by James Frey
“We should leave. We’re not safe here.”
“No kidding.”
As Jago turns toward the door that leads to the stairs, Maccabee appears behind him. Sarah sees it happen. It’s like Maccabee is emerging from a curtain of black ink suspended in the air.
Maccabee doesn’t seem to have suffered any ill effects from the bomb or the teleportation. He lunges at Jago, wrapping his hands around his neck. Sarah’s first thought is for the disk. Though she doesn’t know how or why, she’s certain that it will help her—them—get a big lead in Endgame.
Sarah raises her fist to hit Maccabee in the back of the head, and Jago rakes his heel across Maccabee’s shin. Maccabee yells out and bends over, shoving Jago toward the floor, and Sarah narrowly misses his skull with what would have been a crushing blow.
Jago can’t break the Nabataean’s grip. He blindly jabs his thumb behind him, hoping to land it in Maccabee’s ear. He scores a direct hit, and there’s a pop as Jago pulls his digit free, like a cork coming from an old bottle.
Maccabee lets go and wails. He grabs the side of his head with one hand and wildly swipes at the air with the other. First an arrow in the thigh and now a dirty blow from this hideous Olmec. Maccabee is not used to so much pain, so much humiliation. It infuriates him.
Before he can collect himself, Sarah steps around Maccabee and kicks him in the thigh, right next to his wound. He collapses to the floor.
Sarah and Jago have a clear path to the stairway leading down, out of this funnel of Players, this bottleneck of murderers. Sarah wonders if they’ll have time to finish off Maccabee, or if it’s even worth it.
Jago doesn’t have the same concern. His knife flashes into his hand, ready to find Maccabee’s throat.
“Watch out!” Sarah shouts, as Aisling Kopp appears in the room.
Aisling’s short red hair is wild, her face covered in soot from the fire in the woods. She was forced to double back for the pyramid after An lit the trees on fire. She’s feeling panicked and hemmed in, which is why she doesn’t ask questions. Aisling raises her small crossbow and fires.
Sarah’s warning is just enough to get Jago diving out of the way. The bolt sails over his head.
Midair, Jago flips the knife, catching it by the anodized blade, and hurls it at Aisling. The Celt drops the one-shot crossbow, claps her hands, snags the knife out of the air, and smiles. She’s proud that move worked; her grandfather taught her well.
As Jago and Sarah turn and run down the stairs, Jago’s knife flies over their heads and imbeds itself in the far wall.
In seconds they emerge into the large room near the top of the pagoda. Jago moves to keep running, but Sarah sidesteps the doorway and grabs him by the arm. She points up. Rafters. Between the rafters and the underside of the roof is a foot of space.
Jago nods. He understands. Side by side, he and Sarah jump up, silently grab the rough-hewn timbers, and twirl their bodies around them. They eye each other intently and stop breathing and will their hearts to slow, slow, slow.
Aisling bursts into the room and runs toward the stairs that lead farther down. But just before exiting, she stops. She smells something in the air, cocks an ear to the empty space. She makes a half turn in their direction, and for a second Sarah wonders why they are bothering to hide. The Celt is only one and they are two. They could eliminate her quickly. As she looks toward Jago, all three of them hear Maccabee’s voice bellowing from the stairway: “I’m going to kill all of you bastards!”
Without pause, Aisling spins and is gone. Maccabee stumbles loudly down the stairs. He grunts and moans, dragging himself into the room. He’s in bad shape: other than Marcus, dead-as-dirt Marcus, Maccabee has endured the most violence of the Calling.
Maccabee steps to the middle of the room and looks in a circle, doesn’t bother to look up. His mind is clouded with injury, the suddenness of Endgame, and the clue implanted in his mind. He slides around the room for 22 seconds—only 12 heartbeats in Sarah’s chest—before the three of them hear another Player arrive in the room above. Maccabee spits on the floor and leaves, going down.
They wait for three more minutes. Whoever appeared in the room upstairs must still be there, waiting. Without speaking, the Olmec and the Cahokian drop silently to the floor, walk to the stairs, and leave.
