“You’d have a heart attack,” Lily teased. Mia liked to be in control with a capital C. Flying blind into enemy territory in a scout ship or flying full speed at an enemy destroyer would not make her happy, and we all knew it.
“Shit. You’re right. I totally would.”
We all laughed, and I was still smiling as I booted up my player stats on my big flat-screen TV. The bar across the bottom that showed my mission completion—like the temperature on a thermometer—was almost full. The XP tally too. I was literally this one last mission shy of academy graduation. I was almost there. While I played with Mia and Lily, their training program—and game experience—was customized by their other fighter types, but we all had to work together to be successful. Once I graduated, they would have to recruit a new pilot from one of the game’s chat rooms to help them win their final battles. Once I won, I couldn’t play my character anymore. Which was sad and yet not enough to stop me from wanting to beat the game.
Game after game, mission after flight mission, I’d honed my skills to be the best Starfighter pilot. To make it even better, I had a wingman. A Goose to my Maverick, if I put it in Top Gun terms. A gorgeous wingman.
I admired the full-body image of my fighting partner—whose avatar filled my TV’s dark background. I grinned, loving the hot-as-hell alien I’d custom built to be my sidekick when I’d first started the game. Every player had one—a hunky fighting partner—and they were all different. Customized and designed using attributes chosen from the game menu to match each game player’s personal preferences. I’d gone with tall, dark, and handsome. Times ten. There were men and women. Short. Tall. Every size, shape, skin tone, and facial feature was represented. I’d basically built my dream man inside a video game. I understood Lily’s hesitation.
If we started the game over, I’d have to give him up.
Lily practically read my mind. “Look, if Jamie wins, she’ll have to give up Alex when we start over. Same goes for both of us when we graduate.”
“Bist du bescheuert?” Mia shouted in her headset. Both Lily and I had spent enough time online with Mia to know exactly what she was saying. Are you crazy? Or stupid. Or something along those lines. “My Kassius is sexy, but he’s not real. Not. Real.”
I stared at Alexius—who I nicknamed Alex—my custom-built hottie, and frowned. Yeah, he wasn’t real… but I wanted him to be. To look at me and talk to me as he did in the game. While he only spoke a limited number of programmed responses or orders because we were… in… a… game… I dreamed of that deep voice talking dirty to me in real life. There were some outtakes that teased me with a romance between my character and Alex. Usually I was treated to one romantic scene where there would be a brief kiss between us. Sometimes his character would ask mine to go with him after a mission for some private time. But the game makers always took what happened next off-screen. Damn them.
Not that I would have been more satisfied with watching video-game love scenes. No matter what, it still wouldn't have been real. But what a kick-ass fantasy. I wanted to run my hands over those hard muscles, feel his power. Feel him. Kiss him. Touch him. Let him strip me naked and… Yeah.
I sighed and took another sip of soda. I was insane, getting hot for a computer-generated hero. But he was mine. Lily and Mia had made their own custom sidekicks. As gamers, we’d chosen literally everything but their names. Which seemed weird to me but was a relief, too. Knowing myself, I would have named Alex something boring… like John.
Alexius of Velerion was anything but boring. I couldn’t imagine a guy as gorgeous as him being into me outside of a game. I was a woman who never met a cheesecake she didn’t like. Who spent most of my workday solo. Read more than partied. Played video games. I spilled some soda on my pants, and I rubbed at the soft material. Yeah, I was sure Alex would get hot and heavy for a woman in pj’s decorated with cartoon penguins.
“I know,” Lily said, but I couldn’t miss the pout in her voice. “But Jamie’s going to finish tonight, and soon we’ll be done, too.”
“Remember that game when Jamie destroyed that entire squadron of Dark Fleet Scythe fighters to rack up all that XP?”
I smiled. God, that had been amazing. The Dark Fleet had set up an ambush. I’d been leader of my own Volantes II fighter squadron, but they’d tricked us into chasing them into a ravine and killed every single one of my squadron except me.
I’d destroyed them all, every single Scythe fighter left, but I still felt guilty about it. I’d led my squadron into a trap. I’d been in command. And they’d all died because of my poor judgment.
I’d moped for a week until Mia reminded me that it was a game. Just. A. Game.
Damn, but sometimes it didn’t feel like we were playing. I got so deep into my headspace when I was in a battle, it felt real. Too real sometimes.
I’d doubled my score from that mission alone, pushing me to—tonight, hopefully!—beat the game or graduate before Mia and Lily. So overall, as far as that specific mission, that disastrous battle had been a total win. But I still fell asleep thinking about it almost every night. Wondering where I’d gone wrong. How to prevent it for next time. Because I was going to play this game again. Unlike
