Endgame: Rules of the Game

by James Frey

“Christ, Pop,” Aisling repeats in a whisper. “Why the fuck did you do that?”

  Pop passes out.

  She stands and looks across the room. Hilal is on one knee now, Stella Vyctory draped over his thigh, her arms hanging limp and lifeless at her sides, her legs crossed under her hips at an uncomfortable angle. The bright fletching of a small dart sticks out of the center of her throat. Her face and neck are coated in saliva and mucus as these stream out of her mouth and nose. Her chest rises and falls quickly, a few bubbles forming on her swollen lips, and then this stops.

  Stella Vyctory is dead.

  Then the lights flicker once more and a sound like an explosion rattles down the tunnel that leads to the surface and the lights go out for good.

  All that is left is blackness and the sudden silence and the uncertainty.

  Hilal says, his voice now hard and bitter, “It is too late. They have found us—together.”

  SHARI CHOPRA, HILAL IBN ISA AL-SALT, AISLING KOPP, SARAH ALOPAY, JAGO TLALOC, POP KOPP, GREG JORDAN, GRIFFIN MARS

  Bunker beneath Classic Kameo Hotel and Serviced Apartments, Ayutthaya, Thailand

  Shari doesn’t hesitate. She can’t think about whoever it is that’s coming for them. Because she’s not one of them. She is the Harappan, and her daughter is out there somewhere. And in order to get to her Shari needs to be free.

  She slides out of her chair and feels around on the floor, her fingertips searching, and she finds it. Pop Kopp’s blade. She snags it and flips it around and slips it carefully between her bound wrists and then snaps the blade up, cutting the zip tie that binds her hands together.

  The zip tie falls to the ground. She bites the blade between her teeth like a pirate and hunkers down and waits for her chance to run.

  A flashlight’s white beam pierces the dark. It belongs to Sarah. The beam skirts around the room as she asks, “Who’s coming, Hilal?”

  “The people destroying the monuments. The people who want—wanted—to kill Stella,” Hilal explains, Sarah’s light illuminating the side of his face and that of a very dead Stella Vyctory.

  While they talk Shari takes advantage of the flashlight’s shifting ambient light to get her bearings. Aisling stands over her grandfather, near the sliding door that leads to the cars. Shari’ll need one of those to escape. This door opens as Jago slips into the garage. She moves her eyes over the floor, searching for Pop’s gun, and yes—there it is—a shadowy lump near the same sliding door.

  Jago bounds back into the room. “People are coming down the ramp. They’re trying to be quiet but I can hear them.”

  Sarah racks her pistol and moves toward Jago. “I’m coming. We’ll cover the tunnel. Won’t let anyone down it alive.”

  “Good,” Jordan says through clenched teeth. “Go!”

  Sarah sprints out of the room, brushing past Aisling.

  Marrs uses the hem of his T-shirt to clean off Stella’s face. “Goddamn it, why did your grandfather do this?”

  Aisling flicks on a flashlight and watches Marrs wipe the corners of Stella’s eyes, her mouth, the bridge of her nose. “I should have known better. I should have left Pop in the van,” she says.

  “I want to know too,” Jordan says. “Stella is like—was like . . .” He trails off. Their grief and confusion is cut short by the sound of two gun reports from the tunnel.

  “Now is not the time, my friends,” Hilal says.

  Jordan straightens. “No. It isn’t.”

  Aisling shakes off what Pop has done and forces herself to concentrate. “We need to get out of here. The stairs!”

  Jordan points at the van in the garage. “But all those guns. All those supplies.”

  “There are more where they came from,” Hilal says, unzipping the top of his rucksack. He reaches in and draws out a single machete, the word LOVE engraved on its hilt. “Stella briefed me after I arrived last night. She has another supply cache here in Thailand, though it is a few hours away.”

  “She also brief you on who exactly these people are, Hilal?” Aisling asks, taking a few steps away from her unconscious grandfather.

  Shari senses an opening. She creeps toward the cars. Another flashlight goes on, this one belonging to Marrs. Hilal says, “They are people loyal to her adoptive father—to the man named Wayland Vyctory.”

  “The hotel guy?” Aisling asks incredulously.

  “The same,” Hilal answers.

