Origins

“What if it actually happens? Endgame. And it’s all on me.” Xander speaks slowly, like he knows this isn’t anything he should admit out loud. “How do they know I’ll be good enough? What if they’re wrong?”

“They’re not wrong,” Marcus says, glad Xander can’t see his face in the dark. “They know what they’re doing. They’ve been doing this for centuries, right? If they picked you, then it’s supposed to be you.”

“You sound so sure,” Xander says. “Everyone is so sure—except for me. Doesn’t that mean something? That I’m not sure?”

“Not everything has to mean something,” Marcus says. “You take things too seriously.”

“We’re talking about the end of the world,” Xander says, frustration leaking through. “I’m not supposed to take that seriously?”

Marcus says nothing.

“You wouldn’t have any doubts,” Xander says—and, incredibly, he sounds jealous. As if Xander has reason for envy. “You’d know you could do it. You’re probably thinking right now that you could do a better job than me. Admit it.”

“Maybe I am,” Marcus says, because Xander is his best friend. And because it’s easier to be honest in the dark. “But maybe being sure isn’t always the important thing. Maybe having doubts will make you stronger.”

“How?” Xander’s voice is small, almost afraid. Eager for Marcus to tell him what to do. And for that one moment, Marcus truly wishes he had the answer—knew the words that would calm Xander’s fears and help him believe in himself.

But he doesn’t.

“I don’t know,” Marcus admits.

“Exactly.”

The morning is crisp and clear, perfect for a climb.

Neither of them is in the mood to talk.

They pack up their ropes and carabiners, then begin the long haul to the summit. The volcano looms above them, hissing smoke and ash into blue sky. It’s like climbing any mountain, but it feels different when you know what’s waiting for you at the top. When, at any moment, the cavernous mouth could spit out a glob of lava that would incinerate you in seconds.

Marcus focuses on that feeling of approaching danger. He focuses on finding handholds and footholds, on pulling himself up one arm-length at a time. On the crumbling rock beneath his fingers and the heat of the sun on his back. On the loamy smell of the rock and the twitter of distant birds. On his body, pushed to its limits; on this lonely wilderness at the edge of the world. Tunnel vision: it’s another reason he’s so good at climbing. To summit the great peaks, you have to shut everything else out. You have to believe nothing matters but making it to the top.

He and Xander do not race, not this time. Competition seems beside the point for them now. They climb at a steady pace, Marcus leading the way. Until, impatient to reach the summit, Marcus pushes himself to climb faster.

“Thought we weren’t racing,” Xander pants from behind him, which only makes Marcus speed up more.

He tells himself it’s only about getting to the top. That it has nothing to do with wanting to exhaust Xander, to prove to both of them that Marcus is still the best.

But behind him, Xander breathes hard, gasping with effort, while Marcus smiles and picks up the pace.

It takes them half the day to reach the summit.

Now the fun can begin.

It’s like a different planet up here—a dead, arid one choked by sulfuric gases and thick clouds of ash. The gaping vent in the rock spews clumps of lava and burps puffs of oppressively hot air. They’re braving this climb without masks, and the foul gases—toxic enough to eat through metal—burn Marcus’s eyes and scald his throat. Small fissures in the rock called fumaroles exhale clouds of steam, and gossamer threads of cooled lava weave eerie orange spiderwebs in the rising updraft. From Marcus’s perch on the rim, the lake of lava several hundred meters below is almost completely obscured by thick ash and smoke, but the red glow is unmistakable, like a second sun. The noise is thunderous, earsplitting, an engine roar that drowns out everything else. This is an alien place; humans are not meant to survive here.

Marcus loves every inch of it.

“Remind me again why I let you talk me into this?” Xander shouts over the noise as they hoist themselves over the lip of the volcano. It’s what he says every time. And every time, Marcus responds with Because you can’t say no to me.

But that’s no longer true, of course. Xander is the Player: he can say no to anyone and anything he wants. It’s Marcus who’s obligated to serve Xander’s whims.

So instead he says, “You don’t want to come, just wait here.” Then propels himself over the lip of the volcano without waiting to see whether Xander will follow.

It’s like traveling back in time, into an age of tectonic creation and primordial ooze.

It’s like descending into the mouth of hell.

Hot air closes in with a pressure that makes his ears pop. Every breath is scalding poison. The walls are rainbowed with color, chemicals glazing the rock—orange iron, green manganese, white chlorine, cheerfully yellow sulfur. The sky above disappears behind a thick cloud, and there is only the cavernous volcano, and the sea of magma below.

Marcus stares into the frothing, sparking abyss. It’s easy to imagine he’s staring into the molten center of the earth.

Legend says it was a volcano that erased the ancient Minoan civilization from the face of the earth, and Marcus can believe it. His people spend so much time worrying about destruction coming from the stars—but if they knew what it was like down here, they would fear the earth just as much, its destructive power immense enough to consume itself.

That’s how Marcus feels now, too: bent on destruction. Consuming himself.

He swings himself down the cable and howls into the steaming pit. All his envy and despair, his rage and frustration, his disappointment in himself and his terror of what’s to come, he flings it out of himself and into the churning magma below.

It feels good.

Good enough that he looks up to the lip of the opening, where Xander still perches hesitantly on the edge, and shouts, “What are you waiting for, slowpoke?”

Xander waves, then leaps off the edge, hurtling into the air. The cable stretches taut and he swings back toward the inner wall of the volcano—and that’s when it happens.

Without warning. Without reason.

The line snaps.

“Xander!” Marcus screams. There’s nothing he can do but watch.

Watch his best friend plummet down and down.

Watch the broken cable dangle uselessly, too many meters overhead.

Watch Xander fling out his arms, reach blindly and desperately for purchase, for something that will slow his fall.

Watch, and hope.

Xander does it. The impossible. Catches his fingertips on a jutting rock, halts his descent. He can’t stop his momentum, and his body smashes into the volcano wall with such impact that Marcus can nearly hear the crunch of bone.

“Xander,” he whispers, panic stealing away his breath.

Xander is dangling by his fingertips, nothing saving him from a drop to his death but vanishing strength and sheer will. It’s crazy that things could turn so wrong so quickly. But the craziest thing of all: Xander is grinning.

“Little help up here?” he calls down to Marcus, barely audible over the volcano’s roar. There’s a lilt in his voice, and Marcus recognizes it, that adrenaline shot of pure joy that comes from facing death and surviving. “Or you going to leave me hanging?”

It’s a joke, of course. It would never occur to Xander that Marcus would just leave him there.

It wouldn’t have occurred to Marcus either.