Daniel X: Game Over (9 page)

“Getting your bearings back, little Alien Hunter?” Number 1 asked, bending down, his bug eyes flashing red. “Starting to figure it all out, are you?”

Now he started to peel
me
off the floor. Was he going to toss me off the balcony too? Would I land near Dana’s body?

He was laughing. “I guess I was right not to adjust my schedule and deal with you before now. You’re obviously not as adept a hunter as either of your parents were. By your age, each of them was more formidable than you are. And, clearly, even the two of them never became a true threat, not
really.
”

He held me out in front of him and looked into my flattened eyes.

“Still,” he seethed, “there’s no sense taking unnecessary risks.”

And, with that, he extended his disgusting insect jaws,
clamped them onto to me, and began to
blow.
He was filling me with foul alien breath!
He was inflating me
.

It was too disgusting to even contemplate, but my limbs and head started to regain their accustomed shape, and then—

Suddenly, I was standing on the balcony again with a nonflat Dana. My friends, the Murkamis, and my family were still inside watching the Gathering Day parade of elephants, listening to the orchestra.

Had that entire weird scene with Number 1 been just a Gathering Day vision?

I grabbed Dana’s hand to make sure she was real. She was.

I never wanted to let go.

THE GATHERING DAY party went on later than it should have—especially on a weeknight—but there wasn’t really anybody to blame but myself. After all, no one was forcing me to wake up at 6 a.m. to try on Japanese school uniforms.

Staring at myself in the bedroom mirror, I decided that—except for the bags under my eyes—I basically looked like Little Lord Fancypants. Almost every school in Japan requires kids to wear
seifuku,
and like most uniforms, they aren’t exactly, um, hip. I understood the purpose behind them—I’m sure they helped to keep students from getting distracted with superficial concerns—but the one I was wearing right then made me look like a cross between an admiral and a theme-park greeter.

It was a good thing I’d gotten the Murkamis their own room and that my friends and family weren’t around right
then, or I’m sure I’d have never heard the end of it. Of course, they probably wouldn’t have approved of my plan, either. I confess. I knew it wasn’t the safest thing in the world to be interfering in the hunt of the last living Pleionid in the universe.

Using my List computer, I’d done some refresher research on the legendary species. Pleionids had been unique in all the universe for their unsurpassed ability to change shape and color (kind of like me, but with
way
more options). Their gift was enabled by a compound called pleiochromatech that was so chemically complicated and unstable that it had never been successfully duplicated in any laboratory.

And that was what had caused the species’ downfall. Ever notice how the rarer a thing is, the more valuable it becomes? Well, pleiochromatech—despite the fact that nobody ever even figured out how it worked—at one point was worth more per milligram than pure lawrencium, and that meant that every unscrupulous merchant in the cosmos was paying top dollar for the stuff. So it wasn’t long after the Pleionid’s home planet was discovered that entire armies of poachers descended and all but wiped them out.

A handful had been rescued by well-meaning agents of the Federation of Outer Ones and sequestered in “safe houses” around the universe, but, one by one, the few survivors had died of natural causes or had been hunted down. Speaking as a member of another decimated species, I had some sense for how hard it is to persevere under such circumstances.

But I also knew other things about the mind-set of a survivor. And I wondered if this last Pleionid might be willing to help prevent the same fate from befalling another innocent species—aka you humans. Plus, The Prayer had ordered Number 7 and Number 8 to keep the Pleionid away from me at all costs, so there must be something we could do to help each other.

I slung my book bag over my shoulder, adjusted my uniform’s crisp lapels, and headed outside to join the similarly dressed schoolchildren of Japan. My mission? To befriend the son of Number 7 and Number 8.

I had a sneaking suspicion we had at least one enemy in common.

WHEN IT COMES to schools and children, Japanese culture is pretty serious. We’re talking proper terms of respect for teachers (sensei), loudspeaker announcements alerting the public to use caution when students are headed to and from school, and meticulous attention to students’ safety while they’re at school too.

Which meant that even with a perfectly tailored uniform and the universe’s most pleasant demeanor, I wasn’t going to be able to just march into Kildare’s school and sit at the desk next to him.

It was a little exhausting, but I basically had to brainwash my way into Kildare’s class. From the first group of kids I bumped into on the sidewalk to the crossing guard to the homeroom teacher—I mentally created for each of them the impression that I was somebody they knew,
somebody they shouldn’t be suspicious of or throw off the premises.

