Endgame: The Calling (54 page)

“They can’t have it. We would know.”

“Yes, Hilal. Hush now.”

“I could be . . . I could be . . . I could be wrong. . . .” He fades out. Eben ibn Mohammed al-Julan ties off Hilal’s good arm. Grabs his wrist and turns it, taps the inside of his elbow. Hilal jolts back to consciousness. “I could be wrong!”

“Peace, Player.” Eben takes a needle from the table, primes it, pushes a finger against a plump vein, lays the cold steel on the skin, pulls the plunger, pushes it slowly in.

“I could be wrong,” Hilal says. “The Event could be inevitable; it could be . . .” He trails off, fades again. Eben pulls the needle free and applies pressure. The pulse is still good. His respiration normalizes; there is no pain. Eben looks at the Christ. The lamplight flickers. The power is still gone. The generators still dormant. But he has spoken with someone on a hand-crank radio, learned that a solar flare knocked everything out, but only in northern Ethiopia.

He prays.

Because what out there can direct a solar flare? And how would it know what Hilal was attempting to do?

He prays more.

Grits his teeth.

The beings are not supposed to meddle.

Liu Residence, 6 Jinbao Street, Apartment 66, Beijing, China

An Liu reads Chiyoko’s email 134 times.

His body can’t stop

SHIVERblinkblink-SHIVERSHIVERSHIVER

SHIVERblink-SHIVERSHIVERSHIVER-SHIVER

BlinkSHIVERblinkblink-blink-blinkSHIVER-blinkblinkblinkSHIVER-blink

SHIVERSHIVER-blink

can’t stop shaking.

He crawls across his Beijing safe house to her remnants on the soft red cloth. It takes him 22 minutes to travel 78 feet. It has never been this bad. Never.

BlinkSHIVERSHIVERblink-blinkSHIVERblinkblink-blink-blinkSHIVER-blinkblinkblink-blink.

He touches her lock of hair, and his body still trembles but not as badly.

He won’t
blinkblink
won’t wait.

After he set off the dirty bomb in
SHIVERblink
in Xi’an, his homeland is too hot anyway.

He
blink
will go.

Blinkblink
he will take his toys
SHIVER
and go to his love.

He will change the way he Plays.

And when he finds her, stands in her presence, stillness.

Malpensa International Airport, Milan, Italy

One of Aisling’s shots nicked the Bush Hawk’s gas line and they had to make an emergency landing in another lake, 17 km to the west. They abandoned the Bush Hawk and hiked into the tiny town of Bondione and stole an old Fiat. Since touching down on the lake it has taken them five hours and 17 minutes to reach the airport.

Too long.

Sarah navigates the Fiat into the covered lot north of the terminal and winds up the ramp. The trio is silent. They are frayed, exhausted, filthy.

They pass car after car. The vehicles belong to people. People on trips. People working. People vacationing. People living their lives.

Not thinking that it’s all going to end.

Sarah slams the brakes.

“Damn it!”

“What?” snaps Jago, peering around for snipers.

She points.

“The Peugeot!”

She pulls into an empty spot next to their old car. The big flower on the hood seems to mock them. Sarah says, “At least we know Chiyoko was here.”

“
And
we know she’s got a big head start,” Jago adds.

Thinking of the plane crash he and Kala had to endure, plus the emergency landing of the Bush Hawk, Christopher says, “Maybe this is a sign that we should drive.”

Sarah kills the engine. “No. This means we
have
to fly. We’ve gotta catch up.”

“She’ll get Earth Key as soon as she can,” Jago adds. “We have to be there when she does.”

Christopher folds his arms. “All right,” he says, disappointed.

Jago turns in his seat. “
You
could drive. We’ll meet you there.”

Sarah snickers, in spite of herself. Christopher frowns, but tries not to take it personally. He’s decided to endure Jago until Sarah gets tired of him. He’s sure that, eventually, she’ll get tired of him.

“Screw you, Tlaloc,” Christopher says. “I haven’t left yet, and I’m not going to now.”

Jago opens his door. “Too bad.”

They get out and check the 307, digging the spare key out of a secret compartment behind the rear bumper. They open it up; everything is still in place. The guns, the computers, their clothing, personal items. Their various passports and visas, their extra credit cards. The med kit, including five preprepped shots of cortisone. Sarah injects two into Chris’s lame knee. He winces but feels better immediately. He leaves a crutch in the car, opting for only one. They clean up, pack their carry-on bags.

“What should we do about guns?” Sarah asks.

“You can’t bring them on a plane,” Christopher says.

“You figure that out all by yourself?” Jago asks.

“Screw you.”

“Kidding, amigo.” Jago opens a case and produces a small semiautomatic pistol unlike any Christopher has ever seen. It is white with a matte finish. “We
can
bring these on a plane,” Jago says proudly.

“Ah, I forgot about those,” Sarah says reverently.

“What the hell are they?” Christopher asks.

“Ceramic and graphene-polymer plastic pistols,” Jago says, turning one in his hand. “Everything down to the ammo is nonmetallic. Completely invisible to imaging equipment.”

“What—you’re just going to carry them on board?” Christopher asks.

“Nah, we’ll check a bag.”

