Game Over

Chapter 35





TEN MINUTES LATER I’d gotten us a fortieth-floor room in the Park Hyatt—the swankiest high-rise Western-style hotel in the area—and I summoned the rest of the gang.

With Joe’s help, we quickly determined that there was more to the alien’s smartphone than I’d begun to guess. Not only was it tuned to a secure channel that would receive transmissions from Number 7 and Number 8, but it contained a preloaded database about the nearly extinct Pleionid species and its abilities, as well as a smattering of other encrypted information that I hadn’t been able to access from their heavily secured network.

Joe had run a signal from the device straight to the wide-screen unit on the wall, so we could all see the information it contained.

“They spoke in colors!” exclaimed Emma. “How amazing!”

The transponder was now displaying images from the Pleionid’s home world—a cloud land of shifting colors and shapes, mesmerizing in their complexity and beauty. And there, flitting in and out among the semisolid shapes—their towns, their buildings?—were the Pleionids themselves. Sweet, wide-eyed creatures that seemed to be a cross between ET, a long-haired terrier, and maybe Alvin of Alvin and the Chipmunks.

But that form was apparently just a default. They easily, effortlessly, became balls of pulsing light, lightning streaks of pure color, and nearly transparent clouds that floated hither and thither. Sometimes, they even seemed to turn completely invisible.

The screen now filled with a chemical study of what I quickly realized must be pleiochromatech, the unique lifeblood of these creatures that, combined with their pacifist ways, had led to their demise. I’d never seen anything so beautiful in its chemical complexity. It seriously put the DNA double helix to shame. Its structure—containing elements ranging from neon to lithium to magnesium—looped, intersected, folded, and refolded itself in front of our eyes. Impossibly, it seemed to be a living molecule.

Now the screen showed the Pleionid home world of today: a gray, dusty cinder of a planet. Just another burned-out orb, like so many others the Outer Ones had left in their wake.

Emma was practically sobbing at the sight, and the rest of us weren’t far behind. Joe shut off the feed.

“Anything else, Joe?” I asked.

“They haven’t activated the tracking program yet, but it should work once they release the activation code. And I think I’ve figured out how to triangulate any signal we get on the Pleionid—hopefully that will help us find it before the other hunters do.”

“What about intelligence on the other safari hunters, or on Number 7 and Number 8?”

“Nothing really, but there’s one image here…”

And right then, the screen lit up with a headshot of another alien. An all-too-familiar and disturbing one.

It was a high-res photo of me.