James Frey - Sky Key

Alice shoots up in her hammock, her fists gripping the edge so she doesn’t tumble out, her hair a wild dark explosion, moonlight reflecting off its curls in white turns.

She takes a breath, slaps her face, checks her boomerangs. Checks her knife. Still there, embedded in the wooden column above the eyelet holding up one end of her hammock.

She is on the porch of her little shack near the lagoon. Alone. Beyond the lagoon is the Timor Sea. Behind her, on the other side of the shack, is the scrub and bush of the vast Northern Territory. Alice’s backyard.

She has been at home meditating, listening to the dreamtime and tracing the songlines with her memory. Thinking of the ancestors, the sea and sky and earth. She has been there since the kepler broadcast his “Play on” message and since she received another clue in her sleep. This one not a puzzle, but explicit and direct, if not exactly fixed.

She wonders if other Players got new clues. If one of the others has already figured out where she is. If one of them is drawing a bead on her right now with a sniper rifle, in the distance, silent and deadly.

“Bugger you!” she yells into the darkness, her voice spreading over the dry land. She flips out of the hammock and stomps to the edge of the porch, wiggles her toes, lets her arms out wide. “Here I am, you hoons—take me!”

But no shot comes.

Alice snickers and spits. She scratches her ass. She watches the bright light of her clue, a mental beacon in her mind’s eye. She knows exactly what it is: the location of Baitsakhan, the Donghu, the terrifying toddler, the person who wants to kill Shari and maybe this girl Alice has seen in her dreams over and over. Alice guesses that this girl is Shari’s Little Alice, but why the Donghu, or anyone, would want her killed isn’t clear. Why Little Alice is important— if she’s important—remains shrouded.

Regardless, Big Alice is going to find Baitsakhan and kill him. That is how she will Play. If this leads her closer to one of the three keys of Endgame, so be it. If it doesn’t, so be it.

“What’ll be’ll be,” she huffs.

A shooting star cruises the firmament and fades in the western sky.

She spins, walks inside her shack, snatches her knife from the wooden post. She picks up the receiver of an old push-button phone, curly cord and all. She punches in a number, puts the receiver to her ear.

“Oi, Tim. Yeah, it’s Alice. Look, I’m on a freighter tomorrow predawn, and I need you to use your unmatched skills to locate a certain someone for me, yeah? Might’ve mentioned her. The Harappan. Yeah, that’s the one. Chopra. Indian. Yeah, yeah, I know there must be a hundred million Chopras in that country, but listen. She’s between seventeen and twenty, probably on the older end of that spectrum. And she has a kid. Maybe two or three years old. Here’s the kicker, though. The girl’s name’s Alice. That oughta narrow it a little. Yeah, you call me on this number when you get it. I’ll be checking the messages. All right, Tim. Good on ya.”

She hangs up and stares at the backpack on her bed. The black canvas roll covered with weapons.

She has to get ready.

And she told her Students, her Acolytes:

You can feel it.

Everything that is good is a facade.

Nothing worthwhile lasts.

If you are hungry, you eat, and you are full, but that fullness just reminds you that you will be hungry again in the future. If you are cold, you make a fire, but that fire will die, and then the coldness creeps back in. If you are lonely, you find someone, but then they get tired of you or you get tired of them and, eventually, there you are—alone again.

Happiness, satisfaction, contentment, all of these create a veil spread thinly but convincingly over suffering. The pain awaits, always, underneath.

Everything the children perceive themselves to be and all that they devote themselves to—food, sex, entertainment, drink, money, adventure, games—exist to insulate them from fear.

Fear is the only constant, which is precisely why we should listen to it.

Embrace it. Keep it. Love it.

Greatness comes from fear, Students. Using it is how we will fight.

Using it is how we will win.

—S

Beep.

SHIVER.

Beep-beep.

SHIVER.

Beep-beep.

SHIVERBLINKSHIVERBLINK.

“CHIYOKO!”

An Liu tries to sit, but he is restrained. At the wrists and the ankles and across SHIVERblinkblink the chest. He glances left and right and left and right. His head is killing him.

Killing .

The pain radiates over his right eye and around his temple and to the back of his skull and down his neck. He can’t remember how he got here. He’s on a gurney. Sees an IV stand, a rolling cart with a heart and respiratory monitor. BLINKshiverblink. White walls. Low gray ceiling. A bright fluorescent light overhead. A framed picture of Queen Elizabeth. An oval door with an iron wheel in the middle. A black four stenciled above it.

He can feel the room shift and hear it blinkblink hear it creak.

A wheel on the door.

The room shifts and creaks in the other direction.

He’s on a boat.

“Ch-Ch-Ch-Chiyoko …” he stammers quietly.

“That’s her name, eh? The one who got flattened?”

A man’s voice. SHIVERblinkSHIVERblinkblinkblink. It comes from above his head, out of eyeshot. An lifts his chin, strains at the straps. Rolls his eyes up until the pain in his head becomes almost unbearable. He still can’t SHIVER he still can’t see the man.

“Chiyoko. I was wondering.” He hears the scratch of a pen on paper. “Thanks for finally telling me. Poor girl just got flattened like a pancake.”

Flattened? What’s SHIVERSHIVER what’s he blinkblinkblink what’s he talking about?

“D-d-d-don’t say—”

“S’matter? Something in your mouth?”

“D-d-d-don’t say her n-n-n-name!”

The man sighs, steps forward a little. An can just make out the top of his head. He is a white man with tan skin and a mop of brown hair, straight thin eyebrows, and deep lines in his forehead. The lines are not from old age but from frowning. From yelling. From squinting. From being British and way too serious.

An already shiverBLINK already knows: British Special Forces.

“W-w-w-where—” SHIVERSHIVERSHIVERblinkSHIVER. It hasn’t SHIVER hasn’t been this bad SHIVERSHIVERSHIVER …

The tremors haven’t been this bad since Chiyoko left him in bed that night. His head whips back and forth and his legs shake and shake.

SHIVERblinkSHIVERblink. He needs to blinkblinkblinkblinkblink to see her. That will calm him down.

“Twitchy lad,” the man says, stepping around to the side of the gurney. “You wanna know where your girlfriend is, that it?”

“Y-y-y-y-y—”

An is stuck on the sound. He keeps saying it, his mind and mouth on a loop.

“Y-y-y-y-y-y-y—”

The man places a hand on An’s arm. The hand is warm. The man is skinnier than An expected. His hands are too big for his body.

“I have questions too. But we can’t talk until you’ve gotten ahold of yourself.” The man turns away. He picks up a syringe from a nearby tray. An catches a glimpse of the label: serum #591566. “Try to breathe easy, lad.” The man pulls up An’s sleeve on his left arm. “It’s just a pinch.”