by James Frey
He waits. He hides.
Jenny freezes near the portal. Shari does too.
Little Alice is not there yet. But—
Aisling Kopp is there, her unconscious face and bright-red hair peeking above the edge of a silken shroud.
Shari wants to know how this happened, but she can’t speak. She can’t think. She closes her eyes in the Dreaming and breathes breathes breathes.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing is what will save them now.
NORI KO
24.43161, 123.01314, near Yonaguni, Japan
The man’s voice above has been silent since she first heard it. If he’s coming to her—and he must be—then he’s keeping quiet. Nori Ko’s repositioned herself in the passageway that An and Sky Key disappeared through, prone and propped on her elbows, her rifle covering the door on the far side of the room. The air falls around her like a frigid blanket. She mashes her teeth to keep them from chattering. The room beyond is pitch-black. She lies motionless in a void, waiting, her only window on the visible world a night vision–equipped riflescope. She keeps her eye pressed to this. She sights along the edge of the table and up to the door. Since she is a few short meters from her target she can’t fit more than half the door in the field of vision. To keep sharp and ready she shifts the rifle every three seconds. Up and down and up and down and up and down.
The man—and whoever is with him, for he might not be alone—will round the final corner and appear and she will wait for the right moment and she will cut them down.
The doorway remains black and empty for four minutes.
Five.
Six.
Seven.
Eight.
This is how long it took her and An and Sky Key to get here from the room above.
Somewhere below, An is closer to meeting the Maker.
And Chiyoko too—or what is left of her. Around his neck, in his mind.
In his dark heart.
Nine minutes.
Up and down and up and down and up and down.
Up and down.
HILAL IBN ISA AL-SALT, NORI KO
24.43161, 123.01314, near Yonaguni, Japan
Hilal keeps his rifle up one-handed, the mysterious weapon ready in the other hand. His night-vision goggles are flipped over his face. He moves methodically through the dark and the cold.
After seven minutes of steady, twisting descent, Hilal stops.
The passageway ends less than a meter away. Hilal makes out the long wall of a room. If he hadn’t been moving so slowly he would have poured into it. Who knows what might be waiting for him on the far side.
He moves his rifle aside and inspects the floor, looking for trip wires. Nothing. He checks the edges of the doorway for sensors. Nothing.
He stands there for several seconds, thinking about what to do.
About what he must do.
Faith, he says to himself.
He kneels and readies the rifle. He will roll forward and to the right, hoping to find something to hide behind.
He counts.
One.
Two.
Three.
The tip of Nori Ko’s nose feels like an icicle.
She moves the rifle up and down and up and down.
Up.
Down.
Up.
A figure rolls from the doorway. She presses and holds the trigger, pushing the rifle against the recoil and adjusting to hit the target on the floor. Modified for full auto, the rifle sprays bullets into the room, muzzle flash strobe-lighting the contours of her head and shoulders and the stone walls. The figure disappears behind the end of the table. She’s not sure if she scored a hit. She releases the trigger. The last few shell casings tinkle onto the floor. Her ears ring. She parks her rifle, aiming for the end of the table, painfully aware that she cannot simultaneously sight the door.
If there is more than one of them, she is done for.
She slides the gun back to the base of the door, then to the top of it, then to the table. She draws this little triangle for five full seconds, which feels like five minutes. She hears a child’s wail from somewhere deep in the ancient building. She draws the triangle again. Again. Again.
Maybe she’s gotten lucky. Maybe there’s only one.
Movement. The figure that tumbled into the room sticks a rifle around the table’s corner. They fire simultaneously. The shots being fired at her miss, but her shots hit, and a man’s voice calls out in pain and his rifle drops to the floor with a clank.
She shoots this and it slides out of reach.
Then she sights the top of the door, the bottom, the table. The triangle again.
The table.
The bottom of the door.
The top.
Again.
