Mako (The Mako Saga: Book 1) Read Free Page A

boy’s deep brown eyes went wide with complete and total disbelief as the revelation of his professor’s identity sank in.
    Rocketing forward in his seat, the words shot like rapid fire from his mouth. “ No freakin’ way! You’re—”
    “Okay class, if you’ll turn to the third page of the syllabus, you’ll find…”
     

Chapter 2: Echoes
    Fifty-five obnoxious minutes later, having answered six questions about the final, four about the term paper, two about attendance, and another three about his grading system—as if none of this had been covered in the slides—Lee crammed his thumb drive and leftover syllabus materials back into his briefcase for the return trek up to his office.
    “So much for thirty-five minutes,” he grumbled, offering a halfhearted wave goodbye to the boy in the brown ballcap who’d all but bumrushed him after class with a not-so-quick round of Twenty Questions: Mako Assault edition.
    “What did you do on E-4?” he’d insisted. “How did you get past the second wave on E-8? Is the rumored ambush on E-16 legit? Do you ever square off with Commandant Masterson before the game ends?” Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
    Of course, Lee couldn’t really hold it against the kid. After all, he’d been every bit as exuberant once he’d gotten hooked six months ago—still was. Hence why he’d shirked pretty much every responsibility he had this weekend to run back through his workup for E-42. Laundry, lawn work, cleaning the war zone that was his kitchen; it all paled in importance of what lay ahead tonight. To his knowledge, only a handful of clans had made it this deeply into the game; and at present, out of an estimated 18.5 million users worldwide, his was the only active clan even close to the end.
    Naturally, this fact had drawn them a moderate amount of celebrity status in gamer circles online, hence the boy’s animated response in class. As such, Lee’s pulse quickened with the thought of what tonight could mean. True, there was no monetary reward for beating the game—although given last month’s utility bill; that would’ve been nice. There was no earth-shattering praise or prestige—no tickertape parade. Just the knowledge and personal reward that went with doing something that literally, no one else in the world had done, and in the case of Lee Summerston, whose ramen noodle budget and borderline manic-depressive state allowed him the ability to do little else, it was everything. It was the chance to finish something—to do something that no one else had. Ultimately though, it was a chance to be proud of something again, a feeling he hadn’t known in a very, very long time.
    Yep. Tonight would be a good night—it had to be.
    Jingling his keys into the lock beneath the smoky glass pane of his office door, Lee pushed through the opening and tossed his briefcase down beside the hand-me-down desk he’d called dibs on last spring when most of the tenured faculty had received new office furniture. Granted, this one wasn’t in much better shape than the rickety excuse for a workstation that’d occupied the space before, but at least it wasn’t in danger of collapsing on him at any given time, and that alone was a much-welcomed upgrade.
    Rolling up his squeaky office chair and taking a seat, Lee hunched over to the ancient computer tower beside the desk and pressed the power button on its scratched faceplate. As it buzzed and sputtered to life, he began sifting through the mail he’d retrieved from his faculty box in the supply room, sorting out the things he’d actually need (early semester memos, faculty messages, orientation fliers—that sort of thing) and lobbing the rest through the basketball hoop over his trashcan. That was when his eyes locked on a large yellow envelope at the base of the pile, marked “Clerk of the Court: Leon County, FL.”
    Staring at it for a long moment, Lee pondered the implications of its contents. He’d waited eight long months to