Rules of the Game

An spits, the stream thick with black ash.

The Nabataean is gone.

AISLING KOPP, GREG JORDAN, GRIFFIN MARRS, POP KOPP, SARAH ALOPAY, JAGO TLALOC, SHARI CHOPRA

Heading south along the Teesta River near Mangan, Sikkim, India

Aisling looks over her shoulder into the back of the jeep. Shari Chopra slumps in her seat, an IV bag pinned above the window, a tube running into a spike in the back of her hand. Dripping into that line on a regulator is a small dose of BZD, keeping her good and asleep for as long as necessary. All the way to Thailand, where Jordan is taking them and where Stella Vyctory awaits.

The jeep bumps along the road, mountains looming all around. Aisling thinks about Shari. After the standoff with Sarah and Jago, Aisling followed Marrs into the deepest chamber of the Harappan fortress and saw the raven-haired mother of Sky Key, alive and more-or-less well.

This is a wrinkle that has Aisling feeling very conflicted. On one hand, Aisling suspects that Shari is one of the decent Players, one who doesn’t deserve a meaningless death at the hand of a psychopathic Player. She’s glad that Baitsakhan and Maccabee didn’t kill her. But on the other hand, as far as Shari’s concerned, Aisling probably is that psychopathic Player. If it weren’t for Aisling, Shari’s family would be alive. Sure, her daughter would probably still have been taken by the Nabataean, but all the Harappan who’d taken refuge in the mountains would be breathing if it weren’t for Aisling and her ragtag death squad.

Aisling tries to reason out of this by blaming Endgame for what happened—Aisling didn’t make Shari’s daughter one of the fucking keys, Endgame did. Aisling was only doing what she thought she had to do to stop Endgame, and Shari, for her part, was only doing what any mother would do.

All of which makes Aisling want to stop Endgame—and punish the Makers, especially kepler 22b—all the more.

Aisling knows in her bones that when Shari wakes up she won’t be in a very forgiving mood. All Shari will want is revenge, and Aisling knows that revenge is a soul-gnashing affliction that operates completely outside the realm of logic. Sure, Aisling could wave her hands at Chopra and plead for reason, insisting that Endgame killed all of Chopra’s people, but Aisling also knows that’s bullshit. She killed those people, along with Jordan and Pop and the rest of her team. And for better or worse, Chopra is now slumped behind Aisling in the jeep.

Jordan drives, Aisling wedged between him and Marrs in the front seat. Whenever Jordan shifts gears he reaches between Aisling’s legs. He half apologizes each time until Aisling tells him to shut up. He does. Sarah’s in the middle of the backseat, between Shari and Jago, her body folded awkwardly into Jago’s lap, her injured arm, which Aisling patched up, bent into a sling. Jago is awake and mostly silent. His hand rests on top of Sarah’s head, his fingers entwined in her hair. He’s said very little, but when he does speak he’s been even-tempered and friendly.

Pop is a different story.

He’s in the wayback, jigsawed into the gear they couldn’t leave behind—mainly guns and a mobile satellite uplink that Marrs uses for internet access. Pop has not said a single word since they forged this latest alliance. He hasn’t asked about Sky Key or spoken to Sarah or Jago at all. He hasn’t said if he’s on board with the plan to meet Stella, and he hasn’t said he’s against it.

To Aisling, his silence is the same as a full-throated scream. She knows that Pop hates the course they’re charting. It goes against every one of his beliefs. It is not what Endgame is meant to be.

Aisling is not sure how she’s going to handle Pop, but she knows that it will fall on her to handle him when the time comes.

The others don’t seem as concerned. Especially Jordan and Marrs.

Ever since getting into the jeep, Marrs has been tearing around the internet, going from news sites to encrypted government forums to deep-web hovels full of rumor and intrigue, providing an account of recent world events and bantering with Jordan on pretty much every point.

“The space agencies have been scrambling since the kepler’s announcement. At the moment, NASA’s got Abaddon falling in the North Atlantic,” Marrs says in his nasal monotone. “South of Halifax. Gonna wipe out a lot of land. A lot.”

“Fucking hell,” Jordan says. “What’s DC doing?”

