Sky Key

by James Frey

  “And when they do, we’ll follow them.”

  “Right. Just like we said. Going up there would be suicide. Plus, you and me aren’t exactly fit for battle right now.”

  Baitsakhan bristles. He is always ready.

  Maccabee continues. “We’ll follow them, bide our time, and kill them.”

  Pause.

  “A small army . . .” Baitsakhan says slowly.

  Maccabee turns to the boy. “What’re you thinking?”

  “You speak Spanish?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then I’m thinking you and me would look good in those eagle-claw uniforms.”

  Maccabee smiles. A local disguise. It’s a good idea. A great idea. “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, eh?”

  Baitsakhan frowns. “What?”

  “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

  “What kind of stupid talk is that?”

  “It’s an expression,” Maccabee says flatly. “What I mean is that we’ll jump a pair of those guys, take their clothes and their truck, and blend seamlessly into the environment. Then, when the time is right . . .” Maccabee draws a finger over his throat.

  “That’s what I’m trying to say,” Baitsakhan explains.

  “Christ. Never mind.”

  “Fine. But we will ambush them and take the key, right?”

  Maccabee fights the urge to roll his eyes. “Yes, Baitsakhan. That’s the plan.”

  The Donghu smiles. He likes it. “And then, my Nabataean brother, we will go and kill the Harappan and the Aksumite.”

  Maccabee doesn’t say anything. He understands Baitsakhan a little better than before, how revenge for the deaths of Bat and Bold and Jalair clouds his judgment—the same happened to Maccabee when he saw Ekaterina slaughtered by the Koori—but all the same he’s growing tired of the Donghu.

  Yet Maccabee still sees some wisdom in their alliance.

  “Take kill win, Baits,” Maccabee says, echoing Baitsakhan’s clue from the Calling. “Take kill win.”

  >>Aleph Press Release JULY 30 of this Year Zero Minus<<<<<<<<

  <>

  FOR IMMEDIATE DSTRIBUTION

  AUM.

  THE CLUB OF GODS AND HERMITS, seeing in the lightness of the darkness, and that which has been prophesied by our leader for forty years and counting, it is time. Our hand on this morning to act. We cannot be outdone by charlatans and posers, these unnamed fighters for freedom and desolation who like cowards take no responsibility for the explosion and radioactive poisoning at Tokyo Port early this morning.

  We cannot be outdone.

  AUM.

  This arrival that the Beast calls Abaddon will be loud.

  The death that precedes it, today, my people, in this frail nation’s most traveled port. The death that precedes it will be quiet.

  Look east, sinners of Tokyo, to where the sun rises over the faded false empire.

  Look to Narita.

  AUM.

  KYODO NEWS—BREAKING

  At 8:37 a.m. local time, five compact hydrogen cyanide devices were detonated in the HVAC systems of Terminal 1 at Narita airport. Three minutes prior, a press release was issued by the terrorist organization Aleph, also known as Aum Shinrikyo. In the interval, evacuation was begun at both terminals. This procedure proved inadequate. Hundreds are confirmed dead, hundreds more suspected dead. Gunfire, presumably from security forces, has been reported as well. It is advised that all people, foreign and domestic, remain free of Narita and environs for the time being.

  It is not known if this event has anything to do with the explosion and release of radioactive material at Tokyo Port earlier this morning.

  Effective immediately, all mass transit in Tokyo is suspended. Officials are declaring martial law for central Tokyo, Chiba, and Narita.

  This is a developing story.

  AISLING KOPP, POP KOPP, GREG JORDAN, BRIDGET MCCLOSKEY, GRIFFIN MARRS

  55, Headed West-Southwest

  After An’s explosion, Aisling did indeed need every second of her breath and then some.

  She held it hot and hollow in her chest under the water for four minutes and fifteen seconds, a personal record, one created by fear and desire and determination but mostly fear. When her lungs lit with fire and her stomach clenched for life and her heart beat so loudly that she could hear nothing else, she surged upward and surfaced, screaming for air.

