by James Frey
Jago reaches into his bag and pulls out the disk for the first time since the Calling. He holds it up and turns it in the midmorning light that filters in through the taxi windows, tries to make head or tail of it. The driver notices it in the rearview mirror and starts talking about the strange object.
They have no idea what he’s saying.
The driver is an odd man. He knows they can’t understand a word he’s saying, but he keeps talking. He takes his hands off the wheel, gesturing wildly, and the cab swerves back and forth. Sarah is tired of it, of him, of the noise, of driving. She turns away and looks out the window, watches the city give way to the suburbs and the countryside. She needs to quiet her mind.
Sarah tries to visualize something pleasant, someplace far from here. She ends up thinking about Christopher. Remembering the night before graduation, before the meteorite destroyed her school and killed her brother. Christopher picked her up at her house and took her to a quiet spot along the Missouri River where he had arranged a picnic. And while there was food, they spent most of their time under a blanket, kissing, holding each other, whispering between kisses, their hands locked, their bodies entwined. It was a great night, one of the best nights of her life. And while she’s been telling herself to forget about Christopher, at least until Endgame is over, he is the first thought she conjures up when her mind needs comfort.
And though she wants to keep that image in her mind, the clue that kepler 22b burned into her brain imposes itself over all of her thoughts. It is a long and senseless string of numbers. No matter what else she thinks about, no matter how hard she tries to avoid it, no matter how happy the memory or how sweet the vision, the numbers are there.
498753987.24203433333503405748314984.57439875234872039849999329.29292389370213754893567.24985723412346754893422677434537777773923046805.3652566245362209845710230467233100438.13857210102000209357482lii
Sarah is a crack code breaker, but this one makes no sense to her. She can’t find a pattern, can’t find a clue, can’t find the rhythm that lurks within every code. She gives herself over to it and feels a profound sadness as her image of Christopher fades.
“You okay?” Jago asks.
“I don’t know,” Sarah answers, surprised at how easy it is for her to be honest with Jago.
“You look sad.”
“You could tell?”
“Yes.” Jago hesitates. “You want to talk about it?”
Sarah smiles, a bit flustered at the idea of having a heart-to-heart with this boy she’s just met. A Player, no less. Someone she should probably be figuring out how to kill instead of how to trust. She doesn’t want to tell him about Christopher, so she only gives him some of the truth. “I can’t stop thinking about my clue. It’s like a bad song stuck in my head.”
“Ah,” Jago says, nodding. “Same with me. I can’t shake it loose.”
“Mine’s this crazy string of numbers.”
“Mine’s a picture, some kind of ancient Asian warrior.”
“That’s better than numbers,” Sarah says.
Jago clicks his tongue against his teeth, annoyed. “You ever looked at the same damn thing for twelve hours straight? Like being at a museum and getting stuck in front of one boring-ass exhibit.”
Sarah allows herself another smile. Perhaps helping Jago will take her mind off her own clue. “Maybe I can help. Can you describe the picture?”
“It’s like a photograph, I can see every detail. In one hand he has a spear, in the other he’s holding . . .” Jago points his eyes at his feet, at his bag.
“The disk?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe that’s why you picked it up?”
“Nah. Finding it before the others was just luck.”
“What do you think that thing is?”
“No idea, but it’s important. The mute girl knew it was. It’s why she flipped out when I grabbed it.”
Sarah nods. She turns away. Christopher was right, she thinks. Then she says, “This whole thing is crazy.”
Jago stares in front of him. The only sounds are of the car and the road. Then he says, “You didn’t want Endgame, did you?”
She can’t tell him the truth. She can’t tell him about Tate. She can’t tell him that she’s only been training for real for under four years. She can’t.
“I just never thought it was going to happen,” Sarah says.
“To be honest, neither did I.” Jago touches the scar along his face. “Almost ineligible, too.”
“Yeah. I was just over two years out.”
“Dios mío.”
“Thousands and thousands of years have passed without Endgame. Why now? Do you know?”