  Aisling doesn’t understand. Everyone has heard of Wayland Vyctory—everyone in America at least. He’s one of the richest and most successful men in Las Vegas. His business is casinos and showgirls and five-star restaurants and golf courses, not Endgame. She says, “Why the hell would a hotel billionaire have anything to do with End—”

  But she’s cut off by another loud blast, this one much, much closer. The whole bunker flashes brightly, and the glass doors on the eastern side of the conference room push in with the shock wave but don’t break.

  Jordan runs to a keypad by the glass doors and enters a code. Behind the doors is a cloud of white billowing smoke. This cloud lights with muzzle flash as hidden shooters let loose with semiautomatic rifles. Jordan winces as the shots strike the bulletproof partition and bounce away next to his face and chest. He hits enter. The doors lock shut. They are safe from the men coming down the stairs, at least for a few moments.

  Aisling leaves her grandfather and joins Jordan, Marrs, and Hilal.

  This is Shari’s chance. She doesn’t wait. She’s in the middle of the action but everyone is preoccupied. She slips across the floor. She takes the gun and stuffs it in her waist and hooks her hands under Pop’s shoulders and drags him toward the vehicles. She works quickly, silently, reaching the Mercedes in under 20 seconds. There’s enough light from the flashlights for her to operate. She opens the passenger door quietly and gets in the Mercedes and drags Pop into it. She slides over the center console, working Pop into the passenger seat. Once he’s in she pulls the door shut, locks it, and gets belted into the driver’s seat.

  She runs her hands over the steering column and yes, there is the key.

  The van’s on her left, Sarah and Jago out of sight on the far side. The others are in the conference room on her right. There’s a concrete wall directly in front of the car. The only way out is the way they came in: the tunnel.

  She looks over her shoulder at it. Lights dance some distance up the ramp. A man appears around the corner, his rifle up, and Jago and Sarah fire on him. He falls and rolls down the incline.

  They are coming.

  She can’t think about this shitty situation they’re in.

  She has to act.

  Shari takes a deep breath. She’ll take the tunnel. She’ll run over whoever she finds in it, probably taking fire the whole way. She hopes the car is bulletproof. She expects it is but won’t know until someone’s shooting at her. She grips the wheel with one hand and holds the other over the ignition and takes a deep breath and gets ready to turn the key.

  She just waits for the right moment.

  Meanwhile, Aisling, Hilal, and Jordan stand shoulder to shoulder as four men—tall and athletic in head-to-toe tactical gear, their faces covered by helmets and goggles—emerge from the cloud obscuring the stairwell. They move into position, only a few feet from Aisling and Jordan and Hilal, behind the locked and very well armored glass door. They open two duffel bags containing explosives and detonators and get to work.

  One of the men flips up his goggles. Jordan shines a light on his face. The man blinks. His skin is pale and his eyes are set a little wider than they should be. His mouth is open, and Hilal can plainly see that he has no tongue.

  A mute. Like Wayland’s guards in Las Vegas.

  “Nethinim,” Hilal says quietly.

  “Shit,” Jordan says.

  Hilal twirls his machete. “They are not so tough. I took down two in Las Vegas. But when those doors open we cannot wait. We must strike at once.”

  Aisling doesn’t have a clue what they’re talking a
bout, but now isn’t the time to ask.

  “We can take them,” Aisling says.

  “We will take them,” Hilal says.

  “Maybe we won’t have to,” Jordan says. He spins to Marrs, Stella draped over his shoulder. “Get her to the van, Marrs. See if there’s another way out of here. Stella wouldn’t blind alley herself like this.”

  Marrs answers by double-timing it to the Sprinter. He’s so shocked to be carrying the dead body of Stella Vyctory, and the darkness is so complete, that he doesn’t notice Shari or Pop is gone. He walks around the sedan and doesn’t see Shari sitting in the driver’s seat, staring at him hard, waiting for the moment to make her run for it.

  Marrs opens the van’s side door and gently lays Stella across the backseat. Then he jumps in and fires up a laptop mounted on the dashboard. He pounds the keyboard furiously, trying to access the bunker’s security system to see if it will divulge any of its secrets.

  In the conference room Aisling, Hilal, and Jordan watch one of their ambushers spray aerated C4 on the glass door in a starlike pattern. Another points a rifle at them, its muzzle dancing between their heads, a smile on his face.

