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  The expressions on their faces ran the emotional spectrum—from Willy’s steely defiance to Mom’s outright queasiness—but as I dropped that bombshell a uniform look of terror appeared.

  “Let’s not lose our heads,” I said, forcing a smile. I had one more piece of news that I was quite certain none of them would see coming.

  “Does anybody know the date?”

  “April twenty-ninth,” said Joe.

  “Not that date,” I said as the room began to shake and a noise like thunder filled our ears.

  Chapter 20

  A PARADE OF trumpeting elephants sent us sprawling against the walls amid a confetti storm of flower petals. Never before had anything like this ever been experienced inside the Fujiya Hotel—or, really, anyplace on this side of the planet.

  “Gathering Day!” screamed Pork Chop, jumping up and down on the credenza next to me. She was too young to have experienced the last one. To clarify, Alpar Nok, my home planet, circles its sun a little more slowly than Earth does. About twelve times more slowly. So a single Alpar Nokian year is about twelve Earth years long.

  You might think maybe this would cause us to have more holidays, but, in fact, we have fewer. So when one happens—and Gathering Day is the biggest of them all—it’s a pretty massive thing. Think Christmas, Rosh Hashanah, Eid ul-Adha, Fourth of July, Bastille Day, Boxing Day, Chinese New Year, Easter, Diwali, Mahavir Jayanti, and your birthday all rolled into one.

  My mother dodged an elephant and climbed up next to me with tears in her eyes.

  “You remembered, Daniel,” she said, so softly I could hardly hear her over the trumpeting pachyderms and, now, the polyphonic strains of the Bryn Spi Philharmonic Orchestra.

  Bryn Spi is the capital city, the center of Alpar Nokian culture. It’s where the very best of our artists, musicians, and entertainers gather. And, considering that there’s never been a nonmusical, nonartistic, nontalented Alpar Nokian, that’s saying something.

  To hear just one Bryn Spi musician is an amazing thing. To hear a gathering of the hundred best performing the most beautiful and touching piece that has ever been composed, the Departed Symphony, is completely soul lifting. It’s a celebration and a remembrance of lost Alpar Nokians—humans and elephants alike. Needless to say, the song got a lot longer after First Strike, the horrible attack on our planet by the Outer Ones that resulted in the decimation of our species.

  Legend has it that the symphony is so affecting that it causes people to have visions. Seriously. I don’t remember much from my last Gathering Day (when I was a toddler and by then living in Kansas), but they say you can’t be exposed to the song and not have an out-of-body experience: seeing dead relatives, conversing with famous Alpar Nokians from history, or some other grand and enlightening vision.

  Within a minute, even tough-as-nails Willy had tears streaming down his face. And I was just starting to go off into la-la land myself. I was beginning to smell the gunjun flowers of my home planet’s high mountain plains and was even starting to see a herd of elephants coming toward me—when there was a knock on the door.

  I quickly muted the orchestra, hid the parade, and leaped across the room, pressing myself along the wall next to the door.

  Everybody was looking to me for some sign. I waved them into defensive positions. It was unlikely to be a noise complaint—I’d of course soundproofed the room so that the noise of this holographic parade wouldn’t send hotel management into conniptions—but, then, who could it be? The only certain thing was that the visitor was uninvited.

  And, quite possibly, most unwelcome.

  Chapter 21

  “WHO IS IT?” I asked as innocently as I could.

  “It’s the Murkamis, Daniel-san,” said a voice that sure sounded like Eigi’s.

  Willy peeked through the keyhole and nodded. I also did a little radar sweep through the door to confirm that there were just four people and that their sizes and shapes matched the Murkamis.

  I opened the door and they stepped in, all wearing gleaming Gathering Day robes (made of woven vanadium) and traditional Alpar Nokian headdresses.

  “Eigi,” I yelled with alarm. “You guys were supposed to have left from Narita Airport by now! It’s in the complete opposite direction from here!”

