Sky Key

Let it pass.

She does. The images and feelings come and go. Memories. The rain lashing her face as she sits on the northeastern gargoyle’s head on top of the Chrysler Building. The taste of wild mushrooms scavenged from the Hudson Valley. Her heaving lungs pushing out water when she nearly drowned in Lough Owel, Ireland. The creeping fear that she can’t win, or doesn’t deserve to win, or shouldn’t win, the doubt that every Player who isn’t a sociopath must confront. The bright blue of her father’s eyes. The spooky voice of kepler 22b. The escape from the Great White Pyramid. The regret that her crossbow bolt didn’t skewer the Olmec in the attic of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. The anger over what the cave paintings showed her in Italy. The anger that the Players are being played by the keplers. The anger that it’s not fair. The anger from knowing that Endgame is a bunch of bullshit. The anger.

Let it pass.

Let it pass.

Breathe.

The door whispers. One, two, three. The latch turns. Aisling doesn’t open her eyes. Listens, smells, feels. Just one person. The door closes. Whispers. One, two, three.

Shut in.

A woman. She can tell by the smell of her soap.

Light-footed. Steady breathing. Maybe she meditates too.

The woman crosses the room and stops on the other side of the table.

She introduces herself: “Operations Officer Bridget McCloskey.” The woman’s voice is raspy, like a lounge singer’s. She sounds big. “That’s my real name. Not some cover bullshit, Deandra Belafonte Cooper … Or should I say Aisling Kopp?”

Aisling’s eyes shoot open. Their gazes lock. McCloskey is not what Aisling expects.

“So you admit your passport is a fake,” McCloskey says.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I say Aisling Kopp, your eyes pop open. That’s an admission in my book, a hundred times out of a hundred.”

“What book is that? Fifty Shades of Grey? Letters to Penthouse?”

McCloskey shakes her head with a look of disappointment. She’s in her early 40s. Like Aisling she has red hair, except that hers has a Bride of Frankenstein streak running from her forehead all the way through to the tip of her tight ponytail. She’s leggy and stacked and flat-out hot, like a Playboy bunny just a few years past her prime. She has eyeglasses with teal frames and very little makeup. Her eyes are green. Her hands are veined and strong, the only giveaway that she’s the real deal. She must have been stunning when she was Aisling’s age.

“You’d be surprised how often I hear degrading shit like that,” McCloskey says.

“Maybe you need a new line of work.”

“Nah. I like my job. I like talking with people like you.”

“People like me?”

“Terrorists.”

Aisling doesn’t flinch and doesn’t speak. She understands that from a law-enforcement perspective any Player of Endgame could absolutely be considered a terrorist—but what does this woman know about Endgame?

“No more smart mouth? I’ll remind you that you’ve been caught trying to cross the US border under an assumed name.”

“Am I under arrest?”

“Arrest?” McCloskey chuckles. “How quaint. No, I’m not with the part of the government that arrests people, Miss Kopp. I’m with … another part of the government. A small and exclusive part. The one that deals with terrorists. Up close and personal like.”

“Well, we have a problem, then, because I’m not a terrorist.”

“Oh, dear! So you’re telling me this is all one big misunderstanding?”

“Yes.”

“So I’m wrong in believing you’re a member of a very old sleeper cell that, once called to action, can and will do anything to achieve its goals? That’s not you?”

“A sleeper cell, huh? Is this a joke?”

McCloskey shakes her head again. “No joke. Did you hear what happened in Xi’an? You have anything to do with that?”

The mention of the Chinese city causes Aisling’s heart to quicken. A shiver runs down her neck. If she can’t head off her body’s hardwired threat response, then she might break out in a cold sweat. She can’t break out in a cold sweat. Not in front of this woman, who already seems to know a bit too much.

“What, the meteor? Is my sleeper cell responsible for that? Lady, if I could control meteors, you can bet I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

If I could control meteors, Aisling thinks, the Event would never come.