  Air that was black and poisoned and thick.

  But it was the only air available, and there was oxygen in it, along with pulverized concrete and plastic and glass and metal and god-knows-what isotope of what element—probably cesium 137—and so she breathed.

  And breathed.

  And breathed.

  She pulled herself from the water and breathed.

  The bomb An Liu detonated was massive. It destroyed every building for three blocks, and damaged many more past that. It left a crater at ground zero 104 feet across and 37 feet deep and smoldering and black as pitch.

  Aisling didn’t dare go to look. Nothing could survive that blast. She needed to find her grandfather and Jordan and his team—or what was left of them.

  She wandered south along the shoreline into the wind blowing off the water, trying to get a signal out of her waterlogged radio. She got nothing. She abandoned the radio.

  She avoided the smoky plume that flowed over Tokyo Port. She rounded a corner and found Pop and McCloskey sitting on the edge of a curb, their arms draped over their knees, McCloskey talking to Jordan and Marrs on her comm link. They were behind Aisling, only a few minutes away.

  All four had been just outside the blast radius and they’d survived.

  Aisling hugged Pop. And hugged him and hugged him. When they were done they sat on the curb, utterly exhausted.

  “You’re soaked,” he said.

  “Took a morning swim.”

  “Was it nice?” McCloskey asked.

  “Wonderful.”

  Silence.

  Aisling broke it. “That was . . . not good.”

  “No. It wasn’t.” McCloskey continued to fiddle with her radio, trying to establish some contact with the KFE team. Aisling and Pop just sat. Still. Quiet. Sirens in the far but audible distance.

  “We need to leave,” Aisling said.

  McCloskey pointed. “Here they come.”

  Jordan and Marrs rounded the corner, clambered over a capsized car. They were covered in soot. Aisling and her group rose to meet them. Jordan and McCloskey hugged. Marrs lit a cigarette and let it dangle from his lower lip. Pop and Aisling leaned on each other.

  The group turned from the destruction and walked over a causeway, still toward the open bay, looking for transportation.

  “Kilo Foxtrot Echo?” Aisling eventually asked.

  But she knew the answer.

  They all did.

  Jordan said, “Dead. Every one.”

  “Least An Liu is dead too,” Aisling said.

  “True. I saw the blast site, and it’s textbook. No one’s walking out of it,” Jordan says, confirming what Aisling already knew.

  They continued south. In the parking lot of an out-of-place golf course they stole two compact cars and left. No one had seen them. They took a circuitous route back to the hotel, avoiding police and any official entanglements.

  When they got to the suite, Jordan passed out potassium iodide pills and everyone stripped and they threw out their clothes and they showered and they got rid of the few weapons they had, since they could have been contaminated. Aisling was glad that she hadn’t brought her ancient Celtic sword with her to the op. It wouldn’t have been very auspicious to have to discard such a priceless and dear artifact.

  After they were clean, the news wires lit up and the television blared with horror, not only for what had happened in the shipping port, but of what was happening at Japan’s largest and most important airport.

  Run-of-the-mill terrorists were getting in on the action.

  This is one way the wor
ld ends, Aisling thought.

  Aisling declared that they had to leave Japan, and no one argued with her. They talked about where to go. McCloskey said South America, to chase the three or maybe four Players they could still track. Aisling overruled her. “No. It’s true that one of them has Earth Key, but we might as well let them fight over it and kill each other in the process. They clearly don’t know they’re being tracked, so we can go to them when the time is right. I say we look for Sky Key, and also for a way to stop this madness.”

  Pop asked where they might do that.

  “Stonehenge,” Aisling answered. “I’m guessing you can access the site, right, Jordan?”

  “Of course I can. I even know the NATO CO personally. He’s kind of a bastard.”

  “Great. Stonehenge it is.”

  “You sure about that, Jordan?” McCloskey asked, and Aisling wondered if she was slowly getting closer to whatever it is they’re not telling her.