  “We’re sorry, Daniel-san,” he said, bowing contritely. “But we couldn’t leave a fellow Alpar Nokian all alone against those two monsters.”

  “Besides,” said the daughter, Miyu, “you can’t exactly show up at the airport in clothes like these and expect to get right on the airplane.”

  “Yeah,” agreed the boy, Kenshin. “Or really go anyplace and expect anybody to think you’re not a freak.”

  “But how did you know we were here?” I asked.

  “Dana invited us last night,” said Miyu.

  “It was kind of obvious they didn’t want to leave Tokyo, Daniel,” said Dana. “And it seemed wrong not to include them if they were going to be in town. Here, come outside with me.”

  I waved the Gathering Day parade back into existence for the others and followed Dana outside onto the terrace.

  I turned to her in the late-afternoon sunlight. “So how did you know I was going to have a Gathering Day party?”

  “Well, sometimes, umm, I can kind of read your thoughts.”

  I looked at her in horror. Could it be true? Because if she could read my thoughts, then she might know when I thought embarrassing things about her, like how I thought she looked really beautiful right then and—

  “I mean, not most of the time. Just sometimes, when you bring me in and out of existence. Maybe it’s because I kind of come out of your mind. It makes sense that sometimes I bump into your thoughts then, you know?” I chuckled self-consciously, and then she continued to torture me by probing my innermost emotions.

  “Yesterday when you brought us here to check out the GC Headquarters, you were filled with thoughts about Gathering Day. About how you last celebrated it with your parents in Kansas when you were a little boy and how incredible it was. It was really very touching,” she said, taking my hand. I turned as red as a lobster in a pot of boiling water.

  “I mean,” she went on, “you’re always thoughtful, Daniel, but thinking of this, remembering this—the loss of your civilization, your family, and the care you give to the others around you, even strangers—”

  “Can Willy and the others also see my thoughts sometimes?”

  “I don’t think so,” she guessed.

  “That’s so weird…” I started to wonder.

  “Not as weird as what’s about to happen,” said a sinister voice just above us.

  A massive head peered out over the curving eave of the hotel. The head of a very large insect. A praying mantis, to be precise. A praying mantis with dreadlocks.

  “Number 1!!!!” screamed Dana.

  Too late. Way too late.

  Chapter 22

  BEFORE I COULD even flinch, Number 1 had hopped over the edge of the hotel roof and flattened us to the floor of the balcony. And when I say flattened, I don’t mean knocked down—I mean flattened. Crushed to a thickness of less than an inch.

  This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. I’d been waiting my whole life to be face-to-face with Number 1, but here it was and there was nothing I could do. I was a pancake… a pancake that was about to become toast. He bent down in my face and mocked me. “Poor little Daniel. Have you been eating enough? You seem so… thin.”

  He laughed and peeled Dana’s crushed body from the balcony floor. She was like a big disk of Play-Doh, all stretched out and wretchedly, helplessly flat. Utter dread seized me. Was it possible that—

  I couldn’t even think it. He’d taken my parents. He couldn’t take Dana too.

  “Do they play much Frisbee in this country?” Number 1 asked, like I was in any shape to talk. I couldn’t even tell where my mouth was except that something tasted gritty and soapy like floor cleaner. Which probably meant at least part of it was against the floor.r />
  He took Dana’s flat, motionless body and flung her off the balcony, spinning her out over the trees. How could this be happening? A body couldn’t possibly survive in this shape. If he’d crushed us, he’d crushed us, right? Dana must be dead. I must be dead. I must be—

  “Getting your bearings back, little Alien Hunter?” Number 1 asked, bending down, his bug eyes flashing red. “Starting to figure it all out, are you?”

  Now he started to peel me off the floor. Was he going to toss me off the balcony too? Would I land near Dana’s body?

  He was laughing. “I guess I was right not to adjust my schedule and deal with you before now. You’re obviously not as adept a hunter as either of your parents were. By your age, each of them was more formidable than you are. And, clearly, even the two of them never became a true threat, not really.”

