This book is a puzzle.i

Within its pages lie clues that lead to a key hidden somewhere on Earth.

Decipher, decode, and interpret.

Search and seek.

The first to find the key and deliver it to its proper home will be rewarded with gold.ii

Stacks and stacks of gold.iii

$$$ . $.iv

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

77–85 Fulham Palace Road

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2014

Endgame: The Calling

Copyright © 2014 by Third Floor Fun, LLC.

“Ballad for Gloom” excerpt here by Ezra Pound, from Collected Early Poems, copyright

© 1926, 1935, 1954, 1965, 1967, 1976 by The Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

Puzzle hunt experience by Futuruption LLC.

Additional character icon design by John Taylor Dismukes Assoc., a Division of Capstone Studios, Inc.

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. You do not need to prove that you purchased this book to enter. Copies of the book may be available to you through other resources, such as your local library. Contest begins 9:00 a.m. EST, October 7, 2014, and ends when the puzzle has been solved or on October 7, 2016, whichever is earlier. Open to ages 13 and older. Entrants under 18 must have consent from a parent or guardian. Void where prohibited. Total value of prize: approximately $500,000.00. Sponsor: Third Floor Fun, LLC, 25 Old Kings Hwy N, Ste 13, PO Box #254, Darien, CT 06820-4608. For Contest details, prize description, and Official Rules, visit www.endgamerules.com

HarperCollins Publishers is not responsible for the design or operation of any contests related to Endgame, and is not the sponsor of any such contest. All such contests have been designed, managed, and sponsored by Third Floor Fun, LLC, which is solely responsible for their content and operation.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source HB ISBN: 9780007585168

Source TPB ISBN: 9780007586448

Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007585212

Version: 2014-09-22

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Marcus Loxias Megalos

Chiyoko Takeda

Sarah Alopay

Jago Tlaloc

Baitsakhan

Sarah Alopay

Maccabee Adlai

Sarah Alopay

An Liu

Jago Tlaloc, Sarah Alopay

Christopher Vanderkamp

Chiyoko Takeda

Christopher Vanderkamp

Marcus Loxias Megalos

Kepler 22B

All Players

Christopher Vanderkamp

Kala Mozami

Christopher Vanderkamp

Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc

Chiyoko Takeda

Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt

Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc

Chiyoko Takeda

Shari Chopra

Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc

Christopher Vanderkamp

An Liu

Chiyoko Takeda

An Liu

Jago Tlaloc

An Liu

Maccabee Adlai

Baitsakhan

Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt

Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Chiyoko Takeda, An Liu

Shari Chopra, Baitsakhan

An Liu, Chiyoko Takeda, Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc

Aisling Kopp

Christopher Vanderkamp

Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc

Christopher Vanderkamp

Chiyoko Takeda

Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc

Alice Ulapala

Chiyoko Takeda

Kala Mozami

Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc

An Liu

J. Deepak Singh

Aisling Kopp

Kala Mozami

Alice Ulapala

Kala Mozami

Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc

Christopher Vanderkamp, Kala Mozami

Chiyoko Takeda

Baitsakhan

Kala Mozami, Christopher Vanderkamp

Baitsakhan, Maccabee Adlai

Aisling Kopp

Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc

Christopher Vanderkamp, Kala Mozami

Chiyoko Takeda, Kala Mozami, Christopher Vanderkamp

Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt

Chiyoko Takeda

Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc

Baitsakhan, Maccabee Adlai

Kala Mozami, Christopher Vanderkamp

Chiyoko Takeda

Kala Mozami, Christopher Vanderkamp

Baitsakhan, Maccabee Adlai

Chiyoko Takeda

Kala Mozami, Christopher Vanderkamp, Baitsakhan, Maccabee Adlai, Chiyoko Takeda

An Liu

Kala Mozami, Christopher Vanderkamp, Baitsakhan, Maccabee Adlai, Chiyoko Takeda

Alice Ulapala

Chiyoko Takeda, Kala Mozami, Maccabee Adlai, Baitsakhan, Christopher Vanderkamp

Christopher Vanderkamp

Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Chiyoko Takeda

Baitsakhan, Maccabee Adlai

Shari Chopra

Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Chiyoko Takeda, Christopher Vanderkamp

Aisling Kopp

Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt

Maccabee Adlai, Baitsakhan

Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Chiyoko Takeda, Christopher Vanderkamp

Maccabee Adlai, Baitsakhan

Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Chiyoko Takeda, Christopher Vanderkamp

Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt

Sarah Alopay

Chiyoko Takeda

Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt

Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Christopher Vanderkamp

Chiyoko Takeda

Aisling Kopp, Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Christopher Vanderkamp

Chiyoko Takeda

Hilal Ibn Isa Al-Salt

An Liu

Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Christopher Vanderkamp

Maccabee Adlai, Baitsakhan

Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Christopher Vanderkamp

An Liu

Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Christopher Vanderkamp

Chiyoko Takeda

Christopher Vanderkamp, An Liu

Sarah Alopay, Jago Tlaloc, Chiyoko Takeda, An Liu, Christopher Vanderkamp

All Players

Shari Chopra

Endnotes

About the Publisher

Much of this book is fiction, but much of the information in it is not. Endgame is real. And Endgame is coming.

Everything, all the time, every word, name, number, place, distance, color, time, every letter on every page, everything, always. So says, and so has been said, and so will be said again. Everything.

ʿ Ēlv 12 12 12vi

Endgame has begun. Our future is unwritten. Our future is your future. What will be will be.

We each believe some version of how we got here. God made us. Aliens beamed us. Lightning split us, or portals delivered us. In the end, the how doesn’t matter. We have this planet, this world, this Earth. We came here, we have been here, and we are here now. You, me, us, the whole of humanity. Whatever you believe happened in the beginning is not important. The end, however. The end is.

This is Endgame.

We are 12 in number. Young in body, but of ancient people. Our lines were chosen thousands of years ago. We have been preparing every day since. Once the game begins, we must deliberate and decipher, move and murder. Some of us are less ready than others, and the lessers will be the first to die. Endgame is simple this way. What is not simple is that when one of us dies, it will mean the deaths of countless others. The Event, and what comes after, will see to that. You are the unwitting billions. You are the innocent bystanders. You are the lucky losers and the unlucky winners. You are the audience at a play that will determine your fate.

We are the Players. Your Players. We have to Play. We must be older than 13 and younger than 20. It is the rule, and it has always been this way. We are not supernatural. None of us can fly, or turn lead to gold, or heal ourselves. When death comes, it comes. We are mortal. Human. We are the inheritors of the Earth. The Great Puzzle of Salvation is ours to solve, and one of us must do it, or we will all be lost. Together we are everything: strong, kind, ruthless, loyal, smart, stupid, ugly, lustful, mean, fickle, beautiful, calculating, lazy, exuberant, weak.

We are good and evil. Like you.

Like all.

But we are not together. We are not friends. We do not call one another, and we do not text one another. We do not chat on the internet or meet for coffee. We are separated and scattered, spread around the world. We have been raised and trained since birth to be wary and wise, cunning and deceptive, ruthless and merciless. We will stop at nothing to find the keys to the Great Puzzle. We cannot fail. Failure is death. Failure is the End of All, the End of Everything.

Will exuberance beat strength? Stupidity top kindness? Laziness thwart beauty? Will the winner be good or evil? There is only one way to find out.

Play.

Survive.

Solve.

Our future is unwritten. Our future is your future. What will be will be.

So listen.

Follow.

Cheer.

Hope.

Pray.

Pray hard if that is what you believe.

We are the Players. Your Players. We Play for you.

Come Play with us.

People of Earth.

Endgame has begun.

MARCUS LOXIAS MEGALOS
Hafız Alipaşa Sk, Aziz Mahmut Hüdayi Mh, Istanbul, Turkey

Marcus Loxias Megalos is bored. He cannot remember a time before the boredom. School is boring. Girls are boring. Football is boring. Especially when his team, his favorite team, Fenerbahçe, is losing, as they are now, to Manisaspor.

Marcus sneers at the TV in his small, undecorated room. He is slouched in a plush black leather chair that sticks to his skin whenever he sits up. It is night, but Marcus keeps the lights in his room off. The window is open. Heat passes through it like an oppressive ghost as the sounds of the Bosporus—the long, low calls of ships, the bells of buoys—groan and tinkle over Istanbul.

Marcus wears baggy black gym shorts and is shirtless. His 24 ribs show through his tanned skin. His arms are sinewy and hard. His breathing is easy. His stomach is taut and his hair is close-cropped and black and his eyes are green. A bead of sweat rolls down the tip of his nose. All of Istanbul simmers on this night, and Marcus is no different. A book lies open in his lap, ancient and leather-bound. The words on its pages are Greek. Marcus has handwritten something in English on a scrap of paper that lies across the open page: From broad Crete I declare that I am come by lineage, the son of a wealthy man. He has read the old book over and over. It’s a tale of war, exploration, betrayal, love, and death. It always makes him smile.

What Marcus wouldn’t give to take a journey of his own, to escape the oppressive heat of this dull city. He imagines an endless sea spread out before him, the wind cool against his skin, adventures and enemies arrayed on the horizon.

Marcus sighs and touches the scrap of paper. In his other hand he holds a 9,000-year-old knife, made of a single piece of bronze forged in the fires of Knossos. He brings the blade across his body and lets its edge rest against his right forearm. He pushes it into the skin, but not all the way. He knows the limits of this blade. He has trained with it since he could hold it. He has slept with it under his pillow since he was six. He has killed chickens, rats, dogs, cats, pigs, horses, hawks, and lambs with it. He has killed 11 people with it.

He is 16, in his prime for Playing. If he turns 20, he will be ineligible. He wants to Play. He would rather die than be ineligible.

The odds are almost nil that he will get his chance, though, and he knows it. Unlike Odysseus, war will never find Marcus. There will be no grand journey.

His line has been waiting for 9,000 years. Since the day the knife was forged. For all Marcus knows, his line will wait for another 9,000 years, long after Marcus is gone and the pages of his book have disintegrated.

So Marcus is bored.

The crowd on the TV cheers, and Marcus looks up from the knife. The Fenerbahçe goalie has cleared a rainbow up the right sideline, the ball finding the head of a burly midfielder. The ball bounces forward, over a line of defenders, near the last two men before the Manisaspor keeper. The players rush for the ball, and the forward comes away with it, 20 meters from the goal, free and clear of the defender. The keeper gets ready.

Marcus leans forward. Match time is 83:34. Fenerbahçe has yet to score, and doing so in such a dramatic way would save some face. The old book slides to the floor. The scrap of paper drifts free of the page and slips through the air like a falling leaf. The crowd begins to rise. The sky suddenly brightens, as if the gods, the Gods of the Sky themselves, are coming down to offer help. The keeper backpedals. The forward collects himself and takes the shot, and the ball blasts off.

As it punches the back of the net, the stadium lights up and the crowd screams, first in exaltation for the goal, but immediately afterward in terror and confusion—deep, true, and profound terror and confusion. A massive fireball, a giant burning meteor, explodes above the crowd and tears across the field, obliterating the Fenerbahçe defense and blasting a hole through the end of the stadium grandstand.

Marcus’s eyes widen. He is looking at total carnage. It is butchery on the scale of those American disaster movies. Half the stadium, tens of thousands of people dead, burning, lit up, on fire.

It is the most beautiful thing Marcus has ever seen.

He breathes hard. Sweat pours off his brow. People outside are yelling, screaming. A woman wails from the café below. Sirens ring out across the ancient city on the Bosporus, between the Marmara and the Black. On TV, the stadium is awash in flames. Players, police, spectators, coaches run around, burning like crazed matchsticks. The commentators cry for help, for God, because they don’t understand. Those not dead or on their way to being dead trample one another as they try to escape. There’s another explosion and the screen goes black.

Marcus’s heart wants out of his chest. Marcus’s brain is as hot as the football pitch. Marcus’s stomach is full of rocks and acid. His palms feel hot and sticky. He looks down and sees that he has dug the ancient blade into his forearm, and a rivulet of blood is trickling off his hand, onto the chair, onto his book. The book is ruined, but it doesn’t matter; he won’t need it anymore. Because now, Marcus will have his Odyssey. Marcus looks back to the darkened TV. He knows there’s something waiting for him there amidst the wreckage. He must find it.

