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John stepped toward her, and I raised my gun again. “You do not threaten her.”

“Keep it up, Mike,” John said. “Keep thinking with your dick. First Mary and now Kat. Is that the only thing that motivates you?”

“Back off,” I said.

We stared at each other for a long, silent minute. John could make any assumptions he wanted to, but I was here to save the world. Sure, I'd gotten into Zero line because of Mary, but now Kat and I had found something special. I was determined that, no matter what happened here in Munich, Kat and I were going to survive. We were going to stop the Players, and we were going to live.

Just then a little bell jingled. The door to the café had opened.

I turned my gun away from John and moved to the kitchen door.

It was Mary.

“Harappan, Nabataean, Donghu, Sumerian, Shang, Olmec. We've killed half of them,” I said. “The rest are all out there, waiting for whatever is supposed to happen at a Calling.”

We were still in the café, the place still heavy with anger and the smell of blood and gun smoke. Through the big glass windows, we could see the six remaining Players. A few were looking in our direction. They must have heard the gun.

But, instead of coming toward us, they all moved toward the sunburst, forming a circle around it. I moved to the window and opened it, hoping I could hear what was happening.

“So this is it?” the Sumerian asked. He was a short kid, maybe 16. He wore a red tunic and pants that reminded me of the clothes I'd seen people wear in martial arts classes. In fact, almost everyone appeared to be in fighting clothes, as if this were the Olympic judo trials. Most of them appeared to have a weapon of some kind—concealed, so as not to draw attention, but I knew what I was looking for.

There were four boys: the Sumerian, the Harappan, the Shang, and the Nabataean. The Olmec and the Donghu were girls. The Donghu was bouncing from foot to foot as if she were preparing for a boxing match. The Olmec was gorgeous—a tall, tanned girl with long, black, curly hair. She looked about my age—19, maybe.

She had a confused and angry look on her face.

“Who is that?” she said, speaking to the other five Players but pointing over at our café. She had virtually no accent. “The girl who just went into the restaurant. Who is that?”

“What are you talking about?” the Nabataean asked. He had a low voice, and he spoke perfect English, but with a British accent, and he stood as still as a tree, his arms folded. “This is about us.”

“Have you noticed there are only six of us here?” the Olmec said. “That girl who just went into the café was in Mexico. She was there right before the sign from Huitzilopochtli. The explosion.”

“Someone has already started Playing,” the Harappan said calmly. “And I don't think that it's Player versus Player. I think someone—one of you—has brought assassins from your line. They're watching right now. Maybe they have us in their crosshairs. This is not in the rules. The Makers are watching us, and they know who is a Player and who is not. They will not tolerate cheating.”

“I didn't do this,” the Shang said. “I don't need help to defeat the rest of you.”

“Perhaps should go see who in the café,” the Donghu said in broken English.

“Perhaps you should,” the Harappan said.

The Olmec girl pulled an obsidian knife from her belt. “One of you is lying. But it won't help you win. Let's get this started.”

“Do we wait for another sign?” the Shang said. “Or has the game begun?”

The Harappan spoke. “Someone thinks the game has begun. I do not know what the Makers will rule about this breach, but I do know that you will not need to wait long.”

The Shang, barely five feet tall, pulled a saber from his belt, eyeing the Olmec on his left and the Nabataean on his right. “Your lives will end on my blade.” The Harappan was directly across the circle from him. The Nabataean held out the walking staff he was holding and removed a leather cover that hid a spearhead. In response, the Harappan drew his sword—short, with a wicked curve.

The Donghu laughed. “What is this? Middle Ages?” She reached into the folds of her clothes and pulled out a pistol. “Sorry. I prepared.” She aimed at the Shang.

Next to me in the café windows, both John and Walter pointed rifles out the window, waiting for the action to start.

The Sumerian was the only one who didn't draw a weapon, but he was still smiling.

“Wait for them to kill each other,” Mary said. “We don't need to shoot if they're going to settle this here themselves.”

“We have clear lines of sight,” John said, “and there aren't many tourists right now.”

I heard a whistle, and then a Munich police officer came running over, pulling out his pistol.

“Halt! Nicht bewegen!”

Before I even got a look at the cop, the Sumerian flicked his hand and a knife buried itself into the policeman's chest.

To my side I heard glass break, and for a split second I thought John and Walter were firing, but it was the opposite: Walter fell back, a bullet in his forehead.

