Sky Key

by James Frey

  And he has his special hand.

  He grabs the muzzle of the guard’s rifle and squeezes. The man pulls the trigger, but the weapon backfires and kicks into the man’s hands. He drops the rifle and lashes out at Baitsakhan, who throws the ruined firearm to the floor. Maccabee slides toward the open doorway, his pistol dancing here and there as he tries to get a bead. But it’s too difficult. Baitsakhan jumps like a pogo stick, continually taking away Maccabee’s shot.

  Baitsakhan catches the man by the arm and wraps his left hand around it. The man cries out and falls to his knees. A series of snaps ring through the room. Sarah knows that sound well enough—the muted crackle of splintering bone. The man screams louder. She sees the boy in profile. He smiles. His metal hand is going to rip the man’s arm clean off.

  And with the pop of Maccabee’s pistol, the man’s head explodes, as the Nabataean puts him out of his misery.

  Baitsakhan shoots Maccabee a piercing look. “He was mine!”

  “Forget him. Sky Key is out there!” Maccabee says, pointing urgently at the hallway.

  Pain radiates through Sarah’s arm. She is fully conscious, but she has watched this short and brutal battle from a prone position on the floor in a pool of her own blood.

  She wills her eyes to go blank and doesn’t dare move.

  Baitsakhan takes a half step toward her. He sees her blood and draws his own conclusions. The Nabataean grabs the Donghu by the shoulder and yanks him away. “They’re done. The priority is Sky Key. It’s right here, Baits! Let’s take it.”

  And with that Maccabee pivots out of the room, his pistol already firing. From down the hall, a volley of rifle shots sails over his head, but Maccabee hits his mark. Sarah knows because the return fire stops. She hears Maccabee’s footfalls pound out of the room.

  Baitsakhan lingers. Sarah hears his breathing, and feels the caress of his metal finger along her hairline. She has stilled her breath, willed her heart to a whisper. She is excellent at playing dead.

  Baitsakhan buys it. He turns and follows Maccabee. He can’t let the Nabataean beat him to Sky Key.

  When he has both keys and his partner is killed, Baitsakhan will return for the Cahokian.

  He will have her scalp yet.

  SHARI CHOPRA, LITTLE ALICE CHOPRA, JAMAL CHOPRA

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

  Shari shouts “Jamal!” and he opens the door and Shari spills into the room and falls into her husband’s arms. Paru closes the door behind them and locks it shut and Little Alice calls “Mama!” and Shari hands Jamal the pistol and she drops to her knees and hugs Little Alice. Shari buries her nose in her daughter’s hair. It smells like cinnamon and warm milk.

  “I’m scared, Mama.”

  “I’m here, meri jaan.”

  They hear the report of gunfire from outside the room. Shari clasps her hands over her daughter’s ears. “Those were our men, protecting us. It will be all right.” Like any parent would, Shari lies. She has no idea if it will be all right. In fact, she doubts it.

  Jamal wraps his arms around both of them. His girls. His life. “We’re here, sweetie. We’re here.”

  All three start to cry. Because they are scared but also because they are together.

  In that moment they are full of love, and they are happy.

  “They won’t hurt you, meri jaan,” Shari promises. “I won’t let them.”

  “Nor will I,” Jamal says. He squeezes his loves, and also squeezes the grip of the gun. He gives Shari a sad look, and in that instant she wonders: Will he? Will he do what I cannot?

  Jamal closes his eyes. Kisses each on the head. His arms are hard and strong. His breath is quick.

  Shari hugs their daughter tighter, thinks of the small child on the Chinese bus, the one she and Big Alice helped to bring into this world, this doomed world.

  I am a human being.

  Tighter.

  I am a compassionate human being and I renounce Endgame.

  I renounce you.

  I say no to the gods.

  Because there are none.

  Then there is the sound of more gunfire and three slugs slam into the door, thwap thwap thwap. She knows what that means. Paru. Her own father. Gone.

  Little Alice shudders, and Shari cries quietly.

  All of the Harappan line.

  Gone.

