Game Over - By James Patterson Page 0,42

with a freeze ray and then spending the next few years figuring out how to extract Kildare’s billions of cells from the mix once they weren’t moving around. Problem was that although I’d heard of them, I hadn’t yet learned the physics of freeze rays and couldn’t very easily just invent one on the spot.

Using a giant can of alien bug spray was a great idea, if I had any understanding of Number 7 and Number 8’s physiology and what toxins might actually be effective. And, again, how could I simultaneously not kill the Kildare parts of the cloud?

Going back in time and hoping things would work out differently. But I’d been told that Number 1 had somehow put a block on time travel for me, and since I had no idea how he’d done it, I couldn’t possibly figure out how to work around it.

Summoning a billion carnivorous dragonflies and instructing them to eat only those bits that looked like Number 7 and Number 8’s cells. I had no idea, though, if there actually were a way to tell Kildare’s bits apart from his parents’ bits… or if a billion dragonflies would fit inside the lobby… or if dragonflies were even trainable.

In short, maybe if I’d had a month and access to the intergalactic equivalent of Wikipedia, I could have come up with something. But I didn’t have a month. And I didn’t have a computer. And I did have a big black cloud of malevolent alien cells trying to sting me to death.

Again and again, they came after me. At first I was dodging pretty well—biding some time, hoping against hope I’d find a weakness, a chink in their amorphous armor—but with every leap, spin, duck, and parry, I grew a little less confident, and a little slower, and a little more scared.

And then blackness exploded across my vision, and searing white light seemed to be pouring into my skull.

They’d hit me. They’d gotten me in the face.

How could I have been so stupid? How could I have let them do this to me? How could I have thought—after losing Kildare, after my friends’ and father’s warnings—that I’d ever stand a chance against them?

I leaped blindly, as high and as fast as I could, wanting only to get away, wanting only to make the pain stop.

I smashed into the wall on the far side of the room with a bone-jarring thud, but I was almost grateful for it. The stinging wasn’t as bad as before, and my vision had partially come back. Apparently, they’d only grazed me.

And then, finally—as if the impact had knocked some sense into me—I had a halfway decent idea.

Chapter 53

I’D NOTICED THAT every time Number 7 and Number 8’s cloud attacked me, it first had oriented its four eyes at me. Its eyes! In other words, it was finding me by sight. If the cloud couldn’t find me by sight, I might just gain some sort of advantage or, at least, a chance to live.

The next step was effortless. I filled the entire GC Tower lobby with something relatively easy to understand and create: mirrored glass. With a quick sweep of my arms, I converted the sleek obsidian ground floor of the building into a giant carnival fun house.

The fun part was that Number 7 and Number 8 didn’t see just me; they saw thousands of me.

The not-so-fun part was that, judging from the angry, droning roar that went up, they weren’t very happy about it.

“You think you’re clever?!” the cloud’s polyphonic voice challenged me, spinning its gray mass around and around as it—or they?—tried to figure which image was the real Daniel X.

This was no time for chitchat. I had to take advantage of their momentary confusion to strike back or get away.

The cloud’s eyes were up against one of the mirrors now, examining the surface closely, very closely. Then it lifted a glossy black appendage—an arm? a leg? a tentacle? a pseudopod?—and carefully tapped the glass.

There was a small ping and then the pane shattered into gravel-sized bits and collapsed on the hard floor.

“Not so clever,” the droning voices yelled triumphantly. The cloud flickered and launched a swarm of tiny, glossy black spheres. In a moment, they had all fanned out and had shattered every single mirror in the room, resulting in a sound like, well, a Niagara-sized waterfall of breaking glass.

All of them, that is, except for the one that was obstinately flying into my forehead, over and over again, wondering