Zak was never so wasteful. With a single shot, he blasted the orange-coloured guard, who crumpled to the ground in a sticky mess of blue gunge. He ran to join Tom, taking a disdainful glance at the mask solidifying over the Spongeyman’s face.
Without hesitation, the two boys burst through the door of the Communications room and dealt with the resistance inside swiftly and accurately, causing no damage to any equipment within.
‘You see,’ said Tom with a smile, stepping over the bodies, ‘it takes more than twice as long with one person instead of two. Now where do we enter this code? We’d better get a move on, as back-up will be here any second.’
The walls of the room were tiled with video sheet, displaying an array of footage, charts and text. Several keyboards were scattered around on desks up against each wall. Tom looked around the room, scanning the items on display.
‘We’re looking for a Visitors Book,’ he said. He pointed to an image of an open book. ‘Found it! Now which of these keyboards?’ He hit keys on each keyboard on the desk in front of him. On the fifth one a stream of characters appeared in the Visitors Book entry form. ‘This one!’ He pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket, and held it up to read.
‘Hey Tom,’ said Zak urgently. ‘Can I do it?’
‘Sure,’ said Tom, and handed him the piece of paper. Tom then moved to check the door. ‘But before you do that, I need to remind you both of something. Are you listening Van?’
‘Should be okay for a minute,’ said Van.
‘Okay,’ said Tom. ‘This cheat puts the game on the True-To-Life setting. You know what that means – you cannot choose to quit the game. You can only get out by completing the mission or getting killed.’
Zak remembered how difficult it was as a beginner to stop himself opening his real eyes. He couldn’t imagine not being able to quit.
