by Frey, James
I swim over to Sauer’s body and start searching him. Between his coat and his clothes, he has a lot of pockets. Each one turns up nothing, and I start to think maybe Ariadne was right, there is no key. Then, in the last one I check, I find something. I pull out an ordinary-looking skeleton key, the kind that could fit a lock on a door, a trunk, or a hundred other things. Will it work on the cabinets?
I take it and go to the nearest cabinet. My fingers trembling, and not just from the cold, I try to insert it into the lock. It doesn’t go. I try again, and again I’m met with resistance. The key does not fit this lock. I go to the next cabinet and have the same result. And the next. It’s clear that the key from Sauer’s pocket is not for anything in this room.
I return to his body and search again, hoping that I’ve overlooked something. I turn every pocket inside out. But there’s nothing.
Despair presses down on me like the icy water. The excitement and hope that was helping keep me moving evaporates, and now I feel every bit of the chill. I know the weapon is here. I know it is. And I have no way of getting to it. After everything—all the killing, the running, the death of my own brother—I’m left with nothing.
Then I hear what sound like tiny explosions. They come again, and I realize that it’s the sound of gunfire echoing through the air shaft. Something has happened up in the basement. Something bad.
I shine the flashlight at the opening in the ceiling. There’s no way I can get up there to help Ariadne. It would take too long, and I would be an easy target. My frustration and rage double. I’m useless down here. Nothing I can do will help anyone.
A tiny shadow detaches itself from the hole in the ceiling, a small circle of blackness that falls quickly through the beam of the flashlight. I know immediately what it is. A grenade. Ariadne has chosen to employ the final option.
That option means killing me too.
Still, my survival instincts kick into gear. As the grenade rolls to a stop, I swim as quickly as I can in the opposite direction, which means toward the elevator. As I near it, I see that the doors are open a crack. I don’t know how or why, as I know they were sealed the last time I was in here. Maybe the water has short-circuited something. I don’t really care, I’m just grateful for the possibility of escape. But is it enough to get through? Not with the air cylinder on my back.
I take a final breath and abandon the Aqua-Lung. As I force the doors open enough to pull myself inside the elevator, the grenade explodes. Only moments later, the wave of pressure comes. Even inside the elevator, it’s enormous. The doors buckle. My whole body feels as if it’s being squeezed. The glass on my dive mask cracks. My lungs are gripped so tightly that I can’t breathe. I know I’m dying.
And then I don’t.
I’m still alive. But I can’t breathe. All the air has been sucked out of my lungs. So now I’m going to drown.
The flashlight is still in my hand and still working. I look out and see the Aqua-Lung cylinder. The regulator has been ripped from it, and air is bubbling from the broken valve. I grab the tank and put my mouth in the stream of bubbles. I sip at them, getting enough air to take a breath. Then I survey the damage done to the chamber.
One wall has been ripped open. The contents of the cabinets are strewn around the floor. It’s difficult to see clearly through the cracked mask, and I have no idea what anything is, or if any of it is related to the weapon. I shine the flashlight around, hoping something will point me in the right direction. Then I see a metal box. It’s dented and battered from the explosion, but still intact. I swim to it, take the key I took from Sauer’s pocket, and insert it. When I turn it, I feel a click. I quickly turn it back, locking the box again. I don’t know exactly what’s inside, but I don’t want to get water in there if I can help it. I have to assume that since Sauer was guarding the key to the box, whatever’s in it is what I’m after.
Now I have to get out of the chamber. The only way out is the air shaft. But what’s waiting up there? I don’t know who Ariadne was facing, or if she survived. The fact that she dropped the grenade makes me think she might not have. If I go that way, I might be walking right into the hands of death.
Then I remember the elevator. I swim back to it and look at the ceiling. There’s a hatch to access the machinery on top of the car. I turn the handle, and the cover flops down. The shaft above seems to be filled with water too. I push the box in my hands through the hole, take a last breath from the almost-empty cylinder, and pull myself up and through.
