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This book is a puzzle.
Decipher, decode, and interpret.
Search and seek.
If you’re worthy, you will find.
Copyright
First published in hardback in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2016
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
The Rules of the Game: An Endgame Novel © 2016 by Third Floor Fun, LLC.
Puzzle hunt experience by Futuruption LLC.
Additional character icon design by John Taylor Dismukes Assoc.,
a Division of Capstone Studios, Inc.
Cover design and logo by Rodrigo Corral Design
Additional logo and icon design by John Dismukes
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Source ISBN: 9780007585250
Ebook Edition ISBN: 9780007585274
Version: 2016-11-28
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Copyright
Kepler 22B
An Liu
Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Aisling Kopp, Pop Kopp, Greg Jordan, Griffin Marrs
Maccabee Adlai, Little Alice Chopra
An Liu
Aisling Kopp, Greg Jordan, Griffin Marrs, Pop Kopp, Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Shari Chopra
Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc
Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt
An Liu
Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc
An Liu
Maccabee Adlai, Little Alice Chopra
An Liu, Nori Ko
Shari Chopra
Aisling Kopp, Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Shari Chopra, Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt, Stella Vyctory, Pop Kopp, Greg Jordan, Griffin Mars
Shari Chopra, Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt, Aisling Kopp, Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Pop Kopp, Greg Jordan, Griffin Mars
Shari Chopra, Pop Kopp
Maccabee Adlai, Little Alice Chopra
An Liu, Nori Ko
Shari Chopra, Aisling Kopp, Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt, Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Pop Kopp, Greg Jordan, Griffin Marrs
An Liu, Nori Ko
Maccabee Adlai, Little Alice Chopra
Aisling Kopp, Shari Chopra, Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt, Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Greg Jordan, Griffin Marrs
Kepler 22B
Maccabee Adlai, Little Alice Chopra
An Liu, Nori Ko
Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc
Kepler 22B
Aisling Kopp, Greg Jordan, Griffin Marrs
Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt, Shari Chopra
Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Simon Alopay
Aisling Kopp, Pop Kopp, Kepler 22B
Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Simon Alopay
An Liu, Nori Ko
Kepler 22B
Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt, Shari Chopra, Jenny Ulapala
Shari Chopra
Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt, Shari Chopra, Jenny Ulapala
Maccabee Adlai, Little Alice Chopra
Kepler 22B
An Liu, Nori Ko, Maccabee Adlai, Little Alice Chopra
Kepler 22B
Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt, Shari Chopra, Jenny Ulapala
An Liu, Maccabee Adlai, Little Alice Chopra
Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt, Shari Chopra, Jenny Ulapala
An Liu, Maccabee Adlai, Little Alice Chopra
Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt, Shari Chopra, Jenny Ulapala
An Liu, Maccabee Adlai, Little Alice Chopra, Nori Ko
Kepler 22B
An Liu, Nori Ko, Little Alice Chopra
Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Simon Alopay
Greg Jordan
An Liu, Nori Ko, Little Alice Chopra
Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Simon Alopay
Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt
Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Simon Alopay
An Liu, Nori Ko, Little Alice Chopra
Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt
An Liu, Nori Ko, Little Alice Chopra
Kepler 22B
An Liu, Nori Ko, Little Alice Chopra
Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt
Shari Chopra, Jenny Ulapala
Nori Ko
Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt, Nori Ko
An Liu, Little Alice Chopra
Shari Chopra, Jenny Ulapala
An Liu, Kepler 22B, Little Alice Chopra, Jenny Ulapala, Shari Chopra
Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt, Little Alice Chopra, Kepler 22B
Jenny Ulapala
Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt, Little Alice Chopra, Jenny Ulapala, Kepler 22B, Aisling Kopp
23 Months, 5 Days Later
Endnotes
Keep Reading …
Endgame Series
About the Publisher
KEPLER 22B
Ansible chamber on board the Seedrak Sare’en, active geosynchronous orbit above the Martian North Pole
kepler 22b sits in a shiny chair in the center of a black, low-ceilinged room. His seven-fingered hands are woven together, his platinum hair bound into a perfect sphere perched on top of his head. He reviews the report he is about to give over the ansible to his conclave, many light years away. The game taking place on the blue-and-white planet in the next orbit has experienced hitches and unforeseen developments, but it progresses nonetheless. Most of what has transpired is not terribly worrying, with the notable exception of the destruction of one of Earth’s 12 great monuments. This was the one that belonged to the La Tène Celts, the one called Stonehenge, and it is now utterly gone and useless. kepler 22b is deeply disturbed by this. At least one of these ancient structures—ones that were erected many millennia ago, when his people walked alongside the young humans of Earth—at least one is required to finish Endgame.
