Endgame Novella #2

by James Frey

  Allow me to be your master.

  The words burn.

  Baitsakhan bows his head. His fingers twitch at his dagger, so eager, so impatient. But he cannot leave his line without an eligible Player. The people would never stand for it.

  Twelve days until he reaches the age of eligibility.

  Twelve suns and 12 moons, and then he will be his own master.

  He will master all.

  He will wait.

  The camp is silent and still, the sky gray with predawn light.

  Baitsakhan is, today, 13 years old.

  Eligible for Endgame.

  Tired of waiting.

  For 12 days, he has watched the Donghu carefully, marked those who might see what Surengan saw, who might have the temerity to fight back. He has drawn up a list of 13 names.

  He likes the symmetry of this. Thirteen names, 13 years. On the day he is about to become the Player of the thirteenth line.

  There are other ways to go about this, of course. Other, less bloody ways, but those hold no appeal for Baitsakhan. Although he has no understanding of what it means to feel, to love or to fear, he’s studied the men and women around him for many years now. He understands that they feel, and he understands what makes them do so.

  He has paid special attention to the emotion they call fear, and he knows how best to instill it.

  Bat and Bold stand watch for him as he slips into the first man’s ger. Bayar, his father’s second cousin, who once challenged Baitsakhan’s right to a flank of meat from a fresh kill. Bayar lies on his fat stomach, snores rumbling with every breath.

  “Why?” Bat and Bold asked him, when he told them of his plan.

  He could have said: Because if I’m going to seize control, I need to take out my enemies, and my potential enemies, and all those they love. I need to slaughter enough people that those who survive know it’s only because I let them. This was rudimentary strategy, the art of war and domination.

  Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, said Sun Tzu’s Art of War. Surengan had made him memorize the whole thing. When you move, fall like a thunderbolt.

  Sun Tzu said, The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting, and this is what Baitsakhan intends to do. He will murder a handful of his people, to save himself the trouble of fighting the rest of them; he will ensure they are too frightened to fight back.

  All of this is true, in a sense, but it’s not the whole truth, and Baitsakhan is doing this so he no longer has to lie.

  “Because I want to,” he told Bat and Bold instead. “Because I have always wanted to, and from now on, I’m going to do whatever I want.”

  Now he wants to cut into the back of Bayar’s fatty neck, slicing through his spine.

  And so he does.

  Bayar’s eyes fly open. Paralyzed by his severed spine, he watches Baitsakhan slice the throats of his wife and three daughters. He is dead by the time Baitsakhan steps over these bodies and into the ger of Bayar’s oldest son, now married with a family of his own. Baitsakhan stabs the son in the heart, wishing he had the luxury of lingering: This man once broke Baitsakhan’s favorite bow. It was an accident, but still, debts must be repaid, and Baitsakhan would like to cut his eyes out and feed them to him one by one. There is no time. Instead, a quick death for Bayar’s son, for Bayar’s son’s two young boys and his pockmarked wife.

  Then Baitsakhan turns to the next name on his list.

  He saves Al-Ulagan for last. This one is special to him.

  When Al-Ulagan takes his last breath, Baitsakhan will finally meet his destiny. He will be the Player. He will be the master of all he surveys. He will be one step closer to Endgame, to the apocalypse of his dreams.

  Al-Ulagan is the only one capable of stopping him, the fierce warrior who carries the hopes of his people on his strong shoulders.

  And yet here lies Al-Ulagan, asleep. Helpless as a baby.

  First Baitsakhan will cut the Player’s vocal cords, so that he cannot scream.

  It wouldn’t do, making unseemly noise, summoning others to interrupt their private gathering before he’s ready.

  Baitsakhan has been waiting a long time to meet the Player man to man, knife to flesh.

  He intends to take his time.

  Sunrise is greeted by wails of shock and grief.

  Fifty-two bodies.

  An ocean of blood.

  The Donghu Player: dead.

  Baitsakhan sounds the alarm, summons his people to assembly. They look to him with hope and rage. He is their Player. He will know what to do.