Jago sighs. “No, not really. Mami says it’s because there are too many people. Like we’re a scourge. But you know, it doesn’t matter why, Sarah. You saw that kepler thing—el cuco. Made it crystal clear that Endgame’s for real and we don’t have much choice. All that matters is that it’s happening. And we have to Play.”
“But why?” Sarah persists.
“Why’d that thing have seven damn fingers?” Jago snaps, brushing off Sarah’s question. “You trained. You were told about Endgame and the Makers and the lines and the real history of humanity, no?”
“Of course I was. I trained as hard as you can imagine.” Harder, she thinks, to make up for lost time. To cram it all in. “But I was also normal. Seeing the others for the first time last night . . . I don’t know . . . maybe I’m the only normal one. You, Chiyoko, Baitsakhan, An? You’ve been bred for this shit. Me . . .” She shakes her head and trails off.
“A few days ago you jumped from a moving train. You relocated my shoulder. You saved my life last night by catching an arrow. Don’t kid yourself; you’ve been bred for this too.” Jago smirks at her. “And I’m more normal than I seem. Used to show pretty American tourists like you down to the beach, give them the tour.” Jago sucks his teeth, reflecting. “Like you were the only one with a normal life. Please.”
What Jago says is true and she knows it is, but it still feels unreal. For the first time, Sarah realizes the deep gulf that has divided her life. On the one side, Sarah Alopay, homecoming queen and valedictorian. On the other, a hardened badass raised to kill, decipher, and deceive. Before it started, she could always reconcile her two halves, because Endgame was an evil joke that consumed her summers and weekends. But it isn’t a joke anymore.
For a brief moment the image of Christopher—smiling, sweating in a practice jersey, bounding toward her off the field—infiltrates her mind’s eye. But as soon as it appears, the code pushes it away.
“I was happy,” she says wistfully. “I held the keys to the world. I thought I was normal, Feo. I thought I was fucking normal like everyone else.”
“If you want to have any chance of winning, you better stop thinking that way.”
“I want more than a chance. I want to win. There’s no option but winning.”
“Then the old Sarah Alopay is dead.”
She nods, and the cab slows and turns onto a dirt road. They drive a quarter mile and pull through an iron gate, drive along a road lined with blossoming lemon trees. The driver stops at a cul-de-sac and points to a two-story concrete guesthouse with red roof tiles and overflowing flower boxes. The bars on the windows are painted yellow. A rooster stalks the tiled threshold.
There are no other buildings nearby. There is an array of satellite dishes—meaning internet service—on the roof. The road is a dead end, and behind the building is a small fallow meadow, behind that the rise of the hills.
“Perfect,” Jago says to the driver. He hands him a fistful of yuan and opens the door. He turns to Sarah and says, “Look all right to you?”
She inspects it. Her training takes over, pushing her trepidation aside. The place is remote, secluded, safe. As good a place to Play the next round as any.
“Yes,” Sarah says.
She steps out of the cab and takes a deep breath. Jago was right. It’s time to leave the
normal parts of her behind. The Sarah who was homecoming queen and valedictorian.
As she watches Jago walk ahead of her, she knows, once and for all, that it’s time to leave the Christopher part of her behind as well.
CHIYOKO TAKEDA
Taxicab #345027,liii Registered to Feng Tian, Chang’an District, Xi’an, China
Feng Tian shakes his head, puts the car in gear, and leaves. He’s glad to be rid of the strange and moody foreigners. He couldn’t understand a word they said, but that didn’t matter; he’s driven around enough sullen foreign couples to recognize the signs of a lovers’ quarrel. Silly kids. At least they tipped well.
He pushes a CD into the player and blasts some pop music and bumps along the dirt road and lights a cigarette. He turns onto the paved road, passing a red motorbike that wasn’t there before. He doesn’t pay it any mind.
A short distance down the road he is surprised to find a young Japanese girl in short jean shorts and makeup, wearing a wig of bright blue hair. She has a large, stylish purse slung over her shoulder. She’s flagging him down. She does it in the Japanese fashion, her fingers pointed to the ground, her wrist swinging back and forth. To him it is a motion that says “go away.”
