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Reap
James Frey


A short prequel story set within the world of Endgame – the New York Times bestselling series and international multimedia phenomenon by James Frey.Humanity rests on the shoulders of the Players representing the twelve lines. But there are some people out there who aren’t keen to let their fate be decided by twelve strangers. They are Endgame conspiracy theorists, people who fear and know of the coming Event and will stop at nothing to ruin Endgame in a desperate bid for survival. They call themselves The Zero Line, and they have one goal: kill all of the living Players before Endgame even begins.























Copyright (#ulink_2ee5d628-6537-5742-b53b-24c78a78be2a)


First published in ebook in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2016

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

Endgame: The Zero Line Chronicles: Reap © 2016 by Third Floor Fun, LLC

Cover design and logo by Rodrigo Corral Design

Additional logo and icon design by John Dismukes

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780062332721

Ebook Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780007585304

Version: 2016-05-11


Contents

Cover (#u23807963-6049-588c-981a-2680a04ba99a)

Title Page (#u4e0fd2ee-e1c9-557f-8f6f-e7e6f833e7b6)

Copyright (#u861147b7-5b22-5419-ac78-784c630ba5db)

Chapter One (#u98b58b16-596e-5a9f-ba67-6bc92066c8b9)

Chapter Two (#ufe2768a8-630a-5858-9dea-1d683d17864f)

Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading for Endgame the Calling (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading for Endgame the Complete Training Diaries (#litres_trial_promo)

Endgame series (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_c7b9ea17-ac5d-5124-b2c0-03d3b162b1e8)


“It’s time,” I said to Kat.

We double-checked our guns, made sure they were loaded, flicked off the safeties, and headed down the hall. We stopped at room 412. It was five in the morning.

Ready? Kat mouthed.

I nodded.

I knocked on the door.

This was it—what we had been preparing for all summer. We—just Kat and I—were knocking on the door of a Player. Raakel, the Minoan. Last week, Kat and I had planted a bomb next to her house in Istanbul, “inviting” her to come to Zero line’s fake Calling. We thought she might have died in the explosion—the bomb was supposed to imitate a sign from the heavens, a message from the alien Makers.

And now we were supposed to reason with her, with this Player who was trained to be a killing machine. That’s what a Calling was meant to be: the starting point of a bloodbath in which twelve killing machines, representatives of their civilizations, would each try to be the last one standing in a global fight that would decide the fate of the world.

And we needed to stop it.

My M1911 pistol was tucked into the back of my pants, covered by a long Munich Olympics T-shirt. Kat was carrying a Beretta in the front pocket of her sweatshirt. I had my backpack for our walkie-talkie and a few other supplies we might need.

There was the sound of the deadbolt being unlocked, and I tensed up, wishing my gun were in my hand. But no. We were here to talk to her, not to kill her.

Kat and I already had blood on our hands, and we didn’t want more. The door opened.

Raakel stood there, fully dressed in a pair of jeans and a loose blouse. Her black hair was pulled back in a ponytail. There was a smirk on her face. Despite the early hour, she looked fully awake and ready for the Calling.

“I was wondering when you would show up,” she said with very little accent. “You followed me with all the stealth of stampeding bulls.

You’re staying in a house with sixteen or seventeen others?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. We were supposed to be surprising her, not the other way around.

“We’re here to talk to you,” Kat said.

“How do you know who I am?” Raakel asked. “For that matter, who do you think I am?”

Kat answered. “You’re the Player for the Minoans.”

“How do you know this?” she asked. “What line are you from?”

“Zero line,” I said, finally getting my voice back. “We have important things to talk to you about.”

“There is no such line.” She opened the door an inch or two wider, just enough to let us pass. With her eyes trained carefully on us the whole time, she motioned us into her room. I caught a flash of metal at her side, and I realized she was carrying a blade that looked like a sword of some kind. My pulse was pounding so loud I was sure she could hear it.

“Consider us a group of concerned citizens,” Kat said. I noticed the shake in her voice, and I wondered if Raakel could tell how nervous we were.

Raakel laughed as she closed the door. I walked to the table in the corner of the room, and when we sat, I got a better look at the weapon she was holding: a long, skinny machete. My heart jumped into my throat at the look of the sword.

“Oh, this?” she said with a cold smile, sitting on the foot of the bed and laying the sword across her lap. “It’s called a yatağan. I assume you’re both armed. I wanted to even things out. Now: talk.”

