The Dangerous Days of Daniel X

The first installment in the Daniel X series opens with its fifteen-year-old narrator, Daniel, addressing the reader directly. He warns that Earth is populated by dangerous alien creatures and promises to tell the story of how he came to hunt them.

In a prologue set twelve years earlier, three-year-old Daniel is playing in the basement of his family's Kansas farmhouse when an explosion rocks the kitchen above. A deep voice demands something called The List, a catalog of alien outlaws living on Earth, from his parents. Gunfire erupts from an Opus 24/24, an alien assault rifle, and his father's last words tell Daniel they will always love him. A six-and-a-half-foot-tall praying mantis creature calling itself The Prayer descends into the basement searching for the boy. Despite his age, Daniel is extraordinarily gifted: He instinctively transforms himself into a tick, hiding in the creature's hair as it leaps upstairs. He catches a final glimpse of his parents' bodies on the kitchen floor. Unable to find The List, The Prayer sets the house ablaze and flees. Restored to human form, Daniel stands alone as the house burns, realizing he knows where The List is hidden and that he is now the Alien Hunter.

Twelve years later, Daniel has spent his youth tracking aliens from The List across the globe. In the sewers of Portland, Oregon, he destroys the 19th-ranked outlaw, a shape-shifting creature called Orkng Jllfgna. He reviews The List on an advanced alien computer recovered at age 13 from his parents' farmhouse, which also contained a message instructing him to take their place. When Portland police investigate reports of a minor living alone, Daniel demonstrates a core ability: He can rearrange matter at a subatomic level to conjure real, DNA-complete people and objects from memory, creating lifelike manifestations of his parents to deflect suspicion. He also possesses superhuman speed and strength, telepathy, limited precognition, and the power to influence minds. After the police leave, he announces his next target: Ergent Seth, ranked sixth on The List and on a genocidal rampage in California. Daniel also reveals to the reader that he is himself an alien.

Traveling south, Daniel encounters a truck driver who transforms into a fanged alien delivering a warning: Seth knows he is coming. That night in the Northern California woods, Daniel summons his four best friends, all created from his imagination: Willy, a fearless fighter; Joe, a sarcastic comedian; Emma, Willy's compassionate younger sister; and Dana, a girl on whom Daniel has an intense crush.

In Los Angeles, Daniel creates his parents and a younger sister named Pork Chop (Brenda) to help rent a house in Glendale. He studies Seth's file: the alien is a Vermgypian from planet Gorto 4, a species known for producing lethal nerve gas, with Level 7 strength and speed far exceeding Daniel's Level 3. Seth plans to depopulate Earth and recolonize it with his own kind. Daniel's created parents warn that a top-ten outlaw may be far beyond what he can handle.

Daniel enrolls at Glendale High School and meets Phoebe Cook, a tall, black-haired new girl whose sadness and loneliness he perceives telepathically. He walks her home and asks her out. During nighttime surveillance on skid row, he discovers children dealing drugs as part of Seth's criminal network and intervenes, mentally reprogramming the dealer overseeing them.

Seth's intimidation campaign escalates rapidly. He invades Daniel's dreams, sends alien cats to ransack the house, and phones Daniel to reveal he knows his name and location. When Daniel rips the cord from the wall, the disconnected phone rings again, and Seth's voice emits his species' signature nerve gas through the answering machine, nearly killing Daniel before Willy smashes the device. At school, Phoebe confides that her six-year-old sister was abducted the previous July; Daniel discovers that area child kidnappings form a pattern centered on Malibu, where Seth lives. Snipers fire on Daniel at school with alien weaponry, and Seth transforms Daniel's house into a cemetery bearing his name. Daniel reverses the transformation but knows he is compromised.

After spending a night at Phoebe's house, Daniel wakes to find her missing. He locates her crying behind the school, but she reveals herself to be Ergent Seth in disguise. The real Phoebe never existed as Daniel knew her. Seth's true form is monstrous: an impossibly narrow dead horse's head covered in bone-white skin with bulging blood-red eyes. He created the Phoebe persona to get close to Daniel and assess whether the boy posed a threat. Seth drains Daniel's powers by touching his temple and carries the helpless boy away.

Daniel is transported to an abandoned film set in Death Valley, where dozens of kidnapped children are imprisoned. He taunts Seth by claiming he scanned Seth's dreams and learned his deepest vulnerability, using the word "Dumb-Dumb" to enrage him. Seth retrieves an Opus 24/24, the same weapon type that killed Daniel's parents, and shoots Daniel in the stomach. A young captive girl saves his life by pressing his shirt into the wound.

Seth's forces load Daniel and the children onto a massive spaceship, a flying sweatshop where enslaved children are shackled and eventually sold. Locked in a cell, Daniel slowly recovers enough power to manifest his friends for covert reconnaissance. In a moment of anguish, he tells his created sister Pork Chop the truth: She was never born because their mother was pregnant with her when The Prayer killed their parents. His created family dissolves in tears.

Seth brings Daniel to the bridge and reveals they have traveled to Alpar Nok, Daniel's devastated home planet. The once-magnificent city of Bryn Spi lies in scorched rubble, stripped by massive machines called World Harvesters. Seth explains that Alparians were the universe's Protectors and that Daniel's parents were sent to Earth to guard humanity from hostile aliens known as the Outer Ones.

Upon touching his homeland's soil, Daniel feels power surging back. He topples a damaged skyscraper into the ship's landing shaft, shatters his shackles, and flees into the ruins. In tunnels beneath the city, he discovers Undertown, a hidden settlement of surviving Alparians. An elderly woman named Blaleen confronts him; when Daniel mentions his father's name, Graff, she reveals she is his grandmother. His stomach wound hemorrhages because the bullet contains a delayed explosive charge, and Blaleen operates to extract it, saving his life.

Daniel's extended family gathers for a celebration. Blaleen explains that Daniel's parents were sent to Earth to protect humanity and that Daniel's power rating is double both parents' combined. Memory home movies reveal that Joe, Willy, Emma, and Dana were real Alparian children, Daniel's preschool friends bound to him by a rare bond called a drang. Blaleen reveals all four were presumed killed when their academy was bombed during Seth's initial attack on the planet. Devastated, Daniel vows to destroy Seth.

Returning to the surface, Daniel creates thousands of silver-armored soldiers as a bluff and challenges Seth to single combat modeled on Achilles versus Hector in Homer's Iliad: The winner takes all. Seth refuses until Daniel goads him by exploiting a childhood memory of being mocked as "Dumb-Dumb." In the duel, Seth overwhelms Daniel physically, crushing him in a bear hug. As his bones crack, Daniel transforms into a tick, climbs into Seth's ear canal, navigates to his brain stem, and transforms into a full-grown elephant. Seth's head ruptures, killing him instantly.

With Seth dead, Daniel frees all the captive children. A human girl introduces herself as the real Phoebe Cook, held captive on the ship, and returns Daniel's laptop containing The List. After 12 days of celebration with his people, Daniel's grandmother insists he return to Earth to finish his parents' mission before the remaining Outer Ones regroup. Daniel delivers the freed children home, then lands with his created friends in an Iowa cornfield, overwhelmed with joy. With Dana on his back, he runs into the sunset, shouting to the world's aliens to be very, very afraid.