Then she hears a sound like an arc of electricity and sees a blinding yellow light and she rolls defensively to the side, wedging between the floor and the wall. The flash zips past her in a millisecond and catches her ARX 160 right down the middle, cutting the scope and both receivers clean in half. This energy projectile burns the flesh on the back of her trigger hand, and although her eyes are shut it’s so bright that all she sees is orange and red.
But the flash is gone as fast as it arrived, and the sound too. There’s the smell of burned flesh and of what she swears is molten metal.
But she can’t be sure because now, with the light lingering in her eyes and her night-vision scope ruined, she’s completely blind.
She hops to her feet, draws a long tactical knife, steps gingerly into the room. She swings the knife here and there, here and there.
“Come on!” she blurts, defying the darkness. “Come on!”
Hilal twiddles the fingers of his right hand. It was rattled badly when the 416 was shot from his grip and it tingles like when a cricket batsman gets a curving pitch near the hands.
But this sensation is nothing next to what is happening in his left hand.
As soon as his rifle was hit the lump of metal came to life, as if it knew he was in imminent danger and its services were needed.
His arm went as straight as a board, locking at the elbow, as a long spike grew from the pinkie side of the piece of metal, extending for a little over a meter. As soon as this happened his hand felt as if it was joined with the metal, and his thumb found the socket, and he pressed it. His arm lit up with a jolt of energy as a bright disc flew from the tip of the spike, careening across the room in a flash and hitting his adversary.
But this shot did not kill her.
Now he takes more careful aim. He peers at this woman for a brief moment. If she had night vision before she does not now, as she stands before him swiping randomly at the air. She is undoubtedly the Mu that Masaka told him about, as she looks very much like an older version of Chiyoko Takeda. Hilal can only guess why this person is helping the Shang, and he is too pressed for time to consider it for very long.
He presses his thumb into the trigger again. The room flashes yellow once more and the weapon fires its energy disk and the air crackles with electricity and two thumps.
Hilal looks to the far side of the room. Two halves of a person lie on the floor, the contacted flesh and innards cauterized and popping-hissing.
A child wails from deeper down in this ancient monument.
“Sky Key!” he hisses.
He stoops and runs his fingers over his 416. The magazine was knocked free and the mag well is dented and misshapen. It is useless. He straightens. Draws HATE in his right hand and keeps this amazing Maker weapon ready in his left.
He steps past the cleaved body and through the doorway and slips silently into the darkness and the cold that lies below.
AN LIU, LITTLE ALICE CHOPRA
24.43161, 123.01314, near Yonaguni, Japan
Keep going, love. BlinkSHIVERSHIVERblinkblinkblinkshiverBLINKBLINK SHIVERSHIVERSHIVER BLINKSHIVERSHIVERShivershiverBLINK.
An blink An blink An drags an increa
singly conscious Sky SHIVER Sky Key down blink down SHIVER down.
The air is cold shiver cold blinkblink cold blink it’s freezing. A faint glow grows below. His vest feels like it weighs shivershiver weighs 200 kilos not blink not BLINK not 20.
Walk, love. Next foot, next foot, next foot. Move. Move!
She encourages him, speaks to him without any blink any hitches. No tics in her shiver in her voice.
She is pure. In his mind. In his heart.
The pure part of him.
SHIVERSHIVERSHIVERblinkblink. SHIVERblinkshiver.
He’s so anxious blink so shaken shiver so blinkblink so ticking he can’t blinkblinkblink can’t talk to her SHIVERSHIVER either out loud or blinkblink or in his mind.
His mind.
His heart.
His mind.
His black heart.
Chiyoko.
Chiyoko.
BLINKSHIVERBLINK.
He tightens his grip on the girl’s collar, catching a clump of blinkshiver a clump of hair. The follicles blinkblink snap-snap-snap out of her skin. She yelps and wails and starts speaking in Hindi or Bengali, whatever it is he can’t blinkshiverSHIVERblink he can’t understand a word. She kicks and swings her arms and An gives her a hard shake but this only blinkshiverSHIVERblink it only makes her more upset.
