Reap (7 page)

We weren't the only ones watching the fight. I could see faces in the windows up and down the street. And outside, there were onlookers watching from what they must have considered was a safe distance—but as soon as they saw our guns, they began to clear out. There was a siren coming from somewhere down the road, out of sight behind buildings and trees.

The Harappan was whirling, a blur with his curved sword. The Nabataean was standing mostly still, parrying each strike with his spear—about two inches in diameter, and made of some very hard wood, it was hardly getting nicked by the sword. But the Nabataean was on the defensive, backing up as the Harappan was advancing.

John fired, hitting the Harappan in the chest—he fell back onto the stone. The Nabataean turned back to see us, and he ran for the cover of a newsstand. John and I fired at him as he ran, but he was fast and out of view almost immediately. A motorcycle cop appeared at the end of the road—John took a couple of shots in his direction, and the bike slid out from underneath him. The cop crawled for the cover of a parked car.

I couldn't see anyone from where I was—the Harappan had disappeared under the shrubbery, and the Nabataean was well hidden.

“Both of you,” John said, “go to the far side and work your way up.”

“The Nabataean's the last,” I said, and nodded. That side was where the newsstand was.

“I don't know,” John said. “Did you hear the ping? The Harappan's
wearing a barrier vest. Bulletproof, I think.”

“What does that mean?” I asked. We'd never practiced shooting at targets with bulletproof vests.

“It means I wish I still had my Kalashnikov. Pistols at this range won't penetrate. Either get closer, or shoot for the head.”

“Okay,” I said.

“What about the cop?” Kat asked.

“Will you just get going?”

Kat glanced at my face, and our eyes met for a moment; then we crossed the street, running in a low crouch. The road was lined with shops with large front windows. I kept my shoulder against the glass as I moved up, looking for a sign of either Player.

The cop shouted something in German that I didn't understand.

“Do I have to know what that was?” I asked Kat without turning to look at her.

“‘Stop' and ‘surrender,' I think. High school German didn't cover this kind of vocabulary.”

John was opposite us, on the other side of the street, moving cautiously, his gun in a solid two-hand grip. He moved with confidence. He looked like a soldier. I imagined I looked like an idiot. I looked like a target.

Suddenly the Harappan was on his feet again, throwing something at John. John fired back at him, and glass on our side of the street exploded into a million little pieces. I ducked and scrambled to take cover by a lamppost. I lined up my sights on the Harappan—John was downrange, but not in my sight line, and I decided to take the shot.

Without a noise I was smashed to the ground.

The Nabataean had swung his heavy spear like a seven-foot-long baseball bat, and it had knocked me to the sidewalk.

Dazed, I saw Kat fire wildly with her pistol—her left hand shook despite trying to hold it steady with her wounded arm. But as I lay on the ground, I saw the big man pause and reach for his chest. Blood was dribbling down from his sternum, soaking his shirt.

He raised the spear one last time, threw it, and fell to his knees. He said something in a foreign language and then collapsed to the street.

The cop was up, gun out, yelling at the Harappan and John.

I turned back to Kat.

The spear had buried itself deep into Kat's chest, exiting through her back so that she was halfway sitting up. Blood was everywhere. So fast, it was pouring from her body. So much blood.

“Kat,” I called, and scrambled through the broken glass to get to her. “Kat, no.”

She was gone. There was no life in her eyes, and I grabbed her throat to feel for a pulse, but there was nothing. The spear had gone straight through her heart, piercing her like she was a piece of paper.

No last words. No good-byes.

She had killed him and he had killed her.

And there was nothing left of me.

I could hear shooting, distant and unimportant.

I touched Kat's face. She was so pale, all color rushing out of her as she bled.

“Kat,” I said again, wanting to put my arms around her, but blocked by the mammoth spear. She shouldn't have come. When her arm got cut, she should have stayed in the hospital. She should have stayed at the safe house. She shouldn't have been here, backing me up.

Somehow I had lost track of the Nabataean. Stupid. I'd been so stupid. I'd known where he'd gone, where he was hiding, but I'd focused on the Harappan. Shooting at the Player who was threatening John, not the one who was only a few yards from me. It had been stupid, and Kat had paid for my stupidity. She'd killed him, her last act on Earth, but it hadn't been enough. If I'd kept my eyes on the edge of the newsstand, I could have shot as soon as he'd come out of hiding.

But I hadn't. I'd kept my eyes on everything but that.

I looked back at John, but he was gone. The Harappan was gone. The policeman lay dead in the bushes. I wondered who had killed him. It didn't matter, I guessed. Someone had done it, and John and the Harappan were continuing their battle elsewhere. I wasn't going to chase them down and find out. John was a Green Beret. He could handle the Harappan. We'd have won: all the Players were dead.

