by James Frey
They swear to be true to her memory by doing everything in their power to stop Endgame.
They also check weapons, go through preflight routines on the planes, establish channels of communication. They charge satellite phones and radios, and Marrs sets up an encrypted closed channel designated Alpha Romeo Five Seven. They agree on check-in times over the coming days. Jordan shares a string of clandestine clearance codes used by spy planes so that they can safely navigate restricted airspaces. Aisling and Marrs tend to Pop, placing him safely in the plane, binding his wrists and ankles and hooking him up with the same IV cocktail they had in Shari to keep him unconscious and harmless.
Most importantly they bring Shari up to speed on their plan. They ask her who she’d like to go with and, to their surprise, she chooses Hilal.
“It can’t be Aisling,” she reasons, “and I think Sarah and Jago should go to their places alone. That leaves you, Aksumite.”
“I happily accept,” Hilal says.
“I can’t say the same. But I won’t try to kill you. I promise you that.”
“Understood. And all the same, I am pleased.”
At around four in the morning Sarah and Jago gather wood from the jungle and make a fire. Hilal and Shari join them, while Aisling, Jordan, and Marrs retire to their plane for some much-needed rest.
Sarah, Jago, Hilal, and Shari pass the rest of the night talking. Each tells of where they’ve been, who they’ve fought, who they’ve lost. Shari is reluctant to speak at first, but Sarah moves next to her and puts an arm over her shoulders and says, “It’s okay. We want to hear.” Shari takes a breath to speak but instead of words come tears, fast and hard, and for eight solid minutes she bawls and shakes and clings to Sarah because Sarah is the only one there is and she needs to cling to someone.
When she’s done crying she says weakly, “I can’t talk about them, my family. So let me speak about Big Alice Ulapala.”
She tells them about seeing Alice on the bus after the Calling, about how Shari delivered a baby right there, about how Alice helped. She told them about Alice’s special connection to Shari and about a thing Big Alice called the Dreaming. She told about how Big Alice rescued her from the Donghu, and about how Big Alice had also figured out that Little Alice was Sky Key.
She said, “I don’t know how she died, but Big Alice shouldn’t have. She should be here now, with us. She would have wanted to stop all this needless suffering too, I think.”
The other Players believe her.
When she’s finished, Sarah and Jago speak about how they escaped the Calling and decided to Play together, about meeting Chiyoko and watching her free Christopher from Maccabee and Baitsakhan, about Stonehenge and An Liu, and of course about Renzo. Jago briefly eulogizes his friend, pointing out that both he and Sarah would be dead if it weren’t for him.
As if waiting his turn, Hilal goes last. He speaks carefully about his belief in the goodness of man, and about how he came to realize that there’s something wrong with Endgame. He talks about the Ark of the Covenant and Master Eben and the men who perished when the ark was opened. He talks about the device he found in the ark. He talks about meeting Stella, and how he came to believe her. He talks about how he confronted and killed her father, Wayland Vyctory, an ancient alien also known as Ea.
And, at long last, he tells them about the book. “According to Stella, it is ten thousand years old at least, and is one of a very few artifacts here on Earth that came from the Makers’ home planet.”
“Will it help us?” Sarah asks.
“It already has,” Hilal says, before remembering that Shari is sitting right here. He looks down to the ground and says, “I used it to discover . . . to figure out why your daughter is important to Endgame.”
An awkward silence drifts over the fire. It cracks and glows. The creatures of the jungle click and whoop, and the birds call and sing, as the sky brightens with the dawn.
“Let me show it to you,” Hilal says. He goes to his plane and comes back with a large silver tome held out in both hands. He sits on the ground and places it on his lap. He traces his dark fingers over the fine cover, pointing out a coin-sized glyph tucked into the lower left corner. A pair of snakes twisted in a figure eight and devouring each other, set over an eye shape inside a circle.
“The mark of Endgame,” he says.
Then he opens the book and beckons them to come and look.
