The Calling

The voice is in Marcus’s head, like the voice of his thoughts, only it’s not the voice of his thoughts.

Marcus begins to say he’s sorry, but before the words can pass his lips, the voice comes again.

It is not preferable, but it is acceptable.

The voice is pleasant, deep, neither male nor female.

“You can hear—”

I can hear your thoughts.

“I’d prefer to speak.”

Fine.

The others did too.

Except for one.

“Why are they wrapped up like that?”

So I can take them.

“You need me to put on one of those things too?” Marcus is impatient. His lateness makes it worse.

Yes.

“Okay. Where do I go?”

Here.

“Where?” Marcus sees nothing. He blinks—a routine, taken-for-granted, split-second blink—and when he opens his eyes, floating before him is one of the silvery shrouds. He can see faint markings in gold, green, and black on the inside of the cloth. He recognizes some of the characters—Arabic, Chinese, Minoan, Grecian, Egyptian, Mesoamerican, Sanskrit—but many are unknown. Some must belong to the other Players. Some must belong to whoever is speaking to him. “Where are you?” he asks as he takes the shroud.

Here.

“Where?” The cloth has substance but is virtually weightless, and it’s cold, freezing cold.

Everywhere.

“What do I do?”

Put it on, Marcus Loxias Megalos. Time, as you understand it, is of the essence.

He pulls the shroud over his shoulders, and it’s like stepping out of a sauna and into Antarctica. The sensation is shocking, and would be debilitating if not for the pair of unseen hands wrapping a blindfold around his head. As soon as the blindfold is in place, Marcus falls into an immediate slumber. It’s so deep that he can’t feel his body. There’s no cold or heat. There’s no pain or pleasure. He is neither comfortable nor uncomfortable. It’s as though his body has ceased to exist.

What consumes him is the image of a vast black nothingness perforated by points of light in a rainbow of colors. Blotting out this cosmic scrim is a silent, cratered, tumbling rock that gets closer and closer but never arrives.

There’s no telling how big it is.

Or how small.

It just is.

Tumbling.

Closer and closer and closer.

I flew around a mountain and then we came to a valley. Directly below us was a gigantic white pyramid. It looked as if it were from a fairy tale. The pyramid was draped in shimmering white. It could have been metal, or some other form of stone. It was white on all sides. What was most curious about it was its capstone: a large piece of precious gem–like material. I was deeply moved by the colossal size of the thing.

—US Air Force pilot James Gaussman,xlviii March 1945, somewhere over central China

KEPLER 22B

Great White Pyramid, Qin Lin Mountains, China

You may look.

Each Player opens his or her eyes.

They are seated in a circle, cross-legged, straight-backed, their hands joined in their laps. The blindfolds, the shrouds, and the overwhelming cold they carried are gone. The 12 are free to move their heads, hands, and torsos, but any attempt to stand is thwarted by paralysis.

Your legs are fine. They will work when I’ve finished.

The being who shepherded them is nowhere to be seen, even though the voice is present, as if it simultaneously stands behind each of them.

Several Players try to speak, but like their legs, their mouths are frozen.

They look around. They’re in a forest surrounded by hills and mountains. The air is crisp and cool, the ground soft, sounds muted. Behind the northern side of the circle, 754 feet away, is a huge pyramid. It has no discernible openings or markings. Its edges are perfectly hewn. There are no variations in its mercurial surface—no lines suggesting stonework or construction of any kind. Its base measures 800 feet across. It is nearly as high. Its apex glows bright and white.

They look around the circle. They’re seeing one another for the first time. The Players they’ll stalk, follow, fight, love, betray, fear, kill. They commit everything to memory: eye color, visible tattoos, birthmarks, hairstyles, postures, jawlines, dimples, mannerisms, everything.

They judge, make assumptions, take guesses. Each of them has been trained for this: the quick recognition of enemies, the parsing out of weaknesses.

The Players are even more captivating to one another than the immense pyramid.

They are the 12.

