Game Over

Chapter 31





YOU KNOW WHO wins in a fight between Exhausted and Stressed Out? Yeah, Stressed Out. I not only didn’t pass that all-night test with Dad; I managed to fail it with flaming colors.

I decided against taking a much-needed nap and soon found myself standing a block away from the GC Tower, contemplating the best way to get inside and do some more spying on Number 7 and Number 8. My window-washing gig had worked out okay, but it definitely had certain drawbacks. Like the fact that if they didn’t happen to be in a penthouse with floor-to-ceiling windows, I’d have no idea what they were up to.

I didn’t have much time to rig up the window-washing gondola now anyway. If there was one thing Dad’s test had done—besides making me even more tired—it had proved that I needed to become better prepared—and fast. I needed to learn everything I could about these two. I needed unlimited access.

I considered a few options. In theory I could make myself into a computer virus and infect the building’s security systems, hacking into the cameras and microphones they had doubtless installed throughout the facility. But that was probably too risky. Although I’d been doing a lot of research on digital information systems lately, I hadn’t actually tried to be a computer program before, and, judging by Number 7 and Number 8’s success with their video games, their digital security would probably be light-years better than anything Earth had ever seen.

I also considered disguising myself as a security guard again. But this time I was going to be among top-ten List aliens, and it was highly unlikely I’d be able to bluster or brainwash my way past them.

No, if I really wanted to be a fly on the wall, the best thing to do was to make myself into a creature as common to Japan as it is the United States: Musca domestica, the ubiquitous housefly. One with a miniaturized Alien Hunter brain in its tiny head.

When nobody was looking, I transformed myself and flew over to the uniformed shoulder of a passing teenage boy who, sure enough, was headed straight into the GC flagship store for an early-morning video-game session before heading off to school.

Now I just needed to hope that Number 7 and Number 8 weren’t as high-tech with the building’s pest control as they were about other things.