  He held me out in front of him and looked into my flattened eyes.

  “Still,” he seethed, “there’s no sense taking unnecessary risks.”

  And, with that, he extended his disgusting insect jaws, clamped them onto to me, and began to blow. He was filling me with foul alien breath! He was inflating me.

  It was too disgusting to even contemplate, but my limbs and head started to regain their accustomed shape, and then—

  Suddenly, I was standing on the balcony again with a nonflat Dana. My friends, the Murkamis, and my family were still inside watching the Gathering Day parade of elephants, listening to the orchestra.

  Had that entire weird scene with Number 1 been just a Gathering Day vision?

  I grabbed Dana’s hand to make sure she was real. She was.

  I never wanted to let go.

  Chapter 23

  THE GATHERING DAY party went on later than it should have—especially on a weeknight—but there wasn’t really anybody to blame but myself. After all, no one was forcing me to wake up at 6 a.m. to try on Japanese school uniforms.

  Staring at myself in the bedroom mirror, I decided that—except for the bags under my eyes—I basically looked like Little Lord Fancypants. Almost every school in Japan requires kids to wear seifuku, and like most uniforms, they aren’t exactly, um, hip. I understood the purpose behind them—I’m sure they helped to keep students from getting distracted with superficial concerns—but the one I was wearing right then made me look like a cross between an admiral and a theme-park greeter.

  It was a good thing I’d gotten the Murkamis their own room and that my friends and family weren’t around right then, or I’m sure I’d have never heard the end of it. Of course, they probably wouldn’t have approved of my plan, either. I confess. I knew it wasn’t the safest thing in the world to be interfering in the hunt of the last living Pleionid in the universe.

  Using my List computer, I’d done some refresher research on the legendary species. Pleionids had been unique in all the universe for their unsurpassed ability to change shape and color (kind of like me, but with way more options). Their gift was enabled by a compound called pleiochromatech that was so chemically complicated and unstable that it had never been successfully duplicated in any laboratory.

  And that was what had caused the species’ downfall. Ever notice how the rarer a thing is, the more valuable it becomes? Well, pleiochromatech—despite the fact that nobody ever even figured out how it worked—at one point was worth more per milligram than pure lawrencium, and that meant that every unscrupulous merchant in the cosmos was paying top dollar for the stuff. So it wasn’t long after the Pleionid’s home planet was discovered that entire armies of poachers descended and all but wiped them out.

  A handful had been rescued by well-meaning agents of the Federation of Outer Ones and sequestered in “safe houses” around the universe, but, one by one, the few survivors had died of natural causes or had been hunted down. Speaking as a member of another decimated species, I had some sense for how hard it is to persevere under such circumstances.

  But I also knew other things about the mind-set of a survivor. And I wondered if this last Pleionid might be willing to help prevent the same fate from befalling another innocent species—aka you humans. Plus, The Prayer had ordered Number 7 and Number 8 to keep the Pleionid away from me at all costs, so there must be something we could do to help each other.

  I slung my book bag over my shoulder, adjusted my uniform’s crisp lapels, and headed outside to join the similarly dressed schoolchildren of Japan. My mission? To befriend the son of Number 7 and Number 8.

  I had a sneaking suspicion we had at least one enemy in common.

  Chapter 24

  WHEN IT COMES to schools and children, Japanese culture is pretty serious. We’re talking proper terms of respect for teachers (sensei), loudspeaker announcements alerting the public to use caution when students are headed to and from school, and meticulous attention to students’ safety while they’re at school too.

  Which meant that even with a perfectly tailored uniform and the universe’s most pleasant demeanor, I wasn’t going to be able to just march into Kildare’s school and sit at the desk next to him.

  It was a little exhausting, but I basically had to brainwash my way into Kildare’s class. From the first group of kids I bumped into on the sidewalk to the crossing guard to the homeroom teacher—I mentally created for each of them the impression that I was somebody they knew, somebody they shouldn’t be suspicious of or throw off the premises.

