Endgame: The Calling

by James Frey

An wipes a real tear away from his tattooed one and reads on.

  Yesterday, when I woke, you were nothing to me but an opponent. I can’t explain what happened since. But something did happen. My effect on you is plain to see. It is easy to understand, if not the why, at least the what. The effect you have had on me is subtler. You were not my first, An, so it wasn’t that. It was something else.

  Something precious and rare.

  Like you.

  I have known about Endgame since I came from the womb. It is who I am. I love my parents, my cousins, my aunts and uncles, all who taught me and guided me. We were a quiet, contemplative group of people, always weighed down by the game, but we were also happy. I was never beaten or tortured. Yes, I endured pain in training, as we all surely have, but nothing like you have had to endure.

  I like life, and I intend to live. You Play for death. I Play for life. Other Players also Play for life. Other Players surely also Play for death. But not like you. I believe that you, among the 12, are unique. Even if the reasons are grotesque, mean, and twisted, you are unique. Do not forget this.

  You are hard because hardness is what made you. But with me you were gentle. It is in you as well. Kindness. Empathy. Generosity. All of them are in you. You were sleeping so quietly and contentedly when I left. I wished the man I was with in bed was the man who was playing Endgame.

  Play on as you choose. I will not judge you. Hate me if you must, but know that I will never hate you. And if it ever becomes necessary, I will fight for you. This I promise.

  I am sorry, truly sorry. Keep what little of me I have put in the envelope for you. If I could have left you more of myself, I would have. So much more.

  —Chiyoko

  An reads the letter again and again and again. The tics stay gone throughout. These talismans will protect him. Shepherd him. See him to his end, wherever that is. He knows he’ll keep them on his person at all times. And he immediately decides two things. The first: if she will not judge him, then he will not judge her. The second: if she wants to Play for her life, then he will do what he can to help her.

  He turns on the computer monitor, opens a terminal, and starts typing. The no-fly lists are in place at all the appropriate agencies and in nearly every country in the world. All they await now is their keyword and they will spring open. He types, hits enter, leans back, and watches it unfold.

  The keyword is a simple string:

  CHIYOKOTAKEDA.

  That, dearest, is my love letter to you.

  And for the others, especially any who might be flying right now, what a surprise is in store.

  J. DEEPAK SINGH

  Qatar Airways Flight 832, Seat 12E

  Depart: Xi’an

  Arrive: Dubai

  J. Deepak Singh gets a vibrating in-flight alert on his agency smartphone. He reaches into his jacket and pulls it out and enters the code and reads the flash.

  EMERGENCY UPDATE>>>01:34:35.9 ZULU>>>ALERT ALERT ALERT>>>IMMEDIATE ATTENTION REQUIRED>>>SPECIAL AIR AGENT JDSINGH ASSIGNED QATAR AIRWAYS FLIGHT 832 ENRTE CZX>DXB>>>FOR YOUR EYES ONLY>>>REPEAT>>>FOR YOUR EYES ONLY>>>STOP

  Singh follows protocol. He turns off his phone, rises from his seat by the bulkhead in the middle of coach, and makes his way to the bathroom. He has to wait for a moment, until the door opens and a young girl steps out. He steps into the bathroom, closes and locks the door.

  Occupied.

  He swipes at his phone again, opens the app, enters his security code. A picture of a pretty, dark-skinned, green-eyed Middle Eastern girl pops up.

  KALI MOZAMI AKA KALA MEZRHA AKA KARLA GESH AKA REBEKKA JAIN VARHAZA AKA NIGHTOWL>>>AGED APPROX 16–18 YRS>>>173–176CM>>>48–52KG>>>HAIR BLACK EYES GREEN SKIN BROWN>>>NATIONALITY UNCONFIRMED>>>ENRTE FLIGHT 832 ON OMANI PASSPORT>>>SEEK AND DETAIN>>>CONSIDERED ARMED AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS>>>USE ANY AND ALL NECESSARY MEANS>>>REPEAT>>>USE ANY AND ALL NECESSARY MEANS>>>TICKETED SEAT 38F>>>UAE AIRPORT AUTHORITIES ALERTED>>>PREPARED FOR DETENTION ON ARR>>>STOP

  Singh can’t believe it.

