Sky Key

by James Frey

  The green dots are still in place.

  Waiting.

  “Fire in the hole on five. Confirm with one click.”

  Four separate clicks, one from each member of her team.

  She drops her head. “One. Two. Three. Four. Five.”

  She yanks the thread hard, feels it slip from the rock, and for a split second feels the tension on the trip wire, but then—

  The explosion is not very big, but the forest sings with shrapnel. Clinks and clatters from the other side of the boulder as ball bearings and nails and screws and shards of metal shred the forest. Chunks of bark, bits of leaves, slashed branches—all of these rain down.

  The blast only lasts a second, then it’s quiet again. Aisling stands and checks her HUD. Two green dots are already on the move, headed her way, one from each flank.

  Aisling places her guns—a new Brügger & Thomet along with an FN SCAR—on the ground and quietly draws her sword. “Marrs, come to my position. The rest move on the flanks now. Acknowledge.”

  Four clicks.

  She sees her purple dots move.

  The two green dots are closer.

  Only 65 feet away.

  Both hands on the Falcata. She waits. Faces the path they’ve already walked up.

  She hears them clear the rise, and the green dots are practically on top of her. She flips up the monocle so that it won’t interfere with her vision. She crouches, rests the tip of her sword on the ground, waits.

  A man swings around the boulder, a Kalashnikov on his shoulder, the muzzle pointed at a spot just above her head.

  In one motion she stands, leans forward, thrusts the sword between the man’s legs. The Kalashnikov lets out a signature burst, the shots flying over her shoulder. The man’s face registers shock and terror as she swings the sword upward in a great arc, catching the man in the groin and completely severing his left leg at the hip. Aisling elbows him in the chest and throws him into the boulder, and he drops his rifle and goes into shock. Aisling jumps sideways into the path as a thirtysomething woman with a shotgun rounds the boulder. The woman manages to pull the trigger just as Aisling brings the edge of her sword down on the shotgun’s barrel. The blast kicks up dirt between their feet, the buckshot chewing a hundred little craters into the path. But Aisling’s strike hits, and the shotgun is useless, its barrel lopped off.

  The woman drops the gun and swipes at Aisling’s throat with a blade that emerged soundlessly from the cuff of her jacket. Aisling leans far back—the knife just misses her—and then surges forward with the sword. She cleaves it into the Harappan’s sternum, right through the heart. Aisling places a foot on her victim’s hip and pulls the sword free. The Harappan falls to the side, motionless.

  She flips her monocle back down. Sees her dots on the move, the four remaining green dots in a cluster. In 4.6 seconds she hears the report of rifle fire—the telltale slithering sound of the SCARs, the clatter of more Kalashnikovs, three charging bursts from an M60 machine gun. She recognizes each weapon’s voice, its character, its part.

  The shots ring out for 17 seconds.

  As a crescendo she hears the airy pop of Jordan’s grenade launcher, followed by a large incendiary explosion.

  Silence. The purple dots move. The green ones, their vital warmth already fading, don’t.

  Threading it all together is the whisper of the rain, the push of a slight breeze, her breath.

  Her heart is racing.

  “Aisling clear, report back, over.”

  “Jordan clear.”

  “McCloskey clear.”

  “Pop clear.”

  “I’m nearly there,” Marrs says, forgoing jargon.

  Checkpoint one is theirs.

  Aisling wipes her face. Sees blood on her glove.

  Not her blood.

  Marrs approaches at her back.

  “Jesus,” he says when he sees the carnage surrounding Aisling.

  Her eyes are wild.

  Her face flush, alive, vibrant.

  She sheathes her sword. Picks up her two guns.

  “Come on, Marrs. This is just the beginning.”

  SARAH ALOPAY, JAGO TLALOC, RENZO, MACCABEE ADLAI, BAITSAKHAN

  Camino Antigua a La Paz, Just West of Tiwanaku Municipality, Bolivia

  It’s been a long and uncomfortable morning for Sarah. Renzo escorted her through the Tlaloc house, into the kitchens, down a narrow passage to a storeroom dug out of the hillside, into a secluded delivery area outside the estate’s walls. The guard who normally patrolled here was slumped against a wall, dead to the world.

