Game Over Read Free Page A

He stepped deeper into the building, deeper into the shadow, closer to the sarcophagus.
    Favian flashed along by his side.
    â€œI don’t think you should do that,” he said. “Really. Don’t look in there.”
    Rick ignored him. He kept moving toward the enormous coffin.
    â€œThis place, this church. It’s so strange,” said Favian, worried. “Like a ghost church or something . . .”
    Rick still didn’t answer. All his attention was focused on the sarcophagus. It was drawing him, pulling him to it.
    He reached it now. Holding his sword in one hand, he put his other hand on the edge and leaned over the side to take a look.
    He gasped at what he saw. He could barely comprehend.
    The sarcophagus was full . . . of nothingness. An impenetrable, incomprehensible darkness. A darkness that went down and down forever, deeper than death itself.
    Rick stood staring into it as if hypnotized. He felt something inside him drop open like a trapdoor, all his courage falling through it into that eternal nothingness.
    And suddenly, like a great wave, the dark swarmed up out of the coffin and seized him.

2. THE AWAKENED
    RICK’S EYES FLASHED open and he started screaming. He reached out frantically in a panic. Was he being swallowed by the darkness? Had the nothingness claimed him forever? Was he dead? Was he in hell?
    He fought off the panic. He touched his chest with his hands. He felt his heart pounding, his lungs heaving as he gasped for breath.
    Alive! he thought. I’m still alive!
    He lifted himself up on one elbow and looked around him. He saw his desk, his laptop. His jeans and sweatshirt crumpled on the floor. He saw his football posters and football calendar tacked onto the wall. The harsh glare of sunlight was breaking through the parting of the curtains over his window.
    He was in his bedroom. In his family’s house. In the MindWar compound. Safe. Alive.
    His heart slowing, he sat up on the edge of his bed.
    Another dream , he thought.
    The dreams came every night now, every night since his return from MindWar. Each one of them was morerealistic than the last. Each time he woke it was more impossible to believe it had not been real, that he had not been somehow swept into the MindWar Realm again without using the portal. Which was impossible. So yeah, it had to be a dream. But it sure did seem like the real deal.
    Now the headache hit. Of course. Like the dreams, they were coming every day, more powerful each time. This one felt like someone had stuck his thumbs into his eyes and ripped his skull open. Rick sucked in a breath through his clenched teeth. He pressed his temples with his thumbs. Closed his eyes. Massaged his brow with his fingers.
    He knew the headache would pass. He knew the dream would fade too. But they would both come back, stronger and more real than ever.
    Because of the Realm. Because he had spent too much time in the MindWar Realm, a computerized world created by a terrorist named Kurodar, built out of a link between Kurodar’s mind and a bank of supercomputers, a way for the killer to imagine himself into any computer system on the planet and take it over. Unless Rick could stop him.
    The Realm had infected Rick’s brain somehow, causing these dreams, these headaches. And the infection was getting worse.
    That thought made something curdle in the pit of Rick’s stomach. If there was one thing in this world he didn’t want, it was Kurodar’s sick imagination poisoning his own. Not much was known about the terrorist, butthey knew this: he was a highly not-nice person. He had already tried to crash several jets into a city, kidnap Rick’s father, and blow up Washington, DC. And for Rick, the idea of having the imagination of a guy like that digging like a worm inside his own brain was sickening.
    He didn’t want to tell anyone what was happening to him. He was afraid Commander Mars, or his lieutenant, Miss Ferris, would take him out