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  “Shhh. You should sleep, Daniel.”

  I did want to sleep. But I also wanted to figure things out. I wanted to figure out if Number 7 and Number 8 had done any permanent damage to my body or mind. I wanted to figure out what Dana might be thinking right now. I wanted to figure out what that weird high-pitched droning sound was.

  “Is that my stomach, Dana?”

  “I wish,” she said, jumping to her feet and letting my poor aching head slam down on the steel platform where we’d been resting.

  “Ow!” I complained. “I’m injured here.”

  “You’ll think you were just tickled by a feather if we don’t get out of here right now. That noise is coming from an alien skycar. The hunters are coming!”

  Chapter 55

  AS YOU MAY recall, I’m quite capable of running at over two hundred miles per hour. Limping at that rate of speed, however, is an entirely different sport and not one I’d recommend.

  At that velocity, the forces that come into play are pretty extreme. But when your leg has recently been mauled by a couple of top-ten List aliens and feels like it was broken in three places and then sprayed with hot acid…

  In other words, I wasn’t really too keen on the idea of going all the way back to Tokyo on foot. We ran as far as a highway overpass and stopped to look back at the alien vehicle now hovering above the giant Buddha’s head like an oversized mosquito.

  I zoomed in my eyes and turned up the light levels, watching closely as the vehicle slowly circled the head. I gathered it was running some sort of scan to determine whether I was in there or not.

  “Uh-oh,” said Dana, with good reason. The skycar had changed direction and was now pointed right at us. And it was accelerating toward us at one hundred, two hundred, three hundred miles per hour! I’d have trouble running that fast on a good day. Trying to materialize our own skycar now, or even a motorcycle, just wasn’t possible.

  “Daniel, you teleported. That’s how you escaped Number 7 and Number 8 and ended up in the Buddha’s head. You’ve got to be able to do at least that much again.”

  I could almost see the driver’s eyes through the windshield of the rocketing skycar.

  “Gotcha,” I mumbled. I just needed to think of a place to send us. A place whose layout I knew, a place that would be the same as when I was last there, a place where a person—or a piece of furniture—wouldn’t be in our landing spot, inadvertently causing us to be dead on arrival.

  And I needed to figure it out fast, before we got mowed down by the approaching alien vehicle that was now a mere one hundred… fifty… twenty-five… ten yards away.

  Chapter 56

  THE WEIRDEST THING about teleporting is how instantaneous it is. There are no flickering lights or humming sounds like on Star Trek. One eyeblink, you’re looking at one thing, and the next, you’re looking at something else. It’s even faster than changing TV channels and definitely faster than waiting for a website to load. It’s just slam bam, okay, here I am.

  “The dojo!” exclaimed Dana as we looked around the abandoned Keihin martial arts studio where we’d sparred with our friends the Murkamis.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I thought it fitting to go back to the first of the many places I’ve had my butt kicked in Tokyo. Nostalgia thing, you know.”

  “Stop feeling sorry for yourself, and start figuring out how those aliens knew to find you, or we’ll never get a moment’s rest.”

  I looked out the dojo window and saw the orange lights of the Tokyo Tower looming over the city skyline. An image of the schematics Number 7 had been looking at flashed in my head.

  “I’m honestly not sure how they always seem to know where I am,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure I know how they’re letting the hunters know about it.”

  “How?”

  “Let’s go do some sightseeing,” I answered instead, nodding at the Tower’s blinking lights.

  “Are you okay to go out? You still look terrible, Daniel.”

  “You were the one just saying that we can’t sit still. They’ll come after us again unless we do something about it.”

  Dana frowned. “Hey! What’s happening to your leg?”

  I looked down at the more battered of my legs—the one that felt like it had been broken in three places—and saw that it was changing shape.

  And I don’t mean that it was just swelling up a little. I’m talking morphing out.

  My leg was literally sprouting rainbow-colored fur and flexing and stretching and shrinking and then becoming invisible. And before I had a chance to freak out about that, it started rematerializing (without the rainbow fur) and stretching and shrinking and then popping back into its usual shape.

  At the same time, a feeling of cool relief washed over me. The leg was no longer giving me any pain. It actually felt darn good.

  “Daniel, what the heck was that?”

  For a moment I was unsure myself. I hadn’t consciously healed myself. Then a bubbly giggle echoed in my head.

  “I think I must have picked up a little something from the Pleionid,” I said to Dana.

  “It taught you how to heal yourself? Why didn’t you do it earlier?”

  “Because I didn’t do it. It kind of did it by itself.”

  “Weird. But your leg’s better?”

  “Right as rain,” 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 exp
ect 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 capacitors that powered the light.

  “Bright enough for ya?” asked Dana, rubbing her eyes as the lights went back out.

  “They’re to warn low-flying aircraft,” I explained. “They have to be bright. Which also means they have to use a lot of electricity.”

  As the capacitors recharged, I examined the electrical conduits running into the lights and did some quick calculations.

  “Okay,” I announced. “On the count of three, we jump up again.”

  Dana pointed at the sky above us. “Don’t know if you noticed, but… there are no more platforms to jump to.”

  “Just do it, ’kay? Straight up and as high as you can go.”

  She shrugged as I tried to tune out the ringing metallic sounds of our pursuers, concentrating instead on the increasingly higher pitch of the charging capacitors.

  “One, two, three,” I counted. “Jump!”

  As soon as I’d delivered a swift kick to the conduit, Dana and I leaped up into the air. The high-tension wires spilled free and exposed the copper leads to the tower’s structural steel.