I looked at Kat. Her eyes were open, and I reached out to close them, but I couldn't bring myself to touch her again. I turned away and tried to think of my other memories of her—of her smile, of her laughter, of her kisses.

But all I saw was her contorted face. Her dead eyes. Her blood on the sidewalk.

More sirens.

I dropped my gun on the ground and stood up. I half expected to see John's body lying across the way, but there was only the cop's.

The windows were filled with faces, and as I turned around, searching for a sign of John, they all just focused on me, perhaps unafraid, maybe foolish. Maybe they'd seen me drop my gun. Maybe they could see into my heart and know that I wasn't going to fight again. That I was done. That my part in the Endgame legends was coming to an end.

I started to jog away, then broke into a full sprint. I didn't know where I was, so I couldn't know where I was going, but I tried to pick the least-busy streets and alleys. I tried to run in the opposite direction of the sirens, but there were sirens everywhere. It sounded like it was going to be an impossible task to avoid them, but I would do what I could.

I was going for the safe house. Maybe there would be someone there. I didn't really care. I was going for the money we had stashed in a communal fund. I was going to take what was left and get on a train and get out of Munich—out of Germany altogether. Maybe, I thought, I'd go back to Turkey. We hadn't encountered any notable security while we were there, and the cost of living was low—the money at the safe house could easily support me for a year, maybe more. I didn't even try to think of anything further away than a year. In the last hour I'd just seen people I cared about die in horrible ways. I didn't need anyone new in my life right now. I'd be a hermit. Maybe I'd get a job on a fishing boat, or in a café. I'd learn more of the language. I'd fade into the background.

Seven blocks away from the street where I'd left Kat, I stopped running, and I walked until I found a gift shop. I bought a white Olympics T-shirt—one with the sunburst logo on the chest—and pulled it on over my blood-spattered shirt. I also bought a map, and
I asked the cashier, who spoke a little English, where we were. He pointed the intersection out to me, and I was able to figure out a path to get back to the safe house. I could have hailed a cab, but I wanted to walk. There was too much going on in my head, and, to tell the truth, I wasn't in a hurry to get back to the house. I wanted to freeze time. I didn't want to get on with my life. I wanted to go back in time, not forward.

I couldn't believe that I had left Kat there on the road. Was there something I could have done for her?

What about Mary? I had just left her too. They were dead, and I'd just moved on, leaving them on the street for the birds.

I got sick to my stomach, remembering their wounds. Both had been brutal, hateful injuries. Both had devastated their bodies, killing them instantly. If there was a good thing, that was it. There'd been no suffering.

I put my hand to my face. I'd started sweating heavily. I still had Kat's blood on my shirt.

I bent at the waist and puked in the gutter. And as I did, I thought about what had become of this entire mission. John was the only hope now—he had to kill the Harappan. If he did that, we would have won. Zero line would have killed all the Players. The Makers—the Annunaki, the Sky Gods, whatever they were called—had no more game to play. They had no more Players. No more Endgame.

Or did they? Was Raakel right? Would the next generation of Players take their place? Would it continue, forever?

That was the thing that hurt the worst—that all of this might have been for nothing.

Were the Makers watching all of this from above? Some kind of alien satellite that monitored the Players?

Would they punish humanity for ruining their fun? I wouldn't bet against it. Maybe they were on their way right now. Maybe they'd punish me and John for trying to stop Endgame.

I walked the final blocks to the safe house. I continued to hear sirens,
but they never came close to me. I never saw flashing lights or police cars or motorcycles.

The safe house was just as I'd left it. I'd hoped I'd find John there, but I didn't. No one was there. I went into the dining room, where all our gear had been laid out—all the pistols were gone, but there were a dozen long guns there. Shotguns, AK-47s, an M21 sniper rifle, two HK33s, and several guns I couldn't name. They'd all been smuggled into town by Lee and Lin, both of whom were dead now.

I picked up an Uzi, testing its weight in my hand. I should have taken that to the plaza, not a lousy revolver.

My fingerprints were on it now. They were on everything in this house. Should I bother trying to wipe the place down? Now that Eugene had talked, I was connected to all of this.

I set the Uzi back in its place and moved to the bag with all the forged papers. My Frank Finn passport was in there, along with everyone else's fake IDs. I took mine and put it in my back pocket, then emptied the rest of the bag into the fireplace. I found a bottle of vodka on an end table and splashed it on the passports. I struck a match and the whole pile went up in blue flame.

I put a few logs on top of the IDs and then sat down in a leather high-backed chair. I took a sip of the vodka straight from the bottle and got too much, and my eyes started to water.

“Who are you?” a voice behind me asked.

I was too despondent to bother turning around. Or answering. I took another swig and rolled it around my mouth for a minute.

“Who are you?” the male voice repeated. The accent was Indian.

