Endgame: The Calling (14 page)

Everything is here
, Kala recalls kepler 22b saying. What does that mean? The way the creature said it made her feel small and meaningless. She didn’t like that. Kala cannot think about this for long, though. Because, as her feet move across the ground, the code comes back to the forefront of her mind like a supernova.

Kala is so distracted that she doesn’t even notice the young man following her.

False
^l

Big Wild Goose Pagoda, Ground Level, Xi’an, China

Christopher stood and watched as the girl’s clothing inflated like a balloon and, without breaking stride, she hit the ground and started running. He takes it as a good omen that this is the same girl he was able to ID from his room. The one with the dark-tanned skin and the colorful scarves and the green eyes.

He also takes it as a good omen that she doesn’t notice him.

She’s playing catch-up
, he says to himself as he tries to run silently after her.
I have to assume that she was the last to leave, that the others have already moved on from the Calling. I have to follow her. She’s the best and only connection I have to the girl I love.

And he follows. And as he does, it doesn’t occur to him that Kala is in fact the first Player to leave the Calling through the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. That if he had waited a few more minutes, he might have seen Sarah Alopay, the Cahokian Player of the 233rd.

Big Wild Goose Pagoda, 6th Floor, Xi’an, China

Sarah and Jago arrive in the same room as Kala did. It is 3:29:54 a.m. Kala jumped exactly 10 minutes and 14 seconds ago. They have no idea she jumped. Sarah has no idea that Christopher is so close. If she were to imagine Christopher, it would be back in the relative safety of Omaha, helping diligently with the cleanup efforts. But she doesn’t imagine him; she’s pushed Christopher out of her mind.

That part of her life is over.

Blindly leaping through an alien door was a strange experience. It seemed to Sarah like something magical, but she knows that’s not the case. It’s just like what the first men must have thought about fire. The door wasn’t magic; it was science. Just tech, far-off and advanced tech, something humans have not yet learned, or maybe were never allowed to learn.

For centuries, this has been the power and allure of the Sky People. Their machines, technology, and abilities were what made them gods in the eyes of countless ancient peoples around the world. Sarah knows that the Sky People could do the same to modern humans if they so wished. Awe them, intimidate them, enslave them. All the Players know that humans are but a diversion to the Sky People. Even with contemporary DNA sequencing and nuclear reactors and geotechnical engineering and space stations, humans are just a crude amusement, like ants who make fire out of anything, kill one another for no reason, and stare into mirrors for too long.

But ants that, for whatever reason, the gods have taken an interest in.

“You still have it?” Sarah asks, her head spinning.

“I have it,” Jago replies, motioning to his backpack. His head throbs; he’s panting, dizzy. The shock wave from the bomb took a toll.

“You okay?” Sarah reaches out.

“Fine,” he grunts, straightening.

“We should leave. We’re not safe here.”

“No kidding.”

As Jago turns toward the door that leads to the stairs, Maccabee appears behind him. Sarah sees it happen. It’s like Maccabee is emerging from a curtain of black ink suspended in the air.

Maccabee doesn’t seem to have suffered any ill effects from the bomb or the teleportation. He lunges at Jago, wrapping his hands around his neck. Sarah’s first thought is for the disk. Though she doesn’t know how or why, she’s certain that it will help her—
them
—get a big lead in Endgame.

Sarah raises her fist to hit Maccabee in the back of the head, and Jago rakes his heel across Maccabee’s shin. Maccabee yells out and bends over, shoving Jago toward the floor, and Sarah narrowly misses his skull with what would have been a crushing blow.

Jago can’t break the Nabataean’s grip. He blindly jabs his thumb behind him, hoping to land it in Maccabee’s ear. He scores a direct hit, and there’s a
pop
as Jago pulls his digit free, like a cork coming from an old bottle.

Maccabee lets go and wails. He grabs the side of his head with one hand and wildly swipes at the air with the other. First an arrow in the thigh and now a dirty blow from this hideous Olmec. Maccabee is not used to so much pain, so much humiliation. It infuriates him.

Before he can collect himself, Sarah steps around Maccabee and kicks him in the thigh, right next to his wound. He collapses to the floor.

Sarah and Jago have a clear path to the stairway leading down, out of this funnel of Players, this bottleneck of murderers. Sarah wonders if they’ll have time to finish off Maccabee, or if it’s even worth it.

Jago doesn’t have the same concern. His knife flashes into his hand, ready to find Maccabee’s throat.

“Watch out!” Sarah shouts, as Aisling Kopp appears in the room.

Aisling’s short red hair is wild, her face covered in soot from the fire in the woods. She was forced to double back for the pyramid after An lit the trees on fire. She’s feeling panicked and hemmed in, which is why she doesn’t ask questions. Aisling raises her small crossbow and fires.

Sarah’s warning is just enough to get Jago diving out of the way. The bolt sails over his head.

