Game Over

Chapter 30





IT WAS NOT a mystery that took long to figure out. In a moment, I saw the source of the noise—motorcycles—1400cc Hondas, in all poetic probability.

Dear Old Dad had transported me right into the middle of a MotoGP exhibition street course in downtown Tokyo. A pack of overpowered, smooth-tired street racers was now rounding the corner about a half mile away and coming straight at me. They’d have plenty of time to stop or steer around me, assuming they took pity on me.

But it was soon obvious, mainly from how they were laughing and pointing, that they had no interest in avoiding me. The fact that the racers were barb-tailed, cloven-hoofed, red-horned demons—or, at least, a species of alien that very much looked that way—was also something of a warning sign.

Fortunately, the course was less than one hundred and fifty feet wide, so I didn’t need to sprint much faster than Usein Bolt to get to safety. When I glanced back at them from the side of the road, it looked like they didn’t care I was escaping. They were still speeding forward and laughing their pointy heads off.

I turned to see what they were looking at and spotted their real target: a little girl clutching a big Hello Kitty doll and frozen in pure horror at the sight of the approaching demon bikers.

“RUN!” I screamed, skidding to a stop at the barrier. This would be close—the demons were about to go by me, and the girl wasn’t much farther. If I was going to save her, there weren’t even seconds—

Time-out! If I could stop time, but I knew immediately I couldn’t dive below the surface right then. It’s one of those things you either can or can’t feel, and I definitely didn’t have the feeling.

So I did the next best thing. In an instant, I gauged the distance, studied the ground by her side, and teleported myself there.

“Grab hold of me!” I yelled

Teleporting others is not a good idea unless you happen to know the location and nature of every molecule in their bodies, because if you make any bad assumptions, well… just be sure to bring a bucket and a mop.

So that meant right then I had somewhere on the order of 1.043 seconds in which to physically carry her out of harm’s way.

She started to grab me as I turned and glanced into the yellows of the approaching demons’ loathsome eyes. I quickly calculated the leap I was going to have to make to get us airborne and to safety. But there was something wrong with how she was holding on to me—something painfully wrong. I turned to look at her and saw what it was.

She was no longer a cute little girl with a cute little stuffed animal in her arms; she was a long-tailed, red-skinned demon—a demon with very sharp teeth that she had just sunk into my left arm. The pain was beyond anything I’d ever experienced. To complicate matters, the Hello Kitty doll had grown an evil monobrow and six-inch-long claws that it was using to climb up my back, probably so it could slice my throat.

Time seemed to slow, and all the panicked stretched-out split-seconds made me realize that, aside from the raging pain of being bitten and clawed, (a) I could no longer leap clear of the oncoming motorcycles, at least without leaving my arm behind, and (b) I was about to become 110 pounds of alien roadkill.

I was about to die.

I couldn’t believe it. I’d come this far and then, just like that, it was the end.

Only, of course, it wasn’t exactly.

The scene disappeared, and I was back in my deluxe suite at the Fujiya Hotel with Dad.

“Daniel,” said Dad in a sad voice, “if this training exercise had been a test at school, you would have received a forty-seven point four out of a hundred. In other words, an F. It’s entirely clear that you can’t possibly win against Number 7 and Number 8 right now, much less with Number 1 in the picture. You should leave Japan. Immediately.”

“But I can dive back through time and take it again, can’t I?”

He shook his head. “No. No, you can’t, Daniel. These training exercises are all in your mind. You’ll see that if you try it in real life, you won’t be able to. Since your last adventure, Number 1 has put a disruption field over the entire planet.”

“What the heck does that mean?” I asked, suddenly remembering what Number 1 had told Number 7 and Number 8.

“It means you couldn’t time-travel if you tried.”

“I don’t believe you!” I said, and tried to visualize the surface of time so I could dive through. I was going to jump back thirty seconds, just to prove my point; but I couldn’t see it! Everything was gray and filled with static, like an old TV set when you don’t have a good signal.

“You see?” asked my father. “Leave Japan, Daniel. There’s no hope for you this time.”

“I can do it anyway,” I insisted.

But there was nobody there to hear me. Dad was gone.