The Glitch in the Galaxy Arcade
A Pixel-Perfect Mystery

About this book:

The Galaxy Arcade is twelve-year-old Maya Lin's kingdom—a neon-lit fortress of cathode-ray dreams where respect is earned in quarters and high scores are sacred. But when a token changer coughs up a single, impossibly light aluminum coin stamped with a lightning bolt and the word *OVERRIDE*, Maya's sanctuary becomes a crime scene. The token doesn't belong to the arcade, and the three identical ones Toby found yesterday came from the pockets of strangers who weren't there to play. They were there to hack the new *Space Warp* cabinet—and they just erased Maya's best friend's record-breaking run with a touch of that same impossible coin.

Now Maya and Annie are the only ones standing between their beloved arcade and Apex Amusement Systems, a corporation that treats high scores like trade secrets and arcade cabinets like vaults to be cracked. With Frank's jury-rigged repair philosophy as their only backup, a notebook full of cabinet specs as their field guide, and a corporate spy's dropped ID badge as their only lead, they have twenty-four chapters to trace the conspiracy from the coin hopper to the leaderboard, expose the cheat codes buried in the firmware, and prove that some games can't be won with overrides—only with skill, nerve, and a perfectly timed quarter drop.

*Token by token, glitch by glitch, the Galaxy Arcade's biggest mystery is loading. Insert coin to begin.*