Standing on top of the elevator car, I take the box and put it under my shirt, knotting the material to hold it in place. Even then, it’s incredibly awkward. Then I grip the steel cable that the car is attached to and start climbing, using the fins to help propel me upward. After a dozen pulls on the cable, my head breaks through the water. The rest of the shaft is dry. I rip the mask from my head and drop it, then lose the fins, as they’ll do me no good out of the water.
Being able to breathe doesn’t make the climb much easier, though. I still have to pull my tired, freezing body up the entire length of the shaft. My muscles scream in agony as I go hand over hand, and I’m afraid to stop to rest in case I can’t get them going again. I feel as if I’m crawling toward a finish line that keeps moving away from me just when I think I’m about to cross it.
Finally I’m at the top. The doors there are shut, but it’s easy enough to pry them open. I stumble into a closet, then into an office. It’s empty. So are the galleries and hallways outside. My feet leave footprints in the snow as I walk, then run, toward the steps that will take me to the basement. What I’m doing is stupid. I have no weapon. I’m freezing. I’m practically naked. But I have to know what happened to Ariadne.
The steps to the basement are covered in blood. I slip in it as I go down them, my heart pounding harder and harder. There are bodies here, but most of them are from our previous fight. I see no new ones. I also don’t see Ariadne.
I call her name. My voice echoes back at me. I call again, louder, not caring if anyone else hears me. I know I’m not thinking straight, not doing what a Player should do, but I don’t care.
Then I hear someone behind me. I whirl around and see Ariadne coming down the steps. She’s holding her pistol in her hand. As she runs, she takes off her coat, which she puts around me.
“I got it,” I say through shivering teeth as I show her the box. The key is still in the lock. I turn it, and this time when it clicks open, I lift the lid. Inside is a metal cylinder, along with a handful of pieces of machinery. Ariadne lifts the tube out and unscrews the end. She tips some rolled-up papers into her hand. Unrolling them, she shows me what is obviously a blueprint of some kind. I can’t read the writing on it, but the images are unmistakable. It’s a design for a weapon.
“That’s it,” I say. “We did it.”
I look at her face. She’s smiling. She rolls the plans back up and returns them to the cylinder, which she places back in the case. She runs her fingers over the pieces of machinery, then shuts the lid.
“We did,” she says.
There’s something about her voice that troubles me, a coldness that I haven’t heard since our first encounter.
“Ariadne?” I say.
She steps away from me and holds up her pistol. “No,” she says, shaking her head. “Cassandra.”
Ariadne
As I stand beside Cassandra, watching Boone’s eyes move between my face and that of my twin sister, a single thought keeps running through my mind: He’s going to die.
I’m still shocked at Cassandra’s unexpected arrival in the museum, where Boone and I have been working to extricate the alien weapon that’s been hidden there by Evrard Sauer, the scientist who was studying it after its discovery by the Nazis. Sauer is now dead, entombed in the water-filled chamber 60 meters below our feet. The same chamber from which Boone has recently escaped for the second time.
I look at the metal box Boone is holding in his hands. It’s the whole reason he descend
ed into the room. Part of me is excited to see that he’s gotten it, and to know what’s inside it. Another part wishes he’d never found it, because I know what’s going to happen next. I’d hoped that by throwing the grenade down the shaft and into the underground room, I’d have warned Boone that something was wrong. Maybe he was too excited about finally getting the box. Maybe he thought he could help me. I’m thankful the blast didn’t kill him, which was a very real possibility, but I’m not sure it matters now.
“Put the box on the floor,” Cassandra says.
Even if we weren’t twins, I would have known this was coming.
Cassandra might not be our Minoan line’s official Player, but she is a Player nonetheless. Maybe even more than I am. We trained side by side, and although I was the one who was presented with the golden horns at the choosing ceremony and have served our line to the best of my abilities, Cassandra has always longed to wear them. If she had been sent to Berlin instead of me, Boone would already be dead. Now she is toying with him, enjoying the confrontation.