  “Sure I’m sure, McCloskey. You know we’ll get the grand tour. We’ll just tell them you’re a new case officer, Aisling. Langley’s latest virtuoso, don’t let her young looks fool you. How’s that strike you?”

  “Fine. Now let’s go. I don’t want to stay in Tokyo one second longer.”

  They agreed and gathered their things and moved out that afternoon, before martial law could be fully implemented.

  And now they drive north in another van, looping around the vast metropolis. Their next destination is Yokota Air Base, only 19 miles from the center of Tokyo. Jordan’s Gulfstream waits, fully gassed and loaded with weaponry and some new equipment and armor and food.

  With uncertainty high and the trains shut down and martial law looming, Tokyo’s citizens pour into the countryside. Traffic crawls. They sit in the van for over two hours, and by Marrs’s estimation have another hour to go. Aisling is in the back on her laptop. Pop is next to her, running a sharpening stone over the Celtic sword. The others are in the front.

  Aisling scours a folder of An’s files, the files they stole before the op went to shit. She looks for anything regarding Stonehenge or other ancient sacred sites like Carahunge or Carnac or the Egyptian pyramids—anything that might help her locate Sky Key. Anything.

  But she finds nothing. Apparently, An Liu didn’t give a shit about Endgame—at least not about its heritage, or about the Makers, or about humanity’s strange history. All he cared about were the Players—especially Chiyoko Takeda—and about bombs, destruction, and death.

  He Played for death, Aisling thinks. And that’s what he got.

  The van inches along the smooth Japanese highway. Jordan and Marrs and McCloskey have been quiet for most of the ride, and have reverted to their gallows humor only sparingly. Losing Kilo Foxtrot Echo has knocked their confidence down a peg or two.

  They pass a tall Shinto temple on the side to the road, its stacked stories and curved roofs a remnant of another age, a golden age.

  Pop drags the stone over the blade. He nudges Aisling’s shoulder. He doesn’t break from sharpening the sword. A sword that’s already one of the world’s keenest, a sword that doesn’t need the attention.

  “You’re wondering again if you should have teamed up with them?” he asks very quietly.

  Aisling frowns at the front of the van. She doesn’t want to them to hear. She opens a new Gmail window and types her answer there.

  A little. Just before everything went bad, I asked myself that. Sure, it has its advantages, and with the world already getting unpredictable, those advantages can’t be ignored, but . . . I don’t know . . .

  Pop puts down the sword and stone. Moves his hands to the keyboard. Types: I agree about the advantages. But that mission did not go well.

  They take turns.

  No. It didn’t. Still, Liu is dead.

  Pop pauses. I’m not convinced he is.

  Aisling shoots Pop a look. Why? You saw what happened back there. Besides, Marrs says his tracker is kaput.

  So? An’s a Player. The most dangerous of all, perhaps. Until you know, I would assume he’s alive.

  Pause.

  Shit. If he IS alive, if he meant to do that in order to escape, then I think we SHOULD stay with them.

  They do have access to transportation, and weapons.

  Pause.

  Aisling writes, Yes. But if we stay, I have to take charge. These calls, they have to be mine. I don’t care how much experience they have.

  Agreed.

  Aisling highlights everything and deletes it.

  McCloskey looks to the back of the van. “You guys all right back there? Awfully quiet.”

  “Yeah, we’re fine. Just tired.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  McCloskey turns back to the road. The van stops and starts as Marrs works it along. Pop goes back to sharpening. Aisling goes back to the Shang’s files. She checks An’s tracking programs. Both blips are in Juliaca, Peru, about three miles from each other, and both are virtually motionless.

  One is watching the other.

  One is going to surprise the other.

  Soon, most likely.

  Just as she’s about to close her laptop, a Google Alert pops up in a window. Her breath is dashed and her heart races and she clicks the link hastily. Either from beyond the grave or by his own living hand, An Liu has posted a video on YouTube.

  The title is simple and direct:

  ENDGAME IS HERE. KILL THE PLAYERS. SAVE THE WORLD.

  AN LIU

  Fishing Boat , Sagami Bay, Heading 204˚ 45' 24"

  It is by his own living hand.

