by James Frey
Dawn is on its way. Chiyoko creeps back to the campground so she can feign sleep before Akina wakes, but Akina is gone. A trail of fresh footsteps leads back into the trees, and Chiyoko follows, cautious and quiet. The lightening sky has a heaviness to it, and Chiyoko can feel the night weighing down on her. Something has changed; something is coming.
Akina stands in a clearing, holding a satellite phone that Chiyoko has never seen.
“Yes, Father,” Akina says as Chiyoko plays statue in the brush. It’s been so long since she had to be invisible.
“No, Father,” Akina says. “Not yet. But . . . are you sure there’s no other way? She’s not like you said. She’s—”
Akina goes quiet, her face changing as Satoshi spills poison in her ear. Chiyoko doesn’t have to hear his end of the conversation to know what he has to say. She’s heard it all before.
“Of course I want our people to survive,” Akina says, “but—”
Another silence, longer this time. When Akina speaks again, there is defeat in her voice. “Yes, Father. I understand. Tonight, then. I’ll finish it. I promise.”
Chiyoko can’t help but feel relief. Reality has finally intervened, saved them both from this flight of fantasy. She’d lulled herself into believing there was a choice here: Kill Akina or don’t kill Akina. Responsibility or mercy. But there has never been a choice, except the choice to live or the choice to die.
“Yes, Father, I promise. After she goes to sleep. It’ll be done.”
Yes, tonight, Chiyoko promises herself. Tonight it will be done.
It is a strange day, both of them pretending they don’t know it’s the last. The hours pass slowly, and Akina is unusually quiet. There is no chatter over breakfast, no complaint about the temperature of the water and the absence of conditioner, no trash-talking when they spar. Chiyoko misses it. She’s fallen out of the habit of silence.
“What’s it like, being the Player?” Akina asks her that night as they sit by the fire, watching the flames dance and the moon rise. “Do you ever wish it were different, that it didn’t have to be you?”
Chiyoko, of course, says nothing. The stars are bright tonight, and feel too close.
“You must wonder sometimes,” Akina says, her eyes fixed on the horizon. “What happens if you’re not strong enough? If you do something wrong, and everyone dies. To have all that on your shoulders . . .”
Chiyoko wonders if she’s trying to make herself feel better, repeating her father’s arguments, convincing herself that Chiyoko doesn’t deserve her role.
“Sometimes I think it’s too much to ask,” Akina says. “How can you put all that on us? We’re just kids.”
Not us, Chiyoko thinks. Only me.
Almost as if it’s spoken aloud, Akina says, “They shouldn’t put it on you, I mean.”
Chiyoko shrugs. It’s hard to do, almost as if Akina spoke the literal truth, and all those lives are balanced on her shoulders, weighing her down.
“Whatever, it’s not like you’re ever going to have to do something. I mean, what are the odds that this Endgame thing is coming soon to an Earth near us? Or coming ever, right? Maybe it’s just the world’s most sadistic bedtime story.” Akina laughs, but there’s no joy in it.
Chiyoko climbs to her feet. Enough of this.
“Yeah, I’m tired too,” Akina says. She stands and together they damp down the fire. “It was a good day, Chiyoko. Wasn’t it?”
Chiyoko can give her this: she nods.
“They’ve all been good days, I guess,” Akina says. “Who would’ve thought?” She looks up to the sky, its stars gleaming like diamonds on velvet. “I’m going to miss this, I think. Will you?”
Chiyoko shrugs again, but the answer is no. She will do her best to never think of this place, this night, again.
“Good night, Chiyoko.”
Akina raises her arm as if to touch Chiyoko, or embrace her, but stops it midair and settles for an awkward wave. Chiyoko waves back.
Good-bye.
Then it is just a matter of waiting for Akina to snuggle into her sleeping bag, close her eyes, and fall asleep, or pretend to.
Chiyoko doesn’t bother to pretend. The game ends tonight, one way or another. She sits awake, watching the stars, counting the seconds, and when she can wait no longer, she creeps into Akina’s tent. The girl lies on her back, still and peaceful, chest rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm.
Maybe she’s planning to wake early and strike at Chiyoko just before the dawn, or maybe she intended to stay awake but sleep overtook her. It doesn’t matter. Chiyoko is tired of trying to understand Akina, to know her.
Knowing her has only made this harder. If she knows more, it might become impossible.
Maybe they shouldn’t put it on me, she thinks. Maybe I am just a kid.
But she has never been just a kid.
She has never been just anything.
Her knife is a Japanese tanto, the kind used by the samurai warriors. This blade is double-edged, with an engraved handle that sits perfectly in her palm, and according to her uncle it is more than 900 years old. It is razor sharp. Her uncle gave it to her for her seventh birthday, and she has sharpened it every night since. Even here. Especially here.
Akina will be dead before she has a chance to wake. She will never know pain, she will never know failure. Chiyoko cannot afford to be merciful, but she can at least be kind.
That’s the plan, at least.
