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Descendant
James Frey
The second thrilling digital prequel novella to Endgame: The Calling follows the lives of four of the twelve Players before they were chosen as the one to save their ancient bloodline - and win Endgame.Before the Calling . . . Twelve Players-in-training are tested to the very edge of their physical and mental abilities. The second Training Diaries follows Baitsakhan, Maccabee, Shari, and Aisling, as they prepare for the apocalyptic game.They must shed their normal lives and transform into the. Players they were meant to be. They must train, learn, prepare. To Play, survive, and solve. To kill or be killed.Endgame is real. Endgame is coming. And only one can win.
Copyright (#ulink_31874436-e190-5e9f-b603-44ab29bd9d2b)
First Published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2015.
1 London Bridge Street
London, SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
ENDGAME: THE TRAINING DIARIES VOLUME 2: DESCENDANT. Copyright © 2015 by Third Floor Fun, LLC. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, 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 hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Source ISBN: 97800062332684
Ebook Edition © February 2015 ISBN: 9780007585175
Version: 2015-02-18
Contents
Cover (#u758b01ec-8e8f-56b1-a685-762589ed6527)
Title Page (#u72ea090e-6c4e-5e5d-8ff9-9d9f42747f31)
Copyright (#ulink_c4cb5297-8320-5ff6-b2ed-0907d1355049)
La Tène AISLING (#ulink_dbb90776-e974-5b2c-94dd-0f829a6637b7)
Harrapan SHARI (#litres_trial_promo)
Nabataean MACCABEE (#litres_trial_promo)
Donghu BAITSAKHAN (#litres_trial_promo)
Excerpt from Endgame: The Calling (#litres_trial_promo)
Marcus Loxias Megalos (#litres_trial_promo)
Chiyoko Takeda (#litres_trial_promo)
Excerpt from Endgame: The Training Diaries Volume 1: Origins (#litres_trial_promo)
Minoan: MARCUS (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Books in the Endgame Series (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Twelve thousand years ago, they came. They descended from the sky amid smoke and fire, and created humanity and gave us rules to live by. They needed gold and they built our earliest civilizations to mine it for them. When they had what they needed, they left. But before they left, they told us that someday they would come back, and that when they did, a game would be played. A game that would determine our future.
This is Endgame.
For 10,000 years the lines have existed in secret. The 12 original lines of humanity. Each has to have a Player prepared at all times. A Player becomes eligible at 13 and ages out at 19. Each bloodline has its own measure of who is worthy to be chosen. Who is worthy of saving their people. They have trained generation after generation after generation in weapons, languages, history, tactics, disguise, assassination. Together the Players are everything: strong, kind, ruthless, loyal, smart, stupid, ugly, lustful, mean, fickle, beautiful, calculating, lazy, exuberant, weak. They are good and evil. Like you. Like all.
This is Endgame.
When the game starts, the Players will have to find three keys. The keys are somewhere on Earth. The only rule of Endgame is that there are no rules. Whoever finds the keys first wins the game.
These are the stories of the Players before they were chosen—of how they shed their normal lives and transformed into the Players they were meant to be.
These are the Training Diaries.
LA TÈNE (#ulink_30e8722f-3d64-5954-a811-8cc16995adc0)
AISLING (#ulink_30e8722f-3d64-5954-a811-8cc16995adc0)
This is the story Aisling Kopp, Player of the 3rd line, does not know.
This is the story Aisling Kopp will never know, because the only one who could tell it is dead.
This is the story of her life and her line—the story of how she began and how the world will end.
This is the story of a hero and a traitor, neither of them certain which is which.
This is the story before the story.
Before Aisling.
The end:
Declan Kopp stands at the mouth of the cave, a 2,500-year-old sword in his hand. The heft of it calms him. The familiar grip reminds him of a time when the Falcata was rightfully his to wield, a simpler time, when he could lay its blade against flesh and enjoy the kill.
A time before Aisling was alive, a time before Lorelei was dead, a time when he was young and foolish and the sword was a symbol of all things just and good.
Now it’s nothing but a symbol of the lines he’s crossed.
The people he’s betrayed.
The home he’s left behind and the family to which he can never return.
The ancient sword, like the polished stone in his pocket, like the baby whimpering in the dark depths of the cave, is a precious stolen good.
Not his to take—but taken nonetheless.
That’s what they would say, at least.
They: the High Council. The La Tène Player. His father.
Everyone who matters to him, or once did.
Once, he had so much in his life. Family, love, hope—the belief that his life’s mission was just and his future was fated. Once, he had certainty.
Now he has only his stolen child, and her birthright.
He has the Falcata, whose razor-sharp blade has taken 3,890 lives and awaits its next kill.
And he has a few precious hours, or maybe minutes, before they come for him and try to reclaim what he’s stolen—before he and the sword make their last stand.
The child’s cries echo through the dark.
“Peace, Aisling,” he calls to her. “Daddy’s here. Daddy will protect you, I promise.”
