Sky Key

“He was a favela kid, skinny, muscles like cords wrapped around bones. Fast as an eyeblink. Didn’t say anything other than ‘Hi’ and ‘Better luck next time.’ Smart, though. A prodigy. Of blades and angles of attack. He’d been taught, but most of what he knew he was born with.”

“Sounds like you.”

“He was like me.” Jago smiles. “It was like fighting my reflection. I’d stab and he’d stab back. I’d swipe and he’d swipe back. That was how he parried, by counterattacking. He wasn’t like anyone else I’d trained against—ex-Players, Papi, no one. It was a little like fighting an animal. Quick, impeccable instincts, not so much thinking. They just attack. You ever gone toe to toe with an animal?”

“Yeah. Wolves. Those were the worst.”

“A wolf or—”

“Wolves. Plural.”

“No guns?”

“No guns.”

“I’ve done dogs, never wolves. A mountain lion once.”

“I wish I could say I was impressed, Feo, but I’m not.”

“I already got in your pants, Alopay.” Jago tries some weak humor. “Don’t need to impress you.”

She smiles again and punches him under the sheet. Another good sign that maybe she’s coming around.

“Anyway, I couldn’t hit him. The rule was first blood and the fight’s over. See red and stop. Simple.”

“But the scar—that cut was deep.”

“Sí. I was stupid, stepped right into it. Honestly, I was lucky. If he hadn’t got me on the face like this—it nearly took my eye, you know—he probably would have killed me.”

Sarah nods. “So—blood, red, stop. He says ‘Better luck next time’ and leaves and that’s it?”

“I had to get stitched up, but yeah. And of course, since I was training, there was no anesthesia.”

“Ha. Anesthesia. What’s that?”

Jago smiles big this time. “Exactly. Fucking Endgame.”

“Fucking Endgame is right,” Sarah says, her face betraying no emotion. She rolls onto her back and stares at the ceiling. “Was there a next time?”

Jago doesn’t speak for a few seconds. “Sí,” he says slowly, drawing it out. “Less than a year later. Only two days before my birthday, right before I became eligible.”

“And?”

“He was even faster. But I’d learned a lot, and I was faster too.”

“So you drew first blood?”

“No. We had blades, but after a couple minutes I punched him in the throat and collapsed his windpipe. When he went down I stepped on his neck. Didn’t spill a drop. And I can still see his eyes. Uncomprehending, confused, like when you shoot an animal. It doesn’t understand what you’ve done. It was outside the rules of his nature, this favela boy, best knife fighter I have ever seen. He did not understand that his rules did not apply to me.”

Sarah doesn’t say anything. She rolls onto her side, her back to Jago.

I’m in bed with a murderer, she thinks.

And immediately after, But I’m a murderer too.

“I’m sorry, Sarah. I didn’t mean to—”

“I did it.” She takes a deep breath. “His rules didn’t apply to me either. I chose to do it. I killed him. Killed … Christopher.”

There. She said it. Her body starts to shake, as if a switch has been thrown. She pulls her knees to her chest and shakes and sobs. Jago moves his hand over the skin of her bare back, but he knows it’s a small comfort. If it’s any comfort at all.

Jago never thought much of Christopher, but he knows that Sarah loved him. She loved him and she killed him. Jago isn’t sure he could have done what Sarah did. Could he shoot his best friend from back home? Could he kill José, Tiempo, or Chango? Could he put a bullet in his father, or, even worse, his mother? He’s not sure.

“You had to do it, Sarah.” He’s said this 17 times since they checked into the hotel, mostly unprompted, just to fill the air.

Every time it has rung hollow. Maybe this time more than ever.

“He told you to do it. He understood in that moment that Endgame would kill him, and he knew the only way to die was in the service of helping you. He helped you, Sarah, sacrificed himself for your line. You had his blessing. If you’d done what An wanted, Chiyoko would be the one with Earth Key, she would be the one on her way to winni—”

“GOOD!” Sarah screams. She isn’t sure what’s worse—having killed the boy she grew up loving or having caught Earth Key as it popped out of Stonehenge. “Chiyoko shouldn’t have died,” she whispers. “Not like that. She was too good a Player, too strong. And I … I shouldn’t have shot him.” She takes a deep breath. “Jago … everyone—everyone—is going to die because of me.”

Sarah curls into a tighter ball. Jago bumps his fingers along her vertebrae.

“You didn’t know that,” Jago says. “None of us did. You were just doing what kepler 22b said. You were just Playing.”

“Yeah, Playing,” she says sarcastically. “I think Aisling might have known … Christ. Why couldn’t she have been a better shot? Why couldn’t she have shot us or taken out our plane when she had the chance?”

Jago has wondered the same about Aisling—not about taking down the Bush Hawk, but definitely about what she was trying to tell them. “If she had shot us down, then Christopher would still be dead,” Jago points out. “And you and I would be too.”

“Yeah, well …” Sarah says, as if that would be preferable to everything that’s happened since Italy.

“You were just Playing,” he says again.

No words for several minutes. Sarah resumes crying, Jago continues to caress her back. It’s one in the morning, drizzling outside, the sounds of cars and trucks on the wet street below. An airplane now and then, Heathrow-bound. A far-off whistle, like a boat’s. A police siren. The faint sound of a woman laughing drunkenly.

“Fuck kepler 22b and fuck Endgame and fuck Playing,” Sarah says into the silence.

She stops crying. Jago lets his hand fall into the sheets. Sarah’s breathing deepens and slows, and after several minutes she’s asleep.

Jago slides out of bed. He gets in the shower, lets the water run over him. He thinks about the knife fighter’s eyes, about how they looked as life abandoned him. About how Jago felt, watching, knowing he’d taken that life. He gets out and towels off, dresses silently, eases out of the hotel room, the door closing silently behind him. Sarah doesn’t stir.

“Hola, Sheila,” Jago says to the clerk when he reaches the lobby.

Jago has memorized the names of everyone who works at the hotel and in the restaurant. Aside from Sheila there are Pradeet, Irina, Paul, Dmitri, Carol, Charles, Dimple, and 17 others.

They’re all doomed.

Because of Sarah. Because of him. Because of Chiyoko and An and all the Players.