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The pain radiates over his right eye and around his temple and to the back of his skull and down his neck. He can’t remember how he got here. He’s on a gurney. Sees an IV stand, a rolling cart with a heart and respiratory monitor. BLINKshiverblink. White walls. Low gray ceiling. A bright fluorescent light overhead. A framed picture of Queen Elizabeth. An oval door with an iron wheel in the middle. A black four stenciled above it.
He can feel the room shift and hear it blinkblink hear it creak.
A wheel on the door.
The room shifts and creaks in the other direction.
He’s on a boat.
“Ch-Ch-Ch-Chiyoko …” he stammers quietly.
“That’s her name, eh? The one who got flattened?”
A man’s voice. SHIVERblinkSHIVERblinkblinkblink. It comes from above his head, out of eyeshot. An lifts his chin, strains at the straps. Rolls his eyes up until the pain in his head becomes almost unbearable. He still can’t SHIVER he still can’t see the man.
“Chiyoko. I was wondering.” He hears the scratch of a pen on paper. “Thanks for finally telling me. Poor girl just got flattened like a pancake.”
Flattened? What’s SHIVERSHIVER what’s he blinkblinkblink what’s he talking about?
“D-d-d-don’t say—”
“S’matter? Something in your mouth?”
“D-d-d-don’t say her n-n-n-name!”
The man sighs, steps forward a little. An can just make out the top of his head. He is a white man with tan skin and a mop of brown hair, straight thin eyebrows, and deep lines in his forehead. The lines are not from old age but from frowning. From yelling. From squinting. From being British and way too serious.
An already shiverBLINK already knows: British Special Forces.
“W-w-w-where—”SHIVERSHIVERSHIVERblinkSHIVER. It hasn’t SHIVER hasn’t been this bad SHIVERSHIVERSHIVER …
The tremors haven’t been this bad since Chiyoko left him in bed that night. His head whips back and forth and his legs shake and shake.
SHIVERblinkSHIVERblink. He needs to blinkblinkblinkblinkblink to see her. That will calm him down.
“Twitchy lad,” the man says, stepping around to the side of the gurney. “You wanna know where your girlfriend is, that it?”
“Y-y-y-y-y—”
An is stuck on the sound. He keeps saying it, his mind and mouth on a loop.
“Y-y-y-y-y-y-y—”
The man places a hand on An’s arm. The hand is warm. The man is skinnier than An expected. His hands are too big for his body.
“I have questions too. But we can’t talk until you’ve gotten ahold of yourself.” The man turns away. He picks up a syringe from a nearby tray. An catches a glimpse of the label: serum #591566. “Try to breathe easy, lad.” The man pulls up An’s sleeve on his left arm. “It’s just a pinch.”
No!
SHIVERblinkblinkblinkSHIVERSHIVER.
No!
“Breathe easy now.”
An convulses. He feels whatever he’s being injected with move through his arm, into his heart, his neck, his head. The pain disappears. Cool darkness washes into An’s brain, like the waves outside, gently rocking the ship back and forth, back and forth. An feels the drug pull him beneath the surface, down into the dark ocean. He’s suspended. Weightless. He doesn’t shiver. His eyes don’t BLINK. All is quiet and all is dark. Calm. Easy.
“Can you speak?” The man’s voice echoes as if it is in An’s mind.
“Y-yes,” An says without much effort.
“Good. You can call me Charlie. What’s your name, lad?”
An opens his eyes. His sight is fuzzy around the edges, but his senses are strangely acute. He can feel every centimeter of his body. “My name is An Liang,” he says.
“No, it’s not. What’s your name?”
An tries to turn his head but can’t. He’s been restrained further. A strap across his forehead? Or is this the drug?
“Chang Liu,” he tries again.
“No, it’s not. One more lie and I won’t tell you anything about Chiyoko. That’s a promise.”
An begins to speak but the man claps one of his big hands over An’s mouth. “I mean it. Lie to me one more time and we’re done. No more Chiyoko, no more you. Do you understand?”
Since An can’t move his head at all, can’t nod, he widens his eyes. Yes, he understands.
“Good lad. Now, what’s your name?”
“An Liu.”
“Better. How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Where are you from?”
“China.”
“No shit. Where in China?”
“Many places. Xi’an was last home.”
“Why were you at Stonehenge?”
An feels a tickle in his ear. A scratching noise close by.
“To help Chiyoko,” he says.
“Tell me about Chiyoko. What was her last name?”
“Takeda. She was the Mu.”
A pause. “The Mu?”
“Yes.”
“What is a Mu?”
“Not sure. Old people. Older than old.”
An hears the scritch-scratch noise again. He places the sound. A polygraph. “He’s not lying,” the man says. “Don’t know what he’s talking about, but he’s not lying.”
An hears a tinny voice over an earpiece. Someone else is watching and listening. Giving Charlie with the big hands and wrinkled forehead instructions.
“What you inject in me?” An asks.
“Top-secret serum, lad. I tell you more than that and I have to kill you. It’s not your turn to ask questions yet. I’ll let you ask yours after you answer a few more of mine, deal?”
“Yes.”
“What were you helping Chiyoko with at Stonehenge?”
“Get Earth Key.”
“What’s Earth Key?”
“Piece of puzzle.”
“What kind of puzzle?”
“Endgame puzzle.”
“What’s Endgame?”
“A game for end of time.”
“And you’re playing it?”
“Yes.”
“Chiyoko was too?”
“Yes.”
“She was Mu?”
“Yes.”
“What are you?”
“Shang.”
“What is Shang?”
“Shang was father of my people. Shang are my people. Shang is me. I am Shang. I hate Shang.”
Charlie pauses, writes something on a pad that An can’t see. “What does Earth Key do?”
“Not sure. Maybe nothing.”
“Are there other keys?”
“Yes. It is one of three.”
“Earth Key was at Stonehenge?”
“I think yes. Not sure.”
“Where are the other two keys?”
“Don’t know. That is part of the game.”
“Endgame.”
“Yes.”
“Who runs it?”
He cannot resist saying the words. “Them. The Makers. The Gods. They have many names. One called kepler 22b told us of Endgame.” The serum they put in him tickles the synapses in his frontal cortex. It is a good drug, whatever it is.
Charlie holds a picture over An’s face. It’s of the man from the announcement that was made on every screen in the world—TV, mobile phone, tablet, computer—after Stonehenge changed, after that beam of light shot to the heavens. “Have you seen this person before?”
“No. Wait. Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Yes … yes I see it before. That is disguise. Could be kepler 22b. Could not be him—her—it. Not a person.”
Charlie takes the picture away. Replaces it with a picture of Stonehenge. Not as it was, quaint and ancient and mysterious, but as it is now. Revealed and altered. An unearthly tower of stone and glass and metal rising 100 feet in the air, the age-old stones that marked it jumbled around the tower’s base like a child’s discarded blocks.
“Tell me about this.”
An’s eyes widen. His memory of Stonehenge stops before anything like that appeared. “I do not know about that. Can I ask question?”
“You just did, but yes.”
“That is Stonehenge?”
