Endgame Novella #1 (11 page)

Her uncle’s eyes are the only ones that have never lied to her. His faith in her is bone deep, and it is what sustains her through every doubting day. Or so she has always thought.

Maybe she is foolish after all.

Chiyoko clings tight to the wall, disappearing into the darkness. She closes her eyes against the wind, and listens.

“The girl is weak,” Satoshi says. “After so many generations, you would have us trust our people’s survival to this defective thing? This mute?”

It’s nothing she hasn’t heard before.

“You would have us cast away a hundred generations of tradition, defy the word of the gods, all on your opinion?” Chiyoko’s uncle says. “Chiyoko’s voice may be weak, but her spirit is strong. She is our Player, whether you like it or not.”

This, too, is familiar territory. No one questioned Chiyoko’s annunciation as Player-to-be—not until she was five years old and it was clear she would never speak. For three millennia, the elders have anointed a Player in the womb, and that child has grown up to Play. Never has this tradition been violated. Never has the child proven unworthy. But three millennia is a long time. There are those who believe that maybe, finally, the elders have made a mistake. That maybe it’s time to dispense with tradition and apply common sense. Choose a Player who will be whole. The argument has raged behind Chiyoko’s back for a decade.

It is as if they think that because she cannot speak, she does not hear.

So tonight’s argument is familiar—but then it takes an unexpected turn.

“This cannot continue,” her uncle says. “This dissension, the lack of faith. It’s too dangerous.”

“Then we are in agreement,” Satoshi says.

“You said you had a proposal?”

“I propose we offer our people a Player they deserve, one without defect or disability. Akina Nori.”

Chiyoko barely knows the girl. The Mu rarely socialize with one another, finding it safer to assimilate into Naha society and keep their bond hidden from prying eyes. On those rare occasions when their children came together, Chiyoko was always ignored. She played silently by herself, while the others chattered together. But she knows enough about Akina Nori: The girl is beautiful, athletic, wealthy. She is also Satoshi Nori’s daughter.

“Imagine my surprise,” her uncle says, and Chiyoko can hear the wry smile in his voice.

“She’s a good candidate,” Satoshi says. “Top of her class, and the most accomplished fighter I’ve ever seen.”

“You’ve never seen Chiyoko.”

“In fact, I have,” Satoshi says.

Girls like Akina don’t learn how to fight. Not unless they’re being trained for something. Groomed for something.

“I have support,” Satoshi says, and there is a murmuring among the elders, a murmuring that sounds like agreement. “You would be surprised to know how much.”

“I have support as well,” her uncle says. “But I agree with you—this cannot continue.”

Chiyoko nearly loses her grip on the sill. The wind is suddenly colder than it was, biting sharp and angry at her flesh.

She never asked to be the Player. Never thought to wonder whether she wanted it.

But she finds now she does not want to lose it.

Who would she be without it?

Who would she be without her uncle’s belief that she is special, that she is the one?

Who would she be but a broken girl who only feels whole in the dark?

Then her uncle speaks again. “I propose a test,” he says. “A challenge. Chiyoko has a training mission coming up. Survival in the wilderness. I intended to test her against the elements—but I see no reason not to pit her against an enemy as well. Akina will have the element of surprise, the superior firepower; Chiyoko will have her training and the will of the gods. Let us leave them to their own devices and see who lives.”

A woman gasps, and Chiyoko recognizes this as Satoshi’s wife. Akina’s mother.

“Chiyoko will know none of this?” Satoshi says.

“You have my word,” her uncle says, and all the Mu know what this is
worth.

“You would send your own niece into an ambush?”

“I have no fear that she can take care of herself,” her uncle says, and relief surges through her. This is how much he believes in her. Enough to risk her life on her skill and his certainty. “Can you say the same for your daughter?”

“Satoshi, think about this,” Akina’s mother says. Her name is Lia, and Chiyoko knows her to be a fearsome woman, all sharp vision and sharper edges. There are those who whisper that she is responsible for much of Satoshi’s success and all his decisions. She doesn’t sound fearsome now. She only sounds afraid. “This is our daughter.”

Satoshi says nothing.

“If you have no faith in her, how can you expect our people to defy the gods’ will and follow yours instead?” Chiyoko’s uncle says.