Sarah and Jago move to either side of him while Shari stands off a little. She’s not sure she wants to see the thing that exposed her child and her family to ruin. In her mind it is evil and not to be trusted.
But she is curious.
Hilal leafs through the book’s vellum-like pages. They see diagrams of ancient monuments, an alphabet of lines and dots, pages full of things that appear to be mathematical formulas, constellations and spirals and webs of complex systems that describe who-knows-what. They see long passages of indecipherable glyphs. They see graphs and line plots and sweeping arcs that describe orbits or light-year parabolas through time and space. They see a few things they recognize—monuments, details from stones and hieroglyphs, shapes like pyramids and obelisks and spheres laced with coordinate systems.
But mostly it is mystifying.
As they peruse the book’s pages Jago asks, “Stella could read this?”
Hilal shakes his head. “No. Hardly at all.”
“But you read part of it, right? To figure out what Sky Key was?” Sarah asks.
“Correct. The device I told you about translated that section, and only that section, when I pointed it at the book.”
“The device that’s busted now,” Jago says.
“Unfortunately.”
Sarah puts a finger on a passage. “And this is Maker language?”
“Yes. It is.”
“And it’s about Endgame?”
“That and much more, I would presume,” Hilal says.
“So it could help us—if we could figure out what it says?” Sarah asks again.
“Yes. Do you have an idea of how we may accomplish this?”
She shakes her head. “No, I’m just thinking out loud.”
“It’s useless, then,” Jago says.
And here Hilal holds up a finger. “Ah. It is not at all useless. Look.”
He flips to a section at the back of the book and then goes through it page by page until he stops. He plants a forefinger in the middle of the page. “Do you recognize this drawing, Sarah?”
She leans closer. The jungle animals continue their dawn symphony all around.
“Well, it’s a little different—less eroded, newer looking—but I think it’s Monks Mound.”
“That is correct.” He flips a few more pages. “And here is my line’s monument—the Temple of Yeha.” It is a stonework tower with an ornate, pyramidal roof.
He flips through more pages. They recognize the monuments for the Olmec, Nabataean, and Minoan lines, and they see other, unknown monuments for the other lines. After looking at one that looks more like a garden than a building, Hilal stops. The drawing on this page has been blotted out by an orderly series of lines.
“What’s that?” Jago asks.
“That was Stonehenge. As soon as it was destroyed, this page flickered and changed into what you see now.” He flips to another. “This was the Sumerian monument. It also was snuffed out the moment Wayland’s people destroyed it. This is a living book. Somehow connected to Earth’s innate energy. Even if we cannot understand its words, it is useful, Jago Tlaloc. It will tell us what monuments survive Abaddon, and which may fall to further destruction at the hands of Wayland’s brotherhood.”
“Good for preventing wild goose chases,” Sarah says.
“I have not heard that expression before, but if I understand, yes. No wild gooses.”
Shari leans closer too. “Where’s the Harappan monument?”
Hilal flips through a few more pages. “Dwarka, of course. It is the last one. Here—oh!”
He stops on another page that has been crossed out and effectively erased.
Shari’s shoulders slump. “I’ve lost that too, it seems.”
Hilal glances at her sideways. “Yes. I am sorry for this as well. Wayland’s men continue their work, apparently.”
“We’ll have to be ready for them as we look for Sun Key, won’t we?” Sarah asks.
“Sí. Muy listo,” Jago confirms. He likes the idea of fighting. In fact, he loves the idea of fighting.
He’s tired of talking.
He imagines the same is true for Sarah.
Shari sits back down. Jago takes the book from Hilal and pulls it into his lap and he and Sarah look through more of its strange pages. Hilal sits and looks at the sky. The morning is here now, the sky clear and bright.
He wonders what the sky looks like under threat of Abaddon. Black. Red. Torn asunder.
On fire.
And then, at that very moment, all the birds and insects and small creatures go silent, as if a predator has drawn too close. Sarah looks at her watch. Jago closes his eyes. Shari hums a prayer to herself.
