Game Over

Chapter 57





AFTER WHIPPING OUT the tracking device I’d stolen and doing a little triangulation, I confirmed my hunch about how Number 7 and Number 8 were directing the hunters to find me: the aliens had installed a relay transmitter in the top of the Tokyo Tower, something I’d figured out from the schematics I’d seen on Number 7’s computer.

It stood to reason: the Tokyo Tower was one of the tallest structures around, and if you wanted your signal to have the widest possible range, you wanted your source as high above the ground as possible.

Fortunately, getting up to the top of the tower wasn’t a problem. The tourist center was closed, there were no crowds, and it was pretty dark. So I simply took advantage of my much-improved leg and climbed up the outside on the structural girders. Dana was right behind me, whistling the theme from Spiderman as we went.

The transmitter was alien-tech and, therefore, a very compact package. Since it broadcast an ultralow frequency and in an incredibly sophisticated pattern, humans would probably never detect it in a thousand years. What was more noticeable, however, were the sticky, black, rubbery balls—slightly bigger than watermelons—that were clustered at the base of the tower’s broadcast mast.

“Gross,” Dana remarked.

“Definitely not native to Earth,” I observed, taking some readings on my modified iPhone. “But they appear to be completely inert. They’re probably leftover lunch containers or something.”

I turned my attention to the small transmission device and proceeded to scan its length. In theory, there should have been a dataport I could use to reprogram or shut the thing down without setting off any alarms.

“Are you sure that’s the right decision, Daniel?” asked Dana.

“What?”

“Ignoring those things.”

“I found it! The dataport!” I said, attaching my tracking unit and ignoring her.

“Um, Daniel—”

“What?” I asked.

She didn’t answer, but I heard weird cracking noises, then looked up from the display. Dana was silently backing up toward me.

Beyond her, the sticky black things were no longer sticky black things. They’d disgorged a half dozen metal-skinned creatures that were busy unfurling wings, fangs, claws, stingers, and a host of other appendages that you might expect if you were to cross a twenty-five-pound hornet with a sack of scissors.

“Oh,” I said.