Endgame: The Calling (43 page)

She emerges from behind one of them and finds herself staring at Christopher’s back. He is crouching, struggling to look toward the rear of the room to see what Kala is doing. From her position, Chiyoko cannot see what’s happening, but she can hear that the Sumerian is looking for something. Something that she evidently believes is Earth Key.

Fool.

Chiyoko needs a better vantage point. She scampers up one of the massive metallic stacks littering the chamber. Ten feet above the floor, she sees Kala standing on an altar, working a knife into the head of a statue. Baitsakhan is nearly upon her. She sees Maccabee still standing calmly at the exit, waiting. She sees Christopher where she left him.

He sees Baitsakhan too, and he is not going to warn her. He is Playing. Interesting.

Chiyoko looks up, notices the ceiling, and loses her breath. Words, numbers, signs. She activates a recording device in her eyepiece and zooms in. She takes a careful hi-res picture, takes another and another and another. Earth Key may not be here, but this
is
important. She recognizes the word for gold in at least four languages.

Curious, Chiyoko runs her fingers over the stone beneath her. She draws the wakizashi and cuts carefully into the surface.

And then she realizes what this room contains.

Kala jumps onto the altar and stands face-to-face with the statue. She runs a finger along its jawline. There is a break in it. Up the cheek. She feels under the ear and finds a pin. The other side as well.

It is hinged.

She unsheathes her knife and pries the mouth open. Inside is a black orb of glass the size of a baseball that has a perfect triangular hole bored through it. She shines the light on it. Stares at the smooth surface. She sees images: the faint outlines of the continents, the deepening oceans, the towering mountains.

Of Earth.

“I found it,” she whispers.

Earth Key.

“I found it.”

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

SHIVER.

Blinkblink.

SHIVERblink.

SHIVERblinkSHIVERSHIVER.

SHIVERblinkSHIVERblink.

SHIVERblinkSHIVERblink.

SHIVERSHIVERblink.

BlinkSHIVERblinkblink.

BlinkSHIVERSHIVER.

BlinkblinkblinkSHIVER.

SHIVERblinkSHIVERblink.

SHIVERblinkblinkSHIVER.

An’s body seizes. He was sleeping, but no more. It seizes over and over again.

He struggles to keep his tongue in his mouth, away from his teeth. He fights to keep his fists at his side, his feet in place, his head from flailing. A sound blares from another room, and his convulsing, sleep-addled brain can’t figure out what is happening.

The blaring is just like his alarm. It is just like the air horn his father used to blow to wake little An up every day for his training.

His
blink
his
blink
his father.

His goddamned father.

He seizes, again and again, again and again.

This is not a tic, not an episode.

It is something else.

His father.

He was here!

An forces his shaking body to turn over so that he’s on his side. And there he sees Chiyoko’s talismans, sitting on a soft, red velvet cloth.

His body begins to calm.

My father was here! But how? I killed him.

An realizes it was a dream.

The first dream he can ever remember having. His body stops shaking. He stares at Chiyoko’s pieces. The tics are still at bay.

But the alarm still sounds.

He sits. Pushes a button. A screen unfolds from the wall. It is full of images of his compound. A Kinect is hooked up to the system and he points at one image. It zooms up. Nothing. He points at another. It enlarges. Nothing. He points at another. It enlarges. Something.

Not a man.

A small, hovering drone, shaped like a dragonfly.

A Player?

He draws a window around it. The camera tracks the drone. It zooms way in. And then—

No. Not a Player. The government. The Chinese government. An is as skilled a hacker as exists, but the Chinese employ hackers of their own. Messing with no-fly lists, running tracking programs, buying supplies—An must have drawn their attention. They have no idea what he’s truly up to, no idea about Endgame. To them, he is just a potential terrorist, a dissident.

The government. Not for long. Not a government on Earth is going to survive what’s coming.

SHIVER.

