Kitabı oku: «Rules of the Game», sayfa 3

SARAH ALOPAY, JAGO TLALOC
Heading south along the Teesta River near Mangan, Sikkim, India

Sarah is not asleep. She hasn’t slept at all. And while Jago has been friendly with the others, and truly does want to meet this Stella Vyctory, he’s not convinced. Not by a long shot.

Sarah slumps across Jago’s lap, her hand resting under her hair and on Jago’s thigh. She taps out messages to him in Morse code, and he answers in the same code by squeezing her scalp so softly that the movement can only be felt by her and not seen by anyone else.

Their conversation has been long and a little testy, and it revolves around one question, which in this moment Sarah asks for the seventh time: Should we really trust these people?

And Jago answers, We have to for now. If what Jordan says is true, then maybe we now know of another way to stop this thing. Even if Abaddon hits, and the world is changed, we might have a way to prevent a Player from winning. And if Jordan isn’t right, it seems that these people really do want the same thing. They can help us, Sarah. We can help them.

Help us so that we can stay together.

Yes. So that we can stay together.

We stick with them, then.

Yes.

All right, she taps. I only wish …

What?

I wish we were alone, Feo. I wish it were just you and me.

This is the first time she’s said it all day.

And Jago squeezes back, I do too, Sarah. I do too.

HILAL IBN ISA AL-SALT
Ayutthaya, Thailand

Hilal is also headed to Stella Vyctory, except he is much, much closer.

He hustles out of the Phra Nakhon Provincial Railway Station, turning this way and that, slicing through a mass of people. He went directly from the Bangkok airport, where he last spoke to Stella, to the central Bangkok train station. He got on the first train to Ayutthaya and now he makes his way on foot to Stella, who is a short four kilometers away.

He goes south from the station through a platoon of food carts, smelling fried things and salty things and sweet things. Squid, mushrooms, pork, onions, garlic, sugar, basil, citrus, peanuts. His large rucksack claps his shoulders as he jogs. It contains his twin machetes, a change of clothing, a first aid kit for his wounds, the device from the ark (which has ceased working since the kepler’s announcement), and the incomprehensible book he took from Wayland Vyctory’s hotel suite in Las Vegas.

A few blocks from the station a large group of worshippers blocks the street and forces him to detour into the Wat Pichai Songkram temple complex. Monks are everywhere. Bald and saffron-robed and busy. Devotees wearing conical shade hats and carrying parasols surround the holy men, pleading for mercy and praying to Lord Buddha. Hilal does the same in his mind as he rushes past the gilt icon covered in marigolds and lotus blossoms and surrounded by a pyre of incense. He searches for a way out of the complex so he can pick up the pace again and get to Stella as soon as possible.

After a minute he finds himself on the banks of the Pa Sak River. He turns south and resumes running. Longtail boats ply the cloudy water and schools of huge catfish boil to the surface to eat bread being thrown by children. It is nice to see young people doing everyday things, to witness innocence.

It is also nice to feel the sun.

He is afraid that, thanks to the impact winter that is likely to shroud the skies after Abaddon, sunlight will be something of a luxury soon.

He is very afraid of this.

He tilts his disfigured face to our star as his feet carry him toward Stella.

The sun. Earth’s life force. The photons that bounce off his skin and everything else around him left the solar surface eight minutes and 20 seconds ago. Eight minutes and 20 seconds! They hurtled through the void of space and entered the atmosphere and made a beeline for this spot, right here, on Earth, in the continent called Asia, in the country called Thailand, in the city called Ayutthaya, onto the man and Endgame Player named Hilal ibn Isa al-Salt. A great cosmic accident that happens over and over and over again to everything the sun’s light touches. Over and over and over again.

Stella.

He quickens his pace.

Stella. Her name means “star,” like the sun.

May she give us light, Hilal thinks.

He turns east onto the wide Rojana Road. He jogs now, passes car dealerships and beauty salons and tourist offices and convenience stores and Thai motorcycle cops in brown uniforms who give him suspicious looks but who don’t do anything. He passes a two-story stupa right in the middle of the six-lane road. He passes a group of teenage boys loitering on souped-up scooters, smoking filterless cigarettes, whistling at girls, laughing.