  Jordan sticks up a meaty middle finger at him before saying, “I’m sure we can take these guys, but I think we should get in the van too. It’s our best cover. It’s bullet- and bomb-proof and full of guns.” Jordan takes a half step toward the garage. “Come on!”

  The beam of Jordan’s light bounces between Aisling and Hilal’s faces. Aisling looks ready to follow Jordan, but Hilal is less certain. It’s hard to read his expression because of his injuries.

  After a beat, Hilal says, “You are right.” He picks up his rucksack and swings it over his shoulders. He hasn’t told them what else is in this bag of his—the Maker book from Wayland Vyctory’s hotel suite. He hasn’t told them how important it could turn out to be, and how essential it is that Wayland’s Nethinim do not, under any circumstances, regain possession of this book.

  Hilal holds out a hand for Aisling. “We should fight these men on our terms, not theirs. Come, Aisling Kopp.”

  Aisling doesn’t need to hold his hand or anyone else’s. She bats it away and takes the lead, running toward the garage, but at the far end of the table she stops short. “Give me a hand with Pop, will you? Wait. What the—?”

  Hilal continues for the van while Jordan bumps into her. “What is it?”

  Aisling points at the floor. “Where the hell is he? Marrs!” she yells. “Did you get Pop?”

  “No!” Marrs answers from the van.

  “What the fuck?” Aisling says, moving the flashlight all over the ground. “He was knocked out.” And then she remembers.

  Shari.

  The beam of light whips to Shari sitting in her chair.

  Except that now it is empty.

  Jordan grabs her roughly by the arm and tugs her toward the van. “Come on, Aisling! We don’t have time!”

  But Aisling ignores him. She shines the light here and here and here. The cut zip tie. Pop’s missing gun. A scuff mark on the floor leading to the cars.

  She raises the light and shines it directly at the Mercedes sedan, a circle of white light on the dark window. On the other side of that window is Pop, slumped in the passenger seat. And next to him, gripping the wheel and staring murderously at Aisling, is Shari Chopra.

  “No!” Aisling yells, wriggling free of Jordan’s grasp. She is about to sprint for the car and save Pop but at that very moment Aisling and Jordan are lifted off their feet and sent sailing through the air. They slam painfully into the side of the sedan. The men have blown open the glass door at the far end of the conference room. The blast is large and deafening, its shock wave rattling around the bunker with great force. Both vehicles rock, and inside the sedan Shari braces herself and catches the sun visor, knocking it open. Something falls into her lap. She shakes off the ringing in her ears and reaches between her legs and picks up a small remote with two buttons. One green, one red.

  The blast also knocks Sarah and Jago off their feet, but they’re the farthest from the explosion so they don’t suffer too much. They dive into the van as Marrs starts the engine, steeling himself for a rough drive back up the tunnel and through who knows how many enemies.

  “Come on, Aisling!” Hilal yells.

  Jordan scrambles to his feet, his ears stuffed by a high-pitched whine, grabbing Aisling. Gunfire rat-a-tats from the tunnel. Shari turns on her car’s engine. Marrs revs the van. Aisling follows Jordan reluctantly—she so badly wants to get Pop away from Shari. Jordan and Aisling move between the vehicles and now Aisling is less than a foot from Shari, the sedan’s closed door between them. Aisling reaches for the door handle and yanks it but it’s no use.

  Locked.

  Shari eyes Aisling contemptuously, shaking her head. He’s mine, Shari mouths.

  More gunfire, this time on their other flank from the men who’ve breached the conference room. Bullets zing off the armor and whiz past Aisling. Jordan yanks her hard as slugs crackle all around and then she’s inside and the door’s closed and she’s safe.

  Everyone is out of breath. “I couldn’t find anything,” Marrs says, pointing at the laptop. “We’re trapped.”

  The pitter of bullets bounce off the outside of the vehicles like frantic music. Aisling stares at Shari. Marrs stares at Jordan. Jordan stares at Stella’s feet hanging off the backseat, the shock of her death grabbing him. Sarah and Jago stare at each other, holding hands. Hilal says, “What now?”

  Shari remembers the object that fell in her lap. She takes it back up. Green button. Red button.

