Endgame Novella #1 (2 page)

The fight dragged on and on. Dodging punches, blocking kicks, throwing each other to the mat again and again, they fought for one hour, then two. It felt like years. Sweat poured down Marcus’s back and blood down his face. He gasped and panted, sucking in air and trying not to double over from the pain. His legs were jelly, his arms lead weights. Alexander looked like he’d been flattened by a steamroller, with both eyes blackened and a wide gap where his front teeth used to be. The kids fell silent, waiting for the referee to step in before the two boys killed each other.

But this was not that kind of camp.

They fought on.

They fought like they lived: Marcus creative and unpredictable, always in motion; Alexander cool, rational, every move a calculated decision.

Which made it even more of a shock when Alexander broke. Unleashing a scream of pure rage, he reached over the ropes to grab the referee’s stool, and smashed it over Marcus’s head.

Marcus didn’t see it coming.

He only felt the impact.

A thunderbolt of pain reverberating through his bones.

His body dropping to the ground, no longer under his control, his consciousness drifting away.

The last thing he saw, before everything faded to black, was Alexander’s face, stunned by his own loss of control. Marcus smiled, then started to laugh. Even in defeat, he’d won—he’d finally made the uptight control freak completely lose it.

The last thing he heard was Alexander laughing too.

“You always tell that story wrong,” Marcus says now. “You leave out the
part where I let you win.”

Xander only laughs. At 14, he’s nearly twice the size he was at that first Theseus Cup, his shoulders broader, his voice several octaves deeper, his blond hair thicker and forested across his chest. But his laugh is still exactly the same as it was on the day of the fight.

Marcus remembers, as he remembers every detail of that day.

You never forget the moment you make your best friend.

“Yeah, that was really generous of you, deciding to get a concussion and pass out,” Xander says. “I owe you one.”

“You owe me two,” Marcus points out. “One for the concussion, one for the cheating.”

They are hanging off a sheer rock face, 50 meters off the ground. They will race each other to the top of the cliff, 70 meters above, then rappel back down to the bottom, dropping toward the ground at a stomach-twisting speed.

Marcus has heard that most kids his age fill up their empty hours playing video games. He thinks this is a little more fun.

“I most certainly did not cheat,” Xander says, trying to muster some of his habitual dignity. Most people think that’s the real him: solemn, uptight, deliberate, slow to smile. Marcus knows better. Over the last five years, he’s come to know the real Xander, the one who laughs at his jokes and even, occasionally, makes a few of his own. (Though, of course, they’re never any good.) “Not technically, at least,” Xander qualifies. He jams his fingers into a small crevice in the rock face and pulls himself up another foot, trying very hard to look like it costs him no effort.

Marcus scrambles up past him, grinning, because for him it actually
is
no effort. “Only because no one ever thought to put ‘don’t go nutball crazy and smash furniture over people’s heads’ in the rules before,” Marcus says.

“Lucky for both of us,” Xander says.

Normally, Marcus would shoot back a joke or an insult, something about how it’s not so lucky for him, because Xander’s been clinging to
him like a barnacle ever since. Or maybe something about how it was luckier for Xander, because now, with Marcus as a wingman, he might someday, if he’s lucky, actually get himself a date.

But not today.

Not today, the last day before everything changes. Tomorrow, they will find out who has been selected as this generation’s Player. It’ll surely be either Marcus or Alexander; everyone knows that. They’re the best in the camp at everything; no one else even comes close. It’s what brought them together in the first place. After all that time wasted hating each other, they’d realized that where it counted, they were the same. No one else was so determined to win—and no one else was good enough to do so. Only Marcus could melt Xander’s cool; only Xander could challenge Marcus’s cockiness. In the end, what else could they do but become best friends? They pushed each other to go faster, to get stronger, to be
better
. Competition is all they know. Their friendship is built on the fact that they’re so well matched.

Tomorrow, all that changes. Tomorrow, one of them will leave this place as a winner, and embark on his hero’s journey. The other will leave a loser, and find some way to endure the rest of his pathetic life.