Hilal slows to a brisk walk when he sees these young men. Four of them wear makeshift masks of a face that everyone has seen and everyone has memorized and everyone is confused by and many are terrified by.

The pale face of kepler 22b.

There were Meteor Kids throwing raves and partying after the twelve meteors that announced Endgame, and now there are kepler Kids.

The teens are loud as Hilal approaches, but when they notice him the silence hits. They see his scarred face and his discolored eyes and his lack of hair and his missing ear. Two of the kids pull the masks from the tops of their heads and over their faces, as if to hide.

Hilal doesn’t break stride. “Krap,” he says, dipping his chin and raising his hand.

None of them say anything in return.

He resumes running. Another kilometer and he reaches the Classic Kameo Hotel, a collection of glass and cement blocks, all white and modern and clean. Hilal imagines it caters to upscale tourists and Asian businessmen.

This is where he will find Stella.

He goes inside. The air conditioning slaps him in the face. He moves through it, crossing his arms for warmth. Nice lobby, big chairs, front desk, clerk, elevator, hallway, room.

Its number is 702. He is about to knock when he is overcome with nerves. He is going to see her again. Stella. The woman who beat him in a fight, who helped him, who claimed Wayland Vyctory as her father. Hilal trusted her in Las Vegas, and he trusts her still, but now that he is on the edge of whatever comes next in Endgame he pauses.

Breathes.

Knocks.

He hears the soft pad of footsteps on the far side of the door. The world turns some more.

The door opens. The woman smiles.

“Hilal,” Stella says. “Come in. It is so good to see you again.”

AN LIU
Shang Safe House, Unnamed Street off Ahiripukur Second Lane, Ballygunge, Kolkata, India

An walks from the cemetery back to his safe house. He walks briskly, angry and red-eyed and oblivious to the world around him.

He had them. The Nabataean and Sky Key and Earth Key too. Right in his sights. He had them and his shots missed and they outplayed him!

And they got away.

They are gone.

“Gone, Chiyoko, gone! How could I let it happen?” he curses BLINKshiverBLINK he curses himself as he marches through the choked streets, and when he finally reaches the secluded side entrance of his hideout his emotions are a tempest.

He opens the door and bolts it shut from the inside and punches a code into the security system. He stalks toward the bathroom, stripping off his clothes as he moves, letting his garments fall to the floor in heaps. He rants the whole way. “I had”—BLINKBLINK—“I had them! I could have killed”—shiverBLINK—“killed”—shivershivershiver—“killed”—BLINK—“them.” SHIVERshiver. “Could have”—SHIVERshiver—“Could have”—SHIVERshiver—“Could have stuffed a grenade in his mouth and stepped back and laughed and watched the whole thing burn!” BLINK. “No”—BLINK—“No”—BLINK—“No”—BLINK—“No winner could be”—shiverSHIVERshiver—“no winner could be”—BLINKBLINKBLINKBLINKshiverBLINKBLINK—“No winner could be!”

He’s in the bathroom and naked except for Chiyoko’s necklace. He puts his hands to it but they shake too much. She can’t calm him right now, she can’t, and he lets go of the necklace because he’s shaking so much that he’s afraid he’ll break it, that he’ll hurt her, and he raises his arm and bites it and clamps down, gnashes, grinds. It hurts and stings and a little blood comes and he stops shaking. He turns on the hot water tap, and his hands calm. He removes Chiyoko and sets her gingerly on the edge of the sink and steps through the curtain and into the stall. It is scalding and his skin turns red and he winces and holds his breath from the shock of the temperature.

He calms some more. His arm throbs. He ducks his stubbly head under the water stream. It burns.

“The world would have gotten what it deserves,” An says.

And in that moment there is a small sound deep in his mind and he knows it is her and she’s trying to speak to him but he can’t hear. He strains and concentrates but he can’t hear her.

“What it deserves. All because of me.”

He feels better. He washes, dries, cleans the necklace, gets dressed, eats, and then moves to a control room and settles down. He checks the tracking program that marks the Olmec’s position, and then turns on several monitors at once and watches the news.

