by James Frey
“Yes,” Hilal says, “but I think it better to discuss in person, in case this channel is compromised. Shari is transmitting coordinates now. I will meet you at this rendezvous ASAP. If you arrive first, please encamp at the airport. Once we are together we will move to the next monument in force.”
“Roger that,” Sarah says. “We’ll see you there.”
Hilal says, “Safe travels, Players. I will see you soon. I want to hear how you killed the Maker.”
“I wanna hear that too,” Jordan chimes. “But until you can tell me face-to-face, get out there and fucking kick ass, Players. For Marrs, for McCloskey, for the Harappan, for everyone. For Stella. For Aisling. Just fucking kick ass. This is Charlie Echo One, out.”
AN LIU, NORI KO, LITTLE ALICE CHOPRA
Private plane holding area, Xianyang International Airport, Xi’an, China
An sits at the controls of his modified Y-12E, a laptop on his thighs, his fingers stabbing the keys. The turboprop is dormant but otherwise fueled, its course charted, its occupants ready for take off. It originally flew maritime surveillance for China Flying Dragon Aviation out of Harbin in Heilongjiang, but it has belonged to the Shang line for as long as An remembers. Of all the planes and helicopters he’s flown, real or in simulation, An’s logged more hours on his precious and reliable Y-12E than any other.
Over 992 hours, to be exact.
All he needs is a few more hours.
Except that he and Nori Ko and Sky Key can’t take off. They can’t fly to Yonaguni and to the Mu monument—which is also where the Olmec appears to be headed. When they left the Shang pyramid An checked Chiyoko’s tracking watch, and there, to his delight and surprise, was the blip-blip marking Jago Tlaloc. He hadn’t died. Not yet. The fool hadn’t figured out that he’d been tagged way back at the Calling. Now he is over halfway across the Pacific, on a heading that will soon cross the Japanese island of Yonaguni. The place where, if they could only get airborne, the Olmec will find nothing but death.
But An and Nori Ko and Sky Key can’t fly to Yonaguni because the military clearance codes An’s relied on for so many years aren’t working. Air traffic over China and Taiwan, which they’ll have to fly over to reach Yonaguni, has been severely restricted since Abaddon.
BLINKSHIVERBLINKBLINKSHIVER.
He raps his knuckles on his temple three times. Pain shoots down the side of his head and through his jaw. The pain is good. The tics subside. He’s been trying to hack through a back door of Beijing’s aviation administration so they can cross China with no questions asked.
“How’s it going?” Nori Ko asks from the cabin. She’s working a computer too while monitoring Sky Key.
An yells, “This last encryption is challenging.” SHIVER. “How about you?”
“I spoke with my brother Tsuro in Yonaguni,” she says, her voice getting closer. She appears behind him and leans into the cockpit. “I’m glad the Mu planted him there so long ago. He’s going to help us out.”
“I’m glad he’s there too,” An says.
“Tsuro filed the request for emergency medical supplies with the trans-Asian relief agency. I sent you the doc number with our mocked-up manifest. That’s the one you should use with Beijing. As far as anyone knows we’re flush with gauze, iodine, and IV bags, not sniper rifles, explosives, and a nuclear suicide vest.”
“Okay”—blink—“I”—shiver—“I”—SHIVER—“I got it. Good work.”
“Thanks. I also told Tsuro that if any of the others get there before us then he needs to stall them.”
“With any”—blinkBLINK—“with any”—SHIVERshiver—“with any luck that won’t happen.”
“Yeah. With any luck,” Nori Ko says.
An shudders visibly. He holds his fingers out over the laptop, obviously trying to keep them from shaking.
“Hey, you okay?” Nori Ko asks.
“Y-”—blink—“Y-”—BLINK—“Yes.”
He lowers his fingers to the keyboard and punches away.
“All right.” Nori Ko points at the navigation computer. “What’s the Olmec’s ETA?”
“Less than six hours,” An says. Nori Ko watches as windows on his computer screen open and close, open and close.
“Get us airborne, An.”
“I’m trying.”
Nori Ko turns back to the cabin.
Get us in the sky, love.
“I’m trying, Chiyoko.”
