Sky Key

by James Frey

  Only Alice barely moves at all.

  Christ, she’s strong, Maccabee thinks.

  Their faces are right in front of each other, and before Maccabee can do anything, Alice cracks her forehead into the bridge of Maccabee’s nose.

  It breaks again.

  The 7th time in his life. The 2nd in the last three weeks.

  It kills.

  But the adrenaline doesn’t let him feel it.

  Since she’s as strong as any man he’s fought, he treats her like one. He brings his knee up hard into her groin, very hard, and this causes her to falter for half a second. It even draws out a muted “Oof!”

  Maccabee focuses on the gun. He twists the wrist with the pistol and it falls to the floor. He flicks it under the bed with his foot.

  But Alice recovers fast, grabs the flesh between his rib cage and his pelvic bone, and squeezes. Squeezes so hard it feels like her fingers are going to cut through him and literally yank out his insides and throw them on the floor.

  He lets go of her wrist and zips a left cross over her cheekbone. He can feel it crack below the eye.

  “Ack!” she yells, releasing him and hopping backward onto the bed, straddling Ekaterina’s lifeless body. She doesn’t speak, but her face, smiling wryly, says it all: Nice hit.

  Maccabee tries to grab her, but she claps a hand on the crown of his head and vaults over him, as gracefully as a circus acrobat. She hits the floor noiselessly, expecting Maccabee to spin and face her. But he doesn’t waste time doing that. Instead he sweeps his leg behind him and cuts Alice’s feet out from under her. She falls over sideways. She scrambles momentarily, but before she can get up Maccabee’s knee crunches into her side and she folds at the middle, crunching to the hardwood floor.

  Maccabee jumps on top of her, his knees pinning her elbows, and lands a series of lighting-fast but gut-churning blows to her midsection. She tenses her stomach muscles, pain latticing every fiber, as Maccabee lands his 5th hit. The sound is different this time. More slap than thump. Alice has had worse.

  Alice studies Maccabee’s face in that split second. It is torn with rage and grief. If he wasn’t trying to kill her, she’d almost feel sorry for him.

  Too many people are going to be suffering from the same feelings soon. Far too many.

  Alice thrusts her hips up to try to throw Maccabee. He holds on, but his flurry is interrupted. She works her right arm free and swings up, her hand open, her fingers curled like claws, her nails raking the side of his neck and drawing blood. She swipes again, trying to grab his ear and pull it off, but he whips his arm through the air and catches her wrist. He twists it to the floor and reaches down and pulls out the four-inch blade hidden under the cuff of his pants. It flashes in front of Alice’s eyes as it comes down for her throat. He is going to kill her in the same way that she killed the woman.

  Your mum, Alice realizes.

  She shows a new level of strength as she bucks her left arm, lifting Maccabee’s knee off her elbow. The knife slices the air next to Alice’s ear, cutting a handful of her curled hair. He doesn’t waste any time, though, and brings the knife back, trying to slice a deep gouge on her throat.

  But Alice’s left arm is now free, and she deflects the swipe away from her neck. She grabs his wrist. He flips the knife in his fingers, point down. He grabs her wrist with his other hand. She snatches this wrist with her hand. He tries to activate the needle in his little ring, but only in that instant realizes that he doesn’t have it on.

  They are locked up.

  The knifepoint is 12.7 centimeters from her flesh.

  It is a contest of strength.

  For several seconds neither makes any progress. Muscles bulge and twitch. Veins pop on both their faces, a thick one running diagonally from the bridge of Alice’s nose and past her pale crescent-shaped birthmark, the vein disappearing into her hair.

  Maccabee leans forward, puts his shoulders and back into it. The knife jitters with the effort of both Players. It moves toward Alice’s neck, but only 2.4 centimeters.

  Alice is silent. Concentrated.

  Maccabee screams. Spittle flies from the back of his throat, dotting Alice’s face. She blinks one fleck out of her eye, but otherwise stays here, in the moment, her muscles working working working.

  Maccabee cannot make progress.

  He screams again, this time even more primal and desperate, and rises onto his feet, angles his shoulders so that he can get as much of his weight over the knife, and finally it comes down.