Boone glances at me. I can tell he’s confused. He doesn’t know if I knew about Cassandra being here or not, if I’m working with her or still teamed up with him. I wish I could let him know that my sister’s presence here is a surprise to me too, but I don’t dare risk showing any hint of caring about what happens to him. If I do, Cassandra will make things worse. For both of us. I keep my face blank and stare back at him coldly, trying to still my wildly beating heart.
Boone crouches down, setting the box on the floor. Then he stands up again. Underneath Cassandra’s coat, which barely stretches across his shoulders, he’s wearing only boxer shorts and a thin undershirt, both of which are soaking wet. He’s been swimming around in ice-cold water, and the temperature in the room now is well below freezing. I can see him shaking as his muscles seize up and his body attempts to warm itself. He’s trying to control the trembling, but he can’t. He’s rapidly becoming hypothermic and needs to get warm. Although I want to go to him and wrap my arms around him, I can’t. I have to watch him suffer, and it makes my heart ache.
Cassandra has had her pistol trained on him this whole time. She keeps it leveled at his chest as she says to me, “Go get it.”
I don’t like her ordering me to do anything, but the situation is delicate, and I don’t want to risk upsetting her. I walk toward Boone. I consider placing myself between him and my sister, screaming at him to run and giving him a slim chance of escaping. But it would only put off his death for a short time. Cassandra would never let him get out alive. And she’d probably kill me as well for getting in her way.
When I reach Boone and the box, I kneel down and pick it up. It’s not as heavy as I expected. As I stand and back up, holding it in my hands, I risk a look at Boone. He won’t look at me. He’s staring straight ahead at Cassandra, a furious expression on his face even though his lips are bluish and I can see that he’s clenching his teeth together with enormous effort to keep them from chattering. But he still has enough strength to defiantly shrug off her coat, which puddles around his feet.
I walk back to Cassandra, who glances briefly at the box and says, “How clever of you to trick him into retrieving it for you.” She smirks at Boone. “Just like a pet dog.” She makes a woofing sound, and laughs. “Fetch, boy.”
She’s taunting him, but I know she’s also taunting me, letting me know what she thinks about my not going after the box myself. But I don’t react. Instead I smile and say, “You know I don’t like to get my hair wet if I can help it.” It’s the kind of thing she would say, childish and inappropriate given the situation, so of course she laughs.
Cassandra turns her attention back to Boone. “Unfortunately for you, we no longer need you.”
“Wait,” I say, placing my hand on her arm.
She looks at me, one eyebrow raised in question.
“I’ll do it,” I tell her. I lift my shirt and show her the bandaged wound on my stomach. “There’s a debt that requires repayment.”
Cassandra nods. I know she’s annoyed that I’m depriving her of making the kill herself, but she also recognizes that I have first right. “Do it quickly. We need to be on our way. Would you like to use my gun?”
She says this loudly enough for Boone to hear. She’s enjoying playing with him, and I’m reminded of how during our training sessions she would often let her opponents think they had a chance just before she landed a victory blow. She enjoys offering a bit of hope, then snatching it away. I shake my head as I set the box down, reach into my boot, and pull out the knife tucked inside. “You know I prefer a blade.”
She laughs again as I turn and walk back to Boone. “He’s not a kolios, Ariadne. Make sure you gut him properly.”
Another taunt, a reminder of the time we were four and our grandfather took us fishing and I wouldn’t stick my knife in the flapping, gasping mackerel I hauled out of the ocean on my line. I felt bad for it. Before I could throw it back, Cassandra grabbed it and plunged a knife into its belly, slitting it open and scraping its insides out before it was even dead. At dinner, she’d eaten it fried, with lemon, grinning at me from across the table as our grandfather boasted about how brave she’d been.
