Endgame: The Calling

by James Frey

  Kala turns a tight circle. “There are underground cities strewn across Turkey. They were dug by Hittites, Luwians, a smattering of Armenians. The most famous is called Derinkuyu. But none I’ve heard of are as old as this. This is something else. This . . .”

  “Sky People,” Christopher guesses, still stunned. “Sarah was right. It’s for real.”

  “Yes,” Kala says, filling with pride. The people of Gobekli Tepe, the people who once worked the floor of this amazing room, are directly related to her. The ancestors of her ancestors. The original members of her line. “The Annunaki used gold for energy. And they used men to mine it for them. We were their slaves, and they were our gods.”

  “So this is some sort of power plant?”

  “More like a fueling station. One that hasn’t been seen in at least fifteen thousand years.”

  They are silent. Christopher can’t fathom the value of the gold that surrounds them. Kala raises the torch as high as she can and peers into the recesses of the ceiling.

  Christopher follows the light. “Are those . . . letters?”

  Kala frowns. She sticks the torch back on the wall and gets out her smartphone. She makes sure the flash is on, holds it over her head, takes a picture. A blinding white light fills the room. She lowers the screen and looks at the photograph.

  “By the gods,” she says breathlessly.

  “What is it?”

  She holds out the phone. Christopher takes it. He can’t understand what he’s looking at. Dashes and periods and numbers and letters. A jumbled mass of them. He pinches to zoom in. Uses his finger to move around the field. Squints. A massive array of Roman letters and Arabic numerals, as if printed by a huge computer. The signs of modern humans, buried here for 15,000 years. He doesn’t understand how it’s possible.

  But Kala does. She knows that it’s a sign.

  Earth Key is here. It has to be, she thinks.

  “We need to get the key and leave. The boy, Baitsakhan, is up there looking for us,” she says, pointing straight up.

  Kala grabs the torch and runs toward the altar.

  “What about Sarah? Isn’t she meeting us up there too?” Christopher calls after her.

  Kala ignores him. He watches her go and stays on the ground. He’s still recovering from what surrounds them. He breathes. The air is stale and thin. He looks again at the photo of the grid on the ceiling. He stares, stares, stares at the phone, like so many other people in the world are doing at the same moment, playing games, checking email, texting.

  None of them are looking at anything like this.

  Christopher lets the phone fall into his lap. His face is lit from below by the pale light of the screen. He hears Kala moving at the other end of the room. The phone’s screen shuts off, going to sleep.

  Darkness.

  Christopher’s mind reels.

  He thinks of what he learned in world history, in math, in an advanced history of philosophy class he took in the fall. If this room has been untouched for 15,000 years, then those letters and numbers and signs were put there before writing was even invented. Before any kind of writing was invented. Before cuneiform and pictograms and hieroglyphs, to say nothing of Roman letters or Arabic numerals. They were there before Euclidean geometry, before math as we know it, before the concept of knowledge.

  Kala’s words ring in his mind. There is so much you don’t know.

  Christopher is completely silent. It is real. Endgame, the Sky People, the Players. This picture is proof, he thinks. Proof of some unknown human history. Proof of extraterrestrial life.

  Proof.

  Chiyoko passes through the door and starts to descend the stairs. She hears Baitsakhan and Maccabee shuffling below her, trying to remain quiet, unseen. They are rank amateurs compared to her.

  Her footfalls on the cut stone are nonexistent. Her breath is a whisper. Her clothing does not rustle. She carries no light, as each of the fools below her does.

  The staircase is a tight spiral not wide enough for two people to pass. The wall is smooth to the touch. There are no markings, just depth and more depth.

  The sounds below her change. Baitsakhan and Maccabee have reached the bottom. She quickens her pace. She must see what’s there, decide how to proceed.

  She must see what these boys will do.

  Because she knows it will happen soon.

  It will happen soon.

  Blood will flow.

  Baitsakhan and Maccabee stop just short of the vast storeroom. Maccabee has his hand over his flashlight. His flesh is red and he can see the blurred outlines of phalanges and metacarpals.

