Daniel X: Game Over (20 page)

All of them, that is, except for the one that was obstinately flying into my forehead, over and over again, wondering why on earth I wouldn’t shatter.

I grabbed it in my fist, and it made a disgusting popping sound as I crushed the life out of it.

“Ouch,” pouted the cloud’s voices as it turned its four baleful black eyes toward me.

“You started it,” I reminded them, as a wall of darkness roared near. I almost got out of the way, but it hit me in the leg—hard.

And then I began to fall, and my entire being exploded in pain, and, well, I don’t remember much after that…

I DIDN’T WANT to open my eyes. They hurt enough as it was with the lids closed, without having to focus or move or do anything. I just wanted to go back to sleep. I just wanted to fade back into darkness. I just wanted get myself away from the sickening, searing pain that racked my head and entire body.

“Daniel, sit up. You need to drink.”

The noise hurt my head, but there was something reassuring about the voice, something that was the closest thing to comfort I could remember.

And then I realized why. It was Dana’s voice.

“Am I dead?” I managed to croak, no pun intended.

“Almost—but you somehow teleported yourself away before they could actually kill you.”

“I don’t remember trying to teleport,” I said with a wince. “I was in too much pain.”

“Maybe it was the pain that forced you to do it,” Dana said. “You couldn’t stand it any longer and channeled all your energy into getting away. There’s no shame in backing down when you know you need to. It’s what we’ve all been trying to tell you from the beginning.”

I decided I would have to think about that some more later. “Where are we? Are we safe?”

“You’re back at the Amitabha Buddha in Ushiku.”

“The giant one?”

“Yes, the one that could kick King Kong’s butt.”

“You mean if the statue were alive and King Kong were real?”

“Yes, Daniel, that’s exactly what I mean.”

I cautiously let one of my swollen eyes open. It was dark.

“Is it nighttime?”

“Yes, you’ve been unconscious awhile.”

“Wow, it’s
really
dark,” I said, allowing my other eye to open. “Even for nighttime.”

“Well, that’s because we’re inside the statue’s head. There aren’t a lot of light sources in here.”

“So… why are we inside a Buddha statue’s head?”

“Because that’s where you teleported yourself, genius.”

“I teleported myself? Away from Number 7 and Number 8?”

“That’s what I was just telling you. Don’t you remember anything?”

“Would I be asking—” I couldn’t finish the sentence. I had to stop talking. My brain was wobbling like bowl of
jelly on a dirt bike’s fender. Dana forced a Japanese lemon soda to my lips. It was really sour, but it felt good in my sore, dry mouth. I drained the entire bottle in less than five seconds, a new personal best.

“That’s it. Drink up. Clearly, you aren’t ready to heal yourself yet,” said Dana, taking the soda and resting my head gently in her lap. “So, get some sleep. Let your body do some of the work on its own. I’ll be right here.”

It’s true—between the pain and the exhaustion, there was no way I could possibly think about doing something as complicated as diagnosing and fixing my wounds. You know why doctors have to go to school for like ten years before they get licensed? It’s because healing is a complicated business. Way too complicated for somebody as beaten down as I was then. But I wasn’t going to stress about it. After all, Dana was right there next to me. Seemed like nothing bad ever happened when Dana was around. I turned my head and started to thank her, but she pressed her finger to my lips.

“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!
”

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.

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.