by James Frey
Eben asks the same for both blessed men.
Finally, without looking at Eben, Same-El and Ithamar smile and turn toward the curtain. Holding hands, they go forward. Eben turns away and walks to the hatch and presses his knees into it and closes his eyes and covers his ears and waits.
It takes one minute and 16 seconds for the screaming to commence.
It is not joyful or enlightened. It is terrifying. These are two strong men, some of the strongest in the entire line, and they are crying like babes being torn by wild beasts from their mothers’ breasts.
Seventeen seconds later the air at Eben’s back becomes hot, and he can hear the curtain whipping and snapping like an untethered sail in a tempest.
The screams continue, they are desperate, tearing, shrill, final.
Then the light comes, so bright the lids of his squinting eyes turn as orange as the sun, and Eben is slammed into the wall by a heavy wind and he cannot move. His nose is smashed against the wall, which heats up like a stovetop, and he smells his own flesh cooking and hears his own heart beating faster than it’s ever beaten, like it’s going to sing out of his chest, and he too is going to die.
And still the screams, weaving the horror together like a searing thread.
Then darkness, and the air sucks back like a vacuum and the curtain’s metal rings clatter and clank and Eben, eyes still closed, tears freezing in air suddenly turned frigid, has to step back with one foot and then the other to steady himself. His robes pull toward the ark so hard that he thinks they will be torn from his body, or will spread out around him like fabric wings and fly him backward into the howling void.
A full three minutes and 49 seconds after it began, there is silence.
Stillness.
Eben peels his hands from his ears. They are clammy, his fingers stiff, as if he has been gripping something with all his might for hours upon hours. He tries to open his eyes, but they’re crusted shut. He digs his fingers at them, wiping away crystals of ice and gobs of yellow, congealed tears.
He blinks. He can see.
He snaps his fingers. He can hear.
He stamps his feet. He can feel.
The pinkish light of the room is unchanged. He looks at the shiny wall, only centimeters from his face, striped with gold and silver. It is unchanged. He can see his splotchy, imperfect reflection there, just as before.
He breathes.
Breathes and breathes.
Holds his breath and turns.
The room is utterly undisturbed. The lamp hangs from the ceiling on its slender rod. The low gilt table, with the bowl and the pitcher, is on his right. The robes hang on the pegs on the wall. The jeweled breastplate from antiquity that Ithamar wore hangs there too.
The curtain is as before—straight and bright and clean.
“Same-El? Ithamar?” Eben asks.
No answer.
He steps forward.
He reaches the curtain.
He drags his fingertips across it.
He closes his eyes and pushes his hand through the parting and walks in.
He opens his eyes.
And there it is. The Ark of the Covenant, golden, two and one half cubits long, one and one half cubits high, one and one half cubits deep, the mercy seat lifted free and leaning against the wall, the cherubim on top facing each other in timeless reproach.
The only sign that Same-El and Ithamar ever existed are two fist-sized piles of gray ash on the floor, precisely two meters apart.
Eben stands on his tiptoes and tries to see past the leading edge of the ark and into the bottom.
But he cannot see.
He edges closer.
And there. Inside, a ceramic urn coiled in copper wire. A stone tablet without any markings. A wrinkle of black silk pushed into one corner.
And in the middle of the ark two black cobras, looped over each other in a figure eight, sleek and vigorous, chasing and nibbling at each other’s tails.
Eben reaches down and touches the edge of the ark. He is not smitten, not blinded, not driven mad.
He pushes his knees against it and leans forward and grabs a snake in each hand. As soon as his flesh touches theirs, they harden and straighten and transform into wooden rods, each a meter long, and each tipped with a metal snake head on one end and a golden spike on the other.
The Rod of Aaron.
The Rod of Moses.
He slips one under his sash.
He holds the other.
Eben kneels and reaches for the tablet and turns it over with a thump.
It is blank on both sides.