  Jamal stands. “You need to keep her safe, Shari. Hide over there.”

  Shari nods, overcome with terror. She ushers Little Alice behind a wall cut from the stone. She pulls an empty crate in front of them. Little Alice hunkers between her legs. They can just see the door between the wooden slats of the crate.

  “Don’t cry,” Shari says. “Be quiet.”

  Shari wraps her arms around Little Alice.

  “Aim for the head, my love,” Shari says.

  “I will.”

  “Show no mercy.”

  “I won’t.”

  “For they will show you none.”

  AISLING KOPP, POP KOPP, GREG JORDAN, GRIFFIN MARRS

  , Valley of Eternal Life, Sikkim, India

  Aisling and her team picked their way through Little Bertha’s carnage at the entrance to the fortress without incident, being careful where they stepped, trying not to dwell on what they’d done. So many dead, Aisling thought, so many. And no sign of Shari Chopra. She isn’t here. She’s somewhere else.

  With her daughter.

  With Sky Key.

  The Celt leads them through the suddenly empty stone fortress. Signs of life put on pause everywhere. Cups of warm tea. The strands of a beaded curtain swaying back and forth. A chair still warm to the touch. A radio crackling with static in a control room on the 2nd sublevel. A small cloth doll in this room too, discarded on the floor, forgotten.

  But no one is left.

  They’ve either been killed or they’re hiding.

  There are no more green dots displayed on their HUDs. The fortress walls are too thick. But there are still clues. From the control room Aisling goes into the hall and finds a scuff mark, and farther down a thread from a brightly colored piece of cloth, and down some stairs a 9-millimeter bullet—not a casing, just a bullet. They keep going down. Aisling finds a feather floating in the air on the 5th sublevel. She pinches it between her fingers. Smells it. Inspects it.

  A peacock startles them, running across the hall from one room to another. It disappears.

  “Uh, everyone else saw that, right?” Marrs asks.

  They nod.

  “Good,” he says.

  “We need to go all the way to the bottom,” Aisling says, ignoring the bird. “That’s where they’re keeping her.”

  “You sure?” Jordan asks.

  “Not completely, but that’s where I’d take a little girl if I were terrif—”

  She’s cut off by the telltale rattle of gunfire.

  Aisling hoists her sniper rifle and takes off at a trot and they don’t say another word.

  Down they go.

  SARAH ALOPAY, JAGO TLALOC

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

  As soon as Maccabee and Baitsakhan leave the room, Sarah blinks and sits and pushes her back into the wall. She knows these two have just made a terrible, and hopefully mortal, mistake. They should have taken 10 or 20 seconds and put a bullet in her head and in Jago’s, but they didn’t.

  The little sadist, Baitsakhan, he seemed crazy enough for such a lapse. Like he wanted to enjoy his time killing them.

  But Maccabee? Sarah’s not sure why he spared them. He seemed more concerned with pushing forward, with leading Baitsakhan on.

  Whatever. Thanks for the freebie, boys.

  She unsheathes her knife and slices a hole in her shirt at the shoulder and tears the cloth free. Using her good hand and her teeth, she works it around her arm just below the elbow and ties it tight, slowing the blood that flows out of her forearm. This will have to do for now.

  Sarah crawls to Jago, careful not to put any
weight on her wounded arm. As she covers the dozen feet between them, she is overcome by the powerful odor of ammonia. Smelling salts. One of the others must have dropped them.

  She snaps up the packet and continues crawling. Jago’s on his side, rolling back and forth. His diamond teeth glitter.

  She reaches him. She holds the smelling salts to her face and inhales, and the odor goes up and under her eyes and swirls through her sinuses to her temples and her brain lights up like it’s run through with electricity. She’s suddenly very conscious, and her arm sears with pain, the skin and muscles throbbing at the tourniquet.

  She shakes Jago. “¿Que?” he utters.

  “Wake up, damn it!” she whispers. “We’ve got to fight!”

  He mumbles something unintelligible before Sarah practically jams the salts into his nostrils.

