ECHO's Revenge

"Echo's Revenge" is the story of brothers Reggie (age 14) and Jeremy King (age 10), elite gamers and experts at destroying the allegedly indestructible online videogame boss, "Echo-6." Their skill at surviving indestructible monsters comes from practice. Without their skills, they would never be able to avoid and survive the explosive monster that hunts them in the real world: Asa, the boyfriend of their mostly absent mother, Jeda.



So brilliantly skilled is Reggie's in his knowledge of Echo-6's weaknesses that he catches the attention of the creators of Echo 6, who invite Reggie to a focus group at their company headquarters group with other Elite Echo-6 gamers. Despite the fact that Asa threatens to beat him and forbids him to attend, Reggie sneaks out at pre-dawn to attend the focus group where he-and the other elite gamers-are carefully watched and questioned by Echo's creators.



But the creators and game designers of Echo are not the only ones listening to elite gamer's tales of defeating Echo and their answers to personal questions regarding their own hopes and fears: The latest version of Echo, Echo 7, is carefully analyzing each gamer and recording notes as this version of Echo is quite different from Echo 6. Unlike Echo 6, Echo 7 is alive and sentient-in the real world. And neither Reggie nor Jeremy know this.



After Asa discovers that Reggie has attended the focus group, he brutally beats him. To avoid greater punishment, Reggie and Jeremy run away to their father's house, 1100 miles away, in Southern California. On the way there, Reggie and Jeremy have the sensation of being pursued and strangely sense that the visual elements around them-a Fed Ex Truck, a comic book storefront-are constantly changing their shape. They are also given rides by series of strange and mythical truck drivers who seem to have prior knowledge of Reggie's and Jeremy's lives.



Within 24 hours of beginning their journey, Reggie begins to see Amber Alerts with faces that he recognizes. He quickly realizes that the Amber Alerts are increasing at an alarmingly quick pace and the faces and names in each new Amber Alert belong to the other Elite Echo-6 Gamers who attended the Echo-6 focus group. Within two days, Reggie realizes that there has been an Amber Alerts for all of the other Elite Echo-6 Gamers at the focus group and that every gamer who attended has been kidnapped. That is, everyone but Reggie. But Reggie is clearly next.



Using his expert powers and knowledge of Echo-6, Reggie is able to keep Jeremy and himself safe as they hide and outwit Echo-7. Finally, they arrive at their father's house in Southern California. But just as they walk up the driveway in front to their father's house, shockers-Echo's sentinels disguised as toy remote control cars-attack them and bring them to Echo-7 who has waited in front of their father's house, shape-shifting and disguising as a race car trailer.



Echo-7 abducts the brothers inside its body and takes them to a cauldron deep inside a mountain in Death Valley where the other kidnapped Elite Gamers are being held. Like the other Elite Gamers, Reggie and Jeremy are forced to work as Echo-7's slaves, slaves who have a decreasing chance of survival as every day passes.



It is there in Echo-7's prison that Reggie and Jeremy-as slaves-must confront who they are: Do they still have the skills to survive and defeat this new, smarter, and alive version of Echo which knows all of their tricks and weaknesses? But more to the point, do Reggie and Jeremy have the strength and loyalty to keep themselves and the other Elite Gamers alive?