  “You are wondering who could have done this,” he says, and pauses. He can still turn back. Lie, blame the massacre on a neighboring tribe, lead his people into a bloodbath of vengeance. It could be fun.

  But he is tired of hiding who he is and what he wants.

  No more.

  “I have done it,” Baitsakhan tells his people. “I have killed your Player, as I killed my own trainer, the great and mighty Surengan. I have killed your brothers and your sisters, your cousins and your wives, and I have done it on a whim, because they displeased me. Because I wanted to. And that is all you need to know. I am your Player, and that means you will do as I say, you will do what I want. This will be the new Donghu way. I have removed all those I believed might object to this. If there are more of you, please speak up now”—he pulls out his blood-stained knife—“so we might discuss.”

  No one speaks.

  No one moves.

  “If you are ready to swear loyalty to me, you may drop to your knees and do so,” Baitsakhan says.

  Bat and Bold immediately fall to their knees. Baitsakhan’s brother follows suit, averting his eyes.

  The rest of the crowd is still.

  “Now,” he says, and, slowly but surely, they drop to their knees before him, until only his mother is left on her feet. They stare at each other across the bowed heads of their clansmen. Baitsakhan senses she is sending him some kind of silent message, but he doesn’t know what it could be.

  Then she nods her head deliberately, and lowers herself to her knees. She keeps her eyes on him, though, and it is Baitsakhan who finally looks away.

  Instead he surveys his people, his servants. His slaves. He’s almost disappointed that they obeyed so easily. He wouldn’t have minded more bloodshed.

  Then he remembers.

  He can have as much blood as he wants. He is his own master now. There is no more need for trumped-up excuses to kill, no more hiding in the shadows to carve flesh where no one can see. No need for fake sorrow or regret. He can torture and kill with impunity now, if he likes, and they will obey him. Because they are his people. And he is their Player.

  “It is an honor to serve,” he tells them.

  Let the games begin.

  He commands his people to build him a new ger, one of his own, bigger and more lavish than any of the others. Not that Baitsakhan cares for such meaningless luxuries, but he understands the symbolism of power. He wants a home that will remind his people who is master and who is slave.

  He wants a home that will not be his mother’s ger, that will not make him feel like a child.

  But the first night of this glorious era, he sleeps beneath her roof. He needs to know what she will do.

  Many hours pass before she does anything. Baitsakhan lies still, feigns sleep. Waits.

  The moon has nearly returned to the horizon before he hears his mother padding softly across the ground.

  Baitsakhan keeps his eyes closed. Surengan has trained him well: He doesn’t need sight to kill. He can track her movements by sound and smell. He can feel the minute displacement of air as she nears. He could cut her down where she stands, before she knows what has happened.

  He does nothing, yet.

  She stands over him, as if considering.

  She is considering whether to kill him, Baitsakhan thinks. It’s the rational thing to do. It’s what he would do.

  “I know you’re not sleeping,” his
mother says softly.

  Baitsakhan does not open his eyes, does not move.

  “I held you in my arms and rocked you to sleep,” she says. “Before that, I held you in my womb. You fed of my blood. You breathed my air. You think I don’t know what you look like when you’re truly asleep? I know everything about you, my little Baitsakhan. I know you better than you know yourself.”

  “I doubt that, Mother.”

  “You think I’m going to kill you,” she says.

  Baitsakhan laughs. “No one can kill me. Least of all you.”

  “But you think I want to.”

  “Of course,” he says.

  “You murdered your sister.”

  It is the last thing he expects her to say—the first thing she’s said that surprises him. Baitsakhan starts to wonder if his mother is maybe not so stupid as she seems.

  “Of course I did,” he says, masking his confusion. He smiles, thinking back to the noises the little girl made as the nails tore her intestines to shreds. “Do you want to know why?”

  She laughs, softly. He’s never before noticed, how their laughs sound alike. “I know why,” she says. “I told you, I know you too well.”