“Too bad we couldn’t take at least one out,” Jago laments as they creep down the stairs. He rubs his neck where Maccabee’s fingers left a ring of bruises.
“We’ll get our chance,” Sarah says. She can see that they make a good team, but she’s not sure that Endgame is the place for teams. Still, Jago has grown on her. And he has been helpful and, more importantly, faithful. She can tell that he likes her. She wonders if she can use that. She wonders if she wants to use that.
“The next time I see the Nabataean . . .” Jago spits, trailing off.
They go down, down, down.
When they reach the bottom, they make sure the coast is clear, step out of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, and head toward the street, sticking to the shadows. Sarah has no idea that not more than 30 minutes before, the boy from Omaha who she still loves was right here.
And neither Sarah nor Jago knows that An Liu, the tricky bomb maker, the last to emerge from the portal, is watching them from a window, back up the stairs of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda.
Watching them and pointing a long metal object in their direction.
A wand.
An antenna.
A microphone.
A sneaky blink sneaky blink sneaky bit of blinking business.
CHIYOKO TAKEDA
Great White Pyramid, Qin Lin Mountains, China
Chiyoko Takeda slinks through the woods. She watched—and smiled as she watched—An Liu blow up the Calling. She considers it a great move. A great, great move.
Nothing like death and mayhem to cloud minds and mask intentions.
Chiyoko is tracking the Olmec and the Cahokian as they make for the pyramid. She’s on their right, to the east, moving silently. The Nabataean is also making his way toward the pyramid, but the Olmec and the Cahokian haven’t noticed him.
Chiyoko noticed. She saw the Sumerian leave through the mystical pyramid. Saw her melt away into its quicksilver wall.
The Great White Pyramid is a monument that speaks volumes to Chiyoko Takeda, the mute, the ever-ancient Mu, the Player of the 2nd line.
Just to look at it is an honor. It stands as a marker of space, history, and commonality. Chiyoko knows that pyramids were the Game Keepers’ tethers in the ancient past—tethers for their ships, their portals, their sources of energy—and someday they might be again, after it all comes and goes and comes again. The buildings or their remnants are in China, in Egypt, in Sumer, in Europe, in India, and in the Americas. Most of them have fallen down or vanished beneath mounds of dirt and foliage. Or they’ve been desecrated by people, ignorant humans who don’t deserve to survive what comes next. Some, like this pristine example, are even undiscovered. But none are like this one.
This one has not been polluted by human hands or minds. It hasn’t been eroded by wind or rain. Eaten by root or soil. Shattered by the quaking earth or an erupting volcano.
This one is special.
If she could, she’d stay and look at this one for a week, two, three. Wonder at its dimensions. Measure its footprint. Record its markings. Try to decipher them. But she can’t do any of this.
The game is on.
And she is tracking.
Her ropes—the hojo—are slung over her shoulders. Their deployment was a diversion, like An’s explosives. Not as effective, of course, but they served their purpose. Her ropes gave her the cover that allowed her to get off the tracking dart that struck Jago Tlaloc in the neck and chipped him. The dart that buzzed his ear like a mosquito.
Jago Tlaloc, the Olmec. Clearly aligned with Sarah Alopay, the Cahokian. The Players of the ancient tribes of the Americas. She watches them walk toward the pyramid. Chiyoko is near enough to hear their
voices but not their words. Maccabee is limping close behind. Jago and Sarah have still not noticed him. Just behind the Nabataean is Aisling Kopp. Who will catch who, who will fight who, who will die?
The Olmec leads the Cahokian through the door. They vanish like a magic trick. Chiyoko starts to step forward, hoping to get in before Maccabee, but he’s too close. She knows what the others don’t—that the Olmec has the disk. Among the Mu the disks are worshipped as sacred and mysterious symbols. Chiyoko recognized it instantly: a disk of Baian-Kara-Ula. Disks that fell from the sky many ages ago. Disks with information and knowledge, clues and direction.
