Endgame: The Calling (37 page)

The post on their Facebook page said,
Come party to the end of days where it all began! Lights and transcendence and dance trance in the desert. Wuck the Forld!

Christopher is listening to a group of girls giggle and gossip in Turkish. He can’t understand a word. Sarah used to giggle. He wonders if she still does. He rolls his head to Kala, who sits next to him in the aisle seat. “You’re sure she’ll be there?”

“For the thousandth time, yes. I spoke with her at the InterContinental.”

“After you knocked me out.”

“Yes, after I knocked you out.” She turns her green eyes to his. “Why don’t you be quiet so I don’t have to knock you out again?”

Christopher looks away from her. “Okay.” He sounds fearful. He
is
scared of Kala, but he’s also playing it up. He wants her to believe he is like a puppy or a lamb. Utterly defenseless.

But he is not.

He hates her too much to be afraid of her. Hates what she did to the mother and the girl on the raft. Hates that Kala is a Player, charged with saving some sliver of humanity. He feels sorry for her people, that they have such a lunatic for a representative.

She can’t be allowed to win.

And if he can help her lose, he will.

But she can’t know this. Not yet. Not until Christopher has a chance to strike. Not until Christopher finds a way to neutralize her superior speed, training, strength, gear—superior everything.

The road goes on. The kids on the bus are getting excited, rowdier. A boy blunders past them and knocks into Kala’s shoulder. He gets a look at her—young, smooth, beautiful—and tries to say something clever. She ignores him.

He speaks again and Kala looks up at him with her green eyes and smiles and reaches out and grabs his hand and twists it. The boy yelps and drops to his knees and he’s face-to-face with Kala. She says something in Turkish and the boy whimpers that universal acknowledgment: “Okay, okay.” He gets up and scampers away.

Christopher pretends not to have noticed the exchange. Still facing the window he says, “Tell me again what Sarah said.”

Kala’s annoyed. “No more questions. You’ll see her at this party.”

“All right.” He doesn’t say anything else. It is late afternoon. The countryside around them is rolling and dry but not bleak. It looks like western Nebraska after the harvest, only without any trees.

Kala frowns.

Kala knows that she is lying. The Cahokian has not returned her call. Not yet, anyway. She hopes she will. Maybe Kala has misjudged the situation and the Cahokian is a coldhearted bitch who doesn’t care for her precious, pining, nuisance boyfriend. Either way, they are going to Gobekli Tepe to seek Kala’s clue. If she hasn’t heard from Sarah by the time Kala finds it, she’ll kill him.

Christopher smiles to himself. He believes his ruse is working. Kala doesn’t know anything about him. He remembers going knife hunting for boar with his uncle Richard in the Texas panhandle. He thinks of the chase and plunging the blade into the wiry hide.

All he needs is a blade and an opportunity.

Bardi Turkish Tour Bus, on the D400 7 km from K
z
ltepe, Turkey

Five rows back, in a window seat on the other side of the bus, is a small girl in a red wig. She’s been bouncing her head to the beat inside a pair of bright blue oversized headphones for the duration of the trip. She has on heart-shaped sunglasses with gold rims. She has pouty blue-lipsticked lips and perfect skin.

Chiyoko knows Kala is there, and that Kala is with a non-Player boy who looks American. An tipped her off—sent her an email about the plane crash, how a Player was on board, how the two mysterious survivors should be investigated. In the days when Sarah and Jago were stalled in Iraq, Chiyoko kept tabs on the Sumerian.

And now, as luck would have it, the Sumerian is heading in the same direction as Jago and Sarah. According to the tracking chip, the Olmec and the Cahokian have been on the move, but are currently stalled at the Turkey-Iraq border. Eventually, all things will intersect, and Chiyoko will be there.

She pinned a bug on Kala’s shoulder and can hear every boring thing she and the American say. They are saying nothing now, so Chiyoko is enjoying her music.

And then, over the guitar, Kala’s phone rings.

Chiyoko mutes the music and turns up the transmission.

“Yes, this is she,” Kala is saying into her phone.

Kala stands and moves into the aisle. Chiyoko can just make out the boy asking, “Who is it?”

Kala doesn’t answer and walks down the aisle. “Yes. Again, I am sorry—”

Kala approaches Chiyoko, looks directly at her, doesn’t recognize her. Chiyoko smiles to herself, keeps bouncing.

“He is with me, yes.”

Pause.

“We are going to Gobekli Tepe. Have you heard of it?”

Pause.

