Game Over - By James Patterson Page 0,45
I said.
“Prove it,” she said.
“Sure!” I grinned, nodding at the Tower. “Wanna race?”
The leg was better. I even set a new personal best. Four hundred thirty-eight miles per hour! My sneakers were a little worse for wear, but that’s okay. Unlike colonial alien supervillains, I understand sneakers. So I made myself a fresh pair.
Chapter 57
AFTER WHIPPING OUT the tracking device I’d stolen and doing a little triangulation, I confirmed my hunch about how Number 7 and Number 8 were directing the hunters to find me: the aliens had installed a relay transmitter in the top of the Tokyo Tower, something I’d figured out from the schematics I’d seen on Number 7’s computer.
It stood to reason: the Tokyo Tower was one of the tallest structures around, and if you wanted your signal to have the widest possible range, you wanted your source as high above the ground as possible.
Fortunately, getting up to the top of the tower wasn’t a problem. The tourist center was closed, there were no crowds, and it was pretty dark. So I simply took advantage of my much-improved leg and climbed up the outside on the structural girders. Dana was right behind me, whistling the theme from Spiderman as we went.
The transmitter was alien-tech and, therefore, a very compact package. Since it broadcast an ultralow frequency and in an incredibly sophisticated pattern, humans would probably never detect it in a thousand years. What was more noticeable, however, were the sticky, black, rubbery balls—slightly bigger than watermelons—that were clustered at the base of the tower’s broadcast mast.
“Gross,” Dana remarked.
“Definitely not native to Earth,” I observed, taking some readings on my modified iPhone. “But they appear to be completely inert. They’re probably leftover lunch containers or something.”
I turned my attention to the small transmission device and proceeded to scan its length. In theory, there should have been a dataport I could use to reprogram or shut the thing down without setting off any alarms.
“Are you sure that’s the right decision, Daniel?” asked Dana.
“What?”
“Ignoring those things.”
“I found it! The dataport!” I said, attaching my tracking unit and ignoring her.
“Um, Daniel—”
“What?” I asked.
She didn’t answer, but I heard weird cracking noises, then looked up from the display. Dana was silently backing up toward me.
Beyond her, the sticky black things were no longer sticky black things. They’d disgorged a half dozen metal-skinned creatures that were busy unfurling wings, fangs, claws, stingers, and a host of other appendages that you might expect if you were to cross a twenty-five-pound hornet with a sack of scissors.
“Oh,” I said.
Chapter 58
FORTUNATELY, THE WINGED alien sentries (which, I assumed, Number 7 and Number 8 must have planted here to guard the transmitter) weren’t quite ready to get airborne. Like any insect just emerging from its pupal stage, they had to extend their wings to dry before they could fly.
Nevertheless, they weren’t exactly less than agile in moving each of their six feet. They came skittering forward, claws, fangs, stingers, and other shiny metal bits poised to poke some serious holes in the two of us.
“Daniel,” Dana said in a steely voice.
“Yeah, I’m listening to you this time,” I whispered nervously as I took in all of the clicking joints and clanking spikes. They moved terrifyingly fast, but in a mesmerizing sort of way.
“How about you forget your antigun bias this time and just materialize us some deadly weapons?”
She didn’t have to say another word. In a few seconds we were holding two of Dad’s favorite Fly Daddy transformers.
“Fire!” I commanded, and we let loose a stream of blasts from the weapons.
But the creatures—with reflexes the likes of which I’d seldom seen—turned away so that their metal-hardened upper carapaces reflected the fire harmlessly up into the air. Then, like turkey-sized bionic scorpions, they sprinted the remaining distance toward us.
Stunned, we both leaped to the next platform up the tower’s mast.
“Holy moly, are they fast,” I said, stating the obvious.
“Holy moly, are they creepy,” Dana echoed.
We were on the second-highest platform in the tower’s tip and in another moment had hopped up to the very highest level. Glittering, nighttime Tokyo was sprawled about us like some vast, twinkling circuit board. The view was spectacular, but there wasn’t a moment to appreciate it.
I looked down the mast to gauge how much time we had until our attackers reached us, but just then the light at the top of the tower blinked on. My vision became a sea of eye-clenching red, and my ears filled with the thrum of the discharging