A single piece.

For himself, for his line.

He smiles. Marcus has trained all of his life for this moment. When he wasn’t training, he was dreaming of the Calling. All the visions of destruction that his teenage mind concocted could not touch what Marcus has witnessed tonight. A meteor destroying a football stadium and killing 38,676 people. The legends said it would be a grand announcement. For once, the legends have become a beautiful reality.

Marcus has wanted, waited, and prepared for Endgame his entire life. He is no longer bored, and he won’t be again until he either wins or dies.

This is it.

He knows it.

This is it.

CHIYOKO TAKEDA
22B Hateshinai Tōri, Naha, Okinawa, Japan

Three chimes of a small pewter bell awake Chiyoko Takeda. Her head lolls to the side. The time on her digital clock: 5:24. She makes a note of it. These are heavy numbers now. Significant. She imagines it is the same for those who ascribe meaning to numbers like 11:03 or 9:11 or 7:07. For the rest of her life she will see these numbers, 5:24, and for the rest of her life they will carry weight, meaning, significance.

Chiyoko turns from the clock on her side table and stares into the darkness. She lies naked on top of the sheets. She licks her full lips. She scrutinizes the shadows on her ceiling as if some message will appear there.

The bell should not have rung. Not for her.

All her life she has been told of Endgame and her peculiar and fantastical ancestry. Before the bell rang, she was 17 years old, a homeschooled outcast, a master sailor and navigator, an able gardener, a limber climber. Skilled at symbols, languages, and words. An interpreter of signs. An assassin able to wield the wakizashi, the hojo, and the shuriken. Now that the bell has rung, she feels 100. She feels 1,000. She feels 10,000, and getting older by the second. The heavy burden of the centuries presses down upon her.

Chiyoko closes her eyes. Darkness returns. She wants to be somewhere else. A cave. Underwater. In the oldest forest on Earth. But she is here, and she must get used to it. Darkness will be everywhere soon, and everyone will know it. She must master it. Befriend it. Love it. She has prepared for 17 years and she’s ready, even if she never wanted it or expected it. The darkness. It will be like a loving silence, which for Chiyoko is easy. The silence is part of who she is. For she can hear, but she has never spoken.

She looks out her open window, breathes. It rained during the night, and she can feel the humidity in her nose and throat and chest. The air smells good.

There is a gentle rapping on the sliding door leading to her room. Chiyoko sits in her Western-style bed, her slight back facing the door. She stamps her foot twice. Twice means Come in.

The sound of wood sliding across wood. The quiet of the screen stopping. The faint shuffle of feet.

“I rang the bell,” her uncle says, his head bowed low to the ground, according the young Player the highest level of respect, as is the custom, the rule. “I had to,” he says. “They’re coming. All of them.” Chiyoko nods.

He keeps his gaze lowered. “I am sorry,” he says. “It is time.”

Chiyoko stamps five arrhythmic times with her foot. Okay. Glass of water.

“Yes, of course.” Her uncle backs out of the doorway and quietly moves away.

Chiyoko stands, smells the air again, and moves to the window. The faint glow from the city’s lights blankets her pale skin. She looks out over Naha. There is the park. The hospital. The harbor. There is the sea, black, broad, and calm. There is the soft breeze. The palm trees below her window whisper. The low gray clouds begin to light up, as if a spaceship is coming to visit. Old people must be awake, Chiyoko thinks. Old people get up early. They are having tea and rice and radish pickles. Eggs and fish and warm milk. Some will remember the war. The fire from the sky that destroyed and decimated everything. And allowed for a rebirth. What is about to happen will remind them of those days. But a rebirth? Their survival and their future depend entirely on Chiyoko.

A dog begins to bark frantically.

Birds trill.

A car alarm goes off.

The sky gets very bright, and the clouds break downward as a massive fireball bursts over the edge of town. It screams, burns, and crashes into the marina. A great explosion and a billow of scalding steam illuminate the early morning. Rain made of dust and rock and plastic and metal hurls upward over Naha. Trees die. Fish die. Children, dreams, and fortunes die. The lucky ones are snuffed out in their slumber. The unlucky are burned or maimed.

Initially it will be mistaken for an earthquake.

But they will see.

It is just the beginning.

The debris falls all over town. Chiyoko senses her piece coming for her. She takes a large step away from her window, and a bright ember shaped like a mackerel falls onto her floor, burning a hole in the tatami mat.

Her uncle knocks on the door again. Chiyoko stomps her foot twice. Come in. The door is still open. Her uncle keeps his gaze lowered as he stops at her side and hands her first a simple blue silk kimono, which she steps into, and, after she’s in the kimono, a glass of very cold water. She pours the water over the ember. It sizzles, spurts, and steams, the water immediately boiling. What is left is a shiny, black, jagged rock. She looks at her uncle. He looks back at her, sadness in his eyes. It is the sadness of many centuries, of lifetimes coming to an end. She gives him a slight bow of thanks. He tries to smile. He used to be like her, waiting for Endgame to begin, but it passed him over, like it did countless others, for thousands and thousands of years.

Not so for Chiyoko.

“I am sorry,” he says. “For you, for all of us. What will be will be.”

SARAH ALOPAY
Bryan High School, Omaha, Nebraska, United States

The principal stands, smiling, and looks out over the crowd. “And so it is with great honor that I present your class valedictorian, Sarah Alopay!”

The crowd cheers, applauds, whistles.

Sarah stands. She’s wearing a red cap and gown with the valedictorian’s blue sash across her chest. She smiles. She’s been smiling all day. Her face hurts, she’s been smiling so much. She’s happy. She’ll be 18 in less than a month. She’s going to spend her summer at an archeological dig in Bolivia with her boyfriend, Christopher, and in the fall it’s off to college at Princeton. As soon as she turns 20, she can start the rest of her life.

In 742.43625 days she’ll be free.

No longer eligible.

She’s in the 2nd row, behind a group of administrators, PTA board members, and football coaches. She’s a few seats from the aisle. Next to her is Reena Smithson, her best friend since 3rd grade, and four rows behind her is Christopher. She steals a look at him. Blond hair, five-o’clock shadow, green eyes. An even temper and a huge heart. The best-looking boy in her school, her town, maybe the state, and, as far as she’s concerned, the world.

“Go get ’em, tiger,” Christopher says, grinning.

Sarah and Christopher have been together since the 7th grade. Inseparable. Christopher’s family is one of the wealthiest in Omaha. So wealthy, in fact, that his mom and dad couldn’t be bothered to fly back from business in Europe to attend their own son’s graduation. When Christopher crosses the stage, it will be Sarah’s family cheering the loudest. Christopher could’ve gone to private school, or the boarding school where his father went, but he refused, not wanting to be apart from Sarah. It is one of the many reasons she loves him and believes they will be together for their entire lives. She wants it, and she knows he does as well. And in 742.43539 days it will be possible.

Sarah gets into the aisle. She has on the pink Ray-Ban Wayfarers her dad gave her for Christmas, a pair of glasses that obscures her brown, wide-set eyes. Her long auburn hair is pulled into a tight ponytail. Her smooth, bronze skin is luminous. Under her gown she is dressed like all the others.

Yet how many others in her graduating class will bear the weight of an artifact onto the stage with them? Sarah wears it around her neck, just as Tate had worn it when he was eligible, as it has been, passed from Player to Player, for 300 generations. Hanging from the chain is a polished black stone that has seen 6,000 years of love, sorrow, beauty, light, sadness, and death. Sarah has been wearing the necklace since the moment Tate got hurt and her line’s council decided she should be the Player. She was 14. She hasn’t taken the amulet off since, and she’s so used to it that she hardly feels it.

As she makes the trip to the stage, a chant begins in the back of the assembly. “Sar-ah! Sar-ah! Sar-ah!” She smiles, turns, and looks at all her friends; her classmates; Christopher; her older brother, Tate; and her parents. Her mom has her arm around her dad, and they look proud, happy. Sarah makes an I’m nervous face, and her dad smiles and gives her a thumbs-up. She steps onto the stage, and Mrs. Shoemaker, the principal, hands Sarah her diploma. “I’ll miss you, Sarah.”

“I’m not leaving forever, Mrs. Shoe! You’ll see me again.”

Mrs. Shoemaker knows better. Sarah Alopay has never gotten a grade lower than an A. She was All-State in soccer and track, and got a perfect score on her SATs. She’s funny, kind, generous, and helpful, and clearly meant for bigger things. “Give ’em hell, Alopay,” she says.

“I always do,” says Sarah.

She steps to the mic, looks west over her class, her school. Behind the last line of 319 students is a stand of tall green-leafed oaks. The sun is shining and it’s hot, but she doesn’t care. None of them do. They’re finishing one part of their lives, and another is about to begin. They’re all excited. They’re imagining the future, and the dreams they have and hope to realize. Sarah has worked hard on her speech. She’s to be the voice of her classmates and wants to give them something that will inspire them, something that will drive them forward as they embark on this new chapter. It’s a lot of pressure, but Sarah is used to that.

Sarah leans forward and clears her throat. “Congratulations and welcome to the best day of our lives, or at least the best day so far!” The kids go crazy, and a few prematurely toss their caps into the air. Some laugh. More cheer, “Sar-ah! Sar-ah! Sar-ah!”

“While I was thinking about my speech,” Sarah says, her heart pounding, “I decided to try to answer a question. Immediately I thought, ‘What question is most often asked of me?’ and though it’s a little embarrassing, it was easy to answer. People are always asking me if I have a secret!”

Laughter. Because it’s true. If there was ever a perfect student at the school, it was Sarah. And at least once a week, someone asked what her secret was.

“After thinking long and hard, I realized it was a very simple answer. My secret is that I have no secrets.”

Of course, that is a lie. Sarah has deep secrets. Profound secrets. Secrets that have been kept among her people for thousands and thousands of years. And though she’s done all the things she’s popular for, earned every A and trophy and award, she’s done so much more. Things they can’t even imagine. Like make fire with ice. Hunt and kill a wolf with her bare hands. Walk on hot coals. She has stayed awake for a week straight; she has shot deer from a mile away; she speaks nine languages, has five passports. While they think of her as Sarah Alopay, homecoming queen and all-American girl, the reality is that she is as highly trained and as deadly as any soldier on Earth.

“I am as you see me. I am happy and able because I allow myself to be happy. I learned young that being active breeds more activity. That the gift of studying is knowledge. That seeing grants sight. That if you don’t feed anger, you won’t be angry. Sadness and frustration, even tragedy, are inevitable, but that doesn’t mean that happiness isn’t there for us, for all of us. My secret is that I choose to be the person that I want to be. That I don’t believe in destiny or predetermination, but in choice, and that each of us chooses to be the person we are. Whatever you want to be you can be; whatever you want to do you can do; wherever you want to go you can go. The world, and the life ahead, is ours for the taking. The future is unwritten, and you can make it whatever you want it to be.”

The kids are quiet now. Everyone is quiet.

“I’m looking west. Behind you, above the bleachers, is a bunch of oaks. Behind the trees are the plains, the land of my ancestors, but really the ancestral land of all humans. Past the plains are the mountains, from where the water flows. Over the mountains is the sea, the source of life. Above is the sky. Below is the earth. All around is life, and life is—” Sarah is interrupted by a sonic boom overhead. Everyone cranes their necks. A bright streak breaks over the oaks, scarring the blue sky. It doesn’t appear to be moving, just getting bigger. For a moment everyone stares in awe. A few people gasp. One person very clearly says, “What is that?”

Everyone stares until a solitary scream comes from the back row, and it hits the whole assembly at once. It’s like someone has flipped a switch for panic. The sounds of chairs tipping over, people screaming, total confusion. Sarah gasps. Instinctively, she reaches through her gown and grabs the stone around her neck.

It’s heavier than it has ever been. The asteroid or meteor or comet or whatever it is, is changing it. She’s frozen. Staring as the streak moves toward her. The stone on the chain changes again, feeling suddenly light. Sarah realizes that it’s lifting into the air under her robe. It works itself free of her clothing, pulls in the direction of the thing that is coming for them.

This is what it looks like.

This is what it feels like.

Endgame.

The sounds of terror fall away from her ears, replaced by stunned silence.

