by James Frey
Marrs howls, “Ha-ha! Gotcha, you bastard! Nest is clear!”
“Nice!” Aisling says. The remaining green dot zigs and zags like a confused rat in an ever-shifting maze.
“Almost on her!” Jordan says.
The green dot turns due west.
But then it stops.
And disappears.
“What the?” Aisling says as she and McCloskey burst out of the woods right by the machine gun. Three bodies lie there. Pop jogs out of the woods on the other side.
“She’s underground!” Jordan says. “Come ’ere!”
Pop joins Aisling and McCloskey as they run forward. Aisling gives her grandfather a concerned look, but his eyes and a wan smile say that he’s fine, that he’s had a lot worse.
Thank the Makers, Aisling thinks.
After a few more seconds they reach Jordan. He’s inspecting the ground with a small handheld device, a discarded and racked PPK near his feet.
“Where the hell is she?” Aisling asks as she skids to a stop next to him.
“A tunnel. Right here. She wasn’t armed.”
Sure enough, they see the outlines of a metal trapdoor in the ground.
Aisling kneels next to Jordan. “Was it Shari?”
“Couldn’t tell,” Jordan answers. He looks at his device. “I’m not detecting any bomb residue.”
Aisling thrusts her rifle into McCloskey’s hands and draws her sword. She holds it in her left hand, point down like a dagger, and unholsters a Beretta pistol on her thigh. She brings her hands together and says, “Open it. I’m going in.”
Pop places a hand on her forearm. “One of us shou—”
“No, one of you shouldn’t. I’m the Player. This is the way it’s gotta be. Open the damn door, Jordan.”
Jordan doesn’t say anything. Just grabs the iron ring and lifts. A hole in the ground, three feet across, eight feet deep, a tunnel, weak orange light inside. “Radio will work down there but not your HUD,” he says.
Aisling pulls off her helmet and hands it to Jordan. “Won’t need it.” She peers down. “See you in a minute.”
And then she jumps in and disappears.
Tiwanaku
No one knows what the native inhabitants of this ruin called their impressive city-state. No one knows because the people are gone, vanished, spirited away.
What is known is that they flourished over 2,000 years ago, though some maintain that their culture, and certainly the roots of their culture, go back many thousands of years before that.
They were masters of agriculture. They conquered not through war but through soft power: culture, religion, trade. They ritually sacrificed men to their gods, disemboweling them and quartering them alive and leaving their remains for the people to see and marvel at atop their high-stepped pyramid.
They worshipped Viracocha, who looked over them from the lintel of the Gateway of the Sun, and another god whose name is unknown, a being with 12 faces, who is always depicted as being worshipped by 30 faces. The god of the seasons, of the march of time, of the calendar, of the wheeling stars and the solar disc.
And they were grandmasters of stone. Cutting exact and intricate angles from andesite, demonstrating their advanced knowledge of geometry and, by the placement of their stones, the stars and moon and the planets and the Earth itself.
No one knows how they quarried their rock, or transported it over great distances without use of the wheel, or worked it into such intricate and massive structures.
No one knows how they learned all of this, or who taught them.
But some.
But some—somewhere, sometime—some do.
MACCABEE ADLAI, BAITSAKHAN, SARAH ALOPAY, JAGO TLALOC, RENZO
Tiwanaku, Bolivia
“What’re they doing?” Baitsakhan asks, bouncing in his seat. His anger over not being allowed to ram the others into vehicular oblivion has faded, but he’s still itching to kill.
They took the pickup off-road north of the monument and parked it next to a low rise of earth, obscuring the truck from three sides.
Maccabee leans out the passenger window with the binoculars. “They’re talking. Getting weapons.”
“What kind?”
“The usual. Guns. Knives. Looks like the Cahokian has a hatchet. Don’t see any explosives.”
“I hope the hatchet’s sharp. I’ll scalp her with it.”
“That’d be fitting.”
