Daniel X: Game Over by James Patterson, Ned Rust Read Free Book Online Page A

mean that Kildare came and left only through the vent?
    I understood the need for privacy—especially with parents like his—but it seemed like it would be pretty inconvenient to forever be clambering around in those dark, cramped vents to get in and out of here.
    And why were there
two
sleeping bags, not one? And why was one so much smaller than the other?
    I quickly examined them. They’d each been slept in, and recently. The bigger one smelled exactly like the trail in the vents and must have been Kildare’s. But the little one—it could have been an infant’s sleeping bag, and it smelled like nothing I’d ever come across. I mean, I don’t even know what to compare it to. It was kind of sweet, but not like perfume and not like candy. It just smelled
good
somehow, if that makes any sense.
    But there weren’t any other clues, at least that I could find. If the big bag was Kildare’s, whose was the little one? A little brother’s?
    I didn’t have any idea what was going on. And what about Number 1? Had he just been checking in on Number 7 and Number 8, or was he here for something else? If he were to join forces with those two, the scales wouldn’t just tip the wrong way; they’d fall right off the counter.
    A chill ran down my spine, and I spun around, but no one was there.
    Strange. Usually when I have the feeling that I’m being watched, I’m right.

Chapter 19

     

 
    THERE WAS ONLY one reasonable thing to do to ease my nerves: check in to a luxury hotel.
    The Fujiya Hotel, a Western-style hotel dating to 1878, is down in Hakone, a mountain resort town south of Tokyo. Charlie Chaplin, Helen Keller, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John Lennon, kings of England, and, of course, emperors of Japan—you name a celebrity or VIP from the past couple centuries, and if they visited Japan, chances are they stayed at the Fujiya.
    You reach it by bullet train, not a bad hour-long hop out of Tokyo, and then take a switchback train up into the hot spring–studded mountains. It’s inviting and beautiful and classy and just the sort of spot where you can escape from the modern hubbub and luxuriate in true old-world opulence, replete with the most deluxe room service you’ve ever seen.
    I placed my order as soon as I got to the room: “Yes, I’d like eight bowls of the Imperial consommé, two dozen orders of the assorted sashimi, seven gratin-of-shrimp with the sole Queen Elizabeth II, eight Chaliapin steaks—actually, better make that nine—and why don’t you throw in twenty orders of shrimp tempura. As for drinks, I’d like two pitchers of fresh-squeezed orange juice, four liters of Coke, two liters of Sprite, three liters of Pineapple Crush, and some of that fancy sparkling water—what’s it called—Pellegrino? Oh, and dessert. Do you have baked Alaska? Great, how many people does it serve? Yes, in that case, I’d like three of those too.
Domo arigato.
”
    And then—so you don’t think I’m a glutton or anything—I placed another order, only this one happened entirely inside my own head. I materialized Dana, Willy, Joe, and Emma, as well as Mom, Dad, and Pork Chop (aka Brenda, my little sister).
    There was a lot of hugging, high-fives, low-fives, jumping on the bed, and general jubilation. And when I told Joe what I’d ordered from room service, he just about went catatonic on me.
    “This sure seems festive, Daniel,” said my mom. “What’s going on?”
    “Attention, everybody,” I said, standing on the mahogany credenza and waving at Emma to turn down the sound on the Dance Dance Revolution game she and Pork Chop had begun to play on the room’s Wii console.
    “As you know, we’re once again faced with what some might think is an insurmountable challenge. Not one, but
two
Listers are with us in Tokyo, and all signs suggest that they’re about to go critical. What you don’t know is that there may actually be
three
of them—they appear to have a son.”
    “I’m really good with alien kids, you