Even that wouldn’t have seemed so disturbing if it had been the only strange behavior Gus had demonstrated in the last few weeks. But Gus had been acting so oddly that Shawn frequently found himself checking the back of Gus’ neck to see if the Martian invaders had been tinkering with his brain.

It all started around the time they were hired to find Macklin Tanner. To Shawn this was the greatest case they’d ever landed. It was, in fact, the very case he’d had in mind when he first decided to become a private detective. In order to solve the crime he and Gus would have to live in a completely virtual world that no one had ever seen before. They were going to be paid to play and win the coolest computer game ever invented.

And yet when Brenda Varda came to them for help, Gus hadn’t wanted to take the case. Instead he kept muttering about how the police had already looked into it and the guy had probably taken off on his own.

That had sparked their first real argument since they had given up trying to agree on whether or not it was right for George Lucas to digitally “upgrade” the original Star Wars movies. Shawn’s point had been simple and, to his mind, obvious-if Tanner had gone for an unannounced vacation, then the case was guaranteed to have a happy ending. If, on the other hand, something had happened to him, then Shawn and Gus were the only ones who could help him. Either way they were going to get paid a lot of money for an experience most people could only dream about.

Gus finally agreed to help on the case, but Shawn could tell his heart wasn’t in it. And once they were actually inside Darksyde City, the game’s fictional locale, Gus managed to be no fun at all. The first two days, he hardly killed anyone, even when a good bit of mayhem might have moved him up a level. It was like he couldn’t wait to get out of the virtual world.