Read Daniel X: Game Over Online

Authors: James Patterson,Ned Rust

Tags: #JUV037000

Daniel X: Game Over (2 page)

 
 

EVIL ENTERTAINMENT EMPIRE or no, I probably could’ve kept gaming on the showroom floor all day long. But after I lost my thirteenth virtual bout of Extreme Cage Fighter VI, I decided it was time to start the real hunt.

My first move was to head to the back of the store and down a set of stairs to a service corridor, scouting out a way to the Gygax inner sanctum. I guess luck was on my side, because it took me less than five seconds to collide with a poorly disguised alien store clerk who was swinging around the corner with a cart stacked high with boxes.

A sure sign that top-ten List aliens are in the proximity is the presence of low-level hench aliens. In this case, the oddly matched skin around the clerk’s eyes and ears, not
to mention his orange toupee, were my first clues as to whom I was dealing with.

I immediately materialized a banana peel under one of the cart’s wheels, which skidded sideways, causing the cart to tip over—right on me.

“Ahhh!” I yelled, falling to the floor in mock agony. (Well, not exactly “mock.” Those boxes were
heavy.
)

“Thisss isss for employeesss only,” he hissed in annoyance, accidentally revealing a forked purple tongue. The thing was so long, he could barely keep it in. Clearly, he’d forgotten the mouth part of his human costume that morning.

“I was looking for the restroom,” I said, gritting my teeth. He looked me up and down like he had X-ray eyes. “Could you please get these boxes off me?” I continued. “I’m a paying customer, you know.”

“You’re not welcome in thisss place,” he said, his voice dripping with menace. “Go back to Kansssasss.”

I felt the blood drain from my face. Kansas is where my parents raised me from just about infancy until I was three. And Kansas is where my parents were killed—slaughtered in cold blood by The Prayer, Number 1 on The List of Alien Outlaws. Did the clerk know? Had my cover been blown? Were Number 7 and Number 8 watching me? Did they know I was there?

I refused to let paranoia get the best of me and so switched gears.

“I’m sorry to trouble you, sir,” I said, extracting myself
from the pile. “I’ll be on my way, but let me help you with these boxes first.”

The clerk looked momentarily confused, clearly not the cleverest creature to ever step off a UFO. A good tip to remember: politeness and civility throw a goon every time.

I heaved a box that had partially split open. Something metal was poking out, and I shifted the box so I could peer inside.

“No!”
The clerk suddenly sounded more anxious than hostile. “I’ve got it. Pleassse, go back upstairsss. Thisss isss a ssservice corridor only.”

“Sorry!” I said with forced cheer. “Have a good day, sssir!”

I was feeling a lot less cheerful than I sounded. What I’d seen inside that box was something no video-game store should need: guns—dozens of them.

And they were definitely not garden-variety man-made handguns that I could easily change into something else. In fact, their Andromedan trinitanium alloy suggested they were imported from a galaxy far, far away—specifically for the purpose of eliminating hard-to-eliminate beings from other planets.

And I just happened to be one of those beings.

I pretended to walk back the way I’d come, then when the clerk wasn’t looking I quickly turned myself into a replica of one of the many light fixtures on the walls. The hench alien hastily got his boxes back in order
and rushed the cart farther down the hall, where he swiped his ID card at a door bearing a sign that read
.

I hoped to heck that meant “Employees Only” and not “Alien Hunter Execution Chamber.”

Chapter
4

 
 

I HADN’T YET downloaded all the Japanese language characters to my brain, but at least I’d been studying radio frequency security-lock protocols. By adjusting my eyes down to the RF spectrum and intercepting the ID reader’s brief interaction with the clerk’s pass, I was able to figure out and memorize his security code.

The next step in my plan would require help, which meant it was time to morph back to human form and summon my best friends Willy, Dana, Joe, and Emma.

Brief interjection here: when I say “summon,” I don’t mean the way a rich guy might summon his servants. I mean that my best friends are now 100 percent
pure products of my imagination.
It’s not like I spend time talking to empty space or cracking up at things that only I can hear. When Joe, Emma, Willy, and Dana are around, everyone
can see them, hear them, even shake hands with them if they want to. They’re absolutely real. And they’re manufactured by the power of
my mind.

You might have difficulty understanding what I’m talking about—the power to create and manipulate the atomic structure of things around me is completely “alien” to you earthlings, but it’s just part of who I am. It’s one of the gifts an alien hunter gets early on and uses pretty frequently. In fact, it’s the same power I used to turn myself into that light fixture when the clerk wasn’t looking. I also use it to re-create my family, specifically my mom, dad, and sister. Because otherwise I’d be totally alone.

