Sky Key

by James Frey

  BLINKBLINKSHIVER

  The darkness in front of him is more open, the smoke from the grenade rising and rising. An guesses that he has just entered the ship’s hangar.

  More moaning. But also a scrambling sound.

  An lifts up the head he slid into and blink and blink and blink and gets his fingers around a pair of night-vision goggles. He yanks them free. As An pulls the goggles over his face, he realizes for the first time that his head is blinkSHIVERblink is bandaged. He tightens the straps and they squeeze blinkblinkblink they squeeze blinkblinkblink they squeeze the swollen skin and pull at the fresh stitches across his forehead and his hairline. He winces and stifles the urge to cry out. The goggles are in place, but they aren’t working.

  “Who has eyes?” a faraway voice whispers, the sound echoing through the hangar.

  He’s not alone.

  “Almost online,” a 2nd voice answers, this one closer. “Come ON!”

  This voice is only feet away. SHIVERblinkSHIVER An sees the soft green glow as the goggles come to life. Only three meters away.

  “I see him!” the man blurts.

  But he doesn’t shoot. He must have lost his rifle in the explosion. The ghostly light frames the edge of his face, his scruffy beard, gnashing teeth. It all surges toward An, who flops to the floor, aims his pistol, and fires.

  The man falls against him. Dead. A knife stabs the floor just next to An’s ear.

  BLINKBLINKshiverBLINKshiver.

  Close one.

  An pushes the man off shiver and feels the goggles blink again and finds the switch.

  The room turns green.

  It is indeed the hangar.

  A shot screams from the far side of the room and misses An by a less than a meter. He spots a large blinkblink a large man shouldering a rifle. No goggles. He’s guessing. Firing toward the commotion. An raises the Glock, takes his time, and fires a single round. It passes through the man’s front hand and enters his skull directly over his right eye. He falls.

  An pries a knife from the dead man’s hand, inspects it. Blinkblink. It has a 30-centimeter straight blade with a single edge and no serrations. Shiver. It’s more like a small sword than a military tactical knife. Probably this man’s prize possession, his weapon of choice. His signature.

  Not anymore.

  BLINKBLINKSHIVERSHIVERBLINK

  An slaps himself, runs across the hangar, whispering, “Chiyoko Takeda Chiyoko Takeda Chiyoko Takeda.” He bobs and weaves just in case, but no shots come. He finds it blinkblink finds it odd. This is a large ship, probably a Type 45 destroyer, and even a skeleton crew would require over 100 seamen. By his count, he’s only killed 17. That means more will be coming.

  Or maybe it means the rest of the ship doesn’t know about An. They don’t know what’s happening below deck. Maybe An’s a secret.

  He scurries around an amphibious vehicle and between two pallets stacked with cargo blinkshivershiverblinkblink with cargo wrapped in plastic and nylon webbing. Three meters away is an open doorway, a set of stairs inside, going up, up, up.

  A Type 45 destroyer has a blink has a blink has a helipad. Maybe a Merlin Mk1or a Lynx Mk8.

  An has logged 278 simulated hours on the Merlin and 944 on the Lynx, plus 28 hours in a real one.

  An makes for the door.

  blinkblinkblinkblinkblink

  He hits the narrow stairs and goes up.

  One deck.

  Up.

  Two.

  Up.

  Three.

  The air cools and he smells the blinkblinkblink the salty sweetness of the sea and best of all SHIVER best of all SHIVER best of all he hears the whomp-whomp-whomp of a chopper’s rotors coming to speed.

  Thank you, special forces.

  BLINKBLINK.

  An is a few steps below the door that leads to the helipad. It’s open. The ship’s engines throttle up, as if the hunk of metal and electronics and weaponry is nervous. He feels the first breeze of the rotor wash from the helicopter and pulls Charlie’s coat closed around him. He sees the sharp, full moon, the sky clear and the stars bright and the void limitless above.

  BlinkSHIVERblink.

  Chiyoko would have liked this night, An thinks. Would have seen the beauty where I can’t.

  An rips off the goggles, the straps tearing his bandages and popping a couple of stitches.

  He has to get to the chopper.