Eben huffs and his heart feels hollow. This is the covenant with the Makers.
A blank stone tablet.
Curse them.
He doesn’t dare open the urn, which is without doubt the manna machine. The Aksumites will guard it—having a machine that potentially makes food might come in handy after the Event, so long as they can figure out how to work it—but they don’t need it yet.
All that’s left is the crumpled pile of black silk.
Eben pushes the silk aside with the cane, and there—there it is.
He leans over and picks it up. Turns it over in his hand. Runs his fingers over it.
He shakes his head in disbelief.
Knock-knock.
Someone is at the hatch.
Eben spins and crosses the Kodesh Hakodashim. He opens the latch and lets the person on the other side push it inward.
Hilal pokes his disfigured head into the chamber. “Well, Master? I couldn’t just sit there and wait.”
“You won’t believe it.”
“Is it open?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“Same-El and Ithamar.”
“Did they survive?”
“No.”
“God take them.”
“Yes, my Player. God take them.”
“And what was in it?”
“These,” Eben says, indicating the snakelike rods. “They are living weapons. The rods of Aaron and Moses, the consuming snakes, the prime creators, the ouroboros. Our symbols of uncorruption, the hunters of Ea. Even if our line never finds the Corrupted One, the canes will serve you well in Endgame.”
“And what else? What of the covenant?”
“There is no covenant, Player. The tablet was blank.”
Hilal looks to the side. Through clenched teeth he asks, “Was there more, Master?”
“Yes, Player. And that is what you won’t believe.”
Eben holds it out and Hilal looks.
It is a slender sheath of black metal the size of a large smartphone, curved slightly and etched in one corner with a glyph.
Eben hands it to Hilal, and as soon as the Player of the 144th line touches it, it glows to life.
Hilal looks at Eben.
Eben looks at Hilal.
“To Endgame, my Player.”
“To Endgame, Master.”
AN LIU
Over the English Channel, heading 0° 12' 56"
Shiver.
He is free.
But exactly where he is free he does not know.
He inspects the instrument panel of the Lynx, locates the navigation system and the autopilot. Punches a few buttons on the touch screen and sees the English Channel. The lights to the north are Dover. He does not want to return to England, not ever, not ever blinkSHIVERblink ever blinkSHIVER ever blinkblinkSHIVERBLINKBLINKBLINK not ever.
An punches himself in the cheek to knock away the tics.
It works. “Chiyoko Takeda,” he whispers. “Chiyoko Takeda.”
Blood drips from his nose.
Shiver.
He blows out his cheeks. The adrenaline from the escape dissipates. The pain soaked into every cubic centimeter of his head revs like an engine.
He grabs the stick and arcs the Lynx low over the water, until his heading is 202˚13' 35". He passes the still-burning destroyer three kilometers to the east, and prays that they don’t see him
and that their guns are disabled, or that they’re too distracted by the burning ship to even bother with the guns.
And that’s when he notices a section of the controls that he isn’t familiar with, and realizes why the chopper was taking off dark, and why he is not at the moment being shot out of the air by a pair of F/A-18s.
It took off dark because it could.
The strange controls are a stealth array, and they are already active.
An can use this bird to disappear.
Blink. Shiver.
Why would stealth be active in the first place? If he had been on the Lynx as their prisoner, that would have made sense—he is a Player of Endgame, one of the deadliest people on the planet—but it was scrambling to take off before he’d even reached the flight deck.
So why take off dark?
Blink. Shiver. Blink.
And then he lurches forward, as if someone hit him in the back of the neck.
The metal box in the cargo hold.
The metal box the size of a coffin.
CHIYOKO TAKEDA.
An brings the chopper up 50 meters to keep a safe distance from the water and activates the autopilot, punching in a new heading of 140° 22' 07".
He spins out of the copilot’s seat and lands right in front of the box.
Shiver.
He takes a step forward and places his hands on it.
He doesn’t have to open it to know.
