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  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 a syrupy maelstrom of flavored toppings), and apparently his alien digestive system wasn’t any more robust than mine. We went outside and attempted to recover from our respective food overdoses on a pedestrian overpass, looking down at the sea of people coursing up and down the sidewalks like ants at an overstocked picnic.

  “I guess they must call this the Shakey’s shakes,” Kildare joked weakly, looking down at his rumbling belly.

  “Let’s walk it off,” I said, hoping the taste of pineapple and maraschino cherries would one day fade from my mouth. “Isn’t Ueno Park right up the street?”

  Ueno Park is an old-style city park—cobblestone carriage paths, huge trees, stone parapets—in the center of Tokyo. It’s got more than a half dozen world-class museums in and around it, a zoo, playing fields, and some truly awe-inspiring Buddhist shrines.

  We soon discovered that it’s also got to be Japan’s premiere cherry-blossom-viewing venue. There have to be more than a thousand cherry trees in the park. I mean, I’m not a huge flower freak or anything, but all those millions of blossoms—and how the petals rained down like a snowstorm when the wind blew—it’s just one of those things you have to see to believe.

  What was not so cool to see, however, was that on that particular spring afternoon, for every one of the thousands of blossoms on each of the trees, there had to be at least one tourist crammed into the park.

  Plus, one alien safari hunter.

  And believe me, one was enough. As luck would have it, it was the tall one whose hat I’d ridden on in the GC Tower elevator and whose tracking device I’d stolen. He was attempting to blend in as a forty-something man who happened to stand six feet eight inches tall and looked like he had broken glass under his skin.

  We were just walking past the life-size model of a blue whale in front of the natural history museum when I spotted him. I grabbed Kildare’s arm. I didn’t need to offer a word of explanation as I steered him quickly away from the crowds toward the safety of a nearby shrine that had been roped off for the blossom festival.

  As is customary, we washed our hands in the ablution pool outside the shrine.

  “Should we stop the charade, Daniel?” he whispered as he filled his ladle with the cold water streaming from a spigot in the mouth of an ornately cast copper dragon.

  “Of course, Kildare,” I said.

  “You aren’t here to kill me; I can tell that much.”

  “That’s true—and I’m sorry we haven’t talked openly before. I just, well—”

  “It’s my fault too. Things are just so messed up. My parents—”

  I nodded. It was definitely a delicate situation. Which was of course why we hadn’t talked about it, even though obviously we’d both known each others’ true identities all along.

  “I hope it’s okay. I feel bad—”

  “They killed the Pleionid already, didn’t they?”

  I nodded.

  “I felt it.”

  “Look,” I said. “Is there anything you can tell me that will, um—”

  “I know they have to be stopped, Daniel. But just give me a day. I think I may know a way to do it without resorting to, you know—”

  “Okay. But what are you thinking?”

  “I can sabotage my parents’ plans.”

  “You mean like when you set the Murkami family free?” I asked, giving voice to a hunch.

  He nodded.

  “Steps like that aren’t enough, Kildare. They have too much in motion now for us to be doing guerrilla stuff. They’re too strong. We have to step it up. How many others will they hunt to extinction?”

  “Well,” said Kildare. “I’ll give you one thing you may find useful if, you know, my plan doesn’t work.”

  “Please. Anything.”

  He nodded as he ladled some more water over his hands. “Do you like the ocean?”

  “What?”

  “Oh, crap!”

  He was staring across the pool. I followed his horror-stricken gaze and saw Ellie and Colin Gygax—his parents, Number 7 and Number 8 on The List of Alien Outlaws on Terra Firma—coming up the stone path toward us. They did not look happy.

  Chapter 46

  “DANIEL, THEY’RE GOING to try to demoralize you. Don’t let them, okay? No matter what they say.”

  “I don’t demoralize easily,” I replied. Still, I had to admit I was more than a little freaked out that they somehow knew we were here and were approaching us in broad daylight!

  “Good,” Kildare said. “Now just stick with me.”

  My mind was exploding with questions, but I nodded at him as his parents came up to us, looking like some snooty, well-dressed professional couple.

  “We can do this right here, right now, in the middle of Tokyo, Alien Hunter,” said Number 7, striding up and attempting to grab Kildare’s hand. Kildare was having none of it and backed up next to me.

  “Of course, given the crowds today, a few hundred humans would doubtless be killed or injured in the melee,” chimed in Number 8. “Minimum.”

  “Like that’s a big concern for you guys,” I muttered.

  They ignored me, and Number 7 went on. “And we’d doubtless end up wrecking some of this park’s lovely cultural treasures—”

  “We mean, if you still want to hunt us, that is.”

  “You’re calling him a hunter?” demanded Kildare.

  “Why else would he have been conducting surveillance on us?”

  “Shopping in our store—”

  “Watching us from window-washing platforms—”

  “Turning himself into a fly—”

  My mind was reeling. How did they know all this? How had they been spying on me even as I was trying to spy on them?

  “Even,” said Number 8, “going as far as pretending to care about our son.”