Kat and I gave each other a look. Her tanned face was pale, or maybe it was just an effect of the lamplight. She was scared. I wondered if she could see the same fear on me.

I turned to Raakel. “We’re here to tell you to give this up. Our group is talking to all twelve lines this morning. We want you to ignore the Calling, and to stop Playing.”

Raakel laughed. “I am a Player. I’ve trained for this for seventeen years. My whole life. It’s not just something I do; it’s who I am. Why on earth would I give it up just because two strangers ask me to?”

“The Makers shouldn’t be running the world. They shouldn’t be toying with humanity like this. It’s just a game they’re playing.”

“It’s a game I’m Playing,” she said.

Kat and I exchanged glances. We knew we were right, but I don’t think either of us felt fully prepared to convince someone to give up everything that made them who they were.

“You have to give it up. All of you do—all of the Players from all of the lines. Listen: if you don’t Play—if we can keep everyone from Playing—then there can be no Endgame. We can save the world.” Raakel narrowed her eyes.

Kat jumped in. “The best way things can work out right now is that one of you wins and only your line will survive, and the other eleven lines on Earth get destroyed. Right? That’s the best-case scenario if you Play Endgame. Millions of people will still die.”

“And you two think that my not Playing will save those lives?” Raakel tightened her grip on the machete. “I don’t know what you believe you understand about Endgame, but this entire world rests on the game. The history of the human race rests on the game. That’s why we Play. It’s always been this way.”

“But,” I said, “what happens if no one Plays? If there’s no winner, there will be no losers.”

She shook her head. “If there’s no winner, we all become the losers. If we defy the Makers, what’s to stop them from killing all of us as punishment? Just wiping us off the face of the Earth and starting over?”

“Here,” I said. I reached to pull several papers from my back pocket. Raakel jumped up, her sword ready in her hand.

“Sorry,” I said, freezing. “I have something for you to read. Can I just pull it out of my pocket?”

“You read it to me,” she said.

I had spent a year as a furniture salesman, and I knew when I was losing a customer. Usually they didn’t threaten me with swords, though.

With trembling fingers, I unfolded the Xeroxed pages. “This is from an ancient document that we acquired from trusted sources on the inside.

“‘This is the lie, the one that has fueled your life and the lives of all who have come before you. I have risked everything to remove the veil of mystery that shrouds the Annunaki … It will all be for nothing …

“‘The Mu had a choice. You have a choice.

“‘To Play the game is to lose the game …

“‘Prove to the Annunaki that you are not mindless animals, that you can think … We, all of us, deserve a chance to live.

“‘Choose to question what you have been taught.

“‘Choose to be free, that we might all be free.

“‘Choose not to Play.’”

Kat spoke. “That’s from the Brotherhood of the Snake. We know at least two lines had this document in their archives. Maybe you recognize it?”

“The Brotherhood of the Snake?” Raakel scoffed. “Who are they to tell me how I should be Playing? I’ve never even heard of them.”

“Just think about it,” Kat said. “I totally understand what you’re feeling right now. You’re being confronted by two people you don’t know, and you’re being told to give up everything that you’ve ever been trained to believe. But this is real. It doesn’t get more important than this.”

I watched Raakel watch Kat, her eyes narrowing. Now that we were sitting there, facing a real Player, I couldn’t help but see the cracks in our plan. We’d been thinking about this as a question of reason, that the Players would discuss it rationally. But I didn’t realize until now what an emotional decision we were asking them to make.

What did it feel like to be asked to give up your entire belief system? I remembered how hard it had been for me to believe in what Zero line was doing. It took having my hand forced—realizing I had nothing left—for me to join them. I wondered: If I’d had a real choice, would I have left Berkeley to go on this crazy mission?

Raakel shifted the sword to her left hand.

“So what if I don’t Play, and you can’t convince every other line? I will have to Play, or my line will perish.”

“We’re out this morning to stop every other line,” I said. “That’s our goal.”

“Why should I trust you? Maybe you’re working for another line, trying to remove some of the Players.”

“Look at me,” I said, raising my voice slightly. “My name is Michael Stavros. I’m Greek. Odds are I’m a Minoan, just like you. If I believed that stopping you would cause the death of me and all my family, do you really think I’d be doing it?”

“What is this word you use? Stop? What is that supposed to mean?”

Kat’s voice was pleading now. “It means that we want you to turn around and get on a plane back to Istanbul. Don’t Play the game.” “Just ‘don’t Play the game’?”