He falls forward on top of the casket, his ear and jaw cold on the metal, his arms draped over the sides.
“Chiyoko Takeda.”
The tics have stopped.
He stands, the internal world of the helicopter loud and pressing in on all sides, pain drilling the wound on his head, and he gets his fingers under the lid. It comes up more easily than he expects. He flips it away and peers inside. In the faint light he can just make out the wavy reflections of a rubber body bag. Next to the body bag is a small stuff sack.
An snatches a flashlight from a charging dock by the door and flicks it on.
The body bag looks as if it contains a broad-shouldered child.
An grabs the stuff sack first. Works his fingers into the cinched opening and pulls it open. A black analog watch, a leather sleeve containing assorted shuriken, a small knife, a ball of black silk, an eyeglasses case, some inch-long paper tubes that look like straws, a small plastic container. A thumb drive. A pen. A thin leather billfold.
Chiyoko’s things.
He closes the sack and sets it next to his feet.
The body bag.
He takes a breath and hooks the metal hoop of the zipper with his finger and slides it down 43 centimeters. The flashlight tumbles into the casket. It shines hard on the face of Chiyoko Takeda. One of her eyes is open and lifeless, dry, the pupil large and black. He touches it with his fingers and closes it. Her skin is pale and tinged blue. Purple capillaries crack over her right cheek in a fractal of jagged lines. Her lips are the color of the sea. They’re parted slightly. An sees the dark within, and the thin line of her front incisors. Her hair, black and straight and unchanged, has been combed and pinned away from her face. He puts his hands on her cheeks. Runs his hands over her neck and her collarbones and over the balls of her shoulders, covered in a pale green cotton hospital gown.
An whimpers.
He collapses into the box and his face lands on hers and the moonlight streams through the windows of the darkened chopper churning south-southwest to Normandy and he is blinking back tears and he can see the black filigrees of his wet eyelashes like a shroud of lace that is draped over him, over her, over them.
He works his arms under the rubber bag and squeezes. Hugs her.
“Chiyoko,” he says.
A beeping sound from the nav computer.
An kisses Chiyoko’s blue lips, her eyes, the little saddle where her eyebrows and nose meet. He smells her hair—it smells alive, unlike the rest of her—and he pirouettes into the copilot’s chair. He takes the stick and throttles back, looks out the port window past the pilot’s slumped body.
There, 500 meters away, is France. The beach and land rising above it is dark, hardly populated. Not far away, he knows, is the town of Saint-Lô. And in Saint-Lô is a Shang resupply cache. The world is littered with them. He just happens to be near one.
He is lucky.
He brings the Lynx to a hover and punches a new course into the autopilot but doesn’t activate it. He pulls on a life vest but will wait until he’s in the water to inflate it. He grabs a dry bag. Throws in the stuff sack of Chiyoko’s things, four MREs, the pilot’s Browning Hi-Power Mark III, extra ammo, a field kit, a GPS, a headlamp. Takes the pilot’s knife. Grabs another life vest and a coil of rope. Cuts a long section and ties one end to a loop on the dry bag. Ties the middle to the 2nd vest, which he inflates. Ties the remaining end to his waist.
He doesn’t seal the dry bag, not yet. He has to put some more things in it first.
He hits a red button with the side of his fist, and the starboard door slides open. Air, cool and fresh and salty, rushes in.
Before jumping into the water, he kneels over Chiyoko, grabs a fistful of her hair, and holds up the knife.
“I am sorry, my love. But I know you understand.”
The tics are gone.
He brings the knife down and cuts. He starts with her hair.
iv
SARAH ALOPAY, JAGO TLALOC
London Underground Tunnel near Gloucester Road
They’re running. Sarah is in the lead and Jago has made it a point of pride to catch her. He pushes himself, pumping his legs as fast they’ll go, and he still can’t touch the Cahokian.
No one has followed them.
