Endgame: The Calling (25 page)

The bolt sails between the two guards, shatters the window, and just nicks the key that operates the gate mechanism. It turns in the opposite direction; the gate slowly grinds backward just as their car reaches it. Sparks shoot up along the doors, the side mirrors ricocheting off, but they’re through.

As they drive away, the bewildered guards disappearing in the distance, Sarah screams with pleasure and Jago just laughs.

41.252363, -95.997988
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Calvary Cemetery, Queens, New York, United States

Thousands of miles away, Aisling Kopp stares tiredly at a headstone. She doesn’t want to be here, the cemetery unpopulated on this sunny day, at least by the living. She should be back in China or Turkey or somewhere else, following the clues of Endgame. Even though it was her clue, in a way, that brought her back to New York, far away from the action.

The headstone belongs to Declan Kopp. Aisling’s father.

“Why’d you make me come here?” Aisling asks the old man standing next to her. “This some kinda motivational thing? ’Cause we coulda just done that on the phone, Pop.”

Aisling’s grandfather seems lost in thought. He snaps to when she speaks, turning his bad, milky-white eye toward her. His hands are folded peacefully behind his back. He is missing three fingers on his left hand. He has a bushy white beard and long white hair still tinged with traces of orange. Decades ago, this man was a Player. Just like his son, Declan, was a Player.

Aisling’s father, in the ground, dead for almost as long as Aisling’s been alive.

It was her grandfather who trained Aisling. He taught her everything she knows. He was there, in the dirt next to her, spotting for her, when Aisling made her first kill. It was with the same reliable Brugger & Thomet APR308 sniper rifle that now sits at Aisling’s feet, broken down and packed away in a sleek black case. That first kill, the expression of pride on her grandfather’s face, it is one of Aisling’s fondest memories.

And that is why, when Pop insisted that she come back home just as Endgame had finally begun, Aisling begrudgingly complied. It was the clue that had set her grandfather off. Aisling had told him the random string of numbers over the phone, and her grandfather had used a tone of voice she’d never heard before.

Afraid.

All because of 19090416. Whatever that was supposed to mean.

So Aisling had hopped two trains and four planes and ended up back in Queens, worn out from traveling and wanting to move on as quickly as possible. As much as she loves him, Aisling knows that the time for men like her grandfather is past. The work of the trainers is done.

“I have never told you how your father died,” Pop says matter-of-factly.

Aisling glances at her chunky pink wristwatch. “You’re picking now?”

“Wasn’t important until now,” muses her grandfather. “But I think They want you to know. For whatever reason.”

Aisling thinks about that kepler thing. She’d hate to have to guess at its motivations, at what it knows, and why. Luckily, she doesn’t have to. Endgame is simple. Kill or be killed.

“What gives you that idea?”

“Your numbers: they’re the day he died, mixed up.”

Aisling sniffs, feeling incredibly dumb for not figuring
that
out. “That’s some pretty simple coding for big-shot aliens.”

“Like I said, child, they wanted you to figure it out. It’s the
why
that’s troubling.”

“Go on, Pop.”

“Your father, after eligibility passed him by, he couldn’t let Endgame go. He spent years studying it. Studying
Them
. Trying to figure it all out.”

Aisling remembers one of her first lessons, something Pop has ingrained in her since childhood. “It’s not for us to know,” she says. “What will be will be.”

“That’s what I’ve always taught you, child, but . . .” Her grandfather raises a hand. “Your father, he had some ideas. Wasn’t a popular man amongst our line. Had you with an outsider, bless her. When the High Council decided you’d grow up to be a Player, he took it badly.”

Aisling is paying attention now. She’s never heard so much about her mother and father, has always known better than to ask. But now the floodgates are open. “What’d he do?”

“He fled. Killed the active Player in the process. Took the stone, your birthright, and you. You were just a babe, years away from eligibility. He said he was breaking the cycle.”

“What the hell does that mean? That he was going to end our line?”

Her grandfather sighs, shaking his head. “Presumably, but I never really knew for certain. The High Council sent me to find the two of you, and the stone, and eventually I did. And I restored order to our line.”

It takes a moment for this to sink in. “You killed him,” Aisling states.

Pop nods. “My son. Your father. Through the scope of the rifle at our feet. Yes.”

Aisling exhales slowly through her nose. She’s not sure how to interpret this, not sure what to do with this information.

Her grandfather holds out a folded piece of paper. “These are the coordinates of where he took you. Where he died. Maybe They want you to go there.”

Aisling takes the piece of paper, glancing at it. Somewhere in Italy. She stuffs it into her back pocket. “Go there and do what?”

Her grandfather shakes his head. “Perhaps see what your father did. Perhaps understand like he did.”

“But he didn’t want to
win
,” Aisling says, surprised by her own ferocity. She’s suddenly angry with her father, a man she doesn’t remember, for trying, somehow, to buck Endgame. For putting her in the middle. For forcing Pop to carry around all this guilt for years.