But as Chiyoko brings the blade to Akina’s throat, Akina opens her eyes. She does not flinch. She does not look surprised. Chiyoko realizes she’s been awake the whole time. Awake and waiting. She’s been waiting for Chiyoko, for this moment, maybe since the beginning.
The blade rests on the delicate flesh of Akina’s neck. Chiyoko does not bear down; Akina does not pull away. Their eyes meet.
“It’s the only way,” Akina says quietly. “I can’t do it. I can’t be what he needs me to be. If it has to be one of us, it has to be you.”
Chiyoko watches her. There are so many things she wants to say—and at the same time, there is nothing to say. She is thankful to have an excuse for silence. This doesn’t feel like killing an enemy.
Because she is not an enemy, not anymore.
Akina has managed to surprise her once again. Chiyoko never thought she was someone who would want to die.
“I don’t want to die,” Akina says. How is it that she understands Chiyoko so perfectly, when Chiyoko doesn’t understand her at all? “But it’s better than the alternative. There is no alternative.”
Chiyoko dips her head. She needs to live for her people. She needs to live for herself. And if Chiyoko is going to live, if Chiyoko is going to Play, then Akina has to die.
All the doubts she’s nursed about herself, about whether she’s strong enough for Endgame, strong enough to do whatever needs to be done, they all slip away. In this moment, she knows her own strength, finally knows her determination not just to live, but to win.
This is the certainty that has always awaited her in the dark, but she knows now it will remain when daylight comes. This moment will always sustain her.
This moment, this choice, this will define her.
The elaborate ceremony on her 13th birthday, the solemn promise over an ancient text, the approval of her elders, none of it meant anything, not compared to this moment. To this knife in her hand, to the life it will take.
This is her moment of ascension.
This is how she will finally and wholly accept her fate. This is how she will truly become the Player.
The blade slides easily through flesh, through artery, and when Akina whispers “Thank you,” blood bubbles from her lips, and then it is over, and all that is left is silence.
She lays the knife on Akina’s body. She will dig a hole by the sea and lay Akina to rest, the knife along with her. She has loved this knife, loved its deadly power and the way it shapes itself to her grip, enacting her will on flesh and blood, tearing life from
its victims. But that time is over. When she kills again—and she knows the moment will come, probably soon, and often—there will be no pleasure in it. Only necessity. She understands now, what it means to live a full life, to live outside the game, and she understands what it means to take that life away.
As, in a way, it was taken from her.
Tomorrow, Akina will fail to check in with the mainland. And so Satoshi will know, all will know, the outcome of this test. Soon Chiyoko’s people will come for her and ferry her back to her life. But she will not forget what happened on this island. She will not allow herself to forget. She will return as the Player, and if Endgame comes, she will Play. She chooses to Play. But she will be a different Player than she was, Playing for a different purpose.
Before, she cared only about living up to expectations, escaping the disappointment of the people she loved. She Played to make her uncle proud, to make her parents love her; she Played to prove herself to her family, and to her bloodline—and there was honor in that. But now she knows better. Now she will also Play for herself, and for the kind of future that Akina dreamed of but will never have. She will endure these years as the Player for what lies at the other end—a life she has never let herself imagine, a life that holds more than duty, a life of laughter and friendship and choice. She will Play for life, and for the hope that, one day, she will have one of her own.
KOORI
ALICE
Alice lies on cold ground, pebbles digging into her back, her eyes fixed on the stars. The land is rusty and flat, hard-packed mesa pockmarked with sickly desert bushes. A flock of corellas skims across the rising moon, and a snake dozes in a dark crevice of the lean-to, but otherwise, Alice is alone. This is the back of beyond, the never-never, harsh desert bushland with no human settlements for hundreds of miles. This is the danger zone, where pitiless sun scorches unwary travelers and bones bleach in the midday heat. It is the unimaginable stretch of emptiness where feral horses run wild, kangaroos bounce across the horizon, and snakes and lizards rule an unforgiving domain.
For Alice, it is home.
She comes here when she can, when she needs to escape, and lets the earth recharge her.
She has been here, alone, for five days, hiking through the bush, slicing up dingoes with her boomerangs and roasting them on a spit, watching the stars spin, thinking. Preparing.
Waiting for the dreams to come.
It’s been a full year since Alice spent this much time on her own in the bush. A year since she ventured out into the land with nothing but her buck knife and a supply of water. Five of them had set out that day a year ago, each hiking in a different direction, each hoping that somewhere in the bush the dream would settle upon them. The dream that would name them as the next Player.
Five cousins, five Koori, each a direct descendant of a former Player—and so each privileged to try for the honor themselves.
Four of them were boys; one of them was Alice.
None of the boys were as tough as she was. None as determined. None had been pushed as hard, trained as well, taught to understand that this moment, this honor, mattered more than anything. None of them believed it would be her, the girl, the ugly girl with the chubby cheeks and the moon-shaped birthmark rising over her eye, the girl with the untamed bird’s nest of curls and the dead mother. None of them but Alice, who knew she would return from her solo quest with her ancestors’ verdict rendered. She knew she would return home as the Player.
