Endgame: The Calling (28 page)

And it began.

And it happened.

Now they are looking at each other. Unsmiling. Just looking. Chiyoko feels desperate. She still has to leave. But, strangely, right now she doesn’t want to.

She blinks her big eyes and holds up a finger and gets out of bed. He watches her naked body glide to the chair with her things. She gets her phone. She returns. She is completely at ease in her skin.

He’s envious of her. Of her ease and purity. Envious and enamored.

She gets back in bed and opens a Chinese language notepad app. Types. Shows it to him.

That was nice. Really nice.

“It was. Thank you.” An sounds a little surprised, but also tries to be confident and assured. The lack of a stutter certainly helps in that department.

I wonder if any of the others . . .

“Ha. Maybe. Probably those two you were following, right?”

Chiyoko shrugs. It’s not like her to gossip. She doesn’t care what the Cahokian and the Olmec might be doing. She just wants to draw An out some more. It’s working.

He stares at her, speaks. “I want to tell you something. Some
things
. That I’ve never told anyone. Is that all right?”

He is being dumb,
she can’t help but think. Never has she been so glad to be a mute as in this moment.

She nods.

The whole time he speaks, he looks directly into her eyes. His voice is even and deliberate. His nerves are quiet, his tics still.

“When I was very young, I was normal. Two, three years old. I can remember it. Actually I can remember it very well. Playing with red rubber balls in the park, talking to my uncles, insisting on getting a little toy, running, laughing, talking without a stutter. None of what I am now—what I am when I’m away from you—was there. None of it. And then, when I turned four, I was told about Endgame.”

She pushes her head into the pillow. Chiyoko knew about Endgame from the day of her birth. The stories they told her as a baby were of Endgame. The songs they sang to put her to bed, the easy lies her parents told to get her to behave. Everything was Endgame, all the time. It troubled her, of course, and as she got older her apprehension grew, but she always accepted it. It was a part of her, and in a very real way, she was proud of who she was.

But not An.

“The day after I turned four, my father whipped me savagely with a switch for no reason. I cried, wailed, pleaded. It didn’t matter; he didn’t stop. And everything that came after was a nightmare. I was beaten, tortured, forced to learn by rote. If I cried, I was tormented more. I was made to do hundreds of repetitive tasks or movements thousands upon thousands of times. Left alone in a box only centimeters bigger than me for days at a time. Starved. Parched. Drowned. Overloaded. Eventually I learned not to cry. Not to scream or protest. I had to understand the hardness of it all. And I did. They broke me over and over and over again. They beat me regularly. They said it was the same way with them, and before them, and so it would be with me, and after me. When I was ten, they beat me so bad they fractured my skull and I had to have a steel plate put in my forehead. I was in a coma for two weeks. They didn’t care that I developed tics and spoke with a stutter when I came out of the coma, that half my skull is made of metal. As they made me—my own father and his brothers, and no women, none—they forgot the innocent boy that I started as. They forgot the little kid I once was. I, however, never have. And I never forgave them for what they did to me.”

Chiyoko can’t help but feel for him, moves closer to him.

“I killed them all when I was eleven. Drugged them while they were sleeping and doused them with the cheap rice whiskey they loved so much and lit them each on fire, one by one. The flames roused them, even with the drugs. They were terrified, and I loved it. I left my uncles to burn alone, but I watched my father. I said to them, in my mind, because my tongue was so jammed by speech, ‘You have reaped what you have sown.’ I watched my burning father for as long as I could, until I had to leave the house, because it was burning too. That day was, and has been until today, the happiest day of my entire life.”

Chiyoko puts a hand on his arm. He is silent. The silence is the purest Chiyoko has ever heard.

“I hate Endgame, Chiyoko. Despise it. Loathe it. If humanity is meant to perish, then it should perish. No one will have a chance to win as long as I live.” Pause. “No one, but now, you.”

And I have to leave you to make that happen,
she thinks.
I hope you will understand.

The silence resumes. She leans in and kisses him. Kisses him again. And again. She pulls back. They stare at each other. They still don’t speak.

He rolls onto his back and gazes at the ceiling. “The others are going to find it difficult to get around very soon. They will all be put on no-fly lists, along with as many aliases as I could glean. If I find more, I will add those names too. The only people who will find it easy to fly will be you and me. Oh—and the young one, Baitsakhan. I just couldn’t locate any electronic bread crumbs for that one. It’s like he’s never used the internet, or left Mongolia until a week ago.”

He isn’t dumb at all. He is in love. And whatever his goal, he is Playing. Playing harder than most, if not all, of the others.

I am lucky.

She nuzzles her head into his neck. She thumbs something into her phone. Shows it to him.

Thank you, An. Thank you for everything. I’m going to sleep now if that’s okay.

“Of course. I’m tired too.” Pause. “Will you stay here, in the bed with me?”

She smiles, puts her arms around him, kisses his neck.

