by James Frey
Sarah yells into her headset, “Hilal, the gunmen are going to make the runway! I repeat, they are going to make the runway!”
Before the trees break overhead Jago pulls up on the flight controls. Their jet spits out of the fringe of leaves hanging over the open end of the runway. As soon as they’re over the jungle they bank hard to starboard. And then Jago pulls up and punches the throttle and they climb fast on a steep angle and they’re free too.
But the last plane—Hilal’s—is not.
Shari yanks off her headset. “Get us airborne, Hilal, but don’t go full speed until I give you the all clear.” She clicks out of her seat belt and stands up.
“Where are you—”
“Fly the plane, Hilal!”
Shari exits the cockpit and heads to the storeroom in the tail section, going right for the guns. She grabs a stock M4 with an extended clip and an undermounted M203 grenade launcher preloaded not with incendiaries but with smokers.
Then she bounds back to the front of the plane and does something very inadvisable for taking off.
She opens the door.
It flops open below her, the steps on the inside of the doorway leading to the ground below.
“What are you doing?” Hilal asks as warning lights ping across the flight console.
“Making sure we get out of here,” Shari says, pulling the cockpit door shut so she can concentrate better. “Just fly!” she commands.
Hilal yells something in a language she’s never heard, but he listens. The plane lurches forward and begins its turn onto the runway. Shari drops to the floor, a gust of warm morning air coating her face. She peers down the runway and sees the fire and the outlines of three men—no, four—taking cover near the gate. She smells the cordite from the firefight. She braces her feet against the bulkhead and quickly fires the grenade launcher. Fwomp! Fwomp! The projectiles travel on low arcs before hitting halfway down the runway, exploding in a dense blue haze that instantly obscures the gate.
“Go!” she yells, but Hilal doesn’t need to be told. The plane surges, the bottom of the door scrapes noisily along the concrete, sparks flying. They take fire, but due to the smoke and their rapid acceleration, these shots all miss to the aft of the tail. As they trundle down the runway, her hair stiffening in the wind, her eyes squinting and watering, Shari pulls the assault rifle into her shoulder. She lays down cover fire as the plane goes faster, faster, faster, the blue smokescreen getting closer, closer, closer, and then they are through it. The men stand and Shari holds her breath as she fires three-shot bursts, her body pivoting as the plane passes her targets. Seven quick bursts, four of them finding their targets. Two heads, one chest, one leg. All four men fall and the one with the leg injury screams but she can’t hear because the wind is so strong now.
After a few more seconds the trees give way to the sky and Hilal pulls up. A few stray shots come from behind them as one of the survivors fires, blindly and pointlessly.
Shari carefully gets to her feet, bracing herself in the galley as air whips around her and screams in her ears. She grabs the top of the door’s handrail and pulls with all her might, but it’s useless. The force of the air holds it open and she can’t get it to close.
She picks up the closest handset. “I can’t shut it!” she yells.
Hilal says something but she can’t understand him over the deafening whine of the wind.
“What?” she asks.
He says it again and then the plane accelerates and jerks violently to port and before Shari can get ahold of something she’s falling over and cradling her head and she feels momentarily weightless. Her shoulder mashes into something hard and her rifle flies out the open door and to the greenery below. The plane straightens and she looks up but instead of the ceiling she sees the floor and she understands. They’re inverted, flying in an arc. The door remains open and she’s not sure what Hilal is doing or if they’ve been hit and he’s lost control of the plane, but before she can think about any of this the plane flops over and is suddenly right-side up. The door obeys the laws of physics and hinges shut with a loud clap and Shari doesn’t waste a second as she springs to her feet and grabs the lever and pushes it hard into the closed position.
Shari spits hair out of her mouth. Her shoulder stings. She smiles.
“It worked?” Hilal asks from behind the cockpit door.
“Yes, Hilal!”
She falls to her bottom and sits there and begins to laugh. The plane pitches up and accelerates more.
It worked.