  “Had to tranq him,” Renzo explained.

  Renzo took Sarah to a Mazda hatchback and opened a rear passenger door. The seats were folded down. Underneath them was a smuggling compartment.

  A small one.

  “Just like the 307, huh?” she asked.

  “I wish. This one’s only good for smuggling.”

  “What, no weapons? No night-vision HUD?”

  “None of that. Now please, get in.”

  Sarah hesitated. At that point, she could easily have dropped Renzo, stolen the car, and made a break for it. But then she remembered the small army of mercenaries the Tlalocs kept outside their compound. No way she would have gotten through them all, not in that car.

  And besides, Sarah wanted to hear what Jago had to say for himself.

  So she threw her bag into the opening, climbed on top of it, folded herself up, held on tight to Earth Key. Renzo pointed to a tube next to her head that led to a reservoir of cold water. He shut her away, got behind the wheel, and drove.

  Fast.

  The ride was so rough that Sarah was convinced that Renzo was driving straight into potholes in order to punish her.

  To needle her.

  Irk her.

  Anger her.

  Which it did.

  The ride lasted two and half grueling hours. Sarah was glad that she’d endured so many deprivation trials in the past. Like the time she was locked in a coffin for 62.77 hours. Or when she lived for three full days in an igloo where she couldn’t stand or lie down as she waited out a brutal snowstorm—and had to dig herself out from under five feet of snow. Or when she was tied into a chair that was bolted to the floor and left alone, water and food on a table only feet away, a high-pitched chirp sounding every 0.8 seconds, torturing her, until she managed to undo her bindings, which took 14.56 hours.

  This car ride was not much different. As in those trials, she turned her mind inward. She pictured fields of autumn wheat and remembered the pleasant ache of her legs after a long run and recalled playing with Tate when they were kids in the tree house on the Niobrara River.

  But then the car jostled and her legs tingled and she realized that she couldn’t feel her feet and that her neck was like a piece of crooked wood. And that made her think again of the coffin, and that made her think of Tate—dead—and Christopher—dead. When her mind went to these places, she became terrified that she would break, that the insanity that had infected her after retrieving Earth Key would return. When these moments came, she turned to the rubber tube and drank the water. And drank and drank until her stomach knotted and her bladder pressed, the discomfort and the pain keeping the crazy at bay.

  They stopped only three times. The first, Sarah guessed, was to clear a checkpoint at the bottom of the Tlalocs’ hill. The 2nd, she could tell by how the car shifted, was to pick up Jago. And the 3rd was about 40 minutes ago. This stop lasted the longest, and even though her cramped and pitch-black compartment was completely soundproof, Sarah guessed correctly that they were crossing the Bolivian border.

  And now they’ve stopped a 4th time. She feels the car rise as two passengers get out. She hears the latch unclick on the smuggling compartment.

  The door opens.

  The daylight cuts at her eyes like a knife edge. She braces her forearm over her face. She sits up. Blinks and blinks. Her back screams. She rolls her neck. The vertebral cracks echo through her skull. A fi
gure stands before her.

  “Can you lift my legs? They’re completely asleep,” she says, lowering her arm, still blinking.

  The figure leans forward and says. “Sí, of course.”

  Jago Tlaloc. Thin, strong, his face shadowed by a hood pulled against the chill of the morning.

  Sarah wipes the corner of her mouth, slips Earth Key into a pocket. He takes her legs at the thigh above the knee. He pulls them out and sets her feet on the dirt. She sees no sign of Renzo. Jago kneels, takes the calf of her left leg between both hands and massages it. “I’m sorry about . . .”

  The light is less intense. She can make out his features now. The scar. The eyes. The chiseled jaw. Sarah Alopay punches him hard in the cheek. His head whips to the side. Even with the punch, he doesn’t stop kneading her aching muscles. He turns back to her. Flashes his diamond smile. “Need to do that again?”

