Sky Key

“Yeah,” she says unconvincingly. “Okay.”

Jago takes her head and turns it gently. He kisses her. “We can do this, Sarah. We can do it together.”

“Shut up.” She kisses him back. She feels the diamonds in his teeth, licks them, nibbles at his lower lip, smells his breath.

Anything to forget.

They fool around, and Sarah doesn’t say “Play” or “Earth Key” or “Sky Key” or “Endgame” or “Christopher” for the rest of the evening. She just holds Jago and smiles, touches him and smiles, feels him and smiles.

She falls asleep at 11:37 p.m.

Jago doesn’t sleep.

He is sitting in bed at 4:58 a.m. Stock-still. No lights. Two windows looking over a slender courtyard to the left of the bed. The blinds are open, ambient light suffuses the glass. Jago can see well enough. He’s already dressed. Sarah is too. He watches her sleep. Her breathing slow and steady.

The Cahokian.

He tries to remember a story his great-grandfather, Xehalór Tlaloc, told him about a legendary battle between humans and the Sky Gods that took place hundreds of years ago. A battle that the humans, who according to Xelahór didn’t even have guns at their disposal, somehow managed to win.

4:59.

If he and Sarah both want to survive, they will need to beat the Sky Gods a 2nd time. But how did the humans do it? How could humans with spears and bows and swords and knives defeat an army of Makers? How?

5:00.

How?

The air changes. The hair on Jago’s neck stands up. He whips his head to the door. The crack of light from the hall is unbroken. He stares at it for several seconds, and then it goes out.

He grabs his pistol from the side table. Pokes Sarah with a bony elbow. Her eyes pop open as Jago clasps a hand over her mouth. His eyes say, Someone’s coming.

Sarah slides to the floor. She grabs her pistol and quietly charges a round. She rolls under the bed. Jago slips to the floor and rolls under too.

“Player?” Sarah whispers.

“Don’t know.”

Then Jago remembers. He points his chin to the center of the room. Earth Key is still on the coffee table!

“Shit,” Sarah says.

Before Jago can stop her, Sarah slides out and gets to her knees, but then she freezes. Jago peers past her legs. There, just outside the windows, are two black tactical ropes, dancing back and forth.

“La joda!” Jago whispers.

And then the door bursts open. Four men in staggered single file push into the adjacent living room. All black, helmets, night vision, toting futuristic-looking FN F2000 assault rifles. At the same moment there’s a thud from outside, and the windows crack in every direction. Two men immediately rappel down the ropes and kick the glass. It shatters inward, shards raining onto the floor. The men swing in and land right in front of Sarah. She’s in a deep crouch, her gun leveled on the face of the lead soldier. She hesitates to shoot, and she hates herself for it.

But her senses are sharp, and she notices that the rifles have a strange attachment where the grenade launcher would normally be.

“Don’t move,” the lead soldier says with a British accent. “Except to lower your gun.”

“Where’s the other one?” asks the lead who came through the door.

One of the men behind him says, “Going thermal. There—”

Pop-pop!

Jago fires and rolls to his right, away from Sarah. Both shots hit the legs of the man who switched his goggles. This man’s shins are armored, but Jago guessed as much, and the bullets tear through the flesh and bone just above his feet. He falls to the floor, crying out. None of the other men move to help. Instead they begin firing.

But not bullets.

Sarah springs straight up from her crouch, pulls her knees to her chest, her head nearly touching the ceiling. Two darts sail beneath her. Thup-thup. They hit the wall.

Thup-thup-thup-thup-thup. Jago’s on his feet too. He yanks a metal lamp from the bedside table and dances forward, twirling and ducking and spinning. Four darts zip through his shirt, a 5th grazes his hair, but none hit flesh. A 6th clangs off the metal of the lamp.

“Net!” says the lead soldier that came through the window. The man behind him fires a weapon that looks like a small RPG.

A dark blob expands through the air, heading for Sarah. She fires twice, hitting two of the metal balls that give the net its weight and propel it forward, but it’s no use. The net is coming for her.

