Rules of the Game
James Frey
The explosive final novel in the Endgame trilogy, by New York Times bestelling author, James Frey.Two keys have been found. The strongest Players are left. One final key remains to win Endgame and save the world.For Sarah, Jago, Aisling, Maccabee, Shari, An, and Hilal, Endgame has reached its final phase. The third key, Sun Key, is all that stands between one Player saving their line - or perishing along with the rest of the world. And only one can win.West Bengal, India: Maccabee is Playing to win. He has Earth Key and Sky Key and he is determined to find Sun Key. But in Endgame, fate can turn in the blink of an eye. He must Play carefully. He must watch his back.Kolkata, India: An Liu is Playing for death. His goal: stop Endgame, and take the world down with him.Sikkim, India: For Aisling, Sarah, Jago, Shari, and Hilal, their mission is to stop Endgame. Sun Key must not be found.No matter what they’re Playing for, all of the remaining Players have one thing in common: they will end the game, but on their own terms.
This book is a puzzle.
Decipher, decode, and interpret.
Search and seek.
If you’re worthy, you will find.
Copyright (#ulink_ab645fba-edeb-57eb-bafc-4f1e49c900f1)
First published in hardback in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2016
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
The Rules of the Game: An Endgame Novel © 2016 by Third Floor Fun, LLC.
Puzzle hunt experience by Futuruption LLC.
Additional character icon design by John Taylor Dismukes Assoc.,
a Division of Capstone Studios, Inc.
Cover design and logo by Rodrigo Corral Design
Additional logo and icon design by John Dismukes
NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. You do not need to prove that you have purchased this book to enter. Copies of the book may be available to you through other resources, such as your local library. Contest begins 9:00 a.m. EST, January 9, 2017, and ends when the puzzle has been solved or on July 10, 2017, whichever is earlier. Open to ages 13 and older. Entrants under 18 must have consent from a parent or guardian. Void where prohibited. Aggregate value of all prizes: approximately $251,000.00. Sponsor: Third Floor Fun, LLC, 25 Old Kings Hwy N. Ste 13, PO Box #254, Darien, CT 06820-4608. For Contest details, prize description, and Official Rules, visit www.endgamerules.com (http://www.endgamerules.com)
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James Frey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9780007585250
Ebook Edition ISBN: 9780007585274
Version: 2016-11-28
Contents
Cover (#u842222f7-618a-5893-a2fa-173887445044)
About the Book (#u8b6b8457-048b-5ac7-8a62-6675a35975b0)
Title Page (#u8a69584d-7e09-5ab7-95d1-34f7ad68ef11)
Copyright (#uf3b8eb14-7134-5262-8150-9f4ffb951be9)
Kepler 22B
An Liu
Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Aisling Kopp, Pop Kopp, Greg Jordan, Griffin Marrs
Maccabee Adlai, Little Alice Chopra
An Liu
Aisling Kopp, Greg Jordan, Griffin Marrs, Pop Kopp, Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Shari Chopra
Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc
Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt
An Liu
Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc
An Liu
Maccabee Adlai, Little Alice Chopra
An Liu, Nori Ko
Shari Chopra
Aisling Kopp, Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Shari Chopra, Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt, Stella Vyctory, Pop Kopp, Greg Jordan, Griffin Mars
Shari Chopra, Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt, Aisling Kopp, Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Pop Kopp, Greg Jordan, Griffin Mars
Shari Chopra, Pop Kopp
Maccabee Adlai, Little Alice Chopra
An Liu, Nori Ko
Shari Chopra, Aisling Kopp, Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt, Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Pop Kopp, Greg Jordan, Griffin Marrs
An Liu, Nori Ko
Maccabee Adlai, Little Alice Chopra
Aisling Kopp, Shari Chopra, Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt, Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Greg Jordan, Griffin Marrs
Kepler 22B
Maccabee Adlai, Little Alice Chopra
An Liu, Nori Ko
Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc
Kepler 22B
Aisling Kopp, Greg Jordan, Griffin Marrs
Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt, Shari Chopra
Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Simon Alopay
Aisling Kopp, Pop Kopp, Kepler 22B
Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Simon Alopay
An Liu, Nori Ko
Kepler 22B
Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt, Shari Chopra, Jenny Ulapala
Shari Chopra
Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt, Shari Chopra, Jenny Ulapala
Maccabee Adlai, Little Alice Chopra
Kepler 22B
An Liu, Nori Ko, Maccabee Adlai, Little Alice Chopra
Kepler 22B
Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt, Shari Chopra, Jenny Ulapala
An Liu, Maccabee Adlai, Little Alice Chopra
Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt, Shari Chopra, Jenny Ulapala
An Liu, Maccabee Adlai, Little Alice Chopra
Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt, Shari Chopra, Jenny Ulapala
An Liu, Maccabee Adlai, Little Alice Chopra, Nori Ko
Kepler 22B
An Liu, Nori Ko, Little Alice Chopra
Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Simon Alopay
Greg Jordan
An Liu, Nori Ko, Little Alice Chopra
Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Simon Alopay
Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt
Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Simon Alopay
An Liu, Nori Ko, Little Alice Chopra
Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt
An Liu, Nori Ko, Little Alice Chopra
Kepler 22B
An Liu, Nori Ko, Little Alice Chopra
Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt
Shari Chopra, Jenny Ulapala
Nori Ko
Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt, Nori Ko
An Liu, Little Alice Chopra
Shari Chopra, Jenny Ulapala
An Liu, Kepler 22B, Little Alice Chopra, Jenny Ulapala, Shari Chopra
Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt, Little Alice Chopra, Kepler 22B
Jenny Ulapala
Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt, Little Alice Chopra, Jenny Ulapala, Kepler 22B, Aisling Kopp
23 Months, 5 Days Later
Endnotes
Keep Reading … (#litres_trial_promo)
Endgame Series
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
KEPLER 22B (#u72b70ec8-efa0-5e43-8859-a6cb22f1dc08)
Ansible chamber on board the Seedrak Sare’en, active geosynchronous orbit above the Martian North Pole
kepler 22b sits in a shiny chair in the center of a black, low-ceilinged room. His seven-fingered hands are woven together, his platinum hair bound into a perfect sphere perched on top of his head. He reviews the report he is about to give over the ansible to his conclave, many light years away. The game taking place on the blue-and-white planet in the next orbit has experienced hitches and unforeseen developments, but it progresses nonetheless. Most of what has transpired is not terribly worrying, with the notable exception of the destruction of one of Earth’s 12 great monuments. This was the one that belonged to the La Tène Celts, the one called Stonehenge, and it is now utterly gone and useless. kepler 22b is deeply disturbed by this. At least one of these ancient structures—ones that were erected many millennia ago, when his people walked alongside the young humans of Earth—at least one is required to finish Endgame.
And this, more than anything, is what he wishes to see happen.
For a Player to win.
A Player.
He turns his attention from the report to a transmission hologram projected into the air not far from his face. A dim real-time blip moves over the map of a city on the Indian subcontinent. A Player. Judging by the speed, he uses some kind of vehicle.
This Player is not the one that kepler 22b expects to win, but it is the one he has been most curious about.
He is a shrewd and incautious Player.
Unpredictable. Excitable. Merciless.
He is the Shang, An Liu.
And kepler 22b would continue to watch but then the ansible hums and the hologram flicks off and the room fills with pitch blackness and the temperature drops to -60 degrees Fahrenheit. Moments later the blackness pricks with drifting motes of light and the room glows bright and there they are, their projections surrounding him on all sides.
The conclave.
kepler 22b would prefer to watch the Shang, but he cannot.
It is time to give his report.
AN LIU (#u72b70ec8-efa0-5e43-8859-a6cb22f1dc08)
Beck Bagan, Ballygunge, Kolkata, India
The Shang.
SHIVER.
blink.
SHIVER.
An Liu rides a Suzuki GSX-R1000, trying to gain speed but getting thwarted by the Kolkatan throng.
He twists the grips. The wheels spin over the uneven pavement. No helmet, teeth gritting, lungs burning, eyes like slits. Chiyoko’s remnants press into his chest. Next to the necklace of his beloved is a SIG 226 and a small collection of custom-made grenades. All of these are hidden from view by a cotton shirt.
He pushes north for South Park Street Cemetery. Pushes, pushes, pushes.
The cemetery. It is where he is. One of the Players who Chiyoko had nicked with a tracker. One of the Players that An is now tracking.
The cemetery is where he will find the Nabataean. Maccabee Adlai. Who has Earth Key and Sky Key. Who is winning.
Or believes he is winning.
Because there is a difference between these.
If An gets there soon, there will certainly be a difference.
If An gets there, Maccabee will not be winning. Not at all.
He will be dead.
And An is less than two kilometers away.
So close.
But the streets are full. Kolkata has poured her citizens out of doors this evening, all of them clamoring for information, for loved ones, for a decent cell signal. An dodges businessmen and spice wallahs, brightly dressed women and stray dogs, crying children and stalled Ambassador taxis, rickshaws with reed-thin men pulling their carriages along haphazard streets like fish working upstream. He curls the bike around an oblivious Brahman bull. Some people get in An’s way. These either get nudged by the bike or get a swift kick from An’s foot.
Out of SHIVERSHIVER out of the way.
In his wake are screams and bruises and cursing and shaking fists. There are no cops. Not a single officer of the law.
Is it because the world is on the cusp of lawlessness?
Is it because of Abaddon, even now, before it has struck?
Could it be?
Yes.
An smiles.
Yes, Chiyoko. The end is near.
Two large men appear at the intersection of Lower Range Road and Circus Avenue. They point and shout. They recognize him. They saw his video—everyone in the world has seen his video by now—and they want to stop him. They may try to kill him, which An finds preposterous. He revs the bike and people scatter, but the men hold strong and lock arms.
Fools.
An rides straight for them, through them, knocking them aside and running over one, tearing skin from an arm. The men yell and one produces an ancient-looking pistol from nowhere. He pulls the trigger, but instead of firing properly it explodes in his hands.
He falls, screaming.
The gun was faulty. Old. Broken.
Like this BLINKBLINKBLINK this world.
An might feel sorry for the man and his mangled hand, but he is the Shang and he doesn’t care. He jams the throttle and rises out of the saddle and weaves the bike’s rear wheel back and forth and scuttles away, one of the men screaming as his leg is momentarily caught under the rubber and made bloody and raw.
An’s smile grows.
He leaves the men behind. Passes a barbershop, a sweetshop, a mobile phone shop, an electronics shop crowded with people. On the screens in the windows of this store An catches the image of kepler 22b.
The alien outed himself when he gave his announcement about Sky Key. kepler 22b began to show his true colors. Endgame is real for everyone now. It is real for rich people and poor people, the powerful and the impotent. The brutal and the kind. Everyone.
And An loves it.
Now the whole world knows that the first two keys are together. That Maccabee has them. That Endgame continues despite some of the other Players’ misguided attempts to stop it. That it continues despite fear and hope and murder and even love.
Best of all, kepler 22b told the people of Earth that Abaddon can’t be stopped. That the giant asteroid will fall in less than three days and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
That millions will die.
An loves it.
The bike churns. The street widens. The crowds part and An moves a little faster, up to 60 kph now. He glances at Chiyoko’s watch. Sees the tracker’s display screened over the numbers.
Blip-blip.
There. Maccabee Adlai.
So BLINK so SHIVER so close.
So close that An can smell them.
An screams across Shakespeare Sarani Road and goes two more blocks and spins northwest on Park Street. He looks at the watch again and sees it.
Blip-blip.
Blip-blip.
Only blocks away.
BLINKshiver
Chiyoko Played for life.
SHIVERblink
But I
SHIVER
I Play for death.
SARAH ALOPAY, JAGO TLALOC, AISLING KOPP, POP KOPP, GREG JORDAN, GRIFFIN MARRS (#u72b70ec8-efa0-5e43-8859-a6cb22f1dc08)
The Depths,
, Valley of Eternal Life, Sikkim, India
“Everybody chill the fuck out!” a man yells. He’s mid-40s, weathered, drenched in sweat, a little chubby. He stands in the middle of the hallway that is crowded with Players and their friends.
