Game Over - By James Patterson Page 0,35
from real life—one of those conscienceless alien poachers was priming an Opus 24/24!
Great. This was just great. Human civilians under my feet, a sacred metal statue all around me, a half dozen aliens working together to blow my brains out, and I was so tired and disoriented and scared I could barely see straight. Some superhero I was turning out to be. If the cards continued to fall like this, I would be responsible for the untimely deaths of more than a hundred innocent souls.
Then in a flash, I realized the Opus 24/24 was no longer charging, which meant it would soon be firing.
I leaped up as a pulse of pure pain arced from a saw-toothed muzzle, and evil yellow tendrils blossomed across the interior metalwork of the statue.
Normally I would have stood my ground, normally I would have been happy to go down swinging, but normally I wasn’t living with the burden of just having witnessed the death of the last member of a legendary—and irreplaceable—alien species. I couldn’t even think straight. Heck, I probably would have had trouble tying my shoelaces right then, I was so freaked out.
And then it came to me—pleiochromatech. I’d just been shown how to make it and how it worked. I didn’t need to fight; I could hide.
I dove down into the wealth of knowledge the Pleoinid had just given me… and through an act of sheer will that I don’t know how to explain, I flattened myself into a slick of invisible flesh, and slid down into the darkness while my pursuers raged with frustration.
Chapter 44
THEY SAY THE best way to recover from a tragedy is to throw yourself back into regular life. And since the only regular thing I know to do in this life is hunt bad aliens, that’s exactly what I did.
At 8:20 a.m. I was on my way back to school to have one last meeting with Kildare. I couldn’t shake my hunch that he was part of the solution, not the problem. And the alternative—waving the white flag and leaving Japan like my father wanted me to—just wasn’t in the cards. Especially not after I’d learned that Number 7 and Number 8 weren’t a couple steps away from having the human race destroy itself; they were one step away. And not after I’d just let the last living Pleionid get eaten by some nameless, faceless, game-obsessed alien beast.
As it turned out, though, I didn’t have to get all the way back to school to find Kildare. Three blocks away from the main entrance, I just about collided with him as he rounded a corner on his bicycle.
“Hey,” I said as he skidded to a stop. His eyes were red and puffy.
“Oh, Daniel, hey.”
“Want to give me a lift the rest of the way?” I asked. “I could sit on the rack.”
“I’m not going to school,” he blurted. “My father won’t let me go anymore.”
“Your dad is actually forbidding you to go to school? What is he—like, the Anti-Dad?”
He started to say something but clamped his mouth shut before it could get out. The pain in his eyes said it all.
“Well, small world,” I quipped, trying to cheer him up. “I’m having a crapalicious day, too.”
He nodded and tried to smile, but the poor guy was starting to shake.
“Hey,” I said, “I know just the thing.”
“You’re going to go make my father change his mind?”
“Better than that. You and I are going to take one of the most important courses of study that school offers.”
“But I told you, my dad’s not letting me go.”
“This is an off-campus course.”
He looked at me skeptically. “Oh yeah? What’s it called?”
“Introduction to…hooky.”
Chapter 45
WE HEADED STRAIGHT to Harajuku, the hippest district in the entire city of Tokyo. From Burton Snowboards to Harley-Davidson to Under Armour to North Face to Adidas—name your favorite company and they have a store in Harajuku. And, chances are, it’s mobbed with teenagers.
Oh, and it’s also got some pretty hip cafés, clubs, and fancy Japanese restaurants. But I wasn’t in the mood for noodles or sushi for lunch, so, instead, we hit a Shakey’s Pizza, where I can’t recommend the dessert pizza enough. That’s right—a pizza crust with such toppings as pineapple chunks, hot fudge sauce, and whipped cream.
“I feel a little sick,” said Kildare with only a mild smile of regret. After eating an entire teriyaki chicken pizza, he’d somehow managed to down an entire 1800 cc Grande Parfait (read: a half gallon of ice cream floating in