No one had any answers. The manager stepped out in front of the crowd and raised his hands for quiet.
“Everyone, stay calm. We’ll head to the back and lock ourselves in the storeroom until help comes. It’s the safest place.”
The other adults nodded, pleased that someone was taking charge of the situation. The Ghost Reapers looked at one another uncertainly as the shoppers began to file away.
“I don’t wanna hide in no storeroom,” Elite complained, staring at his trainers. “I get claustrophobic. Small spaces freak me out.”
“How can the Red Eyes be real?” Cheeze whispered, glancing around the group. None of them had an answer. Finally, he turned to Casey. But she was staring at a man in a suit who had turned to follow the store manager.
“You’re Lee, aren’t you?” Casey said, grabbing his elbow. “You were in charge of the tournament. You must know what’s going on.”
Lee’s brash confidence had vanished. He looked terrified. Even his suit seemed to have lost its sparkle.
“It’s nothing to do with me,” he said, defensively. “I just work for a brand management company.” He could see from their faces that they didn’t understand what that meant. “We sell merchandise and set up events like the tournament,” he explained. “We don’t make the actual game. We just do what they tell us.”
“Who?”
“The developers, Area 51.”
“And who are they?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never met them. They do everything by email. I always thought they must be based in Poland, or Hungary. Somewhere like that. Lots of video game developers have studios in Eastern Europe. It’s cheaper to hire staff.”
“They authorized you to set up the eSports tournament?” Cheeze asked.
“I swear I didn’t know this was going to happen,” Lee whispered. “It’s not my fault they took them.”
“Took who?” Casey demanded. She was still holding his arm.
“The gamers, of course!” He seemed surprised they didn’t already know. “A bunch of those things burst into the tournament zone after you lost your match. I told them I hadn’t ordered any cosplayers. But then they pulled out their guns and started shooting. Turns out they weren’t cosplayers at all.”
Casey went pale. She thought of Pete out there on his own. Would the Red Eyes want to take him captive too? She should never have let him out of her sight.
“Where did they take them?” she asked, her mind racing.
Lee shook his head.
“Tell me!” Casey demanded. The forceful anger in her voice clearly surprised Lee. It surprised her even more.
“The last thing I saw, they were putting metal collars around kids’ necks and leading them away, like … like prisoners,” he stammered. “There wasn’t anything I could do.”
Casey let go of his arm. She’d gripped it so tightly that she’d crumpled the fabric of his suit. Without a backward glance, he turned and scurried after the other shoppers as they headed to the storeroom.
“Why they taking gamers prisoner?” Elite asked. “It don’t make no sense.”
“Experiments,” Fish said, shivering slightly. “Aliens always abduct people to run experiments on them. I saw a documentary about it on the Discovery Channel.”
Brain scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Maybe they’re taking hostages,” he suggested. “They could be using kids as a human shield while they launch their invasion.”
“That’s cold!” Elite cried in outrage.
“It’s the only logical explanation.”
Elite shook his head, annoyed by Brain’s lack of emotion.
“Whatever the reason, someone’s got to help them,” Cheeze said. He looked to Casey for guidance, but she was lost in her own thoughts.
“What can we do against an army of Red Eyes?” Fish snapped. “You heard what they said: they’re all over the shopping centre.”
“We need to warn the authorities,” Brain said firmly. “Tell them they’re dealing with aliens.”
“Not just aliens. Aliens from a video game,” Elite added.
“They’ll think we’re nutters,” Fish said, pulling a packet of sandwiches from one of the refrigerated shelves and ripping it open. “What?” he asked as the others stared at him in surprise. “I can’t think clearly when I’m hungry.”
“You know that’s technically looting, right?” Brain said, pointing at a security camera on the ceiling behind them.
“It’s not my fault the tills are shut,” Fish said petulantly, although he was careful to angle his body so the camera couldn’t see his face.
“How we gonna speak to anyone anyway?” Elite asked. “We’ve got no phone signal. No WiFi, no 4G, no nothing.”
