Existence

by James Frey

  Hilal had spent seven years preparing for that day. Studying and training, learning fully what it meant to be the Aksumite Player—he had endured great pain, and inflicted it on others. He knew that if Endgame came during his tenure, there would likely be pain beyond his wildest imaginings. There would be danger; there could be death.

  And yet he did not hesitate.

  “I swear,” he said, in the shadow of the cross, in the aura of the covenant. He felt no fear, only the ecstatic joy of giving himself up to a higher power. Giving himself to the ultimate. “I pledge myself to this fight. To Endgame.”

  Because he promised on that day, he will now return home to Ethiopia and to his master; he will complete his mission. Because Rabiah has made the same promise to her own people and her own fight, he must leave her behind to her fate, whatever it might be.

  And so he sneaks out of the prison as stealthily as he snuck in. No alarm is raised; no more harm comes to anyone.

  Hilal walks away from Tora, and simply keeps walking. He walks through the night, one kilometer after another, and though the city lights block out the stars, he can sense their watchful presence. He breathes in the night air, feels the earth beneath him, and tries to focus his mind on the future rather than the past. When dawn breaks, he takes the last of his American dollars and offers them to the driver of the first Jeep he comes across.

  The offer is accepted.

  Hilal takes the wheel and drives south. Day and night, he drives, crossing the Sudanese border by ferry to Wadi Halfa, charming his way through immigration with his fake passport and a gentle smile, pressing farther south, through Dongola and Al Dabbah and Khartoum, across Dinder National Park, the tires swallowing broken pavement, the hum of engine and roar of wind driving all thoughts from his mind, the landscape gradually resolving itself into the familiar contours of home, until, finally, nearly four days and nights later, he reaches the Church of the Covenant, where his master waits.

  “I was beginning to worry for you,” Eben tells him, cradling the Book of Ouazebas as if it is a living creature, precious and fragile. “Did you meet unexpected troubles?”

  “Life is made up of the unexpected,” Hilal says, repeating one of his master’s favorite sayings. “This is its greatest gift.”

  Eben smiles. “Indeed. You have done well for us, my Player. And the journey seems to have done well for you. You seem more settled than you have been. I sense your heart is no longer elsewhere.”

  “My heart is here,” Hilal agrees, feeling the truth of his master’s words, and his own. “My life is here.”

  Hilal rededicates himself to his ancient texts and his modern weapons, his scholarship and his training; in Cairo, the protests continue. As she expected, Rabiah’s people continue on in her absence, carrying out her plans. As he expected, they have no luck breaking her free, or perhaps they had as much luck as he did, and once again she refused rescue.

  Martial law is declared; soldiers patrol the streets; university students and businessmen and religious leaders and families mass in Tahrir Square, night after night, raising their signs and their voices to the sky. The international community raises its own voice in support of the protest and its leaders, and Rabiah’s name circles the globe, a symbol of oppression—and hope.

  Hilal watches it all on TV.

  Hilal watches a lot of things on TV now: news broadcasts from around the world, news of local political squabbles, of oppression and poverty and disease and war. These updates are irrelevant to Endgame, and to his ultimate goals, yet still he watches. He is attuned, suddenly, to a world beyond the world he has always known. He’s spent a lifetime focusing on the ancient past and the imagined future; now Hilal pays new attention to the present. He sees the effects of environmental degradation, the tsunamis and earthquakes and agricultural plagues. He sees children forced into sweatshop labor and children forced into battle. He sees villages burned, tribes exterminated; he sees dissent silenced, leaders of opposition parties hauled off to prison or gunned down in the streets. He sees the world ending, not in a single apocalyptic blow from above, but gradually, incrementally, in a thousand ways at once.

  He hears the voices crying in protest.

  He doesn’t allow himself to wish he could join them. He doesn’t let himself wonder what he could contribute to these fights, if he didn’t have one of his own. If anything, he is more committed than ever to Endgame, to his master, to the ancient truth. In that sense, nothing has changed.

