Daniel X: Game Over - 4 by James Patterson

Author:James Patterson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery & Thrillers
ISBN: 9780316134194
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2011-09-19T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 32

TWENTY THOUSAND HIGH-RANKING alien thugs were making their way through the building’s lobby. Well, that’s how it looked through fly eyes anyhow. It took me a moment to get used to my new senses and to realize there were just a dozen of them. Still, that was a lot.

I flew as fast as I could to catch up and landed on the hat of the tallest one, just as a security guard waved him through the turnstile.

My steed and his buddies then crammed into a single elevator that shot us up to the fifty-first floor where we entered a conference room whose walls were lined with alien antlers, bones, stuffed heads, pelts, and other hunting trophies. The conference table also looked to be from some sort of creature—the hip bone of an enormous animal. And, by “enormous,” I mean the bone must have been at least a hundred feet long and thirty feet wide. When intact, the actual creature was probably big enough to accidentally inhale a city bus.

The aliens took their seats around the table, and the meeting was called to order.

Number 7 presided from the head of the table as the thugs took off their human disguises. The hat I was riding was unceremoniously tossed to the middle of the table, and, unfortunately for me, it didn’t have ribbons or feathers or anything I could use for cover. I was totally out in the open. My only defense was to stay perfectly still. Fortunately, for the moment, nobody seemed to notice the little black fleck on the brim of the gray hat.

“As you know,” began Number 7, “today marks the launch of a new level. It will be the most challenging—and rewarding—hunt you’ve ever undertaken.”

He had them all on the hook, and he knew it.

“What is it?” demanded one of them. “A Mahoneyian Stinkbear?”

“A Corruscated Fosterite?”

“An Endomorphic Nebulan?”

“A Pleionid,” replied Number 7, cutting short the welter of speculation as if he’d fired a gunshot.

The thugs straightened in their chairs and went wide-eyed, or, if they didn’t have eyes, widened other things.

“But—” began the tall one I’d ridden in on.

“No, they’re not quite extinct,” said Number 7. “There’s one left. And it’s here—here in Japan.”

The hunters looked like they were about to break into applause, but Number 7 would have none of it.

“The mission brief, which I’ll feed into your consoles at sundown, will contain a link to the creature’s location. Because of its shape-shifting and self-healing abilities, we couldn’t use a traditional transponder. Nevertheless, we have another way to track the creature that will allow us to send you rough coordinates.”

A murmur of speculation rippled through the room. I too wondered how they might be tracking the Pleionid.

“Also,” said Number 7, glancing at Number 8, “to make things even more challenging, a new hunter will join us tonight, a truly formidable competitor.”

“Who is it? Is he here?” asked one of the hunters.

“You’ll see.”

“This sounds like a tough assignment,” said another. “Are there any special incentives?”

“First of all,”

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