Recruit

With adrenaline numbed fingers, she hammered the buttons. Ignoring sweat in her palms, she clutched the joystick in a steely grip, wielding it with forceful, graceful accuracy. She barely noticed the small crowd gathering around her, bubbling with barely contained excitement. Could she do it? Would she be the first?

Her tiny, pixellated spaceship was badly damaged, under heavy fire. Sweat beaded on her brow. The final combatants closed in. The elite. They fired. She dodged. With surgical precision, her plasma cannons picked them off one by one, till there were no more.

The word CONGRATULATIONS rolled slowly down the screen. She grinned breathlessly, slamming her palms down on the arcade machine, as cheers all around drowned out the electronic victory music.

High above, in orbit, an onlooker smiled. “Contact central command. We’ve found the one.”

— originally published in Dwelling Literary, April 2021

(Unfortunately, this litmag seems to have completely disappeared sometime during 2021. A pity, really. It was my first piece of fiction which wasn’t self-published.)