  His back goes straight as a board as he pops into a sitting position and swipes frantically at his face. Sarah claps her good hand over his mouth before he can cry out. He pushes the salts away and they fall to the floor. His eyes are wide and bright.

  “Shh,” Sarah says. “Other Players are here. The Donghu and the Nabataean. Can you move?”

  Her arm throbs. She needs him to be able to move, to be whole and able-bodied.

  Jago pushes her hand from his lips. “Sí. I feel good.” And he does. He unholsters his pistol and racks it quietly.

  “You’re shot,” he whispers.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Jago stands. He holds out a hand for Sarah and pulls her up. She is not as steady as he is. “Are you sure?” He realizes that he’s standing in a pool of blood. His chest tightens. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

  Sarah shakes her head and points her chin at Renzo. “I’m sorry, Feo. It’s not all mine.”

  And there’s Renzo, sprawled on the ground, eyes open and blank, his mouth full of shimmering blackness.

  “He saved my life,” Sarah says.

  Jago bites his lower lip. His nostrils flare. The muscles in his neck twitch uncontrollably. A vein pops on his temple and his scar darkens. “Who?”

  “The boy. The Donghu.”

  Jago faces Sarah. His expression is one of rage and sorrow. “Where?”

  Sarah points to the hallway, just as they hear two gunshots and a woman cry “NO!” and scream and then these sounds are hushed by the thump of a heavy door being closed.

  Sky Key, Sarah thinks. So close. You can end this. Now. Here.

  “We have to destroy Sky Key,” she says quietly.

  “Sí,” Jago says, but he’s staring at Renzo’s body, and Sarah knows the only thing on his mind is revenge.

  Jago steps to Renzo and leans over and closes his eyes. Sarah picks up a pistol and stuffs it in her belt. She relieves one of the dead guards of a curved fighting stick with a heavy ball on the end. “Here.” She tosses the stick to Jago. He grabs it out of the air and whirls it in front of him, getting a feel. She steps forward decisively and says, as much to convince herself as to remind Jago, “Let’s go save the world.”

  LITTLE ALICE CHOPRA

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

  She watches.

  The door makes a loud pop, like the lock has been broken from the outside.

  It opens a crack. The door is heavy.

  Light floods in from the hall. It wasn’t lit like that before, not when her father ran with her into this storeroom. It wasn’t so bright.

  No one is there.

  Her father swings his gun back and forth, back and forth, looking for a target, for a sliver of flesh.

  The door inches open a little more. More light. Little Alice has to squint her eyes.

  Still, no one is there.

  A shadow. A gun barrel. Three shots.

  Only one from her father, fired into the hallway, into the searing light. A miss. Her father falls and the door is open and that is all Little Alice sees or hears.

  Now that the light is here, with her, close to her, she senses nothing else. It is like a sun. Terrible and strong and full of gravity pulling her in.

  She can’t see her mother’s frantic hands or hear her cry out for Jamal as he falls to the ground, dead before he even had a chance. She can’t hear her own voice saying “Earth Key Earth Key Earth Key Earth Key Earth Key Earth Key” on and on and on in a dry monotone. She can’t see Maccabee, the tall one with the crooked face from her nightmares, come and talk to Shari before pulling Little Alice from her mother. She can’t see Shari try to fight Maccabee off. She can’t see Baitsakhan stand over Shari, his face twisted with pleasure. She can’t hear him say, “This is for Bat and Bold.”

  She can’t.

  All she experiences now is the light. It’s attached to Baitsakhan’s leg.

  The light.

  That’s all there is.

  Her and the light and nothing else.

  “Earth Key Earth Key Earth Key Earth Key Earth Key Earth Key.”

  The light and nothing else.

  The blinding light only Sky Key can see.

  SHARI CHOPRA

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

  The door swings open and before she knows it the Nabataean and the little monster are in the room and Jamal is dead.

  Just like that.

  No heroics.

  No fanfare.

  No beating the odds.

  Her love gone.