We are in the Qin Lin Mountains. South and west of the city now known as Xi’an. This is the Great White Pyramid. Larger than the pyramid at Giza. Like my kind, it has long remained hidden from human eyes.

The Players stop looking at one another, their eyes drawn to the pyramid. Its surface shimmers, and three cloaked figures drift out of a black doorway that appears for less than a second. Two of the figures remain near the pyramid, like guards. The 3rd joins the Players in an instant, as if the space between the pyramid and the forest is nonexistent. It stands behind Sarah Alopay. She cranes her neck in order to take it in.

The being’s cloak is dark and punctuated with illuminated points like it is made of space, as if it is covered in stars. Around its neck it wears a round, flat disk covered with glyphs.

The figure is tall—at least 7.5 feet—and thin, with broad shoulders and long arms. It is wearing shimmering shoes that look to be made of the same substance as the Great White Pyramid. Its feet are very long and very flat.

It has a long, narrow head. Like its voice, the thing’s face is neither male nor female. Its skin is like mother-of-pearl. Its long hair is platinum. Its thin eyes are completely black.

It is obviously not of this world. And though they feel like they should be scared, the Players are at ease with the creature. Although they’ve never seen anything quite like it, there is an odd familiarity about it. Some of them even find the being bewitching, beautiful.

I am kepler 22b. You have come to learn about Endgame. I will teach you. First, it is the custom that you introduce yourselves.

kepler 22b looks down on Sarah. She senses that, for the moment, she can speak, but she’s unsure of what to say.

Your name. Your number. Your tribe.

Sarah takes a breath and slows her heart to 34 bpm. An insanely low number. She doesn’t want to give anything away, knowing that the others might pick up clues in even the simplest statements. “I am Sarah Alopay of the 233rd. I am Cahokian.”

The ability to speak moves to her right, like an invisible token.

“Jago Tlaloc. 21st. Olmec.” Jago is calm, and pleased to be seated next to Sarah.

“Aisling Kopp, the 3rd, La Tène Celt.” Aisling is the tall, thin-lipped redhead Marcus saw piled in the pagoda. She is curt and clear.

“I am Hilal ibn Isa al-Salt of the 144th. I am your Aksumite brother.” Hilal is refined, soft-spoken, very dark-skinned, regal. His eyes are bright blue, his straight teeth a blinding white. His hands are joined easily in his lap. He looks tall and strong, looks the way a Player is supposed to look, somehow both menacing and peaceful.

“Maccabee Adlai. I represent the 8th line. I am Nabataean.” Maccabee is big, but not huge, and impeccably dressed in a casual linen suit and white cotton shirt, no tie. Some of the Players interpret his pretty clothes as a sign of weakness.

“Baitsakhan,” barks a boy with round tanned cheeks and smoldering brown eyes. That is all he says.

Say the rest.

Baitsakhan shakes his head adamantly.

You must.

kepler 22b insists without sounding upset, and Baitsakhan shakes his head again.

Stubborn boy, Sarah thinks. Trouble, probably.

kepler 22b raises a spindly, seven-fingered hand, and the boy’s body begins to shiver. Very much against his will he vomits the words “13th line. Donghu.” When he’s done, he looks at kepler 22b with equal measures of fury and awe.

The next Player is thin, his chest concave, his shoulders slight and curved around him like wings. Dark circles hang under his eyes. A red tear is tattooed in the corner of his left eye. He has shaved an inch-thick line through his hair in a reverse Mohawk. As the Players take him in, they realize that he has been turning his head repeatedly in tiny, jerking movements.

He blinks a dozen times before blurting, “A-A-An Liu. Three-three-three-three-three hundred seventy-seventy-seventy-seventy-seven. Shang.”

It is a terrible first impression. A stammering weakling here amongst trained killers.

“Shari Chopra,” a beautiful, ocher-skinned girl says in a peaceful, meditative voice. “55th. I’m the Harrapan.”

“My name’s Marcus Loxias Megalos of the fighting 5th. Watch your asses, because I’m the Minoan.”

