Sky Key

by James Frey

  But it’s impossible.

  Blood wells around the mechanical digits. His face turns purple and his eyes bulge from their sockets and his tongue darts from his lips and his nostrils flare and the hand squeezes squeezes squeezes and then there is a terrible squishing and popping noise as the hand becomes a fist in Baitsakhan’s throat and blood splatters over the floor and his body falls to the ground. It shakes and quavers for several seconds, and Shari looks on, transfixed and terrified and—she can hardly believe it—deeply satisfied.

  The terror named Baitsakhan is dead.

  Maccabee lets the fob fall to the floor.

  Shari, still staring at Baitsakhan, says, “How?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Shari shakes her head. “No. It doesn’t.” She shifts her eyes to Maccabee. “Thank you,” she manages to say.

  “Don’t.” He swings the gun back to Shari. His finger hovers over the trigger. Maccabee hesitates, looks to Little Alice, makes sure she’s still in her trance. She is. Maccabee sighs. “Like I said, I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t have to be,” Shari whispers, her voice cracking, her throat aching. “The game is bullshit.”

  Maccabee shakes his head. He will never believe this. Never. “It’ll be painless. It won’t be like he wanted.”

  Shari looks at Little Alice. Her daughter is gone. An empty shell now. But she might one day return.

  “Take care of her.”

  “I will. Until the end, I promise.” Maccabee squeezes just a little bit more. Shari closes her eyes. She can’t see him look from the mother to the daughter and to the mother again. He looks at what’s left of the Donghu. Thinks of the Koori, of Ekaterina.

  Fuck, Maccabee thinks.

  He wants to win—he will win—but the Harappan is right that this is bullshit.

  He looks from the mother to the daughter to the mother again.

  And then he raises the gun and steps forward silently. Shari still waits, her eyes closed, her face serene, her cheeks bright with tears. She’s still waiting.

  And he brings the butt of the gun down on her head with a crack and she falls over. He spins to Little Alice and holds out his hand. “Come on, sweetie. Time to go.”

  SARAH ALOPAY, JAGO TLALOC, MACCABEE ADLAI

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

  Sarah pulls the door all the way open as Jago bursts into the room. Maccabee dives to the side and fires. A bullet zips past Jago’s scarred cheek. Jago fires back, his bullet grazing Maccabee’s shoulder.

  Jago sprints forward. Maccabee tracks him. Shoots again.

  This one hits Jago in the chest.

  His bulletproof vest absorbs it.

  Jago holds his breath and ignores the crunching pain. The Olmec does the trick where he runs along the wall. He sails over Jamal’s body, firing until there isn’t a bullet left in his pistol. Maccabee fires too, his rounds biting into the stone at Jago’s heels.

  All shots miss.

  Jago slides to the ground and takes cover behind the wall that Shari and Baitsakhan are slumped near. Both look dead. Baitsakhan certainly does, anyway.

  Maccabee advances. He was more frugal with his ammo and has two bullets left.

  But before he can get a shot off, Sarah steps into the doorway. Her gun is trained on Maccabee and she’s ready to shoot, but then she sees the girl, crawling along the floor toward her mother, and Sarah shifts the gun to her.

  End what you started! she yells to herself, and she puts the slightest pressure on the trigger as she takes in this girl, all of two years old, innocent, a victim of Endgame, maybe the victim of Endgame, and Sarah zeroes in on her and doesn’t notice as Maccabee takes his attention off Jago and turns his gun on Sarah.

  Jago lunges out of cover with the fighting stick and cracks it onto Maccabee’s arm. The pistol drops to the floor. Jago whips his wrist around and swings the stick back up. Maccabee steps back and catches the stick mid-arc. He and Jago are nose to nose.

  Jago smiles, his diamonds catching the light. “It’s on.”

  Meanwhile, Sarah still hasn’t pulled the trigger.

  End what you started! End what you started!

  Save humanity, Sarah Alopay!

  SAVE IT!