The news. The news. The news. It is glorious and beautiful and amazing.

BBC, CNN International, Al Jazeera, Fox News, TASS, France 24, CCTV. Fear is rampant. Martial law in every Western country. Police forces thinning out as their members flee to be with family. Full military battalions being repositioned to minimum safe distances. Nuclear energy facilities being put on lockdown. Chemical plants following emergency shutdown protocols. Municipal airspaces the world over thick with helicopters and drones. Astronauts and cosmonauts on the International Space Station initiating emergency sequences and preparing for a prolonged isolation from Mission Control. The destruction of the ancient monuments of Stonehenge and Chogha Zanbil—the former of principal importance to the La Tène Celts, the latter equally as essential to the Sumerian line. No one knows who is obliterating them, or if they do know, no one is telling. Are other such monuments slated for destruction as well? Will those belonging to the Olmec, the Cahokian, the Nabataean, the Harappan, the Shang, and all the others be destroyed in time? Is the kepler destroying them? A consortium of the world’s militaries? Some group as yet unknown? An is unsure. He watches a dozen segments about the alien called kepler 22b. Interviews with people who revere him or hate him or want to befriend him or kill him. People who want to subjugate themselves to him. People who want to enslave him. But mostly people who want to run away from him, even if there is nowhere to run.

Don’t tell the leaders of the world that, though. Don’t tell the rich. An watches stories about presidents and prime ministers and scientists and educators and MPs and the wealthy, all fleeing, all bunkering, all burying themselves. Trying to disappear. Everyone else looting or taping up windows or trying to get inland and for the most part failing. Shoot-outs on clogged highways up and down the American East Coast. Throngs of people at churches and mosques and temples and synagogues praying to their gods. The Vatican, the Dome of the Rock, the Western Wall—all three so crowded that worshippers at each are being trampled and crushed.

An falls asleep to this beautiful chaotic dance at around three in the morning.

He wakes 2.4 hours later. The television screens are still full of fear and confusion and questions. When will Abaddon hit? How big is it and what’s it made of and how many will die?

And some answers.

Abaddon is a dense nickel-and-iron meteor that will strike soon on the edge of the Nova Scotia shelf, 300 kilometers south of Halifax. The asteroid is spherical with a diameter of just under three kilometers. It will punch a hole in the atmosphere and the sky will light up, snuffing out the sun’s light. The initial blast will vaporize everything around it and underneath it and over it for hundreds of miles. The impact will trigger a massive earthquake to ripple across the globe, which will even be felt on the other side of the world. After the quake comes the airborne shock wave, destroying everything for hundreds and hundreds of miles. And last but certainly not least will be the tsunamis, affecting every North Atlantic city from San Juan to Washington, DC, to Lisbon to Dakar.

In the hours and days that follow, the secondary effects of Abaddon will wreak havoc over the entire planet. These are less certain. They could include eruptions of long-dormant volcanoes as they are shaken from their slumbers. The Big Island of Hawaii could crack and calve a huge section into the Pacific, causing massive tsunamis up and down the Pacific Rim. Acid rain could fall everywhere, but especially within a few thousand miles of the crater, poisoning the sea and all drinking water in the vicinity. Electrical storms and hurricanes could whip up and ravage the land and sea around the crater.

An flips through the channels. There will be tornadoes, floods, landslides, ash, fear, depravation, suffering, death. There will be firestorms. Impact winters. No more internet in a lot of places. No more air travel for a long time. And on and on and on and, yes, soon, very soon, a lot of things are going to die.

At around six in the morning the first report of a visual comes on air. Spotted in the sky over the South Pacific. A dark speck skirting across the sun’s disc. A video plays on CNN International in a GIF loop: fishermen in small wooden boats hoisting Mylar-covered binoculars to the sky. They’re surrounded by blue water and white sand and green trees and the sky as clear as ever, and the men point and scream and yell.

That’s when everyone knows that it’s really true.

That’s when An knows it’s not a dream.

It’s better than a dream.

He will miss the internet, though. Sorely.

