Game Over

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.

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.