“Moving. Lock, stock, and barrel. Looks like to Colorado.”

“NORAD?”

“Naturally. Gold’s going through the roof, New York’s under martial law but seems pretty tame. Boston is coming apart at the seams, though. One of the New England Patriots did a murder-suicide with his wife and kids—dog too.”

“Any flags on other Players?” Jordan asks.

“There’s some indication that the Shang is in Kolkata, but it’s pretty tenuous, and my Bengali is shit. No sign of the Nabataean yet. Oh—and looks like someone’s destroying monuments.”

“Besides Stonehenge?” Jordan asks incredulously.

“Yeah. This morning while we were trekking from the fortress, a group of nongovernmental operators that remains anonymous, at least to our guys, blew up the ziggurat at Chogha Zanbil. That was the Sumerian one.”

“Stella won’t like that.”

“No, she won’t,” Marrs says.

Jordan whips the jeep around a slow-moving truck, guiding them into oncoming traffic, which is de rigueur for India. A motor scooter buzzes out of the way into the shoulder and passes them.

“What the hell are you guys talking about?” Jago demands.

Aisling nods. “Yeah, what are you talking about?”

“Your line has a monument that is more sacred than any other—right, Aisling?” Jordan asks.

“Jordan, you know it was Stonehenge.” Asshole, Aisling thinks.

Jordan says, “And you, Tlaloc?”

“We do. It’s on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico.”

“La Venta,” Marrs says.

Jago looks a little surprised, and thinks that maybe these guys really do know more than he thought they could about Endgame. “Sí. That’s what we call it.”

Jordan asks, “And your girlfriend?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Jago says. He’s lying, though. He knows the exact location of the prime Cahokian monument. It’s called Monks Mound, and it’s in southern Illinois, not far from St. Louis, Missouri. He knows this because it’s where the Cahokian Rebellion of 1613 occurred. The rebellion that the Olmec oracle, Aucapoma Huayna, told him all about. The rebellion that branded the Cahokians as unworthy of winning Endgame, which was precisely why Aucapoma had implored Jago to end his alliance with Sarah Alopay. No, more than that—the Cahokians were so dangerous that Aucapoma had ordered Jago to kill Sarah so he could prove to the Makers that he’d not been poisoned by the Cahokian Player.

Too late for that.

As much as he might want, Jago isn’t about to start talking about all of this. It would be too revealing, too … complicating. So he plays dumb, and they believe him.

“Well, her line has one,” Marrs says. “Called Monks Mound. Big tourist attraction now, kinda like Stonehenge but not as well-known.”

“Never heard of it,” Jago says.

“I have,” Aisling says. “Used to be the center of some huge Native American city.”

“Once upon a time it was the largest city in all of the Americas, long before any Europeans outside of Vikings even knew about the New World,” Jordan says.

“All right,” Jago says, “but why are these places so important to finishing Endgame?”

“What he said,” Aisling adds, sticking a thumb in Jago’s direction.

“I’m going to let Stella fill you in on the details,” Jordan says as he works the jeep through a series of accordion-like turns, “but we’re certain that Sun Key is hidden in one of them.”

Jago leans forward, nearly pushing Sarah’s head off his leg. “No shit?”

“No shit,” Marrs says. “And if they all get toasted before the Player with the first two keys finds it, well …”

“No one will be able to win,” Aisling says.

“Bingo,” Jordan says.

“Who is this Stella woman?” Aisling asks.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” Jordan says.

Jago leans back in his seat, resettling Sarah’s head across his thigh. “Whoever she is, you’ve gotten my attention, Mr. Jordan. I look forward to meeting her.”

“I can promise that the feeling is mutual. She has been waiting to meet you—all of you—for a very, very long time.”

SARAH ALOPAY, JAGO TLALOC

Heading south along the Teesta River near Mangan, Sikkim, India

Sarah is not asleep. She hasn’t slept at all. And while Jago has been friendly with the others, and truly does want to meet this Stella Vyctory, he’s not convinced. Not by a long shot.

