Sky Key

by James Frey

  His baritone voice booms in their ears, a complement to Shari’s timbre, which is strong but high and thin and young.

  They listen to Pravheet. The disavowed killer. The one whose blood runs like ice.

  And what they all know is that he and his Vulcan cannon aren’t even the last line of defense on the path to . If the Celt manages to reach the courtyard that marks the main entrance of the Harappan fortress, she will be met by 42 more Harappan soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder.

  Ready to fight.

  Ready to die.

  “They will not reach our Player or our precious daughter,” Pravheet proclaims.

  Yet even with her calm restored, one thing still bothers Shari. The Celt was surprisingly forthright when she spoke to Helena. She is not here to win. She is here to kill Little Alice. To try to stop the Event from ever happening.

  Shari understands that this desire makes Aisling one of the good ones. One of the Players who recognizes the keplers as petty, and that the game should be stopped at any cost.

  Which, by inference, makes her, Shari Chopra, one of the bad ones. One of the ones who might allow billions to die to save one life. Jov made a convincing argument for why they cannot sacrifice her beloved Little Alice, but there is still a small part of her that wonders: Should I not try to end this myself? What if the Aksumite is right?

  What if?

  She feels the gun on her hip. Heavy. Hidden. Ready.

  She knows that Little Alice is only a few rooms away.

  Shari could go to her now.

  She could do the unthinkable.

  No.

  No.

  No!

  “Jamal,” Shari says, the tone of her voice betraying none of her inner turmoil, “take Little Alice to the Depths. Neither the Celt nor any other Player can reach her, my love. No matter what happens, none can be allowed to reach her.”

  And Shari’s stomach feels empty and her throat hollow and her heart nothing more than a machine that pumps blood.

  Because she knows what the rest of them do not.

  That by “any Player” she might also mean herself.

  Jamal sees none of this. He nods and takes his young, brave, steely, and beautiful wife by both wrists and squeezes and kisses her full on the lips. “I will. And I will see you when those people are dead, my love.”

  1.7320508xvii

  SARAH ALOPAY, JAGO TLALOC, RENZO

  Gateway of the Sun, Temple of Kalasasaya, Tiwanaku, Bolivia

  The Gateway of the Sun.

  Cut from a single 10-ton andesite slab, 9.8 feet high, 13 feet wide. The arch is cracked clean through at the top, and for many centuries it was broken into two great pieces and lay neglected. It has since been restored by archaeologists and erected in this corner of the Kalasasaya.

  It does not stand in its original spot. No. 4,967 years ago it watched over a great field a short distance to the south and west, on the edge of what is now called Pumapunku. Men and women and Makers alike would pass through the Gateway, like a metal detector at a modern airport, on their way to the field beyond, where the Makers had built Earth’s greatest prehistoric spaceport.

  On the flattened field there was a structure, a two-mile-long set of steel rails that were tied to the Earth with the great interlocking stones that the Makers had trained the men of antiquity to craft. The rails, long since dismantled and destroyed, traveled due west toward the point on the horizon where the sun set on the summer solstice, and they angled up 13.4 degrees, east to west. The westernmost end of the railed ramp rose 2,447.28 feet into the air, and from this perch the Makers’ ships were launched into the sky, and into space. Some of the humans who passed through the Gateway in those days were placed on these ships as guests of the Makers, as vassals, as companions. These people were exalted, and celebrated in songs and stories.

  Songs and stories they would never hear.

  For none returned to Earth.

  Jago can’t help but be impressed as he walks closer to the Gateway, even though it’s not nearly as illustrious as it was so many thousands of years ago. Anyone can walk under it now.

  Renzo posts himself on the far side of the monument and keeps watch for any sign of Guitarrero or anyone else who might come around to stick their nose in business that doesn’t concern them.

  Renzo sees nothing but the countryside, vast and empty. He doesn’t see the two other Players hiding behind a low hill only a short distance away.

  “We’re good,” Renzo says.