They are free too.
They can Play the way they want.
They can go and find Little Alice Chopra.
51.397742, 84.676206i
KEPLER 22B
Ansible chamber on board Seedrak Sare’en, active geosynchronous orbit above the Martian North Pole
He sits in the chair again. The dark room pinpricks to life and grows incredibly cold, then glows brightly. His brothers and sisters on the Heedrak mother ship, more than 600 light-years away, surround him on all sides.
Five men, six women.
The 11 members of the conclave speak as one entity. Sentences start in one mouth and are finished in another. This is the way his people communicate when they are near one another. Unfortunately, the ansible transmits sight and sound but not thought, so in this chamber it’s like receiving only part of what’s being said. This cuts in their direction too—they cannot hear his thoughts either, and all struggle against this.
He takes their voices in—drinks in their tones and timbres—as they go around the room with their obligatory salutations. Their speech—low resonant warbles punctuated by high-pitched coos and rhythmic clicks—is like music in his ears. It is far more gracious than Earth humanspeak, and he is eager for the day when he can sit among his own kind and be woven into discussions with both thought and vocalization. His Nethinim are serviceable telepaths, and he has had many fine conversations with them, but as mutes they lack the ability to convey nuance and feeling through their voices. Conversing in one mode—either purely through speech, as with the conclave, or purely through thought, as with his Nethinim—is like speaking with half his vocabulary.
Once the salutations are over, they turn to the business at hand.
The conclave says, “Give us the news, Sare’en Gamerunner.”
“The asteroid has impacted,” he says. “The Nabataean Player is close to presenting the three keys at the Shang monument. We are confident that completion of this game is imminent.” He speaks in the first person plural, as is their custom.
“Were any primary monuments destroyed after impact?”
“Unluckily, the Minoan was lost to a stray bolide accompanying Abaddon, and there are some fluctuations at the Olmec monument. We are monitoring this. We may lose it as well.”
“Pity. But we merely need one for the game to end. What of the other Players?”
“Most have banded. It is our belief that they wish to stop Endgame from progressing. The Shang Plays, though. He alone chases the Nabataean Player in pursuit of the keys.”
“Have we considered direct intervention?”
“We have not as yet, but it is an option.”
“We may order you to pursue this option. Tell us, who is destroying the monuments?”
“This is our main concern, Heedrak. They are people loyal to the old member of our race. The one we abandoned so long ago.”
“Ea?”
“Yes.”
“But you previously reported that the Aksumite killed him.”
“We did, and this is true. But his brotherhood lives on. And they are not pleased. As you know, Ea did not wish for Endgame to occur. His loyalists are trying to carry on in his absence. They are trying, in their own crude way, to stop what has begun.”
“This brotherhood cannot succeed. Are we tracking them?”
“Yes, but Abaddon has severely stressed Earth’s surveillance systems. We will not be able to follow their movements as easily. Having
said that, we surmised that after destroying the Harappan monument they were on course for the Donghu monument.”
“We are concerned.”
“We are as well.”
“We have a notion. We encourage you to follow it.”
“What is this notion?”
“It would require two things. The first is that we channel Sky Key as soon as we can. In order to help speed the Nabataean along.”
“And the second?”
“That the Nethinim on your Seedrak descend to the surface for a brief time.”
“To do what?”
“To stop this brotherhood.”
“They can go to Mongolia and do this as soon as our session ends.” kepler 22b half rises out of his chair.
“Wait. One Nethinim can do this in Mongolia. The other one must go to the Cahokian monument.”
kepler 22b sits back down. He frowns. “Why?”
“We left an object there a long time ago. We have never told you about it. You need to know about it now, though. This thing could be dangerous to us.”
kepler 22b leans forward, intrigued. “I am listening,” he says, intentionally using the first person to indicate his high level of interest. “Please. Do go on.”