“That’s right,” she said. “Don’t Play the game.”

“And what do I tell my family? My line? Their hopes are pinned on me. The lives of millions rest on my shoulders. And I should just turn my back on my responsibility?”

“You tell them just what we’re telling you. That you don’t believe in it. That you’re walking away.”

Raakel stood up. For what felt like several minutes she paced the room. The machete never left her hand.

“And if you can’t convince me to do that, how are you supposed to stop me? Does your Zero line have a plan for that?”

Damn it. For a minute I’d thought we had her.

“We’re supposed to stop you,” Kat said. “That’s all. Stop.”

“You think it will be that easy? You underestimate me. I know some of the other lines,” Raakel said. “We watch each other. The Harappan. You will not ‘stop’ him. And the Mu. And probably many others. You will fail. And then what will you do?”

“We will stop them,” I said. “We will.”

My heart rate was skyrocketing, and I felt sick to my stomach. We were going to have to kill her. One of us had to draw our gun and fire it before Raakel could swing her vicious sword.

I hadn’t shot anyone since I killed the sheriff back in California. That seemed so long ago, but so present. I still saw that man’s face down the sights of a gun, no matter how many rounds I had fired down the shooting range.

“Stop us how?”

Neither Kat nor I said anything. We sat, tense, staring at Raakel and the sword in her hand. This was not how this discussion was supposed to go. She was supposed to see reason. She was supposed to know that the game didn’t have to be Played. But I saw now how naïve we were being.

One of us is going to die.

Raakel was going to swing her sword and kill one of us, and if we were lucky, the other one would draw their gun and shoot before she turned on them. And that was the best case. The worst was that neither Kat nor I would make it out of here alive. We were going up against people who had been trained by mentors like Walter. The Players were too good for us. And they had been indoctrinated from birth. They weren’t going to be convinced in a 20-minute conversation. They weren’t going to give up on everything they’d been raised to believe.

“There’s more to this book from the Brotherhood of the Snake,” I said, trying to get Raakel to think about something other than killing us, and the meaning of “stop.”

“What else is in there?” she said, but she was smiling, toying with us. This was the start of the game for her. She was enjoying it. Two easy kills before moving on to the real Calling.

“It gives the history of the game,” I said. “It explains how the Makers started Endgame as just that: a game.”

Kat jumped in. “You don’t have to fight. The Makers started all of this as sport for themselves—initially they just hunted us themselves.

Then they turned us on each other.”

As I sat there and watched her, I realized something: this was real.

I had had my doubts all summer, while we were at the ranch and hearing John and Walter talk to us every night about the Players, the Calling, Endgame itself. Even while we were delivering invitations, there was a voice in the back of my mind that said that Agatha, Walter, and all the others were delusional. That aliens weren’t real. But now I had to face the facts. There really were Players. They really had responded to our bizarre invitations. They didn’t just have to Play. They were eager to.

Raakel stood up, and we did the same. I felt the gun heavy and cold against my back.

“We are done,” she said.

“Here,” I begged. “Read the pages.” I pushed the papers to her. If she took them and looked down, we could get the jump on her.

She glanced down at the papers, laughing. “I don’t care what your book says. I don’t know where it came from, and there’s no reason I should believe it. Like I said: maybe you’re from another line? Maybe you’re trying to get rid of your competition.”

“Just read the pages,” I said again. “Please.”

She laughed and took them from me, and immediately Kat and I both grabbed our guns.

There was a flash of movement, the papers dropping from her hands.

She changed the sword back to her right hand—she wasn’t ready; she had been too cocky.

I saw the Beretta in Kat’s hand before I could draw my gun.

Raakel swung the sword just as Kat fired.

The sword hit Kat in the arm, and she screamed. Raakel grunted loudly, reminding me of a tennis player whose racket had just connected with a hard serve.

My gun was out and I fired. We were too close for me to miss her, but I was scared, trembling, and my shots were off target: my first hit her in the thigh; then I hit her stomach three times.

Kat dropped the Beretta from her injured hand, and Raakel dropped the sword.

“Aman tanrım,” Raakel said, as she stumbled back and sat on the bed. There was blood everywhere—spatters all across the blankets, a sure sign that the bullets I’d fired had exited her back. She had her hands on her abdomen.

“Aman tanrım,” she said again, sucking in air as the blood flowed.