Sarah and Jago are at the far end, their backs to an open doorway. The Donghu, the Harappan, the Nabataean, and both Earth Key and Sky Key were in the room beyond the doorway not minutes before. Baitsakhan was very alive and very intent on killing Shari Chopra out of a psychotic sense of revenge, but Maccabee felt sorry for the Harappan, and he stopped the Donghu. He was about to take sole possession of both Earth Key and Sky Key when Sarah and Jago surged into the room. As Baitsakhan lay dying, the Olmec jumped forward and attacked Maccabee, and while the fight was close, Jago won. Sarah had a chance to kill Little Alice Chopra, the girl who is Sky Key, a death that should have put a stop to Endgame.
But Sarah couldn’t do it.
And Jago couldn’t do it either.
Aisling’s squad arrived moments after the fight ended. The Celt had a chance to kill Sky Key too, and she tried to take a shot with her sniper rifle, but at the last moment Sky Key reached out and touched Earth Key and in a flash of light the little girl disappeared, taking an unconscious Maccabee with her, and the mutilated body of Baitsakhan as well.
The only living person left in that room is Shari Chopra, knocked out, with a large lump on her head courtesy of Maccabee. He could have killed her too but, perhaps out of mercy or righteousness or empathy, Maccabee let her live.
Where Maccabee and the keys are now, none of them know. It could be that they went to Bolivia, or to the bottom of the ocean, or are in an Endgame-finishing audience with kepler 22b himself.
All that is left here, in the routed Harappan fortress carved out of the Sikkimese Himalayas, are these Players and Aisling’s friends.
All that is left is their fear and their anger and their confusion.
And their guns.
Most of which are pointed at one another.
“Just chill out,” the man implores again. “No one else has to die today,” he says.
You might, Sarah thinks, her pistol trained on the man’s throat. Sarah refused to kill the Chopra girl, but she wouldn’t think twice about shooting this man, or the people with him, if it means escape.
The man steps around Aisling, places a hand on the barrel of her rifle, forces it down two inches. It’s now aimed at Sarah’s chest rather than her forehead. The man’s other hand is empty and palm forward. His eyes are wide and pleading. His breath quick.
A peacemaker, Sarah thinks.
The man licks his lips.
Sarah says, “I’ll chill out when none of you are standing in our way.” Her voice is calm. Sarah notices that Aisling Kopp is flushed. She has a smear of blood on her skin—maybe hers, but probably not.
Blood. And sweat. And grime.
Aisling asks, “Where’s Sky Key?”
Sarah’s gun is light. One bullet. Maybe two.
“Move out of our way,” Jago insists. His pistol is aimed at Aisling’s head. Aisling looks different from when he last saw her. Older, harder, sadder. They must all appear so. Endgame was simpler in the early stages, before any of the keys had been recovered. Now it is vastly more complicated.
“We’re not going anywhere,” Aisling says, her eyes not moving from Sarah’s. “Not until we find out where Sky Key is.”
Sarah says, “Well, she’s not here.”
Shoot her! Sarah orders herself. Do it!
But she doesn’t.
She can’t.
Aisling tried to do what Sarah couldn’t. She tried to kill the little girl.
Aisling tried to stop Endgame.
Which means that Aisling and her friends can’t be all bad.
Sarah glances at the other men in the room, the ones who haven’t spoken. One is old but formidable-looking, an eye clouded and white. Maybe a former La Tène Player. The other is middle-aged, a contemporary of the Peacemaker. He has a bandanna tied over his head, wears round eyeglasses, and is strapped with a heavy-looking pack spilling with communications equipment. He also carries a sniper rifle, which he doesn’t bother to aim at anyone. Instead, he reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out a hand-rolled cigarette. He puts it in his mouth but doesn’t light it.
Both men look spent.
Long day, Sarah thinks.
Long week.
Long fucking life.
Sarah figures she could jump backward and fire simultaneously, killing Peacemaker. Aisling would instantly return fire, but since Peacemaker has his hand parked on her rifle, this shot would miss. Jago would kill Aisling. Then they would finish the old Celt and the hippie walkie-talkie. Provided no one else is hidden nearby, she and Jago could let their guard down and fall into each other’s arms and exhale. They could walk out unscathed. They could continue their mission to stop Endgame. Sarah puts their chances of killing these four people at 60 or 65 percent. Not bad odds, but not great.
“Don’t do it,” Peacemaker says, as if he can read Sarah’s thoughts.
“Why not?” she asks.
“Just hear me out.” He glances at Aisling. “Please.”
“Here it comes,” the man with the cigarette mumbles, breaking his silence. The old man with the white eye stays mum, his gaze dancing from person to person.
The man says, “My name is Greg Jordan. I’m a retired, twenty-plus-year vet of the CIA. I’m associates—no, friends—with Aisling here. I know all about Endgame. Maybe more than any of you know about it, believe it or not.” He glances at Aisling. “More than I’ve been letting on,” he says apologetically. Aisling’s left eye twitches. The old man exhales loudly. “Anyway, I’ve seen my share of Mexican standoffs, and this qualifies big time. One wrong move and we all die in this hallway pretty easily. Like I said, no one else has to die today. A lot of people already have.” Sarah doesn’t know what he’s talking about. She doesn’t know that Aisling and Greg and the other two men—and also a woman, now dead, named Bridget McCloskey—spent the previous day marching into the mountains and killing everyone they met. Killing, killing, killing. By the end of the day many, many Harappan were dead. Well over 50.
Too many.
The man sighs. “Let’s not add to the body count.”
Aisling’s shoulders slump, her burgeoning guilt palpable. Greg Jordan’s words so far make some sense. Bullets remain in chambers. Feet remain planted on the ground. Sarah’s and Jago’s faces say, Go on.
Greg Jordan continues. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I think we can all be friends. I think we all want the same thing—namely, to put a stop to this madness. Am I right? Whadya say, guys? Friends? At least until we’ve had a few minutes to chat and are out of this Himalayan fortress?”
Pause.
Then Jago whispers, “Screw these guys, Sarah.”
And a part of Sarah is inclined to agree, but before she does anything rash Aisling asks, “Why didn’t you kill her, Sarah? Why couldn’t you do it?” As she speaks she lets her rifle fall to her side. Aisling is now completely defenseless, and that counts for something.
The Celt steps past Greg Jordan. “Why?” she repeats, staring intently at Sarah, her voice barely above a whisper.
Aisling wants the game to end badly. She wants to stop it. She wants to save lives.
Just like Sarah and Jago do.
Sarah’s forearm pounds, reminding her that in the fight with Maccabee and Baitsakhan she suffered a gunshot wound that needs attention. Her head spins a little. Her grip on the pistol loosens. “I know I should have …”
“Damn right you should have,” Aisling says.
“I wanted it to stop. I needed it to stop.”
“Then you should have pulled the trigger!”
“You’re … you’re right. But I needed it to stop,” Sarah repeats.
“It’s not going to stop until that girl is dead,” Aisling points out.
“That’s not what I mean,” Sarah says, her voice dropping half an octave. “I want Endgame to stop too, Aisling, but I needed—what did you say, Greg? Madness? I needed the madness to stop. The madness in my head. If I’d pulled that trigger, then it would’ve … it would’ve …”
“Destroyed you,” Jago says, also letting down his guard a little. “I also tried, Celt. I couldn’t do it. It may have been selfish, but I think Sarah was right not to kill Sky Key. She was a child. A baby. Whatever happens, she was right.”
Aisling sighs. “Fuck.” No one speaks for a moment. “I get it. Truth is, I was praying the whole way up here that I wouldn’t have to do it up close and personal. That I’d have a clear and long shot with this.” She jostles her rifle and peers around Sarah into the dark room at the end of the hall. “But I guess I missed, right?”
Sarah nods. “She’s gone. She was repeating ‘Earth Key’ over and over and I think she touched it and—”
Jago clicks his tongue. “Poof.”
“What do you mean, ‘poof’?” Jordan asks.
“They just disappeared,” Sarah says. “It’s not that crazy when you consider that about thirty minutes ago Jago and I and the other two Players were in Bolivia.”
“Bullshit,” Aisling says.
“What, you didn’t teleport here too?” Jago asks, trying to make a joke, even while he still aims at Aisling’s temple.
Aisling doesn’t care anymore. It’s not the first time someone’s aimed a gun at her and it won’t be the last. “No, we didn’t teleport,” Aisling says. “Just good old-fashioned planes, trains, and automobiles … and feet. Lots of feet.”
“But Sky Key—she is gone, right?” Jordan asks.
Sarah nods. “Her mother’s in there, though.”
Aisling double-takes and tries to peer into the room. “Who—Chopra?”
“Yeah,” Sarah says.
“Alive?” Aisling asks, her voice a little too desperate.
“Sí,” Jago answers.
“Shit,” Jordan says. “That’s not good.”
“Why not?” Sarah asks.
Aisling says, “We uh … we just killed her entire family.”
“¿Que?” Jago says.
“This is a Harappan stronghold,” the old man explains from the back of the room, pride lacing his words. “Except it wasn’t strong enough.”
“She’s not going to like me too much when she wakes up,” Aisling says. “I wouldn’t like me, either.”
“Shit,” Sarah says.
“Sí. Mierda.”
“We should kill her,” the old man says.
But Aisling raises a hand. “No. Jordan’s right. It’s been too much today. Marrs”—Sarah and Jago realize that Aisling is talking to the man with the walkie-talkie—“you can keep her all Sleeping Beauty, right?”
“Sure, no problem,” Marrs answers, his voice nasal and high-pitched.
Jordan says, “Hey, we all sound cool. We’re cool, right?”
“Cooler,” Sarah says. But she gets where he’s going and lowers her gun. Jago does the same.
Aisling lays her rifle on the floor. “Listen, Sarah, Jago. I’m done Playing. I thought for a while that I would try to win, but there’s no winning here. We’re all losers—maybe the one who wins will end up being the biggest loser of all. Who wants the right to live on Earth if it’s ugly and dying and full of misery? Not me.”
“Not me either,” Sarah says, thinking again of how she set the whole thing in motion when she took Earth Key at Stonehenge.
Thinking again of Christopher and her guilt.
Aisling drifts toward Sarah, holding out her hand. “When me and Jordan and Marrs teamed up I told them that if we couldn’t win Endgame then we would try to find like-minded Players. We’d give them the option of teaming up with us so we could stop this whole fucking mess. For instance, if I ever find Hilal, I want to fight with him. He was right, way back at the Calling. We should have worked together then. Hopefully it’s not too late to work together now.”
Sarah steps closer but doesn’t take Aisling’s hand. “How do we know we can trust you?”
Aisling frowns, the corner of her mouth turning up. “You don’t know. Not yet.”
“Trust must be earned,” Sarah says, as if she’s quoting something out of a training manual.
Aisling nods. She’s heard that. They all have. “That’s right. But you can have some faith. I didn’t shoot you when I tried to kill Sky Key. I didn’t shoot you in the back in Italy when I had the chance, though I arguably should have. Pop over there certainly thinks so.” The old man grunts. “And a few days ago I thought the same thing. But maybe I didn’t do it so we could meet right now. Maybe I didn’t because the three of us aren’t done yet. What will be will be, right?”
“Sí. What will be will be,” Jago mutters.
Aisling says, “If we try to stop this thing together, really try, then I won’t hurt you. None of these guys will. You have my word.”
Sarah cradles her injured left arm. She stares at Jago and tilts her head. Suddenly all she wants is to fall asleep in Jago’s arms. She can tell that he wants the same thing. He snaps off a quick nod. Sarah leans into his body.
“Okay, Aisling Kopp,” Jago says for them. He puts out his hand and takes the Celt’s. “We’ll put our faith in you, and you will do the same with us. We’ll kill Endgame. Together. But one of my many questions can’t wait.”
Aisling smiles. It’s as if a gust of air has blown into the hallway. Sarah feels it too, and relief washes over her. No more fighting on this day. Jordan makes a low whistle and Marrs lights his cigarette. He crosses the hallway, mumbling something about checking on Shari Chopra as he passes Sarah and Jago. The only one who stays on edge is the old man.
Aisling ignores him and gives her full attention to her new allies. Maybe her new friends. “What question is that, Jago Tlaloc?”
“If Sky Key survived and we missed our chance, then how do we go about stopping Endgame now?”