Nori Ko freezes. “What?”
“I said, I’m trying.”
SARAH ALOPAY, JAGO TLALOC, SIMON ALOPAY
Bombardier Global 8000, 590 miles northeast of Yonaguni, Japan
Sarah Alopay pinches her nose and blows out her ears. They squeak and pop but she doesn’t care. They’re too close for her to care.
She and Simon sit at a shiny walnut table. A bowl that’s bolted to the edge of the table near the window holds the unremarkable-looking Maker weapon and a pack of Trident gum. Jago flies the plane at a level and smooth 42,000 feet. They picked up the two Cahokian trainers, Hibbert and Rodney Q, for added muscle. Both are sacked out in the plane’s bedroom, sleeping in all of their gear like good soldiers always do. Sarah’s injured arm is out of its sling, her elbow extended on the table. She grips a bright tennis ball, releases, grips, releases. Her arm’s getting better. It’s far from healed, but it can handle some light duty. She plans on keeping it out of the sling for this next mission.
With any luck, their last mission.
Simon hits redial on his satellite phone’s keypad. The phone works—he’s placed random test calls to several numbers in the eastern hemisphere—but it hasn’t been able to reach the Alopay compound in Nebraska. He’s tried 74 times on this long flight, and 74 times he has received the automated message of a nice-sounding lady saying, “Inmarsat cannot place the call as dialed. We apologize for any inconvenience. Please try again.”
But then, as Jago announces they’re beginning the descent into Yonaguni, Simon’s face lights up. Sarah releases the tennis ball. It makes a little spiral on the tabletop before rolling into her lap. She catches it with her thighs. “What?” she asks.
Simon hits the speakerphone button and holds up the receiver.
Ring.
Silence.
Ring.
Silence.
Ri—
“Hello?”
“Mom?” Sarah says. “Olowa?” her father says at the same instant.
“Sarah! Oh my goodness, Sarah! Is that really you?”
“It’s me, Mom!” Her eyes meet Simon’s. “It’s us!”
For a few minutes they fawn over each other, talking love and loss and how Sarah and Simon found each other and what’s been happening in Nebraska. Olowa and the others can’t go aboveground on account of the air quality, but the bunker is warm and the power works fine. Olowa’s rationing their supplies, and while she has more people to care for than she expected (“Eleven of us!”), they’re good for at least five weeks. Olowa explains that she had to repair a relay to the phone’s antenna and that was why they hadn’t been able to get through.
“But we’re fine, sweetie. How’re—goodness, how’re you?”
“She’s good, Ole. She has a new boyfriend,” Simon jokes.
“Dad!”
“And guess what. He’s a Player!”
“Dad!”
“All right, all right,” her father says.
“Who is he, Sarah?” her mother asks.
“It’s not important.”
“Sure it is.”
Sarah shrugs. “His name’s Jago. He’s the Olmec.”
“And he has diamond studs set in his top incisors,” Simon adds.
“What?” Olowa asks.
“It’s true,” Simon says. “He’s good for her, though. They’ve saved each other multiple times, apparently.”
Her mother says, “Tell me as much as you can. How are you doing?”
Sarah sighs. “I’ve been better, Mom. I miss school and soccer and worrying about c
ollege. I miss being normal—or pretending to be normal. Jago and I have talked about it a lot. As he’s pointed out, those days are gone. Actually, he maintains they were never really here. That I was always not normal. I still miss them, though.”
“I miss all that too.”
“But I’m alive. I guess, all things considered, I’m good. I can’t tell you how happy I am Dad’s here.”
Simon takes Sarah’s hand. Jago walks out of the cockpit to use the bathroom before landing, ignorant that they’ve been talking about him. Simon motions for Jago to wake up the Cahokian men. Jago nods and disappears to the rear of the plane.
When he passes them again a minute later, Simon joins him to help with landing the plane, and also so Sarah and Olowa can be alone. Sarah gives her mom the quick version of all that’s happened, leaving out certain things intentionally in case the kepler’s listening. She doesn’t mention the Maker weapon, or anything about their plans to stop the aliens, but she does talk generally about how hard the road’s been, and about finding Earth Key and losing it, and seeing Sky Key, and lastly about killing. “It’s been so easy, Mom. Too easy. That’s basically why I lost it after Stonehenge,” she says, not mentioning Christopher.