  The Donghu holds up a fist, jabs himself in the chest. He mouths, Surprise and Neither lives.

  Maccabee nods. I will guard the exit, he mouths with a wide grin. Death is coming, and he likes it.

  He turns off the flashlight. They move through the darkness like wraiths, step over the threshold of the underground chamber. There is a lit torch at the far end, near what appears to be some kind of altar. For a brief moment, Baitsakhan and Maccabee are struck by the size of the room they have entered. The far-off flame doesn’t do it justice, but they can’t risk any light.

  Not until it is done.

  Baitsakhan walks in. Maccabee waits in the doorway, his knife drawn, his other hand resting on the butt of the pistol stuffed down the front of his pants. Let the little monster have his revenge, he thinks.

  Baitsakhan hugs the blocks of metallic stone as he moves toward the torchlight. He knows this place is ancient and untouched.

  Sacred.

  Something snaps underneath Baitsakhan’s foot. He stops, waits to see if Kala notices. She doesn’t. He kneels, runs his fingers over what broke underfoot, and discovers a frail leg bone.

  A good omen for death, he thinks.

  Christopher still sits on the floor when the ghostly form of a small boy passes right in front of him, not more than 10 feet away. This has to be the boy Kala warned him of. Christopher holds his breath and tries to stay calm.

  A snapping noise. The figure crouches, stands again. Christopher catches the glint of a wavy blade. The figure moves on, and Christopher’s lungs start to burn. He doesn’t dare breathe. His hands shake. He grips the smartphone with all his strength, hoping that it doesn’t fall to the ground or ring, though there is probably no signal at this depth, in this remote corner of the world. The boy heads for Kala. This is the opportunity he’s been waiting for. I won’t warn her. He has her phone, and a picture of the thing on the celling. That should be enough.

  Once they start to fight, I will leave.

  Kala opens urn after urn around the man-headed eagle.

  All empty.

  Yet she knows Earth Key is near.

  She feels it.

  Here and here and here.

  But where?

  She walks around the statue. She opens a small stone coffin, sized for a dog or a cat. Nothing inside but dust and tattered cloth.

  She stops. She is behind the bird statue. Is the key the eagle? If it is, that’s a problem, because it’s too big to carry. She holds up the torch again. Turns on her flashlight and sweeps it over the outstretched wings, the elongated neck, the braided hair of the man’s head. She keeps the light trained there and moves around to the front. The man’s face is flat with deep-set eyes and a broad nose and huge nostrils. His eyes are perfect circles. His forehead is squat. The whole thing is made of gold.

  She shines the light up and down the figure.

  Nothing.

  But then something catches her eye.

  Chiyoko walks to within five feet of Maccabee and throws a pebble into the room. The Nabataean’s eyes, struggling against the dark, follow the noise, and she walks right past him, unnoticed. She stays close to the wall and works her way behind several large, cube-shaped stones. The night vision in her monocle does not suggest they are precious in any way. They just look big and gray.

  She emerges from behind one of them and finds herself staring at Ch
ristopher’s back. He is crouching, struggling to look toward the rear of the room to see what Kala is doing. From her position, Chiyoko cannot see what’s happening, but she can hear that the Sumerian is looking for something. Something that she evidently believes is Earth Key.

  Fool.

  Chiyoko needs a better vantage point. She scampers up one of the massive metallic stacks littering the chamber. Ten feet above the floor, she sees Kala standing on an altar, working a knife into the head of a statue. Baitsakhan is nearly upon her. She sees Maccabee still standing calmly at the exit, waiting. She sees Christopher where she left him.

  He sees Baitsakhan too, and he is not going to warn her. He is Playing. Interesting.

  Chiyoko looks up, notices the ceiling, and loses her breath. Words, numbers, signs. She activates a recording device in her eyepiece and zooms in. She takes a careful hi-res picture, takes another and another and another. Earth Key may not be here, but this is important. She recognizes the word for gold in at least four languages.

  Curious, Chiyoko runs her fingers over the stone beneath her. She draws the wakizashi and cuts carefully into the surface.

  And then she realizes what this room contains.