An turns from the news and hops up and moves. He needs to get back on the road, to get out of this city before it goes completely insane. The asteroid will hit on the far side of the globe, but he wants to be in the countryside for Abaddon, not in Kolkata or anywhere like it.

He has a quick breakfast of fish cakes and warm Coke. In the garage he loads his bulletproof Land Rover Defender with his go box and the cans of extra gasoline and his guns and bombs and Nobuyuki Takeda’s katana and the other box too, the precious box that contains the vest should he ever need it. The 20-kilo suicide vest that is his fail-safe.

By 9:13 he is ready to go.

But now that he’s sitting in his Defender and looking at the monitors that show what’s happening outside his safe house, he’s a little worried.

An didn’t expect this.

Not at all.

Hundreds of people choke the alleyway outside. All men. All crammed into the narrow street that is his Defender’s sole egress. They sit on the ground, lean against walls, mill around. Someone must have followed him from the cemetery and called their friends, and then they called friends, and they called friends. The men have sticks and pipes and machetes and a few have semiautomatic rifles. Some have dogs on ropes. Many are shirtless and rail thin and wear the ubiquitous loose cotton pants seen all over India. Some carry placards. Most of these are in Bengali or Hindi, which An can’t read, but some are in English. They say, WE SEE YOU! and BROTHERHOOD OF MAN! and EARTH IS OURS! and NO TO ENDGAME! NO TO THE PLAYERS! NO TO KEPLER 22B!

More than a few have blood smeared over their faces and arms. Blood from chickens or goats or dogs, sacrificed in ceremonies at local temples.

An understands. These men know who he is—the Shang, An Liu, Player of Endgame—and they want his pain. His life. His blood.

He understands perfectly.

BLINKshiverBLINK.

An pounds something into a laptop mounted in the center of the car. He hits enter. Like all Shang safe houses, this one is wired to blow, and blow dirty, irradiating this section of Kolkata. But the bomb will only detonate when his system detects that he and his vehicle have reached a safe distance.

He flicks the laptop closed.

“Are you ready, Chiyoko?”

And then he hears a small sound deep in his mind.

“Chi”—BLINK—“Chi”—SHIVER—“Chiyoko?”

The sound grows a little louder, like a hum in the distance.

“Are you ready?”

SHIVERSHIVERSHIVER.

And then—I am, she says in the voice she never had.

The quality of her voice doesn’t surprise him. Calm but firm. It is her. It is perfectly, succinctly, fully her.

He’s been expecting her.

He says, “You are always ready and I love you for it.”

An taps a button and the garage doors crack open.

“I love you.” An repeats. And she says it too, at the exact same moment, his voice mingling and weaving with hers.

He smiles.

Chiyoko and An. The Mu and the Shang.

They are the same.

The mob outside stirs and crackles.

Those who were sitting stand.

He hits the button again and the doors swing wide. A Kalashnikov fires. Shots explode across the Defender’s bulletproof windshield.

BLINK. SHIVER.

He flips the key in the ignition. The engine comes to life. He jams the gas and the engine roars. The men howl and gesticulate, wave their arms and sticks and their ridiculous placards, as if An cares for any of what they have to say.

This is not a protest, it is a war.

And he will fight it with his beloved.

SARAH ALOPAY, JAGO TLALOC
Gulfstream G650, Bogdogra Airport, Siliguri, West Bengal, India

Sarah and Jago recline in very comfortable seats in Jordan’s very comfortable private jet trying to figure out what to do. It took them a long time to get down from the Himalayas, and now they’re stuck waiting for permission to take off.

The wait is agonizing.

Aisling and Jordan are in the cockpit going through preflight stuff. Marrs is outside dealing with airport personnel. Pop sits in a seat alone near the bulkhead, staring out the window, his rocky knuckles white with tension. Shari is unconscious in the rear of the plane, already seat-belted in place, an IV bag hanging from the overhead compartment. Her chest rises and falls evenly.

Sarah is envious of Shari. Being knocked out would quell the hate and guilt and doubt and fear roiling inside her. Being knocked out would quiet her mind, her soul.