  “Yes.”

  She punches him harder, straight on, snapping his head back and knocking the hood off.

  He keeps massaging, deeply, attentively, as if his hands don’t share the same body as his head. A drop of blood appears in the corner of his mouth. He ignores it. Looks at her intently.

  “Again?”

  She sighs. “No . . . maybe later. Christ, Jago. What’d you do to your hair?”

  “You like it?”

  It’s bleached so blond that it’s practically white.

  “It’s awful.”

  “I had to. How’re your legs?”

  “Tingly as hell . . . Feo . . . Why did you let them take me?” Her voice softens, even though she wishes it wouldn’t.

  “I didn’t want to. I never would have brought you to my home if I’d known my parents were going to do that. Not with the way you’ve been . . . feeling.”

  She doesn’t speak. She realizes that, in a way, being imprisoned was good for her. It took her mind off her guilt.

  Jago wants to ask her if she’s feeling better, but he reconsiders. Instead, Jago pays attention to Sarah’s knees, her ankles, her feet. He switches to the other calf. She twiddles her toes. Jago decides that maybe it’s better to get to business. Save the personal stuff for later.

  “We’ve been outed, Sarah. Every one of the Players. The world has seen us.”

  “What? How?” she asks sharply.

  “An Liu made a video, showed pictures of each of us. Millions have seen it. Hundreds of millions. He said that if the people of Earth could come together to kill the eight players that remain, including himself, then Abaddon would go away.”

  “No.”

  “Sí.”

  “And they believe him?”

  “Some do.”

  “So your hair—that’s a disguise?”

  “Not a very good one. There’s no hiding this scar.” He pulls the hood back over his head.

  Sarah leans out of the car and peers around. The landscape is bare and desolate and empty. “I think you’re safe. This place is dead.”

  “There are eyes everywhere, Sarah. You know that.”

  He kneads some more.

  His hands feel so good.

  “I’ll cut my hair,” she says. “First chance I get.”

  “Bueno.”

  “Dye it black, maybe. Wear some colored contacts.”

  “Bueno.”

  She takes his cheeks in both hands. “Jago, I . . . I was going to kill you. If you’d been the one to come for me, I was going to kill you. No questions asked.”

  Jago hears fear in her voice. And shame. Fear and shame at what she’s capable of.

  “I know, Sarah. That’s why I sent Renzo. I figured you’d at least let him talk, even if only to get a bead on me.”

  “I . . . I’m sorry.”

  “What? No. I’m sorry, Sarah. That will never happen to you again. Never.”

  Jago hesitates. He wants to say more, but can’t find the words. He thinks of their pursuit of Earth Key, how torn Sarah was between him and Christopher. How torn she was between her old life and the life of a Player. And he thinks of her ancestors, how the Cahokians fought against the Makers, fought for independence, for their lives, for normalcy. They were stronger, in their way, than any of the other lines. Just like Sarah. Maybe this duality he’s seen in her, which Sarah is so scared of, maybe it isn’t weakness at all.

  Maybe it is something to aspire to.

  “I will try to be better” is all Jago manages to say aloud.

  She smiles. “I might still kill you.”

  He smiles back. “I don’t doubt it.”

  “My legs feel better. Man, I gotta pee.”

  He helps her out. She moves around the back of the car and undoes her jeans and lowers herself to the ground, leaning against the bumper. He waits, pushes his fists into the pockets of the hoodie, stares down the road toward their destination. A pickup truck bumps along the road in their direction, but he doesn’t pay it any mind. He’s thinking about An, and about disguises, and about Earth Key, and about Playing.

  Mostly he’s thinking about Sarah Alopay.

  “But why did you let them take me, Jago?” Sarah calls from behind the car.

  The truck is close now. Jago is lost in thought. The vehicle bearing down on them finally registers, and he whips his head around as it zooms past, throwing dust and dirt.

  Sarah stands. The truck is gone.