“No!” Mary shouted, and I grabbed Kat and pulled her down, out of sight. John fired his gun—a fully automatic AK-47. He had dropped low and was firing in long bursts, barely looking out the window.

“Who shot Walter?” Mary cried, on her knees next to him.

John ducked down and swapped out the magazine. “Shit. I think it was a sniper. Or it was that Donghu girl with the Sig Sauer.” He was scared. I'd never seen that look on John's face before. He was the one who was supposed to keep the rest of us calm. “But it couldn't have been the Donghu. Or it was just a really lucky shot.”

“Why would there be a sniper?” Kat asked.

John shook his head. “It's like they said. Maybe one of their lines really did send someone with them.”

“Isn't that cheating?”

“I . . . I don't know. Walter would know.”

“We're going to lose them,” I said. When no one responded, I peeked out the window.

“Don't!” Kat said, grabbing my arm. But I stayed where I was.

“I don't see anyone on the roofs,” I said. “No snipers. And we're safe.” The Donghu with the pistol was dead, lying in a crumpled heap, the Harappan standing above her, sword fighting with the Shang. The Olmec was running, no knife in her hand anymore—I didn't know where it had gone. She leaped for the Donghu's gun, but it was knocked away from her at the last minute by the back end of the Nabataean's spear. She turned the leap into a roll and was up on her feet in an instant, dodging the sharp end of the spear and trying for the gun again. The Sumerian was all alone, hunched over the dead cop's body.

The Olmec ran for the gun again, but the Nabataean was too fast and hit her in the face with the spear shaft. She fell to the ground, unconscious. The Nabataean looked at the fighting all around him, spotted the Sumerian, and threw his spear.

He had good aim, but, it seemed by luck, the Sumerian turned at the last minute, the blade slicing his clothes and skittering to a stop several yards away.

“We have to get out there,” John said. “We have to kill them all.”

Mary grabbed up Walter's rifle—an M14. That was what I'd trained on all summer. I knew the gun inside and out, but so did she. I grabbed for the pistol at Walter's side—a Beretta. I gave it to Kat, and took back my M1911. I kept the Colt Lawman with me, too, tucked in the back of my pants. It only had four rounds left.

John opened the door, ran into the square, dropped to one knee, and—didn't fire. He was searching for the sniper, if there even was one. Mary ran out and crouched behind a cement planter full of yellow and red flowers. She too looked for the sniper.

The Sumerian was up from the cop, holding his pistol. I aimed at him with mine, but he was at least fifty yards away, farther than I ever trained for.

I fired twice, from a standing position, both hands on the gun. But I missed. He ducked back into a crouch and shot back at me. I dove down next to Mary, trying to catch my breath. We had them vastly
outgunned, but they were moving with the skill and grace of Players, not wasting a motion, not ever unfocused.

I could hear the rat-a-tat of John's gun. He was taking short bursts now, but shooting up into an empty window.

“Shoot the Players!” I called to him.

“There has to be a sniper. That's the only open window.”

“You can't see a sniper,” I said. “And we need to kill the Players.”

“I will,” Mary said, taking a deep breath and then peering up over the planter to shoot through the flowers. Petals exploded into the air as she fired the semiautomatic rifle. I dared to look out to see what she was hitting.

Nothing. She couldn't see anything through those flowers. She was firing blind.

“Mary!” I shouted. “Give me the gun.”

“No,” she said, ducking back down.

“You're not hitting anything. You can't see.”

“It's suppressing fire,” she said, as she tremblingly fumbled with loading a new magazine—the last magazine we had with us, unless there was more ammunition on Walter's body I hadn't seen. “I'm fine. You shoot.”

Kat was using an upturned outdoor table as cover and was firing at the Sumerian, but because of her injury she was forced to use her left hand, and she wasn't hitting anything.

I took aim at the Harappan, who was still struggling against the Shang, their swords swinging and clashing, parrying and lunging. I squeezed the trigger and the gun jumped up. I wasn't good at these distances. I fired again and hit the Shang in the leg. He stumbled, and immediately the Harappan swung at his neck and practically beheaded him. The Shang fell to the ground, blood spurting out of his severed arteries. The Harappan was close to the unconscious Olmec, and he ran over to her and stabbed her in the chest.