Though she has trained for it for almost her entire life, she never thought it would happen.

She was hoping it wouldn’t. 742.42898 days. She was supposed to be free.

The stone pulls at her neck.

“SARAH!” Someone yanks her arm hard. The fireball is riveting, terrible, and suddenly audible. She can literally hear it moving through the air, burning, raging.

“Come on! NOW!” It’s Christopher. Kind, brave, strong Christopher. His face is red with alarm and heat, his eyes watering, spit flying from his lips. She can see her parents and her brother at the bottom of the steps.

They have seconds.

Maybe less.

The morning sky darkens, turns black, and the fireball is upon them.

The heat is overwhelming. The sound is paralyzing.

They are going to die.

At the last moment Christopher vaults off the stage, pulling Sarah with him. The air fills with the smells of burning hair, wood, plastic. The necklace pulls so hard in the direction of the meteor that the chain digs into the skin of Sarah’s neck.

They shut their eyes and crumple onto the grass. Sarah feels the stone pull free. It sails into the air, seeking out the meteor, and at the last minute the huge fireball changes direction, stopping a thousand feet short and skipping over them like a flat rock on a smooth lake. It happens so quickly that no one can see it, but somehow, some way, for some reason, the ancient little stone has spared them.

The meteor flies over the cement grandstand and impacts a quarter mile to the east. The school building is there. The parking lot. Some basketball courts. The tennis courts.

Not anymore.

The meteor destroys them all.

Boom.

They’re gone.

Those comforting and familiar places where Sarah has spent her life—her normal life, anyway—are gone in an instant. Everything wiped away. A new chapter has begun, just not the one Sarah hoped for. A shock wave rushes out and over the field, carrying dust and darkness. It hits them hard, flattens them, knocks them down, blows out their eardrums.

The air is hot and choked with particles, gray and brown and black. It’s hard to see. Christopher is still with Sarah. Holding her. Shielding her. He pulls her close as they’re pelted with stones and dirt, fist-sized chunks of god-knows-what. There are others around them, some hurt. They cough. They can’t stop crying. They can’t stop shaking. It’s hard to breathe. Another shock wave passes through and pushes them farther into the ground. Sarah gets the wind knocked from her. Spears of fleeting light illuminate the dust. The ground shakes as things begin to fall around them. Hunks of cement and steel, twisted cars, furniture. They can do nothing but wait, praying that nothing lands on top of them. Christopher is holding her so hard it hurts. She is digging her nails into his back.

They have no idea how much time has elapsed when the air begins to clear and smaller sounds begin to return. People are wailing in pain. Names are being called. One of them is hers.

Her father.

“Sarah. SARAH!”

“Here!” she yells. Her voice sounds muffled and distant, even to herself.

Her ears are still ringing. “I’m here!”

Her father emerges from the dust cloud. His face is covered in blood and ash. Against the filth on his face, she can see the whites of his eyes, brilliant and clear. He knows what she knows.

Endgame.

“Sarah!” Her dad stumbles toward them and falls to his knees, wrapping both of them in his arms. They cry. Their bodies heave. People scream in every direction. Sarah opens her eyes for a second and sees Reena in front of her, dazed, in shock. Her best friend’s left arm is gone above the elbow; all that remains is blood and shredded skin and jagged bone. The graduation gown has been torn from her body, but somehow her cap has stayed on. She’s covered in soot. Sarah calls, “Reena! Reena!” but Reena doesn’t hear. She disappears back into the dust, and Sarah knows that she’ll never see Reena again.

“Where’s Mom?” she whispers, her lips on her dad’s ear.

“I was with her. I don’t know.”

“The stone, it … it …”

“I know.”

“Sarah?” her mom calls out.

“Here!” the three say together.

Sarah’s mom crawls toward them. All the hair on the right side of her head is gone. Her face is burned but not too badly. When she sees them she looks so happy. Her look is different from the one she gave Sarah when she walked onto the stage.

I was giving a speech, Sarah thinks. I was giving a speech at graduation. People were happy. So happy.

“Olowa,” Simon says quietly, reaching for his wife. “Tate?” Olowa shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

An explosion in the distance.

The air starts to clear, the carnage becoming more evident. There are bodies everywhere. The Alopays and Christopher are the lucky ones. Sarah sees a head. A leg. A torso. A cap falls to the ground near them. “Sarah, it’s on. It’s on for real.”

It’s Tate, walking toward them, his arms extended. One hand is in a fist; the other holds a grapefruit-sized hunk of gold-and-green rock streaked with black veins of metal.

He is amazingly clean, as if the whole thing passed him over. He smiles. His mouth is full of blood. Tate was a Player once, but no longer. Now he looks almost excited for his sister, in spite of all that’s happened around them. All the death, all the destruction, all that they know is coming.

“I found them!” Tate is 10 feet away now. Another small explosion from somewhere. He opens his fist and puts the small piece of stone that was around her neck into the bigger multicolored rock. “It fits perfectly.”

“Nukumi,” Simon says reverently.

“Nukumi,” Sarah says, much less reverently.

“What?” Christopher asks.

Sarah says, “Nothing—”

But she is cut short as an explosion sends shards of metal flying through the air. A six-foot-long piece of steel embeds itself into the middle of Tate’s chest. He is dead. Gone. Killed in an instant. He falls backward, Sarah’s stone pendant and the piece of green-veined rock still in his hand. Her mother screams; her father yells, “No!”

Sarah cannot speak. Christopher stares in shock. Blood oozes out of Tate’s chest. His eyes are open and staring, lifeless, to the sky. His feet twitch, the last bits of life leaving him. But the stone and the pendant, they are safe.

This is not accidental.

The stones have meaning.

Carry a message.

This is Endgame.

JAGO TLALOC
Tlaloc Residence, 12 Santa Elisa, Juliaca, Puno, Peru

Jago Tlaloc’s sneakers crunch across broken glass. It is night and the streetlights are out. Sirens wail in the distance, but otherwise Juliaca is quiet. It was chaos before, when Jago first headed for the crater in the city center to claim what had been sent for him. In the madness, survivors poured into the streets, shattering shop windows, taking whatever they wanted.

The looting will not sit well with Jago’s father, who runs protection for many of the local businesses. But Jago does not blame his people. Let them enjoy some comforts now, while there is still time. Jago has a treasure of his own: the stone, still warm, wrapped in his satchel and tossed over his shoulder.

A hot wind rushes through the buildings, carrying ash and the smell of fire. They call Juliaca the Windy City of Peru for good reason. Unlike many of his people, Jago has traveled well beyond the city limits. He has killed at least twice on every continent, and still he finds it strange to visit a place where the wind is missing.

Jago is the Player of the 21st line. Born to Guitarrero and Hayu Marca just over 19 years ago. Once Players themselves, several years apart, his parents now run this part of the city. From the legitimate businesses to the illicit materials that flow through the neighborhood’s back alleys, his parents take a cut of everything. They are also philanthropists, in a way, turning around their often ill-gotten money to open schools and maintain hospitals. The law does not touch them, refuses to come near them; the Tlaloc family is too much of a resource. In just a few more months, Jago would have become ineligible and joined his parents in the family business. Yet all empires must crumble.

A trio of shadows peels from the mouth of a nearby alley. The figures block the sidewalk in front of Jago, looking wolfish and dangerous. “What you got there, my friend?” hisses one of the shadows, nodding at Jago’s satchel.

In response, Jago flashes his teeth, which are perfectly straight and white. His maxillary lateral incisors are each capped with gold, and each inset with a small diamond. These gems glint in the moonlight. The three scavengers shrink back. “Sorry, Feo,” says the leader, “we didn’t recognize you.”

They should be scared, but not of Jago or the power of his family, though Jago is strong and merciless, and his family more so. They should be scared of what is to come. They don’t know it, but Jago is the only hope these people have. Once, the power of his family was enough to keep this neighborhood and its people alive and happy. Now that responsibility falls to Jago.

He passes by the thugs without a word. He is lost in thoughts of the 11 other Players, scattered around the world, each with a meteor of their own. He wonders what they will be like, what lines they come from. For the lines do not know the other lines. They cannot know. Not until the Calling.

And the Calling is coming.

Will some be stronger than him? Smarter? Will one even be uglier? Perhaps, but it is no matter.

Because Jago knows that he can, and will, kill them all.

Not the first not the last. vii

BAITSAKHAN
Gobi Desert, 222 km South of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

Baitsakhan wants it, and he’s going to get it.

He rides hard south into the Gobi Desert with his twin cousins, Bat and Bold, both 12.5, and his brother, Jalair, 24.55.

Baitsakhan has been 13 for 7.23456 days and is just eligible for Endgame.

He is happy about this.

Very happy.

The meteor fell in the middle of the night two days ago in the vast central nothingness of the Mongolian steppe. A small group of old yak herders saw it, and they called it in to Baitsakhan’s grandfather Suhkbataar, who told them to leave it alone or they would be sorry. The herders listened. Everyone in the steppe knows to listen to Suhkbataar in strange matters like these.

Because of this, Baitsakhan knows that the space rock will be there, waiting, alone. But when they are about a half mile from the impact zone they see a small group of people, and a worn Toyota Hilux, sitting in the distance.

Baitsakhan reins his horse and slows it to a walk. The other riders pull alongside him. Jalair draws a brass telescope from a saddlebag and looks across the plain. He makes a low sound.

“Who are they?” Baitsakhan asks.

“Don’t know. One wears an ushanka. Another has a rifle. The truck has three external gas cans. One of the men is leaning on a long pry bar. Two are bending to the ground. The one with the rifle is going toward the Hilux.”

Bat rests a longbow across his lap. Bold absently checks his smartphone. No signal, of course, not this far out. He opens Temple Run and starts a new game.

“Do they have the rock?” Baitsakhan asks.

“Hard to tell … wait. Yes. Two are carrying something small but heavy. It’s wrapped in hide.”

“Have they seen us?” Bat asks. “Not yet,” Jalair says.

“Let’s introduce ourselves,” Baitsakhan says.

Baitsakhan kicks his horse and it launches into a canter. The others follow. Each of the horses is light brown with a braided mane and black tail. Dust rises behind the beasts. The group around the meteorite notices them, but they don’t show any alarm.

When they draw very near, Baitsakhan reins his horse and, before it stops, jumps from the saddle. “Hello, friends!” he calls. “What have you found?”

“Why should we tell you?” the man with the pry bar says cockily. He has a low, raspy voice and a thick, excessively groomed mustache. Next to him is the man in the Russian hat. Between them on the ground is the hide-wrapped bundle.

“Because I asked,” Baitsakhan answers politely.

Bat gets off his horse and begins to casually check his animal’s shoes and hooves for rocks. Bold, still in the saddle, gets his phone out and restarts Temple Run.

A short grizzled man with horribly pockmarked skin steps forward.

“Forgive him. He’s like that with everyone,” he says.

“Shut up, Terbish,” Pry Bar says.

“We think we found a shooting star,” Terbish says, ignoring Pry Bar.

Baitsakhan leans toward the bundle. “Can we see it?”

“Yeah, not every day you get to see a meteorite,” Jalair says from atop his horse.

“What’s going on?” someone calls. It’s the man returning from the Hilux. He’s tall and casually holds a .30-06 at his side.

“These kids want to see the rock,” Terbish says, studying Baitsakhan.

“And I don’t see why not.”

“Cool!” Baitsakhan exclaims. “Jalair, check out this crater!”

“I see it.”

Baitsakhan doesn’t know, but this meteorite is the smallest of the 12. Less than 0.2112 meters. The smallest rock for the youngest Player. Terbish smiles. “I found one of these when I was about your age,” he says to Baitsakhan. “Near the Chinese border. The Soviets took it, of course. They took everything in those days.”

“So they say.” Baitsakhan sticks his hands in his jean pockets. Jalair dismounts, his feet crunching on the gravel.

Terbish turns toward the bundle. “Altan, unwrap the thing.”

The man in the ushanka bends and peels back the pony hide.

Baitsakhan peers into it. The thing is a hunk of black metal the size of a small shoe box, pockmarked with glowing lattices of gold and verdigris ingots, like extraterrestrial stained glass. Baitsakhan removes his hands from his pockets and drops to a knee. Terbish stands over him. Pry Bar sighs. Rifleman takes a few steps forward. Bat’s horse whinnies as Bat adjusts the girth.