Aisling looks to Jordan. “I’m guessing that’s where you come in, isn’t it?”
Jordan shrugs. “Yeah.”
Aisling sighs. “I know you’ve been holding something back since the day we met, Jordan. So, you ready to get on the level here?”
Marrs laughs loudly from the next room. Jordan straightens. He says, “Friends, it’s time you met Stella Vyctory.”
MACCABEE ADLAI, LITTLE ALICE CHOPRA (#ulink_698fa310-2073-52d8-9806-e7aa9791d566)
South Park Street Cemetery, Kolkata, India
Maccabee thumbs a Zippo lighter. The flame pops and flickers. They are in a small and pitch-black chamber, one that Maccabee doesn’t recognize. Apparently, Maccabee has been teleported somewhere beyond his control yet again.
He lowers the flame and there, yes, is Sky Key. She trembles before him. Big eyes, beautiful dark hair. Fists balled at her chest. A terrified child.
All the girl can manage is, “Y-y-y-y-y-you.”
“My name is Maccabee Adlai. I’m a Player, like your mother.” His words are muffled, his voice twangy from the beating he took from Jago Tlaloc before he woke up here in the darkness. He reaches up and shifts his jaw back into place with a loud snap!
“Y-y-y-y-you.”
His whole body hurts, especially his groin, the pit of his stomach, his left pinkie, and his jaw. The pinkie is bent completely backward. At least he has his ring. He flips the ring’s lid shut so the poisoned needle is covered, then he cracks his finger straight by pushing it against his thigh. A line of pain shoots up his arm and into his neck. The finger won’t bend at the knuckles, but it’s not sticking out at an odd angle anymore.
When I do win this thing there’ll hardly be any of me left, he thinks.
“Y-y-y-y-y-you,” the girl says again.
He moves toward her. She recoils. Color drains from her face. She can’t be older than three. So young. So innocent. So undeserving of what’s happened to her.
The game is bullshit, Shari Chopra said. And in that moment Maccabee agreed with her. He realizes that this sentiment was probably the one that saved Shari’s life—the one that prompted him to knock her out instead of gun her down. Looking at Alice now, he doesn’t regret this decision.
So young.
“Your mother lives,” Maccabee says. “I saved her from a bad person. He came for her and I … I stopped him.” He almost said killed, but that would be inappropriate, wouldn’t it? With a child? He says, “She lives, but she’s not here—wherever we are.”
“Y-y-y-y-you,” she repeats, her eyes widening.
Maccabee shuffles forward another foot, his chin tucked to his chest, the back of his head grazing the stone ceiling. The air is damp. The only sound is their breath. Maccabee wiggles his fingers at her, the unmoving pinkie like a stick growing out of his hand. “It’s okay, sweetie. I won’t hurt you. I promised your mother I wouldn’t and I meant it.” He stumbles over something. Looks down. A clump of cloth.
“Y-y-y-y-you. From my dream. You-you-you hurt people …”
“I won’t hurt you,” he repeats. He lowers the lighter and pushes the thing on the ground with his foot. It’s heavy. He looks. A limb. A leg. A hole burned in the cargo pocket on the thigh. He sweeps the Zippo through the air, illuminating the blood-spattered face of Baitsakhan, his eyes vacant and staring, slack-jawed, the throat torn open by the bionic hand that still clutches the cervical section of his own spine.
Baitsakhan.
Take.
Kill.
…
Lose.
His Endgame is over.
Good riddance.
Maccabee spits on the floor as the girl gasps and points. “No! Not you! Him!He is the one! He took Mama’s finger! He hurt people! He is the one! He is the one!”
Maccabee kicks the Donghu’s body so that it flips facedown. He steps between Sky Key and Baitsakhan. She shouldn’t see that. No child should see that.
“It’s okay. You’re okay. He can’t hurt you.”
“Mama.”
“He can’t hurt her either. Not anymore.”
Maccabee is suddenly afraid that Shari also made the trip to wherever they are. And the Olmec too, and maybe the Cahokian. He spins, searching the rest of the chamber, but no one is there. It is just him and Sky Key and—
“Earth Key!” he says.
WHERE IS IT?
The girl shudders. She jumps up and then her body stiffens as if she’s possessed. Her right hand falls to her side, her left hand juts out, palm up. Maccabee leans closer. She doesn’t move. It’s like her fear has been spirited away and replaced with emptiness. Shock, Maccabee thinks. Or maybe a force more powerful.
He peers into her hand. A little ball. Earth Key.
He swipes it from her. Her eyebrow twitches but otherwise she’s expressionless.
“I’ll keep that.” He slips it into a zippered pocket on his vest and pats it.
“Earth Key,” she says.
“That’s right,” he says. He inspects the small room. Where the hell are we? The floor is earth, everything else is featureless stone. There are no windows, no doors. No way in or out. As he looks around he runs a hand over his torso, checking to see what he’s got to work with. No guns, but he has his smartphone, a pack of gum, and his ancient Nabataean blade.
A wave of pain crashes over him as the adrenaline fades from his system. He realizes that everything that’s happened recently—finding Sarah and Jago in Bolivia, tracking them through the Tiwanaku ruins, getting teleported somewhere through that ancient portal, fighting, killing, fighting some more, and then getting knocked clean out by the live-wire Olmec, who is 20 or 30 kilos lighter than him, and then getting teleported yet again—all of that probably happened in only the last couple hours.
He needs rest. Soon.
“Earth Key says that …” the girl says in a monotone.
His pant leg vibrates.
“… says that one is coming.”
It vibrates violently. He touches his leg—the tracker orb!
Another Player!
He looks left and right and up and down and can’t figure out where to go. Is another Player going to appear in this small room? Is he going to have to fight with a broken-down body in this box? This, this—sarcophagus?
He whips around, the lighter’s flame blows out. He thumbs the flint. Flick, flick, flick—the sparks don’t take. But in the total darkness something catches his eye. Right before his face. A thin white line. He follows it, tracing a faint square on the ceiling. He stuffs the lighter in a pocket and places both hands on the stone overhead and pushes. It’s heavy and he strains and grunts as his panting mingles with the scraping sound of rock on rock. An opening. Light. Hot air pours into the small room as he gets his fingers around the edge of the six-centimeter-wide slab, heaving it away. He gets on his tiptoes and looks over the edge.
They are in a hole in the ground. The hole is covered by a pillared gothic cupola like one that might cover a grave or a monument. A point of orange light from a streetlamp somewhere, the muted glow of dusk in the sky beyond the cupola, the black boughs of leafy trees hanging over everything like a curtain. A dove coos and then flaps away. The muted jostle of a city—traffic, AC hum, voices—in the near distance.
Maccabee grabs Sky Key and pushes her out of the hole. He jumps out. They’re in the middle of a vast cemetery from a bygone era, every grave marker grand and significant and carved from stone—domed Victorian tombs that must hold entire families, and seven-meter-tall obelisks and basalt pedestals that weigh thousands of kilos. Many are covered in moss and lichen and all are splotchily weatherworn. Plants grow in every available nook and patch—grasses, palms, hardwoods, weeds, sprawling banyan trees with their air roots diving down to the ground here and there. It’s one of the most impressive cemeteries Maccabee has ever seen.
Sky Key steps onto the path, her arms glued to her sides, her legs moving like a robot’s. She’s completely zoned out but manages to say, “One is coming. He is close.”
Maccabee gets out the orb with his right hand and pulls his knife with his left. His unbending pinkie sticks out. As when Alice Ulapala closed in on his hideout in Berlin, the orb simply glows its warning, not giving any intelligence as to who is coming or from which direction.
Maccabee knows that for the first time in his life he is going to have to run. He’s too hurt and too unarmed and too disoriented and too vulnerable with Sky Key to stand his ground.
He stuffs the orb in a pocket and snags the girl, tucking her under his arm like a parcel.
He takes off along a dirt path, the cemetery dark and claustrophobic, until the trees and massive graves give way to an open area. A three-meter-high stone wall rises in front of them, plain concrete buildings beyond it on the street side.
Where the hell am I? This doesn’t look like Peru or Bolivia at all. Or even South America!
He goes to the solid wall, peers left then right. It’s rough enough to scale, but not while carrying Sky Key. He turns left and trots along, keeping the wall on his right. The orb in his pocket has calmed a little, so maybe whoever’s coming got thrown off the trail.
Sky Key weighs about 15 kilos. He holds her sideways, her head forward and her legs flopping behind him. It’s like he’s carrying a life-sized toddler doll.
Near the interior corner of the wall Maccabee comes across a cache of gravediggers’ tools: a shovel stuck in a pile of sand, a pickax, a coil of sturdy rope. He carefully puts down Sky Key and cuts a four-meter length of rope. He lashes it around his waist and shoulders and then works Sky Key onto his back and loops the rope under her butt and twice over her back. He pulls her tight, tying a hitch in the X of rope that crosses his chest. She’s secure in this makeshift child carrier, and he has the use of both hands. He feels her quick breath on his neck. She remains zoned out, likely from the trauma of being taken from her mama, and from coming into contact with Earth Key.
He wants to climb the wall and get out onto the street of whatever city he’s in, but the wall is smoother here and there’s nothing for him to grab. He’s about to double back to where he can climb but then freezes. The rope! The pickax!
He ties the rope to the wooden handle and hurls the pickax over the wall, creating a kind of grappling hook. He gives it a hard tug and it holds. He places his feet on the wall and starts up.
But then, at the same instant, the orb in his pocket jostles like a tiny earthquake, and Sky Key shakes off her zombie-like state and grabs a handful of his hair and yanks it. He loses his footing and swings a half meter to the side. The air cracks around him. A chunk of wall explodes next to his face, followed by a pistol report.
“He’s here,” Sky Key says.
Maccabee dives behind a stone grave marker as three more rounds tear by them, each barely missing. Maccabee kicks the shovel into the air and snatches it. He spins to his right, but Sky Key yanks his hair again and says, “Other way.”
That would take them across the line of fire, but Maccabee trusts her. He quickly guesses that the male Player must be the Shang, An Liu. Marcus and Baits are dead, Jago’s with Sarah, and Hilal is probably recovering from his wounds back in Ethiopia.
And if it is Liu, then he’s probably got some bombs.
That means that Maccabee has to MOVE!
He takes a shovelful of sand and throws it into the air, creating a smokescreen, and sprints behind it. He hears a muted clunk, and he spins around a thick tree trunk and throws his hands over Sky Key’s head and boom! An explosion from where they just were, debris showering all around, leaves whipping along on the shock wave, bits of wood and rock pinging here and there. It was a small explosion but big enough to have hurt them if he hadn’t moved.
“Turn right here,” the girl says calmly.
He’s blind in this place and his body aches from everything that’s happened but she did save them, so he listens.
“Left here. Straight. Left. Left. Straight. Right. Left, left, left.”
He follows every instruction, even if it feels like they’re going in circles. They bob and weave, pivot and fly. They’re narrowly missed by several more shots and one more small explosion. She’s transforming the dense cemetery into a maze, and it’s working. Somehow she knows where An is. Maccabee realizes that this girl, at least in this moment, is vastly superior to the mysterious orb that he’s been using to track the Players.
Finally they round a black stone block and find an arched break in the wall big enough for a car. Two small buildings flanking it are painted pink. A wrought-iron fence is on the far side. Past that a wide street, cars moving along, a late-model motorcycle parked on the curb.
The exit. It’s 10 meters away, a straight shot. But those 10 meters are completely exposed.
“It’s too far,” Maccabee says. The orb in his pocket moves back and forth so fast he’s afraid it’s going to jump out. “He’ll kill us.”
Sky Key scratches the side of his neck. “Here,” she says.
“I see the exit, but it’s too far!”
They don’t have more than a few seconds. She scratches harder, begins to claw at his flesh. “Here!” she whispers into his ear.
Then Maccabee understands. Something is in his neck: a tracker. One that An and who knows how many other Players have been using to follow him!
He whips up his knife and expertly carves a lump of skin from his neck. He’s careful not to nick anything important or shred a muscle or tendon. The pain isn’t too bad, but there’s a lot of blood.
“That’s it,” the girl says.
Maccabee pulls the knife away and stares into the lump of flesh and, yes, there it is. A small black blob.
