by James Frey
“Can you speak?” The man’s voice echoes as if it is in An’s mind.
“Y-yes,” An says without much effort.
“Good. You can call me Charlie. What’s your name, lad?”
An opens his eyes. His sight is fuzzy around the edges, but his senses are strangely acute. He can feel every centimeter of his body. “My name is An Liang,” he says.
“No, it’s not. What’s your name?”
An tries to turn his head but can’t. He’s been restrained further. A strap across his forehead? Or is this the drug?
“Chang Liu,” he tries again.
“No, it’s not. One more lie and I won’t tell you anything about Chiyoko. That’s a promise.”
An begins to speak but the man claps one of his big hands over An’s mouth. “I mean it. Lie to me one more time and we’re done. No more Chiyoko, no more you. Do you understand?”
Since An can’t move his head at all, can’t nod, he widens his eyes. Yes, he understands.
“Good lad. Now, what’s your name?”
“An Liu.”
“Better. How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Where are you from?”
“China.”
“No shit. Where in China?”
“Many places. Xi’an was last home.”
“Why were you at Stonehenge?”
An feels a tickle in his ear. A scratching noise close by.
“To help Chiyoko,” he says.
“Tell me about Chiyoko. What was her last name?”
“Takeda. She was the Mu.”
A pause. “The Mu?”
“Yes.”
“What is a Mu?”
“Not sure. Old people. Older than old.”
An hears the scritch-scratch noise again. He places the sound. A polygraph. “He’s not lying,” the man says. “Don’t know what he’s talking about, but he’s not lying.”
An hears a tinny voice over an earpiece. Someone else is watching and listening. Giving Charlie with the big hands and wrinkled forehead instructions.
“What you inject in me?” An asks.
“Top-secret serum, lad. I tell you more than that and I have to kill you. It’s not your turn to ask questions yet. I’ll let you ask yours after you answer a few more of mine, deal?”
“Yes.”
“What were you helping Chiyoko with at Stonehenge?”
“Get Earth Key.”
“What’s Earth Key?”
“Piece of puzzle.”
“What kind of puzzle?”
“Endgame puzzle.”
“What’s Endgame?”
“A game for end of time.”
“And you’re playing it?”
“Yes.”
“Chiyoko was too?”
“Yes.”
“She was Mu?”
“Yes.”
“What are you?”
“Shang.”
“What is Shang?”
“Shang was father of my people. Shang are my people. Shang is me. I am Shang. I hate Shang.”
Charlie pauses, writes something on a pad that An can’t see. “What does Earth Key do?”
“Not sure. Maybe nothing.”
“Are there other keys?”
“Yes. It is one of three.”
“Earth Key was at Stonehenge?”
“I think yes. Not sure.”
“Where are the other two keys?”
“Don’t know. That is part of the game.”
“Endgame.”
“Yes.”
“Who runs it?”
He cannot resist saying the words. “Them. The Makers. The Gods. They have many names. One called kepler 22b told us of Endgame.” The serum they put in him tickles the synapses in his frontal cortex. It is a good drug, whatever it is.
Charlie holds a picture over An’s face. It’s of the man from the announcement that was made on every screen in the world—TV, mobile phone, tablet, computer—after Stonehenge changed, after that beam of light shot to the heavens. “Have you seen this person before?”
“No. Wait. Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Yes . . . yes I see it before. That is disguise. Could be kepler 22b. Could not be him—her—it. Not a person.”
Charlie takes the picture away. Replaces it with a picture of Stonehenge. Not as it was, quaint and ancient and mysterious, but as it is now. Revealed and altered. An unearthly tower of stone and glass and metal rising 100 feet in the air, the age-old stones that marked it jumbled around the tower’s base like a child’s discarded blocks.
“Tell me about this.”
An’s eyes widen. His memory of Stonehenge stops before anything like that appeared. “I do not know about that. Can I ask question?”