“There’s a big branch of Currys on this floor,” Cheeze said. “They’ll probably have a hardwired Internet connection in the computer section. Maybe it’s still working. We could get the message out. I shot some video on my phone – we can upload that.”
Elite fist-bumped him, impressed, then turned to Brain. “Looks like you’re not the only one with brains, brainiac,” he told him.
“Please stop calling me that,” Brain snapped.
Casey’s voice interrupted their bickering. “I’ve got to find Pete.”
The boys suddenly felt guilty. In the chaos, they’d totally forgotten about Casey’s brother.
“We shouldn’t split up,” Cheeze warned her, his brow furrowing. “Besides, we need you. You’re our team captain.”
“She’s not my captain,” Fish said, swallowing a chunk of roast beef sandwich. “This isn’t SkyWake any more. It’s real life.”
“I don’t know,” Brain observed, squinting through the security shutter. “It looks a lot like SkyWake out there to me.”
“Well, even if it is, look at us,” Fish said, swallowing the last of his sandwich. “We’re just a bunch of gamers, not some crack military team. We need to get help and then find somewhere to hide out until the cavalry arrives. If she wants to go looking for her brother, let her. It’s her fault he ran off anyway.”
There was a sharp intake of breath from the rest of his team.
“Ain’t right saying that, Fish,” Elite scolded, his eyes narrowing.
“She lied to us,” Fish reminded him, still hacked off about all that had happened earlier. “Then her brother ran away when we found out the truth. I’d say that puts it firmly on her.” His face was pinched and angry.
Casey hung her head in shame. It was all her fault – and now Pete was in danger because of her.
“Actually,” Brain said, “we should be thanking Casey for saving us.”
“Thanking me?” Casey asked, surprised. “What did I do?”
“Yeah, what did she do?” Fish demanded.
“That brand management guy said the Red Eyes attacked at the end of the tournament. If we hadn’t been disqualified, we would have been there when it happened. The only reason we weren’t was because of Casey. So, thinking about it logically, she saved us…”
“True dat.” Elite nodded. He saw Fish glaring at him and shrugged. “What? You can’t argue with logic, bruv.”
“OK, then,” said Brain. “Here’s the plan. We’ll contact the authorities and then we’ll look for Pete.”
Cheeze and Elite thought about this for a moment and nodded.
“Thank you,” Casey said, grateful for her team’s support.
“Fine,” Fish muttered. “But I still don’t think it’s right.” Then, when he was sure no one was looking, he picked up another packet of sandwiches and stuck them in his pocket for later.
11
LEVEL UP
The journey up the escalators was taking for ever. There were just too many prisoners. The Red Eye grunts and the overseers in their long cloaks were staggering the gamers, keeping them herded together on each floor and then releasing them in small batches of fifteen or so as they escorted them further up the shopping centre.
Pete was scared. He had no idea where th
ey were going or what would happen to them when they got there. He wished he’d never run off. As he was being frogmarched alongside the other gamers, he saw shoppers hiding here and there inside the stores. The Red Eyes didn’t seem to be interested in them at all.
On the third floor, the aliens stopped Pete’s group outside a branch of Primark and signalled for them to wait. Plasma rifle fire echoed around the high-ceiling atrium from a floor above. It seemed like the Red Eyes were trying to clear a path ahead of them before taking the prisoners any further.
The gamers sat on the ground, their backs pressed up against the windows of the clothes store. A tall, thin boy in a red-checked lumberjack shirt, open to reveal a SkyWake T-shirt beneath, sniffled quietly while his friends talked among themselves in small, scared voices. A girl tapped desperately at her phone, trying to get a signal. From the snatches of conversation Pete overheard, everyone was asking the same three questions:
How can this be real?
What do they want?
What should we do?
But no one seemed to have any answers.