Sarah’s elbows swing and her shoulders sway as she clutches the rifle in her hands. The only light in the tunnel comes from the train signals, red and green at intervals, and the headlamp strapped to Sarah’s forehead. It’s on the weakest setting, only 22 lumens, a red filter over the white plastic.
The red halo of light bounces along the walls. Jago finds it strangely mesmerizing.
“SAS, you think?” Sarah yells over her shoulder, not even out of breath.
“Sí. Or MI6.”
“Or both.”
“Four at the door, two at the window, sniper support.” Jago counts them off. “How many you think in the van out front? Or at HQ?”
“Three or four in a mobile unit. Twenty or thirty at ops.”
“Probably a drone too.”
“Probably. Which means—”
“They saw us come in here.”
“Yep.” Sarah skids to a halt. Water pools around the soles of her shoes. The tunnel forks. “Which way?”
Jago stops next to her, their shoulders touching. He memorized these tunnels as part of their escape plan. Went over it with Sarah back in the hotel. Maybe she wasn’t listening. Maybe her mind was elsewhere, like it’s been these last days.
“We talked about this, remember?” Jago says.
“Sorry.”
“North goes to the High Street Kensington station, which is basically outdoors. South is a service bypass,” he reminds her.
“Then south.”
“Quizás. But these tunnels will be crawling with agents soon. It’s only been”—he checks his watch—“four minutes and three seconds since we came underground. We might be able to make the station, get on the next train, and disappear.”
“We’d have to split up.”
“Sí. We’d meet at the rendezvous. You remember the rendezvous?”
“Yes, Feo.”
They both know this is imperative. Renzo, who’s unaware of this little hiccup, will be at the airstrip in the afternoon to pick them up. This was their plan. But now that Sarah and Jago have been made, they need to get out of the UK ASAFP. Every extra second they spend in the tunnels will be an extra second that the authorities can use to catch them.
Jago points to the rightmost tunnel. “If we go to the service bypass, it’ll take us
longer.”
“Why?”
Jago sighs. He’s disturbed by how much she’s forgotten, or how much she didn’t listen to in the first place. Players don’t forget or miss things, especially things like escape routes.
“Because,” he says, “we’d have to use the—”
A slight breeze cuts off Jago.
“Train,” Sarah says casually.
Without another word, Sarah takes off into the north fork. Decision made. The wind picks up at her back, the tunnel begins to glow. She sees one of the cutouts used by workers to avoid moving trains. She dashes to it and slides in. It’s big enough only for her, but directly opposite is another. Jago fits into it just as the cacophony of the approaching train fills their ears.
The vacuum riding the front car takes Sarah’s breath and pulls her hair around her neck. Her eyes are level with those of the seated passengers on the Tube. Sarah picks out a few in the blur of glass and metal and light that passes less than a foot from her face. A dark-skinned woman with a red scarf, a sleeping elderly man with a bald spot, a young woman still dressed in last night’s party clothes.
Regular unsuspecting people.
The train is gone. Sarah gathers her hair together and remakes her ponytail.
“Let’s go.”
As they approach the station, the light in the tunnel brightens. She switches off her headlamp. The station comes into view. The train that just passed them pulls away from the platform. From their low angle they see the heads of a few people making for the exits.
They go to the short set of stairs that leads to the platform, being careful to stay in the shadows. Sarah raises her hand, points out the cameras closest to them, one of them hidden behind a grate.
“They’re going to see us once we’re on the platform.”
“Sí. We wait here for the next one.”
Jago unscrews the small bolt securing the scope to his rifle. He belly-crawls up the steps, as close to the platform as possible without appearing on camera, and peers through the scope.
Just the usual early morning scene. A few people waiting, swiping at smartphones, reading tabloids and books, staring at nothing. A businessman appears in the middle of the platform. Brimmed hat and dark shoes, a rolled newspaper tucked under his arm. He looks disappointed. He’s just missed his train.