  Jago and Sarah get to work.

  She gives him Earth Key, and he stands in the opening, his head and shoulders scrunched in order to fit. He pulls a tailor’s measure from a pocket, unfurls it, counts the centimeters on the inside of the southern upright. Counts to 121.2 centimeters, two luk’a, just as Aucapoma Huayna instructed. He runs the orb laterally across the rock at this exact height, and yes, there, it shakes and jumps from his fingertips and finds a magnetic home in a thumb-sized divot.

  He pulls his hand away and hopes and waits.

  Sarah cranes her neck. “Anything?”

  “Nada.” He lets out a long sigh.

  Renzo pops his head around the rock. “Why doesn’t she try?”

  “Good idea.” Jago steps from under the arch and Sarah replaces him.

  She reaches for Earth Key, and as her fingers draw closer, the ball vibrates and spins in place on a gyroscopic axis. It throws heat, a lot of heat. Sarah keeps reaching.

  And she touches it.

  The far side of the archway goes completely black, as if the air is suddenly full of ink. This startles all three of them, Renzo most of all. One minute he’s looking at Sarah, and the next she’s blotted out. He runs around the other side to check on the Players, finds them awestruck but unharmed.

  After a moment Jago mutters, “You did it.”

  “I did something. But it’s just a black space.” She raises her hand, moves it toward the surface but doesn’t dare touch it. The air directly in front of it is so, so cold.

  She turns to Jago. “What do we do now?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  As soon as the blackness appears, Maccabee says, “Come on.” He and Baitsakhan jump up and sprint. They’re only 27 meters away. They keep the archway between themselves and the others, the solid darkness in its center all the cover they need.

  Maccabee keeps the rifle raised so that the mic is pointed at the arch. They can hear Sarah and Jago talk.

  “It reminds me of the Great White Pyramid,” she says of the blackness.

  “Sí. That portal that teleported us back to the pagoda . . .”

  It reminds Maccabee of that too.

  Now 15.3 meters.

  They hear the other man, the pudgy one, say, “We haven’t got much time. Guitarrero’s sure to be here soon.”

  Now 12.1 meters.

  Jago says, “If it’s a portal too then we have no idea where it’ll take us. It could lead anywhere, Sarah. It could drop us off in space, for all we know.”

  Sarah says, “Or maybe it’ll show us something. Let’s both touch Earth Key.”

  “Sí. The power of two Players.”

  Now 8.7 meters. Maccabee and Baitsakhan pass over another ruin. They slow down and move soundlessly.

  The other Players still don’t know they’re not alone.

  “Okay, let’s give it a try.” Jago squeezes next to her, and their fingertips grace Earth Key at the same instant.

  And then—

  Only 3.7 meters and the blackness changes.

  “Look!” shouts the pudgy man.

  The Nabataean and the Donghu are only 2.9 meters away. They flinch, ready to shoot, worried that the darkness in the archway might dissipate as suddenly as it appeared, blowing their chance at an ambush.

  Instead, a figure appears in the blackness. Both sides show the same image.

  Maccabee’s eyes go wide as Sarah says, “It’s . . . it’s a girl.”

  Jago says, “Is that the girl from A
n’s video . . . the one the Harappan was holding?”

  She’s chasing something. A peacock. The background changes. It resolves from blackness, turns red and blue. A tapestry hanging on a wall.

  A room.

  “Oh my God,” Sarah says.

  “The Aksumite wasn’t lying,” Jago says slowly.

  “No. He wasn’t.”

  Since Maccabee hasn’t decrypted Hilal’s message, he doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

  But all the same he has a strong, unshakable feeling: this girl is important.

  And as if to answer just how important, Sarah breathes out, “She really is Sky Key.”

  And Sarah realizes that maybe she really can stop the game. Stop the horror that she put in motion.

  Maybe.

  All she has to do is kill this little girl. This one little girl. She already killed her best friend. No reason to think she can’t do this too.