Pete rested against a pillar and tugged at the collar around his neck with shaking hands. It felt heavy and uncomfortable, like he was in a prison chain gang. He longed to take it off. The boy in the lumberjack shirt continued to sob. One of his teammates tried to console him.
Looking around, Pete realized that he was the only one here who wasn’t part of a SkyWake clan. Everyone else was huddled with their teammates. Why had the Red Eyes bothered to take him? He looked down at his COMPETITOR badge, remembering that it had Casey’s details coded onto it. Maybe they thought he was her. But what would they want with Casey? In fact, what did they want with any of the gamers?
He didn’t know. He was as clueless as everyone else.
Just then he spotted a CCTV camera on the ceiling. He stared at it, wondering if someone somewhere was watching them. Someone who could help them. He raised a hand and waved at it. But the camera’s lens stared back at him, motionless and indifferent. He suddenly felt stupid.
“We’re going to have to make a break for it,” he heard a voice say behind him. It was Xander. The boys from Strike Force were grouped outside the entrance to JD Sports. They were talking in low voices, plotting something.
“How many Red Eyes have you counted?” one of the Strike Forcers asked.
“I’m up to thirty,” Xander replied. “Two overseers. The rest are grunts. They’re carrying all the weapons we know from the game. Plasma and sniper rifles, shields and energy swords…”
“We don’t know what these things are, though,” said one of his teammates, tugging on the metal collar around his neck. “They could be explosives or anything. We need to find out before we try anything. I don’t want to make a break for it and then get my head blown off.”
“Hey,” said Pete shyly, heading over to them. “Can I help?”
“I don’t know,” said the kid who’d been filming Xander earlier, “can you help?” His teammates chuckled at the burn. Pete felt small and useless. He was about to turn away when a sharp look from Xander made the others fall silent.
“You’re Casey Flow’s brother, aren’t you?” the YouTuber asked. “She with you?”
Pete shook his head. “I lost her downstairs. Maybe she got away. She’s pretty fearless.”
“Yeah, I noticed.” Xander cast a cautious glance towards the Red Eyes. When he was sure they weren’t listening, he dropped his voice low. “Are you one of my subscribers?”
“Of course,” Pete replied, nodding eagerly. “I’ve been watching your channel since the start. I loved that thing you did where you narrated a SkyWake game like it was a David Attenborough nature doc.”
Xander smiled thinly and looked Pete up and down. “How old are you? Thirteen? Fourteen?”
“Eleven,” Pete said, beaming at having been mistaken for someone older.
“You up for helping me?”
“I’m up for anything. Anything at all.”
“Great,” Xander said. “Stay frosty and I’ll let you know when we’re ready to go.”
Pete saw the other Strike Force members staring at him jealously. He sensed they didn’t have much faith in him. They probably thought he was a loser. Too small, no good, couldn’t even play SkyWake properly…
Well, he’d show them.
He could be just as good as Casey. Better, even. He just wished he didn’t have this collar around his neck. He tugged at it. It felt like it was getting heavier and heavier with each passing minute.
Just then a Red Eye started kicking the prisoners sitting on the floor with its boot and jabbered something in its garbled alien tongue. It was forcing everyone back onto their feet. As the group resumed their journey through the shopping centre, Pete looked around at the gamers’ miserable faces. He was secretly pleased that he knew something none of them did.
He knew that they were going to escape.
He was going to help Xander.
And he was going to be a hero.
12
“PASSWORD” IS NOT A PASSWORD
Casey tapped the laptop to wake it up. Like all the other machines in Currys, it had gone into hibernation mode. Outside the store, the shopping centre seemed to have done the same. The earlier chaos had now been replaced by an eerie quiet. The Red Eyes had disappeared, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake, and the shoppers had taken cover wherever they could find it. The only sound was an occasional, muffled burst of plasma fire from the floors higher up.
Despite the strange calm, the team wasn’t taking any chances. Elite, Brain and Fish stood guard at the entrance to the store, ready to shout if anyone – or anything – appeared.
