by Dustin Brady
“Just close your eyes,” Doug said as he loaded up the rocket launcher. “This will all be over soon.”
I squeezed my eyes closed.
“Three. Two. One.”
BOOM!
I felt the heat and shockwave of the blast, but no pain. Had he missed? I opened my eyes to see the suits scrambling for cover. Then I noticed that their vehicle had been blown to bits.
“What was that?!” Doug yelled. “Did anybody see where that came from?!”
Nobody had time to answer because a sheriff’s car screamed up the gravel road at that moment. Two deputies jumped out. “Drop your weapons!” one of them shouted.
The suits looked at each other, trying to decide if they should fight back. Three more sheriff’s cars pulled up. “DROP THEM!” another man said.
The suits dropped their weapons and put their hands behind their heads. The officers ran over and cuffed them. “Are you kids OK?” one of the officers asked as he untied us. I didn’t answer because I was staring at the hot air balloon. One of the cannons was smoking as if it had just been fired. But how? Just then, a head popped up. No… it couldn’t be.
“Eric?”
“That. Was. AWESOME!” Eric yelled as he climbed out of the basket and started running toward us. “DID YOU GUYS SEE THAT CAR?!”
“Why did you wait so long to shoot?!” Mark asked. “He was on one!”
“Eric?” I still couldn’t get over the fact that my friend was running toward us instead of rocketing to the moon.
Eric reached us and started helping the officer with the knots. “You said to wait until the last second,” he said.
“He was on one!” Mark repeated. “He was going to shoot on zero!”
“Yeah,” Eric said. “That’s the definition of the last second.”
“Can someone please tell me what’s going on?!” I asked.
Mark and Eric had to explain the whole thing three times before I finally understood. According to them, Eric had seen the hot air balloon inflate from the rocket, decided it was his only chance to escape, and jumped. Both he and Mark landed safely on the half-inflated balloon and came up with a quick plan together. Mark would roll off the balloon and give himself up. Then, when a suit would grab him, he’d struggle and flail like he was trying to get away, but really, he’d steal the suit’s phone out of his pocket and throw it up to Eric who was still hiding on top of the hot air balloon. Eric would call 911, then sneak off the balloon, crawl into the basket and blast the suits’ car to keep them from driving away when the police came.
“OK I think I understand everything,” I said. “But I just have one more question. WHY DID YOU WAIT SO LONG TO SHOOT?!”
Eric tried to explain his reasoning again, but I got distracted by Sam, who bumped me as she gestured wildly while talking on the phone.
“Yes mum, Amish Country,” she said. “It’s an American thing. I don’t know; it’s like Lavers Hill. You know Lavers Hill? Look, I’m sure it’s on the telly by now. Turn it on and see for yourself. There are loads of cameras everywhere.”
She was right. It seemed like every news station in the country had descended on the Amish farm, and the crowd was growing by the minute. Everyone kept trying to talk to us, but the sheriff’s office pushed all the cameras away. Finally, a black car pulled up, and a familiar porcupine-haired man stepped out from the back seat.
“Mr. Gregory!” I shouted.
The deputies stepped aside as Mr. Gregory ran to us. “I can’t believe it!” he said with a huge smile. “You all made it!”
“You wouldn’t believe everything that happened!” I said. “There was this minecart and roller coaster hovercraft and a drone named Roger…” my voice trailed off as I remembered Roger.
Mr. Gregory took my pause as an opportunity to jump in. “I have a very important question for all of you right now.” He lowered his voice. “Have any of you said anything about the agency?”
We all looked at each other confused. “The agency?” Mark asked.
“Yes, the men in suits.”
We looked even more confused. “I guess not,” I said.
“Good.” Mr. Gregory got serious. “Don’t. Just trust me.”
Before we could ask any follow-up questions, a red minivan squealed to a stop next to the ambulance — the same red minivan we’d seen in Mark’s garage earlier that morning.