  But in another sense, everything has.

  Hilal has never given much thought to his life after his Playing days are done. If anything, he has imagined he will follow in his master’s footsteps. Eben was a Player, once, and now he helps others do the same. He lives alone; he meditates; he prays; he holds himself separate from humanity; he loves all equally and none particularly. It is a noble life, and it is enough for him, as it has been enough for Aksumite Players through the ages.

  Hilal needs more.

  He will Play. He will give this life everything he has. He will fulfill his promise to his higher purpose—until he comes of age and his Playing time is past. Then he will be free to choose for himself again, and now he makes a new promise: that when the time comes, he will choose the mess, the chaos, of life. He will stop watching from the sidelines, and will instead choose a side, choose a people, perhaps even choose a person: he will love and fight; he will risk himself for what he believes is right. He will turn his gaze from the promised perfected future to the flawed present.

  He will always keep fighting for humanity—and someday, finally, he will join it.

  CAHOKIAN

  SARAH

  For as long as she lives, Sarah Alopay will never forget the sound of her brother’s screams.

  They are muffled by the steel walls that close him in, but she can still hear them. Sarah stands on the other side of a six-inch steel-reinforced door, her palms pressed against the cold metal, tears streaking down her face. Samuel Orozco, her brother’s pain trainer, sits rigidly in a folding chair beside her, eyes fixed on his stopwatch.

  Samuel does not approve of 14-year-old Sarah’s presence here, but she insisted, and her parents agreed, and so Samuel had no choice but to allow it.

  So much of Tate’s training is a mystery to her.

  She knows about Endgame, knows that her big brother is the Player, the fate of their Cahokian line resting on his shoulders. She knows that he goes off to mysterious places for days or weeks on end, returning with bruises and scars—and, no matter what, a tacky souvenir for his little sister. She knows Tate is strong and brave, and proud to serve his people, no matter what it takes.

  She knows he has no fear of pain.

  So Sarah fears for him.

  When he disappears on his training missions, she lies awake at night, praying that he will return safe and whole. So when she learned of this mission—a journey no farther than the reinforced shed in their Omaha backyard, a journey deep into the self, to a dark, tranquil meditative corner of the mind that pain cannot touch—she wanted to be there with him, as close as she could get.

  “It’s just a few hundred bee stings,” Tate said cheerfully, before Samuel locked him in with the angry hive. He tweaked her nose. “How bad can it be?”

  Sarah knows that Tate has been taught to withstand pain. She’s seen him carve a blade across his skin without flinching; she’s seen him walk across hot coals and press an iron brand to his own flesh, searing a Cahokian bird sign into his bicep. All of that without a whimper.

  So she is not expecting the screams.

  “It’s normal,” Samuel murmurs, finally acknowledging her presence. “To be expected.”

  Samuel is one of 10 trainers who serve her brother, turning him into the best Player he can be. Samuel is neither the strongest nor the strangest, but he is by far the most terrifying. His eyes never quite focus, and his face is unnaturally still. He’s a master of inner retreat, of ignoring pain, but Sarah suspects there’s a part of him in consta
nt agony. All that pain must go somewhere. Maybe that’s why he seems to so delight in inflicting pain on her brother.

  He looks at her like he wants to experiment on her, like he’s curious to see how much she can withstand, and this frightens her most of all.

  Which is why she can’t find the nerve to argue with him.

  Why she doesn’t say, No, stop, please.

  Something’s gone wrong.

  Let my brother out.

  Seconds pass. Minutes pass. Tate screams and screams. And when the buzzer finally sounds and the door swings open, when Samuel has gassed the bees into submission and Tate emerges, Sarah understands what she’s done.

  What she’s let happen by letting her fear rule her.

  The creature that stumbles out looks nothing like her brother. He is a swollen monster, every inch of exposed skin inflamed by angry red stings, his face unrecognizable, his screams choked off as he struggles to breathe.