The silence is deafening.
A barely perceptible tremor shakes their bodies.
A piece of wood topples over in the fire.
“That was it,” Sarah says. “That was Abaddon.”
“Sí.”
A bird of prey screeches in the jungle.
Hilal says, “It is a new and terrible world.”
And the second angel blew his trumpet,
and something like a great mountain, burning with fire,
was thrown into the sea.
AN LIU, NORI KO
Provincial Road 204 near Wakang, China
An Liu and Nori Ko wind their way out of the Himalayas, catching glimpses of the Tibetan Plateau between peaks and valleys. The geography they’re headed toward is limitless and barren. Sky and land, sky and land, sky and land.
An loves its emptiness.
Nori Ko has on a pair of headphones and fiddles with the dials of a field radio. She searches the Chinese state-run media for any news of Abaddon, but it’s useless. Most of what she finds are stations playing nationalistic songs on a loop or news programs discussing air quality and water rationing in the western half of the country. China has sealed her borders, restricted her airspace, and declared martial law in many cities until the post-impact dust clears.
“It’s like they’re plugging their ears and singing la-la-la!” Nori Ko says. “They’re treating Abaddon like it’s a Western problem that the East can simply ride out.”
“They’ll be”—SHIVERblinkblink—“They’ll be”—BLINKblink—“They’re wrong.”
“I hope they’re not. But yes—they’re wrong.”
She rolls down her window. The air is warming as the sun rises and they lose elevation.
They round a turn in the mountains and the land below opens up. Tan and brown and gray and as wide and limitless as the sea. I could stay here, An thinks.
I know, Chiyoko says. We could.
He bites his lip, trying hard not to converse with her out loud. It’s not easy. Because as far as he’s concerned, she’s here.
Next to him.
With him.
Always.
If anyone bothered us we could kill them, he says to her in his mind.
Yes, love. We could do that. Chiyoko’s voice is supple and inviting. We could be alone. We could be . . .
Happy, he thinks, finishing her thought. No people, no trouble. I could stay right here if I didn’t have to kill the Players who killed you. If I didn’t have to kill the kepler.
I know, love.
But I do.
I know, love.
ShiverBLINKBLINKBLINK
“I do,” he says out loud.
“What was that?” Nori Ko asks, pushing the headphones from her ear.
“Hmm? Oh.” He sweeps a hand over the dashboard, indicating the landscape. “Was only saying I do like this place. So empty.”
“Ah,” Nori Ko says. “It’s very—” She cuts herself short. “The channel went dead.” She spins the dial this way and that, searching more. She finds nothing at first, but then hears a few stunned voices in the studio, a producer saying, “No, no! Play the anthem!” Followed by the first bars of “March of the Volunteers.”
“I think . . . I think it’s happened, An,” she says.
“Good,” he says.
And he means it.
MACCABEE ADLAI, LITTLE ALICE CHOPRA
Hotel Shivam, Railway Station Road, Dwarka, India
Maccabee and Little Alice are in a dark hotel room in central Dwarka. Maccabee sits on the foot of the bed. Little Alice is curled up, her back pressed to his thigh, her chest rising and falling in sleep. He rests a hand on her shoulder. He watches the news on NDTV, which is about to air a live broadcast from the Indian prime minister.
The screen shows nothing more than the NDTV logo. It dips to black and the Indian governmental seal fades up. Three clocks pop up in the corner. The first reads GMT 02:26:08. The second reads IST 07:56:08. The third reads simply PA 0000 00:00:00.
The clocks tick.
Then a crackle and some voices and yes.
Here he is, in a spare wooden chair against a patterned backdrop. He looks straight into the camera and begins speaking. “Friends, Indians, fellow humans. Abaddon is down.”
The clock labeled PA begins to count forward. Maccabee understands.
Post-Abaddon.
A new age of human existence on planet Earth.