He balls up the flesh and chucks it away. The bloody projectile sails over a gravestone and disappears. He gets ready to run, but the girl digs a nail into this latest wound and whispers, “Wait.”
He stifles a cry and does what he’s told. One second. Two. Three.
“Now. Straight.”
He drops the shovel and runs as fast as he can for the exit. No shots come. They were waiting for An to take the bait of the discarded tracker, and apparently he did.
The exit gets closer and closer and they’re going to make it. A person walks by outside, a woman wearing an orange sari. A bus drives past and Maccabee sees a cigarette ad on the side. The writing is Hindi.
India. We’re in India.
They’re going to make it. The orb in his pocket is going crazy now. He reaches down to secure it but then it pops out and he skids to a stop.
“Leave it!” the girl says.
Maccabee backtracks, the orb glowing bright and yellow and bouncing around on the ground like a living thing.
“No!” she says.
Something catches Maccabee’s eye. There, on the path, is An Liu, a dark pistol in his fist. He hasn’t seen them yet, he’s swinging back and forth and Maccabee almost has the orb but then—too late. An Liu locks onto Maccabee and Maccabee dives sideways and the orb glows so bright that its light eats up the wall and the path and An too. Shots come but all miss since An is blinded by the light and can’t see Maccabee anymore.
“Leave it! I am using it! Go!” the girl implores.
Once again he does what he’s told. He vaults toward the street. He sees the motorcycle and breaks open its ignition switch and hot-wires it in the blink of an eye. He jumps on. It zings to life and they take off, fast. The light from the orb chokes out everything for 20 meters now and people on the street are yelling, pointing, running.
“I am using it,” the girl repeats in a soft voice, her head slumping onto Maccabee’s shoulder. “I am using it.” Her body feels limp. She is exhausted too.
A block later the light gives way to a high-pitched whine and then it’s snuffed out and then—FFFUHWHAM!—the entire street puffs up in a ball of smoke. Maccabee dips the bike around a corner, its rear wheel skidding and his foot planting on the ground as a pivot. Bits of buildings and cars and trees whip through the air at their backs.
The girl passes out, the Indian city is a blur, and for the moment An Liu is no longer hunting them.
For the first time in his life Maccabee ran from a fight. And it worked. With the help of this small, remarkable, maybe possessed Sky Key, it worked.
I won’t let anyone hurt you, he thinks.
And he means it.
AN LIU (#ulink_a79f87aa-ee71-59a7-a9e2-bb6309e51483)
South Park Street Cemetery, Kolkata, India
An kneels. He shakes his head, trying to get it clear.
Almost got them.
SHIVER.
Almost.
BLINK.
That was a big blast.
An had thrown a grenade into the light at the last second, but that explosion was from something else. The Nabataean must have planted that glowing thing and set it off in order to create some space and some time. It was successful. The Nabataean is gone now. With the first two keys.
Gone.
BLINK.
An peeks under his shirt at the Chiyoko necklace. Like everything around him it’s covered in a fine dust. He pulls the necklace over his head and shakes it gently, wipes it with his fingertips, blows on it. When it’s reasonably clean he slips it back on.
He brushes himself off, finds his SIG. He loads a new magazine. Sirens in the distance.
Shivershiver.
The world knows about Endgame, and Abaddon is coming, but the law isn’t all the way gone. Not yet.
He trots to the exit. The Nabataean is gone, and An’s bike is gone too.
An spits, the stream thick with black ash.
The Nabataean is gone.
AISLING KOPP, GREG JORDAN, GRIFFIN MARRS, POP KOPP, SARAH ALOPAY, JAGO TLALOC, SHARI CHOPRA (#ulink_4fbfb6fb-a9fa-515d-b4b5-4f22c0a79c7f)
Heading south along the Teesta River near Mangan, Sikkim, India
Aisling looks over her shoulder into the back of the jeep. Shari Chopra slumps in her seat, an IV bag pinned above the window, a tube running into a spike in the back of her hand. Dripping into that line on a regulator is a small dose of BZD, keeping her good and asleep for as long as necessary. All the way to Thailand, where Jordan is taking them and where Stella Vyctory awaits.
The jeep bumps along the road, mountains looming all around. Aisling thinks about Shari. After the standoff with Sarah and Jago, Aisling followed Marrs into the deepest chamber of the Harappan fortress and saw the raven-haired mother of Sky Key, alive and more-or-less well.
This is a wrinkle that has Aisling feeling very conflicted. On one hand, Aisling suspects that Shari is one of the decent Players, one who doesn’t deserve a meaningless death at the hand of a psychopathic Player. She’s glad that Baitsakhan and Maccabee didn’t kill her. But on the other hand, as far as Shari’s concerned, Aisling probably is that psychopathic Player. If it weren’t for Aisling, Shari’s family would be alive. Sure, her daughter would probably still have been taken by the Nabataean, but all the Harappan who’d taken refuge in the mountains would be breathing if it weren’t for Aisling and her ragtag death squad.
Aisling tries to reason out of this by blaming Endgame for what happened—Aisling didn’t make Shari’s daughter one of the fucking keys, Endgame did. Aisling was only doing what she thought she had to do to stop Endgame, and Shari, for her part, was only doing what any mother would do.
All of which makes Aisling want to stop Endgame—and punish the Makers, especially kepler 22b—all the more.
Aisling knows in her bones that when Shari wakes up she won’t be in a very forgiving mood. All Shari will want is revenge, and Aisling knows that revenge is a soul-gnashing affliction that operates completely outside the realm of logic. Sure, Aisling could wave her hands at Chopra and plead for reason, insisting that Endgame killed all of Chopra’s people, but Aisling also knows that’s bullshit. She killed those people, along with Jordan and Pop and the rest of her team. And for better or worse, Chopra is now slumped behind Aisling in the jeep.
Jordan drives, Aisling wedged between him and Marrs in the front seat. Whenever Jordan shifts gears he reaches between Aisling’s legs. He half apologizes each time until Aisling tells him to shut up. He does. Sarah’s in the middle of the backseat, between Shari and Jago, her body folded awkwardly into Jago’s lap, her injured arm, which Aisling patched up, bent into a sling. Jago is awake and mostly silent. His hand rests on top of Sarah’s head, his fingers entwined in her hair. He’s said very little, but when he does speak he’s been even-tempered and friendly.
Pop is a different story.
He’s in the wayback, jigsawed into the gear they couldn’t leave behind—mainly guns and a mobile satellite uplink that Marrs uses for internet access. Pop has not said a single word since they forged this latest alliance. He hasn’t asked about Sky Key or spoken to Sarah or Jago at all. He hasn’t said if he’s on board with the plan to meet Stella, and he hasn’t said he’s against it.
To Aisling, his silence is the same as a full-throated scream. She knows that Pop hates the course they’re charting. It goes against every one of his beliefs. It is not what Endgame is meant to be.
Aisling is not sure how she’s going to handle Pop, but she knows that it will fall on her to handle him when the time comes.
The others don’t seem as concerned. Especially Jordan and Marrs.
Ever since getting into the jeep, Marrs has been tearing around the internet, going from news sites to encrypted government forums to deep-web hovels full of rumor and intrigue, providing an account of recent world events and bantering with Jordan on pretty much every point.
“The space agencies have been scrambling since the kepler’s announcement. At the moment, NASA’s got Abaddon falling in the North Atlantic,” Marrs says in his nasal monotone. “South of Halifax. Gonna wipe out a lot of land. A lot.”
“Fucking hell,” Jordan says. “What’s DC doing?”
“Moving. Lock, stock, and barrel. Looks like to Colorado.”
“NORAD?”
“Naturally. Gold’s going through the roof, New York’s under martial law but seems pretty tame. Boston is coming apart at the seams, though. One of the New England Patriots did a murder-suicide with his wife and kids—dog too.”
“Any flags on other Players?” Jordan asks.
“There’s some indication that the Shang is in Kolkata, but it’s pretty tenuous, and my Bengali is shit. No sign of the Nabataean yet. Oh—and looks like someone’s destroying monuments.”
“Besides Stonehenge?” Jordan asks incredulously.
“Yeah. This morning while we were trekking from the fortress, a group of nongovernmental operators that remains anonymous, at least to our guys, blew up the ziggurat at Chogha Zanbil. That was the Sumerian one.”
“Stella won’t like that.”
“No, she won’t,” Marrs says.
Jordan whips the jeep around a slow-moving truck, guiding them into oncoming traffic, which is de rigueur for India. A motor scooter buzzes out of the way into the shoulder and passes them.
“What the hell are you guys talking about?” Jago demands.
Aisling nods. “Yeah, what are you talking about?”
“Your line has a monument that is more sacred than any other—right, Aisling?” Jordan asks.
“Jordan, you know it was Stonehenge.” Asshole, Aisling thinks.
Jordan says, “And you, Tlaloc?”
“We do. It’s on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico.”
“La Venta,” Marrs says.
Jago looks a little surprised, and thinks that maybe these guys really do know more than he thought they could about Endgame. “Sí. That’s what we call it.”
Jordan asks, “And your girlfriend?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Jago says. He’s lying, though. He knows the exact location of the prime Cahokian monument. It’s called Monks Mound, and it’s in southern Illinois, not far from St. Louis, Missouri. He knows this because it’s where the Cahokian Rebellion of 1613 occurred. The rebellion that the Olmec oracle, Aucapoma Huayna, told him all about. The rebellion that branded the Cahokians as unworthy of winning Endgame, which was precisely why Aucapoma had implored Jago to end his alliance with Sarah Alopay. No, more than that—the Cahokians were so dangerous that Aucapoma had ordered Jago to kill Sarah so he could prove to the Makers that he’d not been poisoned by the Cahokian Player.
Too late for that.
As much as he might want, Jago isn’t about to start talking about all of this. It would be too revealing, too … complicating. So he plays dumb, and they believe him.
“Well, her line has one,” Marrs says. “Called Monks Mound. Big tourist attraction now, kinda like Stonehenge but not as well-known.”
“Never heard of it,” Jago says.
“I have,” Aisling says. “Used to be the center of some huge Native American city.”
“Once upon a time it was the largest city in all of the Americas, long before any Europeans outside of Vikings even knew about the New World,” Jordan says.
“All right,” Jago says, “but why are these places so important to finishing Endgame?”
“What he said,” Aisling adds, sticking a thumb in Jago’s direction.
“I’m going to let Stella fill you in on the details,” Jordan says as he works the jeep through a series of accordion-like turns, “but we’re certain that Sun Key is hidden in one of them.”
Jago leans forward, nearly pushing Sarah’s head off his leg. “No shit?”
“No shit,” Marrs says. “And if they all get toasted before the Player with the first two keys finds it, well …”
“No one will be able to win,” Aisling says.
“Bingo,” Jordan says.
“Who is this Stella woman?” Aisling asks.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Jordan says.
Jago leans back in his seat, resettling Sarah’s head across his thigh. “Whoever she is, you’ve gotten my attention, Mr. Jordan. I look forward to meeting her.”
“I can promise that the feeling is mutual. She has been waiting to meet you—all of you—for a very, very long time.”
SARAH ALOPAY, JAGO TLALOC (#ulink_d961c2e6-7a13-52a9-98bc-44f649e14b0e)
Heading south along the Teesta River near Mangan, Sikkim, India
Sarah is not asleep. She hasn’t slept at all. And while Jago has been friendly with the others, and truly does want to meet this Stella Vyctory, he’s not convinced. Not by a long shot.
Sarah slumps across Jago’s lap, her hand resting under her hair and on Jago’s thigh. She taps out messages to him in Morse code, and he answers in the same code by squeezing her scalp so softly that the movement can only be felt by her and not seen by anyone else.
Their conversation has been long and a little testy, and it revolves around one question, which in this moment Sarah asks for the seventh time: Should we really trust these people?
And Jago answers, We have to for now. If what Jordan says is true, then maybe we now know of another way to stop this thing. Even if Abaddon hits, and the world is changed, we might have a way to prevent a Player from winning. And if Jordan isn’t right, it seems that these people really do want the same thing. They can help us, Sarah. We can help them.
Help us so that we can stay together.
Yes. So that we can stay together.
We stick with them, then.
Yes.