Midair, Jago flips the knife, catching it by the anodized blade, and hurls it at Aisling. The Celt drops the one-shot crossbow, claps her hands, snags the knife out of the air, and smiles. She’s proud that move worked; her grandfather taught her well.

As Jago and Sarah turn and run down the stairs, Jago’s knife flies over their heads and imbeds itself in the far wall.

In seconds they emerge into the large room near the top of the pagoda. Jago moves to keep running, but Sarah sidesteps the doorway and grabs him by the arm. She points up. Rafters. Between the rafters and the underside of the roof is a foot of space.

Jago nods. He understands. Side by side, he and Sarah jump up, silently grab the rough-hewn timbers, and twirl their bodies around them. They eye each other intently and stop breathing and will their hearts to slow, slow, slow.

Aisling bursts into the room and runs toward the stairs that lead farther down. But just before exiting, she stops. She smells something in the air, cocks an ear to the empty space. She makes a half turn in their direction, and for a second Sarah wonders why they are bothering to hide. The Celt is only one and they are two. They could eliminate her quickly. As she looks toward Jago, all three of them hear Maccabee’s voice bellowing from the stairway: “I’m going to kill all of you bastards!”

Without pause, Aisling spins and is gone. Maccabee stumbles loudly down the stairs. He grunts and moans, dragging himself into the room. He’s in bad shape: other than Marcus, dead-as-dirt Marcus, Maccabee has endured the most violence of the Calling.

Maccabee steps to the middle of the room and looks in a circle, doesn’t bother to look up. His mind is clouded with injury, the suddenness of Endgame, and the clue implanted in his mind. He slides around the room for 22 seconds—only 12 heartbeats in Sarah’s chest—before the three of them hear another Player arrive in the room above. Maccabee spits on the floor and leaves, going down.

They wait for three more minutes. Whoever appeared in the room upstairs must still be there, waiting. Without speaking, the Olmec and the Cahokian drop silently to the floor, walk to the stairs, and leave.

“Too bad we couldn’t take at least one out,” Jago laments as they creep down the stairs. He rubs his neck where Maccabee’s fingers left a ring of bruises.

“We’ll get our chance,” Sarah says. She can see that they make a good team, but she’s not sure that Endgame is the place for teams. Still, Jago has grown on her. And he has been helpful and, more importantly, faithful. She can tell that he likes her. She wonders if she can use that. She wonders if she
wants
to use that.

“The next time I see the Nabataean . . .” Jago spits, trailing off.

They go down, down, down.

When they reach the bottom, they make sure the coast is clear, step out of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, and head toward the street, sticking to the shadows. Sarah has no idea that not more than 30 minutes before, the boy from Omaha who she still loves was right here.

And neither Sarah nor Jago knows that An Liu, the tricky bomb maker, the last to emerge from the portal, is watching them from a window, back up the stairs of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda.

Watching them and pointing a long metal object in their direction.

A wand.

An antenna.

A microphone.

A sneaky
blink
sneaky
blink
sneaky bit of
blinking
business.

Great White Pyramid, Qin Lin Mountains, China

Chiyoko Takeda slinks through the woods. She watched—and smiled as she watched—An Liu blow up the Calling. She considers it a great move. A great, great move.

Nothing like death and mayhem to cloud minds and mask intentions.

Chiyoko is tracking the Olmec and the Cahokian as they make for the pyramid. She’s on their right, to the east, moving silently. The Nabataean is also making his way toward the pyramid, but the Olmec and the Cahokian haven’t noticed him.

Chiyoko noticed. She saw the Sumerian leave through the mystical pyramid. Saw her melt away into its quicksilver wall.

The Great White Pyramid is a monument that speaks volumes to Chiyoko Takeda, the mute, the ever-ancient Mu, the Player of the 2nd line.

Just to look at it is an honor. It stands as a marker of space, history, and commonality. Chiyoko knows that pyramids were the Game Keepers’ tethers in the ancient past—tethers for their ships, their portals, their sources of energy—and someday they might be again, after it all comes and goes and comes again. The buildings or their remnants are in China, in Egypt, in Sumer, in Europe, in India, and in the Americas. Most of them have fallen down or vanished beneath mounds of dirt and foliage. Or they’ve been desecrated by people, ignorant humans who don’t deserve to survive what comes next. Some, like this pristine example, are even undiscovered. But none are like this one.

This one has not been polluted by human hands or minds. It hasn’t been eroded by wind or rain. Eaten by root or soil. Shattered by the quaking earth or an erupting volcano.

This one is special.

If she could, she’d stay and look at this one for a week, two, three. Wonder at its dimensions. Measure its footprint. Record its markings. Try to decipher them. But she can’t do any of this.

The game is on.

And she is tracking.

Her ropes—the hojo—are slung over her shoulders. Their deployment was a diversion, like An’s explosives. Not as effective, of course, but they served their purpose. Her ropes gave her the cover that allowed her to get off the tracking dart that struck Jago Tlaloc in the neck and chipped him. The dart that buzzed his ear like a mosquito.