Origins

It was the kind of camp where little kids were encouraged to play with matches.

It was most definitely Marcus’s kind of place—and that was even before he found out the part about the alien invasion and how, if he played his cards right, he’d get to save the world.

Best. Camp. Ever.

Or it would have been, were it not for the impossible-to-ignore existence of Alexander Nicolaides. He was everything Marcus wasn’t. Marcus could never sit still, always acted without thinking; Alexander was calm and deliberate and even broke the camp’s meditation record, sitting silent and motionless and staring into a stupid candle for 28 hours straight. Marcus mastered languages and higher math with brute mental force, thudding his head against the logic problems until they broke; Alexander was fluent in Assyrian, Sumerian, ancient Greek, and, just for fun, medieval Icelandic, and he was capable of visualizing at least six dimensions. Marcus was better at climbing and shooting; Alexander had the edge in navigation and survival skills. They even looked like polar opposites: Alexander was a compact ball of tightly coiled energy, his wavy, white-blond hair nearly as pale as his skin, his eyes as blue as the Aegean Sea. Marcus was long-limbed and rangy, with close-cropped black hair. If they’d been ancient gods, Alexander would have had charge over the sky and the sea, all those peaceful stretches of cerulean and aquamarine. Marcus, with his dark green eyes and golden sheen, would have lorded it over the forests and the earth, all leaves and loam and living things. But the gods were long dead—or at least departed for the stars—and instead Marcus and Alexander jockeyed for rule over the same small domain. Marcus was the camp joker and prided himself on making even his sternest teachers laugh; Alexander was terse, serious, rarely speaking unless he had something important to say.

Which was for the best, because his voice was so nails-on-chalkboard annoying that it made Marcus want to punch him in the mouth.

It didn’t help that Alexander was a good candidate for Player and an even better suck-up. The other kids definitely preferred Marcus, but Marcus knew that Alexander had a slight edge with the counselors, and it was their opinion that counted. Every seven years, the counselors invited a new crop of kids to the camp, the best and brightest of the Minoan line. The counselors trained them, judged them, pushed them to their limits, pitted them against one another and themselves, and eventually named a single one as the best. The Player. Everyone else got sent back home to their mind-numbingly normal lives.

Maybe that kind of boring life was okay for other kids.

Other kids dreamed of being astronauts, race-car drivers, rock stars—not Marcus. Since the day he found out about Endgame, Marcus had only one dream: to win it.

Nothing was going to get in his way.

Especially not Alexander Nicolaides.

Tucked away in a secluded valley on the western edge of Crete, the Minoan camp was well hidden from prying eyes. The Greek isles were crowded with architectural ruins, most of them littered with regulations, tourists, and discarded cigarette butts. Few knew of the ruins nestled at the heart of the Lefka Ori range, where 50 carefully chosen Minoan children lived among the remnants of a vanished civilization. Tilting pillars, crumbling walls, the fading remains of a holy fresco—everywhere Marcus looked, there was evidence of a nobler time gone by. This was no museum: it was a living bond between present and past. The kids were encouraged to press their palms to crumbling stone, to trace carvings of heroes and bulls, to dig for artifacts buried thousands of years before. This was the sacred ground of their ancestors, and as candidates to be the Minoans’ champion, they were entitled to claim it for their own.

The camp imposed a rigorous training schedule on the children, but none of them complained. They’d been chosen because they were the kind of kids who thought training was fun. They were kids who wanted to win. None more than Marcus. And other than the thorn in his side named Alexander Nicolaides, Marcus had never been so happy in his life.

He endured Alexander for two years, biding his time, waiting for the other boy to reveal his weakness or, better yet, to flame out. He waited for the opportunity to triumph over Alexander so definitively, so absolutely, that everyone would know, once and for all, that Marcus was the best. Marcus liked to imagine how that day would go, how the other kids would carry him around on their shoulders, cheering his name, while Alexander slunk away in humiliated defeat.

He was nine years old when the moment finally arrived.

A tournament, elimination style, with the champion claiming a large gold trophy, a month’s worth of extra dessert, and bonus bragging rights. The Theseus Cup was held every two years as a showcase for campers—and a chance for them to prove their worth. There were rumors that the first to win the Theseus Cup was a shoo-in to be chosen as the Player. No one knew whether or not this was the case—but Marcus didn’t intend to risk it. He intended to win.

He swept his opening matches effortlessly, knocking one kid after another senseless, even the ones who were older and bigger. Bronze daggers, double axes, Turkish sabers—whatever the weapon, Marcus wielded it like a champion. Alexander, who’d started off in another bracket, cut a similar swath across the competition. This was as it should be, Marcus thought. It would be no fun to knock him out in an early round. The decisive blow needed to come when it counted, in the championship, with everyone watching.

The two nine-year-old finalists stepped into the ring for a final bout. Personal, hand-to-hand combat. No weapons, no intermediaries. Just the two of them. Finally.

They faced each other and bowed, as they’d been taught.

Bowing before you fought, offering up that token of respect, that was a rule.