All right, she taps. I only wish …
What?
I wish we were alone, Feo. I wish it were just you and me.
This is the first time she’s said it all day.
And Jago squeezes back, I do too, Sarah. I do too.
HILAL IBN ISA AL-SALT (#ulink_b20b1458-6232-5877-bcfe-d0e8cf8762df)
Ayutthaya, Thailand
Hilal is also headed to Stella Vyctory, except he is much, much closer.
He hustles out of the Phra Nakhon Provincial Railway Station, turning this way and that, slicing through a mass of people. He went directly from the Bangkok airport, where he last spoke to Stella, to the central Bangkok train station. He got on the first train to Ayutthaya and now he makes his way on foot to Stella, who is a short four kilometers away.
He goes south from the station through a platoon of food carts, smelling fried things and salty things and sweet things. Squid, mushrooms, pork, onions, garlic, sugar, basil, citrus, peanuts. His large rucksack claps his shoulders as he jogs. It contains his twin machetes, a change of clothing, a first aid kit for his wounds, the device from the ark (which has ceased working since the kepler’s announcement), and the incomprehensible book he took from Wayland Vyctory’s hotel suite in Las Vegas.
A few blocks from the station a large group of worshippers blocks the street and forces him to detour into the Wat Pichai Songkram temple complex. Monks are everywhere. Bald and saffron-robed and busy. Devotees wearing conical shade hats and carrying parasols surround the holy men, pleading for mercy and praying to Lord Buddha. Hilal does the same in his mind as he rushes past the gilt icon covered in marigolds and lotus blossoms and surrounded by a pyre of incense. He searches for a way out of the complex so he can pick up the pace again and get to Stella as soon as possible.
After a minute he finds himself on the banks of the Pa Sak River. He turns south and resumes running. Longtail boats ply the cloudy water and schools of huge catfish boil to the surface to eat bread being thrown by children. It is nice to see young people doing everyday things, to witness innocence.
It is also nice to feel the sun.
He is afraid that, thanks to the impact winter that is likely to shroud the skies after Abaddon, sunlight will be something of a luxury soon.
He is very afraid of this.
He tilts his disfigured face to our star as his feet carry him toward Stella.
The sun. Earth’s life force. The photons that bounce off his skin and everything else around him left the solar surface eight minutes and 20 seconds ago. Eight minutes and 20 seconds! They hurtled through the void of space and entered the atmosphere and made a beeline for this spot, right here, on Earth, in the continent called Asia, in the country called Thailand, in the city called Ayutthaya, onto the man and Endgame Player named Hilal ibn Isa al-Salt. A great cosmic accident that happens over and over and over again to everything the sun’s light touches. Over and over and over again.
Stella.
He quickens his pace.
Stella. Her name means “star,” like the sun.
May she give us light, Hilal thinks.
He turns east onto the wide Rojana Road. He jogs now, passes car dealerships and beauty salons and tourist offices and convenience stores and Thai motorcycle cops in brown uniforms who give him suspicious looks but who don’t do anything. He passes a two-story stupa right in the middle of the six-lane road. He passes a group of teenage boys loitering on souped-up scooters, smoking filterless cigarettes, whistling at girls, laughing.
Hilal slows to a brisk walk when he sees these young men. Four of them wear makeshift masks of a face that everyone has seen and everyone has memorized and everyone is confused by and many are terrified by.
The pale face of kepler 22b.
There were Meteor Kids throwing raves and partying after the twelve meteors that announced Endgame, and now there are kepler Kids.
The teens are loud as Hilal approaches, but when they notice him the silence hits. They see his scarred face and his discolored eyes and his lack of hair and his missing ear. Two of the kids pull the masks from the tops of their heads and over their faces, as if to hide.
Hilal doesn’t break stride. “Krap,” he says, dipping his chin and raising his hand.
None of them say anything in return.
He resumes running. Another kilometer and he reaches the Classic Kameo Hotel, a collection of glass and cement blocks, all white and modern and clean. Hilal imagines it caters to upscale tourists and Asian businessmen.
This is where he will find Stella.
He goes inside. The air conditioning slaps him in the face. He moves through it, crossing his arms for warmth. Nice lobby, big chairs, front desk, clerk, elevator, hallway, room.
Its number is 702. He is about to knock when he is overcome with nerves. He is going to see her again. Stella. The woman who beat him in a fight, who helped him, who claimed Wayland Vyctory as her father. Hilal trusted her in Las Vegas, and he trusts her still, but now that he is on the edge of whatever comes next in Endgame he pauses.
Breathes.
Knocks.
He hears the soft pad of footsteps on the far side of the door. The world turns some more.
The door opens. The woman smiles.
“Hilal,” Stella says. “Come in. It is so good to see you again.”
AN LIU (#ulink_c6a4ad96-a73c-5ce8-9a01-a55c94bcd5fa)
Shang Safe House, Unnamed Street off Ahiripukur Second Lane, Ballygunge, Kolkata, India
An walks from the cemetery back to his safe house. He walks briskly, angry and red-eyed and oblivious to the world around him.
He had them. The Nabataean and Sky Key and Earth Key too. Right in his sights. He had them and his shots missed and they outplayed him!
And they got away.
They are gone.
“Gone, Chiyoko, gone! How could I let it happen?” he curses BLINKshiverBLINK he curses himself as he marches through the choked streets, and when he finally reaches the secluded side entrance of his hideout his emotions are a tempest.
He opens the door and bolts it shut from the inside and punches a code into the security system. He stalks toward the bathroom, stripping off his clothes as he moves, letting his garments fall to the floor in heaps. He rants the whole way. “I had”—BLINKBLINK—“I had them! I could have killed”—shiverBLINK—“killed”—shivershivershiver—“killed”—BLINK—“them.” SHIVERshiver. “Could have”—SHIVERshiver—“Could have”—SHIVERshiver—“Could have stuffed a grenade in his mouth and stepped back and laughed and watched the whole thing burn!” BLINK. “No”—BLINK—“No”—BLINK—“No”—BLINK—“No winner could be”—shiverSHIVERshiver—“no winner could be”—BLINKBLINKBLINKBLINKshiverBLINKBLINK—“No winner could be!”
He’s in the bathroom and naked except for Chiyoko’s necklace. He puts his hands to it but they shake too much. She can’t calm him right now, she can’t, and he lets go of the necklace because he’s shaking so much that he’s afraid he’ll break it, that he’ll hurt her, and he raises his arm and bites it and clamps down, gnashes, grinds. It hurts and stings and a little blood comes and he stops shaking. He turns on the hot water tap, and his hands calm. He removes Chiyoko and sets her gingerly on the edge of the sink and steps through the curtain and into the stall. It is scalding and his skin turns red and he winces and holds his breath from the shock of the temperature.
He calms some more. His arm throbs. He ducks his stubbly head under the water stream. It burns.
“The world would have gotten what it deserves,” An says.
And in that moment there is a small sound deep in his mind and he knows it is her and she’s trying to speak to him but he can’t hear. He strains and concentrates but he can’t hear her.
“What it deserves. All because of me.”
He feels better. He washes, dries, cleans the necklace, gets dressed, eats, and then moves to a control room and settles down. He checks the tracking program that marks the Olmec’s position, and then turns on several monitors at once and watches the news.
The news. The news. The news. It is glorious and beautiful and amazing.
BBC, CNN International, Al Jazeera, Fox News, TASS, France 24, CCTV. Fear is rampant. Martial law in every Western country. Police forces thinning out as their members flee to be with family. Full military battalions being repositioned to minimum safe distances. Nuclear energy facilities being put on lockdown. Chemical plants following emergency shutdown protocols. Municipal airspaces the world over thick with helicopters and drones. Astronauts and cosmonauts on the International Space Station initiating emergency sequences and preparing for a prolonged isolation from Mission Control. The destruction of the ancient monuments of Stonehenge and Chogha Zanbil—the former of principal importance to the La Tène Celts, the latter equally as essential to the Sumerian line. No one knows who is obliterating them, or if they do know, no one is telling. Are other such monuments slated for destruction as well? Will those belonging to the Olmec, the Cahokian, the Nabataean, the Harappan, the Shang, and all the others be destroyed in time? Is the kepler destroying them? A consortium of the world’s militaries? Some group as yet unknown? An is unsure. He watches a dozen segments about the alien called kepler 22b. Interviews with people who revere him or hate him or want to befriend him or kill him. People who want to subjugate themselves to him. People who want to enslave him. But mostly people who want to run away from him, even if there is nowhere to run.
Don’t tell the leaders of the world that, though. Don’t tell the rich. An watches stories about presidents and prime ministers and scientists and educators and MPs and the wealthy, all fleeing, all bunkering, all burying themselves. Trying to disappear. Everyone else looting or taping up windows or trying to get inland and for the most part failing. Shoot-outs on clogged highways up and down the American East Coast. Throngs of people at churches and mosques and temples and synagogues praying to their gods. The Vatican, the Dome of the Rock, the Western Wall—all three so crowded that worshippers at each are being trampled and crushed.
An falls asleep to this beautiful chaotic dance at around three in the morning.
He wakes 2.4 hours later. The television screens are still full of fear and confusion and questions. When will Abaddon hit? How big is it and what’s it made of and how many will die?
And some answers.
Abaddon is a dense nickel-and-iron meteor that will strike soon on the edge of the Nova Scotia shelf, 300 kilometers south of Halifax. The asteroid is spherical with a diameter of just under three kilometers. It will punch a hole in the atmosphere and the sky will light up, snuffing out the sun’s light. The initial blast will vaporize everything around it and underneath it and over it for hundreds of miles. The impact will trigger a massive earthquake to ripple across the globe, which will even be felt on the other side of the world. After the quake comes the airborne shock wave, destroying everything for hundreds and hundreds of miles. And last but certainly not least will be the tsunamis, affecting every North Atlantic city from San Juan to Washington, DC, to Lisbon to Dakar.
In the hours and days that follow, the secondary effects of Abaddon will wreak havoc over the entire planet. These are less certain. They could include eruptions of long-dormant volcanoes as they are shaken from their slumbers. The Big Island of Hawaii could crack and calve a huge section into the Pacific, causing massive tsunamis up and down the Pacific Rim. Acid rain could fall everywhere, but especially within a few thousand miles of the crater, poisoning the sea and all drinking water in the vicinity. Electrical storms and hurricanes could whip up and ravage the land and sea around the crater.
An flips through the channels. There will be tornadoes, floods, landslides, ash, fear, depravation, suffering, death. There will be firestorms. Impact winters. No more internet in a lot of places. No more air travel for a long time. And on and on and on and, yes, soon, very soon, a lot of things are going to die.
At around six in the morning the first report of a visual comes on air. Spotted in the sky over the South Pacific. A dark speck skirting across the sun’s disc. A video plays on CNN International in a GIF loop: fishermen in small wooden boats hoisting Mylar-covered binoculars to the sky. They’re surrounded by blue water and white sand and green trees and the sky as clear as ever, and the men point and scream and yell.
That’s when everyone knows that it’s really true.
That’s when An knows it’s not a dream.
It’s better than a dream.
He will miss the internet, though. Sorely.
An turns from the news and hops up and moves. He needs to get back on the road, to get out of this city before it goes completely insane. The asteroid will hit on the far side of the globe, but he wants to be in the countryside for Abaddon, not in Kolkata or anywhere like it.
He has a quick breakfast of fish cakes and warm Coke. In the garage he loads his bulletproof Land Rover Defender with his go box and the cans of extra gasoline and his guns and bombs and Nobuyuki Takeda’s katana and the other box too, the precious box that contains the vest should he ever need it. The 20-kilo suicide vest that is his fail-safe.
By 9:13 he is ready to go.
But now that he’s sitting in his Defender and looking at the monitors that show what’s happening outside his safe house, he’s a little worried.
An didn’t expect this.
Not at all.
Hundreds of people choke the alleyway outside. All men. All crammed into the narrow street that is his Defender’s sole egress. They sit on the ground, lean against walls, mill around. Someone must have followed him from the cemetery and called their friends, and then they called friends, and they called friends. The men have sticks and pipes and machetes and a few have semiautomatic rifles. Some have dogs on ropes. Many are shirtless and rail thin and wear the ubiquitous loose cotton pants seen all over India. Some carry placards. Most of these are in Bengali or Hindi, which An can’t read, but some are in English. They say, WE SEE YOU! and BROTHERHOOD OF MAN! and EARTH IS OURS! and NO TO ENDGAME! NO TO THE PLAYERS! NO TO KEPLER 22B!