“If Akina kills Chiyoko, then you’ll accede to my wishes?” Satoshi asks. “You and yours will acknowledge that she is to be our next Player?”

“She will have earned her place. And if it is Chiyoko who survives, there will be no more of this,” her uncle says. “No more questioning, no more dissent. You will accept the gods’ will. You will accept Chiyoko.”

“If she survives.”

“Yes. If.”

Chiyoko leaps from the sill and lands noiselessly on the dewy grass. She takes no pleasure in the flight home, racing down streets and grazing roofs. She doesn’t enjoy the silence or spare a glance for the crystalline stars. She allows herself no thought, no emotion, not until she is safely enclosed in the dark of her room. Surrounded by evidence of her uncle’s love for her: The books he has brought her. The weapons he has given her. The mural he painted on her wall, a serpentine river to remind her that she is like water: deceptively peaceful, quietly strong, dangerous when underestimated, often deadly.

Chiyoko’s uncle has always believed in her. He has raised her, all these years, while her parents travel the world, monitoring Mu business and Mu fortunes in other countries, ensuring that the people—and
its secret, ancient mission—will live on. Like Chiyoko, they have a responsibility to their bloodline, and she cannot begrudge them that. She knows they love her. Even if there’s a part of her that wonders whether it’s easy to love her from a distance. With thousands of miles between them, they don’t have to be confronted by her silence, her failure. She, in turn, doesn’t have to be reminded of their disappointment.

Her uncle has never been disappointed. He speaks up for Chiyoko, who cannot speak for herself. As a child, when she cried herself to sleep after a hard day of training, only to wake up screaming silently from a nightmare, her uncle was always there, waiting. He knew. He told her of his time as a Player; he told her it was an honor, and that she would do her people proud.

She still has nightmares.

Sometimes, in the dreams, she can speak. She never remembers the sound of her voice when she wakes up. But sometimes she can almost hear the echo of her scream. Always, when she wakes up afraid, he is there to calm her, as he is tonight. He brushes her hair from her forehead and sets a soft kiss on her brow. “Whatever happens is meant to happen,” he whispers. “That has always been the way.”

This is the philosophy that allowed the Mu to recover from near extermination. This is what has enabled them to serve the murderers so faithfully over the millennia, to ensure that the other peoples of Earth would serve them too.
Whatever happens is meant to happen
—alone, it is the motto of a defeated people. But the Mu are not defeated, only disciplined. And so there is a second part to their philosophy, just as essential as the first.

Do whatever must be done to prevent it from happening again
.

Whatever must be done. That has been the core of Chiyoko’s training, and she knows it to be the core of her uncle’s being.

Whatever must be done, no matter who it may hurt, no matter what might be sacrificed.

Her uncle isn’t the only one who knows how to read silence. Over the
years, she has gotten very good at reading the lines of his face, the worry in his eyes, and she knows what he is thinking now.

He’s thinking that Satoshi might be right. That Akina might win. That he has just agreed to sacrifice his beloved niece to a larger cause, and that it is hard, but it is right.

He’s sending her into an ambush, but that’s not what hurts.

What hurts is that he’s worried she won’t come back.

Know your enemy.

This is the first rule of battle, a necessity of victory.

And so, in the few days she has left, Chiyoko sets out to know Akina Nori. She will not make contact with the girl, not until absolutely necessary. She will lurk in the shadows, watching, waiting for Akina to reveal her secret self, the indulgences and weaknesses that will seal her fate.

Her uncle’s basement houses a workshop filled with gears and circuitry, GPS chips and microscopic lenses and microphones. Chiyoko has logged many hours down there, designing surveillance equipment to suit her needs. Recording devices disguised as pens, hair clips, lucky rabbit’s feet; infrared cameras the size of a pinhead; nearly invisible trackers that can be shot into a target’s neck, with a small sting easily mistaken for a mosquito bite. In the lush gardens of her father’s estate, Akina slaps at her skin and suspects nothing, feels nothing, certainly not the tiny ridge of a GPS signal emitter.

It’s easy enough that it feels almost like cheating, but Chiyoko has been trained for a game that has no rules except one: win at any cost. This is what she intends to do.

