Game Over

Chapter 47





“CAN YOU DO that?” I asked Kildare as we hurried to the train station. Number 7 and Number 8 were gone, but something told me we weren’t exactly being left alone. My plan was to return to the Fujiya Hotel and then summon my friends and family to meet Kildare.

“Am I a colony too? Is that what you’re asking?”

“I saw you turn gray like that once, at school. When Ichi stuck you in the garbage can.”

“We call it ‘dispersing’ if you want to know the technical term. Yeah, I’m really their son. But personality’s a different thing, you know. Just because you have a brain like your parents’ doesn’t mean you’re going to think the same thoughts or believe the same things.”

“I wasn’t saying—” I started.

“I know. And I don’t mean to be defensive. It’s just that my parents are a little harder to relate to than those of most kids. I mean, some kids complain about having moms and dads that are lawyers or insurance agents. They should try coming home to a couple of vicious genocidal maniacs—”

“—with a small army of henchmen,” I added, gesturing at two aliens shambling down the path toward us in too-tight warm-up suits. We might have mistaken them for sumo wrestlers, except that, once again, their knees bent the wrong way.

“Yeah,” he agreed as we broke into a run toward the Ueno Station on the JR Yamanote line. But even as we made it down the park steps to the sidewalk, we spied three more badly dressed alien henchmen waiting beneath the overpass just outside the station. One of them waved while the other two reached inside their hoodies and pulled out weapons like the ones I had seen in the box back at the Game Consortium.

This was not good.

“Taxi!” I yelled, stepping out to the curb and flagging down a boxy little Tokyo cab. It’s no easier finding an empty cab in Tokyo than it is in New York, Paris, or London, but one just happened to be there right then.

We quickly hopped into the backseat. “Omiya, please,” I said, identifying a major train station a good distance out of downtown where we could easily find a train.

“Anywhere you like, bosss,” hissed the driver.

“Oh, crap!” said Kildare with alarm. “It’s one of my parents’ Silurians!”

Silurians are a species of monkey-like reptile frequently hired as contract assassins, because they’re clever, patient, and obedient, and happen to enjoy killing so much that you don’t even need to pay them to do it.

The driver quickly locked the doors and hit a button that started blowing knockout gas through the vents. Fortunately, Kildare hadn’t quite closed his door and we leaped back out to the sidewalk as the cab accelerated away.

“Close one,” gasped Kildare.

“We could have taken him,” I said, “I think.”

“Well, something tells me my parents have a few more agents in reserve.”

“I think you’re right. And I also think, judging by how they had the JR station covered and now this cab, that they’re expecting us to try to get out of town.”

“So?”

“So, we’re doing exactly what they expect us to do, which must mean we’re making things easy on them.”

“So we should do the opposite of what they’re expecting, like—”

My mind raced as I spotted two more alien thugs making their way toward us down the crowded sidewalk.

“Let’s not go out of town; let’s go downtown.”

“Downtown where?”

“Know anyplace to play video games?”