  She does a little jump as she pulls up her pants. Comes around the side of the car.

  “I had to,” Jago answers. “They would’ve killed you outright if I’d put up a fight.”

  She comes right up to him. Puts her hands on his hips. Grabs the points of his pelvic bone, feels the lean muscles attached to it that lead to his stomach. She presses into him. “Which means Guitarrero and his soldiers will be coming for us this morning, won’t they?”

  “Without a doubt.”

  “Then let’s get hopping, Feo.”

  She leans all the way forward and plants a kiss on his lips. A real kiss. Full and wet. She pulls his hips tight. He keeps his hands in his pockets, pushing them into her stomach just below her breasts.

  They part.

  Jago has never wanted anyone so badly.

  Sarah has never wanted anyone so badly.

  But now is not the time.

  Their faces are inches apart. They can taste each other. Feel each other’s heat.

  Both of them are so happy to be back together.

  So, so happy.

  Jago forces his libido down. He answers, “That’s why we’re out here. To Play.” He points his chin across the reddish-tan landscape. “We need to take Earth Key over there, use it, and then get the hell out of South America.”

  “What’s over there?”

  “Answers, Sarah Alopay. Answers.”

  A few minutes earlier, inside the pickup truck. The Mazda comes into view, sitting on the side of the road on the outskirts of a small Andean outpost. Maccabee points. “There they are.” Two figures in the distance, one next to the car, the other hunkered behind it, the pudgy man nowhere to be seen.

  “The Cahokian is with them!” Baitsakhan pushes the gas pedal. The truck, already barreling down the road, accelerates from 109 kph to 131 kph. “Let’s run them down.”

  “Are you crazy, Baits? We could die just as easily.”

  “We have seat belts. Airbags.” Now 141 kph.

  The Olmec and the Cahokian are 865 meters away, 22 seconds.

  “Get off the shoulder, Baits! Don’t do it.”

  “Why not?” Baitsakhan grips the wheel harder.

  “They’re here for a reason! They’re going to do something with Earth Key, and we need to see what that is!”

  “Who cares?”

  Now 478 meters, 12.14 seconds.

  “I said get off the shoulder, damn it! You could destroy Earth Key.”

  “No way. It’s indestructible.”

  “But we’re not!”

  Now 70 meters. Less than two seconds.

  “Here we go!”

  At the l
ast moment Maccabee reaches across the cab and jerks the wheel to the left and the truck screams past the couple, fishtailing as the wheels jump back to the middle of the dirt road. Jago and Sarah are lost in conversation, and barely notice the truck. They certainly don’t notice who’s in it.

  Maccabee and Baitsakhan continue toward the settlement, Baitsakhan pounding the dashboard in protest.

  Jago and Sarah sit shoulder to shoulder on the Mazda’s hood. Renzo is at the caretaker’s house across the road, offering a bribe to keep the ancient tourist site of Tiwanaku closed for the morning. They watch An’s video on Sarah’s phone, and Sarah quickly, almost instinctively, finds the message from didyouseekeplertwentytwob.

  “Do you understand it?” Jago asks.

  “No, but I’ll be able to figure it out. Whichever Player posted this left enough clues here and here.” She points to lines in the text that are incomprehensible to Jago. “I think I may be able to break it pretty easily, actually.”

  “Go for it. You’re definitely better at codes than me.”

  Jago gets her a pad and paper and she starts writing immediately—a string of numbers. Twelve of them, just like there are 12 Players. Jago recognizes the numbers, he’d gotten that far himself. He just didn’t know what to do with them.

  But she does.

  Once she’s got the numbers, she takes her phone and navigates to a password-protected site and finds the page she’s looking for. “A special decrypter. This kind of code is impossible to break if you don’t have”—she taps the numbers—“the key phrase.” She punches the numbers into one field and Hilal’s gibberish into another, but the result is more gibberish. She reads his post again and again and again. She bites the end of the pen. Jago watches, her tongue playing with the little tip of plastic.