  It would save millions of lives.

  Billions.

  To save the world, Sarah must give herself over and become a monster. Forever.

  To save the world.

  Maccabee doesn’t know what they’re talking about, and he doesn’t care.

  All he cares about now is the girl, this Sky Key.

  He must take Earth Key from the stone archway and unite it with Sky Key and Play on. He is so close.

  The Donghu understands this too. In that instant both Baitsakhan and Maccabee wonder how much longer their alliance will last. Baitsakhan stabs the air with his rifle. Maccabee nods. They advance slowly, silently.

  They will take Earth Key.

  Take it and kill these others.

  Now.

  Take.

  Kill.

  Win.

  Now only 2.3 meters.

  Only 1.5 meters.

  Only 0.8 meters.

  The Nabataean and the Donghu are poised to shoot, the Olmec and the Cahokian and Renzo completely unsuspecting. All five of them practically standing under the Gateway together.

  Maccabee knows that Earth Key is stuck to the side of the stone on his right, just on the other side of the image.

  He will take Earth Key.

  Now.

  The Nabataean. The descendant of Eel and Laat and Obodas, the only son of Ekaterina Adlai. Maccabee Adlai.

  He inches forward. Releases the stock of the rifle with his left hand. Keeps steady, oh so steady. The muzzle is 21.3 centimeters from Sarah’s face. Separated by the image of a child, oblivious, smiling.

  The girl is right in front of Maccabee. Her dark hair, her smile, her bright eyes, her innocence. And his hand and the muzzle are about to pierce the image. And he is going to have Earth Key and find this girl, this Sky Key, and he will win! And he remembers the little tube in his pocket, the thing that can send a signal to Baitsakhan’s robotic hand and activate the code embedded there.

  He’ll have to do that soon.

  His fingers are only millimeters from the image when Little Alice’s face grows frightened. She glares at Maccabee. Points. Retreats. Opens her mouth. And screams.

  She can see all of them.

  LITTLE ALICE CHOPRA, JAMAL CHOPRA

  The Depths, , Valley of Eternal Life, Sikkim, India

  The Chopras brought Tarki, Little Alice’s favorite companion, to the fortress from their home in Gangtok. He runs from Little Alice. The girl and the bird are in the deepest part of . The most ancient part. The part that was once dug out of the mountainside by Makers and humans together. Jamal told Little Alice that things were happening outside, and that it would be safer here. Little Alice did not question him. She was not afraid.

  But now she is.

  Little Alice’s nightmares have come alive before her eyes. The people chasing her in her dreams and killing Big Alice and hunting her family, these people are in front of her with guns and malice and desire and, yes, even shock and fear on their own faces. And she spins away from these phantoms as her father rushes toward her to sweep his daughter into his arms and hold her and ask her what is wrong and chase away her demons. And Little Alice points at a low and ancient doorway the Makers used thousands and thousands of years ago to travel deep into the heart of the mountain, but that has been filled in with stone for ages.

  At first Jamal sees nothing. The peacock zips out of the room as Little Alice points and yells. “There is Earth Key! There is Earth Key! There is Earth Key!”

  The rock changes.

  And Jamal does see. A large man with dark hair and a crooked nose and a battered face stretches his fingers through the wall, and a girl with long auburn hair also reaches out, and the wall isn’t solid anymore, and Jamal sees other people behind the first two, and beyond that red rocks and the limitless sky filled with the light of the sun.

  And then—

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

  Gateway of the Sun, Temple of Kalasasaya, Tiwanaku, Bolivia

  Sarah can almost hear the girl scream. She can see her and the young man holding her as they spin away and follow the peacock out of the room.

  And in that instant Sarah knows.

  The Gateway is more than a gateway. It doesn’t just look like the portal in the side of the Great White Pyramid; it is one of these portals.