  Kala jumps onto the altar and stands face-to-face with the statue. She runs a finger along its jawline. There is a break in it. Up the cheek. She feels under the ear and finds a pin. The other side as well.

  It is hinged.

  She unsheathes her knife and pries the mouth open. Inside is a black orb of glass the size of a baseball that has a perfect triangular hole bored through it. She shines the light on it. Stares at the smooth surface. She sees images: the faint outlines of the continents, the deepening oceans, the towering mountains.

  Of Earth.

  “I found it,” she whispers.

  Earth Key.

  “I found it.”

  AN LIU

  Liu Residence, Unregistered Belowground Property, Tongyuanzhen, Gaoling County, Xi’an, China

  SHIVER.

  Blinkblink.

  SHIVERblink.

  SHIVERblinkSHIVERSHIVER.

  SHIVERblinkSHIVERblink.

  SHIVERblinkSHIVERblink.

  SHIVERSHIVERblink.

  BlinkSHIVERblinkblink.

  BlinkSHIVERSHIVER.

  BlinkblinkblinkSHIVER.

  SHIVERblinkSHIVERblink.

  SHIVERblinkblinkSHIVER.

  An’s body seizes. He was sleeping, but no more. It seizes over and over again.

  He struggles to keep his tongue in his mouth, away from his teeth. He fights to keep his fists at his side, his feet in place, his head from flailing. A sound blares from another room, and his convulsing, sleep-addled brain can’t figure out what is happening.

  The blaring is just like his alarm. It is just like the air horn his father used to blow to wake little An up every day for his training.

  His blink his blink his father.

  His goddamned father.

  He seizes, again and again, again and again.

  This is not a tic, not an episode.

  It is something else.

  His father.

  He was here!

  An forces his shaking body to turn over so that he’s on his side. And there he sees Chiyoko’s talismans, sitting on a soft, red velvet cloth.

  His body begins to calm.

  My father was here! But how? I killed him.

  An realizes it was a dream.

  The first dream he can ever remember having. His body stops shaking. He stares at Chiyoko’s pieces. The tics are still at bay.

  But the alarm still sounds.

  He sits. Pushes a button. A screen unfolds from the wall. It is full of images of his compound. A Kinect is hooked up to the system and he points at one image. It zooms up. Nothing. He points at another. It enlarges. Nothing. He points at another. It enlarges. Something.

  Not a man.

  A small, hovering drone, shaped like a dragonfly.

  A Player?

  He draws a window around it. The camera tracks the drone. It zooms way in. And then—

  No. Not a Player. The government. The Chinese government. An is as skilled a hacker as exists, but the Chinese employ hackers of their own. Messing with no-fly lists, running tracking programs, buying supplies—An must have drawn their attention. They have no idea what he’s truly up to, no idea about Endgame. To them, he is just a potential terrorist, a dissident.

  The government. Not for long. Not a government on Earth is going to survive what’s coming.

  SHIVER.

  He gathers what he has of Chiyoko. Folds the cloth over her. Stands, grabs his go-bag. He opens his closet and gets inside, closes the door, and steps on a lever disguised in the floor. A metal capsule rises around him, and he falls 40 feet, down an escape hatch that he built himself. At the bottom he opens the capsule and walks 678 feet through another tunnel, which leads to an underground garage. He walks through the garage until he finds his vehicle, a black Mercedes SUV with a trailer hitched to it. An gets in, carefully lays Chiyoko out in a silver tray mounted on the center console. Once he’s settled, he takes one of her fingernails and places it on his tongue. He turns on the car and puts it in gear. As soon as it moves, a pressure plate in the floor rises, and the world shakes.

  The explosion will rattle the damn government a little. Give them some pause. The bomb was big, and dirty, full of radioactive waste. No one will want to come near its crater for a dozen years, even though they only have a few more at best.

  I am not a terrorist. This is Endgame. There can be no winner.

  He pulls out, drives up the parking ramp; the Beijing safe house is an 11-hour drive away.

  He rolls Chiyoko’s nail around on his tongue.

  No winner but you, my love.

