by James Frey
Surely there’s no harm in that.
They do battle. An Liu builds up his defenses, and again and again 12goldengate12 hacks his way through. When they get bored of this back-and-forth, they move on to other targets, racing to see who can be the first to burrow into the UN’s mainframe or tamper with Interpol’s digital archives.
12goldengate12 prefers stealing information to abusing it; he calls himself a force for good, and An Liu overlooks the priggishness because, for the first time in memory, he’s having fun. An Liu is good, but he blink has to shiverblink admit that, every once in a while, 12goldengate12 is better.
Somehow, without realizing it, they slide from war into collaboration. Though they know nothing about each other, they understand each other—the hacker’s language is universal, and their minds share the same contours, leap to the same wild conclusions. There’s relief in finding another so like him, devoted to such a singular purpose. Sometimes, hours passing without his notice, hunched over his keyboard in the dark as, somewhere beyond the basement, the sun rises and sets and rises again, he feels joy. They swap chunks of poached code and share security keys to some of the world’s most secure systems. Together, they tackle Mossad, which neither has ever managed to crack on his own—working together, it’s a breeze.
12GOLDENGATE12: NOTHING CAN STAND IN OUR WAY! LET THE WORLD BOW BEFORE US
An Liu has never BLINKBLINKBLINK been an us before.
In the world beyond the basement, An’s father and his uncles wait for him to recover enough to resume his training. They blink-shiver grow impatient. Every week, An’s father descends the stairs and gives his son a blinkblinkblinkblinkblink test. Sometimes this means hand-to-hand combat. Sometimes it is a pain challenge, hot coals or a nail driven into flesh, to help An’s inner resilience return. The more disgusted An Liu’s father grows, the more tics An SHIVERblink gets, and the more tics An BLINKshiver gets, the more disgusted his father becomes. Soon there are no tests at all, simply blink-shiver-blinkBLINK punishments.
An Liu endures.
12GOLDENGATE12: WHERE YOU BEEN?
LAMORT377: BUSY
12GOLDENGATE12: DAD AGAIN, YEAH? PARENTS SUCK, MAN
An Liu has told the stranger that his father is a blinkBLINK disciplinarian, that sometimes it’s difficult to live up to expectations. Nothing more than that.
LAMORT377: WHAT DO YOU KNOW?
12GOLDENGATE12: I KNOW I DON’T LET ANYONE BOSS ME AROUND
12GOLDENGATE12: NOT ANYMORE
LAMORT377: WHAT’D YOU DO, KILL MOM AND DAD?
12GOLDENGATE12: HAHAHAHA
LAMORT377: ☜
12GOLDENGATE12: YOU DON’T KNOW HOW BAD IT CAN GET. I HAD TO GET OUT OF THERE, YOU KNOW? NOT SO GREAT ON THE STREET EITHER, THOUGH. NO COMPUTERS ON THE STREET. LUCKY I FOUND THIS PLACE
LAMORT377: WHAT PLACE?
12GOLDENGATE12: BUNCH OF KIDS LIKE US, SORT OF A COMMUNE THING, WITHOUT ANY OF THE HIPPY DIPPY SHIT. JUST HACKING, YOU KNOW? YOU SHOULD COME, YOU’D LOVE IT
LAMORT377: HOW DO YOU KNOW I’M A KID?
12GOLDENGATE12: COME ON, NO ONE OVER THE AGE OF 20 CAN DO WHAT WE DO
An Liu indulges the fantasy for the moment. Securing himself a plane ticket to California would be as easy as breathing. He could sneak out of the house while his father and his uncles slept, flee this place and this life. No more Playing, no more tests, no more blinkblink punishments.
But then what?
Maybe, if this were blink-shiver before.
If he were the SHIVERshiver boy he was.
Not now. Not when he’s like this, with no blinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblink control. He blink spasms; he blink hurts.