Jago underhands the lamp toward Sarah. The net hits the lamp and the mesh wraps around it like a closing fist. Sarah drops to the floor, deflecting the snarled lamp to the side. Both Players then surge forward, firing simultaneously, twisting their bodies as they move, making themselves harder to hit with the darts.

Impossible to hit.

Jago fires across the room at Sarah’s assailants, using the angle to blast the night-vision goggles off both their faces without actually killing them. Sarah fires across the room at the men facing Jago. She hits two of the dart-gun attachments mounted to the rifles, hits one of the men square in the middle of his bulletproof vest, and with her 5th shot shoots the TV on the far side of the room. It explodes in a shower of sparks, blue and orange and green. The men stand their ground. “Go lethal!” one shouts.

Jago drops to his knees as the first soldier live-fires. Half a dozen 5.56 × 45 millimeter rounds scream over Jago’s head as he brings the top of his pistol hard into the man’s groin. Jago fires twice at the men just behind the lead soldier, hitting one on the hand and the other on the shoulder. Jago then reaches up and pulls a grenade off the man’s vest. Just by the shape and weight he can tell that it’s a flashbang.

At the same time, Sarah moves toward her two men. One lets off a volley, which she evades by leaping out the broken window.

She grabs a rope and slides down the outside of the building six feet. She pops the pistol into her waistband with her other hand. While she’s sliding, she loops the free end of the rope over her foot. She reaches out and grabs the other rope and loops it around her other foot. Then she lets go with her hands and swings backward. She tucks her chin to her chest and pushes all the air out of her lungs as her back slams into the side of the building. She can feel the pistol come free. She is upside down, like a high-wire circus performer, the ropes and her flexed feet keeping her from falling headfirst down three stories. She hears her gun clatter to the ground in the courtyard below as she reaches behind her ankles and grabs each rope and pulls herself up so that her feet are only inches below the edge of the window.

Jago sees Sarah launch out the window, doesn’t worry about the lightning-quick Cahokian, closes his eyes, throws the flashbang against the far wall.

The room lights up, and a loud noise echoes over everything and out into the London night, bouncing off buildings and into the street and sky. Jago stands and pistol-whips the back of the lead officer’s neck. He goes down in a heap. Jago sees that the man he shot, still lying on the floor, is taking aim with his rifle. Jago pirouettes around the next stunned soldier, grabbing him by the shoulders, just as the prone soldier fires. Two quick bursts. But every slug sails into the Kevlar vest of the man between them. Jago jumps sideways, throwing the man forward onto the metal coffee table. He’s already unconscious from the impact of the slugs.

Earth Key rolls across the table and stops, teetering on the edge, as if it doesn’t want to fall.

Jago’s about to spin and help Sarah when a knife flashes out of the cloud of smoke. It slices Jago near his right hand, the one with the gun, and cuts deep across the wrist. The gun falls to the floor, bouncing off Jago’s foot. The knife slices upward, nearly catching Jago. He folds back to avoid it and bends so far that he has to plant his hands behind him to keep from tumbling over. One lands on the cold surface of the coffee table, the other on the muscly leg of the soldier who took a dozen point-blank slugs to the back. Jago feels a tactical knife strapped to this thigh. He draws it and wheels and gets his feet back under him. The soldier with the knife steps out of the smoke, ready to fight.

Jago sets his feet and covers his throat with his free hand. The man lunges from the smoke. Jago sidesteps, and the blade catches him fast along the left forearm, slicing his shirt open but not his skin.

The angle of attack allows Jago to push the man farther to the side. He drops his blade, steps forward, plants his left hand on the man’s arm just above his elbow, and grabs his wrist with his other hand. He pushes hard into the arm and yanks the wrist in the other direction, and the man’s arm snaps clean at the elbow. The man screams, and Jago feels the tendons release the knife. It falls, the heavy handle causing it to flip over. Jago kicks up his heel and hits the knife on the butt. It reverses course, sailing upward. Jago releases the man’s wrist and snatches the blade out of the air.

Just as he catches it, the man head-butts Jago across the forehead, which hurts, especially since he’s still wearing a helmet.

If pain mattered to Jago, this would have been a good move.

But pain doesn’t matter to Jago.

