Game Over

Chapter 14





THE SHOCK WAVE from the exploding refinery rattled windows across Tokyo, and all of us in the dojo sat bolt upright in our sleeping bags.

“What was that!?” asked Emma, voicing the question in all of our sleep-addled heads.

“I believe,” said Eigi, his mind spinning with the quick and precise analysis that only an alien could have, “that the Game Consortium’s Hunt Club just managed to kill a Mahlerian bird-cat.”

“A Mahlerian bird-cat?” I yelled in surprise. “I thought they were extinct!”

“Now they are,” replied Etsuyo.

“The last specimen was being held in an intergalactic preserve for cloning purposes, but Number 7 and Number 8 stole it and brought it here. We saw it while we were being held captive.”

“He was my friend,” said Kenshin, choked up.

“Why would they bring it all the way to Earth just to kill it?” I asked.

“It’s all part of one of their video games—only, of course, they’re more than video games,” explained Eigi. “Number 7 and Number 8 didn’t just get into this line of work here on Earth. They’ve been at it for millennia, on many other planets, with many other races. And the final stage of their efforts is always extinction. They take great pride in being the ones to destroy the last vestiges of a species. This Hunt Club of theirs is actually a safari game they run for the best—that is, winning—players of past conquests. It’s something they do to test out their systems when they arrive at a new planet. And it also helps them tie up any loose ends from the planets they’ve left.”

“Their virtual hunting games have become real hunting games?” I asked.

Eigi nodded.

“But how?”

“Essentially, they’ve gotten their players so addicted that their habits force them to cross over into the real world,” continued Eigi.

“Like what we saw in that creepy theater,” Dana said quietly.

“In fact, these ‘winners’ are actually still willingly paying them for the experience,” Eigi went on. “They’re here to track quarry through the streets of Tokyo and all over Japan. That is, in fact, why we were brought here. We’re among the last of the Alpar Nokians—we’re close to extinction, too—so we qualify as prey. And so, of course, do you.”

“That’s sick!” bawled Emma, our official Animal Planet addict. “Why would they do that!?”

“Who can know the heart of the beast?” asked Eigi.

“A veterinary heart surgeon?” asked Joe, eliciting not a single laugh. This was not a funny situation.

Clearly, I needed to put a stop to this and take out Number 7 and Number 8. Both of them at once. Both of them, even though I hadn’t even managed to lay eyes on them yet, except in their human forms on television and on the Internet.

As if reading my mind—which maybe she can because, after all, she came out of it—Dana said, “Maybe we should back off and find some other way, Daniel.”

I ignored her. “Eigi, do you know where Number 7 and Number 8 live? Are they in the GC Tower?”

“Yes, I think they’re up on the top floor most of the time. We sometimes heard our guards saying things about going up to the penthouse, so I assume that’s where they stay.”

“You’re not going up there, Daniel,” said Dana.

“Well, not there, precisely,” I said to her with a wink.