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SEXSHIVERSEX.
He figures that shiver-blink the Players near the Mongolian and Australian impact zones, on account of their remoteness, will be tricky, so he abandons them. The Mongolian will be coming overland blink anyway, and the Aussie will also probably start his or her journey blink by jeep or possibly chartered aircraft. Instant dead ends.
He also discounts Addis Ababa, Istanbul, Warsaw, and Forest Hills, New York, on account of these being shiver-shiver-SHIVER rather populous. He concentrates on Juliaca, Omaha, Naha, and Al Ain. These smaller markets make the hacking and filtering easier.
Initial results provide 451 candidates. These are cross-referenced with train and/or plane ticket purchases for transport within China. An blink is blink not blink hopeful.
Blinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblinkblink.
Had it been necessary for him to travel to reach the Calling, he would have taken the obvious precaution of using aliases, forged visas, and at least two passports, but he knows that not all people are as paranoid as he is. Even Players.
And lo. Shiver. He gets a hit: Sarah Alopay.
SHIVERblinkblink.
Blinkblink.
Blink.
JAGO TLALOC, SARAH ALOPAY (#ulink_9d138dca-a6d0-5b42-bd73-0add9656f18b)
Train T41, Car 8, Passing through Shijiazhuang, ChinaDepart: BeijingArrive: Xi’an
Jago Tlaloc is on an overnight train from Beijing to Xi’an. It has taken him nearly three days to get this far. Juliaca to Lima. Lima to Miami. Miami to Chicago. Chicago to Beijing. 24,122 km. 13,024.838 nautical miles. 79,140,413.56 feet.
And now the train for 11.187 hours.
Longer if it gets delayed.
Endgame doesn’t wait, so he is hoping for no delays.
Jago has a private sleeping cabin, but the mattress is hard and he’s restless. He sits up and crosses his legs, counts his breaths. He stares out the window and thinks of the most beautiful things he has ever seen: a girl falling asleep in the sand as the sun set over a beach in Colombia, streams of moonlight reflecting off the rippling waters of the Amazon, the lines of the Nazca giant on the day he became a Player. His mind won’t calm, though. His breath is not full. Positive visualizations disintegrate under the weight.
He cannot stop thinking about the horror visited on his hometown. The hellfire and the smell of burning plastic and flesh, and the sounds of crying men, burned women, and dying children. The helplessness of the firemen, the army, the politicians. The helplessness of everyone and everything in the face of the violence.
The day after Jago claimed his piece of the meteorite, the sun rose on a huddled mass of people lined up outside his parents’ villa. Some of them had lost everything and hoped his family would be able to restore them. As Jago packed, his parents did what they could. On television, astrophysicists made hollow promises about how an event like this would never happen again.
They’re wrong.
More are coming.
Bigger, more devastating.
More will suffer.
More will burn.
More will die.
The people called the meteor that fell on Juliaca el puño del diablo. The Devil’s Fist. Eleven other fists punched into the earth, killing many, many more.
The meteors fell and now the world is different.
Vulnerable.
Terrified.
Jago knows he should be above such feelings. He has trained to be above such feelings, yet he cannot sleep, cannot relax, cannot calm himself. He swings his legs over the bed and places his bare feet on the thin, cool carpet. He cracks his neck and closes his eyes.
The meteorites were just a preamble.
Todo, todo el tiempo, he thinks. Todo.
He stands. His knees creak. He has to get out of his compartment, move, try to clear his mind. He grabs a pair of green cargo pants and pulls them on. His legs are thin, strong. They’ve done more than 100,000 squats. He sits in the chair and puts on wool socks, leather moccasins. His feet have kicked a heavy bag over 250,000 times. He straps a small tactical knife to his forearm and slips into a long-sleeved plaid shirt. He has done over 15,000 one-handed pull-ups. He grabs his iPod and sticks in a pair of black earbuds. He turns on music. The music is hard, heavy, and loud. Metal. His music and his weapons. Heavy heavy metal.
He steps to the door of his compartment. Before exiting he looks in the full-length mirror. He is tall, thin, and taut, as if made of high-tension wire. His hair is jet-black, short, and messed. His skin is the color of caramel, the color of his people, undiluted for 8,000 years. His eyes are black. His face is pockmarked from a skin infection he had when he was seven, and he has a long, jagged scar that runs from the corner of his left eye, down his cheek, over his jaw, and onto his neck. He got the scar when he was 12, in a knife fight. It was with another kid a little older than him. Jago got the scar, but he took the kid’s life. Jago is ugly and menacing. He knows that people fear him because of the way he looks, which generally amuses him. They should fear him for what he knows. What he can do. What he has done.
He opens the door, steps into the hall, walks. The music blares in his ears, hard, heavy, and loud, drowning out the steely screech of the wheels on the rails.
He steps into the dining car. Five people are seated at three tables: two Chinese businessmen sitting alone, one asleep in his booth, his head on the table, the other drinking tea and staring at his laptop; a Chinese couple speaking quietly and intensely; a girl with long, auburn hair woven into a braid, her back to him.
Jago buys a bag of peanuts and a Coke and walks toward an empty table across from the girl with the auburn hair. She is not Chinese. She is reading the latest edition of China Daily. The page is covered in color photos of devastation from the crater in Xi’an. The crater where the Small Wild Goose Pagoda had stood. He sits down. She’s five feet away from him, engrossed in the paper; she does not look up.
