Read Daniel X: Game Over Online

Authors: James Patterson,Ned Rust

Tags: #JUV037000

Daniel X: Game Over (4 page)

Chapter
8

 
 

“WE’RE GOING TO need a portable ultrasound scanning unit,” Emma said. “Try the Yokohiro Medical Institute servers.”

“On it,” I replied, whipping The List laptop out of my backpack and conducting a quick search. Y-O-K-O-H-I—there it was. And there was the ISP of their internal server stacks. And then it was just a few more steps before, voilà; there were the manufacturer’s design specs. And now that I knew what it was and could see exactly how it worked—

“Perfect,” said Emma, looking over the newly materialized device in her hands. It basically resembled a police radar gun. She aimed it at the man’s shoulder and had me look into the viewfinder. A glowing mass, about two inches long, spiraled through the flesh of his shoulder, perilously close to the axillary nerve. I let my brain absorb the
image—the dimensions, the orientation—and was overcome with a new appreciation for what it is surgeons do.

And then, just like that, because I could
see
it, I teleported the transmitter out of the man’s shoulder and into the palm of my hand.

It looked like a curly silver wire. I zoomed in my eyes and did a quick study of its circuitry and transmission patterns. If this was a device Number 7 and Number 8 were routinely using, it would be useful to know something about it. Then I materialized a glass beaker of nitric acid and dropped it in—a pretty quick way to destroy the thing for good.

“Can you please give me the names you’ve been using here?” I asked.

“We are the Murkamis,” replied the father. “I am Eigi. This is my wife, Etsuyo; my daughter, Miyu; and my son, Kenshin.”

I introduced myself and my friends, but the real reason I needed their names was for a set of documents I produced right on the spot: Japanese passports, credit cards, and airline tickets to London—a place I knew to be recently free of alien infestations (read Book Three if you’re curious) and where they should be safe for a while.

“Take these and get your family out of the country,” I said. “Things are about to get pretty hot here in Tokyo.”

“I couldn’t possibly take—”

“He made them out of thin air,” Willy said. “It’s not like you’re
taking
anything from him. Trust me.”

The man thought a moment, then nodded. Then we all
hugged. What can I say? We Alpar Nokians are big into public displays of affection.

“Hurry,” said Dana. “You may have destroyed it, but that transmitter was working for a few minutes there. Other killers may be on the way, even as we speak.”

Chapter
9

 
 

NUMBER 7 AND NUMBER 8, Colin and Ellie Gygax to the rest of the world, were having a romantic candlelit dinner in the penthouse apartment of the Game Consortium Tower. They were sitting at a priceless room-length table milled from the dense, richly veined wood of an extinct species of alien tree. And set in the middle of the table in front of them was a lacquered bowl made from the shell of an extinct tortoise-like alien.

“Ah,” said Number 7, slurping away at the soup it contained. “Endangered species jambalaya always takes my mind off my troubles.”

“Do you like it?”

“You’ve out
done
yourself, my dear. Say, is that the Nicolarian I detect? The fruity, almost cherry-like overtones?”

“Very good, honey,” said Number 8. “It certainly is.”

One of several meats in the soup came from a Nicolarian, a species that resembled a gray-haired boa constrictor. Employees of Number 7 and Number 8 had just hunted the only one left last week, and now the two of them were
eating
it.

“Oh,
Colin,
” Number 8 went on, giggling. It was so very droll to call each other by their fake human names. “Ah,” said Number 7, chuckling along. “Perhaps there
is
some part of this unbearable charade I’ll miss.”

“I don’t think so; we won’t have time to miss anything.” Number 8 laughed.

“Once we launch the 5G editions and the gamers start tearing this world apart—”

“And once we have personally wiped out the last Alpar Nokian—”

“Ah, yes. Play the video feed. Let’s see him one more time!”

Suddenly, the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Tokyo went opaque and lit up with a high-resolution picture of a teenage boy climbing down off a bus with a homeless family.

“Will you just look at him?” Number 7 said. “So young, so firm, so vital, so—”

“Absolutely
delectable,

said Number 8, drooling into their shared bowl of soup.

“And soon to be the very last of his kind,” said Number 7.

