James Frey: Sky Key

No!

SHIVERblinkblinkblinkSHIVERSHIVER.

No!

“Breathe easy now.”

An convulses. He feels whatever he’s being injected with move through his arm, into his heart, his neck, his head. The pain disappears. Cool darkness washes into An’s brain, like the waves outside, gently rocking the ship back and forth, back and forth. An feels the drug pull him beneath the surface, down into the dark ocean. He’s suspended. Weightless. He doesn’t shiver . His eyes don’t BLINK . All is quiet and all is dark. Calm. Easy.

“Can you speak?” The man’s voice echoes as if it is in An’s mind.

“Y-yes,” An says without much effort.

“Good. You can call me Charlie. What’s your name, lad?”

An opens his eyes. His sight is fuzzy around the edges, but his senses are strangely acute. He can feel every centimeter of his body. “My name is An Liang,” he says.

“No, it’s not. What’s your name?”

An tries to turn his head but can’t. He’s been restrained further. A strap across his forehead? Or is this the drug?

“Chang Liu,” he tries again.

“No, it’s not. One more lie and I won’t tell you anything about Chiyoko. That’s a promise.”

An begins to speak but the man claps one of his big hands over An’s mouth. “I mean it. Lie to me one more time and we’re done. No more Chiyoko, no more you. Do you understand?”

Since An can’t move his head at all, can’t nod, he widens his eyes. Yes, he understands.

“Good lad. Now, what’s your name?”

“An Liu.”

“Better. How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“Where are you from?”

“China.”

“No shit. Where in China?”

“Many places. Xi’an was last home.”

“Why were you at Stonehenge?”

An feels a tickle in his ear. A scratching noise close by.

“To help Chiyoko,” he says.

“Tell me about Chiyoko. What was her last name?”

“Takeda. She was the Mu.”

A pause. “The Mu?”

“Yes.”

“What is a Mu?”

“Not sure. Old people. Older than old.”

An hears the scritch-scratch noise again. He places the sound. A polygraph. “He’s not lying,” the man says. “Don’t know what he’s talking about, but he’s not lying.”

An hears a tinny voice over an earpiece. Someone else is watching and listening. Giving Charlie with the big hands and wrinkled forehead instructions.

“What you inject in me?” An asks.

“Top-secret serum, lad. I tell you more than that and I have to kill you. It’s not your turn to ask questions yet. I’ll let you ask yours after you answer a few more of mine, deal?”

“Yes.”

“What were you helping Chiyoko with at Stonehenge?”

“Get Earth Key.”

“What’s Earth Key?”

“Piece of puzzle.”

“What kind of puzzle?”

“Endgame puzzle.”

“What’s Endgame?”

“A game for end of time.”

“And you’re playing it?”

“Yes.”

“Chiyoko was too?”

“Yes.”

“She was Mu?”

“Yes.”

“What are you?”

“Shang.”

“What is Shang?”

“Shang was father of my people. Shang are my people. Shang is me. I am Shang. I hate Shang.”

Charlie pauses, writes something on a pad that An can’t see. “What does Earth Key do?”

“Not sure. Maybe nothing.”

“Are there other keys?”

“Yes. It is one of three.”

“Earth Key was at Stonehenge?”

“I think yes. Not sure.”

“Where are the other two keys?”

“Don’t know. That is part of the game.”

“Endgame.”

“Yes.”

“Who runs it?”

He cannot resist saying the words. “Them. The Makers. The Gods. They have many names. One called kepler 22b told us of Endgame.” The serum they put in him tickles the synapses in his frontal cortex. It is a good drug, whatever it is.

Charlie holds a picture over An’s face. It’s of the man from the announcement that was made on every screen in the world—TV, mobile phone, tablet, computer—after Stonehenge changed, after that beam of light shot to the heavens. “Have you seen this person before?”

“No. Wait. Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Yes … yes I see it before. That is disguise. Could be kepler 22b. Could not be him—her—it. Not a person.”

Charlie takes the picture away. Replaces it with a picture of Stonehenge. Not as it was, quaint and ancient and mysterious, but as it is now. Revealed and altered. An unearthly tower of stone and glass and metal rising 100 feet in the air, the age-old stones that marked it jumbled around the tower’s base like a child’s discarded blocks.

“Tell me about this.”

An’s eyes widen. His memory of Stonehenge stops before anything like that appeared. “I do not know about that. Can I ask question?”

“You just did, but yes.”

“That is Stonehenge?”

“Yes. How did this happen?”

“Not sure. Can’t remember.”

Charlie leans back. “I guess you wouldn’t. You were shot, you remember that?”

“No.”

“In the head. You concussed pretty badly. Lucky for you, you’ve got a metal plate in there. A metal plate coated in Kevlar. Some bloody foresight, that.”

“Yes. Lucky. Another question?”

“Sure.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

Charlie pauses, listens to the little voice in his earpiece.

“We don’t really know. You were shot, we know that. With a special kind of bullet that only a handful of people have ever seen. You were clutching the end of a rope that led to the body of a young man. Or what was left of his body. He was blown up above the chest. Only his lower torso and legs were left.”

An remembers. There was the boy he put the bomb leash around. There was the Olmec. There was the Cahokian.

“Your girlfriend, Chiyoko—”

“Not say her name. Her name is my name now.”

Charlie gives An a hard stare. His eyes are blue, then green, then red. It’s the drugs, An tells himself. The good drugs.

“Chiyoko,” Charlie says, emphasizing the name, savoring it in a way that stings An. “She was right next to you. One of the stones toppled onto her when this thing under Stonehenge came up. Crushed the lower two-thirds of her body. Killed her instantly. We had to scrape her up.”

“She next to me, though?” An asks. His eyelids flutter. “After I shot?”

“Yes. Was she the one who shot you?”

“No.”

“Who did?”

“Not sure. There were two others.”

“These two, they had the ceramic and polymer bullets?”

“Not sure. The guns were white, so maybe.”

“What are their names?”

“Sarah Alopay and Jago Tlaloc,” An says, struggling to pronounce these foreign names.

“They’re playing this game too?”

“Yes.”

“For who?”

An’s eyes flutter again. “F-f-f-or their l-l-l-lines. She is Cahokian. He is Olmec.” An’s head jerks. Fresh pain sizzles across his medulla oblongata. The good drugs are wearing off.

Charlie holds another sheet of paper over An’s face. Two security images. “These two?”

An squints. “Y-y-yes.”

SHIVER.

“Good.”

Charlie whispers something incomprehensible into a microphone.

Beep. Beep-beep. Beep. Beep-beep.

The heart-rate monitor. Other details in the room are coming back to An. The edges of his vision aren’t fuzzy anymore. He is resurfacing from the dark waters. The SHIVERS are back.

“Where is Ch-Chi-Chiyoko?”

“Can’t say, mate.”

“On this boat?”

“Can’t say.”

“C-c-c-can I see her?”

“No. You’ve only got me from now on. No one else. Just you and me.”