  He peers over the last BLINK last step. A Lynx Mk8, just as he hoped. He’s lined up perfectly with the cockpit—beyond it is the stern of the ship, and then the blackness of open water. He spies twinkling lights along the horizon. A city in the distance. He glances at the sky. Sees Cassiopeia a few degrees above the Earth. Wonders if the SHIVERBLINKSHIVER the keplers are watching him right now, wonders whether they are cheering.

  BLINKSHIVERBLINK.

  He wants to kill them all for what they did to Chiyoko.

  Snuff it all out everywhere for infinity in every direction for all time.

  All of it.

  blinkSHIVERblinkSHIVERSHIVERBLINK.

  An moves to the doorway. The chopper’s lights are off. The pilot is going to take off blink take off blink take off dark.

  Now or never.

  There’s a 20-millimeter machine gun in the Lynx’s bay that’s aimed right at the empty expanse of deck that An has to cross. He hopes the airmen in the chopper won’t break every protocol in the book and open fire while still on the deck.

  An bolts, firing the Glock at the cockpit, but the rounds bounce away, zinging into the rotors.

  At two meters he stops firing, holding three rounds in reserve. The chopper rises off the deck slowly. An reaches blinkSHIVERblink the side door just as it’s sliding shut. An fires. The copilot falls into the cargo area, his helmet tearing away from his exploded head. An breathes out, leaps up, scrambles in. SHIVER. The pilot spins in his seat, his Browning perched on his shoulder, but An fires his last two rounds and the pilot falls to the side.

  BLINKBLINK.

  The Lynx lurches to port as the dead pilot pulls at the stick.

  An drops the pistol and vaults over a long metal box in the cargo area, landing in the copilot’s seat.

  He gets a strange feeling as he passes the box.

  A feeling of calm and peace.

  He flicks an array of switches, disabling the pilot’s controls, and takes the copilot’s stick. Floodlights from the boat illuminate the bridge.

  BLINKSHIVERBLINKSHIVER.

  “Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” An screams in an attempt to banish the tics.

  He can barely hear himself through the cacophony of the helicopter.

  A dozen sailors, all carrying small arms, spread out under the floodlights and open fire.

  BLINKSHIVERBLINK.

  Tracers light up the night in multicolored arcs. An smiles. They’re too late.

  He brings the chopper up 10 meters and sticks back over the stern, flying precisely north-northeast in reverse, putting almost 87 meters between him and the boat in 2.2 seconds. He flicks the weapons on, prays that the Sea Skua missiles are armed, and presses fire.

  Blinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblink—

  The missiles scream forward and the ship’s bridge explodes in orange and black and white and An pulls back hard and spins 180 degrees and jams the stick forward and throttles up and hits 170 knots in 4.6 seconds and the ship is burning and exploding behind him and he is free, he is free. Until they scramble the fighter jets to shoot him down he is free.

  Shiverblink.

  He flies fast northwest, only meters from the surface of the water to avoid radar, and makes for the flickering lights.

  Shiverblink.

  He is free.

  Blink.

  Free.

  And I will also declare unto you what is written concerning the pride of PHARAOH. MOSES did as God commanded him, and turned his rod into a serpent; and PHARAOH commanded the magicians, the sorcerers, to do the same with their rods. A
nd they made their rods into three serpents which, by means of magic, wriggled before MOSES and AARON, and before PHARAOH and the nobles of EGYPT. And the rod of MOSES swallowed up the rods of the magicians, for these deceivers had worked magic for the sight of the eyes of men. Now that which happeneth through the word of God overcometh every magic that can be wrought. And no one can find him to be evil, for it is the Holy Spirit Who guideth and directeth him that believeth with an upright heart without negligence.

  HILAL IBN ISA AL-SALT, EBEN IBN MOHAMMED AL-JULAN

  Church of the Covenant, Kingdom of Aksum, Northern Ethiopia

  Many Ethiopians and Eritreans and Somalis and Djiboutis and Sudanese believe that the Ark of the Covenant is kept in a cube-shaped concrete building in the Ethiopian city of Aksum, close to the Eritrean border. The building, which is behind a high iron fence and has a small Islamic-style cupola, is called the Chapel of the Tablet at the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion. A single ward attends it. It is in plain view for all to see, and everyone knows what is inside.