The Olmec cups his left hand over the back of the soldier’s neck and brings the blade up fast into his throat. Warm blood shoots over Jago’s hand. He steps away as the man gets busy dying.

While Jago fights, the two tasked with capturing Sarah recover from the flashbang. They look at each other and then out the window. They ready their rifles and step to the edge. The guns swing into the air, the men clear left and right and don’t see her. Then one clears up while the other clears down.

Sarah waits. Still hanging upside down, she crunches up and grabs the unsuspecting man by the cuff of his shirt. She pulls hard and falls back, and the man comes with her, arcing out of the window. He falls to the ground, yelling the whole way until there’s a sickening sound and silence. Sarah looks up, knowing the other soldier is still there. Their eyes meet. He pulls the trigger and fires wild.

Thk-thk-thk-thk-thk! A volley rings out, but because Sarah is still swinging, he misses, the bullets making high-pitched firecracker noises on the concrete and metal in the courtyard below. He aims again, and has her sighted this time. Sarah keeps her eyes open. Christopher had his eyes open. She will too.

But then the man slowly pitches forward and falls out of the building, a knife planted to the hilt in the back of his neck.

“You all right?” Jago calls from inside the room, his body still frozen in the throwing position.

“Yes!”

“There’s one more.”

Jago spins to the wounded man on the floor. The man says, “Rooster call! Repeat, rooster call!”

Jago drops instinctively as something zips into the room from outside and, unfortunately for the soldier, hits him dead in the face. His head explodes.

“Sniper!” Sarah yells from outside.

“Coming!” Jago shouts.

Sarah’s a sitting duck. She points her feet and drops, the rope running over her ankles and under her heels. Just before hitting the ground, she flexes her feet and extends her hands over her head. She slows. Her hands meet the ground. She kicks the ropes free of her ankles and folds out of a perfect handstand.

She’s safe from the sniper. In the room above, Jago sets off two more flashbangs. They’re loud, and he can’t hear a thing as he vaults forward, sliding over the coffee table, grabbing Earth Key. Three rounds explode in the floor just behind him. He scurries forward, only a few meters to go. The coffee table takes the next three sniper rounds. A meter. A round sings by, only centimeters from his head.

Screw this.

Jago stands, yells “Catch!” and throws Earth Key out the window. He dives out after it and snatches one of the ropes with both hands. Sniper rounds, coming from the north-northeast, ping off the building. His hands burn. His hands bleed. He twists, gets his feet on the exterior wall, comes to a stop. The sniper lost his angle and isn’t firing anymore. Jago loops the rope under his butt and rappels the last six meters to the ground.

“Catch yourself,” Sarah snips. Jago spins just in time to grab an F2000 that Sarah throws at him. It claps into Jago’s bleeding hands. He doesn’t care about the pain. He likes it.

He’s Playing.

Sarah bends to pick up the other rifle and the pistol that fell from her waistband. Jago pulls the knife out of the man’s neck. Sarah takes two flashbangs from one of the men. Jago pulls a spray canister off the hip of the same man, along with a satchel not much bigger than a baseball.

“What’s that?” Sarah asks, squinting at the canister.

“Aerated C4,” he says almost giddily.

“Whoa. Never messed with that. You?”

“Naturally.”

“That bag the blasting caps?”

He looks. “Sí.”

“Great. Now let’s get out of here.”

Jago nods. “You got Earth Key?”

Sarah pats a small lump in a zippered pocket. “Good throw.”

Without another word they take off at a dead sprint.

A few seconds later Jago points, and Sarah sees it. An exposed section of Tube tracks for London’s District and Circle lines. They make it in 15.8 seconds from the side of the hotel, and 7.3 seconds after that they are in the dark secluded safety of the tunnels. As they scramble into the shadows, the image of Christopher infiltrates Sarah’s mind, his head exploding, followed by his body. She tries to beat the image back, and she does. Moving, fighting, Playing are all at least good for one thing: forgetting.

iii

Alice doesn’t like beds as much as she does hammocks, especially on ships, so she’s slung her hammock across her small cabin. She lolls around, letting the motion of the sea swing her back and forth.