“Okay,” Sarah says slowly. She picks up the 2nd pistol and slides in a clip and grabs an extra one. Jago does the same.

Jago looks at Christopher. “You want one?”

Christopher shakes his head. “I’m good, dude.”

Jago snorts. “Good. We only have two.”

Sarah puts a hand on his arm. “Ready?”

“Hell yes.”

They’re not happy to do it, but they leave the rest of the guns and black-market electronics behind. Jago tosses Chiyoko’s sword into the trunk as well. They close the trunk and lock the car.

“I’ll be back for you, baby,” Jago says, patting the hood affectionately.

They leave and walk along the sidewalk and into the terminal. From force of habit Sarah counts the number of armed people. Fifteen black-clad officers with Beretta ARX 160s. Two K-9 units with large Alsatian dogs. Two undercovers smoking cigarettes with the obvious bulk of shoulder holsters under their sport jackets. All minding their business and watching the throng.

Christopher watches Sarah’s eyes, noticing the cops too. “Maybe we should ask one of these guys if they’ve seen a little Japanese cat burglar?”

“Don’t even joke,” Sarah says, focusing her eyes straight ahead. “No delays.”

Christopher limps a few steps behind her and Jago. He is, Christopher realizes, a pretty big delay on his own. He tries to keep up. They queue at the British Airways desk. They wait patiently. No trouble. They move up when the line does. They don’t talk. They stare at their smartphones, just like everybody else. They don’t look at all like they’re Playing a game for the fate of the world. They don’t look like the types who would carry high-tech guns through an airport.

“Avanti!”
the desk agent calls.

Sarah and Jago pocket their phones and approach the agent, looking no more suspect than a pair of dusty, travel-sick kids on a gap year. Christopher leans on the counter next to them. He hands over his real passport. Sarah and Jago use fakes that Renzo made them. New identities. They buy tickets for Heathrow. The earliest flight leaves in two hours. No one asks any questions, and the bag with the guns disappears down a conveyor belt. Jago chuckles as they walk away from the desk. “By the way, friend,” he says to Christopher, “our luggage is in your name.”

Christopher’s eyes widen. “You fuck.”

“It’s fine,” Sarah says, placating Christopher but giving Jago a stern look. She actually doesn’t think it’s a bad move. On the off chance that the guns do raise red flags, it’ll be Christopher who’s questioned. She and Jago can slip away and move on. They’d come back for him after confronting Chiyoko.

As they walk through the tunnel toward the gate, Sarah and Jago once again outpace Christopher. It was just yesterday that Sarah spent the night with him, but now all that is forgotten. Aside from when she let him put his hand on her thigh in the Bush Hawk, they’ve hardly touched, and now it’s Jago who she feels more connected to. The two Players are focused but also excited, crackling with an energy that Christopher can’t understand.

He’s not excited about the trip to Stonehenge. He doesn’t care about Earth Key, or the Event, or the Sky People. Now he only cares about Sarah.

Christopher is afraid.

Afraid for her, and afraid for himself.

Afraid because he can’t stop thinking that one of these two Players is going to die.

Saint Gabriel General Hospital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Baitsakhan is down two cousins, one brother, and now one hand. But he still has Maccabee Adlai. They are at a private hospital in Addis Ababa, paid for by Maccabee. Baitsakhan sits in bed, slurping ice water through a straw. During the rushed surgery to save him, he received 12 pints of blood, two of them donated by Maccabee himself, a universal donor.

“First the Aksumite, then the Harrapan,” Baitsakhan says, already thinking about the scores he has to settle.

Maccabee sits in a wooden chair next to him, intently studying the orb in his hands. “I don’t know.”

“Blood for blood, brother. Blood for blood.”

Maccabee shakes his head. “No. We have to change tactics. This can’t be about revenge.”

Baitsakhan rubs the gauze on his stump. “Why not? If we kill them all, then one of us will win. Not counting us, only eight remain. Maybe fewer.”

A dull light grows in the orb. “No, Baitsakhan. You weren’t listening to kepler 22b. One of us
can
win if all the others are dead, but we are guaranteed nothing. We still need the keys. We still need to satisfy the Makers.”

Baitsakhan spits on the floor. “We have one of the keys already. Trust, brother. My way will work.”

Maccabee is silent. The orb begins to glow, but the light is not overpowering. Baitsakhan is so consumed with murderous fantasies that he doesn’t notice. Images flicker within the dark globe. A jagged white peak. A dead tree. A vast fire. A little girl playing in a yard, a peacock, a person screaming. A rough circle of stones. A labyrinth cut in a field of wheat. A distinctive three-stone arrangement.

Stonehenge.

The image of Stonehenge stays, grows, changes to show a figure, a person, walking through it. It’s the Mu, Chiyoko Takeda.

Maccabee clicks his tongue. A revelation. “This isn’t Earth Key, Baitsakhan.”

“What?”

“It isn’t a key at all.” Maccabee stares at his partner with searing eyes. “It’s a transmitter.”

“A
transmitter
?”

“Yes.”

“Transmitting what?”

Maccabee looks at the orb again. His lips curl into a sneer as the Mu picks her way through Stonehenge. “Showing Endgame. It’s not meant for us. It’s meant for . . .
Them
, the keplers.”