Existence (20 page)

22B Hateshinai T
ri, Naha, Okinawa, Japan

Three chimes of a small pewter bell awake Chiyoko Takeda. Her head lolls to the side. The time on her digital clock: 5:24. She makes a note of it. These are heavy numbers now. Significant. She imagines it is the same for those who ascribe meaning to numbers like 11:03 or 9:11 or 7:07. For the rest of her life she will see these numbers, 5:24, and for the rest of her life they will carry weight, meaning, significance.

Chiyoko turns from the clock on her side table and stares into the darkness. She lies naked on top of the sheets. She licks her full lips. She scrutinizes the shadows on her ceiling as if some message will appear there.

The bell should not have rung. Not for her.

All her life she has been told of Endgame and her peculiar and fantastical ancestry. Before the bell rang, she was 17 years old, a homeschooled outcast, a master sailor and navigator, an able gardener, a limber climber. Skilled at symbols, languages, and words. An interpreter of signs. An assassin able to wield the
wakizashi
, the
hojo
, and the
shuriken
. Now that the bell has rung, she feels 100. She feels 1,000. She feels 10,000, and getting older by the second. The heavy burden of the centuries presses down upon her.

Chiyoko closes her eyes. Darkness returns. She wants to be somewhere else. A cave. Underwater. In the oldest forest on Earth. But she is here, and she must get used to it. Darkness will be everywhere soon, and everyone will know it. She must master it. Befriend it. Love it. She has prepared for 17 years and she's ready, even if she never wanted it or expected it. The darkness. It will be like a loving silence,
which for Chiyoko is easy. The silence is part of who she is.

For she can hear, but she has never spoken.

She looks out her open window, breathes. It rained during the night, and she can feel the humidity in her nose and throat and chest. The air smells good.

There is a gentle rapping on the sliding door leading to her room. Chiyoko sits in her Western-style bed, her slight back facing the door. She stamps her foot twice. Twice means
Come in
.

The sound of wood sliding across wood. The quiet of the screen stopping. The faint shuffle of feet.

“I rang the bell,” her uncle says, his head bowed low to the ground, according the young Player the highest level of respect, as is the custom, the rule. “I had to,” he says. “They're coming. All of them.”

Chiyoko nods.

He keeps his gaze lowered. “I am sorry,” he says. “It is time.”

Chiyoko stamps five arrhythmic times with her foot.
Okay. Glass of water
.

“Yes, of course.” Her uncle backs out of the doorway and quietly moves away.

Chiyoko stands, smells the air again, and moves to the window. The faint glow from the city's lights blankets her pale skin. She looks out over Naha. There is the park. The hospital. The harbor. There is the sea, black, broad, and calm. There is the soft breeze. The palm trees below her window whisper. The low gray clouds begin to light up, as if a spaceship is coming to visit.
Old people must be awake
, Chiyoko thinks.
Old people get up early
. They are having tea and rice and radish pickles. Eggs and fish and warm milk. Some will remember the war. The fire from the sky that destroyed and decimated everything. And allowed for a rebirth. What is about to happen will remind them of those days. But a rebirth? Their survival and their future depend entirely on Chiyoko.

A dog begins to bark frantically.

Birds trill.

A car alarm goes off.

The sky gets very bright, and the clouds break downward as a massive fireball bursts over the edge of town. It screams, burns, and crashes into the marina. A great explosion and a billow of scalding steam illuminate the early morning. Rain made of dust and rock and plastic and metal hurls upward over Naha. Trees die. Fish die. Children, dreams, and fortunes die. The lucky ones are snuffed out in their slumber. The unlucky are burned or maimed.

Initially it will be mistaken for an earthquake.

But they will see.

It is just the beginning.

The debris falls all over town. Chiyoko senses her piece coming for her. She takes a large step away from her window, and a bright ember shaped like a mackerel falls onto her floor, burning a hole in the tatami mat.

Her uncle knocks on the door again. Chiyoko stomps her foot twice.
Come in
. The door is still open. Her uncle keeps his gaze lowered as he stops at her side and hands her first a simple blue silk kimono, which she steps into, and, after she's in the kimono, a glass of very cold water.

She pours the water over the ember. It sizzles, spurts, and steams, the water immediately boiling. What is left is a shiny, black, jagged rock.

She looks at her uncle. He looks back at her, sadness in his eyes. It is the sadness of many centuries, of lifetimes coming to an end. She gives him a slight bow of thanks. He tries to smile. He used to be like her, waiting for Endgame to begin, but it passed him over, like it did countless others, for thousands and thousands of years.

Not so for Chiyoko.

“I am sorry,” he says. “For you, for all of us. What will be will be.”

This is the story Aisling Kopp, Player of the 3rd line, does not know.

This is the story Aisling Kopp will never know, because the only one who could tell it is dead.

This is the story of her life and her line—the story of how she began and how the world will end.

This is the story of a hero and a traitor, neither of them certain which is which.

This is the story before the story.

Before Aisling.