“It is beautiful, isn’t it?” Terbish says.

“Looks valuable,” Baitsakhan says innocently.

Jalair points. “Is that gold?”

“I knew we shouldn’t have shown it to them,” Pry Bar says.

“They’re boys,” Terbish says. “This is like a dream come true. They can tell their friends at school about it.”

Baitsakhan stands. “We don’t go to school.”

“No?” Terbish wonders. “What do you do then?”

“Train,” Jalair says.

“For what?” Pry Bar asks.

Baitsakhan takes a pack of gum out of his vest and pops a piece in his mouth. “Do you mind if we check something, Terbish?”

Terbish frowns. “What?”

“Go ahead, Jalair,” Baitsakhan says.

But Jalair has already started. He quickly bends over the meteorite. He has a small black stone in his hand. It has a series of perfectly cut T-shaped holes in it. He runs his hand over the rock, underneath it. His eyes widen. “Yes, this is it,” he says.

Bold turns off his smartphone, puts it in a cargo pocket on his pant leg, spits.

“Bubble gum?” Baitsakhan holds the pack of gum out for Terbish. Rifleman frowns and moves the gun across his body, holding it with two hands.

Terbish shakes his head. “No thanks. We’re going to be going now.” Baitsakhan pockets the gum. “Okay.”

Jalair stands as Altan starts to rewrap the boulder.

“Don’t bother,” Jalair orders.

Pry Bar huffs. “You little shits seriously aren’t trying to say you’re taking this thing, are you?”

Baitsakhan blows a pink bubble. It bursts across his face and he gobbles it back into his mouth. “That’s exactly what we’re saying.” Terbish draws a skinning knife from his belt and takes a step backward. “I’m sorry, kid, but I don’t think so. We found it first.”

“Some yak herders found it first.”

“I don’t see any yak herders around here,” Pry Bar says.

“We told them to leave. And they know to listen. The rock belongs to us.”

“He’s being modest,” Jalair adds. “It actually belongs to him.”

“You?” Terbish asks doubtfully.

“Yes.”

“Ha!” Pry Bar says, holding the rod like a quarterstaff. “I’ve never heard anything so ridicu—”

Jalair cuts Pry Bar short by grabbing the rod, twisting it free, and slamming the pointed end into Pry Bar’s sternum, knocking the wind out of him. Rifleman shoulders the .30-06, but before he can fire, an arrow strikes him cleanly through the neck.

They’d forgotten about Bat behind his horse.

Altan, the man in the hat, gets his hands around the bundle, but Bold throws a black metal dart at him, about eight inches long and a half inch in diameter. It strikes Altan through the hat’s earflap and drives a few inches into his head. He collapses and begins to foam at the mouth. His arms and legs dance. His eyes roll.

Terbish is full of terror and disbelief. He turns and sprints for the truck.

Baitsakhan blows a short whistle through his teeth. His horse trots next to him; he jumps on, kicks it in its side. It catches Terbish in seconds. Baitsakhan pulls hard, and the horse rears and comes down on Terbish’s shoulders and neck. The man is crushed into the earth as the horse turns a tight circle first one way then the next, prancing over Terbish’s body, crushing his bones, taking his fading life.

When Baitsakhan returns to the crater, Pry Bar is sitting on the ground, his legs in front of him, his nose bloody, his hands tied behind him. The rod is under his elbows, and Jalair is pulling up on it.

Baitsakhan jumps from his horse.

The man spits. “What did we ever do to—”

Baitsakhan puts his fingers to his lips. “Shh.” He holds out his other hand, and Bat appears as if from nowhere and places a long and gleaming blade in it. “Don’t talk.”

“What are you doing?” the man pleads.

“Playing,” Baitsakhan says.

“What? Why?” Pry Bar asks.

Baitsakhan puts the knife against the man’s neck and slowly slices the man’s throat open.

“This is Endgame,” Baitsakhan says. “There is no why.”

SARAH ALOPAY
Alopay Residence, 55 Jefferson Street, Omaha, Nebraska, United States

Sarah doesn’t want her brother to be dead or her best friend to be armless in the ICU or her school to be gone. She doesn’t want most of her classmates to have been obliterated. She doesn’t want any part of it. She doesn’t want to be the Player.

Too bad for her.

She sits at the linoleum-topped table, her fingers laced. Simon and Olowa stand behind her. Christopher returned to the crash site to help pull survivors out of the wreckage and do whatever else he can. He’s kind that way. Kind and brave and strong.

Christopher does not know what Sarah is or what she’s going to have to do. He does not know that the meteor fell from the sky in order to deliver her a message. In a way, all those deaths were caused by Sarah’s presence. And there will be more death if Sarah doesn’t Play. Everyone within hundreds, thousands of miles will die if she doesn’t win.

The Alopays are still in shock. They look like actors from a war movie. Sarah hasn’t spoken. Simon has been crying quietly. Olowa has been steeling herself against what has passed and what is yet to come.

The multicolored meteorite rests on an ancient ceramic platter on the table. Olowa has told them that it’s called pallasite—a kind of nickel-iron rock laced with a colorful substance called olivine. In spite of its small size, it weighs 9.91 kg. Cut into the pallasite is a perfect triangular hole.

The stone that flew from Sarah’s neck and saved them rests on the table. It is jet-black, darker than the insides of Sarah’s eyes.

Next to the stone is a rough-edged sheet of yellow paper, and a glass beaker of clear liquid.

Sarah picks up the stone. They have talked about this moment for years. Though Sarah never believed it would come, and doesn’t think her parents did either, now it’s here. They have to follow each step, in proper order. When they were young, before they were eligible, she and Tate would playact and pretend they were doing it. They were children. Like fools, they thought Endgame would be cool.

It isn’t.

Sarah turns the stone in her hand. It is a tetrahedron. Its four triangular sides are exactly the same dimensions as the hole in the chunk of meteorite. The small pyramidal rock is familiar yet foreign. There is no record of its exact age, but the Alopays know that it is at least 30,000 years old. It comes from an era in human history when humans were not believed to have possessed the tools capable of crafting a thing so fine. It comes from a time when humans were not believed to have even been aware of the perfect proportions of golden triangles. But here it is. Passed down again and again and again. An artifact of history before history. A history that is not thought to have existed.

“Here goes,” Sarah says.

This is it.

The future is unwritten.

What will be will be.

She holds the stone over the meteorite; it jumps from her hand and snaps into place, melding with the pallasite. The hairline gap between the objects disappears. For a moment nothing happens. A rock is a rock is a rock is a rock. But as they watch, the stone she wore around her neck turns to dust, as do 3.126 inches of the meteorite around it. The dust mixes, mingles, dances, settles after 11 seconds.

She learned the process when she was five years old. Each step must be done in the proper order.

She pours the dust onto the parchment.

“Ahama muhu lopeke tepe,” her father chants through silent tears. He would rather be grieving for his lost son, but knows there is no time for that.

She spreads the dust.

“Ahama muhu gobekli mu,” her mother chants more resolutely.

She pours the liquid on it.

“Ahaman jeje. Ahaman kerma,” her parents chant together.

The dust steams; the air fills with an acrid smell; the edges of the paper curl, turning the flat sheet into a bowl.

“Ahaman jeje. Ahaman kerma,” her parents chant together.

She picks it up, mixes it.

The liquid evaporates and the dust turns red.

And it appears.

The message.

The Calling.

Sarah stares at the markings. Even though she was not supposed to be the Player, she has always had an affinity for codes and languages. She has been studying them in all their forms since she was four years old. They start shifting into place.

She sees the numbers that are telling her where and how she will start to win.

Sarah thinks about her brother, how Tate couldn’t accept that he had been disqualified from Endgame for losing an eye. How he’d been drifting through his years of ineligibility, how he’d grieved at his inability to continue and the passing of the responsibility to Sarah. How excited he’d looked that afternoon when he’d recovered the meteorite for her. How she can’t actually believe that she’s going to be the one Playing Endgame, and not him. How she is going to have to

Play alone, without Tate’s support.

She thinks about Reena and her missing arm, the confusion on her face. She thinks about Christopher pulling bodies from under rubble. She thinks about her speech. I choose to be the person that I want to be. Those words seem so hollow now that Sarah has no choice.

She will make sure that her family and friends did not die in vain.

All 12 Players of all 12 lines receive the message.

All 12 Players of all 12 lines will attend the Calling.

The 12 Players of the 12 lines are:

Marcus Loxias Megalos,viii Minoan,ix 16.24 years

Chiyoko Takeda,x Mu,xi 17.89 years

Sarah Alopay,xii Cahokian,xiii 17.98 years

Alice Ulapala,xiv Koori,xv 18.34 years

Aisling Kopp,xvi La Tène,xvii 19.94 years

Baitsakhan,xviii Donghu,xix 13.02 years

Jago Tlaloc,xx Olmec,xxi 19.14 years

An Liu,xxii Shang,xxiii 17.46 years

Shari Chopra,xxiv Harrapan,xxv 17.82 years

Kala Mozami,xxvi Sumerian,xxvii 16.50 years

Maccabee Adlai,xxviii Nabataean,xxix 16.42 years

Hilal ibn Isa al-Salt,xxx Aksumite,xxxi 18.69 years

MACCABEE ADLAI
Aeroflot Flight 3501, Seat 4B Depart: Warsaw Arrive: Moscow

Maccabee Adlai, the Player of the 8th line, settles into the 1st-class cabin on Aeroflot 3501 from Warsaw to Moscow, which will take 93 minutes. In Moscow he will make a connection for a flight to Beijing, which lasts 433 minutes. He is 16 years old but has the build of a decathlete 10 years his senior. He is six feet five inches tall, and he weighs 240 pounds. He has the facial stubble as well, one of those kids who never really looked like a kid. Even when he was seven, he was much taller and stronger than his peers.

He likes being taller and stronger than his peers.

It gives him advantages.

He removes the jacket of a three-button custom silk suit. He settles into his aisle seat. His French-cuffed shirt is powder blue and white gingham. His rose-patterned tie is held in place with a silver clip. His cuff links are made of fossilized mammoth ivory. They are shaped like Tibetan skull beads and have ruby chips for eyes. On his left pinkie is a large brass ring inset with a drab tan stone carved in the shape of a flower.

Maccabee smells like lavender and honey. His black hair is wavy and full and slicked back. His forehead is broad and his skull is apparent, as if his skin is almost too thin. His temples are a little sunken and his cheekbones high. His eyes are blue. His nose is narrow but large with a hook in the bridge.

It has been broken five times.

He likes fighting. So what? When you’re Maccabee’s size, fights have a tendency to find you. People want to see how they measure up. In Maccabee’s case, they always come up short.

His only bag—a leather monogrammed shoulder satchel—is in the overhead compartment. He expects other Players to be burdened with packs and suitcases and all kinds of expectations. Maccabee doesn’t like to be burdened. He prefers to be nimble, fast, to be able to move and strike at will. Plus, the world has not ended yet. Until it does, money will suffice.

Lots of money.

He fastens his seat belt and turns on a smartphone and listens to a recorded message. He has listened to the message dozens of times:

NASA/ESA/ROSCOSMOS Joint Press Release, 15 June:

At 22:03 GMT on 11 June a large and previously undetected Near Earth Asteroid (NEA), since designated CK46B, passed within 500,000 miles of Earth. Accompanying this parent NEA were several hundred children of varying magnitudes. At least 100 of these objects are confirmed to have been drawn into Earth’s gravitational field. Like most “shooting stars,” the majority of these burned up in the atmosphere, leaving nothing but visual evidence of their descent and demise. However, as worldwide press coverage has well documented, at least 12 bolides did survive the rigors of atmospheric entry.

While the sudden appearance of an NEA as large as CK46B is disturbing, it is the purpose of this release to assuage fears of a larger impact in the future. Impacts like these—especially like those that occurred in Warsaw, Poland; Jodhpur, India; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; and Forest Hills, Queens, New York, USA—are exceedingly rare. Through joint efforts of our agencies, plus those of the ISA, JAXA, UKSA, and AEB, you can be assured that other NEAs and Near Earth Objects (NEOs) are identified and tracked on a regular basis and that at this time it is our consensus opinion that our planet is in no danger whatsoever of being struck by anything larger than the meteorites mentioned above.