More than a few have blood smeared over their faces and arms. Blood from chickens or goats or dogs, sacrificed in ceremonies at local temples.
An understands. These men know who he is—the Shang, An Liu, Player of Endgame—and they want his pain. His life. His blood.
He understands perfectly.
BLINKshiverBLINK.
An pounds something into a laptop mounted in the center of the car. He hits enter. Like all Shang safe houses, this one is wired to blow, and blow dirty, irradiating this section of Kolkata. But the bomb will only detonate when his system detects that he and his vehicle have reached a safe distance.
He flicks the laptop closed.
“Are you ready, Chiyoko?”
And then he hears a small sound deep in his mind.
“Chi”—BLINK—“Chi”—SHIVER—“Chiyoko?”
The sound grows a little louder, like a hum in the distance.
“Are you ready?”
SHIVERSHIVERSHIVER.
And then—I am, she says in the voice she never had.
The quality of her voice doesn’t surprise him. Calm but firm. It is her. It is perfectly, succinctly, fully her.
He’s been expecting her.
He says, “You are always ready and I love you for it.”
An taps a button and the garage doors crack open.
“I love you.” An repeats. And she says it too, at the exact same moment, his voice mingling and weaving with hers.
He smiles.
Chiyoko and An. The Mu and the Shang.
They are the same.
The mob outside stirs and crackles.
Those who were sitting stand.
He hits the button again and the doors swing wide. A Kalashnikov fires. Shots explode across the Defender’s bulletproof windshield.
BLINK. SHIVER.
He flips the key in the ignition. The engine comes to life. He jams the gas and the engine roars. The men howl and gesticulate, wave their arms and sticks and their ridiculous placards, as if An cares for any of what they have to say.
This is not a protest, it is a war.
And he will fight it with his beloved.
SARAH ALOPAY, JAGO TLALOC (#ulink_6a152a37-f19b-5c8c-b557-850beb62b1ff)
Gulfstream G650, Bogdogra Airport, Siliguri, West Bengal, India
Sarah and Jago recline in very comfortable seats in Jordan’s very comfortable private jet trying to figure out what to do. It took them a long time to get down from the Himalayas, and now they’re stuck waiting for permission to take off.
The wait is agonizing.
Aisling and Jordan are in the cockpit going through preflight stuff. Marrs is outside dealing with airport personnel. Pop sits in a seat alone near the bulkhead, staring out the window, his rocky knuckles white with tension. Shari is unconscious in the rear of the plane, already seat-belted in place, an IV bag hanging from the overhead compartment. Her chest rises and falls evenly.
Sarah is envious of Shari. Being knocked out would quell the hate and guilt and doubt and fear roiling inside her. Being knocked out would quiet her mind, her soul.
She leans into Jago’s side and whispers, “I wish we were fighting, Feo. Right now. I wish we were moving—Playing.”
“I know,” he says. “Me too.”
Action or oblivion, she thinks. Those are the only options right now.
Aisling emerges from the cockpit, interrupting Sarah’s train of thought.
“How long till we’re outta here?” Jago asks.
Aisling drops into the nearest seat. She reaches for her Falcata and lays it over her thighs. She runs her fingertips over the sword.
“At least an hour,” she says. “Maybe less if Marrs can bribe the right air traffic controller. But for the moment we’re holding.” She pulls a stone from a pocket and runs it over her blade’s edge. It’s razor sharp and doesn’t need the attention, but she needs something to do.
Also restless, Sarah thinks.
Sarah straightens and asks, “All right if Jago and I take over the lav for a little while?”
Jago snickers.
“Really?” Aisling’s eyebrows spring upward. “Now?”
Jago flashes his glittery smile and strokes Sarah’s knee. “Sí. No time like the present, ¿sabes?”
Sarah jabs him with her elbow. “Don’t listen to him. Jago picked up a dye kit back in Peru. I’m gonna be raven-haired from now on. Since Liu’s video came out and we can all be made, I don’t want to take any chances.”
He runs his fingers through his platinum hair. “I’m sure you couldn’t tell, Aisling, but I’m not a natural blond.”
Aisling shakes her head and tilts the blade in her lap, eyeing a miniscule nick. “Go for it. It’s all yours.”
Sarah and Jago move to the rear of the plane. The lavatory is very nice. There’s space between the toilet and the sink, and the sink is normal-sized, not a tiny bowl wedged into the corner. The towels are real, the toilet paper plush and soft.
Jago closes the door behind them. He helps Sarah out of her shirt, being careful with her wounded arm. She leans over the basin, face down, and Jago washes her hair using a plastic cup and the liquid soap on the counter.
“Rosemary,” Sarah says. “And lemon. Smells nice.”
“Mmm,” Jago says. He massages her scalp, rinsing out the soap. He runs his fingers along her nape and lets them trail down her back and over the band of her sports bra.
“Give me a towel,” she says.
He does.
She wraps it around her head and stands. They’re face-to-face. Her bra brushes his shirt and a shot of electricity races up her back. She smiles. “Can you dry my hair?” she asks.
“Sí.”
But instead he immediately leans forward and they kiss. She holds his head tightly between her strong hands and pulls him closer.
And they kiss.
And kiss.
They stop.
She sits on the closed toilet seat. He dries her hair. She brushes it, working through the tangles, while he preps the dye. When she’s done brushing, Jago separates her hair into sections and fastens a towel over her bare shoulders. He puts on latex gloves and gets to work, moving methodically from the back of her head and over the crown.
“Feels good, Feo.”
“I know.” He pushes his leg into hers in a show of affection. She pushes back. “I’m glad we’re alive,” he whispers.
“Me too. We shouldn’t be, though.”
Jago pauses so she can speak.
“Baitsakhan had us dead to rights back in the Harappan fortress,” she explains. “You were out and I was pretending to be. He had the opportunity, the motive, and the gun. Would’ve taken a second. Pop, pop.”
Jago’s hands resume working. “Why didn’t he?”
“Who knows. Arrogance? He was messed up from the teleportation? Who cares?”
The plane’s hydraulics and servos make some preflight music. Jordan says over the PA, “Just got word that we’re close, amigos.”
Sarah looks up at Jago, his ugly scar, his stern eyes. “Know what we should do, Feo? Steal a plane first chance we get,” she jokes. “Run away and make babies and teach them how to fight and survive and love.”
“Sounds great.”
“It will be.”
They both chuckle at the impossibility of all that.
They are silent for a while.
“If we want to do that someday—and I do—then we really need to stop Endgame,” Jago says seriously.
“Yes, we do.”
“And you think these people will show us how?”
Sarah shrugs. “I hope so.” Then, very quietly, as if she’s worried they’re being listened to, she says, “Do you believe Aisling? Do you trust her people?”
Jago shrugs. “They haven’t tried to kill us.”
“No. And I guess we haven’t tried to kill them, so we’re even there.”
“True.” He removes some clips from her hair, places them carefully in the sink.
“Okay. Done.” He drapes another towel over her. He opens the door and angles his head into the cabin. “Sarah, I have to tell you something.”
Sarah frowns, takes his hand, and he leads her to the closest pair of empty seats. Aisling is near the front, sitting next to Pop in silence. Shari is across the aisle, the closed window shade by her shoulder illuminated by the dawn’s early light.
Sarah laces her fingers into Jago’s. “What is it, Feo?”
“I couldn’t tell you before. It was too much. It was Aucapoma Huayna. My line’s elder. She told me that … she told me that you needed to die.”
Sarah releases Jago’s hand. “What?”
Aisling turns to look at them for a brief moment. Sarah and Jago lower their voices.
“And she said that I was the one who had to do it.”
Sarah clenches his hand tightly, painfully. “Why would she say that?”
Jago looks her directly in the eye, not wavering, not showing any signs of being dishonest. He wants her to hear. He needs her to. “It had something to do with your line. She said the Makers would never allow the Cahokians to win, nor would they allow my line to win so long as I walked alongside or Played with you.”
Sarah winces. “That’s nonsense.”
“She said your line did something extraordinary. She said that back in the sixteen hundreds the Cahokians actually fought theMakers!”
Sarah shakes her head. “What do you mean?”
“According to her, before the very last group of Makers left Earth—back in 1613—They asked the Cahokians to fulfill an old bargain. You had to give up a thousand young people in a grand and final sacrifice, I guess for Them to take with them on their ships.”
“And?”
“And your people refused. She said that by then the Cahokians understood that the Makers were mortal and that they appeared to be godlike simply because they possessed more knowledge and technology than humans. She said your people fought, using an old Maker weapon against Them, and that as a last resort the battlefield was iced from orbiting ships, killing everyone there, Maker soldiers included.”
“A Maker weapon?”
“Yes. And she said your line received more punishment. She said you were made to forget your rebellion and much of your ancient past, even the original name of your line. ‘Cahokian’ is apparently what you’ve called yourself since this battle. Before that you were known as something else.”
Marrs bounds back into the plane and closes the door behind him. He plants his hands on the bulkhead and leans forward. “Buckle up. We’re flying in five.”
Sarah pulls the seat belt over her lap. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says a little more loudly as the plane’s engines come to life. “The Cahokians have plenty of documents going way past 1613. I’ve seen them. We have plenty of language and knowledge, Jago. Plenty of history. And I have never heard anything like what you’re describing—”
Jago raises a hand. “I’m merely telling you what she said. It’s been eating at me. Obviously I’m not going to kill you, Sarah. And obviously I don’t care what the Makers think or want for themselves. I want you, and I want to stay alive, and to save my family if I can, as fucked up as they are. I want to fight—and fight hard—for what’s right.” He shrugs as the plane lurches backward. “Who knows,” he says. “Maybe she didn’t expect me to kill you. Maybe she wanted me to doubt you—doubt us—so that I’d leave you at my parents’ estate. So they could deal with you.”
“We’re number one for takeoff,” Jordan announces on the PA. The plane pulls around a turn and jerks to a stop. “Flight attendants, cross-check, and all the rest. Sit down and do a crossword.”
Aisling peers around the edge of her seat at Sarah, smiling at Jordan’s lame joke.
Sarah smiles back, not letting her expression relay the seriousness of the conversation she’s having with Jago.
“You didn’t let me finish,” Sarah says, thankful for the sudden hiss of the engines as the jet throttles down the runway. “I don’t know about this battle, but I do know about the weapon. I’ve never seen it, of course. No Cahokian Player has since—get this—1614. But I know where it’s hidden.”
“Where?”
“A little south of Monks Mound. The Cahokian monument Marrs was talking about earlier.”
“A place that someone, for some reason, might try to destroy.”
Sarah shakes her head decisively. The plane jostles through a small cloud, sunlight lancing the cabin as soon as they clear it. “Maybe, Feo. But not if we can get there first.”
AN LIU (#ulink_40756d35-b463-5628-9b06-26a72a2070a1)
Shang Safe House, Unnamed Street off Ahiripukur Second Lane, Ballygunge, Kolkata, India
An Liu’s Defender moves into the daylight to meet the mob. His Beretta ARX 160, specially modified with a powered picatinny rail, fires through a slot below the windshield. The report is loud inside the vehicle and he likes it. The bullets sail into the crowd. The casings pitter onto his lap. A few men are hit. They dive and scatter to the side but the mob doesn’t dissipate. He gives the rifle four more long bursts, swinging it side to side. Red sprays of blood and small clouds of dust as bodies fall and feet scamper. An puts the car in second and lets out the clutch, and the Defender jumps forward. Another volley. He hopes the men will thin enough for him to escape to the wider street at the end of the alleyway.
And for a moment this is exactly what happens. But then the men yell and turn back all at once like a school of fish, surging toward his car. They throw rocks and pipes, and the soldiers with rifles fire at will. These projectiles bounce off his car without causing any real damage, but now things are about to get trickier.
They’re blocking his escape.
He’ll have to run them down like dogs.
Which is fine with him.