“No,” says her grandfather. “He wanted to
know
. Perhaps, child, you can do both.”

Grand Mercure Hotel, Room 172, Huímín Square, Xi’an, China

Christopher gets a call from the concierge. Kala is leaving. She has her bags and is headed to the airport.

It’s a little early, so Christopher doesn’t worry. The flight is in five hours, and even if the traffic is horrible, it will take only two hours to get to Xi’an Xianyang International Airport. Sarah used to like to get an early start on things, too. Maybe that’s something the Players all have in common: anal overpreparedness.

He showers, gets dressed, packs a small bag. Once again he’s going to leave most of what he has with him in the room. He doesn’t want it, doesn’t need it. As long as he has his passport and his credit cards, he can move, live, search for Sarah. Sure, he received an angry and worried email from his mom two days ago, but the credit still hasn’t been turned off.

In the taxi, he turns on his smartphone and flips through pictures. Of Sarah, of the two of them together. He started taking them when she was 14, when they were in 8th grade. They’d only been dating for a year, maybe less. It scares him to think that there was so much he didn’t know about her. She had a whole other life when she was away from him: the training she went through, the terrifying skills she acquired, the violent trials she endured. And somehow, when she was with him, she was still Sarah. The Sarah he’d always loved.

The driver turns on the radio, and he hears a man singing a love song in Chinese, and he’s brought out of his memories and reminded of where he is and what he’s doing. He looks at a picture: Sarah standing in front of her parents’ car just before they went on a camping trip to the Grand Canyon. They probably weren’t going to the Grand Canyon at all. Another lie.

He should be mad at her, angry that she lied to him for all these years. Angry that she said she was going to the Grand Canyon, or soccer camp, or piano lessons, when really she was training to become a ruthless killer. He should be scared of her. But he’s not. He’s scared at how much he still loves her, no matter who she is, no matter what she’s done, no matter what he doesn’t know. She’s waving in the picture.

He smiles.

Says, “I love you.”

And waves back.

G5 Jingkun Expressway, China

Sarah and Jago are also on their way to the Xi’an Xianyang airport. They ditched the Fulwin and stole a Brilliance Junjie wagon, of which there are literally tens of millions on the roads of China. Nobody looks at the car; nobody notices them. While Sarah drives, Jago plays Tetris on his phone.

“We were pretty good back there, Feo.”

“We sure were,” he says. “I knew we would be.”

“I’ve never seen anyone pull that walking on the wall stuff in real life.”

“It’s all in the sneakers,” says Jago, feigning modesty. “Hell of a shot with that gate. Even though we were going to make it.”

Sarah smiles and shrugs, mimicking Jago’s nonchalance. “As long as we keep taking turns saving each other, this’ll play out just fine.”

Jago suppresses a smile.

“Yeah, I guess that’s a pretty good plan.”

“We should get cleaned up before we get to the airport,” she says.

“There. That gas station.”

She pulls off the road and they take turns in the bathroom. Sarah puts her long hair into a tight bun. Puts on eyeliner to darken her eyes. Changes her bra and underwear. Changes all her clothes, throws the dirty ones in the garbage. It’s crazy, but she’s feeling good. Different. More confident. Maybe, as with everything else, Endgame gets easier just by doing it.

Jago splashes water on his dusty body and watches the red water swirl down the drain. He puts fake enamel fronts over his jeweled inlaid teeth. He dons a pair of flashy and expensive sunglasses. He puts on a black silk shirt and leaves it half open.

They head for the airport. While Jago again distracts himself with Tetris, Sarah keeps her eyes on the rearview mirror. Something is nagging at her.

“I can’t believe those two followed us,” Sarah says. “How did they do that?”

“Couldn’t be following us. I’d notice,” Jago replies. Then he looks down at the phone in his hands. He turns it over and rips out the battery, examining it. “Tracking us, somehow.”

“Yeah, and worse, they’re doing it separately. Chiyoko wasn’t expecting An to be there. She tried to warn us.”

Jago screws up his face. “Then why did he try to save her?”

“Got me.” Sarah pauses. “You think he did? Save her?”

“I hope not. I hope both of those crazy bastards bought it.”

“Agreed. But how
did
they find us?” She watches Jago examining his phone. “Phone tracers? Internet trails? A chip?”

“All possible. So we scrap the phones for new ones ASAP and use the internet as little as we can and only at public terminals.”

“What about chips?” Sarah wonders. “When could we have gotten tagged?”

They both know.

“The Calling,” Sarah says. “That’s the only place.”

“What are we going to do?”

Silence for a moment.

Sarah says, “Until we have time to get scanned for real, we’re going to have to check each other out. Like, all over.
Every
where. We can’t take any chances.”

Jago can’t help it: his heart quickens at the idea of looking closely at Sarah’s naked body. And, in spite of everything, Sarah’s heart also quickens at the prospect.