“You just did, but yes.”
“That is Stonehenge?”
“Yes. How did this happen?”
“Not sure. Can’t remember.”
Charlie leans back. “I guess you wouldn’t. You were shot, you remember that?”
“No.”
“In the head. You concussed pretty badly. Lucky for you, you’ve got a metal plate in there. A metal plate coated in Kevlar. Some bloody foresight, that.”
“Yes. Lucky. Another question?”
“Sure.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
Charlie pauses, listens to the little voice in his earpiece.
“We don’t really know. You were shot, we know that. With a special kind of bullet that only a handful of people have ever seen. You were clutching the end of a rope that led to the body of a young man. Or what was left of his body. He was blown up above the chest. Only his lower torso and legs were left.”
An remembers. There was the boy he put the bomb leash around. There was the Olmec. There was the Cahokian.
“Your girlfriend, Chiyoko—”
“Not say her name. Her name is my name now.”
Charlie gives An a hard stare. His eyes are blue, then green, then red. It’s the drugs, An tells himself. The good drugs.
“Chiyoko,” Charlie says, emphasizing the name, savoring it in a way that stings An. “She was right next to you. One of the stones toppled onto her when this thing under Stonehenge came up. Crushed the lower two-thirds of her body. Killed her instantly. We had to scrape her up.”
“She next to me, though?” An asks. His eyelids flutter. “After I shot?”
“Yes. Was she the one who shot you?”
“No.”
“Who did?”
“Not sure. There were two others.”
“These two, they had the ceramic and polymer bullets?”
“Not sure. The guns were white, so maybe.”
“What are their names?”
“Sarah Alopay and Jago Tlaloc,” An says, struggling to pronounce these foreign names.
“They’re playing this game too?”
“Yes.”
“For who?”
An’s eyes flutter again. “F-f-f-or their l-l-l-lines. She is Cahokian. He is Olmec.” An’s head jerks. Fresh pain sizzles across his medulla oblongata. The good drugs are wearing off.
Charlie holds another sheet of paper over An’s face. Two security images. “These two?”
An squints. “Y-y-yes.”
SHIVER.
“Good.”
Charlie whispers something incomprehensible into a microphone.
Beep. Beep-beep. Beep. Beep-beep.
The heart-rate monitor. Other details in the room are coming back to An. The edges of his vision aren’t fuzzy anymore. He is resurfacing from the dark waters. The SHIVERS are back.
“Where is Ch-Chi-Chiyoko?”
“Can’t say, mate.”
“On this boat?”
“Can’t say.”
“C-c-c-can I see her?”
“No. You’ve only got me from now on. No one else. Just you and me.”
“Oh.”
An’s head jerks. His fingers dance.
; “Are-are-are . . .” He trails off, gives up, whispers. “The game, you understand . . .”
“Understand what?”
“You all die.” An says it so quietly that Charlie can barely hear.
“What?” Charlie asks, turning an ear toward him.
“You all die,” An breathes, quieter still.
Charlie leans over. Their faces are less than half a meter apart. Charlie squints, his forehead wrinkles. An’s eyes are closed. His mouth is agape. Charlie says, “‘You all die’? Is that what you sai—”
An bites down hard. A plastic cracking noise comes from inside An’s mouth. This Charlie can hear very clearly. And then An exhales, blows out with a hiss like a punctured balloon, and an orange cloud of gas shoots from behind his teeth and right into Charlie’s face. Charlie’s eyes go wide and fill with tears and he can’t breathe. His face burns, his skin is on fire everywhere, his eyes feel like they’re melting, his lungs are shrinking. He falls forward onto An’s chest. It only takes 4.56 seconds, and after that An opens his eyes again.
“Yes,” An says. “Y-y-y-you all die.”
An spits the fake tooth from his mouth, the poison inside one that he spent years gaining an immunity to. The tooth clicks across the metal floor. The little voice in Charlie’s earpiece is screaming. Two seconds later an alarm sounds, reverberating through the metal hull of the boat. The lights go out. A red emergency light flips on.