The end:

Declan Kopp stands at the mouth of the cave, a 2,500-year-old sword in his hand. The heft of it calms him. The familiar grip reminds him of a time when the Falcata was rightfully his to wield, a simpler time, when he could lay its blade against flesh and enjoy the kill.

A time before Aisling was alive, a time before Lorelei was dead, a time when he was young and foolish and the sword was a symbol of all things just and good.

Now it's nothing but a symbol of the lines he's crossed.

The people he's betrayed.

The home he's left behind and the family to which he can never return.

The ancient sword, like the polished stone in his pocket, like the baby whimpering in the dark depths of the cave, is a precious stolen good.

Not his to take—but taken nonetheless.

That's what
they
would say, at least.

They:
the High Council. The La Tène Player. His father.

Everyone who matters to him, or once did.

Once, he had so much in his life. Family, love, hope—the belief that his life's mission was just and his future was fated. Once, he had certainty.

Now he has only his stolen child, and her birthright.

He has the Falcata, whose razor-sharp blade has taken 3,890 lives and awaits its next kill.

And he has a few precious hours, or maybe minutes, before they come for him and try to reclaim what he's stolen—before he and the sword make their last stand.

The child's cries echo through the dark.

“Peace, Aisling,” he calls to her. “Daddy's here. Daddy will protect you, I promise.”

She's too young to understand—and too young to recognize the lie. He can't promise to protect her. Only to try.

He's given up everything, trying to save his daughter from her fate—but still it's not enough. The cave is surrounded. There's no way out. No way down the mountain, not for him. The final battle is coming, and he will not survive it. He knows that.

He's lured them here, knowing that.

They will pursue him wherever he goes. He finally understands: There is no safe place for him and his daughter, not in this world. He fought; he lost. Letting them follow him here is his last, final, desperate effort to make them see the truth.

If they see it—if he can
make
them see it—everything he's given up will be worth it. Even his life.

The child cries and cries.

Declan can't stand the sound of it.

He turns his back to the cave opening, even though he knows never to turn your back on the enemy.

He retreats into the dark, following the sound of his daughter's cries, and lifts the squirming child into his arms.

At his touch, she quiets. He kisses her forehead, makes soothing noises, inhales the scent of her soft red hair, wonders if she will remember him.

If she will ever know how she came to be here on this lonely mountain, or why.

If she will ever forgive him for what he's done, and the things he has wrought.

Aisling is still in his arms when they come for him.

Two of them, their headlamps sweeping across the dank cave walls. He could hide in the shadows, for just a little longer, but there's no point. He's come here to face them.

To try, one last time, to show them the truth.

“We know you're in here, Declan.” It's a young woman's voice—Molly, his niece, who he's known since she was born. The La Tène Player. He knows exactly how deadly she is; he trained her himself. “Show yourself.”

Declan does as he's told, steps into the beam of light. Aisling squints and, recognizing Molly and the gray-haired man by her side, giggles and waves.

“We don't want to hurt you,” Declan's father says, lifting a rifle to his shoulder. “Just give us the child.”

The beginning:

Sometimes, Declan thinks, it began the day his inbox pinged with the strange anonymous message.
You've been lied to,
it said, no more than that, and he felt only a mild twinge of curiosity before sending it to the trash. Thinking spammers got more inventive every day. Thinking he was too clever to believe anyone's lies.

Maybe it began the day his curiosity got the better of him, and he finally responded to one of the strange messages.

Or the day he stood in dark woods, met the eyes of a cloaked stranger
who told him everything he'd ever believed in was a lie.
Don't you ever want to know why you fight, what you fight for?
the woman asked, before melting back into the shadows, and for the first time, Declan did.

Maybe, he sometimes thinks, it began long before, on the day he first took his father's rifle into his scrawny young arms, aimed at a paper target, pulled the trigger. “You will make a fine Player,” his father said, ruffling the fire-red hair that marked him as a Kopp. “You'll make me proud.”

But maybe it didn't really begin until he was a father himself. Until he understood what it meant to love unconditionally, with his whole self, to know he would give his life for his daughter. Until the High Council decreed that his infant daughter would be the Player once she came of age. Then he knew the time for waiting, for questioning, was over.

It was the time to act.

He managed to keep it together until the end of the High Council's meeting, knowing there was no point in arguing. He's aware of what they think of him: that he's bitter and washed up, that he was warped by his tenure as a Player, by the fact that Endgame never happened. Some of them—his father among them—think he's mad. So he smiled and nodded as if he were happy they wanted to turn his daughter into their puppet, an agent of needless death.

Then he hailed a taxi he couldn't afford and held his breath as it sped down the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, until the towers of Downtown Brooklyn came into sight and with them the dingy brownstone where his wife was waiting.

Now here he is, standing before the door of his apartment, taking a deep breath and preparing to change their lives forever. Thinking,
How did I get here?

But he knows exactly how he got here.

And he knows what has to happen next.

Declan bursts into the apartment and finally lets his panic off the
leash. “Pack everything!” he booms, into the tiny bedroom, where his money and passports are stashed, and his wife and little Aisling are sound asleep.

“Declan?” Lorelei blinks groggily on the bed, baby napping on her chest. She sleeps whenever the baby sleeps, which is never enough for either of them. “Quiet, hon. You'll wake her.”

