James Patterson: Dangerous Days of Daniel X

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “They were together at the Academy when it was bombed on FirstStrike. Their bodies were never recovered. They’re presumed dead, Daniel.”

Tears sprang to my eyes as I felt the strength suddenly leave my body. My head hit the tabletop as a bolt of despair shot into my brain stem. It felt like I was being torn in two.

With all the destruction that I had seen, the ruin of an entire world, it wasn’t until this moment that I was truly overcome. I hadn’t felt such sadness since I was three.

Dana, Joe, Emma, and Willy-my best friends had all been murdered by Ergent Seth and his villains.

I don’t know exactly who I was when I finally lifted my head and dried my eyes. Just that I wasn’t the same person I had been minutes before.

“Seth,” I whispered. “I’m coming for you. I swear I am. I promise you, Dana, Joe, Emma, Willy, my dear dead friends! My drang. ”

MY HEAD WAS STILL SPINNING when I woke up the morning after the party. Meeting my real family for the first time would have been overwhelming in itself. But at the same time trying to get up to speed on my people and the history of my planet and-hello!-my destiny had been like drinking from a fire hose.

I was hoping to catch a few stragglers from the night before. I still had about a thousand questions bouncing around in my skull. But there was no one. In fact even my grandmother seemed to be gone.

I found a handwritten note taped to the inside of the front door.

Dear Daniel,

You are still recuperating, so I couldn’t bear to wake you, but there is grave news! Terrible, woeful news!

The Outer Ones’ World Harvesters have reached the outskirts of Undertown, our last sanctuary in the city. A cave-in at one of the lower tunnels has left hundreds of casualties, and I must leave to help. It is utter chaos and desolation for thousands more who have lost their dwelling places. Mothers and children are weeping and bleeding in the streets.

You have come at a miserable, desperate time for our planet. Who knows, maybe this is no accident. The horse-faced beasts are everywhere, so I must go.

I hope to see you again, and if not-

Love, great love, for all of eternity, my brave, handsome Daniel.

Grandma Blaleen

THE SUN WAS GETTING LOW as I finally made it back out of the confusing maze of tunnels under Alpar Nok’s shattered surface. I turned into the nearest abandoned office tower and hit its stairwell at a gallop. Grandma Blaleen was right-the horse-faced beasts were everywhere!

A short time later, I stood on the roof, watching the sun set. The Alparian sun was almost twice as large as Earth’s. Or was Alpar Nok just closer to it? Anyway, it had a yellowish-green tinge that turned into a blue and gold as it sank. It was heart-stoppingly beautiful, as I was sure this city had once been. I imagined this same fate for New York and Paris and London back on Earth, and it chilled me to the bone.

Then I stared at Seth’s spaceship hovering ominously in the distance. And his sickening machines eating through this planet, like worms through a smashed apple.

I thought about all the dreams and beauty Seth had taken away. And lives-like Joe’s, Willy’s, Emma’s, Dana’s. My dear friends murdered long ago at their school, of all places.

How long would it be before this same kind of senseless destruction would be replayed on Earth?

I closed my eyes, concentrated fiercely, and brought my friends back. With my mind, of course.

“Whu-what?” Joe said, coming up beside me. “No! You gotta be messing with my head. I mean, the alien spaceship was a trip, but now we’re actually on another planet? A wrecked planet, I see, but still. Tell me they have light sabers, Daniel. I want my own light saber!”

“Don’t listen to him, Daniel,” Willy said, punching Joe in the arm. “He’s just taken one small step for idiots, one giant step for idiotkind.”

“I know things look bad now, Daniel,” Emma said, scanning the jagged horizon. “But this planet has an incredible life force, one that is even greater than Earth’s. I can practically taste it. Given time and isolation, it’ll come back.”

I felt something hopeful in my chest. I’d almost forgotten how good it felt to be among my friends again. My murdered friends, I couldn’t help thinking.

I stepped over to where Dana stood, off by herself, looking very sad.

“What is it, Dana? Why won’t you talk? Did I do something wrong?”

Her eyes teared. Suddenly she hugged me hard.

“Okay, Daniel, I know what you have to do here. I’m just so afraid, afraid of losing you. And myself. But let’s get to work anyway. Let’s try to stop Seth if we possibly can.”

For the next several hours, we just sat there and thought about how to save our homeland. We turned over the options and possibilities, thousands of them, actually. Unfortunately, they all pretty much stank.

“What do we do now?” Dana finally asked. “We still don’t have a plan-and my brain is getting numb.”

“Sleep,” I said. “Dream about The Prayer, I suppose. But tomorrow we fight to live!”

THE NEXT MORNING it took us hours of tricky and difficult hiking through the landfill of the destroyed city to get anywhere near Seth’s ship.

If the disaster area looked bad from far away, close up it was much worse. There were thousands of horse-heads everywhere I could see.

We staggered around shattered baby cribs, computer screens, old newspapers and books, broken appliances, skeletons, all of it covered thickly with ash and mud.

When we got closer to Seth’s gigantic spacecraft, I saw that another landing chute was down.

“I guess he’s not afraid of an attack,” I said.

“What are we going to do?” Willy said nervously. “I don’t like the look in your eyes.”

“Get it over with,” I said. “Tussle, rumble, duel to the death. Something awful, something final.”

I pulled a metal pole out from the rubble. Then I hurled it about the length of three football fields. About four seconds later, the pole clanged against the ship’s hull.

“What are you doing?!” said Emma as a deafening alarm sounded in the ship.

“Do you see a doorbell anywhere?” I said, and walked forward.

“Knock, knock!” I yelled up at the belly of the ship. “Come out, come out, wherever you are, Seth! It’s me. Daniel.”

ABOUT TWENTY SECONDS LATER, there was a metallic groaning sound, and the door opened.

Seth came out in a bathrobe, holding a travel mug of coffee in one hand and a folded-over Wall Street Journal in the other. The dozen or so commando soldiers who filed out the doorway behind him swung their 24/24 Opus Magnums in my direction.

“Well, if it isn’t Daniel X himself,” Seth said with a yawn. “Become tired of living in this dump of a city already, eh? What can I do for you today? Death? Eternal enslavement? What’s it going to be?”

“I had something a little more sempiternal and epic in mind,” I said as I put my fingers to my mouth and whistled. “You saw Lord of the Rings I , II, and III , right?”

At first, nothing happened. Then, slowly, there was movement at the rim of the valley wall. Actually, it seemed as if the rim itself was moving, which couldn’t be.

Spikes of light glittered off thousands upon thousands of mirrored visors, and titanium battle helmets, and rifle barrels.

Around the edge of the valley walls stood a massive army of futuristic-looking starship troopers. Each soldier was sheathed head to toe in high-tech silver battle armor, and each one aimed a blocky, snub-nosed submachine gun down at Seth and his fellow aliens.