The room shifts and creaks. Shifts and creaks.
I’m on a boat.
I’m on a boat and I have to get off.
The future is a game.
Time, one of the rules.
MACCABEE ADLAI, BAITSAKHAN
Tizeze Hotel, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
“It is I,” Maccabee Adlai, Player of the 8th line, says into an inconspicuous wireless microphone. He speaks a language only 10 people in the entire world understand. “Kalla bhajat niboot scree.”
These words have no translation. They are older than old, but the woman on the other end of the call understands.
“Kalla bhajat niboot scree,” she says in return. They have proven their identities to each other. “Is your phone secure?” the woman asks.
“I think. But who cares. The end is so close.”
“The others could find you.”
“Screw the others. Besides,” Maccabee says, wrapping his fingers around the glass orb in his pocket, “I would see them coming. Listen, Ekaterina.” Maccabee has always called his mother by her first name, even when he was a boy. “I need something.”
“Anything, my Player.”
“I need a hand. Mechanical. Titanium. Don’t care if it’s skinned.”
“Neurologically fused?”
“If you can do it quickly.”
“Depends on the wound. I’ll know when I see it.”
“Where? How soon?”
Ekaterina thinks. “Berlin. Two days. I’ll text an address tomorrow.”
“Good. Listen. The hand isn’t for me.”
“Okay.”
“It’s not for me, and I need you to put something in it. Something hidden.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll send you specs and code over encrypted botnet M-N-V-eight-nine.”
“Okay.”
“Repeat it,” Maccabee says to his mother.
“M-N-V-eight-nine.”
“It’ll arrive twenty seconds after this call ends. The name of the file is dogwood jeer.”
“Understood.”
“I’ll see you in Berlin.”
“Yes, my son, my Player. Kalla bhajat niboot scree.”
“Kalla bhajat niboot scree.”
Maccabee hangs up. He logs into a ghost app on his phone, launches it, and hits send. Dogwood jeer is off. He turns the phone over, removes the battery, and throws it into the waste bin next to the hotel’s front desk. He takes the phone in both hands and, as he crosses to the gift shop, cracks it down the middle. He goes to a refrigerator full of sodas and opens the door. The cold hits him in the face. He pulls the air into his lungs. It feels good.
He reaches into the back of the case for two Cokes, drops the phone. It clatters behind the racks.
He pays for the Cokes and heads back to the hotel room.
Baitsakhan is on the couch in the junior suite. He sits on the edge of the cushion, his back straight, his eyes closed. The gauze on his wrist stump is blotted by spots of dark blood. His remaining hand—his right hand—is in a fist.
Maccabee closes the door. “I got you a Coke.”
“I don’t like Coke.”
“Of course you don’t.”
“Jalair liked Coke.”
I wish I were Playing with him instead, Maccabee thinks. He twists open his soda, it makes a little hiss, he takes a sip. It tickles his tongue and throat. It’s delicious. “We’re going to Berlin, Baits.”
Baitsakhan opens his deep brown eyes and gazes at Maccabee. “The wind doesn’t blow me there, brother.”
“Yes, it does.”
“No. We have to kill the Aksumite.”
“No, we don’t.”
“Yes, we do.”
Maccabee pulls the orb out of his pocket. “There’s no point. Hilal is nearly dead. He isn’t going anywhere. Besides, his line would be guarding him. It would be suicide to go back there now. Better to wait it out. Maybe he dies anyway and spares us a trip.”
“Who then? The Harappan? To avenge Bat and Bold?”
Maccabee approaches Baitsakhan and lightly slaps his stump. Maccabee knows this hurts, but Baitsakhan only sucks his teeth. “She’s too far away. Others are much closer—others who have Earth Key. Others who are Playing by the rules. You remember what the orb showed us, don’t you?”