Little Alice tosses in her sleep, her lips part, her eyes dart back and forth beneath her eyelids. Maccabee mutes the television and shakes her gently. “Come on, sweetie.”
Her eyes bat open. Wet and dark.
He says, “We have to leave. Now. If we’re lucky, we’ll get to China before any of the others.”
She rubs her eyes. “Okay, Uncle.” She takes one of his large hands. She smiles. The smile of someone decades older. He can’t help but marvel at this small creature yet again.
This Sky Key that he will give to the kepler.
And when he does this, he will break his promise to Shari that he would take care of her.
Because the kepler will most likely take her. And then, who knows what he will do with the child?
Maccabee turns away. He can’t look her in her eyes.
She doesn’t seem to notice his remorse. She squeezes his hand and says, “Yes.” And then, “Let’s go.”
AISLING KOPP, SHARI CHOPRA, HILAL IBN ISA AL-SALT, SARAH ALOPAY, JAGO TLALOC, GREG JORDAN, GRIFFIN MARRS
Hidden airstrip west of Lampang, Thailand
Aisling is woken by the staccato burst of small arms coming from the jungle, followed immediately by the wail of an air horn echoing through the trees.
She pops out of her very nice bed on the very nice plane that Stella left for her and runs to the door near the cockpit. She leans out and sees the others—Hilal, Sarah, Jago, and Shari—standing at attention around a small campfire.
Another burst of gunfire.
“What was that?” Aisling yells to the others.
“The security system has been activated,” Hilal exclaims. “Wayland’s men must have followed us. It is time to fly. Now.”
Jago kicks out the campfire as the others move toward their planes, their weapons already drawn, their feet already running, their brains already coursing with adrenaline.
Aisling spins inside her plane and yanks the door shut. Jordan appears right next to her as Marrs whisks past a slumbering Pop, moving into the cockpit.
“Go time,” Aisling says.
“Good,” Jordan says, his eyebrows drawn across his forehead in a grave and unwavering line.
Outside, Jago and Sarah sprint side by side, Sarah pulling ahead with each step. She bounds up their plane’s steps and pirouettes into the cockpit, Jago right behind her. He shuts the door and seals it and joins her at the controls.
Shari follows Hilal into
their plane and both plop into the flight seats, Shari in the copilot chair.
Aisling sits next to Marrs in the cockpit of her plane and pulls on the headphones. “We’re ready,” she says. Their plane is first in line. Marrs is already pulling it onto the runway.
“You are clear, Aisling,” Hilal says. “We will talk to you at the first check-in in twenty-four hours.”
“Roger that, Hilal. Good luck.”
“And to you.”
Aisling peers out the window and sees Sarah at the controls of her plane, her hand whipping off a quick salute. Aisling returns the gesture as Marrs pushes the throttle. Their jet wash obliterates what’s left of the small campfire as the plane hurtles forward, the jungle canopy rushing overhead like an inky blur. At the midway point Aisling sees the gate they drove through the night before, its sentinel system going full bore, the swivel-mounted rifles flashing and spraying bright casings onto the ground. As they pass, there’s an explosion that takes out one of the guns, but it doesn’t matter to Aisling or Marrs or Jordan because a few seconds later the canopy breaks open to reveal the blue sky. As they hit 128 knots Marrs pulls the stick and the nose tilts up and they shoot through a hole in the jungle and they’re free.
Sarah spins up her engines and says, “Ready to fly—copy back, Hilal. You first or us?”
“You first, Sarah,” he says, and she can’t help but think that even now Hilal’s manners are impeccable. “Get on your heading as soon as possible.”
Jago takes the controls and the engines hum and their plane rounds onto the runway, the ribbon of concrete laid before them. He engages the throttle and the aircraft jolts forward. As they zip past the break in the trees that leads to the road they see lots of muzzle flashes and another explosion and Sarah catches sight of two men cutting a hole in the wire fence, each working fast with bolt cutters.