  Down.

  Down.

  It touches Alice’s dark skin, pushes in. Maccabee feels the skin give way. He sees the blood. He raises his hips. Pushes down. It pierces her platysma muscle 1 centimeter, 2 centimeters. The blood begins to flow. The first drop hits the floor.

  Alice is still silent.

  He pushes.

  She pushes back.

  He pushes.

  She grips his wrists so hard that the tips of his fingers are going purple.

  He has her.

  Alice lets go with her right hand. The knife goes in another centimeter. The pain begins to scream. She doesn’t.

  She reaches down, in between them, in the space that Maccabee has created by half standing over her. She reaches down and grabs his groin and squeezes as hard as she can.

  A sickening popping noise as Maccabee wilts and cries out. She squeezes harder and harder and harder.

  She braces his suddenly dead weight with her left arm. Presses a pressure point in his wrist with her middle finger. His hand releases the knife. She twists, throws him to the side, and straddles him, her right hand still in between them, squeezing harder and harder and harder.

  Finally she lets go.

  Maccabee is panting, crying. He has never felt such pain.

  She pulls the knife from her neck and lays it on the floor and balls her fists and methodically punches Maccabee in the face left and right and left and right and left and right and left and right and left.

  When she is finished, Maccabee is motionless. His nose is as crooked as it’s ever been. His lip is split. His left eye is already swelling shut. Blood and tears and sweat cover his face in a sheen of red. Snot bubbles at his nostrils and pops, bubbles and pops.

  Alice kneads her hands. They are bruised but not broken. She touches the wound on her neck. It’s bad, but it didn’t get anything vital. She’ll live.

  “Good fight, but you gotta bring more for a Koori.”

  She picks up Maccabee’s knife.

  Holds it over his heart.

  “See ya in hell, mate.”

  Yes, Koori . . . In hell. . . . Now Play on . . . Maccabee thinks, still conscious, barely hanging on.

  The Nabataean can just make out the contours of Alice’s mop of hair and the wistful look in her eyes.

  . . . Play on. . . .

  Maccabee waits for the warm death of a skewered heart, waits to see his mother in the life beyond, if there is one, wants it even, to see her, to be with her, to have it end. In that moment he is ready to concede—eager, even.

  Ready.

  But instead of death he sees Alice’s head tilt at an impossible angle, rising suddenly and falling 100 degrees to the side, onto her shoulder and past it, blood spattering everywhere.

  The knife clatters to the floor.

  BAITSAKHAN

  Arendsweg 11, Apartment 1H, Lichtenberg, Berlin, Germany

  Baitsakhan, wearing nothing but a pink hospital gown, stands over the Koori and the pulped Nabataean, struggling to hold up the dead weight of the huge woman.

  All Baitsakhan did was grab and squeeze the back of her neck. His bionic hand did the rest. Maccabee and his mother had explained the hand’s functionality to the Donghu, prattling on about pressure per centimeter and augmented grip strength. The Nabataeans and all their words. Baitsakhan didn’t pay much attention. He wanted to see for himself.

  His hand crushed through the Koori’s skin, muscle, and bone like it was a bundle of straw. In
3.7 seconds, Baitsakhan held a squishy rope of pulverized spine.

  He releases her. She falls to the side, her head barely attached to a bloody braid of bone and tissue. Her body quivers and spasms for several seconds as the strong life inside fades reluctantly, oh so reluctantly.

  She stops moving.

  Baitsakhan spits on the Koori’s mangled body.

  Alice Ulapala is dead.

  Her Endgame is over.

  Next to her, Maccabee’s chest rises and falls. He is battered but he will survive.

  “The hand works,” Baitsakhan says, as if nothing were wrong with Maccabee. As if Ekaterina were not lying dead only a meter away. “It works well.”

  Baitsakhan recalls his fight with Kala in Turkey, how Maccabee saved him in much the same way, by sneaking up on the Sumerian and stabbing her in the back.

  “We’re even now,” Baitsakhan says, still staring at his incredible hand.