Marcus’s bluster is poorly played, like the nonsense a boxer might spout at a prefight press conference. The other Players have no need for such bravado. A few chuckle silently.

“I am Kala Mozami,” a slight girl, wrapped in a brilliant red-and-blue head scarf, says with a thick Persian accent. The force and confidence of her tone is at total odds with her appearance. Her eyes are as green as dampened jade. “89th, sisters and brothers, I trace my line through the ancient, golden heart of Sumer.”

She likes words, Jago thinks. A poet. Probably a liar.

“Alice Ulapala. 34th. Koori,” Alice says with an endearing Australian accent. She’s huge, muscled, and a little plump. A wrestler. A shot-putter. A weightlifter. Her skin is dark, and her eyes are darker, a mop of curly black hair as wild as a nest of snakes. She has a pale, crescent-shaped birthmark above her right eye that disappears into her hair. Without compunction or ire she spits on the ground before the next person speaks.

Only the next person—the last person—doesn’t speak.

Chiyoko Takeda.

All eyes move to the mute. She has pale, ivory skin and shoulder-length hair with bangs cut in a perfectly straight line above her eyebrows. Her full lips are deep red. Her cheeks high and round. She fits the stereotype of a demure Japanese girl, but her eyes are forward and confident and determined.

Chiyoko Takeda does not speak. She is from the 2nd. Her line is more than ancient. Nameless and forgotten. We will call it Mu. kepler 22b raises its right hand, reaches out, opens its fingers. A white hologram sprouts from its palm. It is a perfect circle 8.25 inches in diameter.

A deep gong resonates in the chests of the 12, and a thin, bright light shoots from the top of the pyramid, marking a point in the night sky. kepler 22b begins to read, and as it does, the holographic circle turns slowly.

“Everything is here. Every word, name, number, place, distance, color, and time. Every letter, symbol, and glyph, on every page, in every chip, on every fiber. Every protein, molecule, atom, electron, quark. Everything, always. Every breath. Every life. Every death. So says, and so has been said, and so will be said again. Everything is here.”

The gong resonates in their chests again and the light from the pyramid disappears.

“You are the twelve. All are fated to die—except one. The one who will win.”

kepler 22b looks up from the hologram and regards them carefully.

“As it is with all games, the first move is essential.”

kepler 22b looks back to the hologram.

“To win you must acquire three keys, and the keys must be found in order. Earth Key. Sky Key. Sun Key. All the keys are hidden here on Earth.”

kepler 22b grabs the holographic disk midair and tosses it like a Frisbee. It stops cold over the center of the circle and begins to grow, patterns spreading across the surface. Twelve hairlines of light shoot from it and each strikes one player in the middle of the forehead. The Players all see the same thing through their mind’s eye: Earth, as if from space.

“This is Earth.”

The image changes. The blue of the oceans becomes gray. Streaks of black move across continents. Red scars bloom. The poles become whiter. The expanse of blue and the bands of green and the blots of brown are gone. The vibrant colors of a living Earth appear only in tiny, clustered pinpricks.

“This will be Earth after the Event. The Event is coming, and it is part of Endgame. The Event will destroy everything. The winner of Endgame earns survival. Survival for themselves and for every member of their line.”

kepler 22b pauses.

The image of the ravaged Earth disappears.

“Endgame is the puzzle of life, the reason for death. It holds the origin of all things, and the solution to the end of all things. Find the keys, in the order prescribed. Bring them to me, and you will win. When I leave, you will each receive a clue. And Endgame will begin. The rules of Endgame are simple. Find the keys in order and bring them to me. Otherwise, there are no rules.”

Welcome xlix

ALL PLAYERS

Somewhere in the Qin Lin Mountains, China

kepler 22b vanishes. The guards standing in front of the pyramid vanish. The pyramid remains, glimmering, imposing, otherworldly. The door reappears, though no one knows where it leads.

Feeling slowly returns to the Players’ limbs. There are pins and needles in their fingers and toes, and also in their minds. kepler 22b did something to them, pushed some kind of information into their brains, and now their heads ache. All of them are bleary. All of them know that they must recover quickly. A delay now could mean the end.