  KALA MOZAMI, CHRISTOPHER VANDERKAMP, BAITSAKHAN, MACCABEE ADLAI, CHIYOKO TAKEDA

  Altn Odas, 25 m Underground, Turkey

  Kala doesn’t see him, doesn’t hear him, doesn’t smell him. Baitsakhan could kill her right now, this very second, with his gun. But that would be too easy. Jalair deserves better. Kala deserves worse. Much, much worse.

  He clocks her in the back of the head with the handle of his dagger.

  She falls hard to her knees, taken completely by surprise. Her head swims, spots briefly flash before her eyes, but the shock of ambush fades quickly. Her training takes over.

  She slides to the floor, pretending to be unconscious. As soon as Baitsakhan reaches for her, she elbows him in the gut and jumps to her feet. He barely registers the hit to the stomach, starts toward her, gritting his teeth, scowling. She steps back, reaches for her gun.

  “Sumerian.”

  “Donghu.”

  “Blood for blood.”

  Weak, she thinks. She brandishes Jalair’s gun and squeezes the trigger. Baitsakhan lashes out with the whip. Its tasseled end snags the muzzle as the slug blasts out. The whip changes the trajectory just enough, and the bullet zings by Baitsakhan’s neck, grazing his flesh.

  The gunshot reverberates throughout the chamber, bouncing off the hard surfaces, making its way up to meet the mystery on the ceiling. Baitsakhan yanks the whip and Kala’s gun clatters to the ground. It slides under the altar, out of reach. He draws out his knife; he has the whip in one hand, the blade in the other. She pulls her own blade and smiles.

  “You’re faster than Jalair was,” Kala says, pouring salt on the wound.

  “Do not speak his name, bitch.”

  She smiles wider. “You’ll say hello to Jalair for me after I send you to hell, won’t you?”

  Baitsakhan doesn’t answer. He lunges. He is fast. Kala sidesteps, and their knives meet and spark. She hits him hard across the temple with the glass orb and he flicks his whip at her legs, catching an ankle. She strikes at his jugular, but he jumps backward and pulls the whip with both hands. She thumps onto her back, dropping her blade and getting the wind knocked from her lungs.

  He pulls the whip again, drawing them together. He steps ove
r her, straddling her midsection. He drops the whip and flips the knife and brings it down with both hands for her head, full of fury and vengeance. Kala reaches up and grabs his thighs and pulls herself between his legs. Baitsakhan’s knife impales the ground where her head used to be, just as she punches his groin with the orb. She can feel that he is wearing protection under his clothes, but she knows it still hurts. She springs to her feet and spins.

  Baitsakhan is on her. He is not armed. The knife is still stuck in the ground. They are face-to-face. He hisses and grabs her by the ears and pulls. She hits him in the groin again, this time with her knee. She hits so hard she can feel the plastic cup crack. But he shows no sign of succumbing to pain.

  He is a Player.

  Trained in the ways of combat and pain.

  Baitsakhan pulls her ears so hard that the skin behind the right one begins to tear.

  She leans forward, into Baitsakhan’s pull, and they’re so close they could kiss. But instead, she opens her mouth and bites his cheek, her teeth sinking into his flesh.

  He cries out and releases her. They separate, and Baitsakhan spits red on the floor.

  “Blood for blood,” Kala reminds him, her teeth stained red.

  “Yes,” he confirms, and pulls his pistol from behind his back.

  Kala’s head tilts. “You wait until now? You could have done it first, and taken the key.”

  “So that’s what that is?” Baitsakhan’s eyes just barely drift from Kala’s onto the ball.

  And that is all she needs. Misdirection. Just like with Jalair. These Donghu are all the same.

  Baitsakhan fires, but Kala is on top of him, smashing his wrist with the ball.

  This is too easy.

  All too easy.

  Christopher runs as soon as Baitsakhan pulls the gun.

  To see better he flicks on the smartphone just as he reaches the exit, and nearly runs full bore into a smirking young man wagging his finger.

  Christopher gasps.

  “You lost, kiddo?” Maccabee asks. “No matter. I found you. Pretty soon, you’ll wish I hadn’t.”