It’s easier done than explained in this case—human psychology isn’t the easiest thing to understand, much less manipulate—but Mom had given me a smattering of psychological operations training, and somehow I managed to pull it off.

Just being let into the school wasn’t enough; I still had to find Kildare. I’d hacked into the school server and swiped his class schedule, but he wasn’t in the classroom it indicated he’d be in. I wandered the hallways, peering into classrooms, checking the playground, the music rooms, the cafeteria, and then, as I made my way past the gymnasium, I heard a bunch of boys laughing and taunting somebody.

That’s when I first saw him, standing without a shred of resistance in front of five mean-looking boys. One of them, the spiky-haired ringleader, gave Kildare a push that sent him spinning into a wood-and-glass display case that lined the wall. I suppressed the urge to put an end to this unfair fight, but it wasn’t easy. If there’s one thing that never fails to tick me off, it’s bullies.

But this kid they were shoving around was the child of the most powerful alien couple I’d ever encountered. And something told me, if push came to shove, he’d be able to take care of himself.

I slunk back out of sight and watched the scene from around the corner.

“You going to give us your homework, bug boy?” asked the ringleader.

“Of course, Ichi,” replied Kildare without a trace of sarcasm or defiance. He produced a notebook from his bag. “You want me to copy it into your notebooks for you?”

“In
your
handwriting? Then the teacher would know it isn’t ours, stupid,” he barked, shoving Kildare harder this time.

I again fought the urge to go over and kick their butts and stayed out of sight where I was.

“Get that garbage can,” the ringleader said, gesturing to a round plastic trash barrel just down the hall. Two of the little brutes got the can. And the next thing I knew, the five of them had taken Kildare’s book bag, thrown it in the garbage, and shoved him, butt-first, into the can. He was wedged so far in that the crooks of his knees hung over one side and his armpits over another.

“Now put him up there,” commanded the leader, pointing to the top of the trophy case. His hench-bullies looked at each other quizzically, and first one, then all of them started to laugh.

“Quickly!” the leader urged. They stopped laughing and hoisted the garbage can—with Kildare in it—atop the trophy case.

Then they fled down the hallway, one of them yelling, “Hey, somebody needs to take out the trash down here!”

With little choice but to wait for a janitor to discover him, Kildare was in quite a pickle. He could probably have toppled the can over by rocking his weight back and forth, but if he did that he’d plummet at least six feet to the concrete floor and might land on his head. Seriously, I couldn’t
envision any other way he could unwedge himself from the can. The human body has limitations, and extricating one from a round plastic waste barrel into which it has been forced butt-first is a biggie.

But he
wasn’t
human, was he?

Why had he let a bunch of bullies do this to him? And why was he just sitting up there, slowly counting backward to himself in Japanese, “
Ju, kyu, hachi, shichi, roku, go, shi, san, ni, ichi—”

When he reached zero, he drew a breath and—mindfreak—turned
gray
and then dissolved into little tiny particles. At least that’s what it looked like to me.

I don’t think I actually said “Holy frijoles!” out loud, but I must have inhaled or something, because his color and former shape instantly returned and his head swiveled toward me, his piercing dark eyes locking on mine as a chill shot up my spine.

“Who
are
you!?” he wanted to know.

ACTUALLY, HIS TONE was probably more embarrassed than threatening. I didn’t feel so much scared as I did guilty—like I’d just seen something that I probably shouldn’t have, like I’d been spying on him. Which, I guess, I had.

There was no way I could use my human-tested Jedi mind trick to convince him I was just another human kid who’d been enrolled here for the past two years. Other than the fact that he seemed to have a superhuman tolerance for bullies, I knew next to nothing about how his alien mind might work. Chances were, if I tried to interfere with his thoughts, the only thing I’d end up doing would be flagging myself as a fellow alien.

So instead, I reached into my bag of superpowers and
pulled out my most tried-and-true paranormal ability—playing stupid.

“Uh, hi! Like, I’m Daniel. Who are you?”

“I’m Kildare Gygax. Nice to meet you, Daniel. Want to do me a favor and see if you can help me down from here? There should be a stepladder in the janitor’s closet down the hall over there.”

“How do you know that?”

“Let’s just say this isn’t the first time something like this has happened to me.”

“Those bullies have stuck you up there in a garbage can before?”

“Actually, last time they hung me by my underpants on a climbing peg halfway up the gymnasium wall. But the stepladder was helpful then too.”