There are no rules.

Jago looks around. They’re in a small clearing; the forest gets thicker a few meters from where they sit, and the pyramid waits in the opposite direction. The forest could provide good cover. The pyramid—well, Jago doesn’t want to guess what might be in there, or where the door might lead.

Sarah is next to him, blinking her way back to awareness. Her presence is strangely comforting—one familiar thing amidst an overwhelming sea of questions. He notices something on the ground a few feet away from Sarah’s knapsack. The gray stone disk that hung around kepler 22b’s neck. You will each receive a clue.

Jago dives for it.

Chiyoko notices Jago move for the disk. He’s the first one to act.

Impressive. Chiyoko’s own muscles are stiff, sluggish.

She fights this weariness and also lunges for the disk, but Jago is faster. Chiyoko’s fingertips graze the cool stone surface as he snatches it away.

Jago jumps to his feet. Sarah shoulders her bag and stands beside him. Chiyoko reaches into her bag and pulls out a coil of rope. She can’t give away to the others that Jago has a disk of Baian-Kara-Ula, or she’ll never be able to steal it for herself. Slowly, very slowly, she begins to back out of the clearing.

Jago takes his eyes off Chiyoko. The mute girl saw him take the disk but is leaving him alone. A smart play. Better to avoid open conflict at this point. Jago will have to keep an eye on her. He slips the disk quickly into a small knapsack he bought in Xi’an and grabs Sarah by the arm. Her muscles are hard, tense.

“Let go of me,” she whispers.

Jago leans close to her ear. “I have kepler’s disk. Let’s get out of here.” Finding the disk is a piece of luck, even if neither of them knows exactly what it means. They have an alliance, and now they have an advantage. Better to not let the others find out, Sarah thinks. It could make us a target. She wishes Jago hadn’t grabbed her arm. She shrugs him off and steps to the side, hoping they didn’t give anything away. But Kala saw their exchange. “What did you just say to her?” She holds a short golden spear, lowers it, ready to strike.

Jago meets her eyes, unblinking, and smiles with his diamond-studded teeth so that dimples form in his pockmarked cheeks. “You want to die so soon, little girl?”

Jago and Kala stand across from each other, loose, confident, unbending. It’s the first of many confrontations that will decide the outcome of Endgame.

One by one around the circle, weapons are drawn. This is exactly what Chiyoko was worried about, why she backed away. The paranoia in the air is palpable. She takes another step backward, toward the cover of the woods.

An begins to tremble. He reaches a hand into his vest—a fisherman’s utility jacket covered with small pockets and zippers. Marcus notices. His dagger is drawn and itching to spill some blood. But if that jittery little creep has a gun or something long-range, he’ll have to act fast.

“What’re you doing?” Marcus demands, flipping his knife from hand to hand.

An pauses. “M-m-m-m-meds. I have to take my m-m-m-m-meds.”

Chiyoko silently retreats into the shadows. No one notices her disappear.

Sarah looks at her watch. It is 3:13:46 a.m.

If Jago has the disk, then I am going with him, Sarah decides. Aside from the strategic advantage, I’m not sure I’m ready for this. Maybe he’ ll help me stay alive.

Hilal steps forward to where the center of the circle was. He holds out both his hands, empty. He’s one of the few not to have gone for a weapon.

“Sisters and brothers of Endgame, let’s talk,” Hilal says, his voice smooth. “We have much to discuss. This night does not have to end in bloodshed.”

Baitsakhan titters, amused by the coward. Everyone else ignores Hilal. Kala doesn’t take her eyes off Jago and doesn’t lower her spear.

Shari, noticing Chiyoko’s absence, barks in her Indian accent, “Where’s the mute?”

Alice scans the perimeter of their circle. “Lit out. Smart girl.”