Finally, it is also our opinion that the shower propagated by CK46B is complete and that no additional meteors can be expected. CK46B has been charted and it is not due to reappear in our vicinity for another 403.56 years. For now, the possible danger posed by this NEA is considered past. Any further information—

“Excuse me,” a man says in Polish as he knocks into Maccabee, yanking the cord of his headphones from his ears.

“I should say so,” Maccabee says in perfect English with equal parts confidence and annoyance.

“You speak the English?” the man asks, also in English, dropping heavily into his window seat. He is 40 or so, sweating, overweight.

“Yes,” Maccabee says. He glances across the aisle. A very pretty woman in a form-fitting dark suit rolls her green bespectacled eyes. Maccabee returns the gesture.

“Then I will speak the English too,” the man announces. “I will practice. Yes? Onto you?”

“Practice with me,” Maccabee corrects, winding the cord of his headphones around his hand.

“Yes. With you.” The man manages to shove his valise under the seat in front of him. He struggles to find his seat belt, pulling hard at the buckled end, which does not move.

“You have to let out the buckle. Like this.” Maccabee unfastens his seat belt and shows the man how it works.

“Ah, how silly of me,” the man says in Polish.

“They should do away with them, in my opinion,” Maccabee says, still speaking English and clicking his back together. “If the plane crashes, this is not going to help anyone.”

“I agree,” the pretty woman says in English, her eyes remaining on the magazine she’s browsing.

The man leans past Maccabee, eyes the woman. “Aha. There hello.” He’s back to English.

Maccabee leans forward to intercept the man’s prying eyes. “It’s ‘Hello, there.’ And she wasn’t talking to you.”

The man recoils. “Gentle, young one. She is the pretty woman. She knows it. I just let her know I know it too. What is wrong by that?”

“It’s rude.”

The man waves his hand dismissively. “Ah! Rude! A good English word!

I like. It is meaning ‘not nice,’ no? What is it … ‘unpolite’?”

“Impolite,” the woman answers. “It’s okay. I’ve had worse.”

“There. See? You have the nice suit, but me, I have the … the … experience.” This last word is in Polish.

“Experience,” Maccabee translates.

The man jabs a finger into Maccabee’s shoulder. “Yes, experience.” Maccabee looks at the man’s finger, still pushed into his shoulder. Maccabee is being underestimated, which is the way he likes it. “Don’t do that,” Maccabee says calmly.

The man jabs him again. “What, this?”

As Maccabee prepares to respond, a flight attendant appears and asks in Polish, “Is there anything wrong?”

“Ah, another one,” the man says, his eyes just as greedy for the attendant. She is also pretty. “Yes, there is something wrong, as a matter of fact.” The man animatedly drops his tray table in front of him and taps it. “I haven’t got my drink yet.”

The attendant joins her hands in front of her. “What would you like, Mr. Duda?”

The woman across the aisle chuckles at the appropriateness of his name—which usually means “booby”—but Duda doesn’t hear. “Two champagnes and two Stolichnayas. All in sealed bottles. Two glasses. No ice.”

The attendant doesn’t even bristle. She works for Aeroflot and has seen her share of drunks. She nods at Maccabee. “And for you, Mr. Adlai?”

“Orange juice, please. In a glass with ice.”

“Adlai, hm? You a Jew?” Duda asks in Polish.

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Maccabee says, turning in his seat.

“Figures. Explains all the finery.” Duda’s eyes dart up and down Maccabee’s shirt. “Also explains the scent you exude.” Duda is staying with Polish, probably for the same reason Maccabee chooses English. The attendant returns and bends over, holding a tray, and gravity and pressure part the divide of her collared shirt.

Maccabee takes his orange juice as Duda winks, grabs his drinks, and whispers, “Bend over a little more next time and I’ll give you a nice tip.”

The attendant smiles and straightens. “We don’t accept tips, Mr. Duda.”

“Pity,” Duda says, as he cracks the two Stolichnayas and pours one into each glass.

She turns and walks away.

Duda leans forward and reaches over Maccabee. “How about you?” he asks the woman across from them. “Would you accept a tip from me in exchange of services?”

“That’s enough,” Maccabee says, as his heart starts to beat faster, moving from a resting rate of 41 to a heightened rate of 77. “If you speak again, you’ll regret it.”

Duda downs one of the vodkas and says quietly so only they can hear, “Oh, little boy. I see you dressed like a man, but you don’t fool me.” Maccabee takes a deep breath and slows his heart rate, as he has been trained to do. Killing, if it becomes necessary, is best done in a calm manner, and with smooth, easy movements. He did it for the first time at age 10, and has done it 44 more times in the years since.

The man leans into his seat, drinks the other vodka and both champagnes. He rolls toward the window and closes his eyes.

The plane taxis, takes off, reaches cruising altitude. The pretty woman minds her business. And for a while Maccabee does too.

After about an hour, though, he leans across the aisle and says in English, “I’m sorry about all that, Miss …”

She smiles. “Miss Pawlek.” He can tell that she thinks he is at least 22 or 23. Most people do, especially young women.

“Miss Pawlek.”

“Why should you be sorry? You behaved perfectly.”

“I wanted to punch him.”

“We’re on a plane. You can’t.”

They start to talk. Maccabee quickly realizes that she is tired of talking about the meteorite that has scarred Warsaw, or the 11 others that have rattled the world. It’s all anyone has been able to talk or think about for a week, so he lets it lie.

Instead, Maccabee practices a subtle form of interrogation on her. He has been trained to use techniques that reveal sensitive information from people without their knowing. She is from Goleniów, a medieval capital near the German border. She works for an internet investing firm. She is meeting a client in Moscow. Her mother is dead. Her brother is an accountant in Krakow. She likes Italian opera and watches the Tour de France every year on TV. She has been to L’Alpe d’Huez. She has been in love once, when she was 19, and hopes, she says with a smile, to fall in love again.

Maccabee doesn’t say anything truthful about himself, except that he is on a business trip that will take him all the way to Beijing. Miss Pawlek has never been there. One day she would like to go.

They order a round of drinks, Maccabee opting for a ginger ale. As they toast, they don’t realize that Duda is awake and watching them. “Moving in on my action, eh?” he announces without lifting his head from his pillow. Duda points at Miss Pawlek, amused. “You should leave this boy alone. Women like you need a real man.”

“You’re a pig,” she replies with a sneer.

“That’s not what you’re going to be saying later,” Duda says, smiling. The plane jerks. It is flying at 31,565 feet. The wind is coming from the north-northwest at 221 mph. The fasten seat belt light comes on. It’s rough enough that 167 of the 176 passengers grip their armrests, 140 of them look at the person next to them for reassurance. Eighteen start praying silently. The meteorite has put the idea of horrific, sudden death at the front of everyone’s mind.

Maccabee doesn’t mind the turbulence. To quote one of his favorite books: Fear is the mind-killer. He has practiced besting fear over and over and over again. He has practiced being cold and calculated and efficient. And while Duda is essentially harmless, it never hurts to continue to practice.

He leans close to Duda, pushing a small button on the palm side of his pinkie ring, revealing a short silver needle in the center of the stone flower.

“If you speak to me again, or to anyone on this flight—”

The plane jumps again. The wind speed has increased to 231 mph. More passengers whimper in fear; more begin to pray.

“Don’t threaten me, you little—” Duda says, but Maccabee, with his heart rate back at 41, and quickly enough so that no one sees, strikes the exposed flesh of Duda’s neck with the needle.

“What did you …” Duda says.

“You should have listened,” Maccabee says quietly, coldly, with a smile. Duda knows what’s happened but is unsure if it’s sleep or death that’s coming for him.

Duda cannot speak to ask.

Duda can no longer move.

Duda’s eyes fill with confusion and terror.

The plane slides hard from side to side. The wind is gusting faster. People are not quiet about their praying now. They are calling out to God. Maccabee lets his heart rate rise.

A baby in coach class starts crying.

As Duda’s eyes roll into his head, Maccabee props a pillow against the window and pushes Duda into it. He runs his fingers over Duda’s eyelids. He puts the man’s hands in his lap, one over the other. Maccabee settles back into his seat. He has met so many strange people in his life. He wonders who he will meet when he arrives in China.

Six minutes later the turbulence ends. Miss Pawlek looks over at him, smiles. Her brow glistens with a nervous sweat; her cheeks are flushed. Maccabee likes the way she looks in that moment: the relief mixed with something else.

Miss Pawlek inclines her head at Duda. “What happened to our friend?”

“Closed his eyes and went to sleep,” Maccabee answers. “Some people can sleep through anything.”

She nods. The green of her irises is captivating. “That was pretty rough turbulence, wasn’t it?”

Maccabee turns his head from her, looks at the back of the seat in front of him. “Yes it was. But it’s over now.”

52.294888, 20.950928xxxii 7,459 dead; $1.342B damages

26.297592, 73.019128xxxiii 15,321 dead; $2.12B damages

40.714411, -73.864689xxxiv 4,416 dead; $748.884M damages

9.022736, 38.746799xxxv 18,888 dead; $1.33B damages

-15.49918, -70.135223xxxvi 10,589 dead; $1.45B damages

40.987608, 29.036951xxxvii 39,728 dead; $999.24M damages

-34.602976, 135.42778xxxviii 14 dead; $124.39M damages

34.239666, 108.941631xxxix 3,598 dead; $348.39M damages

24.175582, 55.737065xl 432 dead; $228.33M damages

41.265679, -96.431637xli 408 dead; $89.23M damages

26.226295, 127.674179xlii 1,473 dead; $584.03M damages

46.008409, 107.836304xliii 0 dead; $0 damages

SARAH ALOPAY
Gretchen’s Goods Café and Bakery, Frontier Airlines Lobby, Eppley Airfield, Omaha, Nebraska, United States

Sarah sits with Christopher at a small plastic table, an untouched blueberry muffin between them. They hold hands, touch knees, and try to act like this isn’t the strangest day of their young lives. Sarah’s parents are 30 feet away at another table, watching their daughter warily. They’re worried what she might say to Christopher, and what the boy—a boy they’ve always treated like a son—will do. Their actual son, Sarah’s brother, Tate, is in a funeral home, awaiting cremation. Everyone keeps saying there will be time to grieve for Tate later, but that may not be true.

In 57 minutes Sarah is getting on a plane that will take her from Omaha to Denver, from Denver to San Francisco, from San Francisco to Seoul, from Seoul to Beijing.

She does not have a return ticket.

“So you have to leave to play this game?” Christopher asks for what feels to Sarah like the 17th time.

Sarah is patient. It isn’t easy to understand her secret life. For a long time, she dreamed of telling Christopher about Endgame; she just never thought she would actually have to. But now she feels relieved to finally be honest with him. For this reason it doesn’t matter if he keeps asking the same questions over and over. These are her last moments with him, and she’ll treasure them even if he’s being obstinate.

“Yes,” Sarah replies. “Endgame. The world is not supposed to know about it, or about people like me.”

“The Players.”

“Yes, the Players. The councils. The secret lines of humanity …”

She trails off.

“Why can’t the world know?”

“Because no one would be able to live a normal life if they knew Endgame was hanging over them,” Sarah says, feeling a pang of sadness for her own “normal life” that went up in smoke just days ago.

“You have a normal life,” Christopher insists.

“No, I don’t.”

“Oh, right,” Christopher says, rolling his eyes. “You’ve killed wolves and survived on your own in Alaska and are trained in all kinds of karate and crap. Because you’re a Player. How did you ever manage to squeeze in soccer practice?”

“It was a pretty packed schedule,” Sarah answers wryly. “Especially for the last three years, you know, because Tate was supposed to be the Player, not me.”

“But he lost his eye.”

“Exactly.”

“How did he lose it, by the way? None of you ever told me that,” Christopher says.

“It was a pain trial. Withstand the stings of a thousand bees. Unfortunately, one got him right in the pupil, and he had a bad reaction, and he lost the eye. The council declared him ineligible and said that I was in. Yeah, that definitely made my schedule a bit crazy.” Christopher stares at her like she’s lost it. “You know, I’d think this was a sick joke if your parents weren’t here. If that meteor hadn’t hit and Tate hadn’t … Sorry, it’s just a lot to take in.”

