Game Over - By James Patterson Page 0,31

station. He seemed distinctly gloomy, and I again wondered what he might be thinking about tonight’s hunt. Was he really just going along with it for some almost-human reason, like maybe he wanted to please his father?

Not, of course, that it really mattered. Right then I had more immediate things to figure out—like where the heck he was going. The bullet train he was boarding ran out to the northeast suburbs of Nishinasuno and beyond.

I’m pretty good at tailing people, if I do say so myself, but we’d only gone twenty minutes when he nearly gave me the slip. The train was hurtling through the fields outside of Kurodahara when I noticed him getting up from his seat and heading forward, maybe to use the bathroom in the next car.

But no sooner had he exited the car than I happened to spot him out the window!

Somehow he’d gotten himself off the train and was striding through a rice field like he was a farmer out for a stroll.

With a quick “Pardon me” to the middle-aged commuter at my side, I made my way to the bathroom, then teleported myself off the train, something that I assure you is much easier said than done. I didn’t know the area very well, so, to be safe—and to make sure I didn’t teleport myself into a rock or something—I simply rematerialized myself five feet off the ground and on the opposite side of the train, in case Kildare happened to look back in my direction. Only problem was I forgot to materialize at a speed relative to the ground. That meant I was still traveling as fast as the bullet train.

Yeah, over one hundred miles per hour. Ouch is right.

I bounced and rolled like one of those Olympic downhill skiers who wipes out halfway through the course, only my wipeout was in a muddy, flat field. It was a good thing I’m a pretty sturdily built kid and that there weren’t any trees. It was also a good thing Kildare was too far away to hear me crash to the ground.

Once I’d determined I wasn’t mortally wounded, I turned myself into a butterfly whose anatomy I’d fortunately had occasion to memorize from Professor Kuniyoshi’s collection. I caught up with Kildare just as he made his way to a moss-covered old Buddhist lantern at the edge of a small field.

The timing was good, because what happened there was something I really had to see with my own eyes. As Kildare approached the stone lantern and placed his hand on it, the moss began to move—and talk!

Chapter 39

THE PLEIONID!

The creature had been waiting for Kildare cleverly disguised as a layer of moss and lichen on the surface of the ancient lantern.

Despite its being maybe the cutest creature I’d ever seen—those big puppy eyes, those adorable little hands and feet—it tore into Kildare’s bag of Mister Donut donuts with ravenous savagery. Then it collapsed to the ground in a fit of satisfied groans and bubbly giggles.

But Kildare wasn’t smiling as I landed on a nearby stalk of bamboo.

“You can’t stay here,” said Kildare. “They’re coming for you in less than an hour. You need to leave this planet. Now.”

“I need to talk to the boy,” it replied.

The boy? Did it mean me?

“He was at my school today,” replied Kildare.

My little butterfly mind was racing at a thousand miles an hour. Did Kildare know who I was? I guessed that would make sense given that his parents had mug shots of me floating around their information network.

“Take me to him,” said the Pleionid.

“There’s no time,” Kildare told him. “And I don’t think you can help him anyhow.”

“Faith,” the Pleionid responded simply.

“I have faith,” said Kildare, glancing at his not-yet-activated hunting tracking unit. “I have faith their gamers will hunt you down, and then my parents will probably eat your carcass if you don’t get very, very far away from here right now.”

Should I have revealed myself then and there? It seemed an obvious thing to do. But was it too obvious? How was I supposed to be certain this wasn’t a trap?

The answer, of course, was that I couldn’t be certain of anything. I bit my butterfly tongue and stayed right there, looking to all the world just like one of its billions of innocuous insects.

Chapter 40

HOW MUCH TIME was I losing just resting there and debating everything I saw through my thousand-lensed butterfly eyes?

There was no way Kildare could be the enemy, I thought. I mean,