And this, more than anything, is what he wishes to see happen.
For a Player to win.
A Player.
He turns his attention from the report to a transmission hologram projected into the air not far from his face. A dim real-time blip moves over the map of a city on the Indian subcontinent. A Player. Judging by the speed, he uses some kind of vehicle.
This Player is not the one that kepler 22b expects to win, but it is the one he has been most curious about.
He is a shrewd and incautious Player.
Unpredictable. Excitable. Merciless.
He is the Shang, An Liu.
And kepler 22b would continue to watch but then the ansible hums and the hologram flicks off and the room fills with pitch blackness and the temperature drops to -60 degrees Fahrenheit. Moments later the blackness pricks with drifting motes of light and the room glows bright and there they are, their projections surrounding him on all sides.
The conclave.
kepler 22b would prefer to watch the Shang, but he cannot.
It is time to give his report.
AN LIU
Beck Bagan, Ballygunge, Kolkata, India
The Shang.
SHIVER.
blink.
SHIVER.
An Liu rides a Suzuki GSX-R1000, trying to gain speed but getting thwarted by the Kolkatan throng.
He twists the grips. The wheels spin over the uneven pavement. No helmet, teeth gritting, lungs burning, eyes like slits. Chiyoko’s remnants press into his chest. Next to the necklace of his beloved is a SIG 226 and a small collection of custom-made grenades. All of these are hidden from view by a cotton shirt.
He pushes north for South Park Street Cemetery. Pushes, pushes, pushes.
The cemetery. It is where he is. One of the Players who Chiyoko had nicked with a tracker. One of the Players that An is now tracking.
The cemetery is where he will find the Nabataean. Maccabee Adlai. Who has Earth Key and Sky Key. Who is winning.
Or believes he is winning.
Because there is a difference between these.
If An gets there soon, there will certainly be a difference.
If An gets there, Maccabee will not be winning. Not at all.
He will be dead.
And An is less than two kilometers away.
So close.
But the streets are full. Kolkata has poured her citizens out of doors this evening, all of them clamoring for information, for loved ones, for a decent cell signal. An dodges businessmen and spice wallahs, brightly dressed women and stray dogs, crying children and stalled Ambassador taxis, rickshaws with reed-thin men pulling their carriages along haphazard streets like fish working upstream. He curls the bike around an oblivious Brahman bull. Some people get in An’s way. These either get nudged by the bike or get a swift kick from An’s foot.
Out of SHIVERSHIVER out of the way.
In his wake are screams and bruises and cursing and shaking fists. There are no cops. Not a single officer of the law.
Is it because the world is on the cusp of lawlessness?
Is it because of Abaddon, even now, before it has struck?
Could it be?
Yes.
An smiles.
Yes, Chiyoko. The end is near.
Two large men appear at the intersection of Lower Range Road and Circus Avenue. They point and shout. They recognize him. They saw his video—everyone in the world has seen his video by now—and they want to stop him. They may try to kill him, which An finds preposterous. He revs the bike and people scatter, but the men hold strong and lock arms.
Fools.
An rides straight for them, through them, knocking them aside and running over one, tearing skin from an arm. The men yell and one produces an ancient-looking pistol from nowhere. He pulls the trigger, but instead of firing properly it explodes in his hands.
He falls, screaming.
The gun was faulty. Old. Broken.
Like this BLINKBLINKBLINK this world.
An might feel sorry for the man and his mangled hand, but he is the Shang and he doesn’t care. He jams the throttle and rises out of the saddle and weaves the bike’s rear wheel back and forth and scuttles away, one of the men screaming as his leg is momentarily caught under the rubber and made bloody and raw.
An’s smile grows.
He leaves the men behind. Passes a barbershop, a sweetshop, a mobile phone shop, an electronics shop crowded with people. On the screens in the windows of this store An catches the image of kepler 22b.
The alien outed himself when he gave his announcement about Sky Key. kepler 22b began to show his true colors. Endgame is real for everyone now. It is real for rich people and poor people, the powerful and the impotent. The brutal and the kind. Everyone.