“I know.”

“You’re basically in a death cult.”

Sarah purses her lips, her patience slipping. She expected Christopher to be supportive; at least that’s how it went when she imagined this conversation. “It’s not a death cult. It’s not something I chose to do. And I never wanted to lie to you, Christopher.”

“Whatever,” Christopher says, his eyes lighting up as if he’s just come to a decision. “How do I sign up?”

“For what?”

“Endgame. I want to be on your team.”

Sarah smiles. It’s a sweet thought. Sweet and impossible. “It’s not like that. There aren’t teams. The others—all eleven of them—won’t be bringing teammates to the Calling.”

“The others. Players, like you?”

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “Descendants of the world’s first civilizations, none of which exist anymore. Each of us represents a line of the world’s population, and we play for the survival of that line.”

“What’s your line called?”

“Cahokian.”

“So, like, Native American. I think there’s a little Algonquian on my dad’s side. Does that mean I’m part of your line?”

“It should,” Sarah answers. “Most people in North America have some Cahokian blood, even if they don’t realize it.”

Christopher thumbs his chin. Sarah knows all of Christopher’s tics, so she knows that this means he’s about to make an argument, he’s just not quite sure how to phrase it. There are 52 minutes left before her flight leaves. She waits patiently, although she’s starting to worry that this is how they’ll spend their last hour together. She was hoping to give her parents the slip, find a secluded gate, and make out one last time. “Okay,” says Christopher, clearing his throat. “So you’ve got twelve ancient tribes abiding by these weird rules and waiting for some sign. And that’s how you’ve chosen to interpret the meteor that, admittedly, is a pretty fucked-up and crazy coincidence. But what if that’s what this is? Just a coincidence and you’re like a hot, brainwashed, alleged killing machine only because of some dumb prophecy that doesn’t really exist.”

Christopher catches his breath. Sarah stares at him, smiling sadly.

“It’s for real, Christopher.”

“How do you know? I mean, is there some kind of commissioner who runs this game? Like the NFL?”

“Them.”

Christopher dips his chin. “Them?”

“They have lots of names,” Sarah says, not meaning to sound so cryptic. She’s having trouble putting the next part into reasonable-sounding words.

“Give me one,” Christopher says.

“Cahokians call them the Sky People.”

“The Sky People?”

“Yes.” Sarah holds up a hand before he can interrupt. “Listen—you know how every culture around the world believes that their god or gods or higher power or source of enlightenment, whatever you want to call it, comes from above?”

Christopher shrugs. “I guess. I don’t know.”

“They’re right. God, or the gods, or the higher power, whatever and whoever it is, did come from above. They descended from the sky amid smoke and fire and created us and gave us rules to live by and left. All of the world’s gods and myths are just variations of the same legends, variations of the same story, the same history.”

Christopher shakes his head. “This is crazy. Like, Jesus-riding-a-dinosaur crazy.”

“No, it isn’t. It makes sense if you think about it.”

“How?”

“It all happened so long ago that every culture adapted the story to fit their experience. But the core of it—that life came from above, that humanity was created by gods—that’s true.”

Christopher stares at her.

“Sky People. You mean like …” He shakes his head. “This is insane. What you’re saying can’t be real. It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard! And you’re crazy if you go.”

“I’m sorry, Christopher. If I were in your shoes I’d probably react the same way. Actually, probably way worse. You know me as Sarah Alopay, your girlfriend, but I’m also someone else, and even though Tate was supposed to be playing, I always have been someone else as well. I was raised, as were 300 generations of my people, to be a Player.

Everything that just happened—the meteor, the piece that we found, my necklace becoming part of it, the message and the code—it was all exactly as foretold in our legends.”

Sarah studies him, waiting for a reaction. Christopher’s face has gone completely serious; he’s no longer trying to talk her out of Endgame, as if that tactic ever had a chance.

“Why now?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why did it have to start now?”

“I’ll probably be asking myself that question until I die, Christopher. I don’t know the answer. I know what the legend says, but I don’t know Their real reasons.”

“What does the legend say?”

“It says Endgame will begin if the human race has shown that it doesn’t deserve to be human. That it has wasted the enlightenment They gave to us. The legend also says that if we take Earth for granted, if we become too populous and strain this blessed planet, then Endgame will begin. It will begin in order to bring an end to what we are and restore order to Earth. Whatever the reason, what will be will be.”

“Fucking Christ.”

“Yeah.”

“How do you win?” he asks in a low voice.

“No one knows. That’s what I’m going to find out.” “In China.”

“Yeah.”

“And it’s going to be dangerous?”

“Yes.”

“You talked about choice in your speech—choose not to do it.” Sarah shakes her head. “No. It’s what my parents were born to do, what my brother was born to do, what I was born to do. It is the responsibility of my people, and it has been since we appeared on this planet, and my choice is to do it.”

Christopher has no words. He doesn’t want her to leave. Doesn’t want her to be in danger. Sarah is his girlfriend. His best friend. His partner in crime, the last person he thinks of before he falls asleep and the first person he thinks of when he wakes. She’s the girl of his dreams, only she’s real. The thought of someone trying to hurt her, it ties his stomach in knots. The idea that he’ll be thousands of miles away when it happens makes it even worse.

“The stakes are dire, Christopher. You probably won’t ever see me again. Mom and Dad, Omaha, Tate—I’m looking back on all of it already. I love you, I love you with everything in me, but we may never see each other again.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I may not come back.”

“Why?”

“If I don’t win, I’ll die.”

“Die?”

“I will fight to stay alive, I promise I will. But yes. It could happen. Easily. Don’t forget that I’m a backup. Tate was supposed to be here, not me. The other Players, they’ve probably been training since before they could walk.”

They stare at each other. The sounds of the airport—the announcements of gate changes, the whispering wheels of rolling luggage, the squeaks of sneakers on polished granite floors—swirl around them.

“I’m not gonna let you die,” Christopher says. “And if you have to win to stay alive, then I am coming with you. I don’t give a shit about the rules.”

Her heart drops to the floor. She knew saying good-bye wasn’t going to be easy, but she didn’t expect this. And in a way it makes her love him more. Kind, generous, strong, beautiful Christopher.

She shakes her head. “The Players have to go to the Calling alone, Christopher.”

“Too bad for the others, then. Because I’m coming with you.”

“Listen,” she says, changing her tone. “You need to stop thinking of me as your girlfriend. Even if you could come, I wouldn’t let you. I don’t need your protection. And, honestly, you aren’t up for it.”

So much for finding a quiet gate where they can make out. Sarah knew it could come to this, that she might have to be harsh with him. She sees that her words hurt him, that his pride is wounded. She’s sorry about that, but what she said is the truth.

Christopher shakes his head, persisting. “I don’t care. I’m coming.” Sarah sighs. “I’m gonna stand up in a minute. If you try to follow me, they’ll stop you.” Sarah tilts her head toward her parents.

“They can’t stop me.”

“You have no idea what they can do. The three of us, we could kill everyone in this terminal quickly and easily and escape, no problem.” Christopher snorts in disbelief. “Christ, Sarah. You wouldn’t do that.” “Understand me, Christopher,” Sarah says, leaning forward and gritting her teeth. “I will do whatever it takes to win. If I want you, my parents, everyone we know to survive, I have to do whatever it takes.” Christopher is silent. He glances at the Alopays, who are staring back at him. Simon is giving him a hard, cold look. It’s unlike anything he’s ever seen before. Christopher thought he knew these people. He was closer to them than his own family, and now …

Sarah sees Christopher’s face change, notices the fear blossoming there, and worries that she’s pushed too hard. She softens her tone. “If you want to help me, stay here and help the people who need it. Help my parents deal with Tate’s death, and maybe mine. If I win, I’ll come back and find you, and we can live the rest of our lives together. I promise.”

Christopher looks deep into Sarah’s eyes. His voice shakes. “I love you, Sarah Alopay.” She tries to smile but fails. “I love you,” he repeats earnestly. “And I swear that I’ll never, ever stop loving you.”

They stand at the same time and wrap their arms around each other. They kiss, and though they have shared many, many kisses, none of them has meant as much, or felt as strong. Like all such kisses it doesn’t last long enough.

They pull apart. Sarah knows that this is probably the last time she will ever see him, speak to him, touch him.

“I love you too, Christopher Vanderkamp. I love you too.”

30.3286, 35.4419xliv

AN LIU
Liu Residence, Unregistered Belowground Property, Tongyuanzhen, Gaoling County, Xi’an, China

An Liu has a disadvantage, and he is ashamed.

Blinkblink.

A tic.

BlinkSHIVER.

SHIVERSHIVER.

But An Liu has advantages too:

1. The Players are coming to Xi’an, China.

2. An Liu lives in Xi’an, China.

BlinkSHIVER.

SHIVERblink.

3. Therefore, he has initial home-court advantage.

4. An is a world-class hacker.

5. An is an expert bomb maker.

BlinkSHIVERblinkblink.

Blinkblink.

BlinkblinkSHIVER.

6. An knows how to find people.

After decoding the message, An continuously hacked passenger manifests at airports close to the other impact zones, filtering results for age, ticket-purchase date, date of visa issuance, and blink-blink-blink assuming there would be a more-or-less even distribution of gender, sex.

SEXSHIVERSEX.

He figures that shiver-blink the Players near the Mongolian and Australian impact zones, on account of their remoteness, will be tricky, so he abandons them. The Mongolian will be coming overland blink anyway, and the Aussie will also probably start his or her journey blink by jeep or possibly chartered aircraft. Instant dead ends.

He also discounts Addis Ababa, Istanbul, Warsaw, and Forest Hills, New York, on account of these being shiver-shiver-SHIVER rather populous. He concentrates on Juliaca, Omaha, Naha, and Al Ain. These smaller markets make the hacking and filtering easier.

Initial results provide 451 candidates. These are cross-referenced with train and/or plane ticket purchases for transport within China. An blink is blink not blink hopeful.

Blinkblinkblinkb​linkblinkblin​kblinkblink​blinkblinkb​linkblink​blinkblin​kblink.

Had it been necessary for him to travel to reach the Calling, he would have taken the obvious precaution of using aliases, forged visas, and at least two passports, but he knows that not all people are as paranoid as he is. Even Players.

And lo. Shiver. He gets a hit: Sarah Alopay.

SHIVERblinkblink.

Blinkblink.

Blink.

JAGO TLALOC, SARAH ALOPAY
Train T41, Car 8, Passing through Shijiazhuang, China Depart: Beijing Arrive: Xi’an

Jago Tlaloc is on an overnight train from Beijing to Xi’an. It has taken him nearly three days to get this far. Juliaca to Lima. Lima to Miami. Miami to Chicago. Chicago to Beijing. 24,122 km. 13,024.838 nautical miles. 79,140,413.56 feet.

And now the train for 11.187 hours.

Longer if it gets delayed.

Endgame doesn’t wait, so he is hoping for no delays.

Jago has a private sleeping cabin, but the mattress is hard and he’s restless. He sits up and crosses his legs, counts his breaths. He stares out the window and thinks of the most beautiful things he has ever seen: a girl falling asleep in the sand as the sun set over a beach in Colombia, streams of moonlight reflecting off the rippling waters of the Amazon, the lines of the Nazca giant on the day he became a Player. His mind won’t calm, though. His breath is not full. Positive visualizations disintegrate under the weight.

He cannot stop thinking about the horror visited on his hometown. The hellfire and the smell of burning plastic and flesh, and the sounds of crying men, burned women, and dying children. The helplessness of the firemen, the army, the politicians. The helplessness of everyone and everything in the face of the violence.

The day after Jago claimed his piece of the meteorite, the sun rose on a huddled mass of people lined up outside his parents’ villa. Some of them had lost everything and hoped his family would be able to restore them. As Jago packed, his parents did what they could. On television, astrophysicists made hollow promises about how an event like this would never happen again.

They’re wrong.

More are coming.

Bigger, more devastating.

More will suffer.

More will burn.

More will die.

The people called the meteor that fell on Juliaca el puño del diablo. The Devil’s Fist. Eleven other fists punched into the earth, killing many, many more.