It’s safer here, in his BLINKshiver basement, in the dark where no one can shivershivershiver see him. His damage. Now that An has a friend, he can’t afford to lose him.
LAMORT377: A BUNCH OF GUYS ALL LIVING IN SOME SHACK TOGETHER? DOESN’T SOUND LIKE MY THING
12GOLDENGATE12: WHAT MAKES YOU THINK I’M A GUY?
That stops him cold. It’s never occurred to him that he could be talking to a girl. An Liu’s hands freeze over the keyboard. He hasn’t talked to a girl since . . .
He’s never talked to a girl.
Never talked to any female, except for his mother.
And it’s been so long.
12GOLDENGATE12: OH, DON’T FREAK OUT, DUDE. WHAT IS IT WITH NERDS, IT’S LIKE XX IS KRYPTONITE
LAMORT377: WHAT’S KRYPTONITE?
12GOLDENGATE12: LOL
12GOLDENGATE12: WE STILL FRIENDS?
LAMORT377: YOU KNOW IT
12GOLDENGATE12: PROVE IT.
LAMORT377: HOW?
12GOLDENGATE12: I TOLD YOU SOMETHING ABOUT ME. YOU TELL ME SOMETHING ABOUT YOU. SOMETHING TRUE
An Liu hesitates, but only for a moment. Then he takes a blinkSHIVERblink deep breath.
LAMORT377: I’M LOOKING FOR MY MOTHER
12GOLDENGATE12: HUH
12GOLDENGATE12: YOU FOUND HER YET?
He regrets it already. His father has blinkblinkblink taught him that weaknesses exist for exploitation. And now 12goldengate12 knows An’s greatest weakness of all. What was he blinkSHIVER thinking?
12GOLDENGATE12: MAYBE I CAN HELP
12GOLDENGATE12: TELL ME HER NAME
12GOLDENGATE12: COME ON, YOU CHICKEN?
12GOLDENGATE12: YOU SHOW ME YOURS, I’LL SHOW YOU MINE . . .
12GOLDENGATE12: HELLO?
12GOLDENGATE12: SHIT, COME ON
12GOLDENGATE12: DID I LOSE YOU? DON’T BE LIKE THAT
12GOLDENGATE12: PLEASE?
LAMORT377: DON’T ASK ME ABOUT THIS AGAIN
They don’t talk about it again. 12goldengate12 doesn’t risk asking any more questions about An and his life. Instead, she tells An about herself. About how much she hates her parents and what it was like to walk away from them. About how she was convinced she deserved better for herself, and finally ventured to find it.
An is blinkblinkblink stunned by all of it.
To BLINK want better.
To imagine deserving better.
These are things that have never occurred to him.
Life is what life is; that’s what he’s always SHIVERblink assumed. That’s what he’s been taught.
Sometimes life is hard.
Always life is pain.
Never is it happy, and how could happy be something one is blink-shiver entitled to ask for?
An Liu has blinkSHIVER asked for only one thing in his life, and the consequences will blinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblink be with him forever.
He certainly didn’t ask for 12goldengate12’s help, and has no intention of doing so.
But 12goldengate12 doesn’t wait to be asked.
12GOLDENGATE12: I HAVE SOMETHING TO CONFESS
12GOLDENGATE12: I FIGURED OUT WHO YOU ARE. YOUR NAME. AND I DID SOME DIGGING. I THINK I FOUND YOUR MOTHER FOR YOU. SENDING YOU THE FILES NOW
12GOLDENGATE12: I’M SORRY
The files are a collection of photographs, videos, and police files that, pieced together, tell a clear story:
An anonymous corpse on a morgue slab.
A coroner’s report of a bullet wound in the forehead.
A ballistics report tracing ownership of the gun back to a prominent and apparently well-connected Xi’an businessman who has his name blacked out in all files.
A pauper’s grave.
An Liu blink understands; he realizes now he should have understood long ago.
Of course his mother is dead.
Of course his father killed her.
Of course.