“You’re where? What a coincidence. Though I suppose there aren’t really coincidences in Endgame.”

Pause.

“We’ll be there by evening.”

Pause.

“That’s right. I only want what the Olmec stole from the Calling.”

Pause.

“I swear it to you on my honor, Cahokian.”

Chiyoko has never heard more false words. Kala oozes with dishonor. If Sarah could see her, she would know not to trust her.

“There will be a party there tonight. When you arrive, call me. I hate to have to say it, but no surprises. Your friend will not survive a surprise, understand?”

Pause.

“Wonderful. I look forward to seeing you too, Cahokian. Blessings.”

She hangs up. Chiyoko is about to turn her music back up when she hears Kala say something in Turkish. Her tone is impatient.

Chiyoko looks toward the window, away from Kala, who is behind her. She eyes a thin sliver of mirror on the inside of her heart-shaped sunglasses, which allows her to see what is happening.

The aisle in front of Kala is barred by two large young men. One of them points at Kala, and Kala holds up her hands in front of her. Chiyoko opens a small bag in her lap and removes a small white straw. She sticks it in her mouth and wraps her tongue around it. She adjusts the angle of the mirror and sees two other men behind Kala. One of them is the boy who offended her, the one whose thumb Kala nearly broke.

Chiyoko pities the four fools.

The offended boy moves on Kala. She raises a leg and kicks hard into the boy’s stomach. People begin to look at the commotion. Chiyoko kneels in her seat and pivots. She notices the American boy walking down the aisle.

He’s not scared,
Chiyoko thinks.
He’s faking. Interesting.

Chiyoko looks back at Kala and sees her kick the man behind her square in the jaw.

Chiyoko doesn’t smile but is pleased to see martial arts practiced so expertly. Before anyone can act, Kala kicks into a handstand and away from the two flummoxed men in front of her. There is barely enough room between the floor and the ceiling, but Kala flips and lands on her feet, cracking both men across the shoulders with the sides of her palms. One goes down. The other, who is larger, does not.

He grabs Kala’s forearm with both hands and yanks her forward. He tries to head-butt her, but she angles her neck at the last second. The man doesn’t lose a beat—he starts dancing with his feet, trying to break a toe or an ankle. She is faster, though, and gets her feet up on the armrests behind her. Kala tries to jerk her arm free, but the large man grips her too tightly.

Behind Kala, the insulted boy is now brandishing a small knife.

As the large man continues to wrestle with Kala, the playacting American boy sidles up behind him. “HEY!” he shouts, and the man turns slightly. Christopher lets him have it hard on the eye with a right cross. Ocular bones shatter and the man cries out.

In the same moment, the insulted boy raises his knife. Kala doesn’t see him coming.

Chiyoko parts her lips and blows out her cheeks. Without waiting to see what happens next, she turns to the window and pulls the emergency release.

A dart zips through the air. No one sees it. It strikes the boy in the neck. Chiyoko knows how immediate and how painful it is. She had to endure the same kind of dart in her training many, many times.

The boy screams as he seizes in pain, grabbing his neck. Kala wrestles herself free from the man with the broken face. The commotion is big enough now that the bus is slowing down. Hot air from the desert wafts into the cabin as a window is jettisoned onto the road. Kala looks behind her. The boy writhes on the ground. The other attackers are holding up their hands like they don’t want any more trouble.

Kala spits and looks at Christopher. “Did you do that?” she demands, pointing at the spasming boy.

Christopher is glowering at the man with the broken face. “He deserved it!”

Kala shakes her head and points at the writhing boy. “No. That.”

Christopher sees him. “No.”

“Who did?”

“It wasn’t you?”

Kala steps past her assailants and grabs Christopher by the arm—
he is strong; I have underestimated him—
and leads him toward their seats. She looks left and sees the open window.

The girl with the red hair is gone.

Church of the Covenant, Kingdom of Aksum, Northern Ethiopia

Hilal kneels on the church’s roof. He has been kneeling there for 9,466 seconds. He has contemplated his clue, the simple circle.

Everything.

Nothing.

A circle of stone.

A planet.

An orbit.

A beginning.

An end.

Pi.

3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679821480865132823066470938446095505822317253594081284811174502841027019385211055596446229489549303819644288109756659334461284756482337867831652712019091456485669234603486104543266482133936072602491 . . .

No.

Not pi.

Something simpler.

He contemplates the being’s words.
The first move is essential.

Nothing decides everything. The future is unwritten. What will be will be.

The first move is essential.

The first move.

The key.