  “Tate!” Sarah cries, and the creature that is her brother seems to hear her, turns his face toward her, peers through eyes swollen nearly shut—then drops to the ground, breath rasping, limbs shuddering and thrashing. Samuel has his phone out, is saying something about an error, an emergency, crucial speed and windows closing, but Sarah isn’t listening; she’s kneeling by her brother’s side; she’s weeping; she’s saying, “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry”; she’s saying, “Tate, please.” She’s shaking him, begging him, but Tate doesn’t move, doesn’t wake.

  He only lies there, swollen and limp.

  Still.

  Tate isn’t dead.

  This is what Sarah reminds herself, in all those excruciating hours in hospital waiting rooms that follow. She sits on uncomfortable orange chairs, flanked by her parents, waiting to hear how badly Tate is hurt, whether he can be fixed, whether he can be made whole again, waiting through the epi push and the morphine haze and the induced coma and the raging infection and the first surgery and the second, all the time reminding herself, whatever happens next: Tate isn’t dead.

  As she waits, Sarah clutches Babar Jr., the gray stuffed elephant her brother once brought her back from Kenya. It was four years ago, one of his first solo missions as the Player, and she had begged him not to leave. He was 14, then, and had been training for most of his life. He was big and strong and brave, but she didn’t want him to go—not across the seas all by himself, not to a strange land where terrible things might happen, not anywhere. Please stay, she told him, crying even though she was 10 years old, too big to cry. She meant, Please live. But Tate had just tweaked her nose and promised to bring her back an elephant. She’d half thought he meant a real one.

  He was, after all, her big brother; he was capable of miracles.

  Now she’s 14 herself, but she’s not strong or brave. She is too big for crying and too big for stuffed animals. Still, she hunches forward in the waiting room seats and lets her tears spatter on Babar Jr.’s matted fur.

  She thinks about Tate, how he always snatches the last slice of pizza and the last piece of cake, because, he likes to say, “It’s the least you can do for the guy who’s going to save the world.”

  How her friends’ favorite new game is to hide in the bushes and watch Tate lifting weights, how they giggle and say things like, “Your brother is so handsome” and “Someday I’m going to grow up and marry him,” and Sarah says, “Gross, shut up,” but secretly, she is so proud.

  She tries to ignore her parents’ whispers, something about the Cahokian Council of Elders and what to tell them, what to do if Tate can’t . . . if Tate doesn’t . . . These are things nobody should be saying, least of all her parents.

  Tate will.

  Tate is.

  Tate is alive and will stay that way, the doctors told them, that first day.

  There was damage, permanent damage, how much they didn’t know, but he would survive.

  The trial of the bees is a Cahokian tradition. No one could have known that Tate would have a near-fatal allergic reaction, or that the infection from the stings on his eye would rage through his system, that the only safe treatment would be cutting it off at the root. Removing the eye.

  Tate is unconscious for all of it, and Sarah uses this time to try to get comfortable with this new version of her brother, weakened and scarred, a sunken hollow where his left eye used to be. She wants to be able to look at him without flinching when he finally wakes. She wants to be able to smile and promise him it’s not so bad.

  The day they pull him out of the coma, her parents go in first. Sarah waits just outside the door.

  Sometimes it feels like she’s spent her whole life waiting on the wrong side of a door.

  She can hear her parents’ soft murmurs, and the angry cadence of Tate’s voice as he tries to piece together what’s happened to him.

  He hurts, he says, and it’s like a moan.

  She’s never before heard him admit to pain. Not her strong brother, who’s not just her hero but the hero of her people.

  His voice is too quiet for her to make out the words, but she can tell he’s asked a question, and when her parents don’t answer, he asks it again. Sarah creeps closer to the doorway, hears her father’s response.

  “I’m sorry, but the council voted. With only one eye—”

  Tate chokes out a response.

