Dangerous Days of Daniel X

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.”

Chapter 65

“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.

Chapter 66

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.

Here goes nothing. Or, I guess, everything!

The landing party of horse-skulls turned as the girder sheared with the loudest imaginable crack.

There was a deafening groan as the tower shuddered, then-TIMBER!-it collapsed against the side of the ship’s landing shaft. Actually, it disintegrated the shaft.

Seth’s cigar went flying. Next I shattered my shackles with a violent flex of my shoulders. And because I couldn’t resist, I threw a roundhouse punch into Seth’s snout. He. Didn’t. Even. Flinch.

Then I leaped off the ramp, hitting the rubble at a run. Or should I say, dead run?

I turned into the nearest alley, then skidded to an immediate, lifesaving stop.

I was right at the edge of one of the strip-mining pits, a chasm at least three or four hundred feet straight down, maybe a city block wide. I had missed falling into the pit by inches!

My chest was heaving as I spotted what appeared to be a tunnel opening on the opposite wall of the chasm, twenty or thirty yards across. I backed up and yelled-for extra strength, and to distract me from my fears. And common sense, maybe? Then I ran forward and jumped off the edge, using every ounce of energy I had.

I made it by inches-and then I heard Opus 24/24 gunfire from above.

Bullets rained down everywhere, burrowing into the ground like steel fists.

I turbo-crawled maybe twenty feet into the darkness and waited an eternity-until the thunderous gunfire finally stopped.

Then I heard the cackle of Seth’s laughter. It echoed against the walls of my planet’s version of Death Valley.

“Go ahead, run-un-un,” Seth yelled, echoes trampling all over his slimy words. “You’re a cockroach in a dump-ump-ump. Fall on your face! Stay here in this graveyard if you like-ike-ike. Does it matter? You’re just one more useless slave-ave-ave! Welcome home, loser- ser-ser!”

I took the time to yell back, “Kiss my butt-utt-utt.”

Then I ran until, finally, I was a blur.

Chapter 67

I DON’T KNOW how long it was that I ran, then jogged, then stumbled through the totally unfamiliar semidarkness. Unfortunately my stomach wound was bleeding again.

I found some kind of monorail track thing and followed it for at least a couple of hours. You wouldn’t think that a city could be so big, but Bryn Spi seemed to go on forever.

I think I actually fell asleep walking at one point.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up as I heard somebody, or some thing, breathing in the darkness above me.

“Hey!” a kid’s voice came as I reached up and grabbed a head of longish hair.

A flashlight came on next.

“Lay off! Let me go!” a dirty-faced kid yelled, waving his flashlight. He was emaciated, dressed in filthy rags, and furious with me.