  LITTLE ALICE CHOPRA

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

  There.

  The light.

  Move toward the light.

  There is only the light. The blinding light.

  “Earth Key Earth Key Earth Key Earth Key.”

  AISLING KOPP, POP KOPP, GREG JORDAN, GRIFFIN MARRS

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

  Aisling reaches the bottom of the stairs and holds up a fist. None of them speak. She peeks around the corner. A hallway, a doorway on the right with the bodies of three men just inside the room. At the end of the hall is an open door, another corpse nearby. Blocking the open doorway is the back of Sarah Alopay, her right arm holding a pistol, her left arm tucked in front of her like it’s injured. Aisling senses a commotion just past Alopay, but she can’t tell what’s happening.

  And then Aisling catches a glimpse. Through Sarah’s legs, deeper in the room, a little girl crawls across the floor from left to right.

  Sky Key.

  Alice Chopra. Not more than a baby.

  No wonder Sarah hesitates.

  Aisling looks at the others. Don’t make a sound, she mouths.

  They don’t.

  She readies her sniper rifle and swings around the corner and takes a bead on the girl. Her scope reads due south. She breathes in but the Cahokian steps in her way.

  Move, Aisling thinks. Move so I can end this.

  xix

  JAGO TLALOC, MACCABEE ADLAI, SARAH ALOPAY, AISLING KOPP, LITTLE ALICE CHOPRA

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

  Jago drives the heel of his palm toward Maccabee’s cheek. He narrowly misses as Maccabee leans back, pivots, and swings the handle end of the stick at Jago’s side. Jago tightens his stomach muscles and takes the hit to the gut. But before Jago can grab the stick and take it back, Maccabee throws the thing away, and it clanks into the far wall.

  Jago steps back one pace to gain some room. Maccabee plants a foot behind him. At the same moment he surreptitiously flicks his thumb and opens the lid to his poisoned ring on his left hand.

  Oh, it is on, Maccabee thinks.

  He lashes out with his right hand to distract Jago from the real danger—the ring. Jago backpedals two feet, deflecting blows with his hands. He takes three glancing blows to the chin and realizes he’s fighting a southpaw. He ducks under a heavy left backhand, and when he pops up, he switches his feet, putting the right in front.

  Righty, lefty, it doesn’t matter. He’s fought them all.

  Maccabee cocks his left hand for another powerful swing.

  Two more right jabs, Jago’s head bobbing and weaving, and here comes the left again and Jago steps into it and moves his head to his left and drops his right shoulder, his eyes tracking Maccabee’s fist as it sails past the flesh of his neck. And there, he sees the ring.

  Watch that hand, Jago thinks as he lands five lightning blows to Maccabee’s side. Then he jumps back and says, “Boxing’s for pussies.”

  Maccabee changes his stance and squares his shoulders and brings his hands in front of him and says, “Fine.”

  The huge Nabataean charges. Jago drops and plants his hands on the floor and twirls sideways, his legs flashing in every direction in a showy but deadly display of capoeira. He lands four shots on Maccabee, one on his temple, one on his nape, one to his ribs, and a useless one to his upper arm. He is about to wrap his legs around him and take him down when a meaty fist crashes into Jago’s back and smashes his entire body into the floor.

  Maccabee stands over him and punches down, but Jago rolls over and kicks his legs and catjumps into a standing position.

  Maccabee slices toward Jago’s chest with the rin
g, but Jago sidesteps and grabs the pinkie the ring encircles. With a precise jerk, he snaps Maccabee’s finger so it flops against the back of his hand.

  Maccabee claps his other hand over the Olmec’s shoulder and pulls him in tight.

  “You are so fucking ugly,” Maccabee says and, even though Maccabee knows that he’ll probably break his nose again, he rears back and delivers a vicious head-butt.

  Except Jago is too slippery. He goes limp, falls out of Maccabee’s arms, and slides to the ground. Maccabee stumbles forward with his own momentum, and as Jago passes through his legs, he thrusts upward, both his fists clenched together, right into the Nabataean’s groin.