She’s too young to understand—and too young to recognize the lie. He can’t promise to protect her. Only to try.
He’s given up everything, trying to save his daughter from her fate—but still it’s not enough. The cave is surrounded. There’s no way out. No way down the mountain, not for him. The final battle is coming, and he will not survive it. He knows that.
He’s lured them here, knowing that.
They will pursue him wherever he goes. He finally understands: There is no safe place for him and his daughter, not in this world. He fought; he lost. Letting them follow him here is his last, final, desperate effort to make them see the truth.
If they see it—if he can make them see it—everything he’s given up will be worth it. Even his life.
The child cries and cries.
Declan can’t stand the sound of it.
He turns his back to the cave opening, even though he knows never to turn your back on the enemy.
He retreats into the dark, following the sound of his daughter’s cries, and lifts the squirming child into his arms.
At his touch, she quiets. He kisses her forehead, makes soothing noises, inhales the scent of her soft red hair, wonders if she will remember him.
If she will ever know how she came to be here on this lonely mountain, or why.
If she will ever forgive him for what he’s done, and the things he has wrought.
Aisling is still in his arms when they come for him.
Two of them, their headlamps sweeping across the dank cave walls. He could hide in the shadows, for just a little longer, but there’s no point. He’s come here to face them.
To try, one last time, to show them the truth.
“We know you’re in here, Declan.” It’s a young woman’s voice—Molly, his niece, who he’s known since she was born. The La Tène Player. He knows exactly how deadly she is; he trained her himself. “Show yourself.”
Declan does as he’s told, steps into the beam of light. Aisling squints and, recognizing Molly and the gray-haired man by her side, giggles and waves.
“We don’t want to hurt you,” Declan’s father says, lifting a rifle to his shoulder. “Just give us the child.”
The beginning:
Sometimes, Declan thinks, it began the day his inbox pinged with the strange anonymous message. You’ve been lied to, it said, no more than that, and he felt only a mild twinge of curiosity before sending it to the trash. Thinking spammers got more inventive every day. Thinking he was too clever to believe anyone’s lies.
Maybe it began the day his curiosity got the better of him, and he finally responded to one of the strange messages.
Or the day he stood in dark woods, met the eyes of a cloaked stranger who told him everything he’d ever believed in was a lie. Don’t you ever want to know why you fight, what you fight for? the woman asked, before melting back into the shadows, and for the first time, Declan did.
Maybe, he sometimes thinks, it began long before, on the day he first took his father’s rifle into his scrawny young arms, aimed at a paper target, pulled the trigger. “You will make a fine Player,” his father said, ruffling the fire-red hair that marked him as a Kopp. “You’ll make me proud.”
But maybe it didn’t really begin until he was a father himself. Until he understood what it meant to love unconditionally, with his whole self, to know he would give his life for his daughter. Until the High Council decreed that his infant daughter would be the Player once she came of age. Then he knew the time for waiting, for questioning, was over.
It was the time to act.
He managed to keep it together until the end of the High Council’s meeting, knowing there was no point in arguing. He’s aware of what they think of him: that he’s bitter and washed up, that he was warped by his tenure as a Player, by the fact that Endgame never happened. Some of them—his father among them—think he’s mad. So he smiled and nodded as if he were happy they wanted to turn his daughter into their puppet, an agent of needless death.
Then he hailed a taxi he couldn’t afford and held his breath as it sped down the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, until the towers of Downtown Brooklyn came into sight and with them the dingy brownstone where his wife was waiting.
Now here he is, standing before the door of his apartment, taking a deep breath and preparing to change their lives forever. Thinking, How did I get here?
But he knows exactly how he got here.
And he knows what has to happen next.
Declan bursts into the apartment and finally lets his panic off the leash. “Pack everything!” he booms, into the tiny bedroom, where his money and passports are stashed, and his wife and little Aisling are sound asleep.
“Declan?” Lorelei blinks groggily on the bed, baby napping on her chest. She sleeps whenever the baby sleeps, which is never enough for either of them. “Quiet, hon. You’ll wake her.”
“We’ve got to go,” Declan says, in a quieter voice. He’s ripping through their tiny closet, throwing shirts and dresses haphazardly into a suitcase. “Now.”
“Go? Go where? It’s nearly midnight.” Gently, Lorelei settles Aisling into her crib. She goes to her husband, stands behind him, and wraps her arms around his waist, lets him feel her slow, steady breathing, the rhythm of her heartbeat. “Take a breath, Declan.”
Declan breathes.
“Now, tell me what happened.”
Declan turns to face Lorelei, the love of his life, the outsider who, for love of him, adopted his traditions and his people as her own. She did it because he asked her to—and now, because of that, because of him, their daughter is in danger.
This is all his fault, he thinks, panic blooming again.
“Declan.” She can always tell when he’s spinning out of control.
She’s always been the only one who can stop him.
She fixes her gaze on him, and, for just a moment, he lets himself get lost in her sea-gray eyes.