Yes, she’ll stay with him.

Until.

Until.

Qatar Airways Flight 832, Seat 38F

Depart: Xi’an

Arrive: Dubai

The plane Kala is on has been flying for four hours and 23 minutes. It is passing the western edge of the Indian subcontinent and flying out over the Arabian Sea. Kala is in seat 38F. Christopher is in 35B. He knows where she is. She still has no idea even
who
he is.

Kala is not as obsessed with her visual clue as she had been, but it still turns constantly in her mind. The image was a mystery, and it clouded and distracted her. But it isn’t anymore. She knows what it is.

Gobekli Tepe.

She contacted 56X and he did some research and confirmed her belief. He provided a fact sheet and a list of internet links, not that Kala really needed them.

Every Sumerian knows Gobekli Tepe.

Here is a little of what the world “knows” about Gobekli Tepe: A huge Neolithic stone structure in southern Turkey, buried for millennia. Discovered accidentally by a local shepherd in 1993. Excavation did not start until 1994. It is believed to have been built by an unknown culture no later than 10,000 BCE. Predates the accepted time frames for the inventions of agriculture, metallurgy, animal husbandry, the wheel, and writing. The largest stones—standing on end and capped with huge blocks—weigh as much as 20 metric tons. They are carved with lizards, vultures, lions, snakes, scorpions, spiders. No one knows what they mean or how it was made. Gobekli Tepe remains shrouded in mystery.

Here is what Kala knows: It was one of the sites that the Annunaki visited, a site built for them. One of the places where they came down from the sky and from Du-Ku and gave the people their humanity. Put it in them, to be passed down through the ages. We all have it now, in us still, sleeping, hiding, waiting. The Annunaki showed this group of “first people”—for there were many such “first peoples” around the globe—how to farm and mine and weave and cultivate. Gave them writing. Showed them metal. Told them how to cast and mold it. Especially the magical, soft metal known now as gold. The Annunaki showed them how to find it, work it, craft it. Some believe the gold is why the Annunaki came to Earth. That they needed it for some reason, for some technology they had, and they knew it could be found in abundance on Earth. And while knowledge of the Annunaki has been lost, the cities and monuments built to honor them have not been.

There at Gobekli Tepe, as at other forgotten, buried, submerged, ancient places, the Annunaki pushed our evolution along with gifts unknown. Gifts as if from the gods themselves.

Which is exactly how they came to be known. As gods.

Gobekli Tepe.

That
is where Kala Mozami is going. Back to a place of beginning. She finds this fitting, since it is all going to end so soon.

Blessings.

As the image turns in her mind, she thinks of her line, wonders how exactly they will be delivered when she is victorious. Because, she believes, her line is different from the others.

Prospective Players are taken from their mothers and fathers in infancy and raised and nurtured by elders. They have names, and among themselves they use them, but officially they go by alphanumeric designations. 56X, for instance. Or Z-33005. Or HB1253.

Kala is known as 5SIGMA.

The reason they do this is to avoid what they call “blood sentiment.” Bonds are formed, of course, and feelings nurtured, but it is essential for Players of the 89th not to have blood relations. These, they have learned over the centuries, cloud thought and action. There are stories of other lines, dead lines, collapsing under the weight of their own relations.

So the 89s have no mothers or fathers. It has been this way for 4,394 years. Kala thinks of her favorite mentor. A woman known as EL2. Her name was Sheela. She died three years ago of ovarian cancer. She was a happy, carefree mentor. A good cook and fine martial artist. A master lock picker. She took Endgame seriously, but not with too much pepper. “Like my lamb,” she was fond of saying. Her whole approach to the end was that it would be a new beginning. That the game, when it came, would be the prism through which fear turned to courage.

This is what Kala was taught.

Blessings.

The turning image of Gobekli Tepe fades from her mind. She is going there; she need not dwell on it in this moment. She centers herself. Feels her breath and her heart. Rests her hands in her lap and looks out the window to the world below. The Arabian Sea is dark and blue. There is no land in sight. The clouds are intermittent and puffed and sun-kissed and bunched on the horizon like a gilded cavalry. The world below is as full and beautiful as it ever was.

She leans her head on the glass.

It all passes below.

She closes her eyes.

31.05, 46.266667
^lx

Emirates Airlines Flight 413

Depart: Abu Dhabi

Arrive: Mosul

Sarah and Jago’s plane is just south of Baghdad, 35 minutes from Mosul. They have not spoken about their good fortune in escaping China. They have not spoken about the things they need to acquire in Iraq. In fact, since boarding the first plane out of China, they have barely spoken at all. They are dog-tired. The Calling, the escape from the pagoda, the Terracotta Army incident, the fact that they still have the disk, all the flying—everything—is finally catching up with them. Also, they are about to land in Iraq on forged visas that Jago had hidden in his backpack. So they are a little stressed.