Because Mark looked just like us, it was easy to forget that he’d already lived a full lifetime inside of a video game. He’d already been a kid, a teenager, an adult and finally as an old man — and he’d spent every one of those days dreaming about a single moment.
Before Mark’s dad could shut off the car, his mom had jumped out. “Mark!” she screamed with tears in her eyes.
Mark just sat there with his feet dangling out of the back of the ambulance and the biggest smile on his face, soaking in every little thing about this moment. He was finally home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Mark Day II
I spent nearly every second of the next two weeks with Eric. We told our story over and over to police, to reporters, to friends, and mostly to each other. We’d be sitting in Eric’s room, and he’d smirk and say something like, “Remember the look on your face when I pushed you off that waterfall?”
Then I’d come back with something like, “No, but I do remember watching you scream like a girl when those furballs attacked.”
“They had razors for teeth!”
“I dunno, they looked pretty harmless to me.”
It was good to have my best friend back.
One thing we didn’t talk about — with anyone — was “The Agency.” Thanks to testimony from us and Mr. Gregory, Bionosoft had been shut down for good. Jevvrey Delfino and everyone who’d worked together to trap kids in video games had been put in jail for a very long time. But nobody knew what to do with the suits. They wouldn’t talk, and neither would we. The four that had been captured stayed in jail, but since they all had fake IDs, police never figured out their identity or their employer.
The weeks went by in a parade of interviews and parties and actual parades. But my favorite event was Mark Day II on the last day of school. Since our school had held a “Mark Day” back when they thought Mark was gone for good, they decided they needed to do something special to celebrate him coming back from the dead. There were balloons and pizzas and speeches from myself, Eric and even Sam by video conference. We got her to do her American accent, which was a big hit with the school. After I finished my speech, I hobbled back to my seat on stage (Only one more week with the cast! Woohoo!), and Mark got up.
We were all worried about how he’d handle his first few months back in the real world, but he was doing great so far. The doctors had managed to get the gnarled Iron Man hand off his arm and put his real hand back together good as new. All the teachers had been helping him relearn everything he’d forgotten from his time in the video game so he could graduate to seventh grade with the rest of our class. The State of Ohio was even considering giving him an honorary driver’s license to commemorate his legendary hovercraft run. When he got to the podium, Mark waved, said a few sentences about how grateful he was for all the nice things everyone had done for him and sat back down 20 seconds later, his face a little red from embarrassment.
Then Principal Ortega got up to close the ceremony. “Before we go, we have one more surprise for our heroes,” she said with a smile. With that, she gave way to Mr. Gregory, who arrived on stage with a big box in his hands.
Mr. Gregory waved to the crowd and turned to us. “We could never do enough to thank you boys for your bravery,” he said. “But I’ve been working on something for the past two weeks to show my personal gratitude for all you’ve done. Can we bring Sam back please?”
Sam reappeared on the big screen behind Mr. Gregory. “What is this?” she asked.
“You should have received a package in the mail today,” Mr. Gregory said. “I want you to open it at the same time we ope
n ours on stage, OK?”
“OK…”
“Three, two, one!”
beep-beep-booooooooooop!
Roger flew out of the box and did a triple flip in the air. At the same time, an identical Roger flew out of Sam’s box.
“NOOOOOOOO!” she screamed.
“Meet the original Roger, re-made with 82 percent original parts,” Mr. Gregory said as he gestured to the Roger on stage. Then he turned to Sam. “And Roger II, a perfect replica of everyone’s favorite robot friend.”
“NOOOOOOOO!” Sam continued.
I jumped from my chair. “No way!” Roger spun around and gave me a high five.
“And that’s all for today!” Principal Ortega said. “Have a safe summer, everyone!”
Eric, Mark and I gathered around Mr. Gregory and thanked him over and over, while Roger zoomed around us, whistling merrily. At some point during the celebration, I noticed Mr. Gregory’s son Charlie standing off to the side. When I made eye contact with him, he made a slight “come here” motion with his head. I excused myself from the group. “What’s up?” I asked.