He removes the peanuts from their shells, pops them into his mouth, sips the Coke. He stares at her. She’s pretty, looks like an American tourist, a medium-sized backpack next to her. He has seen countless girls like her stop in Juliaca on their way to Lake Titicaca.
“It’s not polite to stare,” she says, looking at the paper.
“I didn’t think you’d noticed,” he replies in accented English.
“I did.” She still hasn’t looked at him.
“Can I join you? I haven’t spoken to many people the past few days, and this country can be bien loco, you know?”
“Tell me about it,” she says, looking up, her eyes drilling into him. She’s easily the most beautiful American, and maybe woman, he’s ever seen.
“Come on over.”
He half rises and sidles into the booth opposite her. “Peanut?”
“No thanks.”
“Smart.”
“Hm?”
“Not to accept food from a stranger.”
“Were you going to poison me?” “Maybe.”
She smiles and seems to reconsider, like he’s challenged her to a dare.
“What the hell, I’ll take my chances.”
Her smile crushes him. He is usually the one who has to charm a woman, which he has done dozens of times, but this one is charming him. He holds out the bag and she takes a handful of the peanuts, spreads them on the table in front of her.
“How long you been here?” she asks.
“On the train?”
“No. In China.”
“Little over three weeks,” he says, lying.
“Yeah? Me too. About three weeks.” His training has taught him how to tell if someone is lying, and she is. Interesting. He wonders if she could be one of them.
“Where you from?” he asks.
“America.”
“No kidding. Where in America?”
“Omaha.” She’s not lying this time. “You?”
“Peru, near Lake Titicaca.” So he won’t lie either.
She raises her eyebrows and smirks. “I never thought that was a real place until these …” She points at the paper.
“The meteors.”
“Yeah.” She nods. “It’s a funny name. Lake Titty Caca.” She pronounces the words individually, like all amused English speakers do. “You couldn’t come up with anything better than that?”
“Depending on who you ask, it either means Stone of the Puma or Crag of Lead, and it’s considered by many to be a mystical, powerful place. Americans seem to think UFOs visit it and aliens created it.” “Imagine that,” she says, smiling. “Omaha’s not mystical at all. Most people think it’s kind of boring, actually. We got good steak, though. And Warren Buffet.”
Jago chuckles. He assumes that’s a joke. He doesn’t know who Warren Buffet is, but he has a fat, dumb American name.
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” She cracks another peanut.
“What?”
“I’m from Omaha, you’re from near Lake Titicaca, and we’re on a train to Xi’an. The meteors hit in each place.”
“Yes, that is weird.”
“What’s your name?”
“Feo.” He pops a peanut in his mouth.
“Nice to meet you, Feo. I’m Sarah.” She pops a peanut in her mouth.
“Tell me—you going to Xi’an to see the crater?”
“Me? No. Just touring. I can’t imagine the Chinese government is going to be letting anyone get too close to it anyway.”
“Can I ask you another question, Feo?”
“Sure.”
“You like to play games?”
She’s outed herself. He’s not sure this is wise. His response will go a long way to determine whether or not he will be outed too.
“Not really,” he answers quickly. “I like puzzles, though.”
She leans back. Her tone changes, the flirtatious lilt melting away. “Not me. I like knowing things for sure one way or the other. I hate uncertainty. I tend to eliminate it as quickly as I can, get it out of my life.”
“Probably a good policy, if you can actually do it.”
She smiles, and though he should be tense and ready to kill her, her smile disarms him. “So—Feo. That mean something?”
“It means ‘ugly.’”
“Your parents name you that?”
“My real name is Jago; everyone just calls me Feo.”
“You’re not, though, even though you’re trying to be.”
“Thank you,” he replies, unable to stop himself from smiling, the diamonds in his teeth flashing. He decides to throw her a crumb. If she takes it, they will both know. He’s not sure that it’s a smart play, but he knows one must take risks to win Endgame. Enemies are a given. Friends are not. Why not take advantage of an early chance encounter and find out which this beautiful American will be?
“So, Sarah from Omaha who is here on vacation, while you’re in Xi’an do you want to visit the Big Wild Goose Pagoda with me?”
Before she can answer, a white flash comes from outside. The train lurches and brakes. The lights flicker and go out. A loud sound like a vibrating string comes from the other side of the dining car. Jago’s eyes are momentarily drawn to the faint blip-blip of a red light from under a table. He looks back to the window when the light outside intensifies. He and Sarah both stand and move toward it. In the distance, a bright streak runs across the sky, going east to west. It looks like a shooting star, but it’s too low, and its trajectory is as straight as a razor’s edge. Jago and Sarah both stare, transfixed, as the streak speeds against the darkness of the Chinese night. At the last minute, before it passes from view, the streak suddenly changes direction and moves in an 88-degree angle north to south, disappearing over the horizon. They pull back from the window and the lights come back and the train starts to accelerate. The other people in the dining car are talking urgently, but none seem to have noticed the thing outside.
Jago stands. “Come with me.”
“Where?”
“Come with me if you want to live.”
“What are you talking about?”
He holds out his hand. “Now.”
She stands and follows him but makes a point of not taking his hand.
As they walk he says, “If I told you I’m the Player of the 21st line, would that mean anything to you?”
“I would tell you I’m the Player of the 233rd.”