  She picks red.

  As soon as she pushes it the concrete wall in front of the vehicles slides down in a flash, revealing a subterranean road wide enough for two cars.

  Again, Shari doesn’t hesitate. She jams the gas and squeals away, her car’s high beams illuminating a long, straight tunnel.

  “Go, go, go!” Jordan shouts.

  Marrs punches it too, fishtailing into the void, the red taillights of Shari’s much-faster car already receding into the distance.

  Shari is so happy she doesn’t know what to do except drive as fast as she can. She knows the others are behind her, but so what? This car has 280 kph on the speedometer. Even if they’ve also escaped, she’ll surely outrun them.

  Then, to see what happens, she presses the green button.

  She can’t see from her vantage point and distance, but the door that so serendipitously opened for them closes, sealing the men hunting them into the bunker.

  And then the bunker and the hidden tunnel and the ground shake and shake and shake.

  The men aren’t hunting them anymore.

  The men are dead.

  All of them—Shari, Aisling, Jordan, Marrs, Hilal, Sarah, Jago—are in disbelief. They escaped an ambush. They made it out and they are not being chased anymore.

  Shari thinks, I’ll find you, meri jaan.

  And Aisling thinks, Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  Please don’t kill him.

  Fuck. Fuck!

  SHARI CHOPRA, POP KOPP

  Subterranean tunnel, Ayutthaya, Thailand

  Shari drives like a hellcat, one eye on the road and one eye on the unconscious man bouncing in the passenger seat. She drives with one hand on the wheel and her other hand on the knife she took from the floor.

  “I know what you did,” she says to Pop, thinking of all the Harappan he helped to kill. All of them so beautiful and true and loyal.

  Paru and Ana and Pravheet and Peetee and Varj and Ghar and Brundini and Boort and Helena.

  Shari remembers the hate that filled her heart when Helena died. When the Celt said to her, truthfully, that they were both already in hell.

  Yes, this is hell.

  She looks at the man. “I know what you did.”

  The road curves left. She handles it expertly.

  “I should kill you right now.”

  She holds the knife to his throat.

  She
rounds a wide turn and the lights of the van disappear behind the curving wall.

  She pushes the blade forward and it touches his neck and makes a thin depression. The man’s skin is wrinkled and loose and it folds over the metal a little.

  The wrinkles make her think of Jovinderpihainu.

  Shari wonders if Jov was killed too. Perhaps not. There could have been survivors at the Harappan fortress, people who hid and waited and lived. Jov could have done this. If Jov—all 94 years of him—was anything, he was a survivor.

  What would you do in my place, Jov? she wonders.

  The road straightens and a few moments later the van’s lights appear behind her.

  She looks at the instrument panel. They have traveled 0.9 kilometers. The car is humming nicely at 126 kph.

  She thinks, Jov would spare him. Vengeance doesn’t run in his blood, certainly not when there is a chance to be strategic. I must be strategic to have the best chance of finding Little Alice.

  She slowly pulls the knife away from his neck and then stabs it onto the dashboard out of frustration and anger and grief, above everything grief.

  I can’t kill you.

  The headlights reveal a change in the road ahead.

  A fork.

  She hits the brake. The car stops. She looks to Pop. She grabs the knife’s handle again, its blade a good four centimeters in the leather and plastic console.

  “I should kill you right now,” she says one last time.

  The van gets closer. She doesn’t want to see them. She picks a passage and guns the engine again, taking the left-hand tunnel. When the van reaches the fork, it follows.

  I can’t kill you.

  I have to hold the hate back. I have to let it go as much as I can.

  MACCABEE ADLAI, LITTLE ALICE CHOPRA

  Unnamed road near Shree Dwarkadhish Temple, Dwarka, Gujarat, India

  Little Alice is strapped to Maccabee’s back in the child carrier. Men all around yell and throw up their hands and warble in half a dozen languages, a mélange of Gujarati and Hindi and English and Urdu and Punjabi. Maccabee and Little Alice get swept up and are funneled through an alley of concrete buildings. A 2,000-year-old Hindu temple is on their right, its main feature a towering cone of carved stone, weather-beaten and grandiose. A multicolored flag stands at attention in the stiff wind coming off the Indian Ocean only a stone’s throw to the west.