  This is what he has been training for: this, now.

  Most agents go an entire career and never get a call like this. The most the average sky marshal has to deal with is a drunken passenger or a heated family dispute or, at the very worst, a crazy person making unfounded threats.

  But this is something else.

  Singh checks his gun—a standard-issue Glock 19. The rounds are rubber. He has one magazine of live ammunition in his holster. He checks his Taser. It’s charged. He checks his cuffs, hidden and at hand.

  He checks himself in the mirror. Blows out his cheeks. All right, he thinks, let’s go.

  He opens the door and finds the nearest flight attendant. They know who he is and why he’s on the plane. He tells them that he’s going to arrest someone and they need to tell the captain. The attendant is a veteran. So as not to arouse suspicion—either with the mark herself, who could be walking around, or with the passengers—the attendant fixes Singh a cup of coffee and hands him a packet of cookies. He opens the cookies, eats them. When the coffee is ready she gives it to him. He drinks it black.

  He leans against the counter and acts casual. The attendant calls the captain and alerts him. She calls the other flight-attendant stations. Singh says to her, “Rear galley,” and she tells the crew there to be ready.

  She hangs up the phone. He finishes the coffee and hands her the cup. He turns away and walks aft down the aisle. He has one hand on his Taser, the other on the cuffs. His gun is within easy reach.

  AISLING KOPP

  Lago Beluiso, Lombardy Italian Alps, 1,549 m above Sea Level

  Aisling puts one foot in front of the other. The Italian Alps rise around her like the gods themselves, with white-peaked hair, reaching for the heavens.

  She is moving up, up, up, quickly, deftly. She’s sweating, panting, her legs burning. She’s wearing hiking boots, carrying a pack, a coil of brightly colored rope over her shoulder, a walking stick in one hand. She has a sling full of quickdraws and carabiners, nuts and cams. The blue tube of a CamelBak hydration system snakes over her shoulder strap.

  If someone saw her, they’d think she was just some agro kid on a mission. A thrill seeker. A girl marching to the beat of her own drum.

  All of which are essentially true.

  But no one is around to see her. And besides, she is so much more than any of these things. She is also carrying ammo, a scope, and her sniper rifle, which is deadly from two miles. Her pack weighs 130 pounds, which equals her own weight. It’s nothing to her. She’s trained with more weight for longer periods on steeper grades. She is much more than a hiker: she’s an assassin, a dead-eye shot, a patient devil with a trigger finger.

  But Aisling is also confused.

  Worried.

  Angry.

  After everything she learned about her father, about her life, about the history of her line, it feels good to be alone, in the open air, pushing herself. It lets her forget about her short visit home to Queens, if only for a moment.

  She is bushwhacking a trail from Lago Beluiso up to 1,835 m, where her grandfather’s coordinates took her. To the place where her father died.

  No. Was killed.

  She tries to picture Declan, climbing up this same mountain, with baby Aisling wrapped tightly in his arms. Retreating from Endgame. In search of something, something he believed would change him, change Endgame, change the world. She tries to picture it but cannot. She’s never even seen any pictures of her father. To her, he is just a name and a headstone.

  She’s not sure what she’s going to find, if anything. She knows, however, that a nearby valley is famous for a small group of prehistoric caves. In these caves are paintings. Very old paintings showing some very strange things. What these things reference is a point of endless debate. Some think spaceships, others gods, others mere representations of people. No one knows for certain.

  Like so many things in this world.

  No one knows.

  It’s not
for us to know. Aisling remembers the familiar refrain from her pop.

  Everything, always, she recalls kepler 22b saying.

  So confusing, all of it.

  Aisling tries to turn off her mind.

  She can’t.

  The fact that the fate of the world is being played out by a group of teenagers.

  All of whom are deadly, and all of whom want to kill her.