  Her father shakes his head. “I know. I tried to convince them. But they were adamant. They’ve already chosen someone to take your place.”

  Sarah gasps. This is the first she’s hearing of a vote. Of a decision. It’s unthinkable, that the council would take this away from her brother. Being the Player is all he’s ever wanted.

  Her father rests a hand on Tate’s shoulder, then pulls it back quickly, remembering how every touch must burn. “I’m sorry, son. I’m—”

  Tate shouts, and this time, Sarah understands loud and clear. “Get out!” He yells it again, louder, and again and again until his parents follow his command and back away. A nurse rushes past Sarah, flying toward Tate to calm him down before his blood pressure goes too high. She injects something into his IV, and he goes quiet and still again.

  The next time he wakes up, he refuses to see them. He refuses to see anybody.

  He tells his doctors he doesn’t want to live.

  That there’s no point.

  He’s not dead, Sarah tells herself, over and over again. Even if he’s no longer going to be the Player, he will still be Tate. He will find a way to be himself again. He will let her see him, let her love him. At least, she thinks, the worst is behind them. He’ll have to understand that, eventually—that it’s better for all of them that Endgame is gone from their lives, that they can just be a family again, two parents and two kids, happy and normal.

  That night, Sarah’s parents come to her room, saying they have something to tell her. Their faces are grave; her heart seizes. “Is it Tate?” she asks. “Did something else happen?”

  “It’s not Tate,” her mother says. “It’s you.”

  “What about me?”

  “The council voted,” her father says. “They’ve chosen their next Player.”

  “So what?” Sarah spits out. She hates the council, hates the next Player, whoever it will be, hates everything involving Endgame and the trainers and the creatures from the sky, all of whom have conspired to steal her brother away. She wants nothing to do with any of it, ever again. “What do I care who it is?”

  Her mother fights her way to a sad smile. “Sarah, it’s you.”

  Sarah can’t remember a time in her life when she didn’t know about the end of the world. The council selected Tate when he was four years old. No one knows why; the workings of the council are a privileged secret. Only the six Cahokian elders with the key to the council’s underground bunker know what transpires in the meetings, and that knowledge is taken to the grave. They arrived on Simon and Olowa’s doorstep, told them their son had a special destiny, and Simon and Olowa agreed on the four-year-old’s behalf. There is no punish
ment for saying no to such an offer, but in the long history of the Cahokian people, only a handful ever have. To serve Endgame is the greatest of privileges.

  Tate began his training immediately. He has always dreamed of saving the world.

  Sarah was born less than one month later.

  She wonders, lately, about the timing of that. Did they worry even then that Playing might rob them of their precious son, whether Endgame came soon or not? Did they want a backup?

  That’s how she thinks of herself now: a backup.

  Several nights after the council makes its decision, when Sarah is still trying to decide whether to accept, she creeps down the hallway and stops in front of Tate’s bedroom door. It’s his first night home, and he went to bed without dinner. His eye, or the thing that used to be his eye, hurt, he said. Everything hurt.

  Sarah knocks softly.

  “Go away, little sis.”

  He’s only started calling her that since the bees. She can hear the sneer in it.

  “Can I come in?” she asks. “I have to talk to you.”

  “You can talk from there. In here you’d have to look at me. I’ll spare you that nightmare, little sis.”

  Tate was always handsome, never vain. Girls have been throwing themselves at him since he was 12 years old. The doctors say that once the swelling goes down and the scars fade, his face will be almost like it once was. The doctors say that once they can fit him with a fake eye, most people won’t even notice. They can forget any of this ever happened. Tate doesn’t believe them. Sarah doesn’t either.

  “The council wants—”

  “I know what the council wants,” he growls. “Why haven’t you given them an answer yet?”

  “I . . .” Sarah swallows back a sob. Players shouldn’t cry. They should be strong. She wonders, if she says yes, whether someone will teach her how to do that. “You’re supposed to be the Player, Tate. It’s supposed to be you.”