  “He does care about me,” protested Kildare. “Way more than either of you do.”

  “Sure he does, son,” said Number 7. “That must be why they call him the Alien Hunter.”

  “It’s not very nice pretending to be somebody’s friend like that,” said Number 8, casting a reproachful glance my way. “But what would you expect from an Alpar Nokian?”

  “Yes, cold-blooded killers, all of them. He was just using you so he could find out more about us—so he could more easily hunt our family,” said Number 7.

  “Yes, isn’t that one of the first things they teach you as an Alien Hunter—to know your prey?”

  “At least his version of hunting involves saving lives; not killing for sport,” Kildare shouted.

  “So he wants to kill us to save lives?” replied Number 7. “Perhaps he should consider taking a course in logic?”

  “Or,” continued Number 8, “perhaps now that he knows more about us, he should just throw in the towel?”

  “Yes, perhaps,” said Number 7, “he’s beginning to realize we’re a bit more trouble than we’re worth.”

  “Unless,” continued Number 8, suddenly turning to me, “you need some more convincing?”

  “Like,” said Number 7, “maybe it would help you to know that we’re not who we appear to be?”

  “That we’re colonial beings,” said Number 8, “composed of billions of intelligent particles—”

  “Which can combine,” continued Number 7 as he took his wife’s hand, “and take on any shape we wish—”

  His voice suddenly sounded not so much like a single voice but a whole crowd of people talking at once. An
d then the two of them suddenly flickered gray and began to merge, effectively doubling in size and taking on a massive cloudlike swarm. It was kind of like somebody had just kicked over the world’s biggest hornet nest, and the hornets were on steroids and under the control of an evil supergenius. The cloud descended on a nearby pine tree and, with a stomach-turning buzzing noise, consumed every single branch and needle, leaving behind a burnt-looking stump.

  At the top of the shrine’s stairs, out of earshot but still within view of us, the attending monk let out a small yelp and fled into the park.

  Number 7 and Number 8 morphed back into their usual separate forms as I tried to lift my jaw from the ground and not look quite as surprised as I was. The implications of their being colonial creatures were past alarming to consider. Shape-shifting, immunity to projectiles, immunity to blunt trauma, able to disperse and reassemble at any time—

  “So, tell us, have you ever fought a cloud that can take any form it wants and has a collective intelligence higher than any army the universe has ever known?” asked Number 7.

  “It has its challenges, we assure you,” said Number 8.

  They didn’t need to tell me. What was I going to do? Drop a bomb on them in the middle of a Tokyo park?

  “Yes, why don’t you be a smart little Alien Hunter and leave us alone?”

  “He’s not going to leave you alone,” yelled Kildare. “And I’m going to help him!”

  “But surely not right now—not in this crowded park, not where so many innocents might be hurt?”

  I nodded at them coolly.

  Just then Number 7’s cell phone began to ring, and he pulled it out of his pocket.

  “Is it him?” asked Number 8.

  “It is,” said Number 7 looking down at the readout of his smartphone.

  “We’ll continue this later,” said Number 8 as Number 7 put the phone to his ear. And, just like that, the two of them turned and walked back down the path, out of the now quiet sanctuary and into the crowded, blossom-filled park.

  Chapter 47

  “CAN YOU DO that?” I asked Kildare as we hurried to the train station. Number 7 and Number 8 were gone, but something told me we weren’t exactly being left alone. My plan was to return to the Fujiya Hotel and then summon my friends and family to meet Kildare.

  “Am I a colony too? Is that what you’re asking?”

  “I saw you turn gray like that once, at school. When Ichi stuck you in the garbage can.”

  “We call it ‘dispersing’ if you want to know the technical term. Yeah, I’m really their son. But personality’s a different thing, you know. Just because you have a brain like your parents’ doesn’t mean you’re going to think the same thoughts or believe the same things.”

  “I wasn’t saying—” I started.

  “I know. And I don’t mean to be defensive. It’s just that my parents are a little harder to relate to than those of most kids. I mean, some kids complain about having moms and dads that are lawyers or insurance agents. They should try coming home to a couple of vicious genocidal maniacs—”

  “—with a small army of henchmen,” I added, gesturing at two aliens shambling down the path toward us in too-tight warm-up suits. We might have mistaken them for sumo wrestlers, except that, once again, their knees bent the wrong way.

  “Yeah,” he agreed as we broke into a run toward the Ueno Station on the JR Yamanote line. But even as we made it down the park steps to the sidewalk, we spied three more badly dressed alien henchmen waiting beneath the overpass just outside the station. One of them waved while the other two reached inside their hoodies and pulled out weapons like the ones I had seen in the box back at the Game Consortium.

  This was not good.

  “Taxi!” I yelled, stepping out to the curb and flagging down a boxy little Tokyo cab. It’s no easier finding an empty cab in Tokyo than it is in New York, Paris, or London, but one just happened to be there right then.

  We quickly hopped into the backseat. “Omiya, please,” I said, identifying a major train station a good distance out of downtown where we could easily find a train.

  “Anywhere you like, bosss,” hissed the driver.