  It’s easier done than explained in this case—human psychology isn’t the easiest thing to understand, much less manipulate—but Mom had given me a smattering of psychological operations training, and somehow I managed to pull it off.

  Just being let into the school wasn’t enough; I still had to find Kildare. I’d hacked into the school server and swiped his class schedule, but he wasn’t in the classroom it indicated he’d be in. I wandered the hallways, peering into classrooms, checking the playground, the music rooms, the cafeteria, and then, as I made my way past the gymnasium, I heard a bunch of boys laughing and taunting somebody.

  That’s when I first saw him, standing without a shred of resistance in front of five mean-looking boys. One of them, the spiky-haired ringleader, gave Kildare a push that sent him spinning into a wood-and-glass display case that lined the wall. I suppressed the urge to put an end to this unfair fight, but it wasn’t easy. If there’s one thing that never fails to tick me off, it’s bullies.

  But this kid they were shoving around was the child of the most powerful alien couple I’d ever encountered. And something told me, if push came to shove, he’d be able to take care of himself.

  I slunk back out of sight and watched the scene from around the corner.

  “You going to give us your homework, bug boy?” asked the ringleader.

  “Of course, Ichi,” replied Kildare without a trace of sarcasm or defiance. He produced a notebook from his bag. “You want me to copy it into your notebooks for you?”

  “In your handwriting? Then the teacher would know it isn’t ours, stupid,” he barked, shoving Kildare harder this time.

  I again fought the urge to go over and kick their butts and stayed out of sight where I was.

  “Get that garbage can,” the ringleader said, gesturing to a round plastic trash barrel just down the hall. Two of the little brutes got the can. And the next thing I knew, the five of them had taken Kildare’s book bag, thrown it in the garbage, and shoved him, butt-first, into the can. He was wedged so far in that the crooks of his knees hung over one side and his armpits over another.

  “Now put him up there,” commanded the leader, pointing to the top of the trophy case. His hench-bullies looked at each other quizzically, and first one, then all of them started to laugh.

  “Quickly!” the leader urged. They stopped laughing and hoisted the garbage can—with Kildare in it—atop the trophy case.

  Then they fled down the hallway, one of them yelling, “Hey, somebody needs to take out the trash down here!”

  With little choice but to wait for a janitor to discover him, Kil
dare was in quite a pickle. He could probably have toppled the can over by rocking his weight back and forth, but if he did that he’d plummet at least six feet to the concrete floor and might land on his head. Seriously, I couldn’t envision any other way he could unwedge himself from the can. The human body has limitations, and extricating one from a round plastic waste barrel into which it has been forced butt-first is a biggie.

  But he wasn’t human, was he?

  Why had he let a bunch of bullies do this to him? And why was he just sitting up there, slowly counting backward to himself in Japanese, “Ju, kyu, hachi, shichi, roku, go, shi, san, ni, ichi—”

  When he reached zero, he drew a breath and—mindfreak—turned gray and then dissolved into little tiny particles. At least that’s what it looked like to me.

  I don’t think I actually said “Holy frijoles!” out loud, but I must have inhaled or something, because his color and former shape instantly returned and his head swiveled toward me, his piercing dark eyes locking on mine as a chill shot up my spine.

  “Who are you!?” he wanted to know.

  Chapter 25

  ACTUALLY, HIS TONE was probably more embarrassed than threatening. I didn’t feel so much scared as I did guilty—like I’d just seen something that I probably shouldn’t have, like I’d been spying on him. Which, I guess, I had.

  There was no way I could use my human-tested Jedi mind trick to convince him I was just another human kid who’d been enrolled here for the past two years. Other than the fact that he seemed to have a superhuman tolerance for bullies, I knew next to nothing about how his alien mind might work. Chances were, if I tried to interfere with his thoughts, the only thing I’d end up doing would be flagging myself as a fellow alien.

  So instead, I reached into my bag of superpowers and pulled out my most tried-and-true paranormal ability—playing stupid.