And An loves it.
Now the whole world knows that the first two keys are together. That Maccabee has them. That Endgame continues despite some of the other Players’ misguided attempts to stop it. That it continues despite fear and hope and murder and even love.
Best of all, kepler 22b told the people of Earth that Abaddon can’t be stopped. That the giant asteroid will fall in less than three days and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
That millions will die.
An loves it.
The bike churns. The street widens. The crowds part and An moves a little faster, up to 60 kph now. He glances at Chiyoko’s watch. Sees the tracker’s display screened over the numbers.
Blip-blip.
There. Maccabee Adlai.
So BLINK so SHIVER so close.
So close that An can smell them.
An screams across Shakespeare Sarani Road and goes two more blocks and spins northwest on Park Street. He looks at the watch again and sees it.
Blip-blip.
Blip-blip.
Only blocks away.
BLINKshiver
Chiyoko Played for life.
SHIVERblink
But I
SHIVER
I Play for death.
SARAH ALOPAY, JAGO TLALOC, AISLING KOPP, POP KOPP, GREG JORDAN, GRIFFIN MARRS
The Depths,
“Everybody chill the fuck out!” a man yells. He’s mid-40s, weathered, drenched in sweat, a little chubby. He stands in the middle of the hallway that is crowded with Players and their friends.
Sarah and Jago are at the far end, their backs to an open doorway. The Donghu, the Harappan, the Nabataean, and both Earth Key and Sky Key were in the room beyond the doorway not minutes before. Baitsakhan was very alive and very intent on killing Shari Chopra out of a psychotic sense of revenge, but Maccabee felt sorry for the Harappan, and he stopped the Donghu. He was about to take sole possession of both Earth Key and Sky Key when Sarah and Jago surged into the room. As Baitsakhan lay dying, the Olmec jumped forward and attacked Maccabee, and while the fight was close, Jago won. Sarah had a chance to kill Little Alice Chopra, the girl who is Sky Key, a death that should have put a stop to Endgame.
But Sarah couldn’t do it.
And Jago couldn’t do it either.
Aisling’s squad arrived moments after the fight ended. The Celt had a chance to kill Sky Key too, and she tried to take a shot with her sniper rifle, but at the last moment Sky Key reached out and touched Earth Key and in a flash of light the little girl disappeared, taking an unconscious Maccabee with her, and the mutilated body of Baitsakhan as well.
The only living person left in that room is Shari Chopra, knocked out, with a large lump on her head courtesy of Maccabee. He could have killed her too but, perhaps out of mercy or righteousness or empathy, Maccabee let her live.
Where Maccabee and the keys are now, none of them know. It could be that they went to Bolivia, or to the bottom of the ocean, or are in an Endgame-finishing audience with kepler 22b himself.
All that is left here, in the routed Harappan fortress carved out of the Sikkimese Himalayas, are these Players and Aisling’s friends.
All that is left is their fear and their anger and their confusion.
And their guns.
Most of which are pointed at one another.
“Just chill out,” the man implores again. “No one else has to die today,” he says.
You might, Sarah thinks, her pistol trained on the man’s throat. Sarah refused to kill the Chopra girl, but she wouldn’t think twice about shooting this man, or the people with him, if it means escape.
The man steps around Aisling, places a hand on the barrel of her rifle, forces it down two inches. It’s now aimed at Sarah’s chest rather than her forehead. The man’s other hand is empty and palm forward. His eyes are wide and pleading. His breath quick.
A peacemaker, Sarah thinks.
The man licks his lips.
Sarah says, “I’ll chill out when none of you are standing in our way.” Her voice is calm. Sarah notices that Aisling Kopp is flushed. She has a smear of blood on her skin—maybe hers, but probably not.
Blood. And sweat. And grime.
Aisling asks, “Where’s Sky Key?”
Sarah’s gun is light. One bullet. Maybe two.
“Move out of our way,” Jago insists. His pistol is aimed at Aisling’s head. Aisling looks different from when he last saw her. Older, harder, sadder. They must all appear so. Endgame was simpler in the early stages, before any of the keys had been recovered. Now it is vastly more complicated.
“We’re not going anywhere,” Aisling says, her eyes not moving from Sarah’s. “Not until we find out where Sky Key is.”
Sarah says, “Well, she’s not here.”