“Yes. That stone monument. That girl called Sarah getting the first Key. Yes . . . You’re right.”
Maccabee thinks, That’s the closest thing to an apology I’ve ever heard from him.
Baitsakhan nods. “We need to go for them.”
“I’m glad you agree. First things first. You need to get your arm fixed.”
“I don’t want it fixed. I don’t need it fixed.”
Maccabee shakes his head. “Don’t you want to shoot your bow again? Rein a horse and swing a sword at the same time? Wring the life from the Harappan with two hands instead of one?”
Baitsakhan tilts his head. “These things aren’t possible.”
“You ever heard of neurofusing? Intelligent prosthetics?”
Baitsakhan wrinkles his brow.
“I swear,” Maccabee says, “you and your line are from a different century. What I’m saying is that we’re going to lend you a hand, so to speak. A better hand than the one you had before.”
Baitsakhan holds up his stump. “Where does such magic happen?”
Maccabee snickers. “Berlin. In two days.”
“Fine. And then?”
“And then we use this,” Maccabee says, holding up the orb that Baitsakhan can’t touch, “to find the Cahokian and the Olmec and take Earth Key for ourselves.”
Baitsakhan closes his eyes again and takes a deep breath. “We hunt.”
“Yes, brother. We hunt.”
“Speculation remains rampant about what’s going on at Stonehenge in the south of England. It’s been nearly a week since locals reported seeing a predawn beam of light surge to the heavens, preceded by massive booming sounds that rang out only seconds before. Given the ancient monument’s mysterious history, people are saying that anything from aliens to secret government agencies to Morlocks, which are a kind of underground-dwelling troglodyte—yes, you heard correctly—are responsible for whatever is going on there. We go now to Fox News correspondent Mills Power, who’s been in nearby Amesbury since the reports started pouring in. Mills?”
“Hello, Stephanie.”
“Can you tell us anything about what’s going on?”
“It’s been very chaotic. This quaint village is overrun with people. Government trucks travel constantly to and from
the site, and the air is thick with helicopters. I’ve even been told by an anonymous source that three high-altitude CIA or MI6 Predator drones are in the skies twenty-four hours a day keeping watch. The whole area’s been declared off-limits, and a mix of British, French, German, and American authorities have even covered the site with what is essentially a massive white circus tent.”
“So no one can actually see what caused this alleged beam of light?”
“That’s right, Stephanie. But the light isn’t alleged. Fox News has obtained four separate smartphone videos of the beam, as you can see in this footage.”
“Wow . . . this is the first time I’m seeing—”
“Yes. It’s shocking. You can see the beam shooting up in this one—apparently from an area of Stonehenge called the Heel Stone. But the really strange thing, Stephanie, is that all four phones stopped recording at the same moment, even though the people operating them tried to keep shooting.”
“Stonehenge is—was—a tourist attraction of sorts, Mills. Has anyone—besides the people who took those videos—has anyone come forward from the site itself? Any eyewitnesses?”
“As I said, things are very much under wraps here—literally. There are rumors of people being held by the authorities, and that some may be on HMS Dauntless, a Royal Navy destroyer currently in the English Channel. Of course, a military spokeswoman wouldn’t confirm or deny these rumors, based on the fact that this is an ongoing investigation. When pressed on exactly what they’re investigating, the standard response seems to be—quote—‘unexpected developments in and around Stonehenge.’ That’s it. All we know for certain is that, whatever has happened, they don’t want people to know what it is.”
“Yes, that is . . . that is obvious. Mills, thank you very much. Please keep us abreast of any new developments as they become available.”
“Will do, Stephanie.”
“Uh, next on Fox News, the ongoing crisis in Syria, plus a heartwarming story from the meteor impact site in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates. . . .”
AISLING KOPP
John F. Kennedy International Airport, Terminal 1 Immigration Hall, Queens, New York, United States