She leans into Jago’s side and whispers, “I wish we were fighting, Feo. Right now. I wish we were moving—Playing.”

“I know,” he says. “Me too.”

Action or oblivion, she thinks. Those are the only options right now.

Aisling emerges from the cockpit, interrupting Sarah’s train of thought.

“How long till we’re outta here?” Jago asks.

Aisling drops into the nearest seat. She reaches for her Falcata and lays it over her thighs. She runs her fingertips over the sword.

“At least an hour,” she says. “Maybe less if Marrs can bribe the right air traffic controller. But for the moment we’re holding.” She pulls a stone from a pocket and runs it over her blade’s edge. It’s razor sharp and doesn’t need the attention, but she needs something to do.

Also restless, Sarah thinks.

Sarah straightens and asks, “All right if Jago and I take over the lav for a little while?”

Jago snickers.

“Really?” Aisling’s eyebrows spring upward. “Now?”

Jago flashes his glittery smile and strokes Sarah’s knee. “Sí. No time like the present, ¿sabes?”

Sarah jabs him with her elbow. “Don’t listen to him. Jago picked up a dye kit back in Peru. I’m gonna be raven-haired from now on. Since Liu’s video came out and we can all be made, I don’t want to take any chances.”

He runs his fingers through his platinum hair. “I’m sure you couldn’t tell, Aisling, but I’m not a natural blond.”

Aisling shakes her head and tilts the blade in her lap, eyeing a miniscule nick. “Go for it. It’s all yours.”

Sarah and Jago move to the rear of the plane. The lavatory is very nice. There’s space between the toilet and the sink, and the sink is normal-sized, not a tiny bowl wedged into the corner. The towels are real, the toilet paper plush and soft.

Jago closes the door behind them. He helps Sarah out of her shirt, being careful with her wounded arm. She leans over the basin, face down, and Jago washes her hair using a plastic cup and the liquid soap on the counter.

“Rosemary,” Sarah says. “And lemon. Smells nice.”

“Mmm,” Jago says. He massages her scalp, rinsing out the soap. He runs his fingers along her nape and lets them trail down her back and over the band of her sports bra.

“Give me a towel,” she says.

He does.

She wraps it around her head and stands. They’re face-to-face. Her bra brushes his shirt and a shot of electricity races up her back. She smiles. “Can you dry my hair?” she asks.

“Sí.”

But instead he immediately leans forward and they kiss. She holds his head tightly between her strong hands and pulls him closer.

And they kiss.

And kiss.

They stop.

She sits on the closed toilet seat. He dries her hair. She brushes it, working through the tangles, while he preps the dye. When she’s done brushing, Jago separates her hair into sections and fastens a towel over her bare shoulders. He puts on latex gloves and gets to work, moving methodically from the back of her head and over the crown.

“Feels good, Feo.”

“I know.” He pushes his leg into hers in a show of affection. She pushes back. “I’m glad we’re alive,” he whispers.

“Me too. We shouldn’t be, though.”

Jago pauses so she can speak.

“Baitsakhan had us dead to rights back in the Harappan fortress,” she explains. “You were out and I was pretending to be. He had the opportunity, the motive, and the gun. Would’ve taken a second. Pop, pop.”

Jago’s hands resume working. “Why didn’t he?”

“Who knows. Arrogance? He was messed up from the teleportation? Who cares?”

The plane’s hydraulics and servos make some preflight music. Jordan says over the PA, “Just got word that we’re close, amigos.”

Sarah looks up at Jago, his ugly scar, his stern eyes. “Know what we should do, Feo? Steal a plane first chance we get,” she jokes. “Run away and make babies and teach them how to fight and survive and love.”

“Sounds great.”

“It will be.”

They both chuckle at the impossibility of all that.

They are silent for a while.

“If we want to do that someday—and I do—then we really need to stop Endgame,” Jago says seriously.

“Yes, we do.”

“And you think these people will show us how?”

Sarah shrugs. “I hope so.” Then, very quietly, as if she’s worried they’re being listened to, she says, “Do you believe Aisling? Do you trust her people?”

Jago shrugs. “They haven’t tried to kill us.”