“As these annoying humans would have to admit about their caviar and truffles:
scarcity
is the very best seasoning.”

“Well said,
Colin,
” Number 8 replied. “Let’s savor this one
together,
shall we?”

“Absolutely, Ellie,” said Number 7. And then, somehow, the two of them morphed into a shimmering cloud of gray specks that hovered over the bowl and consumed every last particle of soup.

And then they—or it—descended on the kitchen to eat the scraps.

Chapter
10

 
 

IF I HAD realized that the Gygaxes had been watching me on a giant video screen as they ate the last of some poor endangered (now extinct) species, I might have been a little more thorough about checking my surroundings for the equipment they must have been using to track me. But I was a little busy at the moment, squaring off with a rather unlikely opponent.

“You can’t lose touch with your
key
like that,” said the little girl, Miyu, Eigi Murkami’s daughter.

The little she-devil had just delivered a sharp blow to my solar plexus, knocking all the air out of me and making my vision go gray.

“Actually,” I said, wincing as I got back up off the dojo’s bamboo floor, “I don’t have a key or even a wallet, for that matter.”

“Not k-e-y;
ki!
” she barked at me.

“Ah,” I said. “You mean it’s another word. Can you please give me the language of origin? And use it in a sentence?”

I guess she hadn’t seen any National Spelling Bees lately because she gave me a look like I’d lost my mind. I had been hoping to distract her with a laugh, but this would have to do. As she grimaced, I lunged forward and locked her in a jujutsu embrace, setting her up for a devastating fulcrum throw.

But she was having none of it. She countered with a piece of
kansetsu waza—
joint-locking technique—a leg swipe that made my left knee buckle, and the next thing I knew I was looking up at her from the floor.

“In English, you would spell it k-i.
Ki,
” she said. “It sort of means energy. Now, do you submit?” she asked, driving her heel into my windpipe even harder than before.

“Restraint, Miyu,” urged her mother, turning to us as she waited for Dana to get back to her feet. Dana seemed to have had about as much luck sparring with Eigi’s wife, Estuyo, as I had been having with their daughter. And Joe, Willy, and Emma also seemed to be spending an inordinate amount of time on the bamboo floor—sparring, as they had been, with Eigi and his son, Kenshin.

Both for company and because generally there is safety in numbers, we had invited my fellow Alpar Nokians to spend the night with us before they headed off to Narita Airport in the morning.

The smart thing to do would have been to get some
sleep—I had some aliens to hunt, and the Murkamis had a long flight ahead of them—but I guess I was just excited about having people from my home planet around. And what with us happening upon an abandoned martial arts studio, it seemed only natural that we would start talking about the martial arts. I’ve had quite a bit of training over the years, and the Murkamis professed to be slightly expert themselves—black belts, in fact, just like me. So, from there, it was only natural that all nine of us would end up on the dojo floor in a friendly little tournament. Right?

The only problem was that even though I had thought I’d be the one giving pointers, the clinic was clearly shaping up to be
for,
not
by,
me.

“Tell me,” I said, rubbing my neck and getting back up as Miyu resumed a defensive crouch. “Exactly what part of Alpar Nok are you guys from?”

“We learned these martial arts here on Earth,” said Eigi, helping Joe and Willy back to their unsteady feet. “Just as you did.”

Well, that much I believed. If people on Alpar Nok had known how to fight like this, there’d be a lot more of us alive right now. Seriously, these guys knew every move in the book, and a bunch I’d never heard of. I guessed maybe that was the advantage of getting your training in Japan instead of from your imaginary father in America, as I had.

I untied the black belt from my waist and offered it to Miyu. Some may say I’m stubborn to a fault, but, believe me, I know when I’m outclassed.

“Honorable Alien Hunter,” said Eigi, coming over to
me. “There is no need to turn in your belt. You are a worthy opponent for any black belt of the second or third degree.”

“So, you guys are like seventh degree or something?”

“Miyu is
forty
-seventh, but she is still young. The rest of us, as you might expect, are higher degrees than that. Would you like some training?”

I shrugged and looked over at my exhausted, demoralized friends. They were nodding their heads as vigorously as they could through the pain. I guessed it wouldn’t hurt us any to pick up some tips.

Chapter
11

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