  “What do you want?” he asks. It’s too dark to see her face. He doesn’t like this, the not knowing, and thinks perhaps it would be easier just to kill her now, be done with this.

  “No,” she says. “I don’t think you will kill me. You will kill many, before this is finished, simply because you can. But not me.”

  “Why not?” he asks. He genuinely wants to know why she’s so sure. Because he worries she may be right.

  “Because I am your mother,” she says. “Because I created you.”

  “And I’m supposed to what? Be grateful? Love you?” He snorts. But there is a strange feeling spreading through his body, a warmth. Perhaps, he thinks, this is what the thing called emotion feels like; perhaps this is what it feels like to be truly seen, truly known.

  “You love only pain,” she says. “You know how best to hurt. It is your greatest gift. And so you will keep me alive, to bear witness. To bear the most pain of all.”

  Only when she says it does he understand how right she is. He will never kill her.

  Her silent agony sustains him, strengthens him, feeds him. And after all, isn’t this what a mother is for?

  “And you, Mother?” he asks. “What will you do?”

  She falls to her knees beside him, as the tribesmen did earlier. Lowers her head. Offers him her hands, palms up, the sign of surrender.

  “I will serve you,” she says. “I will stand by you, with your brother and your cousins. We are your blood, and blood binds. I will protect you, my little Baitsakhan. I will love you.”

  “I’ll never understand you,” Baitsakhan says, and he means his mother, but not just her. He doesn’t understand any of them, these people, with their strange fantasies about love and family, their determination to cling to illusion: That life is anything but blood and meat and bone. That some bodies matter more than others. That anything matters but survival and pleasure. He can predict them, and he can certainly defeat them, but he will never understand them, and feels tainted by the effort. He is lucky to be so pure, so clear-eyed.

  “I know,” his mother says, and lowers her face to his, kisses him gently on the forehead, like a benediction.

  She was right about one thing, at least: He’s never heard anyone speak with so much pain. She’s radiating torment.

  She’s right about something else too. He won’t kill her. He wants her beside him, now and always; he wants to bathe in her suffering. He wants her to see what he does next. Who he hurts, and how. He wants to show off for his mother, like any child. He wants to show her that she doesn’t know him as well as she thinks, that she can’t even conceive of his unquenchable thirst for pain. He wants to, and so he will.

  This is going to be fun.

  Excerpt from ENDGAME: THE CALLING

  ENDGAME IS HERE. ENDGAME IS NOW.

  KEEP READING TO SEE HOW ENDGAME BEGINS IN:

  MARCUS LOXIAS MEGALOS

  Hafz Alipaa Sk, Aziz Mahmut Hüdayi Mh, Istanbul, Turkey

  Marcus Loxias Megalos is bored. He cannot remember a time before the boredom. School is boring. Girls are boring. Football is boring. Especially when his team, his favorite team, Fenerbahçe, is losing, as they are now, to Manisaspor.

  Marcus sneers at the TV in his small, undecorated room. He is slouched in a plush black leather chair that sticks to his skin whenever he sits up. It is night, but Marcus keeps the lights in his room off. The window is open. Heat passes through it like an oppressive ghost as the sounds of the Bosporus—the long, low calls of ships, the bells of buoys—groan and tinkle over Istanbul.

  Marcus wears baggy black gym shorts and is shirtless. His 24 ribs show through his tanned skin. His arms are sinewy and hard. His breathing is easy. His stomach is taut and his hair is close-cropped and black and his eyes are green. A bead of sweat rolls down the tip of his nose. All of Istanbul simmers on this night, and Marcus is no different.

  A book lies open in his lap, ancient and leather-bound. The words on its pages are Greek. Marcus has handwritten something in English on a scrap of paper that lies across the open page: From broad Crete I declare that I am come by lineage, the son of a wealthy man. He has read the old book over and over. It’s a tale of war, exploration, betrayal, love, and death. It always makes him smile.