Which means today is not a day for joking.
I couldn’t have made it through this place without you
, Marcus would like to say. And
no one knows me like you do
. And maybe even
you make me want to be my best self
.

But he’s not that kind of guy.

“Yeah, lucky,” he agrees, and Xander knows him well enough to understand the rest.

They climb in silence for a while, battling gravity, scrabbling for purchase on the rock. Marcus’s muscles scream as he stretches for a handhold a few inches out of reach, finally getting leverage with his fingertips and dragging the rest of himself up and up.

“It’s probably going to be you,” Xander says finally, and they both know what he’s talking about. Marcus can tell Xander’s trying not to breathe heavily, but the strain in his voice is plain.

“No way. Totally you,” Marcus says, hoping the lie isn’t too obvious.

“It’s not like Endgame is even going to happen,” Xander says. “Think about it—after all this time, what are the odds?”

“Nil,” Marcus agrees, though this too feels like a lie. How could Endgame
not
happen for him? Ever since Marcus found out about the aliens, and the promise they’d made to return—ever since he found out about the Players, and the game—some part of him has known this was his fate. This is another difference between him and Xander, though it’s one they never talk about out loud.

Marcus
believes
.

When they were 11 years old, Marcus and Xander spent an afternoon digging for artifacts at the edge of the camp’s northern border. It was Xander’s favorite hobby, and occasionally he suckered Marcus into joining him. What else were friends for? That day, after several long hours sweating in the sun (Marcus complaining the whole time), Marcus hit gold.

Specifically a golden
labrys
, a double-headed ax. The labrys was one of the holiest symbols of the Minoan civilization, used to slice the throats of sacrificial bulls. Marcus gaped at the dirt-encrusted object. It had to be at least 3,500 years old. Yet it fit in his palm as if it had been designed just for him.

“No one’s ever found anything that good,” Xander said. “It’s got to be a sign. That it’s going to be you who gets chosen.”

“Whatever.” Marcus shrugged it off. But inside, he was glowing. Because Xander was right. It did have to be a sign. The ax had chosen him—had
anointed
him. Ever since then, he’s believed he will be chosen as the Player. It is his destiny.

But that’s not the kind of thing you say out loud.

“It doesn’t even matter which of us gets picked. Without Endgame, being the Player’s just a big waste of time,” Marcus says now. “Though I bet you’d be a chick magnet.”

“But what good would it do you?” Xander points out. “It’s not like you’d have time to actually date.”

This is a game they play, the two of them. As the selection day draws closer, they’ve been playing it more often. Pretending they don’t care who gets picked, pretending it might be better to lose.

“Imagine getting out of here once and for all,” Xander continues. “Going to a real school.”

“Joining a football team,” Marcus says, trying to imagine himself scoring a winning goal before a stadium of screaming fans.

“Going to a concert,” Xander says. He plays the guitar. (Or at least tries to.)

“Meeting a girl whose idea of foreplay isn’t krav maga,” Marcus says. He’s still got an elbow-shaped bruise on his stomach, courtesy of Helena Loris.

“I don’t know . . . I’ll kind of miss that part,” Xander says fondly. He’s been fencing regularly with Cassandra Floros, who’s promised that if he can draw blood, she’ll reward him with a kiss. “But not much else.”

“Yeah, me neither,” Marcus says. “Bring on normal life.”

He’s a few meters above Xander, and it’s a good thing, because it means Xander can’t see his sickly, unconvincing grin. A normal life?

To Marcus, that’s a fate worse than death.

A fate he’d do anything to avoid.

The counselors try their best to give the kids some approximation of a normal upbringing. In their slivers of free time, campers are allowed to surf the Net, watch TV, and flirt with whomever they want. They even spend two months of every year back home with their families—for Marcus, these are the most excruciating days of all. Of course he loves his parents. He loves Turkey, its smells and tastes, the way the minarets spear the clouds on a stormy day. But it’s not his world anymore; it’s not his home. He spends his vacations counting the minutes until he can get back to camp, back to training, back to Xander.