An yanks his rifle into the interior, the flap under the windshield closing immediately. He flips open a panel on the dashboard. Two covered switches and a pistol grip with a trigger are built into the console. He snaps open the switch covers. Presses the left button. It glows red. He takes the grip and angles it up and pulls the trigger. A white arc traces from the front of the car, the projectile rainbowing over the crowd, sailing 30, 40, 50 meters before hitting the ground at the end of the alley and detonating. The air there turns orange and black as the grenade does its job.
An feels giddy.
He slams the clutch, puts the car in the third, and grinds forward.
He meets the men. The sound is sickening, lovely, unusual. Yells of defiance turn to screams of pain and terror, but still the men press in on him. The Defender rides over a body. Faces mash into his windows, their flesh going flat and pink and brown and white against the glass. A pair of men grabs the door handles and tries in vain to work them open. The car slows a little. An drops it into second gear. The men beat the car and grab at it and jump on top of it. The car rocks side to side as An jogs the wheel, pinning men on the sides between the car and buildings, blood smearing across the hood and then the windshield. Some men with the kepler masks get caught and crumple under the rear wheels. The car is a four-wheel-drive beast. He lets out a little laugh. He flicks the wipers. Bad idea—the blood smears and obscures his view. The car moves forward more slowly now, the men treating it like a drum, but it’s useless. It’s too heavy for them to topple and they can’t get in or breach its armor. An is sure that he’ll make it out and get away.
But then a giant man jumps from a low building onto the hood. He turns and sits on the roof, facing out, his feet planted wide. An peers through the arcs of blood swiped across the glass and sees that he’s almost reached the street where the grenade went off. A burned-out car, a few bodies, a dying cow. A strangely dressed woman—cropped hair, a stick tied to her back—darts across the street. A matted stray dog limps from left to right. The grenade cleared a path and if he can get there then he should be able to gain some speed and get away and then, once he’s three kilometers distant, poof! His bomb will detonate and that will be the end of the mob and the end of this safe house and the end of this dank little corner of Kolkata, India.
But then, BAM! An is rattled. The man on the hood has swung a heavy maul into the windshield. The bulletproof glass holds. The men outside whoop and yell and—blink SHIVERSHIVERblink—An’s heart nearly stops as a trio of men heave a thick metal bar across the end of the alleyway and bolt it into place. It’s a meter off the ground, and there’s no way he’ll be able to drive over it.
An pulls the car to within five meters of the barricade and stops.
SHIVERSHIVERSHIVERblinkSHIVER.
“This can’t be it, Chiyoko, can it? Do we abandon the car?” He turns left and right and looks into the cargo area for ideas. His equipment, his weapons, the sword. His vest.
It would be a waste to use that now.
The street.
The barricade.
“We have to at least try.”
BAM! The maul again and the car shakes.
BAM! Again. A small spiderweb in the glass. A chink in the armor.
An puts the car in reverse and guns it. The mauler falls onto his hands and knees, his weapon sliding off the hood to the ground. The mob at the back folds under the car as it rides over them. More mashing. More popping. The mauler looks over his shoulder, stares right at An. Anger, menace, stupidity. An slams the brake and the mauler slides up the hood and into the windshield, his legs bunching under him. An grabs the rifle and sticks it back into the hinged flap, and he fires directly into the mauler’s thigh and buttocks. The mauler rolls to the side in agony. An puts the car in first and it jumps forward and the mauler tumbles off the hood.
Clutch, second, gas, clutch, third, gas. He’s up to 55 kph in no time, the men flying away from the car, gunshots hitting the rear window. He takes the wheel with both blinkblinkblink both hands and peers at the barricade. Will it hold? Will it buckle? Will he make it?
An squints, readying for impact. And then—what is that? A head sailing through the air?
Whatever it is, it rolls under the barricade, and then another head-like ball, and then, at the last second before impact, the barricade is unlocked and the grille slams into it and the bar swings violently away and into the street. He hits the brakes. The car swerves and stops. The street ahead is clear enough for him to complete his getaway. But before he leaves he looks back down the alley, full of bodies living and dying and dead. What is left of the mob comes for him.
But another comes for him too. The woman with the cropped hair. She’s wiry and fast and strong. A stick—no, a sword—in her hand.
And her face.
Her face.
It looks like Chiyoko’s, except 20 or 30 years older.
SHIVERSHIVERSHIVERSHIVERSHIVERblinkblinkblinkblinkSHIVERblink SHIVERSHIVERSHIVER SHIVERSHIVERblinkblinkblinkblinkSHIVERblink SHIVERSHIVERSHIVERSHIVERSHIVERblinkblinkblinkblinkSHIVER blink
BAM! BAM! BAM!
“Go, go, go!” the woman yells in Mandarin. She stands on the running board, right next to An on the outside of the car, slapping her hand on the roof. “Go! They’ll kill us!”
“Who are you?”
“I am Nori Ko. I am Mu. I knew Chiyoko. I can help you. Now, we have to go!”
And An’s heart fills and he feels light and free and he wonders how many has he killed today and how many more will die when the bomb goes off and ChiyokoChiyokoChiyokoNoriKoNoriKoChiyoko and he feels free and light and An’s heart fills.
He drives. Half a kilometer later he stops. He lets her in. “Watch,” he says, and she says nothing. He drives some more and a short while later the sky behind them lights up, and they are free.
MACCABEE ADLAI, LITTLE ALICE CHOPRA (#ulink_9ccadab8-242f-5846-ba42-a336a59be5ce)
Road SH 2, Joypur Forest, West Bengal, India
Maccabee runs a straight razor over his bare scalp. He swishes the blade in a copper bowl half-filled with a stew of water and black stubble and soap. Next to the bowl is a pair of scissors covered by a pile of thick hair. He squints at his reflection in a clouded mirror that’s propped against the wall. He’s never shaved his head before and he likes the way it feels. The smoothness, the lightness. Also, with his bruises and his crooked nose and his physique, the baldness makes him look like a real badass.
Which of course he is.
“What do you think, Sky Key?”
The girl sits next to him. She leans into his side. Her body is warm, and he feels comforted by it. He wonders if she is comforted in turn.
Probably not.
Her legs are tucked up and her arms are wrapped over her knees. She doesn’t answer his question. He briefly touches her hair. It’s thick and soft, the hair of a girl who’s been well cared for.
If he’s going to get her to the end, he’ll have to take good care of her too.
He passes her a bowl of rice and lentils, a stiff circle of dal balanced on top. “Here. Have some more food.”
She digs in with her bare hands and eats. Her appetite is strong and, so far, insatiable.
They are in an abandoned roadside hut 130 kilometers west and north of Kolkata. It’s midmorning. The landscape outside is lush and verdant. Jungle surrounds the hut, but fields of jute and potatoes lie less than a kilometer to the north. Sporadic cars and buses pass on the road, but other than that there are no signs of people here.
Which is good. Early that morning he and Sky Key wandered through a shopping center west of Kolkata buying supplies. Rice, soap, candles, batteries, towels, a sewing kit, a small butane camp stove with a liter of fuel. Baby wipes, pull-up diapers for Sky Key to sleep in, a blanket, and three changes of clothing for the girl. He also lucked into finding one of those cloth child carriers that straps over the shoulders and holds the kid tightly on the back. At a pharmacy he bought generic ibuprofen, amoxicillin, Cipro, zolpidem, and a small first aid kit with an extra bottle of iodine. Back at the hotel he packed all of this into a new knapsack as well as into the stolen Suzuki’s touring panniers, one of which blessedly contained a SIG 226 and two magazines.
The same kind of gun An Liu had fired at them back in the cemetery.
It was then that he realized he’d had the good fortune to steal An Liu’s bike.
He checked the SIG’s decocker and stuffed it into the top of his pants.
Throughout the morning he’d dealt with merchants and for the most part they were nice to him. He had to pay a small fortune for everything, though—prices were going through the roof under the threat of Abaddon, even here on the other side of the world where the effects of the asteroid would be less urgent. The fact that he wasn’t Indian didn’t make things any cheaper. Regardless, none of the shopkeepers recognized him as a Player, which was fortunate.
But then they stopped for breakfast at a dosa stall, and as they sat at a plastic picnic table the owner turned up the news on the small television mounted over the counter. He gabbed on in Bengali with one of his workers, no doubt talking about all the craziness happening in the world, while stills from An Liu’s video clicked past one by one on the screen. And that’s when Maccabee saw his own face, clear as day.
He didn’t worry about it at first. He was banged up from all the fights he’d been through and he didn’t think that the shop owner was paying close enough attention to make the connection. But he was. He turned on Maccabee and Sky Key in a flash, pointed a finger, started yelling. Maccabee stood, his mouth half-full of curried potatoes, and hoisted up the girl. The man stepped around the counter with a long kitchen knife. Maccabee backed away, swallowed his food, lifted his shirt to reveal the butt of the pistol, and said, “You don’t need to get hurt, my friend. None of us do.”
Stunned, the man quieted for a few moments as Maccabee and Sky Key left. He resumed yelling as soon as they were out on the street, and people began gawking, but the pair made it onto the bike in front of the hotel and Maccabee got Sky Key into the child carrier and they whisked out of there.
They rode all morning, stopping once to buy some rice and lentils at a food stall. Not long ago he caught sight of this hut flickering through the trees. Sky Key had been squirming for the previous 10 kilometers, and Maccabee had to piss, so he pulled over. He hid the bike in the bush and crept toward the corrugated metal building, the SIG pistol in hand. The hut was empty of people. It contained some basic items like bowls and a mirror and a few bedrolls and a low table. Maccabee figured it was a crash pad for itinerant farmhands, but it didn’t look like it had been used in a while.
They went in and he fed Sky Key some already cooked rice and lentils that came in simple plastic bags. Then he got going with the scissors and the straight razor. And now he is done. It isn’t a perfect disguise, but he doesn’t look anything like he did in the video.
It will do.
“Well, I like it,” Maccabee says of his new look.
Sky Key chews and manages a grunt. One of the first noises she’s made all morning.
Maccabee scoots over so that he’s sitting opposite the girl. A warm breeze pushes through the windows. The leaves outside rustle, a tree trunk creaks.
So young, he thinks.
Too young.
He dips his fingers into the bowl of rice and lentils and takes a handful in the Indian fashion and brings it to his lips. For food purchased from a roadside hawker, it’s surprisingly good.
Sky Key’s face is wind worn and streaked with grime. He reaches across the bowl and uses his thumb to wipe her cheek. She doesn’t move away. Her eyes are locked forward, staring at Maccabee’s chest.
“I’ll steal a car soon. You shouldn’t ride like that. Too exposed.”
She chews. Stares. Swallows.
“Good,” she says, breaking her silence since the day before.
“So you are going to talk?” he says, trying to sound kind.
“I don’t like it. The motorbike.”
“We’ll get rid of it then.”
“Good,” she repeats. She takes another mouthful of food.
“The problem is—once we get a car, where do we go?”
She doesn’t say anything.
“I mean, we should probably wait out the impact before we keep going,” he says, thinking out loud more than talking to her. “But where will we be safe? And how will we find Sun Key?”
“We’ll be safe, Uncle,” she announces emphatically.
He frowns.
She takes another bite of food in her fingertips, pushes it into her mouth.
Strange girl, he thinks.
“Please, call me Maccabee. Or Mac.”
“All right, Uncle,” she says, as if she’s agreeing to a different request.
He ignores it. “How do you know we’ll be safe?”
The girl swallows her food before answering. “The Makers won’t destroy me or Earth Key. Mama said. The bad thing will happen far from here. From me. From who is with me. What we need to be afraid of are the others. Like the man from yesterday. That’s what Mama said too.”
“Your mama,” he says slowly.
“Yes. Thank you for killing the bad man, Uncle,” she says in a smaller than usual voice. “Thank you.”
Very strange girl, he thinks as pangs of guilt shudder through him. Baitsakhan was absolutely bad, but that didn’t make Maccabee a saint. Not by a long shot. After all, he nearly killed Shari Chopra too.
But he didn’t. And this girl, she does not need to know otherwise.
“You’re … welcome,” he says. He wonders if she’s always spoken beyond her years. He wonders if touching Earth Key made her this way, or if she was like this before.
He can’t know that she was.