  What Marcus wouldn’t give to take a journey of his own, to escape the oppressive heat of this dull city. He imagines an endless sea spread out before him, the wind cool against his skin, adventures and enemies arrayed on the horizon.

  Marcus sighs and touches the scrap of paper. In his other hand he holds a 9,000-year-old knife, made of a single piece of bronze forged in the fires of Knossos. He brings the blade across his body and lets its edge rest against his right forearm. He pushes it into the skin, but not all the way. He knows the limits of this blade. He has trained with it since he could hold it. He has slept with it under his pillow since he was six. He has killed chickens, rats, dogs, cats, pigs, horses, hawks, and lambs with it. He has killed 11 people with it.

  He is 16, in his prime for Playing. If he turns 20, he will be ineligible. He wants to Play. He would rather die than be ineligible.

  The odds are almost nil that he will get his chance, though, and he knows it. Unlike Odysseus, war will never find Marcus. There will be no grand journey.

  His line has been waiting for 9,000 years. Since the day the knife was forged. For all Marcus knows, his line will wait for another 9,000 years, long after Marcus is gone and the pages of his book have disintegrated.

  So Marcus is bored.

  The crowd on the TV cheers, and Marcus looks up from the knife. The Fenerbahçe goalie has cleared a rainbow up the right sideline, the ball finding the head of a burly midfielder. The ball bounces forward, over a line of defenders, near the last two men before the Manisaspor keeper. The players rush for the ball, and the forward comes away with it, 20 meters from the goal, free and clear of the defender. The keeper gets ready.

  Marcus leans forward. Match time is 83:34. Fenerbahçe has yet to score, and doing so in such a dramatic way would save some face. The old book slides to the floor. The scrap of paper drifts free of the page and slips through the air like a falling leaf. The crowd begins to rise. The sky suddenly brightens, as if the gods, the Gods of the Sky themselves, are coming down to offer help. The keeper backpedals. The forward collects himself and takes the shot, and the ball blasts off.

  As it punches the back of the net, the stadium lights up and the crowd screams, first in exaltation for the goal, but immediately afterward in terror and confusion—deep, true, and profound terror and confusion. A massive fireball, a giant burning meteor, explodes above the crowd and tears across the field, obliterating the Fenerbahçe defense and blasting a hole through the end of the stadium grandstand.

  Marcus’s eyes widen. He is looking at total carnage.
It is butchery on the scale of those American disaster movies. Half the stadium, tens of thousands of people dead, burning, lit up, on fire.

  It is the most beautiful thing Marcus has ever seen.

  He breathes hard. Sweat pours off his brow. People outside are yelling, screaming. A woman wails from the café below. Sirens ring out across the ancient city on the Bosporus, between the Marmara and the Black.

  On TV, the stadium is awash in flames. Players, police, spectators, coaches run around, burning like crazed matchsticks. The commentators cry for help, for God, because they don’t understand. Those not dead or on their way to being dead trample one another as they try to escape. There’s another explosion and the screen goes black.

  Marcus’s heart wants out of his chest. Marcus’s brain is as hot as the football pitch. Marcus’s stomach is full of rocks and acid. His palms feel hot and sticky. He looks down and sees that he has dug the ancient blade into his forearm, and a rivulet of blood is trickling off his hand, onto the chair, onto his book. The book is ruined, but it doesn’t matter; he won’t need it anymore. Because now, Marcus will have his Odyssey.

  Marcus looks back to the darkened TV. He knows there’s something waiting for him there amidst the wreckage. He must find it.

  A single piece.

  For himself, for his line.

  He smiles. Marcus has trained all of his life for this moment. When he wasn’t training, he was dreaming of the Calling. All the visions of destruction that his teenage mind concocted could not touch what Marcus has witnessed tonight. A meteor destroying a football stadium and killing 38,676 people. The legends said it would be a grand announcement. For once, the legends have become a beautiful reality.

  Marcus has wanted, waited, and prepared for Endgame his entire life. He is no longer bored, and he won’t be again until he either wins or dies.

  This is it.

  He knows it.