James Frey - Rules of the Game

This is a wrinkle that has Aisling feeling very conflicted. On one hand, Aisling suspects that Shari is one of the decent Players, one who doesn’t deserve a meaningless death at the hand of a psychopathic Player. She’s glad that Baitsakhan and Maccabee didn’t kill her. But on the other hand, as far as Shari’s concerned, Aisling probably is that psychopathic Player. If it weren’t for Aisling, Shari’s family would be alive. Sure, her daughter would probably still have been taken by the Nabataean, but all the Harappan who’d taken refuge in the mountains would be breathing if it weren’t for Aisling and her ragtag death squad.

Aisling tries to reason out of this by blaming Endgame for what happened—Aisling didn’t make Shari’s daughter one of the fucking keys, Endgame did. Aisling was only doing what she thought she had to do to stop Endgame, and Shari, for her part, was only doing what any mother would do.

All of which makes Aisling want to stop Endgame—and punish the Makers, especially kepler 22b—all the more.

Aisling knows in her bones that when Shari wakes up she won’t be in a very forgiving mood. All Shari will want is revenge, and Aisling knows that revenge is a soul-gnashing affliction that operates completely outside the realm of logic. Sure, Aisling could wave her hands at Chopra and plead for reason, insisting that Endgame killed all of Chopra’s people, but Aisling also knows that’s bullshit. She killed those people, along with Jordan and Pop and the rest of her team. And for better or worse, Chopra is now slumped behind Aisling in the jeep.

Jordan drives, Aisling wedged between him and Marrs in the front seat. Whenever Jordan shifts gears he reaches between Aisling’s legs. He half apologizes each time until Aisling tells him to shut up. He does. Sarah’s in the middle of the backseat, between Shari and Jago, her body folded awkwardly into Jago’s lap, her injured arm, which Aisling patched up, bent into a sling. Jago is awake and mostly silent. His hand rests on top of Sarah’s head, his fingers entwined in her hair. He’s said very little, but when he does speak he’s been even-tempered and friendly.

Pop is a different story.

He’s in the wayback, jigsawed into the gear they couldn’t leave behind—mainly guns and a mobile satellite uplink that Marrs uses for internet access. Pop has not said a single word since they forged this latest alliance. He hasn’t asked about Sky Key or spoken to Sarah or Jago at all. He hasn’t said if he’s on board with the plan to meet Stella, and he hasn’t said he’s against it.

To Aisling, his silence is the same as a full-throated scream. She knows that Pop hates the course they’re charting. It goes against every one of his beliefs. It is not what Endgame is meant to be.

Aisling is not sure how she’s going to handle Pop, but she knows that it will fall on her to handle him when the time comes.

The others don’t seem as concerned. Especially Jordan and Marrs.

Ever since getting into the jeep, Marrs has been tearing around the internet, going from news sites to encrypted government forums to deep-web hovels full of rumor and intrigue, providing an account of recent world events and bantering with Jordan on pretty much every point.

“The space agencies have been scrambling since the kepler’s announcement. At the moment, NASA’s got Abaddon falling in the North Atlantic,” Marrs says in his nasal monotone. “South of Halifax. Gonna wipe out a lot of land. A lot .”

“Fucking hell,” Jordan says. “What’s DC doing?”

“Moving. Lock, stock, and barrel. Looks like to Colorado.”

“NORAD?”

“Naturally. Gold’s going through the roof, New York’s under martial law but seems pretty tame. Boston is coming apart at the seams, though. One of the New England Patriots did a murder-suicide with his wife and kids—dog too.”

“Any flags on other Players?” Jordan asks.

“There’s some indication that the Shang is in Kolkata, but it’s pretty tenuous, and my Bengali is shit. No sign of the Nabataean yet. Oh—and looks like someone’s destroying monuments.”

“Besides Stonehenge?” Jordan asks incredulously.

“Yeah. This morning while we were trekking from the fortress, a group of nongovernmental operators that remains anonymous, at least to our guys, blew up the ziggurat at Chogha Zanbil. That was the Sumerian one.”

“Stella won’t like that.”

“No, she won’t,” Marrs says.

Jordan whips the jeep around a slow-moving truck, guiding them into oncoming traffic, which is de rigueur for India. A motor scooter buzzes out of the way into the shoulder and passes them.

“What the hell are you guys talking about?” Jago demands.

Aisling nods. “Yeah, what are you talking about?”

“Your line has a monument that is more sacred than any other—right, Aisling?” Jordan asks.

“Jordan, you know it was Stonehenge.” Asshole, Aisling thinks.

Jordan says, “And you, Tlaloc?”

“We do. It’s on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico.”

“La Venta,” Marrs says.

Jago looks a little surprised, and thinks that maybe these guys really do know more than he thought they could about Endgame. “ Sí. That’s what we call it.”

Jordan asks, “And your girlfriend?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Jago says. He’s lying, though. He knows the exact location of the prime Cahokian monument. It’s called Monks Mound, and it’s in southern Illinois, not far from St. Louis, Missouri. He knows this because it’s where the Cahokian Rebellion of 1613 occurred. The rebellion that the Olmec oracle, Aucapoma Huayna, told him all about. The rebellion that branded the Cahokians as unworthy of winning Endgame, which was precisely why Aucapoma had implored Jago to end his alliance with Sarah Alopay. No, more than that—the Cahokians were so dangerous that Aucapoma had ordered Jago to kill Sarah so he could prove to the Makers that he’d not been poisoned by the Cahokian Player.

Too late for that.

As much as he might want, Jago isn’t about to start talking about all of this. It would be too revealing, too … complicating . So he plays dumb, and they believe him.

“Well, her line has one,” Marrs says. “Called Monks Mound. Big tourist attraction now, kinda like Stonehenge but not as well-known.”

“Never heard of it,” Jago says.

“I have,” Aisling says. “Used to be the center of some huge Native American city.”

“Once upon a time it was the largest city in all of the Americas, long before any Europeans outside of Vikings even knew about the New World,” Jordan says.

“All right,” Jago says, “but why are these places so important to finishing Endgame?”

“What he said,” Aisling adds, sticking a thumb in Jago’s direction.

“I’m going to let Stella fill you in on the details,” Jordan says as he works the jeep through a series of accordion-like turns, “but we’re certain that Sun Key is hidden in one of them.”

Jago leans forward, nearly pushing Sarah’s head off his leg. “No shit?”

“No shit,” Marrs says. “And if they all get toasted before the Player with the first two keys finds it, well …”

“No one will be able to win,” Aisling says.

“Bingo,” Jordan says.

“Who is this Stella woman?” Aisling asks.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” Jordan says.

Jago leans back in his seat, resettling Sarah’s head across his thigh. “Whoever she is, you’ve gotten my attention, Mr. Jordan. I look forward to meeting her.”

“I can promise that the feeling is mutual. She has been waiting to meet you— all of you—for a very, very long time.”