Deep down, he knows this is another difference between them. Sure, Xander wants to be chosen. But Marcus wants it more.

Marcus
needs
it.

That has to count for something.

Marcus is happy to pretend that he and Xander are evenly matched, that the choice between them is a coin flip. It’s easier that way; it’s how friendship works. But surely, he thinks, their instructors can tell that it’s an illusion. That Marcus is just a little better, a little more determined. That between the two of them, only Marcus would sacrifice everything for the game, for his people. That only Marcus truly believes he’s meant to be the Player—and not just any Player, but the one who saves his people.

They’re both pretending not to be nervous, but deep down, Marcus really isn’t.

He knows it will be him.

It has to be.

He reaches the top with a whoop of triumph, Xander still several meters behind. Instead of savoring his victory or waiting for his best friend to catch up, he anchors his rappelling line, hooks himself on, and launches himself over the cliff. This moment, this leap of faith, it’s the reward that makes all that hard work worth it. There’s a pure joy in giving way to the inexorable, letting gravity speed him toward his fate.

Tomorrow, everything changes.

And it can’t come fast enough.

The amphitheater is filled to capacity. Every Minoan within 200 kilometers is here to learn who their new Player will be. Marcus sits in the front row with all the other prospects, remembering the last time he was at this ceremony. He was young then, too young to understand what it meant or imagine that someday it would be him.

It’s strange now, thinking about his life back then. It doesn’t feel real, or at least it doesn’t feel like
his
life. He was a different person then, before he knew the truth about the world and his place in it. His life, the one that matters, is defined by Endgame, and by his friendship with Xander. Before them, he was just a fraction of himself. Now he’s whole.

Elias Cassadine, the camp leader, takes the podium to deliver a speech about the import of this decision and the honor he is about to bestow. Marcus has endured many a lecture by Elias, and knows the man will drone on forever about the long-lost Minoan civilization and its tradition of heroes. How the legendary King Minos was actually an alien god, who chose the Minoans, of all peoples, to live among and rule. Elias will speak of Endgame as a sacred compact between the Minoans and the beings from the stars, a chance for this chosen people to rise above the rest—if their champion can rise to the challenge. He will boast about the camp’s rigorous training program and the care with which the instructors have selected their Player. As if it takes some kind of genius to pick out the best. Elias will talk duty and sacrifice, and how everyone in the audience owes a debt of gratitude to their new Player. He’ll blather on forever while everyone fidgets in their seat and pretends not to be bored out of their skulls.

Xander catches his eye and Marcus mimes choking himself.
Put me out of my misery
, he means, and of course Xander knows it, because Xander always knows what he means. For the last five years, everything he’s done, he’s done with Xander. It’s going to be strange, going forward alone. Yes, he
can
do it on his own, but why would he want to?

Marcus wonders whether he might be able to talk Elias into defying tradition and letting him keep Xander around. Batman had Robin, Theseus had Daedalus—why couldn’t Marcus have Xander?

It’s a brilliant idea, and he can’t believe he didn’t think of it before. He’s working up some good arguments in favor of it when he realizes that Elias Cassadine has stopped droning and excited murmurs are rippling across the crowd. Beside him, Xander has gone pale.

“Meet our new Player,” Elias says, and Marcus is already rising to his feet when his brain kicks in and processes what he’s just heard. What he’s hearing now, as Elias says it one more time, almost drowned out by the thunder of the cheering Minoans.

Xander’s name.

Xander’s name, not Marcus’s.

This isn’t happening
, Marcus thinks, because it can’t be happening.

This is just a dream
, Marcus thinks, because he’s had many like it—nightmares, really, but then he always wakes up.

There is no waking up this time.

This is real. The announcement has been made. The
choice
has been made, and it’s Xander who steps hesitantly up to the podium, lowers his head as Elias sets the golden horns atop his wild curls. A tribute to the legend of the Minotaur, these horns are the official marker of the chosen Player, and it’s Xander who will bear them. Xander who clasps his hands over his head in triumph, Xander who’s been named the best. Xander who’s been named the Player.