Nest Pitch JK4: VIRTUAL REBEL

Nest Pitch JK4: VIRTUAL REBEL

Category/Genre: NA Science-Fiction

Word Count: 90,000

Pitch: Winning. Nothing else matters to 18-year-old Kali. But when the gaming league whitewashes her teammate’s death for ratings, she fights to expose the mind-warping corruption behind virtual sports before it’s game over for her too.

If the MC was an Easter egg…

Whiskey because straight shots can be rough and coffee makes me milder — sort of.

Excerpt: 300 words.

This wasn’t the first time I’d died. Sure as hell wouldn’t be the last either. But while most eighteen-year-old girls studied, gossiped, and swooned over boys, there was no other way I’d rather spend my Saturday night.

Crouched high on the tower’s parapet, I overlooked a sea of wheat fields. The scent of lavender and the taste wheatgrass wove together in the air, drifting alongside the breeze that swept through my hair. I took a deep breath and smiled at the irony, as thick as the mountain air filling my lungs. Lavender. Wheat fields. Tranquility.

Peace, in a place anything but peaceful.

Movement in the fields caught my eye, down and right. A zigzag carved its way through the ten-foot tall stocks, heading straight for the tower. My smile pulled wider. Maybe this sucker had the balls to take on Kali Ling.

The warrior.

I stilled inside. Even breaths. No fear. At the field’s edge, the stocks trembled violently. The air filled with the rainstick rustling of brush and dry grass. Yes. Someone would emerge. I gripped the sword sheathed across my back and waited, muscles tight, mouth watering. Come on. Give me something. A brute. Six — no — seven feet tall, wielding a mace. Or an axe.

Give me anything.

A rabbit scurried out from the field. Nothing followed. The grass fluttered in the breeze. Birds chirped, nestled in the nearby sycamore trees. It was the rabbit, and only the rabbit.

For now.

I punched the parapet’s brick wall, but instead of frustration, irony reverberated through me again. In 2054, most my age hid behind a barricade — of textbooks. Engineering. Art history. Pffft. Meanwhile, I strapped on battle gear, sword and all, and headed into these fields.

Fields I now frowned at, which had stilled just to spit on my excitement.