Game Over - By James Patterson Page 0,1

little exchange had been keeping me awake since I’d first heard it and was precisely why I had come to Tokyo. That snippet had made it clear that Number 7 and Number 8 were possibly about to wipe the human species off the face of the earth. And on a personal note, I was pretty sure that yours truly was the “special friend” they mentioned. In other words, they knew all about me, and they weren’t exactly shaking in their alien booties.

According to The List computer—the alien-tech laptop that has been my bible since I started this gig—going after an alien in the top-twenty deadlies is basically a crapshoot in terms of whether you’re going to live or die. But The List isn’t some all-knowing machine. It’s just an encyclopedia of what we alien hunters and our friends upload into it. Kind of like an ultrasecret wiki about superpowered psychopathic aliens.

All The List had to offer about Number 7 and Number 8 was that the pair had spent the past few years masquerading as Earth’s ultimate power couple. In human disguise, they were known as Colin and Ellie Gygax, founders and owners of the Game Consortium, the biggest and most clandestine video-game corporation in the world.

The rest of the info I had was courtesy of Google: the video games created by the Game Consortium were so addicting that phrases like “brainwashing” and “mind control” were sometimes used by concerned parents and teachers when describing them. There were even stories of kids who acted out some of the scenes in the games and landed themselves in detention—or worse.

But GC hadn’t technically broken any laws—yet—so governments had done nothing to stop them. I knew it was time for me to act. Unfortunately, the GC’s computer systems had proved impossible to hack from the outside. These guys were about twenty times more tech savvy than I was, so electronic surveillance was not exactly easy.

If I wanted to find out more about this place, I would have to get behind the scenes.

Chapter 3

EVIL ENTERTAINMENT EMPIRE or no, I probably could’ve kept gaming on the showroom floor all day long. But after I lost my thirteenth virtual bout of Extreme Cage Fighter VI, I decided it was time to start the real hunt.

My first move was to head to the back of the store and down a set of stairs to a service corridor, scouting out a way to the Gygax inner sanctum. I guess luck was on my side, because it took me less than five seconds to collide with a poorly disguised alien store clerk who was swinging around the corner with a cart stacked high with boxes.

A sure sign that top-ten List aliens are in the proximity is the presence of low-level hench aliens. In this case, the oddly matched skin around the clerk’s eyes and ears, not to mention his orange toupee, were my first clues as to whom I was dealing with.

I immediately materialized a banana peel under one of the cart’s wheels, which skidded sideways, causing the cart to tip over—right on me.

“Ahhh!” I yelled, falling to the floor in mock agony. (Well, not exactly “mock.” Those boxes were heavy.)

“Thisss isss for employeesss only,” he hissed in annoyance, accidentally revealing a forked purple tongue. The thing was so long, he could barely keep it in. Clearly, he’d forgotten the mouth part of his human costume that morning.

“I was looking for the restroom,” I said, gritting my teeth. He looked me up and down like he had X-ray eyes. “Could you please get these boxes off me?” I continued. “I’m a paying customer, you know.”

“You’re not welcome in thisss place,” he said, his voice dripping with menace. “Go back to Kansssasss.”

I felt the blood drain from my face. Kansas is where my parents raised me from just about infancy until I was three. And Kansas is where my parents were killed—slaughtered in cold blood by The Prayer, Number 1 on The List of Alien Outlaws. Did the clerk know? Had my cover been blown? Were Number 7 and Number 8 watching me? Did they know I was there?

I refused to let paranoia get the best of me and so switched gears.

“I’m sorry to trouble you, sir,” I said, extracting myself from the pile. “I’ll be on my way, but let me help you with these boxes first.”

The clerk looked momentarily confused, clearly not the cleverest creature to ever step off a UFO. A good tip to remember: politeness and civility