Sarah slumps across Jago’s lap, her hand resting under her hair and on Jago’s thigh. She taps out messages to him in Morse code, and he answers in the same code by squeezing her scalp so softly that the movement can only be felt by her and not seen by anyone else.

Their conversation has been long and a little testy, and it revolves around one question, which in this moment Sarah asks for the seventh time: Should we really trust these people?

And Jago answers, We have to for now. If what Jordan says is true, then maybe we now know of another way to stop this thing. Even if Abaddon hits, and the world is changed, we might have a way to prevent a Player from winning. And if Jordan isn’t right, it seems that these people really do want the same thing. They can help us, Sarah. We can help them.

Help us so that we can stay together.

Yes. So that we can stay together.

We stick with them, then.

Yes.

All right, she taps. I only wish …

What?

I wish we were alone, Feo. I wish it were just you and me.

This is the first time she’s said it all day.

And Jago squeezes back, I do too, Sarah. I do too.

HILAL IBN ISA AL-SALT

Ayutthaya, Thailand

Hilal is also headed to Stella Vyctory, except he is much, much closer.

He hustles out of the Phra Nakhon Provincial Railway Station, turning this way and that, slicing through a mass of people. He went directly from the Bangkok airport, where he last spoke to Stella, to the central Bangkok train station. He got on the first train to Ayutthaya and now he makes his way on foot to Stella, who is a short four kilometers away.

He goes south from the station through a platoon of food carts, smelling fried things and salty things and sweet things. Squid, mushrooms, pork, onions, garlic, sugar, basil, citrus, peanuts. His large rucksack claps his shoulders as he jogs. It contains his twin machetes, a change of clothing, a first aid kit for his wounds, the device from the ark (which has ceased working since the kepler’s announcement), and the incomprehensible book he took from Wayland Vyctory’s hotel suite in Las Vegas.

A few blocks from the station a large group of worshippers blocks the street and forces him to detour into the Wat Pichai Songkram temple complex. Monks are everywhere. Bald and saffron-robed and busy. Devotees wearing conical shade hats and carrying parasols surround the holy men, pleading for mercy and praying to Lord Buddha. Hilal does the same in his mind as he rushes past the gilt icon covered in marigolds and lotus blossoms and surrounded by a pyre of incense. He searches for a way out of the complex so he can pick up the pace again and get to Stella as soon as possible.

After a minute he finds himself on the banks of the Pa Sak River. He turns south and resumes running. Longtail boats ply the cloudy water and schools of huge catfish boil to the surface to eat bread being thrown by children. It is nice to see young people doing everyday things, to witness innocence.

It is also nice to feel the sun.

He is afraid that, thanks to the impact winter that is likely to shroud the skies after Abaddon, sunlight will be something of a luxury soon.

He is very afraid of this.

He tilts his disfigured face to our star as his feet carry him toward Stella.

The sun. Earth’s life force. The photons that bounce off his skin and everything else around him left the solar surface eight minutes and 20 seconds ago. Eight minutes and 20 seconds! They hurtled through the void of space and entered the atmosphere and made a beeline for this spot, right here, on Earth, in the continent called Asia, in the country called Thailand, in the city called Ayutthaya, onto the man and Endgame Player named Hilal ibn Isa al-Salt. A great cosmic accident that happens over and over and over again to everything the sun’s light touches. Over and over and over again.

Stella.

He quickens his pace.

Stella. Her name means “star,” like the sun.

May she give us light, Hilal thinks.

He turns east onto the wide Rojana Road. He jogs now, passes car dealerships and beauty salons and tourist offices and convenience stores and Thai motorcycle cops in brown uniforms who give him suspicious looks but who don’t do anything. He passes a two-story stupa right in the middle of the six-lane road. He passes a group of teenage boys loitering on souped-up scooters, smoking filterless cigarettes, whistling at girls, laughing.

Hilal slows to a brisk walk when he sees these young men. Four of them wear makeshift masks of a face that everyone has seen and everyone has memorized and everyone is confused by and many are terrified by.

The pale face of kepler 22b.

There were Meteor Kids throwing raves and partying after the twelve meteors that announced Endgame, and now there are kepler Kids.

