Daniel X takes on the wildest threat the world has ever seen—someone whose craving for fame could destroy the planet!

LIGHTS
All's quiet in the small town of Holliswood. Television sets, computers, and portable devices are aglow in every home, classroom, and store. Yet not all is perfect. Evil is lurking, just out of sight, behind the screen.

CAMERA
Residing in this sleepy town is a villain with more ambition than the world can withstand. Twisted beyond reason, he is dead set on throwing Holliswood into chaos and documenting the destruction of every person in it, including Daniel X.

EXTERMINATION
The only person who can stop this made-for-TV tyrant, Daniel must use his extraordinary power to save the town. But this devilish director has assembled an all-star team of his own creation and vows to stage the most spectacular finale the world has ever seen. Can Daniel X stop this deranged outlaw—or will he find himself on the cutting room floor?

Prologue | NIGHT'S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOUR SIDE OF THE PLANET IS POINTED AT OUTER SPACE

One

IT WAS A pretty regular early-summer night at 72 Little Lane. The crickets and katydids were making that soothing racket they do on warm, still, small-town evenings. The back porch light was on, but otherwise the tidy brown house was happily, sleepily dark.

At least it was until about eleven thirty, when the dark night in Holliswood became a whole lot darker.

It's hard to exactly translate the command that triggered it—it couldn't be heard by human ears, and the language of insects isn't one that can easily be put into words anyhow—but every six-legged creature in the area instantly hid under rocks, wedged into tree bark, or dug down into the dirt...and became very, very quiet.

And then, inside the small brown house, it became very, very loud.

Every speaker—on the computers, on the cell phones, on the iPods, on the radios, on the telephones, on the brand-new Sony flat screen with THX surround sound and every other TV set in the house, even on the "intelligent" microwave—began to blast a dance song from a popular old movie.

A song that just happened to be the favorite of a very powerful alien.

Copyright © 2009 by James Patterson

Milo Ventimiglia stars in the hit NBC show Heroes and previously starred in Gilmore Girls. His films include Gamer alongside Gerard Butler (300), and Armored with Laurence Fishburne.