That Little Alice was always precocious, always special.
He says, “All right, let’s assume we are safe from the asteroid. I still don’t know where to go. How do I win? Where is Sun Key?”
She chews. Swallows. Then she sticks out her arm and points a few degrees south of due east. “I know, Uncle.”
Maccabee frowns. “You know?”
“Two two dot two three four. Six eight dot nine six two.”
He gets his smartphone, launches Google Maps, and punches in the coordinates. A pin over water pops up, a short distance from the coast of the western Indian port city of Dwarka. He shows it to Sky Key.
“This? Is this where we’ll find Sun Key?”
The girl nods.
“It’s not that far at all!”
Giddiness wells in his heart and works into his throat.
“Yes, Uncle. Sun Key is there.”
“You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
He fumbles with the smartphone and his smile grows. Two thousand four hundred thirty-four kilometers. Thirty-six or 37 hours of driving. Maybe faster if he can find a plane to steal.
He can win Endgame, he can guarantee the survival of the Nabataean line after the cataclysm, he can see the new Earth and live on it until he is old and frail. Maybe he can save this young girl and fulfill the promise he made to her mother.
Maybe he can win and right some wrongs.
He jumps to his feet, intent on going outside and flagging down the next decent-looking car that comes along the road and carjacking it. He can hardly contain himself. “Sky Key, this is amazing!”
“I know, Uncle.” The girl takes another bite. “They call me Little Alice.”
“I could win, Alice! The Nabataeans could win!”
She chews. Swallows. “I know.”
AN LIU, NORI KO (#ulink_f31adcad-0371-5577-ad71-a089f045d0d8)
HP Petrol Pump, Baba Lokenath Service Station off SH 2, Joypur Jungle, West Bengal, India
An’s heart is full.
After the explosion Nori Ko moved to the Defender’s backseat. She said in Mandarin, “Drive west.”
He did.
He watched the road slip under the car and continue to unfurl before them and he watched her in the rearview mirror and he watched the road and he watched her. The road and her. Road and her. He did not speak. He did not need words. He did not speak for over three hours.
She did not bother him with words either.
Chiyoko would have done the same.
ChiyokoChiyokoNoriKoChiyoko.
Now they’ve stopped to refuel. He’s outside. She’s in the car, her head propped against the far window. He’s in the stifling heat, a gas pump in his hand. The paved highway lies to the north. A few kilometers earlier they entered a jungle reserve and now trees rise all around, making the air a couple of degrees cooler than it is out by the open fields of jute and corn. Behind the filling station is a low concrete building, a white bull lolling under a jackfruit tree, its leafy boughs heavy with oblong fruit. Aside from the attendant in the air-conditioned booth, no people are around.
An finishes and pays and gets in and drives.
“West?” he asks.
“West.”
He merges onto State Highway 2, headed for Bishnupur. They drive through the jungle. An doesn’t see any buildings or signs of people except for the road they’re on and a brief glimpse of a derelict metal hut hiding behind the trees. He thinks nothing of it.
After another quarter hour, An says, “I’m ready”—blink—“I’m ready”—blink—“I’m ready to talk.” SHIVER. “We have to talk.”
“We do,” Nori Ko says. She moves An’s rifle from the front passenger seat and climbs forward. “You have questions.”
An nods. “Why did you find me?”
“I found you because I also loved Chiyoko.”
His skin crawls at hearing another person say her name. Even this one, who comes from her stock and looks so much like her. He’s reminded of the British interrogator on the destroyer who insisted on saying it. That one who wielded the name like a blade. Drove it into An’s ears and twisted it. An almost tells his new ally that she should not say Chiyoko’s name either, but he knows he doesn’t have the right. Whoever Nori Ko is, she was someone to Chiyoko. That counts for something.
“Chiyoko,” Nori Ko says quietly.
Yes, it counts for something. But …
Thename is mine now, he thinks. Chiyoko. Chiyoko Takeda. My name.
Nori Ko reaches across the inside of the car, her fingers yearning for the necklace that hangs around An’s neck, breaking his train of thought.
SHIVER.
He moves away from her.
“It’s okay,” she says. “I want to touch her. Like you do.”
BLINKSHIVERBLINK.
She touches the necklace. After a moment Nori Ko returns her hands to her lap. Her fingertips rub together, the residue of Chiyoko on them.
“I love her,” Nori Ko clarifies. “After what happened I couldn’t sit idly by. That’s why I found you.”
“After what happened?”
“I am Mu. A high member of the training council. I know much about Endgame.” She pauses, and then says quietly, “I saw a recording of your conversation with Nobuyuki. I saw how you killed him.”
SHIVERSHIVER.
“Yes, I saw it, Shang. There was a black box containing surveillance recordings that survived the fire in Naha. I heard what you said, what he said. I thought Nobuyuki was unfair to you. Under no circumstances would he have allowed you to Play for the Mu, but I thought it not right of him to test you like that.”
“He deserved what he got,” An says.
“No, he did not.”
SHIVER.
She says, “You didn’t need to honor his request for Chiyoko’s remains. You did not have to respect Nobuyuki the way you respected Chiyoko. But for that same reason, you should have spared him. Not for his sake, but for hers. Killing him dishonored Chiyoko, An. As well as yourself. It did nothing to tarnish the honor of Nobuyuki Takeda.”
BLINKBLINK.
Her voice is cold.
SHIVERBLINKblink.
“You speak like him,” An finally says.
“I can speak like him. But I am not him.”
An wrings the wheel in his hands. His knuckles whiten. He pushes the gas a little more. The car accelerates.
Her voice is cold.
Her words cut.
“I loved Nobuyuki too,” she says. “But don’t worry, I’m not interested in honor like he was. I’m not here to punish you for his death.” The thought of this woman punishing him almost makes An laugh. She continues. “I chose you precisely because I’ve seen what you’re capable of.”
Death, he thinks. She wants death.
“What were you to her?” An asks.
“A trainer. Bladed arts, karate, acrobatics, evasion, disguise. She was my best student. I’ve never met anyone faster or more ruthless. She was—”
“She should not have died.”
“No. She shouldn’t have.”
Silence. One kilometer. Two.
“You love her,” An says. “I love her. This doesn’t explain why you’re here.”
“Because I want the same thing you want.”
“And that is?” He’s glad to be wearing Chiyoko right now. She gives him strength. Allows him to speak without too many glitches or tics.
So glad.
She is like you, love, Chiyoko says to him.
Nori Ko says, “What you want is as plain as the nose on your face, An Liu. Love multiplied by death—by murder—has only one solution.”
Pause.
“Revenge,” An says.
“Revenge,” Nori Ko says.
More silence. The sky is bright. They pass a multicolored Tata truck laden with rebar.
She doesn’t lie, love, Chiyoko says. Her anger makes her strong.
I know, An thinks. It is the same with me. Chiyoko doesn’t say anything to this.
“How did you find me?” An asks.
“I’ve been on your trail since Naha. I was going to approach you the other day, right after you arrived in Kolkata, but then Endgame caught us by surprise, didn’t it?”
“It did. Things happened quickly. Very quickly. We were so close.”
“To Adlai?”
We were so close to killing the Nabataean, love, Chiyoko reminds him.
He nods. “Yes. We were very close,” An says to Chiyoko and Nori Ko.
Nori Ko ignores An’s use of the first person plural and says, “I tried to reach the cemetery, but I was too late to help you. Believe me, I would have.”
An thinks of what she did to the mob in Ballygunge. He says, “I believe you.”
“Good.”
Silence again. They pass roadside things. A group of women in bright clothing, a flock of pigeons rising from the treetops, a road crew patching potholes in the oncoming lane.
The other side of the world faces the apocalypse, but in India life goes on.
“What do you think of when you think of revenge, An?”
“Blood. Ashes. Swollen things.”
Nori Ko shakes her head. “No. I mean, who do you think of?”
The answer is quick. “The Cahokian. The Olmec. They were there when she died. If they hadn’t been, she would’ve lived.”
A brief silence before Nori Ko intones, “Then I want their deaths too, An Liu.”
SHIVERshiverSHIVERshiverSHIVERshiver.
“But tell me, An Liu—is there someone else you want dead?”
The car jounces over a bump. Neither speaks for a moment. He looks at the instrument panel. The Defender whips along at 123 kph. The engine hums at 2,900 rpms. It is 37 degrees Celsius outside.
“Yes,” he answers.
Nori Ko says, “The kepler.”
An nods. “Him. It.”
Nori Ko grunts. “I’m also in the mood for his blood. And I will see that you have it. That we both have it.”
An says, “You’re not like Chiyoko.”
“I’m older than she was. Age does things to a person, and people who know of Endgame age even faster and in different ways.” She waves her hand as if to bat away a fly or an unpleasant memory. “I had ideals once, if that’s what you mean.”
BLINKshiverblink.
“It is.”
“I’ve learned a lot about Endgame over the years, An. From a lot of different people, not all of them Mu. Not all of them wanting Endgame the way the Players did. My ideals, such as they were, suffered the more that I learned.” Pause. “They were dashed for good when Chiyoko was killed.”
Hearing her name again hurts. She shouldn’t say it, he thinks.
Chiyoko whispers, It’s all right. She will help you. Don’t be hard on her. She will help you. She will help us.
An shakes his head—not a tic, just a hard shake to quiet her voice, which echoes in his brain.
A car appears in the rearview mirror, driving very fast.
“So tell me—where are we headed, Mu Nori Ko?”
“You’ve been watching the news?”
“Yes.”
“And seen that someone’s destroying monuments from Maker-human antiquity?”
“Yes. Do you know who?”
“I have a hunch, but that’s not important. What is important is that we get to the next closest monument—which happens to be the Harappan one in western India. Odds are that is where the Nabataean is taking the first two keys. It is where he thinks he will win.”
“Where exactly?”
“A sunken temple near the Gujarati town of Dwarka.”
An jams the brakes and holds the wheel tightly and Nori Ko braces herself on the dashboard and the tires squeal and they come to a lurching halt.
The car that is driving fast so fast overtakes them. A small late-model sedan, one driver, bald and in a hurry. No passengers. The driver looks nothing like Maccabee and there is no one else in the car so An doesn’t pay it any mind. Everyone drives like a speed demon in India anyway.
“Why is Adlai going there?” he asks urgently. “Is it because of Sun Key?”
“Yes.”
“Is it there?”
“I don’t know for sure.”
“But you think it’s at one of these monuments? The ones that are being destroyed?”
“Yes. It is. Although I don’t know which one.”
He pauses. Squints. The car disappears around the next turn. He says, “Then Sun Key could also be at the Mu monument? Or the Cahokian? Or the Olmec? Or—the Shang?”
“Yes. It could.”
An puts the car back in gear, whips the wheel around, pulls a tight U-turn, and heads back in the direction from which they came, going fast fast fast.
“What are you doing?” Nori Ko demands.
BlinkSHIVERSHIVERblinkBLINKBLINKSHIVERshiverBLINK.
She reaches out and puts a hand on his arm. He yanks it away.
China, Chiyoko says.
Yes, he answers.
“The Nabataean could already be halfway to Dwarka!” Nori Ko protests.
“I know. And if he’s lucky enough to find Sun Key there, then he’s already won, and we are already too late,” An says through clenched teeth. “Nothing we do will matter. We need to get the keys to see the kepler face-to-face. If he wins, then we will have lost our chance to meet and then kill the Maker. But …”
And then Nori Ko understands. “The pyramid of Emperor Zhao.”
“Yes. We start at the Shang monument. If Dwarka doesn’t have Sun Key—and the odds are decent that it won’t—then Adlai will go to the next closest monument. Mine.”
“China,” Nori Ko says. Accepting. Approving.
“Yes. We’re going home,” he says, thinking of all the things he hated about it, of all the pain he endured during his training, of all the suffering. “My hellish home.”
SHARI CHOPRA (#ulink_2818d38d-125e-5d4e-bf20-6112b3784e03)
Mercedes Sprinter Van, Ayutthaya, Thailand
Shari Chopra is not in her home, although that is where she would rather be more than anything. In her home, smelling cooking food, watching her child run through the garden, holding her husband’s hand.
But her husband is dead.
She is not home, but she is awake, and none of the others know it yet.
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