  Up, up, she continues. The Alps are stunning. Aisling has always liked the outdoors. One of the best weeks of her life she spent in the New York wilds, infiltrating the woods around West Point during one of the military academy’s war-game sessions. She operated as a rogue, unsanctioned and unknown. She was 15 at the time. Younger than all the cadets. Smaller and physically weaker, but smarter and faster.

  She captured two cadets from opposing sides and held them for three days each in separate camps. Her methods were so unorthodox and bizarre—snare traps, torturous bindings made of vines and sticks, tinctures of psychotropic fungi—that the cadets each thought she was some kind of demon or long-lost Hudson Valley wild woman. She let them go without killing them and kept tabs on both. One went crazy and hanged himself a year later. The other completed his training and is currently stationed in Kabul.

  She thinks about the first cadet often, about the madness she caused within him. She’s not proud of that, but something about it, and the fact that she was responsible for it, creates a sense of awe in her. The power she held, the control, to be able to toy with a man’s life in such a way. Aisling wonders if that is how kepler 22b and his brethren feel about humanity. And her father, was he like the cadet? Did thoughts of Endgame drive him mad?

  Aisling stops next to a towering pine tree. A jagged wall of gray rock rises in front of her. The air drifting down from the heights is cold, but her skin is slick and hot. She drinks from the tube over her shoulder and stares at a dark fissure dividing the rock. She takes out her GPS and checks the coordinates. She pulls off the climbing sling and lets the pack drop to the ground. She fishes in a mesh pocket on the pack’s hip belt and pulls out a headlamp. She draws her skinning knife from the sheath that is strapped to her thigh. She stares at the fissure, which, if she is right and Pop is right and the gods are right, leads to a cave. She starts walking toward the darkness, and when she reaches it, she steps in.

  Earth is 4,540,000,000 years old. Extinctions occur at regular intervals. Today it is believed that between 15,000 and 30,000 species go extinct each year, which translates to a total species loss of 15 to 20 percent over the next 100 years. During the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction, up to 75 percent of all species were lost. During the Permian-Triassic extinction, up to 96 percent perished.

  KALA MOZAMI

  Qatar Airways Flight 832, Seat 38F

  Depart: Xi’an

  Arrive: Dubai

  Someone taps Kala on the shoulder. She pulls the azure scarf around her head away from her eyes, opens them. The person sitting next to her—the one tapping her—is a different person from when she dozed off. The aisle seat just beyond this new man is vacant.

  In a very professional tone the man asks, “Miss, are you Kala Mozami?”

  Kala says, “No. My name is Gesh. Who are you?”

  “Ms. Gesh, I need you to come with me.”

  “Who are you?” Kala repeats.

  Singh holds open his lapel to flash his ID.

  A cop.

  And that’s when she realizes the muzzle of his gun is sitting on the armrest between them, pointed right at her kidney. Kala is genuinely confused. Why would the authorities be looking for her?

  Something is not right.

  As he lets his jacket close again, she sees the extra clip snapped into his holster. The topmost bullet there throws a little light. It’s metal, which surprises her. She knows air marshals usually use only rubber bullets.

  She needs to play this right.

  “I’m sorry,” she says quietly, “but there must be some mistake.”

  “If there is, it will have to be sorted out in Dubai. My instructions are to detain you.”

  “Detain me?” she says a little too loudly, and on purpose.

  Christopher, three rows forward, hears and turns his head. Others look as well.

  “Ms. Gesh, please stay calm. I want you to take these”—he slides a pair of silver handcuffs across his thigh—“and put them on, keeping your hands in front of you. I will remove your head scarf and cover your hands. Then we are going to slowly get up and you will lead the way to the back of the plane.”

  Kala shakes her head. She widens her eyes to make herself look scared. “Please, officer, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Again she says this a little too loudly.

  Someone in the middle of the plane says, “What’s going on over there?” in alarmed Arabic.

  “If you don’t do it, I’ll be forced to do it for you.”

  “All right, but do I have to take off my head scarf? It is haram.”

  Singh isn’t moved. “I am sorry, but I must insist.”

  Slowly, reluctantly, Kala pulls the scarf from her head and lets it fall into her lap. “I’m telling you, this is a mistake.”

  “If it is, then you will have my sincerest apologies.”