I stop in front of Boone. He hasn’t said a word, and I know this is mostly because he can’t. The cold is forcing his body to conserve its resources in an attempt to warm itself. I also know that if he truly thought I was going to kill him, he would find the strength to fight me. I wonder if Cassandra knows he’s a Player. I doubt it. If she did, she would kill him herself, despite my request, so that she could claim him as a trophy. But who does she think he is? And how did she know we were here in the first place? I’ve been wondering that since I turned to find her standing behind me, looking at me as if she’d come into the kitchen and caught me secretly eating one of the melomakarona our mother and aunts make at Christmastime. But there’s been no time for explanations.
Right now I have to concentrate on putting on a show for her. Whatever I do, she has to believe that Boone is really dead. If she doesn’t, she’ll finish him off herself. But how am I going to do that? Unless his body somehow disappears, she’ll be able to check whether or not he’s still breathing.
I look at the entrance to the air shaft, which is just behind Boone, and I get an idea. I don’t know if he can survive another trip into the water. He’s barely able to stand now. But it’s his only chance. Our only chance. Because now there’s no denying it—we’re a team. Who we’re fighting for, I still don’t know. And if he doesn’t survive the next few minutes, it won’t matter. I pray to the gods that he does make it.
I hold the knife up so he can see it. With my eyes, I try to tell him to trust me. I say, “I’ll do you the favor of reuniting you with your brother.” He looks at me, and his brow furrows for a moment. Then he gives the slightest of nods, and I know that he understands what has to happen.
I stab him in the stomach. He bends as if the knife has really gone in, but really I’ve only grazed him. Just enough to make the blood flow. I get some on my fingers and wipe it on the blade. Then I pretend to pull the knife out and I shove Boone toward the shaft. He spins, holding his hands to his stomach, so that his back is to me and Cassandra, and staggers the short distance to the opening. He plunges headfirst into it. There’s a soft splash as he hits the water, then nothing.
It all happens very quickly, and I’m not sure it’s convincing enough. I turn back to my sister, wipe the blade on my pants, and return the knife to my boot. The whole time, I expect Cassandra to express her doubts that Boone is really dead. However, all she does is lower her gun and say, “Who was he?”
“An American,” I answer. “A soldier. Not a very good one.”
“He couldn’t have been completely incompetent,” Cassandra says. “He wounded a Player.”
“A lucky strike,” I say as I retrieve the box. “And now he’s dead, or soon will be.”
“What did you mean about his brother?”
&nbs
p; So she did hear. “His brother was also a soldier,” I lie, although this is not entirely untrue. Jackson Boone was a Player, like his brother. “He was killed in the war.”
“It sounds like an interesting story,” Cassandra says. “You can tell it to me on the trip.”
She’s walking up the stairs. I follow her. I hate leaving Boone behind, but I really have no choice. I have to keep pretending that he means nothing to me. Not knowing whether he’s alive or dead is horrible, but for now I have to bury all my emotions as deeply as possible. Not only is Cassandra trained as a Player, but she’s my twin. We have a bond that is beyond the normal sibling relationship. Each of us knows what the other is feeling and thinking without having to ask. Sometimes, this is a gift. Other times, like when we had to fight each other in training, it could go either way. Now it puts me at a disadvantage.
If I lie to her and she detects any trace of nervousness, she’ll know.
Ironically, after everything I’ve been through in the past 48 hours, the most difficult thing is going to be pretending things are normal between me and my own sister.
Cassandra makes her way through the New Museum as if she’s been here a hundred times. I’m not surprised. She has a photographic memory, and I’m sure she’s memorized every map she could find of the building. I still don’t know, however, how she knew to come here in the first place, or why. What I do know is that she’s dying for me to ask her, so I don’t. We’ve only been in each other’s company for 20 minutes, and already we’ve slipped into our familiar patterns.
“It’s too bad about Europa,” Cassandra says as we exit the museum. “Also about Theron, Cilla, and Misha.” She looks at me, and I know she’s trying to read my expression. “Four Minoans dead. I hope what’s in this box is worth it.”