LITMIR.BIZ

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      Sarah glares at Earth Key. She was the one who unlocked … no. She has decided to stop blaming herself. She was only Playing. She didn’t make the rules. Sarah sits on the edge of the bed, her hands planted firmly on the mattress, her elbows locked. “What do you think it’ll be, Jago?”

      “I don’t know. You remember what kepler 22b showed us. That image of Earth …”

      “Burned. Dark. Gray and brown and red.”

       “Sí.”

      “Ugly …”

      “Maybe it’ll be alien tech? One of kepler’s amigos pushes a button from their home planet and—poof!—Earth is screwed.”

      “No. It’s got to be more terrifying than that. More … more of a show.”

      Jago flicks the remote, the TV shuts off. “Whatever happens, I don’t want to think about it right now.”

      She looks at him. Holds out a hand. Jago takes it and sits on the bed next to her and pushes his shoulder into hers.

      “I don’t want to be alone, Jago.”

      “You won’t be, Alopay.”

      “Not after what happened at Stonehenge.”

      “You won’t be.”

      They flop onto their backs. “We’ll leave tomorrow, like we planned. We’re going to find Sky Key. We’re going to keep Playing.”

      “Yeah,” she says unconvincingly. “Okay.”

      Jago takes her head and turns it gently. He kisses her. “We can do this, Sarah. We can do it together.”

      “Shut up.” She kisses him back. She feels the diamonds in his teeth, licks them, nibbles at his lower lip, smells his breath.

      Anything to forget.

      They fool around, and Sarah doesn’t say “Play” or “Earth Key” or “Sky Key” or “Endgame” or “Christopher” for the rest of the evening. She just holds Jago and smiles, touches him and smiles, feels him and smiles.

      She falls asleep at 11:37 p.m.

      Jago doesn’t sleep.

      He is sitting in bed at 4:58 a.m. Stock-still. No lights. Two windows looking over a slender courtyard to the left of the bed. The blinds are open, ambient light suffuses the glass. Jago can see well enough. He’s already dressed. Sarah is too. He watches her sleep. Her breathing slow and steady.

      The Cahokian.

      He tries to remember a story his great-grandfather, Xehalór Tlaloc, told him about a legendary battle between humans and the Sky Gods that took place hundreds of years ago. A battle that the humans, who according to Xelahór didn’t even have guns at their disposal, somehow managed to win.

      4:59.

      If he and Sarah both want to survive, they will need to beat the Sky Gods a 2nd time. But how did the humans do it? How could humans with spears and bows and swords and knives defeat an army of Makers? How?

      5:00.

      How?

      The air changes. The hair on Jago’s neck stands up. He whips his head to the door. The crack of light from the hall is unbroken. He stares at it for several seconds, and then it goes out.

      He grabs his pistol from the side table. Pokes Sarah with a bony elbow. Her eyes pop open as Jago clasps a hand over her mouth. His eyes say, Someone’s coming.

      Sarah slides to the floor. She grabs her pistol and quietly charges a round. She rolls under the bed. Jago slips to the floor and rolls under too.

      “Player?” Sarah whispers.

      “Don’t know.”

      Then Jago remembers. He points his chin to the center of the room. Earth Key is still on the coffee table!

      “Shit,” Sarah says.

      Before Jago can stop her, Sarah slides out and gets to her knees, but then she freezes. Jago peers past her legs. There, just outside the windows, are two black tactical ropes, dancing back and forth.

      “La joda!” Jago whispers.

      And then the door bursts open. Four men in staggered single file push into the adjacent living room. All black, helmets, night vision, toting futuristic-looking FN F2000 assault rifles. At the same moment there’s a thud from outside, and the windows crack in every direction. Two men immediately rappel down the ropes and kick the glass. It shatters inward, shards raining onto the floor. The men swing in and land right in front of Sarah. She’s in a deep crouch, her gun leveled on the face of the lead soldier. She hesitates to shoot, and she hates herself for it.

      But her senses are sharp, and she notices that the rifles have a strange attachment where the grenade launcher would normally be.

      “Don’t move,” the lead soldier says with a British accent. “Except to lower your gun.”

      “Where’s the other one?” asks the lead who came through the door.

      One of the men behind him says, “Going thermal. There—”

       Pop-pop!

      Jago fires and rolls to his right, away from Sarah. Both shots hit the legs of the man who switched his goggles. This man’s shins are armored, but Jago guessed as much, and the bullets tear through the flesh and bone just above his feet. He falls to the floor, crying out. None of the other men move to help. Instead they begin firing.

      But not bullets.

      Sarah springs straight up from her crouch, pulls her knees to her chest, her head nearly touching the ceiling. Two darts sail beneath her. Thup-thup. They hit the wall.

      Thup-thup-thup-thup-thup. Jago’s on his feet too. He yanks a metal lamp from the bedside table and dances forward, twirling and ducking and spinning. Four darts zip through his shirt, a 5th grazes his hair, but none hit flesh. A 6th clangs off the metal of the lamp.

      “Net!” says the lead soldier that came through the window. The man behind him fires a weapon that looks like a small RPG.

      A dark blob expands through the air, heading for Sarah. She fires twice, hitting two of the metal balls that give the net its weight and propel it forward, but it’s no use. The net is coming for her.

      Jago underhands the lamp toward Sarah. The net hits the lamp and the mesh wraps around it like a closing fist. Sarah drops to the floor, deflecting the snarled lamp to the side. Both Players then surge forward, firing simultaneously, twisting their bodies as they move, making themselves harder to hit with the darts.

      Impossible to hit.

      Jago fires across the room at Sarah’s assailants, using the angle to blast the night-vision goggles off both their faces without actually killing them. Sarah fires across the room at the men facing Jago. She hits two of the dart-gun attachments mounted to the rifles, hits one of the men square in the middle of his bulletproof vest, and with her 5th shot shoots the TV on the far side of the room. It explodes in a shower of sparks, blue and orange and green. The men stand their ground. “Go lethal!” one shouts.

      Jago drops to his knees as the first soldier live-fires. Half a dozen 5.56 × 45 millimeter rounds scream over Jago’s head as he brings the top of his pistol hard into the man’s groin. Jago fires twice at the men just behind the lead soldier, hitting one on the hand and the other on the shoulder. Jago then reaches up and pulls a grenade off the man’s vest. Just by the shape and weight he can tell that it’s a flashbang.

      At the same time, Sarah moves toward her two men. One lets off a volley, which she evades by leaping out the broken window.

      She grabs a rope and slides down the outside of the building six feet. She pops the pistol into her waistband with her other hand.

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