  Shari cries “NO!” and screams and she holds her daughter ever tighter, but Little Alice is like a zombie, the shock of everything perhaps too much. For some reason she’s saying “Earth Key” over and over in a low voice, not desperate, not afraid, not angry, just blank.

  The Nabataean appears in front of them. His expression is intense. He looks at Little Alice, full of desire.

  “You won’t kill her,” Shari says, thinking maybe in this last moment she will have the strength to take her daughter’s head and snap her neck.

  Maccabee leans over. “Kill her? Why would I do that?”

  He pries the entranced girl from her mother’s arms, and Shari screams and strikes out expertly with her hands and feet, but Maccabee wards off every attack and with a swift kick to her chest she finds herself knocked to the ground. This is it.

  Maccabee tucks his gun in his belt and ushers Little Alice away from her mother and picks the girl up tenderly and whispers something in her ear. He takes her to the other side of the room, away from Shari and away from Jamal’s body, and Shari can’t be sure because her body is shaking now and her eyes are filling with tears and her heart is breaking, no it’s broken, so broken, she can’t be sure but it looks like Maccabee Adlai is sorry that it has to happen like this. It looks like he is sorry.

  Shari jumps to her knees to go after her daughter, but before she can move, there is the little monster blocking her path. He plants a hand on her forehead and pushes her back. She looks up at the monster and all hope leaves her.

  She has failed.

  Her line, her family, her ancestors.

  Big Alice Ulapala, her child, her husband, herself.

  She has failed.

  Baitsakhan kneels. Their gazes meet. He holds out his left hand. She sees that it is not flesh but metal. He places it on her shoulder, almost like he’s consoling her. It is a strong hand. He slides the hand to her neck. He begins to squeeze.

  “This is for Bat and Bold.”

  She has failed. She turns inward. Looks for love. Tries to push compassion and empathy across the room to her daughter and out of this room and out of this fortress and over the mountains and into the sky and toward the heavens. She is not afraid for herself. Death is easy.

  But she is afraid for her precious daughter.

  Very afraid.

  BAITSAKHAN

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

  Happiness wells in his heart as he sees the fear in this waste of a Player. He wonders where her preternatural calm is now. Baitsakhan doesn’t have the emotional wisdom to understand
that the source of her calm in China was Little Alice, but now that Little Alice is taken, the source is dry.

  Now Little Alice is the source of something different.

  Fear.

  Baitsakhan loves it. He doesn’t care where it comes from, just that it’s there.

  He squeezes a little tighter.

  Shari chokes.

  A little tighter.

  Her leg kicks out and Baitsakhan sits on it.

  A little tighter.

  He smiles.

  “I am going to rip your throat out.”

  MACCABEE ADLAI

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

  Maccabee Adlai puts Little Alice on the floor.

  “Don’t look, sweetie,” he says.

  “Earth Key Earth Key Earth Key Earth Key,” she drones.

  Her eyes are blank. Her mouth moves as if automated.

  He waves a hand in front of her face.

  Nothing.

  “Can’t see anyway.”

  He stands and takes the pistol from his waistband. Baitsakhan’s back is to him. Shari’s eyes are tear filled. Her face is turning blue. Her hands are clasped on Baitsakhan’s wrist. He’s going slower than he has to. He’s taking his time.

  Maccabee aims the gun at Shari. Says, “I’m sorry.”

  Without looking, Baitsakhan asks, “What for? This is glorious.”

  It makes Maccabee sick.

  He lowers the gun and quickly takes the fob Ekaterina made for him and taps it three times. Click, click, click.

  And the hand releases Shari. She inhales sharply, color returning to her face almost immediately. Baitsakhan recoils and stares incomprehensibly at his bionic appendage. “Wha—” he blurts, but before he can even finish the word the hand zips toward his own neck and locks around his throat. The hand he was born with grasps his left wrist and tries to pull the mechanical hand from his neck. He pulls and pulls but nothing comes of it. He falls over on his side, away from Shari. She stares at Baitsakhan with a look of grotesque wonder as he presses his elbow into the floor, trying to use it to force his hand away from his neck.