  Everyone is wrong.

  Eben ibn Mohammed al-Julan doesn’t even know what’s in the chapel. It’s not that he lacks the authority to find out—it’s simply that he doesn’t care.

  Because he knows where the ark truly rests.

  All the initiated members of the line of Aksum know, and have known for millennia.

  They know because the Makers decreed them to be the Keepers of the Ark.

  They have been its guardians since the fateful year of 597 BCE, when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem, razing the Temple of Solomon. It was in the dead of night on 30 Shebat. Nebuchadnezzar II, who was an incarnation of Ea the Corrupted, and his invading horde was less than two miles from the temple. As they advanced, Ebenezer Abinadab and three other Keepers covered the ark in blue linen, took hold of its acacia poles, and lifted. It weighed 358.13 pounds, just as it always had, ever since Moses and Aaron finished building it and the Maker who had spoken to Moses on Mount Sinai had placed his covenant inside.

  Ebenezer and the Keepers walked out of the temple, put the ark in a covered cart drawn by a jet-black ox with gilt horns, and drove east across the desert and over the Sinai to Raithu, where they slaughtered the ox and salted his flesh for food and carried the ark onto a small wooden galley to be sailed south on the Red Sea. They took it back on land at Ghalib. These four men, heads down, backs strong, hands never touching any part of the ark save the poles (instant death was the punishment for such a transgression), moved overland on foot for many miles and many weeks. They only moved at night, and avoided all contact with people.

  They avoided people out of kindness and respect for life.

  For any human—man or woman, babe or elder—who happened to see this sacred caravan of the world’s most esteemed travelers was stricken immediately blind and had his or her mind poisoned with raving, blabbering, slithering madness. Ebenezer saw this phenomenon seven times over the course of their 136-day voyage, recording each instance in his journal, and each was more horrifying than the last.

  Eventually, Ebenezer and his companions reached their destination in what is now northern Ethiopia. They put the ark in a thick stand of cedar trees, erected the tabernacle around it, making it safe from wandering eyes, and convened with the esteemed members of the line. The Aksumite Uncorrupted Brotherhood. All the living ex-Players plus the current Player as well, a 14-year-old boy named Haba Shiloh Galead.

  The underground temples had already been constructed, if not yet converted to churches—the Makers had seen to their creation when the Aksumite line had been chosen for Endgame thousands of years before—and the ark was taken nine levels down, to the deepest and most secure chamber.

  This room is the Kodesh Hakodashim.

  Once the ark was in place, the entrance to the Kodesh Hakodashim was backfilled by Haba himself with stone and dirt and glimmering rocks, so that for over 2,600 years the only way to reach it has been through a crawl space just big enough for a man to drag himself through on his elbows.

  Which is precisely what Eben ibn Mohammad al-Julan is doing right now. Crawling along the well-worn tunnel on his calloused elbows toward the ark.

  Crawling there to do something no person has ever done in the history of history.

  He thinks of Hilal as he moves. The Player is weaned from morphine and walking and talking, although the latter causes him much pain. Eben left him in his room, sitting in a chair, staring into a mirror. Hilal’s injuries have afflicted him with a twisted form of vanity. This is new to Hilal. In spite of his previous and unequivocal beauty, he was never vain. But now he cannot stop looking at his face, and is especially smitten with his red eye and its white pupil.

  “The world looks different through it,” Hilal said just before Eben left him. The Player’s voice was raspy, as if his throat were full of ash.

  Eben asked, “How so?”

  “It looks . . . darker.”

  “It is darker, my Player.”

  “Yes. You are right.” At last, Hilal looked away from his reflection, turning that red eye on Eben. “When can I Play again, Master?”

  Eben has given up on telling Hilal not to call him “Master” anymore.

  Old habits die hard.

  “Soon. You were right about the Event. It could have been prevented. Furthermore, the keplers intervened.”

  “They are not supposed to,” Hilal replied bitterly.

  “No.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “You are going to keep Playing, but I want to see if we can gain an advantage first. Perhaps you can push back at the keplers, as well as do something that will help you deal with the others.”