Akina isn’t careful. She lives her life on the surface, almost as if she wants Chiyoko to see.

Chiyoko sees Akina train in a lavish gym on her father’s grounds, sees her practice aikido, muay thai, sanshou, capoeira, and jujitsu, sees her skills with the wooden dagger, the battle-ax, the curved kujang, the shuriken, and several semiautomatic machine guns. Akina is
good—Chiyoko is better. Where Akina fights expensive instructors in well-equipped facilities, Chiyoko has battled real enemies on urban battlefields across Japan. Akina, Chiyoko can tell, has never truly had to fight for her life. Paid instructors will always hold back, always pull a punch if it threatens to wound. Chiyoko has stabbed thugs on an empty subway platform in the bowels of Tokyo; she has speared gangsters in a deserted alley of Nagasaki. She has danced away from bullets and kicked knives out of grimy hands. She has fought knowing that no one, not even her uncle, would step in to save her—fought for her life and emerged understanding what is needed to survive. She sees this is a lesson that Akina, spoiled by the luxury and illusion of safety, has never had to learn.

Chiyoko sees that Akina is stronger with her right arm than her left, and has a hamstring strain that acts up when she pushes herself too hard. She sees that Akina is handier with a revolver than with a rifle, and nearly hopeless with a crossbow, her arrows always flying a few centimeters to the right of her mark.

She sees Akina laboring over ancient texts and struggling to translate the words of their ancestors, and sees that she is smart, but not brilliant, and that Satoshi Nori sees this as well, but pretends not to.

She sees Akina put away her training gear and her books so that she can go to school or watch a movie or hold someone’s hand in the dark.

In some ways, they are not so different. They have the same pale skin, the same shoulder-length black hair with bangs cutting a razor-straight line above their eyebrows. When Akina is training, she wears the black robes of a samurai, just like Chiyoko. Watching her from a distance, Chiyoko can almost imagine she is watching herself. But when Akina steps out into the world, she is a girl transformed.

Chiyoko’s closet is filled with identical black skirts and white shirts. This is her costume for daily life, how she hides her superhero self away. She is a black-and-white movie, drab and easily missed, trained to fade into the background.

Akina is Technicolor. She paints her lips cherry red and her eyelids
gold and silver. Akina streaks her hair with neon blues and greens, tugs rainbow socks up past her knees. One day she will drape herself in pure pink pastel princess gear from head to toe, with sparkling tiara to match; the next she will go goth girl, black and bloodred nails and lips, a walking darkness that somehow still shines bright. Every day, Akina remakes herself anew. As if she is always choosing, and choosing again, who she would like to be.

Chiyoko’s life has been a tunnel, funneling her toward a single goal. Every choice is measured against Endgame, and so no choice at all. Now she sees what it might be like to live another way.

Sometimes, especially in the quiet before the dawn, Chiyoko thinks that if she only wanted it enough, she could will herself to speak.

But what would she say? What would
she
choose?

Chiyoko has always wondered if there are some things that cannot be known unless put into words. If this is why she has never quite known her own heart.

Her tongue is intact, her lungs hale, her throat unmarked. Okinawa’s best doctors have been unable to find a single flaw. She is designed for speech—but somehow, still, destined for silence. As if the gods themselves stole her words, unspooled them from her in the womb. She remembers being very young, clapping chubby hands, banging stubby legs, anything to be heard. To be known. She remembers the faces of her elders: Anxious. Hopeful. And, finally, disappointed. They did their best to hide it from her, but Chiyoko has always been good at watching. Understanding.

She tried for them, harder than she tried for herself. She remembers that too. Opening her mouth. Willing herself to scream.

There was only ever silence. So it has always been; so it will always be.

Chiyoko cannot have what she wants. So she has trained herself to want what she has.

She is that strong.

She was designed for strength too. And that
is
her destiny.

But sometimes, even now, if only for a moment, she is weak.

Chiyoko presses herself into the shadows of a school and watches Akina Nori, and even though she knows this butterfly of a girl is nothing to be envied—shallow and preening and fated to die—she cannot help herself. She wishes; she wants; she imagines, just for a moment, a life that cannot be.