And being alone wasn’t an option, at least not then.

“Is this a recon op?” asked Willy, the natural born leader of my gang.

“Yes,” I replied, passing them Bluetooth earpieces and phones so we could communicate. “You and Dana, come with me. Joe, you watch this door and give the signal if anybody comes through. Emma, you go up to the main floor and keep an eye on things. If you spot anything that looks like a trap, we want to know about it.”

“Aye, aye, Cap’n!” Joe saluted.

I released the lock with a micro-RF broadcast from the palm of my hand. “Let’s go.”

Willy, Dana, and I hustled down a hall where we found three doors, a small, narrow window in each. We spread out and each peered through one. Mine was dark.

“Over here,” Willy whispered, a dim, bluish glow visible through the glass. “One… two… three!”

Defenses ready, we swept into a space that appeared to be a projection booth of some kind.

We were looking down into a theater. Rows and rows of teenagers wearing headphones and holding video-game controllers sat transfixed, eyes glued to monitors built into the backs of the seats in front of them. A stage at the front was filled with riot police and soldiers, and—

Wait a minute! The figures onstage weren’t moving. They were just mannequins. But from here, they looked as lifelike as any you’d find at Madame Tussauds wax museum.

Even weirder: intermingled with the police was an assortment of what I’d technically define as thugs, monsters, and all-around bad guys. It looked like the GC might’ve hired the best special-effects team in Hollywood to put this production together. It was an eerie scene, and it was about to get even eerier.

I looked closer and now could see that a black bag rested near each player’s feet. I zoomed in my alien-enhanced vision on one of the screens. They were all playing what appeared to be Crown of Thorns IV, doing battle with video game–sized versions of the thugs onstage.

“Maybe they’re beta testing Crown of Thorns V,” I speculated. I was pretty certain I’d never seen the levels they were playing, and the graphics were even better than what I’d seen out on the showroom floor.

“Maybe,” said Dana, “but what’s the deal with the creepy mannequins onstage?”

“Haven’t figured out that part yet,” I confessed.

It all became clear in a moment when every game display in the theater flickered. Now the players were fighting an on-screen police officer or soldier. Then, after a few minutes, a bright red icon flashed:

CHANGE WEAPONS CHANGE WEAPONS CHANGE WEAPONS

 

In almost perfect synchrony, the kids took weapons from the black bags at their feet. Then, we all held our breath as we watched the armed teenagers charge boldly down the aisles to the stage.

“What the—?” Willy began, as Dana let out a startled cry. But the sounds of gunfire below drowned out any possibility that she’d blown our cover.

In seconds, the good guys had been reduced to smoking, stinking puddles of melted plastic and wire. But if that weren’t disturbing enough, I noticed something else: the monsters onstage had been left completely untouched.

The players looked around, almost as if they were in a daze, and a few even slumped to the floor. But some of the more alert ones started circling one another, and I could tell we were seconds away from an all-out brawl.

“I don’t think those were regular guns,” Willy commented.

“Whatever,” said Dana, shaking her head. “That is just
sick.

“It’s even sicker than you think,” I agreed, as I ran some
quick math. There were hundreds of millions of GC games and consoles in the world. If the company was able to just flick a switch and turn every player into an armed killer…

“Let’s get out of here,” I said, just as the screens flashed another message:

GAME OVER GAME OVER GAME OVER

 

The brainwashed players collapsed to the floor.

Chapter
5

 
 

AS THE FIVE of us casually strolled out the front door of the Game Consortium—acting like we hadn’t just witnessed a dress rehearsal for a massacre—I turned around and looked up at the hulking, looming, skyscraping GC Tower. I couldn’t help imagining the eyes of the demonic duo and their subhenchmen following my every move.

“I gotta admit, those games
were
amazing,” Willy was saying. “It was like I was playing inside a dream. The way you controlled your avatar almost just by thinking—”

“My personal theory,” interrupted Joe, “is that they’re using the games to destroy society by making people so hungry they can’t think straight. I mean, is it me, or are you guys about to pass out from malnutrition? Quick, let’s get some tempura!”

I raised an eyebrow at him. No level of danger or
seriousness ever stops Joe from obsessing about food. The boy must have a forty-gallon stomach.

“I want miso,” Emma chimed in. Even she, our most seriously peace-freaky friend, had gotten scarily sucked into the GC’s first-person shooter games.

“Guys,” I told Joe and Emma soberly. “You didn’t see what the rest of us saw in that room. We’ve got two aliens a couple of steps away from wiping out the entire human species by means of a sinister plot to turn video-game players of the world into nonvirtual killing machines.”

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