So she was not surprised when the dream came, her ancestors whispering her fate in her ear. She was not surprised to wake with the red kangaroo nuzzling the hollow of her neck, sacred creature of her people offered as a tribute from the sleeping world to the waking one.
She has not returned since, because she has not needed to return—her path as the Player has been clear, her training easy and almost joyful, her days driven by a purity of purpose.
Until now.
Now she’s returned to her homeland, to the earth that gifted her with her duty and destiny. She’s returned for guidance from her ancestors. She’s walked; she’s fasted; she’s wilted in the heat and shivered in the night. She’s waited for the dreams, and the dreams have not come.
Alice has patience. She trusts the land; she trusts the spirits of her people. She waits.
She watches the stars. They feel closer tonight.
Everything feels closer tonight: the sky, the ground, her future. The time is near, she thinks. The answers are close.
She breathes.
She trusts.
She sleeps.
She dreams.
Flames streak from the stars. Dusty plains erupt in pillars of light.
The sky is on fire.
Alice watches the world begin and end and begin again. She is an eye of calm at the center of the raging storm of eternity.
She is Alice Ulapala, Player of the Koori. Savior of the Koori. She is Alice the Player, but also Alice the 112th, an infinitesimal point on the unbroken line of her people. She is both at once, and also neither, also a free-floating consciousness on the sea of time, dipping into the now and the then and the might someday be.
In this place between, there is no one-thing-after-another, no cause and effect. No boundaries between past and present, between Alice and her people and her world.
This is where Alice will find her answers. From her ancestors. From herself.
This is where the spirits of the Koori dwell, all memories of past and possibilities of future mingling together, melting into an endless stream.
This is dreamtime.
Her question is not asked in words, nor is the answer spoken aloud.
But as Alice slips deeper into dreamtime, as she soaks in the desire of her line and the visions of fiery future, she understands.
The future is unwritten, its possibilities branching in two directions: death and life. This moment is the hinge.
She is the hinge.
What she does now, what she chooses to do, how she Plays, this will alter the flow of events. This will carry her line forward, or end it.
Alice is Alice the 112th. She is only a single Player in a line of Players stretching back through the millennia. But she sees here, in this place that is no place, that she is the one that counts.
Alice feels the tendrils of the waking world reaching for her, pulling her from the dream.
Color and light fade away, and the heaviness sets in.
The weight of reality.
The weight of time.
She holds fast to the dream as it fades. She lets her spirit stretch through the flow of ancestors, the eternal slivers of soul of all who came before, and, as she always does, seeks out a single bright light in the shimmering stream.
Somewhere among that line, somewhere in dreamtime, lives her mother.
Or, at least, the elemental piece of her mother that slipped into eternity as her body returned to the earth.
But the line is unbroken, the stream undifferentiated. Her mother is only one of many, a single star in a cluster of galaxies, unfindable.
Alice never stops looking.
She wakes knowing what she needs to know.
She needs to stop delaying and fulfill her duty.
She needs to Play.
She radios Henry, her trainer, who’s waiting on her word, the plane fueled and ready to go. She didn’t tell him why she needed to come out here, or how much—but she didn’t have to. Henry knows her well enough to understand why, for the first time, she has hesitated. As he knows her well enough to trust that she will return, ready to fulfill her obligations, to carry out her next mission, to follow orders. He knows her well enough to wait.
And she knows him well enough to know he hated every minute of it.
Now she puts him out of his misery.
“Come and get me, mate,” she says into the satellite phone, marveling that even out here in the heart of nowhere, this tiny machine can commune with the stars. Or at least a mechanical approximation of them
whirling through the ether, beaming her words to an airstrip 300 miles away. “And make it snappy.”
There’s nothing much Alice loves about flying. Especially in this tin can of a plane.
Especially with Henry at the controls.
He’s always a nervous driver, and being several thousand feet above the surface of the earth never helps his mood.
“Still the same as the last thirty times you checked,” Alice teases as he sneaks yet another glance at the altimeter.
“It never hurts to be careful.”
“No Player ever won by being careful,” Alice says.
“And that’s why I never let you drive,” Henry points out. “Now, can I get back to outlining your mission?”
“You’re the boss,” she says, but when he returns to describing the target, she tunes him out. Instead she stares out the mottled window, watching the plane’s wing tear through wisps of cloud. True, there’s nothing to love about flying, but it’s better for her than what’s waiting on the ground.
“Are you even listening?” Henry asks, without looking over at her. He knows her that well.
“Maybe it’d be easier to pay attention if ya didn’t yabber on so much,” she suggests.
“This is important, Alice.”
“Everything’s important with you, Henry. You’d think the fate of the world was at stake or something.” She grins, because that’s what she does when she’s nervous. Finds something to laugh about. Something to let out the pressure and remind herself that life isn’t always so deadly serious. Even her life. Henry, on the other hand, doesn’t crack a smile. “Sometimes I think you’re missing the humor gene.”
“I have an excellent sense of humor,” Henry says drily. “That’s why I only laugh at things that are funny.”