She wails again.
Gunfire, and lots of it, echoes from above and beats blink beats shiver beats on his ears.
A brief silence then another burst, followed by a loud zzzuuppp! like a shot of electricity.
Then silence.
Sky Key cries again.
SHIVERSHIVERSHIVERBLINKBLINKSHIVER.
Keep moving, love. Don’t fail now.
The child writhes and spits. Nori Ko says something above. Another zzzzuuup! and then silence.
Don’t hurt the girl.
He can’t blinkblink can’t help himself. He shoves his rifle around to his back and yanks up Sky Key and shivershiver wraps both arms around her. Her back presses into his chest. He claps a hand over her mouth. She bites the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger and yells out once again.
“Ack!” he blurts. He works his fingers under her blinkblink under her chin and claps her mouth shut and holds it this way. He stops walking. BLINKSHIVERBLINK.
He works his other hand over blinkblinkSHIVERSHIVER over the girl’s nose, pinching it shut.
She needs to live, An! Don’t!
Sky Key kicks her short legs into An’s gut and pelvis. She gets him in the groin and he bends over to help relieve the pain, crooking her body in his. She tries to move her head side to side but she isn’t strong enough. She keeps kicking, kicking.
Don’t.
SHIVERSHIVERSHIVERSHIVER.
Her kicks die down. Her head stops straining. He releases her nose. Holds his hand under it.
The warmth of her breath coats the top of his hand.
She lives. She is unconscious again.
BLINKBLINKBLINK.
Good, love. Now. Go!
He cradles the girl. His vest is so heavy, and so ready, and the release of death is so near.
He is so happy.
Walk.
Next foot SHIVER next foot blink next foot. Down down down.
The blue glow gets brighter.
BLINKSHIVERBLINK.
Closer.
Brighter.
Colder.
BLINKSHIVERBLINK.
Closer.
Brighter.
Colder.
He takes one more step and stops.
The star chamber. The tics are gone. The girl shudders as if disturbed by a bad dream.
We are here, love.
SHARI CHOPRA, JENNY ULAPALA
Shari sees Little Alice’s shaking body in the Shang’s hands. Shari can’t think she can’t yell she can’t call out she can’t reach she can’t act she can’t feel she has to repress it all she is powerless she is powerless she is powerless and she has to embrace the powerlessness.
Jenny stands next to her, they both see, they both let what they see pass through them, as if each were an unthinking camera, nothing more than a lens to an observer’s eye.
They both see the Shang step forward and look around and stop.
They both hear him say, “I am here, kepler 22b. I have the keys. I claim my prize as winner of Endgame. Show yourself.”
AN LIU, KEPLER 22B, LITTLE ALICE CHOPRA, JENNY ULAPALA, SHARI CHOPRA
Star chamber, 24.43161, 123.01314, near Yonaguni, Japan
The Maker moves and the air shimmies and wrinkles and he appears, as if stepping from a rend in space itself.
Welcome, An Liu, Shang Player of the 377th line of humanity.
An’s right hand touches the pad on his left wrist. Both are obscured from the Maker by the drape of Sky Key’s clothing.
An sneers at the kepler. He would enjoy seeing him suffer, but he senses that any hesitation will make it more likely that he will not succeed in killing him.
I can almost touch you, love. Come to me, Chiyoko says.
I am, he thinks.
He smiles at the Maker. “Thank you, kepler 22b.” His finger finds the detonator button. The vest feels light, airy, already like it is igniting moving in and out at the same time, taking him with it and everything around him, warming his flesh and spirit.
I am coming.
He says, “But my name is not An Liu. My name is Death.”
He presses the button.
And nothing happens.
He presses it again.
Nothing.
He drops the girl. She lands awkwardly at his feet and bounces. She groans. Her mouth moves, eyes flutter.
She is in pain.