She can’t bring herself to say his name.
“Oh, Sarah,” Olowa says. But her voice sounds strange. On their own the words mean, I’m so sorry, but the way Olowa says them it sounds more like, You’re strong. So be strong, Sarah.
And then it spills out of her like a flood. She tells everything that happened right after leaving Omaha. She tells about how Christopher followed her and about how she fell in love with Jago as if they’d known each other for months or even years. She talks about feeling out of touch with herself, about how at her worst moments she’s had no idea who she is. She tells her mother about how when she drove out of London she nearly had a nervous breakdown in the car, screaming and crying at the top of her lungs without being aware of it. She talks about how easy it’s been to move and Play and kill, and to hurt people, including herself. About how easy it’s been to deliver and receive pain, and bear it, except for one kind of pain that’s been impossible to carry. And she still can’t say what it is. She can’t say the words to her mother—the woman who gave birth to her and taught her so much about life and love, and yes, also about blood and how to make it flow.
She can’t say, I killed Christopher.
What she does say is, “Endgame’s fucked me up, Mom. Really badly. I probably should have killed that little girl. Sky Key. But I couldn’t. I . . . I couldn’t. Not after . . .”
She can’t say it.
“Stop, sweetie. Nothing could have prevented Abaddon.”
“How do you know?” Sarah takes the tennis ball in her fingers. Squeezes. Releases. Squeezes. The ball caves and breaks and pops. The connection over the phone crackles. “Mom? You there?”
“I’m here.”
“How do you know?” Sarah asks again, pleading.
“Listen—Abaddon’s here, so there’s no point in second-guessing. Nothing could have prevented it. It was too big. The Maker has too much power.”
“But what if he doesn’t have that much power? What if he’s as desperate as we are? What if I hadn’t gotten Earth Key? What if I hadn’t . . .”
She can’t.
“You don’t have to say it, sweetie.”
“Say what?”
“I know Christopher’s dead. As soon as you said his name, I knew.”
“Mom, I . . . I . . .”
“I know you killed him.”
Silence.
“How?”
“I’m your mother, Sarah. No one knows you better than I do, whether you like it or not.”
“Ten minutes to touchdown,” Jago announces over the comm.
Sarah hears Hibbert say something to Rodney Q from the bedroom.
“You have to go,” Olowa says.
“Yeah. But I need to tell you what happened, right now. I might not get another chance.”
“I already know, sweetie.”
“Mom, I’m a monster!” Sarah whispers, her lips practically pressed to the receiver.
“You’re not, Sarah! Oh, honey . . . Don’t you see what Christopher really did?”
“He didn’t do anything, Mom. That’s what’s so messed up. He saw what I’d become and he wanted to die. He said he loved me, and sure, he meant it, but in the end that didn’t count for shit. I still pulled the trigger. Christopher fought to stay with me after the Calling, even after he’d met Jago and seen that we were, I don’t know—together. He fought hard to be at my side and help me. But in the end he couldn’t, Mom. And I killed him for it.” Sarah’s ashamed over the bitterness of her words, but they ring true. Until this moment she never realized how angry she was at Christopher for following her, for loving her, for standing there and staring at her and taking it as she killed him.
For judging her.
“You’re wrong, sweetie. Christopher did do something.”
“What?”
“He saved your life, Sarah. And now you have to keep on living. For him.”
The plane bumps through some clouds.
Olowa continues, “That’s what I’m going to tell his parents, too. That he died so that you could live. That’s not a lie. I’m going to tell them that you were with him when he died, and that you tried to save him but couldn’t. Christopher is a hero, Sarah. You are too. If you and your friends succeed, then you’ll all be heroes. Endgame could have gone a million different ways, but in this Endgame? Christopher, for all his faults, may be the biggest hero of all.”
Several moments of silence. Sarah stares out the window at heavy clouds. The water below is dark. She does not see any land. “Jesus, Mom.”
“Jesus has nothing to do with any of this.”