The teens are loud as Hilal approaches, but when they notice him the silence hits. They see his scarred face and his discolored eyes and his lack of hair and his missing ear. Two of the kids pull the masks from the tops of their heads and over their faces, as if to hide.

Hilal doesn’t break stride. “Krap,” he says, dipping his chin and raising his hand.

None of them say anything in return.

He resumes running. Another kilometer and he reaches the Classic Kameo Hotel, a collection of glass and cement blocks, all white and modern and clean. Hilal imagines it caters to upscale tourists and Asian businessmen.

This is where he will find Stella.

He goes inside. The air conditioning slaps him in the face. He moves through it, crossing his arms for warmth. Nice lobby, big chairs, front desk, clerk, elevator, hallway, room.

Its number is 702. He is about to knock when he is overcome with nerves. He is going to see her again. Stella. The woman who beat him in a fight, who helped him, who claimed Wayland Vyctory as her father. Hilal trusted her in Las Vegas, and he trusts her still, but now that he is on the edge of whatever comes next in Endgame he pauses.

Breathes.

Knocks.

He hears the soft pad of footsteps on the far side of the door. The world turns some more.

The door opens. The woman smiles.

“Hilal,” Stella says. “Come in. It is so good to see you again.”

AN LIU

Shang Safe House, Unnamed Street off Ahiripukur Second Lane, Ballygunge, Kolkata, India

An walks from the cemetery back to his safe house. He walks briskly, angry and red-eyed and oblivious to the world around him.

He had them. The Nabataean and Sky Key and Earth Key too. Right in his sights. He had them and his shots missed and they outplayed him!

And they got away.

They are gone.

“Gone, Chiyoko, gone! How could I let it happen?” he curses BLINKshiverBLINK he curses himself as he marches through the choked streets, and when he finally reaches the secluded side entrance of his hideout his emotions are a tempest.

He opens the door and bolts it shut from the inside and punches a code into the security system. He stalks toward the bathroom, stripping off his clothes as he moves, letting his garments fall to the floor in heaps. He rants the whole way. “I had”—BLINKBLINK—“I had them! I could have killed”—shiverBLINK—“killed”—shivershivershiver—“killed”—BLINK—“them.” SHIVERshiver. “Could have”—SHIVERshiver—“Could have”—SHIVERshiver—“Could have stuffed a grenade in his mouth and stepped back and laughed and watched the whole thing burn!” BLINK. “No”—BLINK—“No”—BLINK—“No”—BLINK—“No winner could be”—shiverSHIVERshiver—“no winner could be”—BLINKBLINKBLINKBLINKshiverBLINKBLINK—“No winner could be!”

He’s in the bathroom and naked except for Chiyoko’s necklace. He puts his hands to it but they shake too much. She can’t calm him right now, she can’t, and he lets go of the necklace because he’s shaking so much that he’s afraid he’ll break it, that he’ll hurt her, and he raises his arm and bites it and clamps down, gnashes, grinds. It hurts and stings and a little blood comes and he stops shaking. He turns on the hot water tap, and his hands calm. He removes Chiyoko and sets her gingerly on the edge of the sink and steps through the curtain and into the stall. It is scalding and his skin turns red and he winces and holds his breath from the shock of the temperature.

He calms some more. His arm throbs. He ducks his stubbly head under the water stream. It burns.

“The world would have gotten what it deserves,” An says.

And in that moment there is a small sound deep in his mind and he knows it is her and she’s trying to speak to him but he can’t hear. He strains and concentrates but he can’t hear her.

“What it deserves. All because of me.”

He feels better. He washes, dries, cleans the necklace, gets dressed, eats, and then moves to a control room and settles down. He checks the tracking program that marks the Olmec’s position, and then turns on several monitors at once and watches the news.

The news. The news. The news. It is glorious and beautiful and amazing.