  Maccabee can only groan in agreement, his mouth swollen, a broken tooth wedged into his bottom lip. The little monster could finish him off. Two Players extinguished in a few seconds. Maccabee knows this, and is thankful the Donghu has some sense of honor, or gratitude, or whatever code the young beast subscribes to.

  He is thankful and surprised. He will lose consciousness soon and will be relying on the Donghu to take care of him, their roles reversed.

  Baitsakhan scratches his bare ass through the back of his hospital gown. “I need to pee,” he declares, and pads quietly out of the room. His footsteps are much quieter than Maccabee’s were. Alice Ulapala was right about that. For all the good it did her.

  The lights go out for Maccabee.

  But unlike the Koori, he will wake again.

  SHARI CHOPRA

  , Valley of Eternal Life, Sikkim, India

  It is Shari’s turn to dream.

  And dream badly.

  She sees the whole thing play out, just as it happened. Alice dying violently in that bedroom on the other side of the world. Shari screams and cries and kicks at the Nabataean and swings at the Donghu with a long stick crowned with a tangle of spikes.

  Her blows pass through them like she is a ghost.

  Time passes quickly in the dream. Shari watches the boys gather themselves and leave, Maccabee’s arm draped over the shoulders of the much shorter Baitsakhan.

  Baitsakhan staring lovingly at his peculiar hand.

  Alice left behind.

  Savaged and cold.

  Good Alice. Noble Alice.

  Dead Alice.

  Shari kneels over her body, tries to give it some dignity, but it’s impossible.

  Shari realizes that what she’s witnessed is no dream.

  The Player who is out in the world protecting her Little Alice is no more.

  It’s a nightmare.

  Shari runs from the room to chase the boys, but as she exits the doorway, she’s transported somewhere else.

  She is neck-deep in cold, cold water in a small stone antechamber. The water glows blue, and throws undulating light onto the walls and ceiling.

  She tastes the water.

  Salty.

  She wades to a small embankment and pulls herself from the water. She’s naked. There’s no sound but the whisper of waves breaking in the distance.

  Carved into the walls are blocks of words. Sanskrit, Sumerian, Egyptian, Celtic, Harappan, and another language Shari has never seen before consisting of perfectly hewn dashes and vertical lines and dots, some kind of otherworldly braille.

  Scattered among the words like mathematical confetti are modern numerals, in a seemingly random pattern: 04011398445134074371876378452911036566102131964652158293456.

  Shari walks along the wall, running her fingers over the writing.

  She can read the Sanskrit. A passage from the Mahabharata. The Hindu sacred poem that she memorized in its entirety when she was all of nine years old. The one that tells of Drona and Arjuna, of King Karna and his many victories, of Lord Krishna and the battle at Dwarka, of Sikhandi and Bhishma. Of the great war of Kurukshetra.

  Of the four human, if not always noble, goals: dharma, artha, kama, moksha.

  Righteousness, prosperity, desire, liberation.

  The goals that every person lives for, fights for, and that many have spilled rivers of blood for.

  As she moves, the light in the water fades, and suddenly all is black.

  The sound of the ocean disappears.

  The numbers light up.

  Here and here and here.

  Ten of them suddenly fly to the middle of the room and swirl around. 4922368622.

  Shari knows these are important. Perhaps, in some way, they are Alice’s parting gift to her.

  She must remember them.

  She tries to grab the numbers, to keep them, but they evade her fingers like butterflies riding a garden breeze.

  And then the screaming starts.

  In less than a second it grows to deafening levels, and Shari jolts awake. The screaming is gone. Jamal is by her side, still asleep. Little Alice is in her adjoining room in the great stone fortress, also asleep.

  Shari scrambles to her bedside table to write the numbers down on a scrap of paper. She does. There they are, in the world of the living, a gift from the dreamscape, a gift from Big Alice Ulapala, may the gods take her.

  AN LIU

  22B Hateshinai Tri, Naha, Okinawa, Japan

  After setting up some just-in-case toys in the backyard, An scales the wall of a four-story prewar wooden residence. It takes him less than a minute to reach the roof. It is 3:13 a.m. The house sits atop a hill, and from the roof An can see all the way down to the water. Naha is asleep, and half-abandoned anyway, since many couldn’t bear to live here after the horrors of the meteor that ravaged the harbor.