MACCABEE ADLAI, LITTLE ALICE CHOPRA
Boeing 737, en route from Ahmedabad to Xi’an, China, crossing 90˚ E
Maccabee sits in a first class seat, Little Alice awake and silent next to him, in an otherwise empty Air China 737. There were precious few flights after the impact, but he’d found one persuadable Chinese pilot in Ahmedabad willing to take them to Xi’an, and all Maccabee had had to give him was $300,000 worth of gold.
A bargain, if it will guarantee that he wins Endgame.
They fly north and east. A laptop sits on the large fold-out table afforded to all first class passengers. Little Alice’s hand rests on his thigh. His hand rests on hers.
This tenderness almost makes him sick. He hasn’t spent more than a few days with this girl, but she is so fragile, and the forces that have made her important to Endgame seem so craven, that he cannot help but care for her.
And he thinks that, despite everything, she cares for him too.
What will be will be.
Maccabee opens and closes a few windows on his laptop. The hard drive he took from the drone in Dwarka is hooked up to it. He looks from the girl to the clock in the corner of the computer screen and then out the window. The flight is halfway over. They have crossed the Himalayas.
The sky outside is unlike any he’s seen. They’re cruising at over 40,000 feet. Sooty, gray clouds are everywhere. The dark blue arc of the upper atmosphere stretches above the aircraft, but the horizon is an odd gradient that, moving from top to bottom, goes from blue to white to brown to orange to the gray floor of the clouds. The air is thick and poisonous looking.
This is the first sign he has seen of Abaddon.
Soon, he assumes, soot will blanket the earth. Winter will come, and it will stay for a long time.
But he is not too concerned about this. He’s too excited. He can barely contain his anticipation. His happiness.
He is so close to winning.
He turns back to the computer. He types away. He’s accessed the innards of the drive, finding curious things. Vestiges of names and organizations. Instructions. Locations. Timelines. Names. Ea. Rima. Stella. Lists of coordinate locations. An organization called the Brotherhood of the Snake.
“Who are they?” he wonders out loud, not expecting Little Alice to say anything.
But she does. “They are people who want to stop Endgame. Who want to stop us.”
“That’s why they blew up the Harappan temple?”
“Yes. And no.”
“I don’t understand. Sun Key was there, wasn’t it?”
“It would have been if you’d reached the temple’s star chamber, but as you didn’t, it was not there. Sun Key is safe.”
“How do you know this, Little Alice?”
“I am not Little Alice. Not right now. I am kepler 22b.”
“kepler 22b?”
Her face snaps to him and her black eyebrows rise but otherwise she maintains her blank expression. “Yes. And no. I am mostly Little Alice, daughter of the Harappan Player. But I can also speak as kepler 22b at certain locations on Earth. We are riding along the ninetieth eastern meridian right now. This is one such location, Nabataean.”
Maccabee’s heart quickens. “Where are we going?”
“The girl knows all of the locations where we can conclude Endgame. The next closest is near Xi’an, China.”
“Sun Key will be there?”
“Yes. Sun Key is always moving, Player. It is not merely one thing, and not merely in one place.”
“It has a quantum component?”
“You will find out when you reach Emperor Zhao’s burial temple, Nabataean.”
“It’ll materialize when I get there, then?”
Little Alice/kepler 22b tilts her head. “In a manner of speaking. Patience, Nabataean. Endgame is the puzzle of life, and the reason for death. You will see when you reach the Shang temple.”
Pause.
Maccabee asks, “Will other Players be there?”
Sky Key frowns as if she’s trying to peer through a mist. “Uncertain. But you should be prepared.”
Maccabee actually laughs at this one. “I am a Player of Endgame,” he says by way of explanation.
“Good.”
“One more question.”
“Yes?”
“The girl—what’ll happen to her? Will you . . . hurt her?”
“No.”
Maccabee breathes a sigh of relief. “I’m glad for that at lea—”
But Little Alice/kepler 22b cuts him off. “Her death will be painless, Nabataean. In fact, she’ll barely be aware of it at all.”