After that, there were no rules.

Marcus opened with a karate kick. Alexander blocked it with ease, and they pitted their black belts against each other for a few seconds before Alexander took him in a judo hold and flipped him to the ground. Marcus allowed it—only so he could sweep his leg across Alexander’s knees and drop him close enough for a choke hold. Alexander wriggled out and smashed a fist toward Marcus’s face. Marcus rolled away just in time, and the punch came down hard against the mat.

The camp was on its feet, cheering, screaming Marcus’s and Alexander’s names—Marcus tried not to distract himself by trying to figure out whose cheering section was bigger. The fighters moved fluidly through techniques, meeting sanshou with savate, blocking a tae kwon do attack with an onslaught of aikido, their polished choreography disintegrating into the furious desperation of a street brawl. But even spitting and clawing like a pair of animals, they were perfectly matched.

The fight dragged on and on. Dodging punches, blocking kicks, throwing each other to the mat again and again, they fought for one hour, then two. It felt like years. Sweat poured down Marcus’s back and blood down his face. He gasped and panted, sucking in air and trying not to double over from the pain. His legs were jelly, his arms lead weights. Alexander looked like he’d been flattened by a steamroller, with both eyes blackened and a wide gap where his front teeth used to be. The kids fell silent, waiting for the referee to step in before the two boys killed each other.

But this was not that kind of camp.

They fought on.

They fought like they lived: Marcus creative and unpredictable, always in motion; Alexander cool, rational, every move a calculated decision.

Which made it even more of a shock when Alexander broke. Unleashing a scream of pure rage, he reached over the ropes to grab the referee’s stool, and smashed it over Marcus’s head.

Marcus didn’t see it coming.

He only felt the impact.

A thunderbolt of pain reverberating through his bones.

His body dropping to the ground, no longer under his control, his consciousness drifting away.

The last thing he saw, before everything faded to black, was Alexander’s face, stunned by his own loss of control. Marcus smiled, then started to laugh. Even in defeat, he’d won—he’d finally made the uptight control freak completely lose it.

The last thing he heard was Alexander laughing too.

“You always tell that story wrong,” Marcus says now. “You leave out the part where I let you win.”

Xander only laughs. At 14, he’s nearly twice the size he was at that first Theseus Cup, his shoulders broader, his voice several octaves deeper, his blond hair thicker and forested across his chest. But his laugh is still exactly the same as it was on the day of the fight.

Marcus remembers, as he remembers every detail of that day.

You never forget the moment you make your best friend.

“Yeah, that was really generous of you, deciding to get a concussion and pass out,” Xander says. “I owe you one.”

“You owe me two,” Marcus points out. “One for the concussion, one for the cheating.”

They are hanging off a sheer rock face, 50 meters off the ground. They will race each other to the top of the cliff, 70 meters above, then rappel back down to the bottom, dropping toward the ground at a stomach-twisting speed.

Marcus has heard that most kids his age fill up their empty hours playing video games. He thinks this is a little more fun.

“I most certainly did not cheat,” Xander says, trying to muster some of his habitual dignity. Most people think that’s the real him: solemn, uptight, deliberate, slow to smile. Marcus knows better. Over the last five years, he’s come to know the real Xander, the one who laughs at his jokes and even, occasionally, makes a few of his own. (Though, of course, they’re never any good.) “Not technically, at least,” Xander qualifies. He jams his fingers into a small crevice in the rock face and pulls himself up another foot, trying very hard to look like it costs him no effort.

Marcus scrambles up past him, grinning, because for him it actually is no effort. “Only because no one ever thought to put ‘don’t go nutball crazy and smash furniture over people’s heads’ in the rules before,” Marcus says.

“Lucky for both of us,” Xander says.

Normally, Marcus would shoot back a joke or an insult, something about how it’s not so lucky for him, because Xander’s been clinging to him like a barnacle ever since. Or maybe something about how it was luckier for Xander, because now, with Marcus as a wingman, he might someday, if he’s lucky, actually get himself a date.

But not today.

Not today, the last day before everything changes. Tomorrow, they will find out who has been selected as this generation’s Player. It’ll surely be either Marcus or Alexander; everyone knows that. They’re the best in the camp at everything; no one else even comes close. It’s what brought them together in the first place. After all that time wasted hating each other, they’d realized that where it counted, they were the same. No one else was so determined to win—and no one else was good enough to do so. Only Marcus could melt Xander’s cool; only Xander could challenge Marcus’s cockiness. In the end, what else could they do but become best friends? They pushed each other to go faster, to get stronger, to be better. Competition is all they know. Their friendship is built on the fact that they’re so well matched.

Tomorrow, all that changes. Tomorrow, one of them will leave this place as a winner, and embark on his hero’s journey. The other will leave a loser, and find some way to endure the rest of his pathetic life.

Which means today is not a day for joking. I couldn’t have made it through this place without you, Marcus would like to say. And no one knows me like you do. And maybe even you make me want to be my best self.

But he’s not that kind of guy.