Endgame: The Calling (21 page)

Jago isn’t sure he trusts Wei, but it will be a good way to get into the complex, if that’s what the clue is telling him he should do. “Thank you, Wei. That would be great.”

Wei bows. “Think nothing of it.”

Liu Residence, Unregistered Belowground Property, Tongyuanzhen, Gaoling County, Xi’an, China

Hard drives spin. Numbers fly. Coordinates are cross-referenced. IP addresses are winnowed. Packets are sent through wires to transmitters to satellites and back. An old dot matrix printer unspools sheets of paper with perforated edges. A display lights up. The script unfurls in masses of long-line code.

An Liu’s mechanism has just pinned Jago Tlaloc’s phone.

The Shang Player bounds into the room, hot from the street, from his fight with Chiyoko, from the flush of her power. Hot from scouring the streets for over two hours, searching for her, and failing.

An goes to the printout.
SHIVER.
Consults the screen.
Blinkblink.
Will
blink
gather his
blink
toys and go and meet them.

When they are removed
blink
are removed
SHIVER
removed from the game board, he will seek out this Chiyoko Takeda. The clue that
blink
kepler 22b
blinkblink
placed in his mind does not matter. He does not intend to play Endgame like the others, chasing
blink
riddles, acting like fools.

blinkSHIVERblink.

What matters is the calming
blink
calming
blink
calming silent soothing force of
blink
the bewitching Player
blink
the bewitching Player
blink
the bewitching Player of the 2nd line.

The remaining Players can wait.

The present he is making for them isn’t ready yet.

But it will be soon.

And what a present
blink
what a present it is going to be.

X
J
ng Hospital Urgent Care, Xi’an, China

Maccabee Adlai leaves the hospital. He has been there for two days and 15 hours, checked in under the alias Paul Allen Chomsky. He couldn’t risk going on the grid with his real name. It wouldn’t have done to be paid a nighttime visit by an assassin as he lay in his bed dreaming of killing the young boy Baitsakhan, killing Jago, and killing that crazy bastard An.

He walks into the light of day and stands in the taxi line. He’s going to the train station. His leg is sore, needs a fresh dressing once a day, and can’t get wet for a week, but is structurally fine. The shot from Baitsakhan’s arrow was clean, and by some miracle the resulting wound did not require surgery.

The ear is another story. Jago Tlaloc ruptured his right eardrum when he thumb-stabbed Maccabee, and for now he has to endure a persistent high-pitched ringing. The doctor insisted it would heal itself and the ringing would gradually subside, but that it could take up to two or three months.

Great.

The doctor also told him to avoid flying for at least two weeks. He said if Maccabee did fly, it wouldn’t make his eardrum any worse, but that it probably would be very painful.

Whatever. He’ll think about it, but he has to follow his two-part clue. Time is of the essence.

The first part is this:
.

And the 2nd, this: 47:4f:42:45:4b:4c:49:54:45:50:45:54:45:4d:50:4c:45:4f:46:54:48:45:43:4f:4e:53:55:4d:49:4e:47:56:55:4c:54:55:52:45.

It took him some fiddling to figure them out, which lying in a hospital bed was good for, but it wasn’t that hard. After he triple-checked the result, he fired up his tablet computer and Googled it to find out where he had to go to get a bead on Earth Key.

It was Turkey.

Near some place called Urfa.

Maccabee gets into the cab. Screw what the doctor said. He’s going to fly to Urfa. Doctors always hedge their diagnoses, and besides, what’s a little ear pain in the service of winning Endgame?

Nothing.

Baitsakhan and the others will have to wait.

Unless, of course, their clues lead them to Urfa as well.

Fashion Europe Wig Factory Warehouse, Chengdu, China

Baitsakhan is letting himself have a treat. A sugar cookie with candied lemon zest on top. It is delicious.

He sits with his brother, Jalair, over a pile of these confections and small glasses of jasmine tea in an abandoned warehouse in Chengdu. Bat and Bold are running an errand. An essential errand.

Baitsakhan’s mind has turned from the task at hand back to Maccabee. The tracker that Baitsakhan’s arrow implanted in the Nabataean’s leg is functioning. It survived the hospital. This much Baitsakhan can tell, because Maccabee is finally on the move.

Baitsakhan will give him one day and start to follow.

Seeing Maccabee again will be a wonderful treat. Like the cookies. Just as sweet, only deadlier.

This is his Endgame.

And it is not hard.

It is easy.

Fun.

Just like his clue, which is incredibly simple and direct. Translated from Oirat, it reads:

TAKE KILL WIN.

The clue is so easy to crack that Baitsakhan—at 13, cold, hard, merciless, and murderous—thinks it conveys favorability.

Yes.

That
is
what it means.

Baitsakhan knows.

The being at the Calling respected his unwillingness to speak his line and his tribe. The being respected his strength and his resistance. And it will appreciate the way he plays Endgame.

Baitsakhan might be the youngest and the shortest, but he is not the weakest. The weakest are those who don’t yet realize they’ve been shoved into a slaughterhouse. The ones digging through ancient ruins, making alliances, having peaceful discussions—any Player doing anything other than killing is a fool.

Like this one here.

Baitsakhan turns his head slowly to regard the girl. He brushes a stray cookie crumb from the corner of his mouth. He pushes play on a docked iPod. “All You Need Is Love” by the Beatles starts up. It is loud, very loud.

He looks to Jalair and nods, and Jalair brings his blade down on Shari’s left middle finger, the one with her ring, the ring given to her by her husband, Jamal, on the day their daughter was born.

Beautiful, smiling Little Alice.

Where is she now?
Shari wonders.
Playing in the backyard.
She can picture it.