“Damn! It needs a password!” Casey muttered as the laptop sprang back to life and a prompt appeared on-screen. She looked around the display table and even pulled out a couple of drawers, searching for a label or sticker that would help her. The drawers were full of TV remote controls, a couple of USB dongles and a busted stapler but not much else.
Cheeze rolled up beside her. “They never use strong security in shops like this,” he said. “It’s usually something easy for the staff to remember. Do you know what the most common password is?”
“Date of birth?”
“It’s Password,” Cheeze told her, laughing. “They use the actual word itself. Everyone thinks hackers are super-smart evil geniuses. But the truth is, most users are lazy when it comes to security.”
“No wonder people get hacked all the time.” Casey moved aside and let Cheeze take the keyboard.
He typed in Password. But it was rejected.
“Hmm,” Cheeze said. “Let’s rethink. How about 12345?”
He typed the numbers and hit the enter key.
“Nope. I know, let’s try QWERTY, like the top row of the letters on the keyboard. People use that one all the time because it’s impossible to forget.”
His fingers danced over the keyboard and he hit the return key. The computer accepted it with a beep. Casey stared at him in surprise.
“Hacker in the game, hacker in real life,” he told her with a smile. “Amazing what you can teach yourself when you’re sitting down all day long.” He reached into one of the pouches in his wheelchair and pulled out his mobile phone and a cable and connected it to the laptop’s USB port.
“Fish says who you are in real life doesn’t have anything to do with the game.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t listen to him,” Cheeze said airily. “He’s got issues.”
“Well, he doesn’t like me much. Especially not since he found out I’m really a girl.”
“Don’t take it personally,” Cheeze said, checking Fish couldn’t overhear them. “He doesn’t like anyone much at the moment. His parents split up recently and his mum went to live with another man. He’s pretty cut up about it.”
“How do you know about that?” Casey asked, surprised.
“We’ve exchanged a bunch of messages over the last few months,” Cheeze e
xplained. “It’s just been him, his dad and his three brothers for a while now. I guess girls are like an alien species to him.” Cheeze realized what he’d just said and rolled his eyes. “Hmm, maybe not the best choice of words…”
He pulled up Google. “Hey, the plan is working. The phone lines must run underneath the building. I guess the force field doesn’t go below the surface.”
Casey thought about the drones driving themselves into the tarmac and the way the dome of light had stretched over the roof of the building. It made sense.
Cheeze logged into his Instagram account. Casey noticed that the feed was full of pictures of skateboarders.
“I used to be a skater,” he told her as he clicked on the videos from the shopping centre and started to share them. “I can still do a few tricks.” He raised the front wheels of his chair and spun it around in a nifty 360.
There was a ping from the laptop’s speakers.
“You know, I’ve only got twenty followers,” he said, looking a little embarrassed, “and they’re all skateboard nuts. Should we send the footage to someone else? The police, newspapers, new channels?”
“Send it to all of them,” Casey said. “They need to know what’s happening.”
Cheeze turned back to the computer and his fingers clattered over the keyboard. A moment later he stopped and stared at the newsfeed on the screen. His mouth fell open in shock.
“Looks like they’re way ahead of us…”
The West Point shopping centre was all over social media and the Web. Cheeze went to the BBC News homepage, which was streaming live footage from outside the building. Sirens flashed silently all around, and military helicopters hovered in the sky above the dome.
ALIEN INVASION IN LONDON! read the caption at the bottom of the screen. The newsreader was slightly breathless, unnerved by the scale of the unfolding events. Casey watched looped footage of the scene she’d seen firsthand outside, of the police car crashing into the force field.
“Well, at least they know what’s happening,” Brain said, looking at the monitor. The rest of the boys had joined Casey and Cheeze in the shop, drawn to the screen by the familiar, clock-ticking theme tune. They all watched for a moment, captivated. Weirdly, seeing the shopping centre on the news made the events of the past couple of hours feel much more real.
SkyWake Invasion Page 7
