Origins

“Yeah, lucky,” he agrees, and Xander knows him well enough to understand the rest.

They climb in silence for a while, battling gravity, scrabbling for purchase on the rock. Marcus’s muscles scream as he stretches for a handhold a few inches out of reach, finally getting leverage with his fingertips and dragging the rest of himself up and up.

“It’s probably going to be you,” Xander says finally, and they both know what he’s talking about. Marcus can tell Xander’s trying not to breathe heavily, but the strain in his voice is plain.

“No way. Totally you,” Marcus says, hoping the lie isn’t too obvious.

“It’s not like Endgame is even going to happen,” Xander says. “Think about it—after all this time, what are the odds?”

“Nil,” Marcus agrees, though this too feels like a lie. How could Endgame not happen for him? Ever since Marcus found out about the aliens, and the promise they’d made to return—ever since he found out about the Players, and the game—some part of him has known this was his fate. This is another difference between him and Xander, though it’s one they never talk about out loud.

Marcus believes.

When they were 11 years old, Marcus and Xander spent an afternoon digging for artifacts at the edge of the camp’s northern border. It was Xander’s favorite hobby, and occasionally he suckered Marcus into joining him. What else were friends for? That day, after several long hours sweating in the sun (Marcus complaining the whole time), Marcus hit gold.

Specifically a golden labrys, a double-headed ax. The labrys was one of the holiest symbols of the Minoan civilization, used to slice the throats of sacrificial bulls. Marcus gaped at the dirt-encrusted object. It had to be at least 3,500 years old. Yet it fit in his palm as if it had been designed just for him.

“No one’s ever found anything that good,” Xander said. “It’s got to be a sign. That it’s going to be you who gets chosen.”

“Whatever.” Marcus shrugged it off. But inside, he was glowing. Because Xander was right. It did have to be a sign. The ax had chosen him—had anointed him. Ever since then, he’s believed he will be chosen as the Player. It is his destiny.

But that’s not the kind of thing you say out loud.

“It doesn’t even matter which of us gets picked. Without Endgame, being the Player’s just a big waste of time,” Marcus says now. “Though I bet you’d be a chick magnet.”

“But what good would it do you?” Xander points out. “It’s not like you’d have time to actually date.”

This is a game they play, the two of them. As the selection day draws closer, they’ve been playing it more often. Pretending they don’t care who gets picked, pretending it might be better to lose.

“Imagine getting out of here once and for all,” Xander continues. “Going to a real school.”

“Joining a football team,” Marcus says, trying to imagine himself scoring a winning goal before a stadium of screaming fans.

“Going to a concert,” Xander says. He plays the guitar. (Or at least tries to.)

“Meeting a girl whose idea of foreplay isn’t krav maga,” Marcus says. He’s still got an elbow-shaped bruise on his stomach, courtesy of Helena Loris.

“I don’t know . . . I’ll kind of miss that part,” Xander says fondly. He’s been fencing regularly with Cassandra Floros, who’s promised that if he can draw blood, she’ll reward him with a kiss. “But not much else.”

“Yeah, me neither,” Marcus says. “Bring on normal life.”

He’s a few meters above Xander, and it’s a good thing, because it means Xander can’t see his sickly, unconvincing grin. A normal life?

To Marcus, that’s a fate worse than death.

A fate he’d do anything to avoid.

The counselors try their best to give the kids some approximation of a normal upbringing. In their slivers of free time, campers are allowed to surf the Net, watch TV, and flirt with whomever they want. They even spend two months of every year back home with their families—for Marcus, these are the most excruciating days of all. Of course he loves his parents. He loves Turkey, its smells and tastes, the way the minarets spear the clouds on a stormy day. But it’s not his world anymore; it’s not his home. He spends his vacations counting the minutes until he can get back to camp, back to training, back to Xander.

Deep down, he knows this is another difference between them. Sure, Xander wants to be chosen. But Marcus wants it more.

Marcus needs it.

That has to count for something.