“No. And I guess we haven’t tried to kill them, so we’re even there.”

“True.” He removes some clips from her hair, places them carefully in the sink.

“Okay. Done.” He drapes another towel over her. He opens the door and angles his head into the cabin. “Sarah, I have to tell you something.”

Sarah frowns, takes his hand, and he leads her to the closest pair of empty seats. Aisling is near the front, sitting next to Pop in silence. Shari is across the aisle, the closed window shade by her shoulder illuminated by the dawn’s early light.

Sarah laces her fingers into Jago’s. “What is it, Feo?”

“I couldn’t tell you before. It was too much. It was Aucapoma Huayna. My line’s elder. She told me that … she told me that you needed to die.”

Sarah releases Jago’s hand. “What?”

Aisling turns to look at them for a brief moment. Sarah and Jago lower their voices.

“And she said that I was the one who had to do it.”

Sarah clenches his hand tightly, painfully. “Why would she say that?”

Jago looks her directly in the eye, not wavering, not showing any signs of being dishonest. He wants her to hear. He needs her to. “It had something to do with your line. She said the Makers would never allow the Cahokians to win, nor would they allow my line to win so long as I walked alongside or Played with you.”

Sarah winces. “That’s nonsense.”

“She said your line did something extraordinary. She said that back in the sixteen hundreds the Cahokians actually fought the Makers!”

Sarah shakes her head. “What do you mean?”

“According to her, before the very last group of Makers left Earth—back in 1613—They asked the Cahokians to fulfill an old bargain. You had to give up a thousand young people in a grand and final sacrifice, I guess for Them to take with them on their ships.”

“And?”

“And your people refused. She said that by then the Cahokians understood that the Makers were mortal and that they appeared to be godlike simply because they possessed more knowledge and technology than humans. She said your people fought, using an old Maker weapon against Them, and that as a last resort the battlefield was iced from orbiting ships, killing everyone there, Maker soldiers included.”

“A Maker weapon?”

“Yes. And she said your line received more punishment. She said you were made to forget your rebellion and much of your ancient past, even the original name of your line. ‘Cahokian’ is apparently what you’ve called yourself since this battle. Before that you were known as something else.”

Marrs bounds back into the plane and closes the door behind him. He plants his hands on the bulkhead and leans forward. “Buckle up. We’re flying in five.”

Sarah pulls the seat belt over her lap. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says a little more loudly as the plane’s engines come to life. “The Cahokians have plenty of documents going way past 1613. I’ve seen them. We have plenty of language and knowledge, Jago. Plenty of history. And I have never heard anything like what you’re describing—”

Jago raises a hand. “I’m merely telling you what she said. It’s been eating at me. Obviously I’m not going to kill you, Sarah. And obviously I don’t care what the Makers think or want for themselves. I want you, and I want to stay alive, and to save my family if I can, as fucked up as they are. I want to fight—and fight hard—for what’s right.” He shrugs as the plane lurches backward. “Who knows,” he says. “Maybe she didn’t expect me to kill you. Maybe she wanted me to doubt you—doubt us—so that I’d leave you at my parents’ estate. So they could deal with you.”

“We’re number one for takeoff,” Jordan announces on the PA. The plane pulls around a turn and jerks to a stop. “Flight attendants, cross-check, and all the rest. Sit down and do a crossword.”

Aisling peers around the edge of her seat at Sarah, smiling at Jordan’s lame joke.

Sarah smiles back, not letting her expression relay the seriousness of the conversation she’s having with Jago.

“You didn’t let me finish,” Sarah says, thankful for the sudden hiss of the engines as the jet throttles down the runway. “I don’t know about this battle, but I do know about the weapon. I’ve never seen it, of course. No Cahokian Player has since—get this—1614. But I know where it’s hidden.”

“Where?”

“A little south of Monks Mound. The Cahokian monument Marrs was talking about earlier.”

“A place that someone, for some reason, might try to destroy.”

Sarah shakes her head decisively. The plane jostles through a small cloud, sunlight lancing the cabin as soon as they clear it. “Maybe, Feo. But not if we can get there first.”