  His bomb-proof capsule was thrown clear of the blast, sailed 100 meters in the air, traveled 1.2 kilometers south, and landed on the fringe of the green of the 10th hole of Wakasu Golf Links, where it rolled and rolled until it tilted into a sand trap. It was a jarring trip that knocked An unconscious for 12 minutes and 15 seconds. After he woke, he blew the explosive bolts, the door blasted off, and he emerged from the pill-shaped vessel. He walked south along the fairway in his hazmat suit. He reached the marina, removed the suit, and climbed into his dinghy and slipped along the water to his escape boat.

  Now, An Liu is on the bridge of his 35-foot Yamaha pleasure cruiser, the , the morning sun pouring through the windows. Oshima Island is in the distance, a wispy plume rising from the island’s volcanic crater. The heading is locked into the boat’s computer, the speed a steady 10 knots on glassy seas. No wind, no clouds. The conditions are ideal.

  He needs to get rid of the tracker the Brits put in him.

  He uses a specially rigged voltmeter to get the weak reading from the transmitting chip inside his thigh. He washes his hands and puts on surgical gloves and takes a scalpel and digs at his skin and hair and veins, parting muscle and pulling up red and pink chunks and placing them on a white sheet of plastic next to the computer keyboard. Digging and digging until he finds it and pulls it out with a pair of sterilized needle-nose pliers. It is a long slender thing, like a hair with a black teardrop of metal and plastic on one end. He wads it up in a ball of gauze and slides open the window and slings it into the water.

  He is not being tracked anymore.

  Whoever was hunting him will not be able to chase him so easily.

  He pours iodine over the wound and cleans it up and sews it shut.

  As soon as this impromptu procedure is finished he turns his attention to the video. He runs the script that will post it, along with all its built-in fake views and all its pings and all the links to other sites and all the emails to journalists and news outlets. He hits send and he watches it move and build and seep into the still-connected world—“Because it won’t be connected for long, Chiyoko. No, it won’t.”

  He knows that people will devour it, and that it will go viral.

  He knows that he is not being tracked.

  He knows that he is free.

  Safe.

  And he knows that the other Players SHIVERblinkSHIVER the other Players are not.

  “Wi
th the world shifting so fast since the announcement of Abaddon, our attentions here at Fox News have shifted as well. With all that is going wrong in the world—with the terrorist attacks in Japan; with Pakistan and India falling headlong into a full-scale war overflowing with nationalistic and religious fervor; with Russia invading Georgia and Kazakhstan; with Iranian fighter jets flying over Riyadh last week in a show of Shia force; with a low-scale “preppers’ war” erupting on the Montana-Saskatchewan border between armed militias; with the deadly race riots in Los Angeles and Saint Louis and Jackson, Mississippi—we at Fox News have been going out of our way to report on many of the good things that have developed in the shadow of the asteroid that will impact our planet.

  “We’ve brought you news from Washington, which has not ceased to surprise us. It seems that Abaddon’s first American victim has been partisanship of all kinds. The men and women of the US capital have been very busy doing something that we have not seen in recent memory—cooperating on nearly everything. They have—literally at times, as we saw during last Friday’s vigil at the Lincoln Memorial—come together and held hands, praying for the graces of god and man, proclaiming America’s importance as a positive force for good in the harsh world that we will inhabit. There simply does not seem to be a Democrat or a Republican left—only Americans, only leaders. It has been remarkable.

  “We have brought you the story of the veteran Kansas City police officer who has tirelessly gone door-to-door in the rough neighborhoods he’s patrolled for the last twenty years, checking on every single family and elderly woman and man and every kid who’s home alone, making sure they’re okay, giving them anything he can—money, food, time, a ride to the clinic or a relative’s house—and how he has already saved three lives in the past week. How he told us that this was how he should have been policing for years.

  “We’ve told you the story of the social-media billionaire who’s paid the cost of reuniting any family for any reason and without asking them to prove that they can’t afford it.