Maccabee expertly hides his emotions—shock, anger, disgust, guilt—when he says, “Good.”
“You are moving off the meridian, Nabataean. Do not tarry when you land. Go to the temple. Find the star chamber within. Call to me and claim your prize. Win Endgame. For you and for your line.”
And then the plane bumps over a patch of rough air and Little Alice’s face goes slack and she blinks four times. Her head cocks to the side. Maccabee holds his steely expression, afraid that the Maker can still see him. He only relaxes when Alice says, “What is it, Uncle?”
kepler 22b is gone.
“Nothing, Alice.” He turns away in shame and reaches for a bag of chips. “Hungry?”
She shakes her head. “No. Thirsty.”
“Let me get you something.” He stands and walks past her. “What do you want?”
“Chai if they have it.”
She wraps her arms around a pillow. Her wrists are chubby with baby fat. He smiles weakly. “I’m sure they do. I’ll make it special for you.”
“Thank you, Uncle.”
He walks to the galley. He has never felt more empty or full of self-hate in his life.
I am sorry, Shari Chopra. I lied.
I cannot protect your daughter. Not from him.
Not at the end.
This is Endgame.
AN LIU, NORI KO
G310 National Road, 313 km west of Xi’an, China
Nori Ko drives.
An Liu lies in the rear seat, keeping out of sight.
He cradles his Beretta rifle and Nobuyuki’s katana. His fingertips grace Chiyoko’s hair.
It’s midday but the sky is dark and covered with ponderous clouds. Light rain lashes the windshield. The wipers dance. The tires hiss.
BLINKSHIVERBLINK.
“How will I find your murderers now, Chiyoko?” He whispers so that Nori Ko won’t hear.
Patience, Chiyoko answers. They will show themselves.
He stares at the watch on his wrist. The same one that used to belong to Chiyoko. The blip-blip marking Jago Tlaloc was there two days earlier. But as he and Nori Ko drove through the bleak desert of western C
hina, as the Olmec moved over northern Saskatchewan, he disappeared in a poof and hasn’t come back.
Dead? Crashed? Shot down? Did he finally remove the tracker? He better not be dead. I need to be the one to kill him.
He isn’t, love.
“He better not be.”
“What’s that?” Nori Ko asks, an unlit Golden Bat cigarette dangling from her lips. She knows by now that An hates the smoke, so she’s refrained from lighting up.
“Nothing,” he says.
“You said something.”
“I said that Maccabee better not”—blinkBLINKshiver—“better not get there before us.”
Nori Ko swipes at a phone mounted on the dashboard. A map pops up, tracking their location faithfully. She smiles, pleased that things still function on this side of the planet. Abaddon triggered a few serious earthquakes on the Kazakh border, but they didn’t buckle or rend any of the roads An and Nori Ko have taken. She can only imagine what’s happened in the United States—did the San Andreas finally trip? Did the Mid-Atlantic Ridge buckle and rage? Is the rain falling there poisonous and acidic? She doesn’t know and she doesn’t want to know.
Because that side of the world is screwed.
They’ve driven nonstop since Kolkata, taking turns in six-hour shifts. The car stinks of body odor and socks and empty food containers. She inhales sharply, enjoying the sweet smell of the unlit cigarette below her nostrils. “We’ll find out about the Nabataean soon enough. Less than four hours to go.”
“Good,” An says. He runs a finger over Chiyoko’s hair, and then over the cool metal of his rifle’s receiver.
Patience, love, Chiyoko says again.
They drive in silence. An listens to the rain and the wind. He listens to his heartbeat. He listens to Chiyoko hum a traditional Japanese song he can’t recall ever hearing before. When she is finished he whispers, “That was nice.”
Thank you.
Nori Ko says, “I have a question.”
“Yes?”
“If—when—we get the three keys and you see the Maker again, how are you planning on killing it?”
An doesn’t hesitate to answer. “You’ve noticed the metal box in the back?”