BBC, CNN International, Al Jazeera, Fox News, TASS, France 24, CCTV. Fear is rampant. Martial law in every Western country. Police forces thinning out as their members flee to be with family. Full military battalions being repositioned to minimum safe distances. Nuclear energy facilities being put on lockdown. Chemical plants following emergency shutdown protocols. Municipal airspaces the world over thick with helicopters and drones. Astronauts and cosmonauts on the International Space Station initiating emergency sequences and preparing for a prolonged isolation from Mission Control. The destruction of the ancient monuments of Stonehenge and Chogha Zanbil—the former of principal importance to the La Tène Celts, the latter equally as essential to the Sumerian line. No one knows who is obliterating them, or if they do know, no one is telling. Are other such monuments slated for destruction as well? Will those belonging to the Olmec, the Cahokian, the Nabataean, the Harappan, the Shang, and all the others be destroyed in time? Is the kepler destroying them? A consortium of the world’s militaries? Some group as yet unknown? An is unsure. He watches a dozen segments about the alien called kepler 22b. Interviews with people who revere him or hate him or want to befriend him or kill him. People who want to subjugate themselves to him. People who want to enslave him. But mostly people who want to run away from him, even if there is nowhere to run.

Don’t tell the leaders of the world that, though. Don’t tell the rich. An watches stories about presidents and prime ministers and scientists and educators and MPs and the wealthy, all fleeing, all bunkering, all burying themselves. Trying to disappear. Everyone else looting or taping up windows or trying to get inland and for the most part failing. Shoot-outs on clogged highways up and down the American East Coast. Throngs of people at churches and mosques and temples and synagogues praying to their gods. The Vatican, the Dome of the Rock, the Western Wall—all three so crowded that worshippers at each are being trampled and crushed.

An falls asleep to this beautiful chaotic dance at around three in the morning.

He wakes 2.4 hours later. The television screens are still full of fear and confusion and questions. When will Abaddon hit? How big is it and what’s it made of and how many will die?

And some answers.

Abaddon is a dense nickel-and-iron meteor that will strike soon on the edge of the Nova Scotia shelf, 300 kilometers south of Halifax. The asteroid is spherical with a diameter of just under three kilometers. It will punch a hole in the atmosphere and the sky will light up, snuffing out the sun’s light. The initial blast will vaporize everything around it and underneath it and over it for hundreds of miles. The impact will trigger a massive earthquake to ripple across the globe, which will even be felt on the other side of the world. After the quake comes the airborne shock wave, destroying everything for hundreds and hundreds of miles. And last but certainly not least will be the tsunamis, affecting every North Atlantic city from San Juan to Washington, DC, to Lisbon to Dakar.

In the hours and days that follow, the secondary effects of Abaddon will wreak havoc over the entire planet. These are less certain. They could include eruptions of long-dormant volcanoes as they are shaken from their slumbers. The Big Island of Hawaii could crack and calve a huge section into the Pacific, causing massive tsunamis up and down the Pacific Rim. Acid rain could fall everywhere, but especially within a few thousand miles of the crater, poisoning the sea and all drinking water in the vicinity. Electrical storms and hurricanes could whip up and ravage the land and sea around the crater.

An flips through the channels. There will be tornadoes, floods, landslides, ash, fear, depravation, suffering, death. There will be firestorms. Impact winters. No more internet in a lot of places. No more air travel for a long time. And on and on and on and, yes, soon, very soon, a lot of things are going to die.

At around six in the morning the first report of a visual comes on air. Spotted in the sky over the South Pacific. A dark speck skirting across the sun’s disc. A video plays on CNN International in a GIF loop: fishermen in small wooden boats hoisting Mylar-covered binoculars to the sky. They’re surrounded by blue water and white sand and green trees and the sky as clear as ever, and the men point and scream and yell.

That’s when everyone knows that it’s really true.

That’s when An knows it’s not a dream.

It’s better than a dream.

He will miss the internet, though. Sorely.

An turns from the news and hops up and moves. He needs to get back on the road, to get out of this city before it goes completely insane. The asteroid will hit on the far side of the globe, but he wants to be in the countryside for Abaddon, not in Kolkata or anywhere like it.

He has a quick breakfast of fish cakes and warm Coke. In the garage he loads his bulletproof Land Rover Defender with his go box and the cans of extra gasoline and his guns and bombs and Nobuyuki Takeda’s katana and the other box too, the precious box that contains the vest should he ever need it. The 20-kilo suicide vest that is his fail-safe.