She tosses a knife end over end and catches it. Tosses and catches. Tosses and catches. One slipup and it could land in her eye, skewer her brain.

Alice doesn’t slip up.

She’s not thinking of much. Just the knife and of slaughtering Baitsakhan when she finds him.

And of the fear on Little Alice’s face. She has seen it in her dreams so many times that it’s burned into her consciousness.

Little Alice.

Screaming.

What is it about this girl she’s never met? Why does Alice care about her? Dream about her?

Shari’s a good nut, that’s why. I am too. The rest are bastards, so fuck ’em.

Her satellite phone rings. She picks it up, presses talk.

“Oi, that Tim? Yeah, yeah. Right. Good! And you spoke to Cousin Willey in KL, yeah? Great. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Naw, none of that. Just my blades. No, Tim, I mean it! I don’t need any guns, I’m telling ya. You know me. Purist and all. Oh, all right, fine. You make a good point. Every one of these Player bastards is probably armed to the teeth, true and true. Just keep ’em small, and only hollow tips. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, any news on the rock? Anyone figure out where it’s gonna hit? ’Cause when it does, your Alice doesn’t want to be nowhere near. You neither? ’Magine that.”

She flicks the knife into the air above her head. It turns nine times. She catches it between her index finger and her thumb. Tosses again.

“Any luck with Shari? Oh, really? When were you gonna tell me, ya wanker? I oughta come back there and carve your freckle out, Tim. Well, what is it, then?”

She catches the knife by the handle and leans so far out of the hammock that she thinks she’s going to flip out, but she doesn’t. She sticks a leg out the other side and is perfectly balanced. She scratches a number on the wall. 91-8166449301.

“Thanks, Tim. Don’t die until you get to see it all go down. Gonna be a sight. Yeah, later, mate.”

She presses talk again, settles into her hammock, calls Shari’s number.

Rings 12 times, no one answers.

She calls again.

Rings 12 times, no one answers.

She calls again.

Rings 12 times, no one answers.

She calls again and again and again and again, and she will keep calling until someone does answer.

Because she has something very important to tell the Harappan.

Something very important indeed.

They are all here.

Shari and Jamal, Paru and Ana, Char and Chalgundi, Sera and Pim, Pravheet and Una, Samuel and Yali, Peetee and Julu, Varj and Huma, Himat and Hail, Chipper and Ghala, Boort and Helena, Jovinderpihainu, Ghar, Viralla, Gup, Brundini, Chem, and even Quali, toting a three-week-old Jessica, who is wrapped in soft linen cloths of alizarin and turquoise.

The other children are here too, more than 50, too many to name, from two to 17, including Little Alice. They’re playing and caring for one another in the adjoining room and in the herb-and-rock garden beyond, leaving the grown-ups alone, as they have been instructed. Seventeen servants are there, all of whom double as guards, and there are 23 more who are only guards, armed discreetly, stationed all around the hall.

They have been meeting, eating, and drinking juice and chai and coffee and lassis—never alcohol for the Harappan—for over three hours. The smells of curry and coriander, lentils and bread, turmeric and cream and hot oil, lemon and garlic and onions, fill the air, along with the rich and heady odor of bodies and sweat and cinnamon and rosewater dabbed behind ears and along necklines.

All of them talking at once.

For three hours they were polite and respectful, catching up with one another, kindnesses exchanged, the familiarity of close relations.

But 16 minutes ago the arguing started.

“The Harappan cannot sit on the sidelines,” Peetee says. He is 44 and the tallest of their clan, a former trainer in cryptography. He has dark, deep-set eyes that tell of sadness, and henna-dyed hair that speaks to his vanity.

Gup, a 53-year-old ex-Player and bachelor who lives in Colombo and who fought against the Tamils just for the diversionary nature of violence, nods with him. “Especially now that Endgame is under way. What is the point of our Player retreating like this? We are teetering on the precipice of, of, of—well, if not our destruction then certainly a sea change for humanity. The Event will see to that.”

“The Player has her reasons,” says Julu, one of Shari’s aunts. She speaks without taking her eyes from her hands, which are habitually fingering a strand of crimson prayer beads.