The meteors fell and now the world is different.

Vulnerable.

Terrified.

Jago knows he should be above such feelings. He has trained to be above such feelings, yet he cannot sleep, cannot relax, cannot calm himself. He swings his legs over the bed and places his bare feet on the thin, cool carpet. He cracks his neck and closes his eyes.

The meteorites were just a preamble.

Todo, todo el tiempo, he thinks. Todo.

He stands. His knees creak. He has to get out of his compartment, move, try to clear his mind. He grabs a pair of green cargo pants and pulls them on. His legs are thin, strong. They’ve done more than 100,000 squats. He sits in the chair and puts on wool socks, leather moccasins. His feet have kicked a heavy bag over 250,000 times. He straps a small tactical knife to his forearm and slips into a long-sleeved plaid shirt. He has done over 15,000 one-handed pull-ups. He grabs his iPod and sticks in a pair of black earbuds. He turns on music. The music is hard, heavy, and loud. Metal. His music and his weapons. Heavy heavy metal.

He steps to the door of his compartment. Before exiting he looks in the full-length mirror. He is tall, thin, and taut, as if made of high-tension wire. His hair is jet-black, short, and messed. His skin is the color of caramel, the color of his people, undiluted for 8,000 years. His eyes are black. His face is pockmarked from a skin infection he had when he was seven, and he has a long, jagged scar that runs from the corner of his left eye, down his cheek, over his jaw, and onto his neck. He got the scar when he was 12, in a knife fight. It was with another kid a little older than him. Jago got the scar, but he took the kid’s life. Jago is ugly and menacing. He knows that people fear him because of the way he looks, which generally amuses him. They should fear him for what he knows. What he can do. What he has done.

He opens the door, steps into the hall, walks. The music blares in his ears, hard, heavy, and loud, drowning out the steely screech of the wheels on the rails.

He steps into the dining car. Five people are seated at three tables: two Chinese businessmen sitting alone, one asleep in his booth, his head on the table, the other drinking tea and staring at his laptop; a Chinese couple speaking quietly and intensely; a girl with long, auburn hair woven into a braid, her back to him.

Jago buys a bag of peanuts and a Coke and walks toward an empty table across from the girl with the auburn hair. She is not Chinese. She is reading the latest edition of China Daily. The page is covered in color photos of devastation from the crater in Xi’an. The crater where the Small Wild Goose Pagoda had stood. He sits down. She’s five feet away from him, engrossed in the paper; she does not look up.

He removes the peanuts from their shells, pops them into his mouth, sips the Coke. He stares at her. She’s pretty, looks like an American tourist, a medium-sized backpack next to her. He has seen countless girls like her stop in Juliaca on their way to Lake Titicaca.

“It’s not polite to stare,” she says, looking at the paper.

“I didn’t think you’d noticed,” he replies in accented English.

“I did.” She still hasn’t looked at him.

“Can I join you? I haven’t spoken to many people the past few days, and this country can be bien loco, you know?”

“Tell me about it,” she says, looking up, her eyes drilling into him. She’s easily the most beautiful American, and maybe woman, he’s ever seen.

“Come on over.”

He half rises and sidles into the booth opposite her. “Peanut?”

“No thanks.”

“Smart.”

“Hm?”

“Not to accept food from a stranger.”

“Were you going to poison me?” “Maybe.”

She smiles and seems to reconsider, like he’s challenged her to a dare.

“What the hell, I’ll take my chances.”

Her smile crushes him. He is usually the one who has to charm a woman, which he has done dozens of times, but this one is charming him. He holds out the bag and she takes a handful of the peanuts, spreads them on the table in front of her.

“How long you been here?” she asks.

“On the train?”

“No. In China.”

“Little over three weeks,” he says, lying.

“Yeah? Me too. About three weeks.” His training has taught him how to tell if someone is lying, and she is. Interesting. He wonders if she could be one of them.

“Where you from?” he asks.

“America.”

“No kidding. Where in America?”

“Omaha.” She’s not lying this time. “You?”

“Peru, near Lake Titicaca.” So he won’t lie either.

She raises her eyebrows and smirks. “I never thought that was a real place until these …” She points at the paper.

“The meteors.”

“Yeah.” She nods. “It’s a funny name. Lake Titty Caca.” She pronounces the words individually, like all amused English speakers do. “You couldn’t come up with anything better than that?”

“Depending on who you ask, it either means Stone of the Puma or Crag of Lead, and it’s considered by many to be a mystical, powerful place. Americans seem to think UFOs visit it and aliens created it.” “Imagine that,” she says, smiling. “Omaha’s not mystical at all. Most people think it’s kind of boring, actually. We got good steak, though. And Warren Buffet.”

Jago chuckles. He assumes that’s a joke. He doesn’t know who Warren Buffet is, but he has a fat, dumb American name.

“It’s weird, isn’t it?” She cracks another peanut.

“What?”

“I’m from Omaha, you’re from near Lake Titicaca, and we’re on a train to Xi’an. The meteors hit in each place.”

“Yes, that is weird.”

“What’s your name?”

“Feo.” He pops a peanut in his mouth.

“Nice to meet you, Feo. I’m Sarah.” She pops a peanut in her mouth.

“Tell me—you going to Xi’an to see the crater?”

“Me? No. Just touring. I can’t imagine the Chinese government is going to be letting anyone get too close to it anyway.”

“Can I ask you another question, Feo?”

“Sure.”

“You like to play games?”

She’s outed herself. He’s not sure this is wise. His response will go a long way to determine whether or not he will be outed too.

“Not really,” he answers quickly. “I like puzzles, though.”

She leans back. Her tone changes, the flirtatious lilt melting away. “Not me. I like knowing things for sure one way or the other. I hate uncertainty. I tend to eliminate it as quickly as I can, get it out of my life.”

“Probably a good policy, if you can actually do it.”

She smiles, and though he should be tense and ready to kill her, her smile disarms him. “So—Feo. That mean something?”

“It means ‘ugly.’”

“Your parents name you that?”

“My real name is Jago; everyone just calls me Feo.”

“You’re not, though, even though you’re trying to be.”

“Thank you,” he replies, unable to stop himself from smiling, the diamonds in his teeth flashing. He decides to throw her a crumb. If she takes it, they will both know. He’s not sure that it’s a smart play, but he knows one must take risks to win Endgame. Enemies are a given. Friends are not. Why not take advantage of an early chance encounter and find out which this beautiful American will be?

“So, Sarah from Omaha who is here on vacation, while you’re in Xi’an do you want to visit the Big Wild Goose Pagoda with me?”

Before she can answer, a white flash comes from outside. The train lurches and brakes. The lights flicker and go out. A loud sound like a vibrating string comes from the other side of the dining car. Jago’s eyes are momentarily drawn to the faint blip-blip of a red light from under a table. He looks back to the window when the light outside intensifies. He and Sarah both stand and move toward it. In the distance, a bright streak runs across the sky, going east to west. It looks like a shooting star, but it’s too low, and its trajectory is as straight as a razor’s edge. Jago and Sarah both stare, transfixed, as the streak speeds against the darkness of the Chinese night. At the last minute, before it passes from view, the streak suddenly changes direction and moves in an 88-degree angle north to south, disappearing over the horizon. They pull back from the window and the lights come back and the train starts to accelerate. The other people in the dining car are talking urgently, but none seem to have noticed the thing outside.

Jago stands. “Come with me.”

“Where?”

“Come with me if you want to live.”

“What are you talking about?”

He holds out his hand. “Now.”

She stands and follows him but makes a point of not taking his hand.

As they walk he says, “If I told you I’m the Player of the 21st line, would that mean anything to you?”

“I would tell you I’m the Player of the 233rd.”

“Truce, at least for now?”

“Yes, for now.”

They reach the table where Jago saw the blinking red light. The Chinese couple is sitting at it. They stop talking and look at the two foreigners quizzically. Jago and Sarah ignore the couple, and Jago kneels and Sarah bends to look over his shoulder. Bolted to the wall under the table is a black metal box with a small, faintly blinking red LED in the middle. Above the LED is the character . In the corner of the black box is a digital display. It reads AA:AA:AQ. A second later AA:AA:AP. Another second, AA:AA:AO.

“Is that what I think it is?” Sarah asks, taking a step back.

“I’m not willing to wait around to find out,” Jago says.

“Me neither.”

“Let’s get your bag.”

They head back to the table and Jago grabs the backpack. They move to the rear of the car and open the door, step into the space between cars.

If the letters are seconds, they have 11 left.

Sarah pulls the emergency brake.

It doesn’t work.

The moving landscape is there. Waiting for them.

“Go,” Jago says, stepping aside.

Eight seconds.

She doesn’t hesitate, jumps.

Seven seconds.

He hugs the backpack, hoping it will soften his landing, jumps.

It hurts when he lands, but he’s been trained to ignore pain. He rolls down a gravel embankment and into the dirt, takes a mouthful of grass, scratches his face and hands. He can’t be sure, but he thinks he’s dislocated his right shoulder.

Three seconds.

He stops rolling.

Two seconds.

She’s a few yards away, already standing, as if she somehow landed unhurt. “You all right?” she asks.

One second.

The train is past them.

“Yes,” he says, wondering if she can tell he’s lying.

Zero seconds.

She crouches next to him, waiting for the train to explode.

Nothing happens.

The stars are out.

They stare.

Wait.

Jago looks in the sky above the train and sees Leo and Cancer above the western horizon.

“Maybe we overreacted—” Sarah starts to say, just as the dining car lights up and the windows blow out. The entire car is lifted 50 feet or more into the air amidst a cloud of orange fire. The force ripples through the train. The aft cars crumple, momentum piling them into a screeching and jumbled pile. The forward cars are obscured by the blast and the darkness, but Jago can make out the lights of the engine as it’s twisted off the rails. The sound of grating metal tears through the night, and another, smaller, explosion goes off toward the front of the train. There is a brief moment of silence, just before the screaming starts.

“Mierda,” Jago says breathlessly.

“I guess we’re going to have to get used to things like that, aren’t we?”

“Yes.” Jago winces.

“What is it?”

“My shoulder.”

“Let me see.”

Jago turns to Sarah. His right arm is hanging low in his shirt.

“Can you move your fingers?”

He can.

“Your wrist?”

He can.

“Good.”

She gingerly takes his arm with both hands and lifts it a little. The pain shoots over his shoulder and down his back, but he doesn’t say anything. He has been through far worse.

“Dislocated. I don’t think it’s too bad,” she says.

“You don’t think, or you don’t know?”

“I don’t think. I’ve only set one of these before. For my brother,” she says quietly.

“Can you put it back?”

“Of course, Feo. I’m a Player,” she says, trying not to sound like she’s convincing herself. “I can do all sorts of wonderful things.” She lifts it again. “It’s gonna hurt, though.”

“I don’t care.”

Sarah pulls, twists, and pushes the arm, and it pops into place. Jago breathes deeply through his teeth, testing out his arm. It works. “Thank you, Sarah.”

The screaming is louder.

“You’d have done the same for me.”

Jago smiles. For some reason, he thinks of the people who came to see his parents after the meteor struck Juliaca. There are some debts that must be honored.

“No, I wouldn’t have,” he says. “But I will now.”

Sarah stands, looks toward the wreckage. “We need to get out of here. Before the government gets here, before they start asking questions.” “You think it was meant for one of us?” Jago asks.

“It had to be. This is Endgame,” she says, reaching out her hand, offering it. “My name is Sarah Alopay. I’m the Cahokian.”

He takes her hand, and it lights him up, feels as if it belongs in his, as if it’s something he’s been waiting for. It also scares him, because he knows these feelings can be dangerous, can make him vulnerable, especially with someone who has the skills he suspects she has. For now, though, he’ll allow himself to feel it, to love it.

“I’m Jago Tlaloc. The Olmec.”

“Nice to meet you, Jago Tlaloc. Thank you for saving my life. I owe you one.”

Jago looks up to the cloudless sky, remembering the streak of light that passed overhead, that short-circuited the train’s power long enough for him to see the blinking light of the detonator. He’ll take credit for saving Sarah, sure. It’s good to have another Player in his debt. But he knows the truth: that streak across the sky was a warning. A warning from Them, making sure that they would live until at least the Calling. “Don’t mention it,” he says.