  Maccabee makes a horrible retching sound and doubles over. Jago is on his feet in a flash, walks around his opponent, and takes Maccabee by the chin.

  “Adios.”

  Jago brings a heavy uppercut into Maccabee’s jaw, and the huge Nabataean is forced up, his back arching, before he falls on top of Baitsakhan, utterly unconscious.

  Jago breathes hard, his fists balled at his sides, his entire body slick with sweat. He looks around and grabs a knife from the floor and stands over Maccabee to finish him off.

  “STOP!” Sarah yells, still standing outside the doorway, still blocking Aisling’s shot.

  Jago whips his head to Sarah. “What?”

  “Not you. Her.”

  And the girl does stop, just shy of the pile of Players. The Harappan, the Donghu, the Nabataean. Her small face to Sarah, her lips moving in the same pattern over and over. Her eyes looking through Sarah, through everything. Blank and dilated.

  “Earth Key,” Sarah says to the little girl, still pointing the gun at her. “I know. I shouldn’t have taken it. I shouldn’t have started all this.”

  Jago looks from Sarah to the spaced-out little girl. He clenches the knife.

  “Sarah . . .” He’s worried that she’s snapped again.

  Sarah ignores him.

  “Earth Key,” Little Alice repeats, losing interest in Sarah, the light no one else can see calling her.

  Sarah cocks her head. “What happened to you?” Sarah asks.

  “Earth Key,” Little Alice says. “Earth Key.”

  “Do it,” Jago says to Sarah.

  “I . . .”

  “End it.”

  Come on, Aisling urges silently. You’re one of the good ones, damn it. Do it.

  Sarah thinks, I have to do it. I have to. It will save billions of people. I have to.

  Memories flash before her—Tate, graduation, her father driving her to a doctor’s appointment, kissing Christopher—all mundane memories of her normal life, the one she definitely had but that now feels like a dream. Memories. As if she is about to take her own life and not the life of yet another innocent person who didn’t ask to be in the crosshairs of Endgame.

  I have to.

  And she remembers Christopher’s face in his last moment and she knows. He wanted to die because he couldn’t live in a world where Sarah Alopay was a psychopathic killer. He just couldn’t.

  And she realizes that’s what has been tearing at her since she shot her best friend.

  That she can’t live in that world either.

  If she truly is going to save humanity, then she must salvage her own first.

  She lets the gun drop to her side.

  And just like that, her mind settles. Sanity washes over her.

  “Sarah!” Jago protests.

  Aisling whispers, “Goddamn it.” Presses her cheek against the rifle’s cold metal. Move, or I’ll blow a hole through both of you.

  “I . . . I can’t do it. Not again.”

  “Earth Key.”

  “But we have to.”

  “Christopher saw. He understood.”

  “Earth Key.”

  Move! Aisling thinks.

  “That puto won’t die, will he?”

  “I wish he hadn’t.”

  “Earth Key.”

  “Billions, Sarah. Billions of people! We have to do it!”

  The gun trembles at Sarah’s side. She stares at Jago. “We’re killers, Jago. All of us. That’s what the Makers taught us thousands of years ago. How to build machines and how to hate and how to fear. And when you put those things together, you end up with death, with violence.” She points the gun at Maccabee and Baitsakhan. “I’ll kill people like them, people like you, like me, but I can’t kill people like her. Not again. I won’t. I just won’t.”

  “Then I will.” Jago pulls the gun from Sarah. Stares at Little Alice. Raises the pistol. Points it at her.

  Aisling watches this exchange. Do it. Do it. She doesn’t want to be the one to take the shot.

  “Earth Key,” Little Alice says.

  He looks down at her. So sweet, so strange.

  The gun drops to Jago’s side. And Sarah is relieved. So relieved.

  “I . . . I can’t.”