“No. I mean I think you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right, sweetie. I already told you: I’m your mother.”
Sarah chuckles.
“I know you don’t like killing, Sarah. You’re not supposed to. You’re human. But you’re good at it. Your friends are good at it. And before this ends, you’re going to have to do it again—maybe more than once. So don’t beat yourself up. Forgive yourself. Christopher saved your life. End of story. Now go out there and save what’s left of our lives, before it’s too late.”
The plane thumps as the landing gear folds out.
“I will, Mom. Thank you.”
“Thank me when you see me.”
“All right. I love you.”
“I love you too, sweetie. And I always will, no matter what.”
HILAL IBN ISA AL-SALT
Bombardier Global 8000, 488 miles south-southwest of Yonaguni, Japan
Hilal checks the navigation system. He’s got 51 minutes left. Sarah and Jago, based on their last check-in, should touch down in 10 minutes. He works the radio controls. Gets the right channel and clicks on. “This is Tango Lima One for Oscar Kilo Fifteen, over.”
Nothing.
“Tango Lima One for Oscar Kilo Fifteen, over.”
Static and then, “Tango Lima One, we read you, over.” It’s Jago.
“What is your ETA?”
“Nine minutes, seven seconds. Should have visual once we get under cloud cover.”
“Understood. I am right behind you. A little more than forty minutes out.”
“Roger, Tango Lima One. Any intel?” Jago asks.
“I spoke with the regional air director ten minutes ago. A man named Tsuro Masaka. I pretended to be an American and gave my name as Harold Dickey. He does not know we will be armed, so be prepared to subdue if you deem it appropriate. For explanation, tell him we are working on a joint US–Japanese top-secret mission in response to Abaddon.”
“Entiendo. Anything else?”
“Yonaguni is a small island. Masaka confirmed that no one has been coming or going for the last sixty-five hours. I have checked the manifests online and can confirm that this is accurate. Masaka made it sou
nd like the place is virtually deserted.”
“So no Shang bogey?”
“Affirmative. If Liu is coming here too, then we have beat him.”
“Excelente. Oscar Kilo Fifteen, out.”
SARAH ALOPAY, JAGO TLALOC, SIMON ALOPAY
Yonaguni Airport, Yonaguni, Japan
Jago cycles down the engines. The airport outside is not much more than a few buildings pushed against a single runway, the East China Sea lapping at its long northern fringe. There’s a small and empty hangar to the west and an Erector set–like radio tower to the east. A few single-engine Cessnas are mothballed nearby, their windows blocked off and dirty. The buildings are unassuming and tidy. In fact, there’s no sign of anyone until a small man swings open a glass door and walks toward them. He smiles broadly, his hand raised in greeting. An orange bag is slung over his shoulder, and he wears an army-green T-shirt with a line drawing of the most venerable and loved Jedi of all time. The caption reads in English, My Yoda Shirt, This Is.
Jago slides open the window. “Hey there.”
“Hello!” the man announces happily in English. “You are Mr. Dickey’s friends?”
“That’s right! Name’s Feo.”
“Wonderful, Feo! Welcome to Yonaguni!”
Jago claps the window shut. “That’s our guy.”
Simon says, “I’ll send Rodney Q and Hibbert out to clear.”
“Good idea,” Sarah says.
They move to the cabin. The Cahokian trainers pop up from their seats, a Colt pistol snapped to each of their hips, an M4 in each of their hands. Rodney Q has a black bandanna tied loosely around his neck and Hibbert chews a big wad of pink bubble gum.
Hibbert says, “What’s the word, Sarah?”
“Go out there, introduce yourself, and report back. Don’t tell him why we’re armed.”
Hibbert nods. “Gun’s the only reason he’ll need,” he says brusquely.
“If we’re clear then start unloading. We’ll move out as soon as Hilal gets here.”
“Got it.”
Jago throws the latch on the door and pushes it out. The stairs fold quietly to the ground. The outside temperature is warm, the air humid. The sun hides behind the clouds of ash that now cover the entire globe. Rodney Q—six foot four, 240 pounds—ducks through the opening and steps down. Hibbert, who’s much shorter and lighter, follows him.