  She holds out a wrist for the cuffs. This, she knows, is what a reasonable innocent person would do. Protest and then comply. With her other hand, under the scarf, she pulls a thin hairpin from a slit in the hem. The cop doesn’t notice. She slips the cuffs over her left wrist and then her right.

  “Tighter, please.”

  “But I haven’t done anything!”

  “Just a little tighter. Please.”

  She does as she’s told. He puts the scarf over her joined wrists.

  “Thank you,” he says.

  Singh slides out of the seat and into the aisle, careful to keep his weapon concealed.

  Kala stands and works her way toward him.

  People are looking at her and mumbling. A large, dark-skinned African man is taking her picture with his phone. A woman in a black hijab is wrapping her arm around her daughter protectively. A Western boy a year or two older than she is peering intently at her over the back of his seat. He looks familiar. More familiar than he should.

  Who is he?

  She steps in front of Singh and turns to the rear of the plane and starts to walk slowly. There are nine rows between her and the aft galley.

  She immediately starts working one of the cuffs’ locks with the hairpin.

  She’s done this hundreds of times before in training, and picked thousands of locks, so she knows she’ll be free by the time they reach the back of the plane.

  Seven rows left and the plane hits some bad turbulence. She has to steady herself against the seats with the side of her arm. A few of the passengers gasp. She runs her finger along the pin. It is still in the lock.

  Five rows left and the plane passes through some more chop, but this time lighter. The overhead compartments creak.

  She almost has it.

  Three rows left and the plane drops 40 or 50 feet. Kala momentarily lifts off the floor, as does Officer Singh. The whole plane comes down with a thump, but Kala and her captor remain standing. They hear more gasping; a couple screams.

  “Keep going,” he says, not a tinge of nervousness in his voice. Flying is Singh’s job, and he’s dealt with turbulence before.

  A cabin chime informs them that the seat-belt light has been turned on.

  Click, click, click, in every seat.

  They pass the lavatory doors and she has it. The left cuff comes free. She brings out her wrist and recloses the cuff, leaves the scarf in place. There are two flight attendants in the rear of the plane. One is strapping herself into a jump seat. The other, a tall, thin man, is bracing himself between the wall and the counter. When he sees Kala—very young and very pretty and not at all what one would think of when one thinks of a criminal or terrorist—his eyes light up. Evidently, he thinks that it’s funny this is t
he person the crew is abuzz over, the person who has been deemed a profound security risk.

  Kala hears something outside, something just barely perceptible. A hitch in the engine.

  She braces herself.

  The plane jumps again. The male flight attendant is thrown over the counter. Singh falls forward and Kala can feel the muzzle of his gun press into her back. Realizing that under these conditions he could accidentally shoot her, and that she needs to act, Kala spins around and raises her left hand like she is going to attack. Singh is not expecting it and his eyes follow her hand. As the plane continues to bounce, and he gets ready to fight her off, she loops the empty cuff ring around the gun and pulls back hard with her right arm. The cuff tightens around the pistol and whips it out of his grasp.

  Singh is shocked.

  The plane bounces again.

  Again.

  Kala struggles for a second to free the pistol from the cuff. Singh is pulling out his Taser. The male attendant sees what’s happening and, believing he can be a hero, moves on Kala. The female attendant screams and closes her eyes. They are all separated by less than five feet.

  Kala raises the pistol. By the weight of the Glock she can tell that her initial thought was right—it’s loaded with rubber rounds. The real bullets are in that extra clip. A kill shot will have to be perfectly placed.

  Singh moves forward. The plane rises again and they all leave their feet. Kala sees everything unfold as if in slow motion. As they are in the air she reaches out for Singh’s left hand, which is holding the Taser. She pulls him close, pushes the barrel of the Glock into his right eyeball, fires. The pop is muted, unnoticeable above the turbulence and the fear and the cabin hum and the engines. There is no exit wound, and he dies immediately, slumping forward across Kala’s shoulder. The Taser is still in his hand. She lifts it and fires at the male attendant. He walks right into it and goes stiff, and his eyes roll into the back of his head.