The Nabataean was running to the Sumerian, or to retrieve his spear—I wasn't sure. I didn't even try wasting bullets on him while
he ran. Instead I focused on the Sumerian. I tried to follow all my training—sight the target, pull the trigger, don't squeeze it, and let out a long slow breath—but by the time I had let out the breath, the Sumerian was on his feet, running. I fired one shot at him and missed.

“Sniper!” John called, and started firing again.

I looked all around for him, trying to see what John was shooting at.

“Where?” I asked.

But he couldn't hear me over the noise of his gun. I turned to Mary.

“Mary.”

She was lying next to me, still bent at the knees but lying on her back.

She'd been shot in the eye, and there was a spray of blood out the back of her head, splattered across the cobblestones.

“Mary,” I said, tears immediately springing to my eyes. I reached a hand out to touch her cheek, but then recoiled. Her face was distorted and broken. The bullet hadn't gone cleanly through her eye but had hit her cheekbone and torn a hole through her face, fracturing the bones. It was too much, too horrible to see, too horrible to remember. But I knew I was going to remember this every day of my life. It was burning into my mind, searing my eyes like a cattle brand.

“I got him,” John said, letting out a long breath. “I got the bastard.”

“Where?”

He pointed up at the roofline. “Behind that chimney.”

“Are you sure?”

Kat answered. “I saw him fall. He's over there. By the Olmec.”

“Where did they go?” I asked, numbly noticing that the Players were gone.

Mary was dead.

“The Sumerian ran, and the Nabataean followed. The Harappan, calm son of a bitch, stabbed an extra time into all of the bodies. Made sure they were dead.”

“I'm sorry,” Kat said, eyes wet. “I tried to shoot him. I really tried. But my hand. I couldn't hold the gun steady. I'm so sorry.”

“It's okay,” I said.

“We don't outnumber them anymore,” John said, dropping his gun. “We need to move, and fast.”

“Don't we have to follow them?” I said.

“Of course,” John said, visibly shaken. “Who has bullets?”

“I have some,” Kat said, standing. “I wasn't counting my shots.”

“I've got three or four,” I said.

“Hide your guns,” John said. “I've got a Walther. One full magazine.”

“Then we're going to have to figure this out. But first we need to follow them. Hopefully they'll kill each other.”

I took Mary's hand and squeezed it one last time. I didn't care what she had done to me at that point. She didn't deserve to die, and not like this. And she deserved more than my just leaving her on the side of the road for some paramedics to find.

But like so many things in my life lately, I had no choice.

We ran after the Players.

I helped Kat check her magazine and saw she had four bullets left.

She was bleeding through the bandage on her arm—it was dribbling down her wrist and hand—but there was nothing we could do about it. We needed to follow the Players, and we needed to stay away from the cops.

All of us concealed our pistols.

“Will they split up?” Kat asked.

“No,” John said, speaking softly. “They were expecting the beginning of the game. But they didn't get any direction, any puzzle to solve, any answer to look for. So all they have as an objective is to kill each other. They have to do it now, today, because there's nothing else.”

“And we can't let them get away because we'll never track them down again,” I said.

“And they'll stick together, because there's nowhere else to go.”

We heard a whistle, and John stopped running. Kat and I did too. I took her good hand in mine. Moments later two policemen jogged past us toward the plaza.

“Are we still in this?” I asked. “I mean, do we even have a chance anymore? We've lost everybody. Kat can't shoot because of her hand. We are almost out of bullets, and we're going up against these guys? Did you see how they fight?”

“It was unbelievable,” Kat said. “Who can move like that?”

“And what if they have more backup, like that sniper?”

John took a deep breath. “We knew it was going to be hard.”

“What?” I asked, incredulous. “We knew it was going to be hard. We
didn't know that it was going to kill us all.”

“Walter and I tried to prepare you,” he said, but the words sounded hollow. “We're trying to save the world, remember? We trained all summer. Were you expecting this to be easy?”

“We trained all summer as a group. We were hunting as a team, in everything we did.”

“We're still a group.”

I rolled my eyes. “I meant we practiced as if we were outnumbering them. Like there were going to be more of us, like this morning when Kat and I went after Raakel. We only beat her because there were two of us.”

“Guys,” Kat said. “How do we even know we're going in the right direction?”

“Blood,” John said simply, and pointed at the roadway. “The Sumerian is bleeding.”

