Rules of the Game

An rides straight for them, through them, knocking them aside and running over one, tearing skin from an arm. The men yell and one produces an ancient-looking pistol from nowhere. He pulls the trigger, but instead of firing properly it explodes in his hands.

He falls, screaming.

The gun was faulty. Old. Broken.

Like this BLINKBLINKBLINK this world.

An might feel sorry for the man and his mangled hand, but he is the Shang and he doesn’t care. He jams the throttle and rises out of the saddle and weaves the bike’s rear wheel back and forth and scuttles away, one of the men screaming as his leg is momentarily caught under the rubber and made bloody and raw.

An’s smile grows.

He leaves the men behind. Passes a barbershop, a sweetshop, a mobile phone shop, an electronics shop crowded with people. On the screens in the windows of this store An catches the image of kepler 22b.

The alien outed himself when he gave his announcement about Sky Key. kepler 22b began to show his true colors. Endgame is real for everyone now. It is real for rich people and poor people, the powerful and the impotent. The brutal and the kind. Everyone.

And An loves it.

Now the whole world knows that the first two keys are together. That Maccabee has them. That Endgame continues despite some of the other Players’ misguided attempts to stop it. That it continues despite fear and hope and murder and even love.

Best of all, kepler 22b told the people of Earth that Abaddon can’t be stopped. That the giant asteroid will fall in less than three days and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

That millions will die.

An loves it.

The bike churns. The street widens. The crowds part and An moves a little faster, up to 60 kph now. He glances at Chiyoko’s watch. Sees the tracker’s display screened over the numbers.

Blip-blip.

There. Maccabee Adlai.

So BLINK so SHIVER so close.

So close that An can smell them.

An screams across Shakespeare Sarani Road and goes two more blocks and spins northwest on Park Street. He looks at the watch again and sees it.

Blip-blip.

Blip-blip.

Only blocks away.

BLINKshiver

Chiyoko Played for life.

SHIVERblink

But I

SHIVER

I Play for death.

SARAH ALOPAY, JAGO TLALOC, AISLING KOPP, POP KOPP, GREG JORDAN, GRIFFIN MARRS (#u72b70ec8-efa0-5e43-8859-a6cb22f1dc08)

The Depths,

, Valley of Eternal Life, Sikkim, India

“Everybody chill the fuck out!” a man yells. He’s mid-40s, weathered, drenched in sweat, a little chubby. He stands in the middle of the hallway that is crowded with Players and their friends.

Sarah and Jago are at the far end, their backs to an open doorway. The Donghu, the Harappan, the Nabataean, and both Earth Key and Sky Key were in the room beyond the doorway not minutes before. Baitsakhan was very alive and very intent on killing Shari Chopra out of a psychotic sense of revenge, but Maccabee felt sorry for the Harappan, and he stopped the Donghu. He was about to take sole possession of both Earth Key and Sky Key when Sarah and Jago surged into the room. As Baitsakhan lay dying, the Olmec jumped forward and attacked Maccabee, and while the fight was close, Jago won. Sarah had a chance to kill Little Alice Chopra, the girl who is Sky Key, a death that should have put a stop to Endgame.

But Sarah couldn’t do it.

And Jago couldn’t do it either.

Aisling’s squad arrived moments after the fight ended. The Celt had a chance to kill Sky Key too, and she tried to take a shot with her sniper rifle, but at the last moment Sky Key reached out and touched Earth Key and in a flash of light the little girl disappeared, taking an unconscious Maccabee with her, and the mutilated body of Baitsakhan as well.

The only living person left in that room is Shari Chopra, knocked out, with a large lump on her head courtesy of Maccabee. He could have killed her too but, perhaps out of mercy or righteousness or empathy, Maccabee let her live.

Where Maccabee and the keys are now, none of them know. It could be that they went to Bolivia, or to the bottom of the ocean, or are in an Endgame-finishing audience with kepler 22b himself.

All that is left here, in the routed Harappan fortress carved out of the Sikkimese Himalayas, are these Players and Aisling’s friends.

All that is left is their fear and their anger and their confusion.

And their guns.

Most of which are pointed at one another.

“Just chill out,” the man implores again. “No one else has to die today,” he says.

You might, Sarah thinks, her pistol trained on the man’s throat. Sarah refused to kill the Chopra girl, but she wouldn’t think twice about shooting this man, or the people with him, if it means escape.

The man steps around Aisling, places a hand on the barrel of her rifle, forces it down two inches. It’s now aimed at Sarah’s chest rather than her forehead. The man’s other hand is empty and palm forward. His eyes are wide and pleading. His breath quick.

A peacemaker, Sarah thinks.

The man licks his lips.

Sarah says, “I’ll chill out when none of you are standing in our way.” Her voice is calm. Sarah notices that Aisling Kopp is flushed. She has a smear of blood on her skin—maybe hers, but probably not.

Blood. And sweat. And grime.

Aisling asks, “Where’s Sky Key?”