Game Over

Chapter 43





I REFLEXIVELY DROPPED to my belly as an enormous inky black shape brushed past me. What the heck? I sprang to my feet just in time to see the black form widen. It happened too quickly to get a good look, but the creature seemed to resemble one of those bizarre-looking, huge-mouthed, predatory deep-sea fish—except that it could fly. It opened its enormous, long-toothed jaws, aiming for the Pleionid.

“No!” I shouted, diving into its path. In less than a second, I had turned myself into a stick of the hardest substance I could think of: diamond. And I was now wedged between the open jaws of the inky black shape. It shook its head and roared in frustration, and I felt my stick-shaped self start to tremble. Diamonds may be one of the hardest substances on Earth, but this guy was definitely from another planet.

“Thank you, Alien Hunter,” the Pleionid said sadly. “But it is now my time. You must not sacrifice yourself. The world needs you.”

“No! Don’t do it!” I screamed. But the Pleionid was already leaping toward me. He knocked me out from between the alien’s jaws, which came crashing down and swallowed the Pleionid whole.

I will carry that image to my grave.

A wave of nausea came over me as the Pleionid’s killer somehow passed out of the statue’s ear and into the night. But there wasn’t time to react—more shapes were coming up behind me, and fast!

I was sure that as a diamond I’d end up in one of these goons’ pockets, so I changed myself back to human form and spun around. Climbing up the girders toward me were a half dozen of the hunters I’d seen in Number 7 and Number 8’s boardroom meeting.

“Double bonus,” hooted one of them.

“The Alien Hunter and the Pleionid on the same safari!” another yelled. “We’ll be famous!”

“Don’t let him out!” shouted one of the taller hunters as he did one of those two-finger Special Operations gestures where you tell your squadmates to fan out.

Wait a minute. They were supposed to be solo agents. So why were they working together? I could hear them racking and priming their weapons and in a moment the whole place stunk of ozone and molten metal as a half dozen plasma pulses arced through the darkness toward me.

Still reeling from the horrific vision of the black shadow of death swallowing that beatific little creature, I somehow managed to leap over their heads, grab a lateral girder, and pivot myself down through the darkness to the interior roof of the viewing room, a few stories below. I can only imagine what the tourists inside thought when hearing all the thumps, weapon pulses, and shouting over their heads.

And then there was an awful whine, a whine I knew from dreams as well as I did from real life—one of those conscienceless alien poachers was priming an Opus 24/24!

Great. This was just great. Human civilians under my feet, a sacred metal statue all around me, a half dozen aliens working together to blow my brains out, and I was so tired and disoriented and scared I could barely see straight. Some superhero I was turning out to be. If the cards continued to fall like this, I would be responsible for the untimely deaths of more than a hundred innocent souls.

Then in a flash, I realized the Opus 24/24 was no longer charging, which meant it would soon be firing.

I leaped up as a pulse of pure pain arced from a saw-toothed muzzle, and evil yellow tendrils blossomed across the interior metalwork of the statue.

Normally I would have stood my ground, normally I would have been happy to go down swinging, but normally I wasn’t living with the burden of just having witnessed the death of the last member of a legendary—and irreplaceable—alien species. I couldn’t even think straight. Heck, I probably would have had trouble tying my shoelaces right then, I was so freaked out.

And then it came to me—pleiochromatech. I’d just been shown how to make it and how it worked. I didn’t need to fight; I could hide.

I dove down into the wealth of knowledge the Pleoinid had just given me… and through an act of sheer will that I don’t know how to explain, I flattened myself into a slick of invisible flesh, and slid down into the darkness while my pursuers raged with frustration.