  “Oh, crap!” said Kildare with alarm. “It’s one of my parents’ Silurians!”

  Silurians are a species of monkey-like reptile frequently hired as contract assassins, because they’re clever, patient, and obedient, and happen to enjoy killing so much that you don’t even need to pay them to do it.

  The driver quickly locked the doors and hit a button that started blowing knockout gas through the vents. Fortunately, Kildare hadn’t quite closed his door and we leaped back out to the sidewalk as the cab accelerated away.

  “Close one,” gasped Kildare.

  “We could have taken him,” I said, “I think.”

  “Well, something tells me my parents have a few more agents in reserve.”

  “I think you’re right. And I also think, judging by how they had the JR station covered and now this cab, that they’re expecting us to try to get out of town.”

  “So?”

  “So, we’re doing exactly what they expect us to do, which must mean we’re making things easy on them.”

  “So we should do the opposite of what they’re expecting, like—”

  My mind raced as I spotted two more alien thugs making their way toward us down the crowded sidewalk.

  “Let’s not go out of town; let’s go downtown.”

  “Downtown where?”

  “Know anyplace to play video games?”

  Chapter 48

  IT WAS A fairly long walk, but at least it proved to be one free from alien harassment.

  “Looks like they really weren’t expecting us to go this way,” I remarked as we crossed the pedestrian bridge over a rail yard a few blocks from the looming GC Tower.

  “That,” said Kildare, “or they wanted us to do this and decided to make it easy.”

  “Thanks,” I told him. “For a minute there I’d actually forgotten to feel paranoid.”

  “I can’t remember the last time I didn’t feel paranoid,” Kildare said, gesturing at a bench. “Is it okay if we rest here?”

  I nodded as he took a seat. I was about to sit down myself when I caught a whiff of something so delicious I couldn’t think straight.

  “What is that?” I asked Kildare, inhaling deeply.

  “Krispy Kreme,” Kildare’s voice caught, and he nodded somberly at the far end of the overpass where I spotted a Krispy Kreme donut shop sign.

  I looked at his furrowed brow. “Um,” I said, trying not to drown in my own saliva, but realizing something was troubling my friend. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing. They used to be his favorite.”

  “Krispy Kremes? Whose?”

  “The Pleionid. After school he used to disguise himself and ride in on my backpack. We’d stand in line and then we’d buy like three dozen glazed and sneak off to an alley and scarf them down together.”

  “You miss him, huh?”

  “You know what it’s like to lose somebody close to totally senseless violence, don’t you, Daniel?”

  I nodded. “Why did your parents do it, Kildare? Why did they kill the Pleionid? Why do they hunt creatures to extinction?”

  Kildare shook his head. “I wish I knew. They weren’t always like this. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they were ever kind to me, but at least they used to look after me. Lately, it’s like I’m just another alien employee.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter now, does it? They’re murderers. Mass murderers.”

  “But they’re your parents,” I said. “So you want to give them one last chance. I get it. Do you want to fill me in on your plan? Maybe I can help.”

  “You’re helping already. You’re giving me hope, Daniel.” He got up from the bench. “Now let’s go get some donuts, and then we can head over to the GC Tower.”

  “No need for the donuts,” said a fa
miliar voice behind us.

  Number 7 was standing there holding an open box of Krispy Kremes.

  Chapter 49

  WHAT CHOICE DID we have? Out of deference to Kildare’s plan—if not to the thousands of innocent humans around us in crowded downtown Tokyo—we fell into step with Kildare’s father and let him lead us the remaining three blocks to the GC Tower.

  Number 8 and a ghoulishly grinning gaggle of security guards met us on the sidewalk and escorted us through the mob of frustrated teenage boys who had gathered outside the flagship store, which was, the sign said, CLOSED FOR A PRIVATE EVENT.

  “We’re so glad you decided to join us,” said Number 8 as two guards unlocked the doors and escorted us into the lobby. “We’ve been wanting to beta test some new games, and you two are smack in the middle of our target demographic.”

  “Yes,” said Number 7, “for instance, we have a new 3-D simulator called Teenage Geek Squad, in which two unpopular boys get caught up in circumstances far beyond their control.”

  “Yes,” said Number 8. “And we want you to try out another new title called NTAC, which stands for ‘No-Talent Alien Clowns.’ You get to play two delusional characters who think they’re going to save the world but who inevitably end up getting their butts kicked all over the place.”

  “And after that,” said Number 7, “we have a prototype for a high-concept strategy game along the lines of World of Warcraft but involving competing groups of aliens who’ve invaded a planet populated by a species of complete losers and mean to make the most of its abundant resources.”

  “Or, if you’d like,” said Number 8, “we have another title based on a superhero-comic concept called Alien Hunter: The Dim Knave. It’s about a kid who goes out thinking he has amazing superpowers only to gradually realize they’re all in his head and that while he thinks he’s been fighting evil, he’s really only been fighting progress. And he has a laugh-riot sidekick, a kid so delusional he thinks that his own parents are his worst enemies.”