She has to follow it. If another Player gets the disk, she’ll follow that Player. She’ll continue to follow it until she spots her opening, and then she’ll steal it. She knows it leads to Earth Key.
And she knows that she is the only one who knows.
Because this is the clue that kepler 22b left in her mind. In very simple language, it told her: As the Mu, only you understand where the disk will lead.
Chiyoko watches Maccabee reach the doorway, stumble through, vanish. Aisling is less than a minute away. None of them have noticed Chiyoko. She’ll go in after the Celt. Chiyoko waits. Surmises that she has only one more minute at the Calling. Only one more minute in the presence of the magnificent glimmering pyramid. She bows to it, shows her respect and admiration, shares a quiet moment with it, thanks it for being.
A small distant twang jostles the air on her eardrum, interrupting her reverie. She drops to the ground instinctively as an arrow cuts the air right where her heart was.
One of them did notice her.
The boy.
Baitsakhan.
Chiyoko figures that seven long strides of open ground separate the edge of the woods from the portal. She will not risk getting shot to get there. She knows she has to move or the boy will kill her. As she crawls forward, another arrow punctures the ground near her, but it is a desperate shot. She is certain the boy can no longer see her.
She reaches a thick tree and stands behind it, traces the invisible arc of the arrows that have been shot at her. Finds the spot where they were fired and sees him crouched among the green.
He’s 90 feet away.
Well within striking distance.
She reaches into her jacket and pulls out five razor-sharp, titanium shuriken. Her fingers dance around them and they fan out like cards. She flips one into the air with one hand, catches it with the other.
She is not impetuous. Killing for her has always been the child of opportunity and necessity, and she doesn’t take it lightly. We are human. We have one life that should be honored. Taking a life should always be a considered decision.
She moves quietly down the hill, the pyramid at her back. She wills her eyes to dilate against the glow of the explosion’s lingering flames. She stops next to a fallen tree, plants her left foot, throws.
Baitsakhan is nearly surprised.
Nearly.
At the last moment he drops, and the throwing star misses, burying itself in a tree trunk.
Chiyoko breathes.
Stays still.
Waits.
She catches sight of Aisling Kopp passing through the portal.
She watches as Baitsakhan stands and exposes himself, loading an arrow and frantically looking for her.
Fool.
She throws a star, and it hits the boy on the outside of his shoulder, disappears into his flesh.
He cries out.
She relocates again, putting herself on a path that leads directly to the door. She throws another star, the six points whirling through the air like a silent saw blade, on target to stop in the middle of the boy’s forehead. But just before it strikes, there’s a gust of wind that blows it off course, and it glances off his scalp, taking a chunk of flesh and hair with it.
He cries out again, issuing a challenge, and desperately shoots an arrow into the night.
Chiyoko breathes. The gust subsides. She turns to the pyramid, performs a forward flip over a large rock, and when she is upside down she throws the last of her shuriken at the annoying one-named boy, Baitsakhan, the Donghu of the 13th line. She lands squarely on her feet and silently sprints through the mystical door, unsure if she hit her target.
She doesn’t care. The boy is too rash to last for very long. If she didn’t kill him, someone else will.
Chiyoko appears in the secret room where they first gathered. She is not at all disoriented like the others were. She sneaks to the door and down the old stairs and sees Aisling leave the main chamber at the top of the building. Chiyoko waits, hugs the wall, and moves around the edge of the room like a ghost. She does not notice the two sequestered in the rafters, and they do not notice her.
And just like that, she is gone.
HILAL IBN ISA AL-SALT
Hsu Village, Qin Lin Mountains, China
Hilal ibn Isa al-Salt has beautiful hands.
No matter how many walls he has scaled, how many knives he has thrown, how many machetes he has wielded, how many stones he has moved, how many bones he has broken, how many wires he has soldered, how many pages he has turned, how many push-ups, pull-ups, and handstands he has done, how many punches he has thrown, how many boards he has broken, how many guns he has cleaned, he has always taken care of them, his beautiful hands.
Coconut oil.
Rosemary tincture.
The freshly rendered fat of young lambs at the slaughter.