Hilal looks grim, disappointed. He knew it would be difficult to make peace, but he expected them to at least hear him out. “Sisters and brothers, we should not be fighting. Not yet. You heard the being. There are no rules. We can work together, for the good of the people and creatures of Earth. We can work together, at least until we are forced to work against one ano—”

He is interrupted by a swoosh as a rope with a weighted metal object on the end of it flies from the shadows. It wraps tightly around Hilal’s throat. He raises his hands to his neck. The cord is pulled taut, and Hilal spins in place and falls, choking, to the ground.

“What the hell was that?” Maccabee asks, swiveling.

Baitsakhan doesn’t wait to find out. He also sprints into the forest. Another rope attack issues from the darkness, this one from a different place, as if from a different person. It lashes out at Jago, but as the rope nears, he jumps backward, and the cord falls limply to the ground before being whisked into the woods.

A twig snaps. They catch a glimpse of Chiyoko’s pale skin and black hair darting through the undergrowth.

“It’s the bloody mute!” shouts Alice.

As they turn to Alice, an arrow whistles from the darkened forest and hits Maccabee’s right thigh. He staggers and looks down. A long shaft has pierced the front of his leg and punched through the back; blood is welling and starting to run. It was that little mongrel boy, Baitsakhan, sniping from the cover of the woods. Without thinking, Maccabee snaps the shaft and pulls the arrow free. It is excruciating, but he does not cry. He is infuriated. The little shit ruined a perfectly good suit.

“To hell with this, I’m gone,” Kala says, forgetting about Jago. She sprints for the pyramid.

“Stop this madness!” Hilal has freed himself from the rope and gotten his breath back. “It does not have to be this way!”

In response, an arrow thuds into the dirt between his legs. Hilal scrambles away, also into the woods.

“Maybe save the sermon for another time, preacher,” says Aisling, before she follows him into the forest.

Another whistle cuts the air. Sarah’s instincts take over, and she reaches toward Jago’s head and with her bare hand snatches an arrow out of the air just before it would have found its mark in Jago’s skull. Jago looks at her. He has never seen someone do that before. He is wide-eyed, grateful. “How did you—”

“We have to get out of here,” Sarah says. She can’t believe she did that either. She practiced it over and over and over, sliced her hands to ribbons trying to catch arrows, but she never succeeded. Not until this moment.

She throws the arrow to the ground and grabs Jago by the hand. “Let’s go.”

They turn toward the forest and begin to run.

An Liu is no longer fishing around for his bottle of pills. He stands, shoulders square, facing what is left of the group. He wears a sinister smile.

A third arrow flies from the woods, striking An square in the chest. An looks down, amused, and flicks the shaft away from the ballistics vest that went unnoticed beneath his fisherman’s pockets. He casually tosses a small, dark sphere the size of a walnut toward the remaining Players. Marcus, who is closest, is taken by surprise. His instincts lead him to reach out and catch An’s offering. But just before it can land in Marcus’s hand, it explodes.

The blast is much bigger than the size of the bomb would suggest. Bodies fly. Sarah loses her hearing, and for a few moments all is chaos. She lifts her head to see the zombielike form of Marcus. Both of his arms are gone at the shoulder, and his jaw hangs dislocated and slack from his skull. Blood covers his face and upper body. The skin on the left side of his head is shredded like cheese, and his ear is hanging low by his neck.

Something falls spinning from the sky and lands at Sarah’s feet. A finger. Pointing 167°49'25".

Sarah’s stomach turns as she is reminded of the meteor strike and her graduation and leaving Christopher.

She is reminded of her best friend, Reena.

And her brother, Tate.

It was only a week ago. A week.

She should be grieving, with her family, sitting in the living room, eating and hugging and holding hands.

Instead, she is here. Alone.

Playing.

She glances at Jago.

Maybe not alone.

Marcus falls to his knees, face-plants into the ground. For Marcus

Loxias Megalos, Minoan Player of the 5th line, Endgame is over.

An spins, and a fire lights behind him as he disappears into the woods. He’s let off another incendiary device. The forest starts to burn. Even though the fire is 59 feet away, the heat stings Sarah’s face.