Without another word Sarah puts her backpack on and starts to run into the darkness. She’s fast, strong, graceful. He smiles as he watches her braid sway back and forth.

He has a new friend.

The beautiful Player of the 233rd.

A new friend.

Maybe more.

43.98007, 18.179324xlv

CHRISTOPHER VANDERKAMP
Air China Flight 9466, Seat 35E Depart: San Francisco Arrive: Beijing

Christopher’s father is a beef farmer in the western prairie. A very successful beef farmer. At last count more than 75,000 head of cattle. Christopher said good-bye to Sarah. He didn’t want to, but he did. He stood with Sarah’s family and watched her go through security. He stayed at the airport until her flight had departed.

He let her go.

He’s not used to letting things go.

And he’s never had to let anything go before.

Christopher was the starting quarterback of the football team. He is a great athlete. He was recruited to Nebraska in the fall to play football. He accepted, but he asked if they could give the scholarship to someone else. Someone who needed it.

On the field he never spent more than five counts in the pocket. He is decisive, has an arm like a cannon, legs like a thoroughbred, a heart like a lion. He is physically superior to most kids his age and to almost everyone he’s ever met.

Christopher is in love. In love with Sarah Alopay. In love with a Player of Endgame. All anyone can do is talk about the meteor, the school, the deaths, the disappearance of Sarah. What it all means. They don’t know, have no idea, couldn’t even begin to imagine the truth about what happened.

But Christopher knows—even if he still thinks it’s bullshit.

He’s 18 years old. Free. He has a passport. He has been to Europe, South America, and Asia. He has traveled on his own before. Christopher is a fighter. His younger brother, John, has Down syndrome. Kids used to pick on him in grade school. They made fun of him and mocked him. Christopher took care of those kids, and John didn’t get picked on anymore.

Christopher is rich.

Decisive.

Fast.

Strong.

And Christopher is in love.

Christopher knows where she is going, the number of her satellite phone, about Endgame.

Christopher likes games.

He has spent most of his life winning games.

He believes he can win anything.

He realizes he lied to the girl he loves. He is not going to sit this one out. He is not going to wait.

Two days after Sarah leaves, Christopher leaves as well.

He is going to find her.

Help her.

They’re going to win.

Together.

The earthquake occurred near Huaxian, Shaanxi ( formerly Shensi), China, about 50 miles (80 km) east-northeast of Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi. Damage extended as far away as Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi ( formerly Shansi) and about 270 miles (430 km) northeast of the epicenter. There were felt reports as far away as Liuyang in Hunan, more than 500 miles (800 km) away. Geological effects reported with this earthquake included ground fissures, uplift, subsidence, sand blows, liquefaction, and landslides. Most towns in the damage area reported collapsed city walls, most to all houses collapsed, and many of the towns reported ground fissures with water gushing out (i.e., liquefaction and sand blows). Gu, et. al. says that “the identified death toll of soldiers and civilians was 830,000, and the unidentified was uncountable.” The earthquake was felt in all or parts of ninexlvi provinces: Anhui, Gansu, Hebei, Hubei, Henan, Hunan, Shaanxi, Shandong, and Shanxi.

CHIYOKO TAKEDA
Big Wild Goose Pagoda, Xi’an, China

Before the meteorite there were two Wild Goose Pagodas in Xi’an. One called Small and the other called Big.

Now there is one.

The Big Wild Goose Pagoda.

Chiyoko visits it on the morning of June 20.

There are tourists from everywhere, but mostly tourists from China. It’s a massive country in every conceivable way. Japan is crowded, but China takes crowds to another level. Ever since she arrived, Chiyoko feels as if China is all there is to the world, that there is nothing more. No ice caps, no Empire State Buildings, no Parthenons, no sprawling boreal forests, no Meccas, no Kremlins, no pyramids, no Golden Temples, no Angkor Wats, no Stonehenges.

No Endgame.

Just China.

Chiyoko sits on a bench. The Big Wild Goose Pagoda is surrounded by a scenic park. Chiyoko reads her guidebook and looks at pictures. The Small Wild Goose Pagoda had soft lines and a rounded taper. It was, before the meteorite, 141 feet tall. It was constructed around 708 CE and had been periodically reconstructed over the centuries. It suffered some earthquake damage in 1556 that, until its recent destruction, had remained unrepaired.

The Big Wild Goose Pagoda—the survivor towering before her—is harsher and more fortresslike. Its taper is fixed by a number—Chiyoko estimates that each successive floor is around 0.8 times smaller than the preceding floor. It is 210 feet tall. It was constructed in 652 CE and repaired in 704. The same 1556 earthquake damaged it extensively, causing it to lean to the west at 3.4°.

In less than 48 hours she will sneak into the Big Wild Goose Pagoda and find whatever it is that is waiting for her.

What is waiting for all the Players of Endgame.

Chiyoko watches the crowd of tourists. She nibbles on spicy rice crackers from a little white paper bag. She is convinced that other Players are here now, doing the same thing she is. Scattered among the Chinese throng are foreigners, and every one intrigues her. Especially the young ones.

The African boy with the lollipop.

The Southeast Asian girl decked out in Hello Kitty gear.

The pale white girl with flame-red hair and skull-shaped headphones. The brooding Indian boy in the cornflower-blue shirt.

The Central Asian girl smoking a thin cigarette as she swipes her thumb across the screen of her iPhone.

The squat blond girl wearing tight white jeans and leather Birkenstocks.

The sinewy pockmarked boy with the scar on his face.

Surely they are not all Players, but some are, some definitely are. Chiyoko stands, walks toward the tower. She is determined to remain alone throughout Endgame. Any alliances she makes will be temporary and opportunistic. She finds friendships to be burdensome, so why bother with any in the crucible that is about to consume them? Nor will she strive to make enemies. These are even more annoying than friends. No, her plan is simply to follow for as long as she can. She will use her best skills and attributes—silence, furtiveness, ordinariness—to her advantage.

She walks to the pagoda. She is so unobtrusive and quiet that the guards don’t notice her, don’t ask for her ticket.

She moves inside. It is cooler there. The sounds are clearer. If there weren’t so many people inside, she would like it. There is so much noise in China. Very few understand the value of silence like Chiyoko.

She makes her way to the stairs, moving without any sound.

I must choose wisely, she thinks. She must pick the Player or Players she believes has the best early chance. Then she will shadow and track that Player. When they are not looking, she will take whatever it is she wants or needs and move on.

She makes her way up, up, up. She reaches the top of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. There is a small door at the back of the room. She makes her way to it, casually inspects it. Etched into its wood, in very small markings, is the word ROBO.

As far as ciphers go, it is child’s play. But since it is recognizable as an English word fragment, it goes unnoticed.

Chiyoko notices, though.

Chiyoko understands.

And the others will too, if they haven’t already.

She turns from the door and goes to the western window. She peers out over the sprawl of Xi’an. There is the crater, where the other pagoda stood, still smoldering, six days after the impact. The wind carries the smoke to the south in black and gray tendrils.

A small group of monks arrives, clad in orange and red robes. Like her, they are quiet. Perhaps they also have dedicated themselves to silence. She wonders if they’ll scream when it all comes crumbling down. Chiyoko won’t scream. When the world goes to hell, Chiyoko will do what she always does. Slip away unnoticed.

CHRISTOPHER VANDERKAMP
Xi’an Garden Hotel, Dayan District, Xi’an, China

Christopher watches the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. He has not seen Sarah. But he has been looking, and he knows that she’s out there. He’d like to think that she can sense his love, but that would be crazy. He needs to keep his head on straight, to go about this rationally.

He didn’t travel halfway around the world, chasing his girlfriend who is involved in an apocalyptic game of allegedly alien design, to get sidetracked by silly puppy-love emotions.

His hotel is across the street from the pagoda. He has a telescope and two pairs of binoculars mounted on tripods. He has a DSLR with a 400-mm fixed lens. All of them face the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. He watches.

Waits.

Dreams of seeing her, touching her, smelling her, kissing her. Looking into her eyes and seeing love returned.

He watches.

Waits.

And on the night of the solstice it happens.

He sees seven people sneak into the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. Most are disguised, hidden, incognito. He can’t be sure if any of them is Sarah. Sarah said there were 12 Players, so he assumes the other five must have gone in from a different entrance, or gone undetected. He can’t cover all the angles from his room.

Snap snap snap.

He takes pictures.

Lots of pictures.

Only one person gives him a good image. A girl. Dark-tanned skin. Wearing colorful scarves over a form-fitting jumpsuit. Full black hair peeking out from a head wrap. The glint of brilliant green eyes.

He is tempted to go too. He doesn’t want to admit it, but he is afraid. Of the other Players. Of Endgame. Of—he can hardly believe he is thinking it—the Sky People.

But mostly he is afraid of what Sarah would look like—what she would say, how she would feel—if she were to see him now.

He knows the time isn’t right.

Not yet.

He needs a moment where he can swoop in and help her, where he can prove his worth and his love. He doesn’t want to seem like a stalker, lingering around the pagoda like some kind of Endgame groupie. That would be embarrassing. So he waits. For an hour. Two. Two and a half.

Nothing.

He waits.

His eyes are heavy. His chin is in his hand. His elbow is on his knee.

There’s nothing, no one.

He can’t fight sleep anymore.

He’s been up for over 27 hours.

And just like that, he is out.

35.2980, 25.1632xlvii

MARCUS LOXIAS MEGALOS
Big Wild Goose Pagoda, Xi’an, China

Up, up, up.

Marcus checks his watch.

Keep going up.

12:10 a.m.

He’s late.

Up.

How could he have been so stupid?

Up.

He should have stayed within walking distance, not at a hotel in the walled part of the city.

Up.

Not have-to-take-a-taxi distance.

Up, up.

A taxi that hit another taxi, which plowed into a couple standing on the side of the road eating fried persimmon cakes out of a red plastic bag. Both died on the spot. And Marcus’s driver took the damn cakes to boot.

Up.

His heart beating hard, beating hard.

Going up.

Finally he stops. He faces a low door at the top of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. Etched on the door is the word ROBO. Is it really this easy? Seems it is.

No one’s seen him, or if someone has, they haven’t called Marcus out. Maybe the guards have been bribed. Maybe they have been bribed by one of Them.

It’s about to begin. Provided he didn’t miss it by being—he looks again—11 minutes late and counting.

How stupid of him to be late.

Marcus puts his hand on the door. The other Players have already arrived. They must have.

He pushes it in.

A narrow wooden staircase is behind the door. Marcus draws his bronze knife from a sheath under his pant leg. He enters and closes the door. It’s dark. The staircase goes up half a flight and makes a turn.

His heart beats harder.

His clothing soaks up sweat.

Marcus is the son of Knossos. A child of the Great Goddess. A Freeborn. An ancestral Witness to the Breath of Fire.

He is the Minoan.

He squeezes the hilt of his knife. It’s adorned with glyphs understood only by him and the man who taught him. All the others who understood are dead.

The old stairs creak. The wind outside whistles over the roof tiles. The smell of smoke, from the crater, wafts over and through the still-standing Big Wild Goose Pagoda. The stairs end.

Marcus is at the edge of a small room. It is shrouded in darkness, and he can barely make out any details. There is no movement.

He breathes.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

“Anyone there?”

Nothing.

He fishes in his pocket for a Bic lighter.

Flick flick flick.

A weak flame ignites.

His heart skips a beat.

Stacked at the far end of the room like logs are the Players. Each is wrapped in a silver shroud and blindfolded with a simple black cloth. Though it is hot and stuffy, he can see their breath on the air, as if it’s winter.

A trap? he wonders.

He takes a tentative step forward.

He can make out features on three of the others. One girl looks Middle Eastern, maybe Persian. She has fine, copper skin; thick black hair; a hooked nose; and high cheeks. A boy—and he is undoubtedly young—is tanned and has round cheeks. His face is locked in a grimace. A tall girl has short-cropped red hair and freckles and lips so thin and pale they are practically nonexistent. She looks like she’s dreaming of rainbows and kittens, not the end of the world.

He takes another step, drawn to the pile of Players like a moth to a flame.

You are late.

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.

“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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