“Scalping an enemy is always fitting,” Baitsakhan says, apparently unaware that some Native Americans were famous for taking scalps after a battle. He flexes his robotic fingers. “After I have her hair, I will crush her skull and brains in my new hand.”
“Wonderful,” Maccabee says sarcastically. He lowers the binoculars. “We’ll go on foot. If we stay to the west, we’ll be at their backs. Once they reach the temple, we can skirt east and get close, using the road and the ruins for cover. Then we can surprise them.”
“How do you even know they’re going to the temple?”
“I guessed.” Maccabee has had about enough. He can’t understand why Baitsakhan knows so little of their ancient history, of the Makers, of the origins of humanity. “This is Endgame, Baitsakhan,” he tries to explain. “And this place might have been the greatest city ever built and used by the Makers.”
“To do what?”
“You really don’t know?”
“No.”
“To visit us. To teach us. To change us. And to launch themselves back into the cosmos.”
“I don’t like to think about those things.”
“No kidding. Now let’s get off our butts and do the things you actually do like to think about.”
“Yessss . . .”
Maccabee slips the orb into his backpack and jumps out. Swings around to look in the bed of the truck. A fat black fly skitters over the dried blood left by the Tlaloc mercenary he killed.
Buzzes.
Feeds.
Maccabee unzips a black duffel bag. Opens it. The fly takes off. Inside are guns. All new. All perfect. All ready. They tool up. They each have their ancient blades, forged in antiquity, wielded by hundreds of ex-Players over the years, their peerless edges combining for 7,834 kills. They each take a Glock 20 and an HK G36. Rigged next to each rifle’s scope is a compact parabolic mic that has a range of 200 meters. Maccabee hands Baitsakhan an earpiece, takes one for himself. They turn them on. Test the mics.
“One two, one two.”
They check out.
They leave the truck and bend low and start toward their prey.
Jago and Sarah and Renzo approach the ruin from the southeast, passing the massive Akapana step pyramid on their right. Cut and dressed stones are strewn around the site as if dropped from the hands of giants. Everything but the sky and clouds is a shade of light red or ocher or dusty yellow.
“You should see it in the summer,” Jago says. “The ground is carpeted in green grass and bright yellow flowers.”
Sarah wishes she could.
They walk farther and come upon the wall of the old temple. It’s a patchwork of red sandstone cut into squares and rectangles.
They reach the corner of the wall, only seven feet high, and Jago holsters his pistol and grabs the stone and climbs, as agile and effortless as a cat. Sarah and Renzo do the same, Sarah just as gracefully, Renzo with more effort.
Sarah expects the other side of the wall to also be seven feet tall and for them to drop into an enclosure, but instead it’s only a few inches to the ground. The wall is more of a retaining structure than a barrier.
They find themselves at the corner of a wide courtyard, 425 feet east to west and 393 feet north to south. The ground is level and clean but covered in a fine dusting of red dirt. Footprints from tourists and guides are everywhere, and also from the small animals that inhabit this place at night. To their right is a tall carved-stone statue surrounded by a low chain-link fence. The statue is of a man with rectilinear features, his feet together, his hands on his stomac
h, his block-like head topped with a hat.
Jago points at it. “The Monolith of the Frail, or the Ponce Stela. And down there”—he indicates the wide courtyard-within-a-courtyard sunken in the center—“is the Kalasasaya. The central temple and meeting point of ancient man and the Makers.”
Sarah takes a few steps forward. “It’s pretty impressive, Jago. The Cahokians don’t have anything like this. Aside from a few earthen mounds, it’s all been buried or lost.”
Lost, Jago thinks, recalling the fate of the Cahokians. Lost and destroyed in punishment for your line’s insolence. No, its bravery.
Jago shrugs. He can’t bring this up now. “It isn’t the Great White Pyramid or anything, but yeah. It’s pretty impressive.”
Renzo walks north. “Come on. No time for an ancient alien architecture lesson.”
Jago nods and points across the courtyard. Sarah follows with her eyes. “We’re going there,” the Olmec says. “The Gateway of the Sun.”