  I was only a couple feet in the air when the coordinated pulse emerged from the capacitors. It tore a new path swiftly through the tower’s girders, then up the legs and through the bodies of the giant alien insects.

  “Nice!” yelled Dana as we landed back on the platform and eyed the sizzling corpses of the guard bugs. Then I quickly repaired the wiring so we wouldn’t get shocked ourselves and so that low-flying aircraft wouldn’t have any trouble seeing the tower.

  We scrambled back down to Number 7 and Number 8’s transmitter. “All set?” asked Dana, as I unplugged my handset from the device.

  “All set. I just entered some new coordinates.”

  “New coordinates?”

  “The transmitter—and the hunters—will now think I reside on a rocky island just south of the Comoros Islands off the coast of Africa.”

  “But won’t that be dangerous for the people who live there?”

  “It’s uninhabited,” I reassured her. “With any luck, the aliens will get frustrated and start hunting each other. Now, let’s get moving.”

  Chapter 59

  DID YOU EVER have a friend who you worried was doing something stupid, but you didn’t want to be a busybody, so you stayed quiet and kept your opinion to yourself?

  Looking through the glass at Kildare’s ant colony in the science lab, I was realizing I’d just had a situation like that. I couldn’t keep the what-ifs from running through my head. What if I’d argued with Kildare? What if I’d persuaded him not to pursue his plan? What if we’d regrouped and come up with a bold strategy that hadn’t involved meekly going along with Number 7 to the GC flagship store? What if I’d just gone solo against his parents so that he didn’t have to be involved? Why had I even gotten their poor son sucked into this mess?

  I sighed and looked down at Kildare’s ants. Maybe they were hungry. After all, they probably hadn’t been fed since the other day. I materialized some food—a nice fresh turnip—and was removing the lid from the tank when I noticed they’d been digging a hole in the sand. At the bottom something white was poking through. A piece of paper!

  I put the turnip in the corner of the tank and removed the paper. It was the page I’d seen Kildare scribbling on the last time we’d been in the lab.

  I pored over the organic chemistry formulas he’d written down, all involving some high-energy, self-propelling reaction, resulting in a bunch of compounds I didn’t recognize. In fact, the only things that made any sense to me were two heavily circled abbreviations in the center of the page: NaCl and H2O, shorthand for sodium chloride—common table salt—and dihydrogen oxide, more commonly known as water.

  Water and salt? I had some serious chemistry studies ahead of me, but now, thanks to Kildare, at least I knew where to go.

  Chapter 60

  NO BETTER PLACE to find salt and water than in the ocean, right? I headed out to the beach at Shirahama, a not-too-touristy surfer beach south of Tokyo on the mighty Pacific. It was a cool day, and only a handful of surfers were out trying their luck in the rolling surf, including the legendary Japanese wave rider Katsu. I looked on jealously, but I had homework to do.

  Instead of a wetsuit and board, I materialized a beach umbrella, chair, and a three-foot-high stack of chemistry textbooks. I needed to identify and understand the nature of all the chemicals and the reactions that Kildare had written down for me.

  The first thing I figured out was why organic chemistry is used as a weed-out course in so many advanced science degrees: it’s a subject so difficult that to make it through you have to be really smart and really dedicated. Something told me if I hadn’t been up against what I was right then, I would have been weeded out myself.

  Still, I was making some progress—that is, when I wasn’t busy dwelling on scary and depressing thoughts, like:

  How my father had told me from the beginning to give up and leave Japan because I wasn’t ready to face this challenge.

  How Number 7 and Number 8 could take on any shape they wanted because they were composed of billions of intelligent parts.

  How my best nonimagined friend in the whole world had just been consumed by his parents.

  How my enemies had apparently been aware of my every move thus far.

  How these greedy, cannibalistic murderers were about to turn all the video-game addicts of the world into raging machines of destruction…

  And how I had no idea why all the surfers had just left the water and were now racing up the beach, screaming their heads off in sheer terror.

  Chapter 61

  I’D ALWAYS ENJOYED Godzilla movies, but I’d never found them to be particularly scary. Watching a guy in a rubber lizard suit step on model-train sets just isn’t the sort of thing that gives me goose bumps. But looking out at the ocean right then, I wo
ndered if perhaps that puzzling lack of fear of an enormous, fire-breathing, radioactive dinosaur didn’t stem from a certain lack of imagination on my part.

  Having suddenly experienced something like it firsthand, I can tell you it’s incredibly disconcerting to witness the ocean boiling over like an overfilled pot of pasta as a forty-story crested reptile strides up into the shallows.

  The creature’s footsteps shook the ground so violently that the sand on the beach seemed to liquefy. The few trees toppled, and the dunes behind me undulated.

  I didn’t for a second think this was the real Godzilla. (Well, okay, maybe I did for half a second.) But when I noticed the creature had four black, lifeless eyes, I knew Number 7 and Number 8 were proving their boast that they could indeed take on any form they wished.

  Kildare’s formulas raced through my mind. Would I be able to put my crash course in chemistry to good use? Certainly the principal reagent—salt water—was available in sufficient quantities. There was just one question to answer: had I done enough cramming to pass the final exam?

  Chapter 62

  THE CREATURE’S FOOTSTEPS were registering on seismographs as far away as Beijing. As I rushed toward the water, I was forced to leap repeatedly into the air to avoid getting swallowed up in sandy fissures or washed a mile inland by a monster-induced tsunami.