Shoot her! Sarah orders herself. Do it!
But she doesn’t.
She can’t.
Aisling tried to do what Sarah couldn’t. She tried to kill the little girl.
Aisling tried to stop Endgame.
Which means that Aisling and her friends can’t be all bad.
Sarah glances at the other men in the room, the ones who haven’t spoken. One is old but formidable-looking, an eye clouded and white. Maybe a former La Tène Player. The other is middle-aged, a contemporary of the Peacemaker. He has a bandanna tied over his head, wears round eyeglasses, and is strapped with a heavy-looking pack spilling with communications equipment. He also carries a sniper rifle, which he doesn’t bother to aim at anyone. Instead, he reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out a hand-rolled cigarette. He puts it in his mouth but doesn’t light it.
Both men look spent.
Long day, Sarah thinks.
Long week.
Long fucking life.
Sarah figures she could jump backward and fire simultaneously, killing Peacemaker. Aisling would instantly return fire, but since Peacemaker has his hand parked on her rifle, this shot would miss. Jago would kill Aisling. Then they would finish the old Celt and the hippie walkie-talkie. Provided no one else is hidden nearby, she and Jago could let their guard down and fall into each other’s arms and exhale. They could walk out unscathed. They could continue their mission to stop Endgame. Sarah puts their chances of killing these four people at 60 or 65 percent. Not bad odds, but not great.
“Don’t do it,” Peacemaker says, as if he can read Sarah’s thoughts.
“Why not?” she asks.
“Just hear me out.” He glances at Aisling. “Please.”
“Here it comes,” the man with the cigarette mumbles, breaking his silence. The old man with the white eye stays mum, his gaze dancing from person to person.
The man says, “My name is Greg Jordan. I’m a retired, twenty-plus-year vet of the CIA. I’m associates—no, friends—with Aisling here. I know all about Endgame. Maybe more than any of you know about it, believe it or not.” He glances at Aisling. “More than I’ve been letting on,” he says apologetically. Aisling’s left eye twitches. The old man exhales loudly. “Anyway, I’ve seen my share of Mexican standoffs, and this qualifies big time. One wrong move and we all die in this hallway pretty easily. Like I said, no one else has to die today. A lot of people already have.” Sarah doesn’t know what he’s talking about. She doesn’t know that Aisling and Greg and the other two men—and also a woman, now dead, named Bridget McCloskey—spent the previous day marching into the mountains and killing everyone they met. Killing, killing, killing. By the end of the day many, many Harappan were dead. Well over 50.
Too many.
The man sighs. “Let’s not add to the body count.”
Aisling’s shoulders slump, her burgeoning guilt palpable. Greg Jordan’s words so far make some sense. Bullets remain in chambers. Feet remain planted on the ground. Sarah’s and Jago’s faces say, Go on.
Greg Jordan continues. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I think we can all be friends. I think we all want the same thing—namely, to put a stop to this madness. Am I right? Whadya say, guys? Friends? At least until we’ve had a few minutes to chat and are out of this Himalayan fortress?”
Pause.
Then Jago whispers, “Screw these guys, Sarah.”
And a part of Sarah is inclined to agree, but before she does anything rash Aisling asks, “Why didn’t you kill her, Sarah? Why couldn’t you do it?” As she speaks she lets her rifle fall to her side. Aisling is now completely defenseless, and that counts for something.
The Celt steps past Greg Jordan. “Why?” she repeats, staring intently at Sarah, her voice barely above a whisper.
Aisling wants the game to end badly. She wants to stop it. She wants to save lives.
Just like Sarah and Jago do.
Sarah’s forearm pounds, reminding her that in the fight with Maccabee and Baitsakhan she suffered a gunshot wound that needs attention. Her head spins a little. Her grip on the pistol loosens. “I know I should have …”
“Damn right you should have,” Aisling says.
“I wanted it to stop. I needed it to stop.”
“Then you should have pulled the trigger!”
“You’re … you’re right. But I needed it to stop,” Sarah repeats.
“It’s not going to stop until that girl is dead,” Aisling points out.
“That’s not what I mean,” Sarah says, her voice dropping half an octave. “I want Endgame to stop too, Aisling, but I needed—what did you say, Greg? Madness? I needed the madness to stop. The madness in my head. If I’d pulled that trigger, then it would’ve … it would’ve …”