“Reasons?” several of them blurt at once. “Reasons?”

“What reason could there possibly be?” a booming female voice asks from the far end of the table. “I demand to know. It looks to me as if she fled at the drawing of first blood.” The voice belongs to Helena, 66, a former Player, the 2nd-most esteemed of the last 208 years. She is squat and round and strong and still swift. “A finger? I would have given an eye and a lung and a leg before I came hopping home. I would have given an arm and my hearing and my tongue! No, I would have given all! I would not have come home for any reason but death!”

Boort, her husband of 46 years—they were married at the stroke of midnight on the day she lapsed—reaches out and pats her forearm. “Now, Helena.”

“Aand mat kha!” she exclaims, shucking off Boort’s hand so she can point at Shari. “That—that—that girl gave up! She gave up. She never even made a kill in all of her training! Takes some effort to wiggle out of that time-honored obligation. More effort than what she put into Playing. I had thirty kills before I lapsed. But her? No! She is too good for death. Imagine that! A Player of Endgame. A Player of Endgame who also happens to be a mother. Can you believe it? That is what we have pinned our hopes to. A spineless quitter.”

Now the room is quiet; Helena’s words are like a volley of gunshots, everyone taking cover, not yet ready to poke their heads back out. Shari, for her part, does not flinch at any of it. She sits straight-backed and listens. Her eyes have moved to each speaker, and so now she stares at Helena. Her stare is calm and confident. She loves Helena like family, in spite of her ire. Loves all of these people.

Helena bristles at Shari’s look, which she mistakes for insolence. “Do not glare at me like that, Player.”

Shari tilts her head to the side as if to apologize, but remains silent. Her eyes drift past Helena to the children’s room, where she picks out a flash of Little Alice’s bright-pink trousers among the wheeling limbs of children. Jamal squeezes her knee under the table, just as he would if they were alone in their yard, watching a sunset.

“Helena, you may be right, but it serves no purpose to compare Shari Chopra to you or any other Player.” This is Jovinderpihainu, a former Player and the elder of the Harappan line. He is 94, as sharp as he was when he was 44, even 24. He is small and shrunken in his orange robes, skin as wrinkled and creased as the fabric. “She chooses a different path. She always has. We mustn’t question it.”

“But I am questioning it, Jov!” Helena persists. This is what everyone calls him, except the children, who call him Happy. They love his smiles, practically toothless, his last shocks of silver hair always sticking out every which way. He doesn’t smile much anymore, not since Endgame began. The children wonder why.

Jov raises a hand, a familiar and crystal-clear indication that he has heard enough. “I will repeat, but not again: this is not about you, Helena.” Helena crosses her arms. Boort whispers some soothing words into her ear, but she gives every appearance of not listening to him.

“Perhaps we should ask Shari’s father, hm?” Jov says. “Paru? What have you to say? Your daughter has taken a strange route in the game. Have you any insight?”

Paru clears his throat. “It is true that my daughter is not a natural killer. I am not sure that, had I been chosen in the past, I would have been much different. But while Shari may not be the bloodthirstiest among us”—he is interrupted by scattered snickers—“I can say one thing with confidence. Shari is the most compassionate soul of everyone in this room, yourself included, Jov. With respect.”

Jov nods slowly.

Paru takes a deep breath, trying to meet every set of eyes upon him. “Compassion may not seem like much of a weapon for Endgame. It is not hard like a fist or sharp like a sword or fast like a bullet. It does not travel in straight lines delivering death. It is not final, but it can be fierce. This I know. If Shari can survive and somehow win, then we will be better for it. The new world of men will need compassion just as much as it will need resourcefulness and cunning. Maybe more, if this blessed Earth will be as broken as we believe it will be. Ask yourself, my family—if the Harappan are to inherit the aftermath, would you prefer our champion to be a ruthless killer, or one who has mastered her fear and found her heart? One who can teach her disciples the ways of compassion in lieu of the ways of the fist?”

“Thank you, Paru,” Jov says. “You speak wisely. I wonder, though—”

“But how”—a soft but clear voice interrupts—“will she win if she is here, and not out there pursuing Sky Key?”