Dangerous Days of Daniel X

“Oh, Daniel,” she sobbed. “You can’t die.”

“Don’t,” I said. “You can’t cry, Dana. My heart can stand pretty much anything except seeing you cry.”

“But look at you. I’ve never seen you like this. What happened to you? Besides that… Phoebe Cook flirtation. What was that about? God, Daniel.”

The last thing I was going to do was tell her that I was gut-shot.

“Seth,” I said. That about summed it up.

“What about your powers? Don’t tell me they’re gone. Please don’t tell me that.”

“Dana, c’mon,” I said. “Of course I still have my powers.”

“Maybe you’d feel better if you got up off that cold floor and moved around,” Dana said, offering me her hand.

Maybe she was right. Maybe all this agony was in my head. With super effort, I climbed up on my knees. Then I dropped facedown, cracked my head on the hard cell floor, and passed out cold.

Chapter 59

WHEN I WOKE AGAIN, I don’t know how much later, I noticed that I wasn’t bleeding anymore. I wasn’t up for a footrace with a pickup truck or anything, but I felt like maybe in another hour or so, I could do something incredible. Like, say, sit up.

I was about to give it a shot when the cell door clanged open, and Seth waltzed in. In his claw was an iron bowl of some slop that smelled like rotting fish and looked like macaroni and eye cheese.

“Here, boy,” he said, clucking his tongue as he dropped the bowl next to my head. “Oh, what’s wrong? Does the little doggie have a tum-tum ache? Don’t want to play epic hero anymore? No more a-hunting-aliens-we-will- go? I came down here just to watch your suffering and humiliation. The thing about moments of triumph, you want to make them last!”

“Please don’t hurt me,” I said, shivering. “Please.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Seth said as he squatted down to get a better look at my misery. “I will.”

That’s precisely when I manifested Willy, Joe, Dana, and Emma into the open doorway behind the big horse- headed creep.

That’s right. Never give up, never say die, live in complete denial. I even remembered to dress them in the filthy gray jumpsuits that were all the rage with the abducted tween-age slave set this season.

I told you I was feeling a little, teensy bit better. It’s hard to keep a good Alien Hunter down. I think it was the sleep that had done it. I’d recharged enough to work at least a little of my power. Maybe five percent.

I watched my gang hoof it out of my cell and down the corridor of the ship.

“You are pathetic, do you know that?” Seth continued. “You actually thought you could come after me? And win? I even warned you. But losers such as yourself never learn, I suppose. Losers like you are never satisfied until someone actually hands them their head.”

“I should have listened to you,” I moaned, crying. Shia LaBeouf couldn’t have done a better acting job, not even with Steven Spielberg directing. “Please, please,” I said, writhing for effect. “I’ll do anything you want.”

Seth merely smiled. “Of course you will.”

Chapter 60

FOR THE NEXT couple of hours, I lay flat on my back in my cell with my eyes closed. What with all I’d been through, I was putting up my feet and taking a major breather.

Yeah, right! Actually, I was busy communicating telepathically with my friends as they searched the ship for a way out, or at least a way to strike back at Seth and his goons.

First off I watched as Willy searched level upon level for any sign of a lifeboat or an escape pod, but unfortunately there was nothing. It was a Hail Mary, I knew, because even if he found one, there was no way of knowing how to operate it or even which was the direction back to Earth. Willy tried to get near what he thought might be the bridge, but it was crawling with heavily armed mutant horse-faces.

On the main slave factory floor, Joe and Emma discovered that there were chains and pallets underneath all the worktables. The kid slaves worked and slept in the same five square feet.

But Joe and Emma did manage to do something positive. They sat with about twenty or so abducted girls gathered around them. Emma had snagged some yarn from one of the sweatshop shelves, and she was showing them how to make friendship bracelets. Leave it to Emma to find a silver lining just about anywhere.

The most heart-shredding of the psychic podcasts came from Dana. She had spoken to one of the prisoners, a pale Asian American boy who had more than a passing resemblance to the ghost kid from The Grudge.

“How long have you been here?” Dana asked. “Can you tell me that?”

The kid looked right through her.

“Dunno.”

“Months? Years?”

“Dunno.”

“Where are the older kids?” Dana said.

A look of horror invaded the kid’s face.

“Taken away,” he whispered. He began sobbing as Dana picked him up and put him in her lap. “Sold.”

Of course, I thought. As if breaking their spirits wasn’t enough, Seth had put the kids on the auction block and sold them to whoever-or whatever-could come up with the highest price.

Maybe that was why I was being kept alive-to be sold at auction. How much for an Alien Hunter, slightly used? With five percent of his former powers?

“You’re going to be okay,” Dana said, hugging the boy as tears rolled down her cheeks. “We’re going to get you out of here and back home. Hey, you want to play I spy? I’ll go first. I spy with my little eye something cute. You.”

The kid actually giggled. How do you like that? Leave it to her. Even in hell, Dana could make people laugh.

Okay, then, what had I learned? Fact one: there was no resistance against the impossibly cruel alien creeps. Fact two: there was no possibility for escape.

I reminded myself for the millionth time to never underestimate an opponent again. Oh, wait. What was I thinking? There wasn’t going to be an again.

Chapter 61

I WAS EATING an imaginary cherry sno-cone-which helped my spirits more than you might think. I was planning on an imaginary lemon-and-lime one next.

“Bet’s to you, Daniel,” Pork Chop said, peering at me over her massive pile of chips. “Quit stalling and lose the hand already.”

If you think regular solitary confinement is boring, you should try it on an alien spaceship. That’s why I decided to host a family World Series of Poker tournament in my cell.

I guess I was feeling a little better. In the special power sense, at least. I was able to manifest my parents and sister, the poker table, cards, some chips, sno-cones.