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The first time his father locks him in the box of rats, An is five years old and thinks he will die.
He wants to die.
Death would be better than this oppressive darkness, the scritch-scratch of tiny claws against his skin, the whisper-soft brush of fur, the screech and squeal of the rodents as they scamper up and down his body, biting and biting and biting, and An screams himself hoarse and prays to lose his mind and still the rats run and scratch and nuzzle and bite.
He lies very still.
In his hand, he clutches a scrap of his mother’s dress. He takes it with him everywhere, sleeps with it under his pillow at night, breathes it in when he wakes, though it no longer smells like her.
He holds tight to it now, holds tight to her, imagines her here with him in the dark, smoothing his hair, whispering in his ear, promising him that she will save him, she will love him, she will come back for him.
He just needs to be patient.
He just needs to hold on.
When he comes back to himself, he knows what he has to do.
First, he finds a needle. He drains a pen of its red ink. Then slowly, painstakingly, working around his blink-shiver tics, he tattoos a bloodred tear beneath his left eye. So he will always remember this day, always remember what has been taken from him.
Then he kills the messenger.
It’s unacceptable that there be someone out there who knows who he is and what he has lost. That cannot blinkSHIVER stand. It was his mistake, exposing shiver-shiver-blink his weakness. But 12goldengate12 is the one who will bear the consequences.
An knows enough about her to find her. A commune of hackers at the heart of San Francisco—that level of computing puts out a signal as bright as the sun. He doesn’t need to know her name to destroy her.
He just needs to know her geographical coordinates the next time she’s online.
12GOLDENGATE12: HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SAY SORRY.
12GOLDENGATE12: I THOUGHT I WAS HELPING
LAMORT377: IT’S OKAY
12GOLDENGATE12: THERE YOU ARE! THOUGHT I LOST YOU. SRSLY, DUDE, DIDN’T MEAN TO OVERSTEP
LAMORT377: YOU’LL MAKE IT UP TO ME
12GOLDENGATE12: HOW?
An needs only to blink hack into the nearest shiver drone and blinkblinkblinkblink command it to drop its blink-shiver-blink payload.
It’s that easy.
Shiver.
12goldengate12 was a friend, and so An Liu gifted her with a merciful death.
The others will not be so lucky.
His father has taught him pain; his uncles have taught him patience. He has watched them BLINK play their parts, pretend respect, obey orders, bide their time.
Now An Liu does the same.
He takes his time; he wants to do this right.
There are shiver-blink things he needs to know. Things about the Shang, about Endgame, about being the Player that he has SHIVER never bothered to ask. The Shang elders believe in the ancient ways—but they live in the modern world. They cannot hide from An Liu’s cyber-reach.
He learns of the council, how it blinkblink leaves Player training in the hands of family. How the father of a Player has SHIVER-blink ultimate control.
It has always been the way.
His 11th birthday passes without note. An feels as if a century has passed since the last one. That boy from a year ago was whole; that boy thought he could take on his father in a fair fight.
The boy An has become knows better.
He won’t make the same mistake again.
He won’t make any mistakes again. He proceeds carefully. He studies the lives of Players past. No Player has ever been stripped of his title—no matter his crime.
Once the oracle bones speak, fate cannot be changed.
An Liu will be the Shang Player.
No matter what he SHIVERblinkSHIVER does.
He learns that pain is, indeed, the Shang way, but not his father’s kind of pain. This is blink new. The elders would, perhaps, not approve. But neither will they shiver-blink interfere.
That makes them guilty, An Liu thinks. As guilty as anyone.
But he will deal with that later. He will deal with all of them. He has nothing but time.
Time and fury.
Upstairs, his father and his uncles sleep peacefully through one night after another, dreaming, perhaps, of new torments to impose on their Player, the boy they’ve turned into a monster. They think he still needs to be trained; they don’t know that he’s blinkblink learned his final lesson.
He’s learned that there is no hope. No escape. No return to a happier past, no flight into a better future.