An ivory-handled file.
His nails are perfect disks, white against his dark skin. His cuticles are smooth. His calluses invisible. His skin like velvet.
He does not pass through the portal of the Great White Pyramid, shrouded in otherworldly mystery and age, but opts for the woods. At first he moves fast to stay ahead of the smoke and fire—and the other Players. The mad ones who wouldn’t listen to him, wouldn’t even give him five minutes before the killing started. Hilal sighs.
As he exits the orbit of the ageless pyramid, the woods grow quiet and still. They become familiar, as all forests are to those who have spent time in them. He encounters none of the others who also left through those woods, and after 12 hours of hiking he reaches a small outpost that is not on his map. It’s not much more than a dirt crossroads, a cow, a flock of chickens, a collection of wooden shacks.
He stops in the middle of the crossroads. No one emerges from the huts, but smoke billows from makeshift chimneys and he can smell food cooking.
A young girl finally appears from one of the buildings, the muffled voices of her caretaker urging her to stay inside. She ignores him. She’s curious and moves into the road. She has never seen a man with black skin. His bright blue eyes—a gift of his ancient heritage—are even more shocking.
He might as well be an alien.
The girl—seven or eight years old—stops in front of Hilal.
A red string around her neck is weighted down by a small silver cross.
Hilal holds out his beautiful hands, forming a bowl. He lowers them and she peers into them. They’re empty. He watches her appreciate the fineness of his skin, how it is lighter on the palm side. And she sees the little scar on the heel of his right hand. Her eyes widen and she rises on her toes.
It is a little cross of his own, branded into his otherwise flawless skin.
“I come in peace, sister,” he says in English. She has never heard such sounds, but his voice is so soft that her thin lips crack a grin.
It fades quickly as Hilal hears footsteps behind him.
The girl waves her hands as if to ward off a bad spirit and scampers back a few feet.
Hilal stays put.
He doesn’t need to look to know what is coming.
He closes his eyes. Listens. It is a man. Barefoot. Trying—and failing—to run quietly. His arms are raised. In his hands is something like a bat or a staff. His breath is suppressed and nervous and charged.
Hilal steps to the right at the last second as an ax slices the air mill
imeters from his shoulder. The sharpened head is buried in the ground, and Hilal reaches out calmly and takes his assailant’s right thumb and snaps it. The ax comes free, and Hilal draws the man’s thumb in an arc. Where the thumb goes, the man follows.
Hilal allows a small scowl to pass across his face. This man should have known better. He does a flip as Hilal takes a knee, still holding the thumb, and the man slams into the ground, his wind taken from his lungs.
The man strikes out with his left hand, but Hilal dodges the feeble attempt and holds out his hand, once again showing the cross on his palm to this outcast band of Christians.
“I come in peace,” he repeats in English. “As our mutual brother Christ once did.”
The man pauses, a look of confusion wrinkling his eyebrows, before he tries to strike again. Violence, always violence as a first resort. Hilal shakes his head disapprovingly and jabs the man in the neck, temporarily paralyzing him.
Hilal lets go of the man’s thumb, and he slips to the ground like a rag doll. Hilal stands and announces to the small town, this time in passing Chinese, “I am a hungry traveler from another world. Help me, and I will do what I can to help you when the time comes.”
A door creaks open. Another.
“And come it will, my Christian brothers and sisters, come it will.”
12.0316, 39.0411li
SARAH ALOPAY, JAGO TLALOC
Taxicab #345027, Registered to Feng Tian, Passing over Xi’an Old City Wall, China
It is 11:16 a.m. later that day. Sarah and Jago have not slept. They haven’t seen another Player since leaving the pagoda. They had rice and tea and oranges for breakfast and ate on the move. They stayed away from the pagoda and the meteorite crater and the city center. They eventually found a cab, climbed in, and said, “Hotel.” The driver has been moving south for over an hour, trying to convince them to get out, but they keep handing him cash and telling him to drive on, to go farther away from the city. They want a small place, an out-of-the-way place. They haven’t found one yet. The driver keeps driving.