“Bok. What did you do?”

“We had to stop you,” I said.

Next to me, Kat ran for the bathroom.

“Kat?” I called.

“I need a towel,” she said. There was a trail of her blood on the carpet.

“We have to get out of here!”

“You’re fools,” Raakel said with a wince. “You can’t stop everyone. You can’t stop the Makers.”

“You should have listened,” I said.

“Someone will take my place.” Raakel’s voice was weak. “Don’t you know that? And someone will take their place. And it will continue.

There’s no way to stop us.”

“We’re going to stop everyone,” I said.

She grimaced, hunching over. “Kill me,” she said. “You want to stop me, so just do it. I’m going to bleed out.”

I held the gun to her head.

There was the sheriff. There was Tommy. Staring back at me with lifeless eyes over the barrel of my gun.

Kat came back. “We have to get out of here.” She had a white hand towel wrapped around her arm. “I need you to tie this.”

“Just do it,” Raakel repeated.

I couldn’t force myself to look at her.

“Do it,” Kat said.

I closed my eyes and fired two bullets into Raakel’s head. When I looked again, Raakel was slumped over, sliding off the bed and onto the floor in front of me.

“You tried, Mike,” Kat said, gritting her own teeth against the pain.

“We both tried as hard as we could.”

“Did we? Well, it wasn’t good enough.” I felt tears welling up in my throat, hot and painful. “Kat, I don’t know if we’re going to convince any of them.”

“I need you to tie this,” she said again, her voice shaking. I turned and looked at her. She was pale and scared.

“Come on,” she said. “We’re going to have police on us any minute now. We probably woke up everyone in this whole hotel.”

I put my gun back in my waistband and took the ends of the towel in my hands. “How is it?” I asked, as I tied it into a makeshift bandage. “It’s the back of my arm,” she said. “So no arteries or anything like that. But it went down to the bone. I need stitches.”

I tightened it and then reached down to pick up her fallen gun. She took it with her left hand.

“There’s a back stairway,” she said.

“Okay.”

She took a robe from the closet and pulled it on, putting the Beretta into a pocket. As we got outside into the hall, we saw a dozen other guests, most of them in pajamas or bathrobes; they all looked tired and bewildered, wondering where the noise had come from. Rumors of whatever was going on in the Olympic apartments had to be passing around. Kat and I played it cool, trying to take on the same look that the others had.

An employee of the hotel made an announcement in German that I didn’t understand, but Kat did.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said.

“The back?” I asked.

“No, the lobby.”

At the front desk Kat asked the clerk a question in German, and he nodded.

He opened a drawer, neatly organized with all kinds of toiletries: toothbrushes, shower caps, fingernail clippers. He pulled out a little packet and a book of matches and handed them to Kat.

“Danke,” she said.

“Bitte.”

We slipped out the front door and crossed the street to a park. It was still dark out, but the eastern sky was beginning to lighten.

“What’s that?” I asked, as she led me to a picnic table.

“A sewing kit,” she said, sitting down and opening the small packet, revealing thread, needles, and a couple of buttons. “You’re going to stitch me up.”




CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_e9dc8b49-255b-565f-b32b-adccc1b3d880)


We had a first aid kit in the backpack and she opened it and took two painkillers. I opened an alcohol swab and wiped the vicious gouge. The Turkish blade had cut cleanly—a straight cut through the sweatshirt, skin, muscle, down to the bone. I lit a match to sterilize the needle and then tried to follow Kat’s instructions to stitch the wound up cleanly. It took me a few minutes to get the hang of it—I was timid at first, knowing how much pain she had to be in—but I soon figured it out. It was going to be an awful-looking scar, but she said it had to be done.

While I worked, she got on the walkie-talkie and called to report in. She had the earphone in, so I couldn’t follow most of the conversation. “We had to kill her,” Kat said. “Yes … No, there was no other choice … No. No. At least I don’t think so … Yes. Mike is stitching me up, but I’m not going to be able to use my right hand. It severed the muscle and tendons I think. I need a hospital … We’re in a park across from the hotel … Okay. We’ll see you.”

There was a long pause, and she looked down at the slash. She was far more comfortable with blood and being stitched up than I was. I didn’t know what kind of pain pills she’d taken, but they must have been strong. She’d been the one to make the first aid kits, and I’d have been willing to bet that she’d taken the pills from the clinic where she worked—these weren’t over-the-counter medications.