Charlie looked around and silently walked into the locker room. I followed. Inside the locker room, he checked out every nook and cranny, then turned on one of the showers.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He motioned for me to shush while he turned on two more showers. Finally, he huddled in close. “I’m making noise in case they have listening devices in here. I saw it on TV once.”
“Listening devices? Who has listening devices?!”
Charlie ignored the question. “Have you noticed anything weird about my dad lately?”
“Weird? Like what? I haven’t seen him much since the robots.”
“I don’t know. Weird. Like anything out of the ordinary.”
I didn’t know what Charlie was trying to get at. “Charlie, I barely know your dad. He helped us rescue Mark, but to be honest, he was a little weird then too,” I said with a smile.
“It’s just — it’s just ever since the robot thing, he’s been acting really weird. Like, OK, I know this is going to sound dumb, but my dad never gets my name right on the first try. All of my brothers’ and sisters’ names begin with ‘ch,’ and he’ll go through all of them when he calls me. ‘Cheyenne, Charity, Christian, Charlie.’ Every time. Sometimes he even adds the dog. But ever since the robot thing, he’s called me by my name on the first try. He hasn’t messed up once.”
Charlie stopped to let that sink in. I looked around. “Uhhhh, so you think something’s wrong with your dad because he knows your name?”
Charlie sighed. “I know it sounds stupid.”
“Charlie, your dad was in hiding for two weeks,” I said. “Aren’t you just glad to have him back?”
“I don’t know if I have him back,” Charlie blurted out.
“Charlie…”
“I don’t know if he’s back. He does all this weird stuff, like he goes to bed at the same time every night. The EXACT same time right down to the second — 10:47:32 — even when I try to stall him! I’ve timed him with several different watches.”
“Charlie…”
“And he keeps asking about you. Like all the time. And not like if you’re doing OK, but he always wants to know what you’ve talked about. And then when I try to have a conversation with him, sometimes he’ll stare ahead with a faraway look in his eye like he’s not listening, but then he can perfectly recite every word I’ve said.”
“Charlie…”
“But here’s the big thing.” Charlie looked both ways and pulled out a frisbee-looking disc attached to a wire and plug. “I snuck into my parents’ bedroom and found this underneath the mattress. Do you know what it is?”
I sighed and shrugged. “What?”
“A wireless battery charger. Like for cell phones.”
“Okayyyy…”
“But it’s way too big for a phone. So I took it apart and looked up the manufacturer. The manufacturer is a new company in New Mexico that makes androids.”
“An android is like a robot?”
“A very human-looking robot.”
“So what are you saying?” I asked.
Charlie was already talking quietly, but he delivered the next two sentences in a whisper. “I don’t think that’s my dad at all. I think it’s a robot.”
Hey! Thanks for taking the time to read Trapped in a Video Game: Book Three. I hope you had as much fun reading it as I had writing it. I’m currently working on Book Three, and I plan on releasing it December, 2016. To get updates on the book, a heads up as soon as it’s available on Amazon and other cool stuff, enter your email address at dustinbradybooks.com.
If you liked this book, please consider telling your friends or posting a short review on Amazon. Word of mouth is an author’s best friend and much appreciated.
If you want to get in touch with me for any reason, I’d love to hear from you! You can email me any time at [email protected].
Thanks again for reading my book!
If you liked this book, you’ll also enjoy these other books by Dustin Brady:
Trapped in a Video Game: Book One
Trapped in a Video Game: Book Two
Superhero for a Day: The Magic Magic Eight Ball
About the Author
Dustin Brady lives in Cleveland, Ohio with his wife, Deserae, and puppy, Nugget. He has spent a good chunk of his life getting crushed over and over in Super Smash Brothers by his brother Jesse and friend Eric.
About the Illustrator
Jesse Brady is a professional illustrator and animator in Pensacola, Florida. If he got trapped in a Mega Man video game, he would totally dominate.