He pulls over.
No one else is around.
On one side of the road is a wheat field. On the other is a stand of bamboo.
Where did she come from?
She leans in the window and hands him a card. He turns down the music. She has a lovely smile, glossy lips, dimples in her cheeks. On the card, in perfect Chinese handwriting, it says, Forgive me, I am mute. Will you take me back to Xi’an?
What luck! A return fare. He nods and points to the backseat. She surprises him by opening the front passenger door and jumping in. She’s like an eager schoolgirl. The thoughts running through his mind are not entirely wholesome. She pulls the door shut and nods at the road and grabs his pack of cigarettes off the dashboard.
Pushy girl.
And stranger even than the other two.
Happier, at least.
Maybe this won’t be such a boring ride back to Xi’an.
Feng Tian puts the car in gear and eases back onto the road. She turns to him and points at the cigarette. She wants a light. He gets out a Zippo, flicks it open, and thumbs the tinder wheel. He keeps one eye on the road and one on the tip of the smoke.
He doesn’t see the specially modified Taser that she pushes into his neck before shooting him full of 40,000 volts of surging, bristling, killing electricity.
Chiyoko grabs the wheel and pulls the emergency brake. She pushes hard into his flesh with the Taser and watches him writhe for 11 seconds. She releases the trigger. Checks his pulse. There isn’t one.
She reaches across the driver’s body and reclines his seat. She pulls off his sunglasses and puts them on the dash. She pries his lighter from his electrified fingertips. She jumps into the back, releases a latch that lowers the seat, and reveals the trunk. She pulls the body into her lap—she is incredibly strong for her size, and has no trouble with the man—and pushes him into the rear of the car. She climbs back into the front, pulls off her wig, and throws it in the footwell. She removes a plain collared shirt, another wig, and a packet of wipes from her purse. She puts on the shirt and the wig, which makes her hair look like a man’s. She adjusts it in the mirror, pulls a wipe from the packet, and cleans the makeup off her face. She takes a small Ziploc bag from the packet, opens it, and removes a thin fake mustache. She puts it on.
All of this happens in under two minutes.
She puts the taxi in gear and pulls away. Checks the mirrors. No one is around. No one has seen. There are no witnesses, so no one else who Chiyoko needs to kill. She slides on the dead man’s sunglasses, takes a new cigarette from the pack, flicks the lighter, inhales. It is only the 4th cigarette of her entire life, but it’s a good one. A delightful cigarette. It relaxes her, calms her, lets her process the murder she just committed. The man had to die because he saw the disk. Chiyoko says a silent prayer for him, explains to him that she cannot take any chances. Even if he had been the dumbest taxi driver on the planet, she cannot take any chances.
Aside from Jago and Sarah, only she can know.
Code Kingliv
SHARI CHOPRA
3rd-Class Bus Approaching Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
Shari Chopra has a new problem, an unforeseen problem.
29, 9, 8, 2, 4.
She cannot calm her mind.
29, 9, 8, 2, 4.
All her life she has been peaceful inside, but something has changed. Something happened after the Calling, after getting her clue. Something started worming away inside her, digging away at her, wanting out, wanting.
The numbers.
29, 9, 8, 2, 4.
Slithering through her mind.
She tries to relinquish expectations, to take shelter in her breath, tries to see through her closed eyes.
Nothing works.
29, 9, 8, 2, 4.
What do they mean?
What do they want?
29, 9, 8, 2, 4.
What Shari wants is a chai in a terracotta cup. She wants to drink the sweet, warming liquid, throw the empty cup on the ground, see the red shards. She wants to hear the wallah in the background as she strolls away. She wants dum aloo and dalchini pulao for dinner. She wants her dadi’s coconut chutney. She wants home, home. She wants her love, the love of her life. She wants to see him. Touch him.
But whatever the numbers want, that takes precedence. They crowd her mind and shove everything else aside.