  “You’re going to open the ark . . .”

  “Yes, Player. I’ll be back. Rest. You’re going to need your energy soon.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  And Eben left.

  That was 27 minutes ago.

  He is five meters from the end of the tunnel.

  Four.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  Knock-knock.

  The leaden hatch swings into the room, and Eben pushes forward, tumbling into the chamber.

  There is no graceful way to enter the Kodesh Hakodashim.

  Like the ark it houses, the Kodesh Hakodashim is of specific dimensions. It is 30 feet long, 10 feet high, and 10 feet wide. Every angle in the room—where wall meets floor, wall meets wall, and wall meets ceiling—is a precise 90 degrees. The earthen walls are covered in thick panels of lead, and the lead is leafed in random-length strips of silver and gold. The chamber is lit by a self-powered and undying light of Maker origin, shaped like an inverted umbrella, that hangs from the center of the ceiling. The light gives off an even and pinkish glow with an unwavering 814 lumens.

  Two-thirds down the long wall is a curtain of blue and red. In the 10' x 10' x 10' area this curtain creates sits the Ark of the Covenant with the Makers.

  The hatch was opened by one of two Nethinim. The one who didn’t open the hatch offers a hand to help Eben stand.

  “No thank you, brother,” he says, working his way to his feet. “Same-El, Ithamar,” Eben says. The two men are in their early 30s. Ithamar is an ex-Player, Same-El a trainer in industrial chemistry and Surma-style stick fighting.

  “Master al-Julan,” they say in unison.

  Eben holds up a hand and does something he has never done before—he closes the hatch and turns the bolt that seals the room.

  He turns to the Nethinim.

  “It is time?” Same-El asks, his voice shaking.

  “Yes, brother. You two have the honor.”

  Ithamar’s eyes widen; Same-El’s shoulders shudder. Both look as if they are about to buckle from fear.

  But Eben knows better.

  Opening the ark is an esteemed honor for the Keepers. The highest honor.

  Ithamar breaks all protocol and grabs Eben’s hand and tugs it like a child.

  “Can it really
be that we are so lucky?” Same-El asks.

  “Yes, brother.”

  “We will see what Uncle Moses last saw?” Ithamar asks. “Touch what he alone was allowed to touch?”

  “If the ark allows, yes. But you know the risks, brothers.”

  Yes, the risks.

  The Aksumites know all the tales and more. How the ark, if opened, will smite even the most ardent of adherents mercilessly and without fail. How it will unleash hellfire upon the Earth, and pestilence, and untold death. How it will run rivers of blood and scorch the sky and poison the very air, since opening it is not the will of the Makers.

  The power inside is God’s and God’s alone.

  Not anymore.

  God be damned, Eben thinks.

  “We are ready, Master,” Same-El says.

  “Good, my brother. When the Aksumite line survives the end of ends, you will be remembered among our greatest heroes. Both of you.” He looks the men in the eyes, embraces them, kisses them, smiles with them, and then helps them prepare.

  The Nethinim untie and remove their bejeweled breastplates. Ithamar hangs his on a peg and Eben takes Same-El’s and pulls it over his torso, a rectangle of 12 wooden blocks attached to one another with iron metal hoops, each set with a colorful and smooth oval stone, all of them different hues.

  The Breastplate of Aaron.

  Same-El ties it tight for Eben.

  It—plus his faith—will be his only protection.

  Ithamar pours holy water from a pitcher into a wooden bowl and kneels. Same-El kneels next to him. They take turns washing their hands and arms and faces, their dark, wet skin reflecting the pinkish light in swirling patterns. Eben’s head is already spinning.

  He envies these two men, even if they do end up being sacrificed.

  No, because they will end up being sacrificed.

  They remove their robes and hang them on the wall and stand, naked, anticipating what is to come.

  Eben hugs and kisses each of them one last time. The two men face each other and slap their own thighs until they are red. When they are finished, they slap their stomachs and their chests. They grab each other by the shoulders and yell at each other the names of their fathers and their fathers’ fathers and their fathers’ fathers’ fathers. They invoke Moses and Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and ask for forgiveness.