I hadn't noticed, but now that I was looking for it, I could spot it on the street. Not a constant trail, but every ten steps or so there was a drop. As we went farther, the drops got bigger, more the size of smallish puddles. And then they turned into small, patterned impressions, like the blood was now on the bottom of his shoe. He would have to stop somewhere soon and wrap the wound, but—

Mary's face came back to me, unexpectedly, filling my mind—just that image of her broken face, a face that I had kissed so many times. A girl who I once thought was mine. I'd been wrong. She'd played me for a fool, but I had still loved her. And now all I could see was her lifeless body, the gaping hole in her cheek.

I looked over at Kat, who glanced back at me and gave a weary smile.

The trail took us out of the Olympic Village and into the streets of downtown Munich.

“Look,” Kat said, pointing down a side street to where an ambulance was parked, surrounded by paramedics and one police officer. There was the Sumerian, sitting up, his back against the stone foundation of an old government building.

“Damn it,” John said. “Shit.”

“What?” I asked.

“The trail only leads to him. We don't know where the others are.”

“Is he alive?” Kat asked.

We looked down at him, waiting for some movement. The Sumerian lifted a hand wearily.. He seemed to be desperately signaling for help.

John immediately started walking toward the emergency team, and Kat and I followed.

“What are we doing, John?” I asked. “There's a cop there.”

“We have to kill all the Players,” he said, anger in his voice.

“Yeah,” I said, “but won't it be easier to track him down at the hospital? Besides, look at him—he's not going to make it much longer anyway. We should go after the others.”

“Don't talk,” he said, and put a finger to his lips.

I exchanged a look with Kat and let go of her hand, getting ready in case I needed to pull the gun from my waistband.

“The Nabataean and the Harappan can't be far. They're trying to kill the Sumerian too, remember.”

I nodded. The two of them seemed the calmest under pressure. I didn't imagine one of them would run from the other. They'd face off, sword versus spear, somewhere nearby. An alley, maybe, or a parking garage—somewhere out of the way, out of sight.

I didn't know what John expected to do here. Kat's hand was red with blood and the paramedics would likely want to treat her too. And the cop would be suspicious of the three of us.

If there was anything helping us today, it was the hostage crisis with the Palestinians and Israelis. The police probably had a lot of manpower surrounding the Olympians' apartments, which would take a lot of cops off the streets. They were overwhelmed and couldn't chase Players across the city.

“Where are we going after this?” Kat asked.

“We're going to find the other two,” I said.

“That's not what I meant. I mean when we're done today. Where are
we going? Not back home.”

“You speak German,” I said. “We could stay here.”

“How about England?” she said. “Forge some forms and get student visas.”

“If we're going to forge papers anyway, let's just get our citizenship.”

John again told us to be quiet. “Kat, talk in German. Pretend to be tourists.”

We were only twenty yards from the cop, and he turned to look up at us.

“Geh weg,”
he said.
“Dies ist ein Tatort.”

“Wir suchen für den Olympic plaza,”
Kat replied.

“Gehen Sie weg; oder werden Sie verhaftet.”

The cop turned his back to us to speak to the paramedics, and John pulled out his gun.

“No!” I cried out, but my voice was covered by the sound of three gunshots. One for each paramedic and one for the cop.

“What are you doing?” Kat screamed.

“I'm finishing Endgame,” he said, walking up to the bodies. The Sumerian watched us through droopy eyes. John took the cop's gun—a Sig Sauer—and held it out to me.

“Where are the others?” John asked the Sumerian.

“Fighting,” he said. “I have lost.”

I noticed now that he had a new injury—there was a half-bandaged wound on his torso.

“Where did they go?” John insisted.

The Sumerian shook his head, coughing up blood. He raised his hand slowly and pointed. “That way. They will be close. Neither is wounded, and they want to fight. Are you the pacifists?”

John stood up, shaking his head. He walked to the end of the narrow street.

“What do you mean?” Kat asked.

“Three Americans visited me this morning. They told me to stop fighting. They said all I had to do was walk away and never Play.”

Kat nodded emphatically. “Yes. That's us.”

“I will walk away.”

Kat stretched the bandage around his side. “It's deep,” she said. “I think you've got a punctured lung.”

“Move,” John said, returning. “I think they're just a few blocks away. You can hear a crowd to the west.”

Kat stood up and reached into the ambulance for a box of bandages. I helped her, since she couldn't use her right hand.

BANG!