Maccabee and Baitsakhan drop to the dirt and crawl behind a berm.
Baitsakhan says, “I don’t think they saw us.”
“No. If they had, we’d already be fighting.”
Baitsakhan brings his rifle to the firing position. Sights through the scope. “One, two, three, done. Pop pop pop. Take kill win.”
Maccabee pushes Baitsakhan’s rifle’s muzzle into the dirt. “Not yet.”
Baitsakhan blows out his cheeks. “Fine. But one of these days we’re going to do something my way.”
“Patience,” Maccabee says, knowing it’s like telling a tornado to be patient. “We have to see what they see.” He clicks the power switch on the parabolic mic mounted on his rifle. “And hear what they hear.”
AISLING KOPP
Underground Tunnel, Valley of Eternal Life, Sikkim, India
The air is warm and damp. The dirt walls are close, the ceiling low, the ground uneven.
Aisling walks straight for 54 paces. A trio of pipes run the length of the wall next to her ankles. The pipes give off heat. There are small lightbulbs on one wall at head height every 15 feet, their looped filaments giving off a pleasant orange glow. When she passes through these illuminated sections, she sees many footprints in the dirt.
But she sees the newest prints too.
A small foot in smooth-soled shoes. Light. Unburdened. But hasty.
Aisling moves quickly. Maybe it is Shari Chopra.
The tunnel turns slightly to the left, revealing a larger room. The left wall is carved from the rock of the mountain, and it extends into the room 12 feet. On the far side of the room is a tangle of larger pipes, valves, and wheels. This must be some kind of way station for whatever they’re pumping into or out of the fortress—heat, water, sewage. The room opens to her right. If the Harappan stopped and is waiting to ambush her, this is where the trouble will be. Aisling knows it, and the woman she’s chasing knows it too.
Aisling crouches and advances slowly. More of the room comes into view. More pipes pretzeling around one another on the back wall. A bright fluorescent light on the ceiling. No sign of the woman.
Aisling is at the edge of the tunnel. She spins to clear the room. Aims. Is ready to fire.
But no one is there.
A dead end.
“You see her topside?” Aisling asks over her radio as she continues to sweep the room.
“Negative. Nothing,” Jordan answers.
“I don’t—”
She’s cut off by a clank and then a loud hissing sound as a plume of white steam shoots from one of the pipes. She ducks and flinches, shielding her face with her shoulder. She’s scalded on her ear and part of her neck but not badly.
As she spins away from the steam, something hard and metal smashes across her hands. The pommel of the sword and the top of the Beretta take the brunt, but it still hurts like hell. The gun sails into the tunnel and the sword falls too, landing point-first in the dirt and standing upright.
The next swing is aimed at her face. Aisling spins away from the steam and into the room, backed up on the far wall.
Trapped.
There, emerging from the shadows and the thicket of pipes, is an older woman. She blocks the only escape. She wields a pipe roughly the size of a baseball bat. The woman—mid-60s, but strong and vital and substantial-looking—lunges at Aisling, swinging again, this time for the body.
Aisling’s only option is to duck, but that would mean she would get hit in the head instead of the ribs. So she raises her arm and lets the pipe slam into her. She feels two ribs crack, even through her bulletproof vest, and she’s going to be bruised as hell, but she’s had worse.
At the moment of impact, she clamps her arm over the pipe, pinning it against her side.
With her free hand, Aisling reaches across her body, pulls a knife from its sheath on her left forearm, and slashes at the woman.
But the older woman is fast.
Very fast.
Without letting go of her end of the pipe, the woman slaps Aisling’s knife hand. The blade drops to the floor.
Aisling snags another knife from a sheath on her thigh. Stabs forward.
This one finds flesh. Aisling buries it deep in the woman’s shoulder.
Aisling tries to twist the blade, but the woman jerks backward and takes it with her. It hangs out of her shoulder. She doesn’t release her end of the pipe.
She doesn’t even cry out.
Instead, the woman smiles.
She says, “You won’t find her, Player. You won’t take Sky Key.”
