James Frey - Sky Key

“Oh.”

An’s head jerks. His fingers dance.

“Are-are-are …” He trails off, gives up, whispers. “The game, you understand …”

“Understand what?”

“You all die.” An says it so quietly that Charlie can barely hear.

“What?” Charlie asks, turning an ear toward him.

“You all die,” An breathes, quieter still.

Charlie leans over. Their faces are less than half a meter apart. Charlie squints, his forehead wrinkles. An’s eyes are closed. His mouth is agape. Charlie says, “‘You all die’? Is that what you sai—”

An bites down hard. A plastic cracking noise comes from inside An’s mouth. This Charlie can hear very clearly. And then An exhales, blows out with a hiss like a punctured balloon, and an orange cloud of gas shoots from behind his teeth and right into Charlie’s face. Charlie’s eyes go wide and fill with tears and he can’t breathe. His face burns, his skin is on fire everywhere, his eyes feel like they’re melting, his lungs are shrinking. He falls forward onto An’s chest. It only takes 4.56 seconds, and after that An opens his eyes again.

“Yes,” An says. “Y-y-y-you all die.”

An spits the fake tooth from his mouth, the poison inside one that he spent years gaining an immunity to. The tooth clicks across the metal floor. The little voice in Charlie’s earpiece is screaming. Two seconds later an alarm sounds, reverberating through the metal hull of the boat. The lights go out. A red emergency light flips on.

The room shifts and creaks. Shifts and creaks.

I’m on a boat.

I’m on a boat and I have to get off.

The future is a game.

Time, one of the rules.

“It is I,” Maccabee Adlai, Player of the 8th line, says into an inconspicuous wireless microphone. He speaks a language only 10 people in the entire world understand. “Kalla bhajat niboot scree.”

These words have no translation. They are older than old, but the woman on the other end of the call understands.

“Kalla bhajat niboot scree,” she says in return. They have proven their identities to each other. “Is your phone secure?” the woman asks.

“I think. But who cares. The end is so close.”

“The others could find you.”

“Screw the others. Besides,” Maccabee says, wrapping his fingers around the glass orb in his pocket, “I would see them coming. Listen, Ekaterina.” Maccabee has always called his mother by her first name, even when he was a boy. “I need something.”

“Anything, my Player.”

“I need a hand. Mechanical. Titanium. Don’t care if it’s skinned.”

“Neurologically fused?”

“If you can do it quickly.”

“Depends on the wound. I’ll know when I see it.”

“Where? How soon?”

Ekaterina thinks. “Berlin. Two days. I’ll text an address tomorrow.”

“Good. Listen. The hand isn’t for me.”

“Okay.”

“It’s not for me, and I need you to put something in it. Something hidden.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll send you specs and code over encrypted botnet M-N-V-eight-nine.”

“Okay.”

“Repeat it,” Maccabee says to his mother.

“M-N-V-eight-nine.”

“It’ll arrive twenty seconds after this call ends. The name of the file is dogwood jeer .”

“Understood.”

“I’ll see you in Berlin.”

“Yes, my son, my Player. Kalla bhajat niboot scree. ”

“Kalla bhajat niboot scree.”

Maccabee hangs up. He logs into a ghost app on his phone, launches it, and hits send. Dogwood jeer is off. He turns the phone over, removes the battery, and throws it into the waste bin next to the hotel’s front desk. He takes the phone in both hands and, as he crosses to the gift shop, cracks it down the middle. He goes to a refrigerator full of sodas and opens the door. The cold hits him in the face. He pulls the air into his lungs. It feels good.

He reaches into the back of the case for two Cokes, drops the phone. It clatters behind the racks.

He pays for the Cokes and heads back to the hotel room.

Baitsakhan is on the couch in the junior suite. He sits on the edge of the cushion, his back straight, his eyes closed. The gauze on his wrist stump is blotted by spots of dark blood. His remaining hand—his right hand—is in a fist.

Maccabee closes the door. “I got you a Coke.”

“I don’t like Coke.”

“Of course you don’t.”

“Jalair liked Coke.”

I wish I were Playing with him instead, Maccabee thinks. He twists open his soda, it makes a little hiss, he takes a sip. It tickles his tongue and throat. It’s delicious. “We’re going to Berlin, Baits.”

Baitsakhan opens his deep brown eyes and gazes at Maccabee. “The wind doesn’t blow me there, brother.”

“Yes, it does.”

“No. We have to kill the Aksumite.”

“No, we don’t.”

“Yes, we do.”

Maccabee pulls the orb out of his pocket. “There’s no point. Hilal is nearly dead. He isn’t going anywhere. Besides, his line would be guarding him. It would be suicide to go back there now. Better to wait it out. Maybe he dies anyway and spares us a trip.”

“Who then? The Harappan? To avenge Bat and Bold?”

Maccabee approaches Baitsakhan and lightly slaps his stump. Maccabee knows this hurts, but Baitsakhan only sucks his teeth. “She’s too far away. Others are much closer—others who have Earth Key. Others who are Playing by the rules. You remember what the orb showed us, don’t you?”

“Yes. That stone monument. That girl called Sarah getting the first Key. Yes … You’re right.”

Maccabee thinks, That’s the closest thing to an apology I’ve ever heard from him.

Baitsakhan nods. “We need to go for them.”

“I’m glad you agree. First things first. You need to get your arm fixed.”

“I don’t want it fixed. I don’t need it fixed.”

Maccabee shakes his head. “Don’t you want to shoot your bow again? Rein a horse and swing a sword at the same time? Wring the life from the Harappan with two hands instead of one?”

Baitsakhan tilts his head. “These things aren’t possible.”

“You ever heard of neurofusing? Intelligent prosthetics?”

Baitsakhan wrinkles his brow.

“I swear,” Maccabee says, “you and your line are from a different century. What I’m saying is that we’re going to lend you a hand, so to speak. A better hand than the one you had before.”

Baitsakhan holds up his stump. “Where does such magic happen?”

Maccabee snickers. “Berlin. In two days.”

“Fine. And then?”

“And then we use this,” Maccabee says, holding up the orb that Baitsakhan can’t touch, “to find the Cahokian and the Olmec and take Earth Key for ourselves.”

Baitsakhan closes his eyes again and takes a deep breath. “We hunt.”

“Yes, brother. We hunt.”

“Speculation remains rampant about what’s going on at Stonehenge in the south of England. It’s been nearly a week since locals reported seeing a predawn beam of light surge to the heavens, preceded by massive booming sounds that rang out only seconds before. Given the ancient monument’s mysterious history, people are saying that anything from aliens to secret government agencies to Morlocks, which are a kind of underground-dwelling troglodyte——yes, you heard correctly——are responsible for whatever is going on there. We go now to Fox News correspondent Mills Power, who’s been in nearby Amesbury since the reports started pouring in. Mills?”

“Hello, Stephanie.”

“Can you tell us anything about what’s going on?”

“It’s been very chaotic. This quaint village is overrun with people. Government trucks travel constantly to and from the site, and the air is thick with helicopters. I’ve even been told by an anonymous source that three high-altitude CIA or MI6 Predator drones are in the skies twenty-four hours a day keeping watch. The whole area’s been declared off-limits, and a mix of British, French, German, and American authorities have even covered the site with what is essentially a massive white circus tent.”