29, 9, 8, 2, 4.
Shari is on a 3rd-class bus approaching the outskirts of Chengdu, capital of Sichuan. She got on the bus because she followed Alice Ulapala. She saw the big Koori in the woods and tracked her into Xi’an. It is less than 30 hours after the Calling. Alice hasn’t seen Shari, or at least she hasn’t let on. Alice is in the front. Shari snuck past her and is in the middle. The bus is full.
Her mind is full.
Too full.
Boiling over.
How could this happen? Shari has always had such rigorous control over her mind. While other Players of Endgame have focused on their physical skills, Shari has honed her mind like a blade, meditation her whetstone. Shari’s memory is close to perfect. Her mind drinks in details as thirstily as a man would drink water in the desert. Perhaps it is this openness that is causing her so much pain; perhaps she was too receptive to the clue.
29, 9, 8, 2, 4.
A passenger behind her starts crying. She says her stomach hurts. There is no air-conditioning and it is hot and getting hotter, and the heat from the engine is washing through the bus, the heat from the churning, belching engine that reeks of oil and gasoline and fire.
Should they be reversed? 4, 2, 8, 9, 29. Is it a sequence? 4, 2, 8, 9, 29. What’s next? Is it a single number? A formula? 2 squared is 4, cubed is 8, plus 1 is 9, put the digit 2 in front and get 29. But then what?
What?
What what what.
Shari is sweating. Sweating from the heat and sweating from the pressure building in her mind.
She wants to see him. She wanted to see him as soon as the Calling started and again as soon as it ended.
She wants to see him now.
She wants to see Jamal. Her best friend. Her jaanu.
The other Players cannot know about him.
About them.
Her husband and her young daughter, also named Alice, just like the Koori who Shari is tracking. She took it as a good omen that the two should share a name, her daughter and this Player.
Shari is only 17 years old, but she’s a woman. A mother and a wife. This must stay secret. They must stay secret. If not, they will compromise her. They will compromise her because she loves them. They have to live. They have to.
The others cannot know.
The woman in the back continues to wail, her pain getting worse. Others are yelling. Shari tries to block it out, tries
to concentrate on the numbers.
29, 9, 8, 2, 4. 29, 9, 8, 2, 4. 29, 9, 8, 2, 4. 29, 9, 8, 2, 4.
But the woman won’t relent. She screams louder, pounds the glass of the window so hard it might break. Shari turns to look and sees a throng of passengers hovering and gesturing wildly. They look like they’re starting to worry. The driver is unfazed, keeps bumping along. Shari sees a hand shoot up from behind a seat, a clenched fist. Someone is asking if there is a doctor on board.
Doctors do not ride 3rd-class buses.
The person asks for something else. Shari understands a word: midwife. Is there a midwife on board?
Shari is not a midwife, but she is a mother and has 13 little sisters and seven brothers, 29 (that number again!) nieces and nephews, dozens of cousins. Her father has had five wives. This is the way with her line. It is messy and big and thank goodness it is full of resources. And full of little mouths.
In the back of the bus, there is a new little mouth struggling to come out, trying to breathe and eat and cry.
Calm.
Be calm.
There is a little mouth in there trying to live.
Shari looks at Alice. She can see her mop of hair rising above the seat back. The Koori Player looks to be asleep. In this heat, with the bouncing bus, and the screaming woman—Shari is amazed that anyone could sleep. The Koori’s mind must not be as cluttered as her own. Shari wishes she could sleep herself. Alice is not going anywhere. She is oblivious.
So Shari will help.
She rises and walks down the crowded aisle. As she walks, she removes a small bottle of hand sanitizer from her fanny pack. She rubs a dollop in and around her fingers and palms.
“Excuse me,” she says, switching to poor Mandarin and stashing the little bottle. The smell of rubbing alcohol is strangely refreshing.
A few people turn to her and shake their heads. She is not what they expected.
“I know I am young and a foreigner, but I can help,” she says. “I have a child myself and have been to twenty-one births. Please, let me see.”