“Frank,” I said. “Finn.”

“That's not what I mean,” he said, moving into my view. He was holding a small pistol I didn't recognize. It looked Russian, maybe.

“I am Pravheet.”

“I'm walking away,” I said.

“You are La Tène?” he asked, sitting down in the chair opposite me. Aside from his pistol pointing at me, we looked like two old friends
sitting by a fire.

“Me? No.”

“Your friend,” he said calmly. “The one I just killed. He was not a Player.”

“No,” I said. “Neither am I.”

“Then who was? The girl killed by the Nabataean?”

“No.”

“Fine,” he said. “Don't tell me. She died, and he died, and now you will die.”

“You don't have to do this,” I said. “I'm not a Player.”

“You're American, aren't you? I know the Cahokian Player by sight, but I don't know La Tène. I assume it's you. Or are you something else? Minoan?”

“Something like that,” I said, taking another hit off the bottle. I wasn't a drinker, and the vodka burned.

“When there is a Calling, only the Player is supposed to come. The Makers will show their displeasure on you and your line.”

“It doesn't matter,” I said. “We failed.”

“You have.”

“You don't have to kill anymore,” I said. “You can stop Playing.”

He smiled. “Surrender? To you?”

“No, I don't mean that. I mean that you don't have to Play. There are no other Players. They're all dead. You can refuse to Play the game.”

“There will be a test,” he said. “There is more to Endgame than simply defeating the other Players.”

I screwed the cap on the bottle and set it on the table next to my chair. “This wasn't a real Calling,” I said. “I'm with a group called Zero line. We are not Players. Our goal was not to kill, but to persuade. Let me guess: your invitation to the Calling was an explosion and the symbol of these Olympics burning.”

“Yes,” he said, his brow furrowed. “The same as all of the lines. A sign from the Makers.”

“It was a couple bricks of C4 and a thermite stencil,” I said. “Look
around this room—there's clothes and gear for twenty people. In the next room you'll find a table full of guns. We, Zero line, invited you here. Our goal was to try to talk you out of fighting. What would happen if you quit? Walked away?”

“My entire line would be destroyed in flame and ruin.”

“No, because all of the lines would walk away.”

“Then all of the lines would perish,” he said. “The Makers do not tolerate disobedience. We are their servants, and all they ask of us is to prepare for Endgame.”

“It doesn't matter now,” I said. “You're the only Player left. When there's a real Calling, there will be no one else to Play against. We have won. Humanity—Zero line—has won.” But even as I spoke, the words felt hollow. I had no idea anymore if that was true. It didn't feel like we'd won. This didn't feel like any kind of victory I wanted.

He put a finger to his chin. We stared at each other for several seconds. I turned my attention back to the fire. The passports were all destroyed.

“If what you say is true,” the Harappan said slowly, “if this was a sham Calling, then you are all fools and have died for nothing. How many of you were killed?”

“I don't know,” I said. “There were once twenty of us. Some never made it here.”

“Then twenty have died for nothing.”

“What do you mean?”

“There will always be Players. If you were to kill me, and it was not during a true Endgame, then someone from my line would immediately take my place as Player. There will always be Players. There could be a true Calling today, and twelve new Players would be brought forward.”

I continued to stare at the fire. I couldn't believe it. I wouldn't believe it. Walter had known about Endgame. He'd known it from personal experience. He would have known if all this was worthless.

“But I don't believe that you're so ignorant. You are the La Tène Player.
And all of this is a ruse to get me to give up so you can shoot me in the back. You're a poor Player. All of your line was working with you, and you couldn't even kill everyone.”

“And that's easier for you to believe than that this is all phony?”

He stood up. “You are a disgrace to the game. I come from a proud lineage. You rely on cheap deceptions and a La Tène army.”

“You're wrong,” I said. He still had his gun pointed at me, and I had nothing to defend myself with. Except the bottle. I picked it up and opened it. My gun was in the other room, so I couldn't shoot Pravheet, but I could light him on fire. Maybe it would give me time to get in the weapons room.

“I will kill you, and with this kill I will have won Endgame.”

With all my strength I threw the bottle at the floor between him and the fireplace. The glass shattered, and the clear liquid sprayed across the room.

At that same instant I felt a searing pain in my chest, and my whole body seized.

Blackness started to close in. All around me was flame, but as the fire spread, it dimmed.

I was wet—my shirt was wet.

Pravheet pulled a blanket from the floor and tamped out the flames on his leg.

I tried to get up, but my body wouldn't respond. I could feel my muscles firing, tightening and releasing, but I wasn't in control of any of it.

“No one can stop Endgame. Endgame will come, and Players will Play. What will be will be,” Pravheet said, and I felt the barrel of his gun against the back of my head.

All went to black.