  And she reaches out and touches the image and

  and at the same moment Maccabee touches the image of the terrified girl and

  and as soon as they touch the void these two Players are pulled forward. Both disappear from Bolivia, from Tiwanaku, from the Kalasasaya, from the Gateway of the Sun and

  and Jago sees Sarah now in this room, fallen unconscious to the floor, another figure mysteriously slumped near her, and Jago calls after the Cahokian and he runs forward and he disappears too and

  and Renzo chases his Player faithfully into the portal and

  and Baitsakhan sees each of these four idiots tumble across space and time into this room, all four of them unconscious on the floor.

  And he’s the only one who can see their folly.

  He.

  Baitsakhan.

  Folly because all these people have used this portal without first securing Earth Key.

  Baitsakhan calmly walks around the Gateway and slings his rifle over his shoulder and takes a packet of smelling salts from a pocket. He breaks the packet open. The vapors burn his nostrils, but he doesn’t care. He tucks the fuming thing into the front of his shirt, right where it opens at the collar, his eyes watering. He holds his left hand over Earth Key and spreads his right hand over the image of the room.

  He eyes Earth Key. He breathes. He puts his palm so close. So close to the portal’s surface. It is ice cold.

  He counts back from five. His eyes streaming with tears from the salts.

  Four.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  And at the same exact moment he grabs Earth Key and touches the image.

  And he too is gone.

  All that is left is a grand ruin of the ancient world.

  Nothing more than a misunderstood tourist attraction for the uninitiated.

  An empty archway of stone.

  ALL PLAYERS

  Kolkata. Over the South China Sea. Sikkim.

  An Liu double-takes.

  One of the blips in Bolivia disappears for a few seconds as the tracker recalculates its position and then, pop, just like that, it reappears in Sikkim, India!

  Not far from where the Celt and her team are headed!

  And the other blip in Bolivia disappears as well, and reappears in India as well. An has no idea how it is happening, but these Players are being driven together. And after they fight and beat and kill one another, An will chase what’s left of them.

  “Let them have each other today, love. Let them do our work for us.”

  Hilal ibn Isa al-Salt’s plane is an hour from its initial descent into Bangkok. He sleeps soundly and knows nothing of what’s going on.

  If he did know, he w
ould be just as rapt as the Shang.

  Just as invested.

  Just as hopeful for death.

  Except he would be rooting for the good ones. For Aisling. For Sarah. For Jago. The ones who are in India to kill a little girl. The ones who, like him, dream of stopping the game.

  But no. Instead he sleeps soundly, the ouroboros on his arm, the device from the ark in his pocket, his ally, Stella, somewhere in the world also Playing, in her own unknown way . . .

  The portal set in the wall is closed and gone.

  The Maker tech that transported them takes a physical and mental toll.

  It hurts.

  Numbs.

  Stupefies.

  Maccabee is out cold. He’s facedown on the floor, his rifle under him.

  Jago is out too, but his eyes flutter. Consciousness creeps into him slowly.

  Sarah rolls back and forth, bumping into Maccabee on one side and Jago on the other, but she is also unaware of what’s happened or where she is.

  Renzo is awake but barely cognizant of his surroundings. He’s on his knees, his forehead to the floor, his head pounding, his ears ringing.

  Baitsakhan is up. The smelling salts did their trick, but the portal still asked a price. He bumbles around the far side of the room, his arms loose, his steps unsure, his rifle on the floor, his mechanical fist still wrapped tightly around Earth Key.

  He’s like a zombie, but coming around.

  Coming around more quickly than the others.

  He blinks. Blinks. Blinks. The salts burn his nasal passages. His eyes water. What’s that smell? he wonders. The spike of ammonia. And he remembers. He shakes his head from side to side. Spits on the floor and slaps the salts out of his collar. He spins wildly, still doesn’t have full control of his body. But he sees the others.

  He won’t be a zombie for long.

  Aisling rejoined her team and continued up the path into the mountains, and now she and Pop and Jordan and McCloskey and Marrs stop 20 feet short of a switchback on the path.

  The last switchback.