The woman pushes the pipe, trying to back Aisling against the wall. “I’m not here to take Sky Key. I’m here to destroy it.”
The woman seethes. “You mean you’re here to kill a little girl?”
Aisling’s foreboding hits her again, but she beats it back. “Yes. That’s . . . that’s exactly what I mean.”
The woman spits, “You’re a monster!”
She pushes into the pipe with all her strength, which is more than Aisling can handle. She releases her end and squirts between the woman and the wall, making a break for her Falcata. She ducks instinctively when she hears the wet sound of ripping flesh just before her knife flies overhead. She slides onto the dirt floor, grabs her sword from the entryway, and pops back up.
The woman is right on her, swinging the pipe wildly.
Aisling is quicker this time. She parries the pipe and plants her back foot and thrusts. The blade slides into the woman effortlessly, through skin and ribs and heart and out her back.
Aisling tightens her grip and pushes the blade all the way to the hilt.
They are face-to-face. The woman drops the pipe. It clunks on the ground. The steam hisses. Blood flows from her mouth and nose.
“I’ll see you in hell,” the woman chokes.
Aisling’s green eyes are wide. She thinks of the girl she’s going to kill, of the haughtiness of the Makers, of her father’s madness and his prescience, of the unfairness of it all, of the supreme perversion of Endgame.
“No, you won’t,” Aisling seethes. “We’re already here.”
xvi
SHARI CHOPRA, JAMAL CHOPRA, JOVINDERPIHAINU JHA, PARU JHA
Operations Room, , Valley of Eternal Life, Sikkim, India
“Helena!” Shari cries, her chest heaving, her knees shaking. Helena and Shari didn’t always see eye to eye, but she was an esteemed member of Harappan line and Shari loved her.
“I will kill the Celt! I will kill her myself!”
The rest are dumbstruck.
They stare at a very large flat-screen bolted to the stone wall. Its image is subdivided into 14 sections. Each subdivision on the screen shows the vital signs of Harappan men and women sent out to guard .
To guard Sky Key.
A set of small speakers broadcasts the audio of everything that’s happened. Shari and Jamal and Paru and Jovinderpihainu have heard it all. The explosions, the gunfire, the splintering bones, the severed limbs, the cries, the moans, the death.
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All of it on their side.
Jamal is next to Shari, his teeth clenched, his heart pounding. Jov is in a chair, straight-backed, still showing strength, not despairing. Paru leans on the desk, pushing it so hard it seems like he might crush it.
Helena’s heart rate has just flatlined.
“We’re being slaughtered,” Paru observes. “How is this happening?”
“It’s as if the Celt’s people can see us, like they know where we are,” Jamal says, his voice dripping with fury, bitterness, fear. “Chem and Nitesh were sniped before they even fired a shot!”
“And yet Helena met the Player face-to-face. She had a chance to kill Kopp,” Shari points out, her anger subsiding, her training kicking in. She allows the horror and the tragedy and the disappointment to flow through her. She does not resist. Let it flow. This is her strength. To be able to bend. She knows it. She must stay here and not give in to anger.
The others are not as resilient.
“But how are they doing it?” Shari’s father demands again.
Jov bobbles his head in the Indian fashion. “We’ve underestimated our enemies.”
“No.” Shari claps to get their attention. Her voice is already cool. She’s surprised by how quickly she’s able to compartmentalize Helena’s death. All of these Harappan deaths. “They have underestimated us. They’ve waltzed past the first two checkpoints. Next comes overconfidence. And with that comes mistakes. We will hold. They will experience death this day, I guarantee it.”
Jov nods. Shari continues. “Whatever their advantages may be, we still have the upper hand. They are but five people. We will not let the Celt murder my child.” She looks each of them in the eye and repeats, “We will hold.”
At least one of them agrees with Shari. It is Pravheet, sitting in his machine-gun nest outside the fortress. He says over the radio, “They won’t pass the Elbow. I will wait for all of them to enter that alleyway and mow them down where they stand.”