  “Right,” Sarah says, a sad smile on her lips. “Because you’re strong, Jago. You’re good, and good people don’t shoot two-year-olds in the face. If this is the off switch for Endgame—well, it’s their off switch. The Makers’. And it’s bullshit. We’ll find another way.”

  Jago wonders if they’re watching. If kepler 22b can hear their words. If the alien knows that this is the beginning of another rebellion.

  “We aren’t like them,” Sarah insists, her voice strong, passionate.

  She means the Players, the Makers, all their sick and twisted and brutal human ancestors. She means all of them. She falls against Jago, pressing her chest to his, resting her chin on his shoulder.

  “You’re a human being,” she says in a whisper, her eyes full of tears, her mind blessedly quiet. “We’re not gods. We’re not aliens. We’re human beings.”

  “Earth Key.”

  Fuck, Aisling thinks as Sarah steps into the room and out of sight. Aisling aims at the girl’s head. She’s going to do it. She has to. She has to.

  The little girl starts to move again. Aisling follows. Puts pressure on the trigger. The little girl passes her mother’s body and stops. Her lips move. More pressure on the trigger. The girl reaches out for the leg of one of the fallen Players. Her lips move.

  Forgive me, Aisling thinks.

  And she closes her eyes and pulls all the way.

  The shot rings out, and for the briefest of moments that is all that any of them know or hear or see or understand.

  LITTLE ALICE CHOPRA

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

  Little Alice slides her hand over Maccabee’s shoulder and touches Earth Key, a small hard ball hidden in Baitsakhan’s pocket.

  There is only the light.

  Sky Key and Earth Key, together. Joined. Inseparable.

  There is only the light.

  Ever brighter.

  Ever brighter.

  There is only the light.

  And there is no sound of the rifle shot.

  There is no sound because Sky Key and Earth Key are joined, and anyone touching either of them, dead or alive, is with them. Baitsakhan is with them. And Maccabee is with them, alive but unaware.

  There is no sound because Sky Key and Earth Key are joined.

  And they are no longer in the Harappan fortress called , in the Valley of Eternal Life, in Sikkim, India.

  They are no longer there.

  They are safe. They are joined. The first two keys came together, and they are saved.

  Saved so that one lucky Player may take them and Play on, right through to the end.

  The light is gone and everything is blackness and silence and Little Alice is suddenly terrified. She can’t remember where she is or what’s happened.

  “Mama?” she says weakly. “Papa?”

  The only thing she hears is the sound of grunting.

  “Mama!” she yelps.

  A man clears his throat. And then says, “I’m here. I’ll take care of you now. No one will hurt you.”

  He flicks on a lighter, and Little Ali
ce sees her nightmare come true.

  Maccabee holds out his hand. “No one will hurt you now, my Sky Key.”

  These Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first men, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when . . . the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberatexx him.

  HILAL IBN ISA AL-SALT

  Suvarnabhumi International Airport, Bangkok, Thailand

  Hilal stands at the baggage carousel, anxious to figure out a way to see if any of the other Players have heeded his message.

  He does not have to wait for long.

  A newscast plays on a screen mounted in a nearby waiting area. He’s not watching it, so he doesn’t notice when the regular broadcast cuts off and is replaced with the unaltered face of kepler 22b.

  He does notice when someone screams and points.

  Instead of pushing his way through the crowd to get a better look at the monitor, he pulls his smartphone from his pocket and looks at its screen. There too is the Maker.

  He turns up the volume and cups his hands over the speaker.

  Esteemed Players of the lines, and all people of Earth, hear me now.

  More screams echo through the terminal, followed by gasps and shushes and more than a few tears.

  The kepler’s voice is as Hilal remembers.

  Earth Key and Sky Key are joined. One Player possesses both. Congratulations to the Nabataean of the 8th Line. May you have continued success in the Great Puzzle.

  Hilal reels and struggles to keep on his feet. His heart weighs heavy in his chest. His message did not work. Ea is gone, but he has failed otherwise. Failed.