Game Over

Chapter 45





WE HEADED STRAIGHT to Harajuku, the hippest district in the entire city of Tokyo. From Burton Snowboards to Harley-Davidson to Under Armour to North Face to Adidas—name your favorite company and they have a store in Harajuku. And, chances are, it’s mobbed with teenagers.

Oh, and it’s also got some pretty hip cafés, clubs, and fancy Japanese restaurants. But I wasn’t in the mood for noodles or sushi for lunch, so, instead, we hit a Shakey’s Pizza, where I can’t recommend the dessert pizza enough. That’s right—a pizza crust with such toppings as pineapple chunks, hot fudge sauce, and whipped cream.

“I feel a little sick,” said Kildare with only a mild smile of regret. After eating an entire teriyaki chicken pizza, he’d somehow managed to down an entire 1800 cc Grande Parfait (read: a half gallon of ice cream floating in a syrupy maelstrom of flavored toppings), and apparently his alien digestive system wasn’t any more robust than mine. We went outside and attempted to recover from our respective food overdoses on a pedestrian overpass, looking down at the sea of people coursing up and down the sidewalks like ants at an overstocked picnic.

“I guess they must call this the Shakey’s shakes,” Kildare joked weakly, looking down at his rumbling belly.

“Let’s walk it off,” I said, hoping the taste of pineapple and maraschino cherries would one day fade from my mouth. “Isn’t Ueno Park right up the street?”

Ueno Park is an old-style city park—cobblestone carriage paths, huge trees, stone parapets—in the center of Tokyo. It’s got more than a half dozen world-class museums in and around it, a zoo, playing fields, and some truly awe-inspiring Buddhist shrines.

We soon discovered that it’s also got to be Japan’s premiere cherry-blossom-viewing venue. There have to be more than a thousand cherry trees in the park. I mean, I’m not a huge flower freak or anything, but all those millions of blossoms—and how the petals rained down like a snowstorm when the wind blew—it’s just one of those things you have to see to believe.

What was not so cool to see, however, was that on that particular spring afternoon, for every one of the thousands of blossoms on each of the trees, there had to be at least one tourist crammed into the park.

Plus, one alien safari hunter.

And believe me, one was enough. As luck would have it, it was the tall one whose hat I’d ridden on in the GC Tower elevator and whose tracking device I’d stolen. He was attempting to blend in as a forty-something man who happened to stand six feet eight inches tall and looked like he had broken glass under his skin.

We were just walking past the life-size model of a blue whale in front of the natural history museum when I spotted him. I grabbed Kildare’s arm. I didn’t need to offer a word of explanation as I steered him quickly away from the crowds toward the safety of a nearby shrine that had been roped off for the blossom festival.

As is customary, we washed our hands in the ablution pool outside the shrine.

“Should we stop the charade, Daniel?” he whispered as he filled his ladle with the cold water streaming from a spigot in the mouth of an ornately cast copper dragon.

“Of course, Kildare,” I said.

“You aren’t here to kill me; I can tell that much.”

“That’s true—and I’m sorry we haven’t talked openly before. I just, well—”

“It’s my fault too. Things are just so messed up. My parents—”

I nodded. It was definitely a delicate situation. Which was of course why we hadn’t talked about it, even though obviously we’d both known each others’ true identities all along.

“I hope it’s okay. I feel bad—”

“They killed the Pleionid already, didn’t they?”

I nodded.

“I felt it.”

“Look,” I said. “Is there anything you can tell me that will, um—”

“I know they have to be stopped, Daniel. But just give me a day. I think I may know a way to do it without resorting to, you know—”

“Okay. But what are you thinking?”

“I can sabotage my parents’ plans.”

“You mean like when you set the Murkami family free?” I asked, giving voice to a hunch.

He nodded.

“Steps like that aren’t enough, Kildare. They have too much in motion now for us to be doing guerrilla stuff. They’re too strong. We have to step it up. How many others will they hunt to extinction?”

“Well,” said Kildare. “I’ll give you one thing you may find useful if, you know, my plan doesn’t work.”

“Please. Anything.”

He nodded as he ladled some more water over his hands. “Do you like the ocean?”

“What?”

“Oh, crap!”

He was staring across the pool. I followed his horror-stricken gaze and saw Ellie and Colin Gygax—his parents, Number 7 and Number 8 on The List of Alien Outlaws on Terra Firma—coming up the stone path toward us. They did not look happy.