Endgame: The Calling (56 page)

“No. I make it special. Small explosion. Take your arms, stomach, maybe heart and lungs. I stay safe. Just get splattered. Gross, yes. But I not die. You understand, say yes.”

“Yes.”

“Good. Turn away. No look.”

Christopher’s heart races faster now. He wonders if these Endgame kids have any advice on controlling heart rates. He should ask Sarah. He turns back to the car, and without making a sound, An approaches him and slips a rope around his neck, pulls it tight. An steps away from his quarry and lets out the leash. There is nine feet of slack.

“I make bombs. Special bombs. This rope special. Part around your neck is bomb. I have trigger. I trip it, you lose head. I have other trigger. Biometric. I die, you lose head. It is active now. Understand, say yes.”

“Yes,” Christopher manages to say. The leash is tight; his hands are sweating, his heart hammering.

I should’ve listened to Sarah
, he thinks once again.
I shouldn’t be here.

“You can drop grenade now.”

“It won’t blow up?”

“No. I lie. But I not lie about rope. You test me, you lose head. Understand, say—”

“Yes.”

An smiles. Christopher drops the fake grenade.

I should have listened.

“Good. Now, walk. Walk to Stonehenge. We go. We go and see our friends.”

Stonehenge

The Altar Stone shudders.

Chiyoko’s charged fingertips tingle.

Her knees shake.

But it stops.

She steps away and gives it a puzzled look.

The disk isn’t working.

What? Why?

A voice interrupts her thoughts.

“You’re doing it wrong.”

Chiyoko spins. Two shuriken, hidden in her sleeves, fly from her hands. Sarah sways and catches the zinging metal blades between the thumb and middle finger of each hand. Sarah smiles. “You’re not the only one with skills, Mu.”

Chiyoko holds up her palms in a sign of peace. Sarah steps forward. “Surprised to see me?” Chiyoko’s eyes look rueful. She claps once for yes, and makes an apologetic bow. She points at Sarah, holds up two fingers, cocks her head. She’s asking where the others are.

“Here,” Jago says, stepping from behind the upright of the southernmost trilithon, the one with the dagger carved in it. His pistol is aimed at Chiyoko’s head.

Chiyoko’s body is still, but her eyes dart from Jago to the disk to Sarah. Sarah looks at her. “Here’s the deal. We’re going to take the disk back and win Earth Key. You have a choice. You can let us get the key peacefully and leave. Or you can make one wrong move and Jago will blow your head off.”

“With great pleasure,” Jago adds. “I’m awake this time,
puta
.”

It doesn’t seem like much of a decision to Chiyoko. She can’t give these two the disk, can’t let them have Earth Key. The disk belongs to her line, to her people. This is how it has been and how it always will be. Chiyoko keeps her hands visible and still, her breath even. Her chi is now in the pit of her stomach, balled up and ready. She hears the spring on Jago’s gun depress.

Jago says, “You’re taking too long.”

Chiyoko makes a confused gesture at the stone disk and the altar. She makes an open-handed shrug, clasps her hands together in a beseeching motion.

“Stop moving,” Jago warns.

“You want to know how it works?” Sarah asks. “Is that it?”

Chiyoko glances hesitantly in Jago’s direction before nodding.

“I solved my puzzle. It led me to answers. If you’d stuck around, maybe we’d have shared it with you.”

“But now you can go to hell,” says Jago.

Chiyoko fumes silently.

I was rash. Stupid. I was not patient.

She takes a step backward. Jago squeezes the trigger; it is 0.7 mm from firing. Chiyoko bows her head in defeat, gestures toward the disk. Sarah steps forward. “Good decision.”

Jago gestures with his gun. “Stand over there, Mu. Slow and steady.” Chiyoko looks at his gun, gauging the distance, trying to figure out if she could disarm him. Jago mistakes her look for apprehension. “Don’t worry. I won’t shoot. Unlike you, when I make a deal, I honor it.”

Chiyoko does as she’s told as Sarah slips the shuriken under her belt and steps to the Altar Stone. She cups her hands around the disk. She can feel its power but knows it’s misplaced.

She begins to lift it and whispers, “This is it.”

But before she can turn the disk, a cocksure voice with a Chinese accent says, “No, Cahokian. Not yet.”

England. India. Italy. China. Turkey. Ethiopia. Australia.

Sarah spins, draws her gun, aims. Jago keeps the pistol steady on Chiyoko. Chiyoko only moves her eyes, but Jago can see the emotion in them. She is sad and she is relieved. She is curious.

Christopher appears from behind the northernmost group of stones in the outer circle. His expression is steady and defiant. A black cord is looped around his neck. Sarah’s gun follows and waits. After 2.3 seconds An Liu steps into view. His forehead is in her gun’s sight. She begins to pull.