  An is dressed like a ninja. Loose black cotton pants and flat, soft-soled shoes. A long-sleeved black cotton shirt. Fingerless gloves. A hood pulled over his head. A scarf tied over his face. A svelte knapsack slung over his shoulders and tied tightly to his waist so that it doesn’t bounce or swing. It contains a few more toys. Two smoke grenades on his chest. A Walther PPQ on his left hip, angled for a right-hand draw. A two-switch remote, the arming mechanism sewn onto the sleeve of his left forearm, the detonator sewn into his right pocket. A smartphone zippered into his left pocket.

  And most importantly, the necklace of hair and flesh hanging against his chest.

  His talisman. His saving grace. His love.

  With him always now.

  There are four cameras on the roof. An avoids them, but doesn’t go to extremes. He doubts the authorities even care about burglars in light of the Abaddon revelation. All the camouflage probably isn’t necessary.

  The ninja suit is a tribute. A testament to his beloved. It felt appropriate to wear, considering who owns this house.

  This is the Takeda residence. Inside are Chiyoko’s people.

  He reaches the door on the roof and holds the smartphone over a keypad. The camera overhead surely sees him. Perhaps someone inside is already running to meet him.

  To greet him.

  Hopefully they will be like Chiyoko and show some restraint. An doesn’t want to be killed tonight.

  Not yet.

  He wants to talk.

  He swipes the smartphone’s screen and selects a homemade app. It runs through 202,398,241 combinations in 3.4 seconds, transmitting them wirelessly to the door’s security keypad. Code number 202,398,242 does the trick. The door unlocks.

  An pulls the handle, opens the door, walks inside, closes the door quietly. No alarms, no shouting, no footsteps, no shots fired from the darkness.

  Just silence.

  The way Chiyoko would have wanted it.

  Perhaps the way all the Takedas want it.

  Maybe they all are mute, he thinks.

  An pulls the scarf and hood from his head. A 2nd tattoo tear is under his eye, fresh and new, glazed with petroleum jelly, ringed with a thin red band of irritation.

  He
leisurely walks down the stairs, holding his hands out in a gesture of goodwill, just in case he bumps into someone.

  He doesn’t.

  He reaches the topmost floor. A hall light is on. Four sliding doors, three open. He peers into each. Bedrooms. All with futons on the floor. All empty of people. He reaches the 3rd door and slides it open. A western-style bed. A small pewter bell over the doorway, a string leading away from it and disappearing into the wall.

  A window overlooking the decimated harbor. A painting on the wall, opposite the bed. A painting of a winding river as seen from a bird’s eye, peaceful and serene, like Chiyoko appeared to be.

  But An knows that water is always strong and unyielding, and that it seeps into everything.

  Like Chiyoko.

  He steps inside the empty room. He smells the air.

  He can smell her.

  This is Chiyoko’s room.

  He takes a deep breath, holds her scent in his nose, and quickly leaves to continue his search.

  Down another flight of stairs—two more empty bedrooms, a study, a bathroom. No people.

  Down another flight. A kitchen, a tea room, another bathroom, a sitting room with a Western fireplace, a small orange fire crackling within.

  And there, sitting serenely on a round floor cushion, a small bald man in a simple blue-and-crimson-striped yukata, his dark, round eyes open and staring straight at An.

  A katana, unsheathed, 1,329 years old, rests in a stand just in front of him. A white porcelain plate with crumbs. A cup, maybe empty, maybe not.

  “Hello,” the man says in Japanese.

  An eyes the sword and holds up his hands. “I’m sorry, sir. But I don’t speak your language,” he says in Mandarin, hoping that since Chiyoko understood it, maybe this man does too.

  “That is all right. I speak yours,” the man answers in Mandarin. He eyes the details of An’s necklace. The shriveled knots of flesh. The ears. The hair.

  “My name is An Liu. I am the Player of the 377th line. I am the Shang. I apologize for entering your home in this way. I was afraid that if I rang the bell, you would reject me.”