I spun around to see John pointing a smoking gun at the Sumerian. There was a bullet hole in the kid's forehead, and he began slumping over onto his side.

“What the hell was that for?” I shouted.

John looked back toward the cross street. “We're killing all the Players. No mistakes.”

Kat threw the box onto the road. “He said he was going to walk away. He said he was going to stop.”

I pointed my gun—the cop's gun—at John. “What happened to all of our rules? What happened to trying to talk to the Players?”

“Of course he would say he was going to stop. We had him defenseless and injured. He was saying what he needed to say to survive.”

“You've made me a murderer, John,” I said. “I was just a college kid. I just wanted to make a difference. I wanted to protest the war. I wanted to get out from under my dad's thumb. And this is where we end up? Shooting a wounded teenager in the street?”

“You've known what we were about since day one,” he said, tucking his gun into the back of his pants. “You just pretended that we could do this without killing.”

“I pretended?
I
pretended? You asked me to write the dialogues. You had me train the others on how to sell, how to build a relationship of trust with the Players. You told me to do that, and now you're saying
I
was pretending?”

“We have to stop them all,” John said, looking back over his shoulder.
“They've killed enough of us. They killed Mary—didn't you see that? And now we outnumber them again. Three on two, and soon it may be three on one, if the Harappan and the Nabataean are really trying to kill each other.”

“We don't know what they're trying to do,” Kat said. “We don't know where they are.”

“Follow the sirens. Speaking of which, we need to get out of here.”

I was fuming. “Yeah, because of
your
gunshot.”

“Yes,” he said, turning back to face me. “Yes, because of my gunshot. We're killing them all. Every Player. And if you don't like that, then you should have damn well said it three months ago. When you killed that sheriff, you knew what you were in for. Every time you sighted down your gun at the range, you knew that you were preparing for war. You could have left at any time, but you didn't. You stayed, and you trained right along with the rest of us. You delivered the invitations, and you killed the Minoan. You're a part of this, Mike, whether you like it or not, so don't act like you're morally superior. Do what you need to do to get your head straight, but do it now, because we're going to end this game.”

I kept my gun on him for a long ten seconds.

“It's okay,” Kat said, putting her hand gently on my back. “Let's get it over with. When we're done, we won't have to see John ever again. We won't have to think about this ever again. For all we know, the Players are killing each other right now anyway. We can do this, and get it over with, and leave. You and me. Together.”

I let out a long breath and then lowered the gun.

“Come on, then,” John said. “I think they went this way.”

We ran to the left down the cross street. I was getting lost, not knowing which way was north or south, east or west. I just followed John and held Kat's hand.

How were we supposed to stay in this country? We'd spoken easily about forging papers, but it was Barbara and Douglas who had done all of that, and they hadn't come back from their mission to kill the
Olmec Player.

As we walked behind John, I pulled the walkie-talkie out of my backpack. I sent a call out on our channel.

“Anyone listening, this is Mike. Does anyone copy?”

There was static.

“This is Mike,” I said again. “Anyone listening?”

Nothing.

“Maybe their walkie-talkie is turned off,” Kat said. “Or in a backpack, like ours was. We need to get back to the safe house.”

We walked on, hearing sirens here and there but not seeing anything. These streets were so narrow that I wondered if John was actually following a real sound or just echoes.

“Do we know who that sniper was working for?” I asked John.

“I couldn't tell. His face was dark, but I don't know if that was because of his skin color or because of camouflage paint. He was doing a really good job of hiding on that roof.”

“So he could be either Nabataean or Harappan, right?”

“Or none of the above,” Kat said. “Besides, he's dead. Or she's dead. I thought she looked like a girl when she fell.”

“But if she was, say, Nabataean, that would mean that the Nabataeans are cheating by bringing along extra combatants. There could be another up here somewhere, ready to take us down.”

“Could be,” John said, and then he held up his hand and made a fist—the sign to stop.

Kat and I froze, watching and waiting while John moved forward to look around the end of a building. He stopped, and his hand went to his gun. I grabbed mine, and Kat awkwardly took hers in her left hand. We slowly moved around the edge of the building, following John's lead.

I could hear the fight now, the scrape of metal on wood, the heavy breathing and grunting of exhausted combatants.

And then I saw them.

It was a wide avenue, with a wide island in the middle of the street.
Among the trees, benches, and flowers, the Nabataean and Harappan were locked in an epic battle.