James Frey - The Calling

Sarah doesn’t want her brother to be dead or her best friend to be armless in the ICU or her school to be gone. She doesn’t want most of her classmates to have been obliterated. She doesn’t want any part of it. She doesn’t want to be the Player.

Too bad for her.

She sits at the linoleum-topped table, her fingers laced. Simon and Olowa stand behind her. Christopher returned to the crash site to help pull survivors out of the wreckage and do whatever else he can. He’s kind that way. Kind and brave and strong.

Christopher does not know what Sarah is or what she’s going to have to do. He does not know that the meteor fell from the sky in order to deliver her a message. In a way, all those deaths were caused by Sarah’s presence. And there will be more death if Sarah doesn’t Play. Everyone within hundreds, thousands of miles will die if she doesn’t win.

The Alopays are still in shock. They look like actors from a war movie. Sarah hasn’t spoken. Simon has been crying quietly. Olowa has been steeling herself against what has passed and what is yet to come.

The multicolored meteorite rests on an ancient ceramic platter on the table. Olowa has told them that it’s called pallasite—a kind of nickel-iron rock laced with a colorful substance called olivine. In spite of its small size, it weighs 9.91 kg. Cut into the pallasite is a perfect triangular hole.

The stone that flew from Sarah’s neck and saved them rests on the table. It is jet-black, darker than the insides of Sarah’s eyes.

Next to the stone is a rough-edged sheet of yellow paper, and a glass beaker of clear liquid.

Sarah picks up the stone. They have talked about this moment for years. Though Sarah never believed it would come, and doesn’t think her parents did either, now it’s here. They have to follow each step, in proper order. When they were young, before they were eligible, she and Tate would playact and pretend they were doing it. They were children. Like fools, they thought Endgame would be cool.

It isn’t.

Sarah turns the stone in her hand. It is a tetrahedron. Its four triangular sides are exactly the same dimensions as the hole in the chunk of meteorite. The small pyramidal rock is familiar yet foreign. There is no record of its exact age, but the Alopays know that it is at least 30,000 years old. It comes from an era in human history when humans were not believed to have possessed the tools capable of crafting a thing so fine. It comes from a time when humans were not believed to have even been aware of the perfect proportions of golden triangles. But here it is. Passed down again and again and again. An artifact of history before history. A history that is not thought to have existed.

“Here goes,” Sarah says.

This is it.

The future is unwritten.

What will be will be.

She holds the stone over the meteorite; it jumps from her hand and snaps into place, melding with the pallasite. The hairline gap between the objects disappears. For a moment nothing happens. A rock is a rock is a rock is a rock. But as they watch, the stone she wore around her neck turns to dust, as do 3.126 inches of the meteorite around it. The dust mixes, mingles, dances, settles after 11 seconds.

She learned the process when she was five years old. Each step must be done in the proper order.

She pours the dust onto the parchment.

“Ahama muhu lopeke tepe,” her father chants through silent tears. He would rather be grieving for his lost son, but knows there is no time for that.

She spreads the dust.

“Ahama muhu gobekli mu,” her mother chants more resolutely.

She pours the liquid on it.

“Ahaman jeje. Ahaman kerma,” her parents chant together.

The dust steams; the air fills with an acrid smell; the edges of the paper curl, turning the flat sheet into a bowl.

“Ahaman jeje. Ahaman kerma,” her parents chant together.

She picks it up, mixes it.

The liquid evaporates and the dust turns red.

And it appears.

The message.

The Calling.

Sarah stares at the markings. Even though she was not supposed to be the Player, she has always had an affinity for codes and languages. She has been studying them in all their forms since she was four years old. They start shifting into place.

She sees the numbers that are telling her where and how she will start to win.

Sarah thinks about her brother, how Tate couldn’t accept that he had been disqualified from Endgame for losing an eye. How he’d been drifting through his years of ineligibility, how he’d grieved at his inability to continue and the passing of the responsibility to Sarah. How excited he’d looked that afternoon when he’d recovered the meteorite for her. How she can’t actually believe that she’s going to be the one Playing Endgame, and not him. How she is going to have to

Play alone, without Tate’s support.

She thinks about Reena and her missing arm, the confusion on her face. She thinks about Christopher pulling bodies from under rubble. She thinks about her speech. I choose to be the person that I want to be. Those words seem so hollow now that Sarah has no choice.

She will make sure that her family and friends did not die in vain.

All 12 Players of all 12 lines receive the message.

All 12 Players of all 12 lines will attend the Calling.

The 12 Players of the 12 lines are:

Marcus Loxias Megalos, viiiMinoan, ix16.24 years

Chiyoko Takeda, xMu, xi17.89 years

Sarah Alopay, xiiCahokian, xiii17.98 years

Alice Ulapala, xivKoori, xv18.34 years

Aisling Kopp, xviLa Tène, xvii19.94 years

Baitsakhan, xviiiDonghu, xix13.02 years

Jago Tlaloc, xxOlmec, xxi19.14 years

An Liu, xxiiShang, xxiii17.46 years

Shari Chopra, xxivHarrapan, xxv17.82 years

Kala Mozami, xxviSumerian, xxvii16.50 years

Maccabee Adlai, xxviiiNabataean, xxix16.42 years

Hilal ibn Isa al-Salt, xxxAksumite, xxxi18.69 years

Maccabee Adlai, the Player of the 8th line, settles into the 1st-class cabin on Aeroflot 3501 from Warsaw to Moscow, which will take 93 minutes. In Moscow he will make a connection for a flight to Beijing, which lasts 433 minutes. He is 16 years old but has the build of a decathlete 10 years his senior. He is six feet five inches tall, and he weighs 240 pounds. He has the facial stubble as well, one of those kids who never really looked like a kid. Even when he was seven, he was much taller and stronger than his peers.