“We've got to go,” Declan says, in a quieter voice. He's ripping through their tiny closet, throwing shirts and dresses haphazardly into a suitcase. “Now.”

“Go? Go where? It's nearly midnight.” Gently, Lorelei settles Aisling into her crib. She goes to her husband, stands behind him, and wraps her arms around his waist, lets him feel her slow, steady breathing, the rhythm of her heartbeat. “Take a breath, Declan.”

Declan breathes.

“Now, tell me what happened.”

Declan turns to face Lorelei, the love of his life, the outsider who, for love of him, adopted his traditions and his people as her own. She did it because he asked her to—and now, because of that, because of
him
, their daughter is in danger.

This is all his fault, he thinks, panic blooming again.

“Declan.” She can always tell when he's spinning out of control.

She's always been the only one who can stop him.

She fixes her gaze on him, and, for just a moment, he lets himself get lost in her sea-gray eyes.

“It's going to be okay,” she says, in soft, measured tones.

He knows he's no longer the man she fell in love with, the man she married.

That man was full of righteous conviction, strong and proud; that man had been raised to believe he could save the world.

“Whatever it is this time, we can handle it,” she says, pressing a smooth palm to his stubbled cheek.

She married that Declan—and got saddled with this one instead, till death do they part. Erratic, paranoid, afraid of shadows, consumed by
guilt. Shamed. Obsessed. Broken.

“Now, tell me what happened,” she says, once his breathing finally draws even with hers and his panic temporarily abates.

When he met her, he thought Lorelei was the miracle of his life.

Now he knows that the true miracle is that she still loves him, even now. But that might change when he answers her question. When she understands what loving him means for Aisling.

“The High Council has named the next generation's Player,” Declan says. He takes his wife's hand in his own, holds tight. “They've named our Aisling.”

She doesn't gasp.

She doesn't scream.

She doesn't yank her hand away and castigate him for drawing her into his nightmare.

She only nods and says, “Okay. So what does that mean?”

“What does it mean?” He's raging again. He needs to make her understand. “It means we have to get out of here, now. Disappear—go somewhere they can never find us.”

“Isn't that a little dramatic, Declan?”

“Lor, are you hearing me? They want her to be the
Player
. They want to turn her into a soldier, brainwash her into this Endgame madness, just as they did me.”

“I'm not saying I want that either,” she says. “But can't we just say no?”

Declan sighs. Were it only that easy. “It's not like this is a game of tag and they decided she's
it
,” he says. “This isn't a game you can just decide not to play.”

The High Council doesn't ask; the High Council commands.

Declan knew it was a possibility, of course. The Player has always been a Kopp, for as long as anyone can remember. But there are so many of them now, little Kopp children running around Queens, so many cousins he can't remember all their names. What were the odds they would choose Aisling? They thought Declan an apostate, a madman—what were the odds they would name his daughter the Player?

“We don't like it any more than you do,” the High Council's leader told him at the meeting. “But the stones have spoken.”

“Screw the stones!” he shouted.

The High Council looked scandalized, all of them but his father, who simply looked tired. Pop was the first to give up on him, the first to accept that Declan had turned his back on his people. Or at least that was how Pop saw it. The move to Brooklyn from Queens, the railing against Endgame, the marriage to an outsider, the trips all over the world in search of answers to questions he wasn't supposed to ask—Pop thinks Declan has rejected his family, his line, his sacred duties. Pop doesn't understand, none of them do, that Declan loves his family and his people fiercely. He's too old to be their Player, but he still sees himself as their warrior, charged with their protection. That's why he fights them so hard: not because he's a traitor, but because he's
loyal
.

“The High Council has made its decision,” Pop said. “We journeyed to Stonehenge and asked our question. The stones gave us their answer, and the answer is Aisling.”

A gaggle of old men measuring angles of light and lengths of shadow, their protractors consigning Declan's daughter to a useless life of blood. He wanted to scream, to overturn the table, to seize the Falcata from its place of honor on the council wall and slash off their heads—but none of that would help Aisling. So instead he pretended to accept it, and came home to do what needed to be done.

“If they want her to Play, she'll Play,” Declan tells Lorelei. “Whatever we want, whatever she wants, they won't care. They'll turn her into a killer. They'll make her help the gods with their genocide. And if she dies, they'll shrug and pretend to care, and then they'll throw another poor child to the wolves.”

What he doesn't tell Lorelei, has never told Lorelei, is what being the Player really means: how much blood has been spilled, even without Endgame. So much death, all of it justified as “necessary to protect the line,” necessary to prepare for Endgame. Declan has killed 23 people, and he remembers every single one of their faces.
Just as vividly, he remembers the face of the current Player when Declan helped her make her first kill—the face of a 13-year-old who has learned what she's capable of, who's drawn blood and murdered her childhood and is equal parts terrified and proud. These are the faces he sees in his dreams every night; this is the fate—guilt, sorrow, regret, obsession—he wants to spare his daughter. Terrible to imagine that she too will someday be tortured by the faces of those she's killed.