James Patterson - Dangerous Days of Daniel X

I was herded into a large, high-ceilinged chamber crowded with a couple dozen horse-heads in black smocks, working at computer consoles.

Was this the execution chamber?

My mind reeled, coming up with a couple dozen horrendous ways in which I would now be put to death. I gritted my teeth and erased all the bad images. I wasn’t going to give Seth the satisfaction of seeing me afraid.

“Get it over with, Seth,” I said. “Do your worst. I can take it.”

“You think so? Put his home up on the big screen,” Seth commanded.

I turned as a soccer field-sized wall seemed to vaporize and a star-sprawled view of space appeared.

Oh, I thought. This wasn’t the execution chamber. It was the bridge of the spaceship. Whoops, I’d jumped to the wrong conclusion. I liked this one a whole lot better.

The view on the screen seemed to pan to the left. I gasped! Filling the screen was Earth in all its massive, beautiful glory.

“Why have we come back?” I asked. “And why is Terra Firma greenish at the edges? What have you done now, Seth?”

“Come back? Did you hear this fool?” Seth called out to the other aliens. “Of course, we just went for a seventeen-light-year spin around the block. That’s not Earth, idiot. I said you were home. Welcome to Alpar Nok, your home world, jackass.”

Alpar Nok? I thought, staring at the green-tinged planet. My home?

The screen tilted suddenly, and the shining green planet on it got larger and larger as we approached in a hurry.

My poker face crumbled as we blasted through clouds and an ocean appeared. An ocean, calm and limitless and filled with the purest, bluest water I’d ever seen.

I felt it then, a kind of warming of my soul. I could hardly breathe. I couldn’t take my eyes away from this miracle.

I was home.

I WAS STILL DUMBFOUNDED as Seth and his security contingent of armed mutant killers escorted me through the bowels of the ship and toward the landing elevator.

A million questions and feelings rushed through me at once. What would my people look like? Would anyone know me? Did they all have powers like mine? Did I have actual family still living here?

“You may wonder why I brought you home,” Seth prattled on with his fancy English accent. “I’m such a show-off. Love to rub it in. I wanted your race to see that their defeat was complete across the universe. All hail the returning conquered loser! That’s you, by the way.”

Unfortunately Seth was right. My hands were shackled behind me, then I was shoved roughly into the elevator car.

We plummeted, and almost instantly slammed to a sudden stop. The forward ramp automatically dropped down, kicking up dust. I squinted through it as I was pushed out and…

Felt panic. Huge Perfect Storm waves of horror and dread and shock.

No! I thought. This can’t be my home.

For mile upon mile, as far as my eye could see, corkscrewed metal girders and wrecked vehicles poked out from mountainous piles of scorched rubble. The few buildings that were still standing were warped, shattered, windowless. The prevailing sound was the whistle of wind over tumbled bricks. From horizon to horizon lay the demolished remains of a massive city, one that had been as big as New York or London.

Staring at the destruction, I stood frozen with despair. Grief for my people and my ruined world filled me. Seth had gotten me yet again, I realized. Hey, look, Daniel. Here’s your home planet. Oh, I forgot to mention, it’s been leveled.

I CAUGHT HIM staring at me, a mirthful smile on his fetid alien face. He’s fooled me twice, I thought with a shake of my head. Shame on me.

Twenty feet below the rim of the elevated landing ramp was what looked like a derailed bullet train. Someone had scrawled DEATH TO ERGENT SETH in its dust-covered side.

“ You did this,” I said, turning to Seth. It wasn’t a question.

Seth took a long cigar out of his pocket and lit it with a gold Zippo as he winked at me.

“I know,” he said, blinking as he shook his head at the desolate vista. “Unreal, isn’t it? Sometimes even I can’t believe it. I mean, ever since I was little, I always dreamed of committing mass destruction. But on this kind of scale? It’s more than even I had a right to expect.”

Seth raised a claw and saluted his handiwork. Half a mile away, a massive pit was being carved out of the rubble. Insectlike machines of the same green-gray metal as the spacecraft were moving around and around in slow circles. There were more pits in the distance beyond it, and more busy insectile machines.

“They’re called World Harvesters, my race’s greatest invention,” Seth said proudly.

“They’ll chew through anything-rock, garbage, dead bodies, you name it-and remove every atom of valuable minerals and elements. It took half a million years for your people to build the city of Bryn Spi, the shining jewel of your planet. It took me one and a half hours to blow it into a billion shiny pieces. And by this time next year-and this is my favorite part-it will look like nothing ever stood here at all.”

My heart seemed to be unfastening inside my chest. “Where is everyone?” I asked.

“Your fellow Alparians? The few who are still alive scurry through the ruins like rats. They have no powers, no hope, no reason to live, really. But still they stumble on. Pathetic.”

Seth shook his head in disgust.

“Protectors of the Universe?” he said, tapping the ash from his cigar with one of his talons. “Guess they should have worried more about protecting themselves.”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, Protectors of the Universe?” I asked.

“You are clueless, aren’t you?” Seth said. “I keep forgetting you had all this thrust on you at three years of age. Behold, Alpar Nok, the home of the Alien Hunters, the universe’s answer to injustice and evil! Your parents were sent to Earth to protect the oh-so-special humans from the Outer Ones, as they like to call us.

“Because a few pathetic Alparians were born with some ability to manipulate the universal force, it was thought you could protect the good from the evil. As if good and evil aren’t just fairy tales made up for small children. There are the strong and then there are the weak. ”

I looked out at the ruined city again. Seth and his buddies had left just enough standing for me to see how amazing it must have been.

Fragments of exotic spires, pyramids, domes, pagodas, minarets, columns, and obelisks peeked out in every direction. Right next to us was a giant sculpted building that looked like a hundred-story violin made of glass and metal. Now it leaned precariously because a huge hole had been blown in its base.

Wait a second, I thought. It was leaning toward us.

Maybe that was a good thing.

IT COULD HAVE BEEN the air of my homeland, or maybe a coincidence, but ever since I’d stepped foot on Alpar Nok, power had been flowing into me. I could feel my energy surging as if I’d just downed about a dozen Red Bulls. Can you imagine it?

There was no time to think this over. I had to do something outrageous and unexpected before Seth found out that my abilities were coming back. This qualified as pretty outrageous, I figured. The question bouncing around my head was whether outrageous equaled really dumb or really ingenious.

I scanned the already weakened base of the building that was tilted toward us. I did some quick calculations in my head. Checked the math. Then I unleashed everything I had at the thinnest part of one of the bent girders.