Shari closes her eyes in the Dreaming. She can’t look. She will keep the connection to this place by imagining Little Alice, as she was in the yard in Gangtok, chasing Tarki through the brush, as she passed through the kitchen while Shari cooked, as she rode on Jamal’s broad shoulders, as she sat in Jovinderpihainu’s lap and smiled at his wrinkled face. She imagines these things without putting words to them. By filling her spirit these images help keep her rooted in the nothingness of the Dreaming. It is the practice of her meditation turned on its head and writ out as large as it can be: find timelessness solely by being in the present, hold nothingness solely by accepting everything.
Little Alice is already with her.
She always has been.
Thank you for not harming the second key, An Liu.
An desperately jams his finger onto the wrist pad. He presses the detonator, presses, presses. Nothing. He pulls back his sleeve and sees that the red arming light is extinguished.
He looks to the kepler’s pale face. An is slack-jawed, eyes widened.
Oh, the bomb would kill me and stop what I am here to do. But the detonator will not work so long as I am alive and close to it. You simply cannot kill me, An Liu.
Move, love!
An drops and rolls over the girl, coming up a meter closer to the Maker, the rifle that was slung behind his back in his hands. He fires. The bullets sail into the alien and hit him and bend around his clothing and his neck and his face. The slugs bury themselves in the stone beyond the Maker, producing a cloud of blue dust as a drifting backdrop.
Although the bullets do nothing, An keeps firing. His teeth grind. Tears stream from the corners of his eyes.
The magazine is empty. The gun bolt click-click-click-click-clicks. An releases the magazine and flips it and shoves it back in and he is about to resume shooting when the Maker raises his arm and points his fist at An. A pulse of invisible energy, like a gust of concentrated wind, lifts An from his feet into the air, throwing him against the doorway he and Sky Key entered through. He would sail through it except that now it’s shut by an invisible barrier.
I said nothing will work, Shang.
An’s entire body aches. He jumps to his feet and draws Nobuyuki’s sword and rushes to the Maker. He leaps over the girl, who was unaffected by
the Maker’s blast, and arrives in front of the alien in less than three seconds, the sword driving at his long neck.
It slams into the Maker, who smiles.
Who laughs.
The sword’s sharpened edge does nothing either.
Enough.
kepler 22b takes An by the neck and lifts him off his feet and holds him at arm’s length. An kicks, swings the sword helplessly. The alien’s hand is so cold it burns An’s skin, which bunches below his jawline, turning blue and white. An tries to curse the alien but he can’t make a sound. His lips turn purple. His eyes redden and bulge from their sockets. He can’t breathe.
You don’t need to kill him, love. Come to me anyway. Die and come to me anyway.
No! An thinks. Death!
I hear your thoughts, you know. I hear the thoughts of everyone in this room. You, the girl, the dead Mu who lives in your twisted mind. I hear the thoughts of the Aksumite, who will arrive at the doorway in a few seconds.
Death!
No, Shang. Not for you. I was going to kill you when I used your body to finish Endgame, but now I see that you don’t deserve death. Life, Shang! That is what you despise and that is what you shall have. That is what you deserve. But . . . time is precious, so . . .
He lifts the rail-thin Player another foot. He holds out his free hand and opens it and one of the Shang’s pockets vibrates and jostles and Earth Key strains at the cloth and shoots out, settling in the Maker’s hand. Then he hurtles the Shang to the right and into one of the star-point recesses. An Liu bangs his head against the stone and crumples into it, alone and silent and completely unconscious.
We can talk about life later.
He glances at the La Tène.
I do not need your body to finish Endgame anyway, An Liu.
He drifts toward Sky Key, dropping Earth Key into the bowl in the middle of the room. It rattles and bounces and settles in the lowest part, waiting to be joined by the girl and the Player.
He reaches Sky Key and bends and picks her up. Her back goes as straight as a board as his frigid hands touch her and she screams.