There is only blinkSHIVER destruction and pain.
Only SHIVERSHIVERSHIVERblink the thing he’s become.
The thing they made him.
La Mort 377.
Walking death. He will bring it to his father and his uncles—and when the time comes, he will bring it to his entire line. His entire species. Someday, finally, an end to misery and the delusions of life.
An end to everything.
There are many ways to kill. An considers a bullet, since this is what took his mother away. But bullets are too fast, too merciful.
An wants it to blinkblinkblink hurt.
He considers his bare hands, but this is too risky. To win a fight to the death, you must have the will to live.
Does he have that? Truly?
An no longer knows.
blink
He has the urge to kill. This is good enough.
He considers sparing his uncles.
He remembers whispers overheard, snatches of conversation, evidence, perhaps, that they SHIVER are not bad men. That blinkblink they think they have no choice. His father is a killer; he knows that now. His uncles shiverBLINK have always known.
Maybe they were afraid for their lives.
So they sacrificed his.
This, perhaps, An Liu could have forgiven.
His mother’s sacrifice? He cannot.
He comes to a decision. He makes a plan. He waits one week, then another, until he is blink-shiver sure. Until he is ready.
At night, he turns his face to the sky. “I-i-i-i-i-s thiiiis r-r-r-ight?” he asks his mother, because he does this for her. “I-i-i-i-is thiiiis what y-y-y-you w-w-want?” BLINK
His mother never answers, because, of course, they’ve taken her away from him.
In the end, that’s answer enough.
An slips into the kitchen and crumbles a bottle of sleeping pills into a bottle of rice whiskey. He knows his father and uncles drink heartily from it every night.
A day passes. He waits. As dinner comes, he listens at the door, hears their merriment, the clink of glasses, the yawns and the thumps as they stumble off dazedly to bed. Then An creeps up his stairs and enters the first bedroom he comes to, where his youngest uncle, the one who used to be his favorite, snores loudly. An douses him with the whiskey—and lights a match.
He slips out of the room as the fire catches, is already halfway to the ne
xt bedroom before his uncle begins to scream.
One by one, he lights his uncles on fire, until the house fills with agonized cries and the smell of burning flesh.
His father slumbers on.
An pours the whiskey.
Whispers a silent prayer to his mother.
Lights the match.
This time, he doesn’t leave the room, not yet. This time, he watches the flesh singe and burn. He waits for the pain to cut through the drugs and rouse his father from sleep; he listens, joy in his heart, to his father’s screams. Their eyes meet, and in those fathomless black pools, An Liu sees pure terror, and An smiles.
His heart pings with something familiar, something he hasn’t felt for a very long time. This, he finally understands, is how it feels to be happy.
“Y-y-y-you—” An stops. Blinks. The moment is too much for his clumsy tongue.
So he says what he needs to say in the silence of his mind.
You have reaped what you have sown.
He smiles, heart bursting with joy, watching his father burn and burn, until the flames leap from bed to floor to walls, and An Liu knows that if he lingers any longer, the fire will consume him along with his family.
He escapes the inferno, leaves his father and his uncles to their flaming death, watches the house burn to the ground, then slips away into the night.
Not because he craves any more time in this blinkSHIVER hell called life.
But because he blink has blink more to blink do.
He will go to the blinkBLINK Shang elders and tell them of this SHIVERblink tragedy. Perhaps they will suspect the truth.
But they will do nothing about it.
An Liu is blinkSHIVER fated to be their Player. With his father BLINKBLINKBLINK dead, he is in control. His blinkblink training is SHIVER complete. He is blinkblink soon to ascend. They will SHIVERblink leave him alone, as they have before.
This is the Shang way. All they care is that he Play, and he will not blink let them down.
He’s been given a sacred duty, and he shiverBLINK will stay alive until he can complete it.
Until blinkblinkblink Endgame comes, and he can offer his gift to the Shang and all the bloodlines of earth.