Marcus is happy to pretend that he and Xander are evenly matched, that the choice between them is a coin flip. It’s easier that way; it’s how friendship works. But surely, he thinks, their instructors can tell that it’s an illusion. That Marcus is just a little better, a little more determined. That between the two of them, only Marcus would sacrifice everything for the game, for his people. That only Marcus truly believes he’s meant to be the Player—and not just any Player, but the one who saves his people.

They’re both pretending not to be nervous, but deep down, Marcus really isn’t.

He knows it will be him.

It has to be.

He reaches the top with a whoop of triumph, Xander still several meters behind. Instead of savoring his victory or waiting for his best friend to catch up, he anchors his rappelling line, hooks himself on, and launches himself over the cliff. This moment, this leap of faith, it’s the reward that makes all that hard work worth it. There’s a pure joy in giving way to the inexorable, letting gravity speed him toward his fate.

Tomorrow, everything changes.

And it can’t come fast enough.

The amphitheater is filled to capacity. Every Minoan within 200 kilometers is here to learn who their new Player will be. Marcus sits in the front row with all the other prospects, remembering the last time he was at this ceremony. He was young then, too young to understand what it meant or imagine that someday it would be him.

It’s strange now, thinking about his life back then. It doesn’t feel real, or at least it doesn’t feel like his life. He was a different person then, before he knew the truth about the world and his place in it. His life, the one that matters, is defined by Endgame, and by his friendship with Xander. Before them, he was just a fraction of himself. Now he’s whole.

Elias Cassadine, the camp leader, takes the podium to deliver a speech about the import of this decision and the honor he is about to bestow. Marcus has endured many a lecture by Elias, and knows the man will drone on forever about the long-lost Minoan civilization and its tradition of heroes. How the legendary King Minos was actually an alien god, who chose the Minoans, of all peoples, to live among and rule. Elias will speak of Endgame as a sacred compact between the Minoans and the beings from the stars, a chance for this chosen people to rise above the rest—if their champion can rise to the challenge. He will boast about the camp’s rigorous training program and the care with which the instructors have selected their Player. As if it takes some kind of genius to pick out the best. Elias will talk duty and sacrifice, and how everyone in the audience owes a debt of gratitude to their new Player. He’ll blather on forever while everyone fidgets in their seat and pretends not to be bored out of their skulls.

Xander catches his eye and Marcus mimes choking himself. Put me out of my misery, he means, and of course Xander knows it, because Xander always knows what he means. For the last five years, everything he’s done, he’s done with Xander. It’s going to be strange, going forward alone. Yes, he can do it on his own, but why would he want to?

Marcus wonders whether he might be able to talk Elias into defying tradition and letting him keep Xander around. Batman had Robin, Theseus had Daedalus—why couldn’t Marcus have Xander?

It’s a brilliant idea, and he can’t believe he didn’t think of it before. He’s working up some good arguments in favor of it when he realizes that Elias Cassadine has stopped droning and excited murmurs are rippling across the crowd. Beside him, Xander has gone pale.

“Meet our new Player,” Elias says, and Marcus is already rising to his feet when his brain kicks in and processes what he’s just heard. What he’s hearing now, as Elias says it one more time, almost drowned out by the thunder of the cheering Minoans.

Xander’s name.

Xander’s name, not Marcus’s.

This isn’t happening, Marcus thinks, because it can’t be happening.

This is just a dream, Marcus thinks, because he’s had many like it—nightmares, really, but then he always wakes up.

There is no waking up this time.

This is real. The announcement has been made. The choice has been made, and it’s Xander who steps hesitantly up to the podium, lowers his head as Elias sets the golden horns atop his wild curls. A tribute to the legend of the Minotaur, these horns are the official marker of the chosen Player, and it’s Xander who will bear them. Xander who clasps his hands over his head in triumph, Xander who’s been named the best. Xander who’s been named the Player.

It’s Xander who’s won.

It’s Marcus who’s been left behind.