“How are we going to explain this to a hospital?” I asked. “People don’t normally stitch themselves up.”

“You’d be surprised what people do,” she said. “Lots of patients self-medicate, and do crazy things like try to remove teeth with pliers or try to close a wound with superglue. That one’s not so crazy. It works pretty well for small stuff. Medics use it in Vietnam. I don’t know if it’s been studied for toxicity, though.”

“You’re not going to be able to use your hand?”

“No, since you’re not suturing the tendons. That’s going to need a hospital.”

“Then what good is stitching?”

She smiled through her pain. “It stops the bleeding.”

“What did John have to say?” I asked, gesturing to the walkie-talkie.

“Mary and Tyson had to kill their Player too. The Koori. Tyson took a bullet, and they’re in the hospital. Walter is off meeting with the Cahokian. He thinks he’ll be able to reason with him, since they know each other.”

I concentrated on the last little bit of the wound, as Kat instructed me how to close it and tie the thread off. When I finished, I took her injured hand in mine. She moved her fingers a little, just to see what they could still do.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought that I could draw my gun faster than she could attack.”

“It’s okay,” Kat said.

“You know what, though? I honestly thought she’d be a lot harder to kill. I thought she had some kind of trick up her sleeve. Walter and Agatha really made these guys out to be worse than they are.”

“I don’t know. You’re not the one who got hacked with a sword.”

I laughed a little. “Fair point. You know what’s weird? No police are going to the hotel. We fired, what, five shots? Six? And nobody is there to investigate.”

“Maybe they came and they just don’t have their sirens on. I can’t see the entrance to the hotel from here.”

I nodded. They could be going room to room with a SWAT team, searching for bullet holes, looking for bodies. They’d find Raakel and her sword and that would be that. It would be a puzzle that they never solved.

At least I hoped they’d never solve it. No police department would ever believe in Endgame, would they? Not even when they found Raakel and the Koori.

“What are we supposed to do about the Aksumite?” I asked, suddenly worried about everybody. “Rodney and Jim and Julia never came back from Ethiopia. Agatha never spotted the Aksumite Player. I think we have to assume he killed them?”

“Maybe the bomb went off too soon and killed them.”

“Either way, that’s a loose end we need to tie up.”

“Maybe.” Then she stopped. Her face grew even paler than it already was. “Wait. Mike. Did you get the pages off the floor—the Brotherhood of the Snake stuff?”

My heart dropped. “No. And that’s my only copy.”

“That’s our only copy,” she said. “But that’s not what I’m worried about. Our fingerprints are all over that thing.”

“They’ll be all over the table and chairs too,” I said.

“Yeah, but there will be a thousand fingerprints on the table, from everyone who has stayed in that room. But those papers lead directly back to us—just our prints and Raakel’s. We’ll get put into a database from Interpol or something.”

“But they can’t connect us to anything,” I said. “Right?”

“What about the gun store robbery? The bank robbery? Both our prints were at the bank.”

“There’d be no reason why a shooting at the Olympics in Munich would ever be connected to a bank robbery in California. No one would make the connection. No one would compare the prints.”

She pulled the robe closer around herself, as if she was cold. “Except that there’s some kind of terrorist attack going on at the same time we’re killing people in their hotel rooms. And how many witnesses saw us come out of that door?”

“We can’t just go back there,” I said. “There’s no way we can get them back. We’re screwed, Kat.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “We need to talk to John and Walter. They’re all coming here, after Mary gets done with Tyson.”

“Why here?”

“It’s kind of a central location. We’re all going to meet up and try some new tactics.”

I nodded. “Good. Because Raakel was totally unswayed by our arguments.”

Kat stood, but she was a little unsteady on her feet. “You okay?” I asked. Kat was stronger than most people I knew, but everyone had a limit. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t reached mine yet.

“Let’s get to a more concealed part of the park.”

“Right. And you need to get out of that bathrobe.”

“Everyone else is in robes,” she said, gesturing to the hotel guests who had filled the street after the alarms went off. “You wear it.”

“But we don’t want to look like we came out of that place.”

Kat set her face in a grimace. “You need to get in there, fast,” Kat said, with a slight slur. “Go now, while everyone is outside and the police haven’t arrived yet. I’d go with you, but I think I’m not fit for service right now.”

I helped her down on a park bench, farther from the street now that it was getting light.

“Stay here,” I said.