“Don’t,” An says. “Rope has bomb. It kill boy if I die. Biometric switch. I also have trigger. You do what I say or boy die. Lose head. It goes boom. You understand?”

Jago asks, “What the hell are you doing here? He with you, Chiyoko?”

“Chiyoko help me in China,” An explains. “I help her now. You give her what she need to have Earth Key. You do it now or boy die.”

“Shoot this chump, Sarah,” Christopher says, his voice hard and searing. “He’s bluffing.”

An pulls on the leash. “Quiet. Not bluffing. Don’t be stupid.”

Sarah puts more pressure on the trigger. She knows Christopher better than any person on Earth. She knows that he’s lying—that he doesn’t really believe An is bluffing. Christopher wants Sarah to shoot An because he is afraid of what will happen if she doesn’t. He’s afraid she won’t win. Christopher’s eyes plead with her. Sarah swallows hard.

Chiyoko claps her hands insistently. An glances in her direction. She makes a calming gesture, shaking her head.
Life is not the same as death,
she says in her mind, willing An to hear. An understands that she does not want this to happen. Not this way.

But An doesn’t see it that way.

Chiyoko has never wanted to speak so badly in her life.

Jago fires a single round over Chiyoko’s head. She feels it graze a stray hair. “I said don’t move.”

Chiyoko freezes.

Christopher’s voice cracks as he says, “Shoot him. He’s bluffing.”

“No bluff.”

“Shoot him.”

Sarah stares down An Liu. The disk is behind her. The dagger stone is just to her right. All she needs is a moment.

“Shoot him. Do it.”

An slides farther behind Christopher. Sarah doesn’t have a clean shot. “Don’t. He die.”

“Don’t move!” Sarah insists.

An stops. She only has a bead on the side of his face, his ear.

“He’s full of shit, Sarah. Shoot him. Do it now.”

“I don’t have a shot.”

“Sure you do,” Christopher says. “You’re Sarah Alopay. You always have a shot. Do it.”

Sarah suddenly feels sick to her stomach. She watches An. Jago watches Chiyoko. Chiyoko watches An. An watches everyone, his gaze twitching between them.

Christopher’s eyes are locked on Sarah Alopay. She looks at her high school boyfriend. Her beautiful, reckless, pigheaded high school boyfriend who has no business being here. She remembers Jago telling her that her love does not make her weak. That it makes her strong. That it makes her human.

But this is Endgame.

She cannot afford to be human anymore. She cannot be normal ever again. She has to be something different. Something more. Something less.

She is a Player, the Cahokian, fighting for her line.

Fighting for her family.

Fighting for her future.

Fighting for
the
future.

“I love you, Christopher,” she says quietly.

He nods. “I love you too, Sarah.”

“Give Chiyoko disk or he die!” An screams.

“I have since the moment I saw you, and I always will.”

“Same with me. Always have, always will. Now waste this scrub.”

“Give Chiyoko disk or he die!” An screams again.

She smiles a sad and tender smile. “You should have listened to me, Christopher. This is not how this should be ending.”

A look of fear and resignation washes over Christopher. “I know. I’m sorry.”

Sarah’s smile fades; her face changes. Christopher watches as the girl he loves melts away and becomes something else. Something he doesn’t recognize. Something hard, efficient, and ruthless. Something he fears. He doesn’t want to live in a world where the Sarah Alopay he knew and loved is replaced by this one. She stares at him, gun steady, eyes locked, smile gone. They could always tell what the other was thinking, even without words. It was one of the things they loved most about each other. They always knew what the other would do before they did it. And what Christopher knows now is that she
is
going to do it. She is going to take the shot. The only shot she has, the only shot that can take An out.

“You always talked about choice, Sarah. About how we all choose who we are and what we’re gonna do. But you were wrong. You don’t have a choice. You never did. This is what you were born to do, what you were destined to do, what you have to do.”

She stares at him.

“So do it. I forgive you, and I’m sorry for putting you in this position,” he says, his voice just above a whisper. “Do it and win. Win for me.”

Sarah nods, and very quietly says, “I will.”

Christopher closes his eyes. Sarah pulls the trigger. The bullet spins out of the chamber, sails through the air, and strikes Christopher James Vanderkamp in the middle of his head, boring through his skin, skull, and brain, killing him instantly.

The bullet continues through the back of Christopher’s head, through the air between Christopher and An, and strikes An Liu square in the forehead. His skin peels away, his neck snaps back, and he is thrown to the ground.

And as An falls, Christopher Vanderkamp, dead but still standing, explodes from the chest up. Poof, he is gone. Blasted into red mist. His lower half collapses and falls to the ground in a heap.