James Frey - Sky Key

Just as he catches it, the man head-butts Jago across the forehead, which hurts, especially since he’s still wearing a helmet.

If pain mattered to Jago, this would have been a good move.

But pain doesn’t matter to Jago.

The Olmec cups his left hand over the back of the soldier’s neck and brings the blade up fast into his throat. Warm blood shoots over Jago’s hand. He steps away as the man gets busy dying.

While Jago fights, the two tasked with capturing Sarah recover from the flashbang. They look at each other and then out the window. They ready their rifles and step to the edge. The guns swing into the air, the men clear left and right and don’t see her. Then one clears up while the other clears down.

Sarah waits. Still hanging upside down, she crunches up and grabs the unsuspecting man by the cuff of his shirt. She pulls hard and falls back, and the man comes with her, arcing out of the window. He falls to the ground, yelling the whole way until there’s a sickening sound and silence. Sarah looks up, knowing the other soldier is still there. Their eyes meet. He pulls the trigger and fires wild.

Thk-thk-thk-thk-thk! A volley rings out, but because Sarah is still swinging, he misses, the bullets making high-pitched firecracker noises on the concrete and metal in the courtyard below. He aims again, and has her sighted this time. Sarah keeps her eyes open. Christopher had his eyes open. She will too.

But then the man slowly pitches forward and falls out of the building, a knife planted to the hilt in the back of his neck.

“You all right?” Jago calls from inside the room, his body still frozen in the throwing position.

“Yes!”

“There’s one more.”

Jago spins to the wounded man on the floor. The man says, “Rooster call! Repeat, rooster call!”

Jago drops instinctively as something zips into the room from outside and, unfortunately for the soldier, hits him dead in the face. His head explodes.

“Sniper!” Sarah yells from outside.

“Coming!” Jago shouts.

Sarah’s a sitting duck. She points her feet and drops, the rope running over her ankles and under her heels. Just before hitting the ground, she flexes her feet and extends her hands over her head. She slows. Her hands meet the ground. She kicks the ropes free of her ankles and folds out of a perfect handstand.

She’s safe from the sniper. In the room above, Jago sets off two more flashbangs. They’re loud, and he can’t hear a thing as he vaults forward, sliding over the coffee table, grabbing Earth Key. Three rounds explode in the floor just behind him. He scurries forward, only a few meters to go. The coffee table takes the next three sniper rounds. A meter. A round sings by, only centimeters from his head.

Screw this.

Jago stands, yells “Catch!” and throws Earth Key out the window. He dives out after it and snatches one of the ropes with both hands. Sniper rounds, coming from the north-northeast, ping off the building. His hands burn. His hands bleed. He twists, gets his feet on the exterior wall, comes to a stop. The sniper lost his angle and isn’t firing anymore. Jago loops the rope under his butt and rappels the last six meters to the ground.

“Catch yourself,” Sarah snips. Jago spins just in time to grab an F2000 that Sarah throws at him. It claps into Jago’s bleeding hands. He doesn’t care about the pain. He likes it.

He’s Playing.

Sarah bends to pick up the other rifle and the pistol that fell from her waistband. Jago pulls the knife out of the man’s neck. Sarah takes two flashbangs from one of the men. Jago pulls a spray canister off the hip of the same man, along with a satchel not much bigger than a baseball.

“What’s that?” Sarah asks, squinting at the canister.

“Aerated C4,” he says almost giddily.

“Whoa. Never messed with that. You?”

“Naturally.”

“That bag the blasting caps?”

He looks. “Sí.”

“Great. Now let’s get out of here.”

Jago nods. “You got Earth Key?”

Sarah pats a small lump in a zippered pocket. “Good throw.”

Without another word they take off at a dead sprint.

A few seconds later Jago points, and Sarah sees it. An exposed section of Tube tracks for London’s District and Circle lines. They make it in 15.8 seconds from the side of the hotel, and 7.3 seconds after that they are in the dark secluded safety of the tunnels. As they scramble into the shadows, the image of Christopher infiltrates Sarah’s mind, his head exploding, followed by his body. She tries to beat the image back, and she does. Moving, fighting, Playing are all at least good for one thing: forgetting.

iii

Alice doesn’t like beds as much as she does hammocks, especially on ships, so she’s slung her hammock across her small cabin. She lolls around, letting the motion of the sea swing her back and forth.

She tosses a knife end over end and catches it. Tosses and catches. Tosses and catches. One slipup and it could land in her eye, skewer her brain.

Alice doesn’t slip up.

She’s not thinking of much. Just the knife and of slaughtering Baitsakhan when she finds him.

And of the fear on Little Alice’s face. She has seen it in her dreams so many times that it’s burned into her consciousness.

Little Alice.

Screaming.

What is it about this girl she’s never met? Why does Alice care about her? Dream about her?

Shari’s a good nut, that’s why. I am too. The rest are bastards, so fuck ’em.

Her satellite phone rings. She picks it up, presses talk.

“Oi, that Tim? Yeah, yeah. Right. Good! And you spoke to Cousin Willey in KL, yeah? Great. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Naw, none of that. Just my blades. No, Tim, I mean it! I don’t need any guns, I’m telling ya. You know me. Purist and all. Oh, all right, fine. You make a good point. Every one of these Player bastards is probably armed to the teeth, true and true. Just keep ’em small, and only hollow tips. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, any news on the rock? Anyone figure out where it’s gonna hit? ’Cause when it does, your Alice doesn’t want to be nowhere near. You neither? ’Magine that.”

She flicks the knife into the air above her head. It turns nine times. She catches it between her index finger and her thumb. Tosses again.

“Any luck with Shari? Oh, really? When were you gonna tell me, ya wanker? I oughta come back there and carve your freckle out, Tim. Well, what is it, then?”

She catches the knife by the handle and leans so far out of the hammock that she thinks she’s going to flip out, but she doesn’t. She sticks a leg out the other side and is perfectly balanced. She scratches a number on the wall. 91-8166449301.

“Thanks, Tim. Don’t die until you get to see it all go down. Gonna be a sight. Yeah, later, mate.”

She presses talk again, settles into her hammock, calls Shari’s number.

Rings 12 times, no one answers.

She calls again.

Rings 12 times, no one answers.

She calls again.

Rings 12 times, no one answers.

She calls again and again and again and again, and she will keep calling until someone does answer.

Because she has something very important to tell the Harappan.

Something very important indeed.

They are all here.