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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.
“Come on!” Jago says. He lifts her to her feet and they stumble away. They have to get out through the pyramid. Through the door that has reappeared, though they don’t know where it will take them. They can’t risk the woods, not with the fire, not with An, Chiyoko, Baitsakhan, and who knows who else lurking there. They reach the pyramid and stop at the door.
Its incandescent surface reflects the light of the fire, the dark of the woods. Sarah reaches out. A series of golden images drift across the doorway. Some are recognizable: the pyramids at Giza; Carahunge; the jumble of geometric stones at Pumapunku; Tchogha Zanbil.
Others are megaliths and signs, idols and statues, numbers and shapes that Sarah doesn’t recognize.
Another explosion rattles the air behind them.
“I think it’s asking where we want to go,” Sarah says.
Jago glances over his shoulder. “Anywhere but here,” Jago says.
He squeezes Sarah’s hand, and together they step forward and pass through the strange portal. They don’t notice that right behind them is Maccabee Adlai, bleeding and angry and hungry for death.
CHRISTOPHER VANDERKAMP
Xi’an Garden Hotel, Dayan District, Xi’an, China
Christopher wakes with a start. He can’t believe he fell asleep. He looks at his watch:
3:13 a.m.
It could all be over by now. Sarah and the others could have finished whatever they were doing in the pagoda and moved on.
He grabs the backpack that contains his passport, money and credit cards, his phone, some food, and a folding knife he bought at the Big Wild Goose Pagoda gift shop. A headlamp, a change of underwear, and a Chinese phrase book. He takes one pair of binoculars and throws it in the bag and leaves the room. He doesn’t bother with the $5,000 worth of equipment, all bought the day before. He knows he’ll never come back.
He’s going to go into the pagoda. He’s going to go find out if Sarah is still there or already gone. He runs down five flights of stairs, into the night, streetlamps casting an orange glow over the city. There are very few cars out, no people. He looks at his watch.
3:18.
He runs as fast as he can, which is fast. His bag bounces on his back. Floodlights on the ground illuminate the pagoda. He hopes there isn’t a guard, but if there is, he’s prepared to do whatever he has to do, knowing in his heart he’s doing it for love. He has to get inside. Find Sarah. Help her win.
He arrives, looks for a guard, doesn’t see one. It’s strangely empty. Whatever was happening here, it was meant to take place in private. He pauses before moving toward the door, looking up and around. He stops dead in his tracks, something catching his eye. His jaw drops. A young woman leaps from a window at the top of the pagoda, 200 feet up. She starts to fall, her colorful scarves flapping and fluttering around her. As she moves toward the ground, she spreads out her arms and legs, and the scarves billow out and catch the wind. Even though she’s falling fast, she also seems to be slowing down. Christopher shakes his head, can’t believe what he’s seeing.
She is not falling at all, not anymore.
She is flying.
KALA MOZAMI
Big Wild Goose Pagoda, 6th Floor, Xi’an, China
Kala materializes in the attic of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, tumbling across the rough wooden floor. She dove into the emptiness of the pyramid’s door and this is where it spit her out. She’s out of breath but relieved to be away from the other Players.
For now, she wants to keep it that way.
For now, she wants to retreat and breathe and decode the random string of Arabic numbers and Sumerian letters kepler 22b tattooed onto her consciousness like a sudden, driving madness.
She wonders if the codes are this intense for the others. She hopes they are. Because it’s strange and upsetting; it disarms her and confuses her.
She doesn’t want to be the only one who feels this way, an indecipherable message burned across the forefront of her mind. It would put her at a great disadvantage. She does not like being at a disadvantage of any kind. She will do what she can to remedy this. As soon as possible. Now.
The room is as she remembers it: dark and small and old. But there are no Players stacked like rugs in the corner, and there is no ghostly voice of kepler 22b. Blessings to Annunaki for that, she thinks. She does not want to be there when another Player arrives, and is not sure when that might happen, so she gathers herself and bolts down the small hidden stairway to the main room of the pagoda’s penultimate story, the room that has windows looking out over China, over the rest of the world.
The world that is going to end.
Filled with people who are going to die.
Kala pauses and balls her fists around her scarves and does a little pirouette as she eyes the open window. She has to get away. She shakes her body violently, and two flaps of webbing drop from her jumpsuit, one beneath her arms and another between her legs. She stares at the night outside. She takes a deep breath and runs straight toward the window.
She jumps headfirst. She’s done the math, knows how much distance she needs. She knows that she only has 200 feet before the ground will rush up to meet her. It’s just enough. Her scarves flutter and snap and the flaps catch the up-rushing wind and it happens. She’s not falling but gliding, flying. For a moment, a too brief moment, she feels free. Blessings.
The code seared onto her brain is gone. The others are gone. The pressure is gone. Just like that.
She’s flying.
But not for long.
Because here comes the ground.
She jerks her head and shoulders and thrusts her pelvis forward. The suit is special. Designed not just for flying but landing too. An array of miniature chutes opens along the flaps that slow her down. Kala pushes a button on a loop of cloth that is stretched around her middle finger, and the whole front of the suit inflates with a loud hiss. She hits the ground and it hurts, but she’s fine. The cushions deflate just as quickly as they blew up, and just like she has practiced 238 times, she is upright and already running. Running away from it all, and running toward it all as well.
Everything is here, Kala recalls kepler 22b saying. What does that mean? The way the creature said it made her feel small and meaningless. She didn’t like that. Kala cannot think about this for long, though. Because, as her feet move across the ground, the code comes back to the forefront of her mind like a supernova.
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