I took another look at the slice in her arm and my poor, uneven stitching. She was definitely going to have a scar—but hopefully she’d regain the use of her fingers. At least the bleeding had stopped.

She took a pouch of something out of the first aid kid—some kind of antibacterial something—and squirted it all along the cut.

“Can you help me with the bandage?” she said, pulling two-inch squares of gauze from the first aid kit.

She held the cotton down with her left hand, and I taped it on. I was no surgeon—I wrapped a strip of tape all the way around her arm twice.

I took the robe from her and put it on myself. I left her gun with her, in the backpack. The robe was snug, but no one else looked particularly well dressed. They’d been awakened by a fire alarm early in the morning. The fact that my robe had blood on it seemed to go unnoticed by anyone in the crowd. There was a lot, but it mostly stained the inside of the fluffy material, not soaking through.

Despite the fire alarm and the noise of bullets, there were only two fire trucks—no police at all yet.

“Absurd,” a man next to me said in a proper English accent. “To be awakened at this hour is absurd. They don’t even know what they’re looking for. I don’t see any smoke. Do you?”

“No,” I said. “And I have to get inside. If there is a fire, I have documents in there that can’t be destroyed.”

“Good luck. The concierge is turning everyone away at the door.”

I hadn’t had a good look at the entrance, so I bade good morning to the man, and walked around a fire truck, the word FEUERWEHR emblazoned on the front. There was a single man at the top of the stairs—a balding man in a suit and tie, who was giving his assurances in English and German to the guests that everything would be fine.

He said it was likely a false alarm.

“Wait to go in,” a voice behind me said.

I startled and looked back. It was John.

“How did you get here so fast?”

“I was only down the street at the Staatlich hotel. Say good-bye to the La Tène.”

“I thought that Agatha was going after the La Tène?”

“Agatha talked to the La Tène last night. But he wouldn’t get on board.

Agatha left him for us—he wouldn’t agree to stop Playing, and she said she wasn’t going to kill anyone.”

“You had to kill?”

He nodded, his lips forming a thin line. “I think we’re going to have to kill more today.”

I sighed and shook my head. “The Minoan got Kat pretty good,” I said.

“I had to kill her—” I laughed tiredly. “Kill the Minoan, not Kat.”

“I knew what you meant. Where is she?”

“In the park. I stitched her up, but she won’t be using her right hand anytime soon.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah. And I left evidence in the room. I’ve got to get in there.”

“What did you leave?”

“The Brotherhood of the Snake papers.”

“Some good they did, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, annoyed by how casual John was. He was always like this. Walter was the one who barked orders. John just talked like a normal person. He talked like a peacenik half the time, and I’d rarely seen someone get a rise out of him.

“Who says you need to go back inside and get them?”

“Our fingerprints are all over them.”

“It’s a risk we have to take. You can’t go back in there.”

“But they’re what’s supposed to convince them to join us,” I said, my panic rising. “We only have so many copies.”

“Mike,” John said, “I think it’s time that you face the facts. Negotiation hasn’t worked. We need to just get in there, eliminate them, and get out.”

“We can keep trying,” I said.

“Mike,” John said, grabbing my arm. “You didn’t really ever expect that to work, did you? These Players are trained killers. Their whole lives have been built on the idea that Endgame is real and they’re saving their entire line—that everyone they know and love will be killed if they don’t win. Negotiation was idealistic, and it’s not working.”

“They’re not that good,” I said. “You made them out to be half kung-fu master and half gunslinger. And so far we’ve killed the Minoan, the Koori, the La Tène, and the Cahokian. These Players aren’t what we expected them to be.”

“We haven’t heard from Walter on the Cahokian yet. Barbara and Douglas haven’t called in yet from the Olmec, either. Tyson took a bullet. We haven’t heard from Larry, Lee, and Lin, either, or Molly, Henry, and Phyllis. Bakr too. Don’t make the mistake that this is going to be easy.”

“Mary’s okay?” I asked.

“She’s fine. Cuts and bruises.”

“We need to rethink this. We’re not getting any of the results that we set out to get. This is going to turn into a bloodbath.”

“Yes we are, and it already is,” John said, with a fierceness in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before. “Tell me you never thought that this was going to end peacefully. We warned you: the Players are trained killers, not diplomats. They’re here to do one thing: kill everyone who stands in their way. We need to move to Plan Charlie.”

“Plan Charlie? Go in guns blazing? What about Bravo? What about talking to them?”




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