He gathers what he has of Chiyoko. Folds the cloth over her. Stands, grabs his go-bag. He opens his closet and gets inside, closes the door, and steps on a lever disguised in the floor. A metal capsule rises around him, and he falls 40 feet, down an escape hatch that he built himself. At the bottom he opens the capsule and walks 678 feet through another tunnel, which leads to an underground garage. He walks through the garage until he finds his vehicle, a black Mercedes SUV with a trailer hitched to it. An gets in, carefully lays Chiyoko out in a silver tray mounted on the center console. Once he’s settled, he takes one of her fingernails and places it on his tongue. He turns on the car and puts it in gear. As soon as it moves, a pressure plate in the floor rises, and the world shakes.

The explosion will rattle the damn government a little. Give them some pause. The bomb was big, and dirty, full of radioactive waste. No one will want to come near its crater for a dozen years, even though they only have a few more at best.

I am not a terrorist
.
This is Endgame. There can be no winner.

He pulls out, drives up the parking ramp; the Beijing safe house is an 11-hour drive away.

He rolls Chiyoko’s nail around on his tongue.

No winner but you, my love.

Alt
n Odas
, 25 m Underground, Turkey

Kala doesn’t see him, doesn’t hear him, doesn’t smell him. Baitsakhan could kill her right now, this very second, with his gun. But that would be too easy. Jalair deserves better. Kala deserves worse. Much, much worse.

He clocks her in the back of the head with the handle of his dagger.

She falls hard to her knees, taken completely by surprise. Her head swims, spots briefly flash before her eyes, but the shock of ambush fades quickly. Her training takes over.

She slides to the floor, pretending to be unconscious. As soon as Baitsakhan reaches for her, she elbows him in the gut and jumps to her feet. He barely registers the hit to the stomach, starts toward her, gritting his teeth, scowling. She steps back, reaches for her gun.

“Sumerian.”

“Donghu.”

“Blood for blood.”

Weak,
she thinks. She brandishes Jalair’s gun and squeezes the trigger. Baitsakhan lashes out with the whip. Its tasseled end snags the muzzle as the slug blasts out. The whip changes the trajectory just enough, and the bullet zings by Baitsakhan’s neck, grazing his flesh.

The gunshot reverberates throughout the chamber, bouncing off the hard surfaces, making its way up to meet the mystery on the ceiling. Baitsakhan yanks the whip and Kala’s gun clatters to the ground. It slides under the altar, out of reach. He draws out his knife; he has the whip in one hand, the blade in the other. She pulls her own blade and smiles.

“You’re faster than Jalair was,” Kala says, pouring salt on the wound.

“Do not speak his name, bitch.”

She smiles wider. “You’ll say hello to Jalair for me after I send you to hell, won’t you?”

Baitsakhan doesn’t answer. He lunges. He
is
fast. Kala sidesteps, and their knives meet and spark. She hits him hard across the temple with the glass orb and he flicks his whip at her legs, catching an ankle. She strikes at his jugular, but he jumps backward and pulls the whip with both hands. She thumps onto her back, dropping her blade and getting the wind knocked from her lungs.

He pulls the whip again, drawing them together. He steps over her, straddling her midsection. He drops the whip and flips the knife and brings it down with both hands for her head, full of fury and vengeance. Kala reaches up and grabs his thighs and pulls herself between his legs. Baitsakhan’s knife impales the ground where her head used to be, just as she punches his groin with the orb. She can feel that he is wearing protection under his clothes, but she knows it still hurts. She springs to her feet and spins.

Baitsakhan is on her. He is not armed. The knife is still stuck in the ground. They are face-to-face. He hisses and grabs her by the ears and pulls. She hits him in the groin again, this time with her knee. She hits so hard she can feel the plastic cup crack. But he shows no sign of succumbing to pain.

He is a Player.

Trained in the ways of combat and pain.

Baitsakhan pulls her ears so hard that the skin behind the right one begins to tear.

She leans forward, into Baitsakhan’s pull, and they’re so close they could kiss. But instead, she opens her mouth and bites his cheek, her teeth sinking into his flesh.

He cries out and releases her. They separate, and Baitsakhan spits red on the floor.