LITMIR.BIZ

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behind him, Xander breathes hard, gasping with effort, while Marcus smiles and picks up the pace.

      It takes them half the day to reach the summit.

      Now the fun can begin.

      It’s like a different planet up here—a dead, arid one choked by sulfuric gases and thick clouds of ash. The gaping vent in the rock spews clumps of lava and burps puffs of oppressively hot air. They’re braving this climb without masks, and the foul gases—toxic enough to eat through metal—burn Marcus’s eyes and scald his throat. Small fissures in the rock called fumaroles exhale clouds of steam, and gossamer threads of cooled lava weave eerie orange spiderwebs in the rising updraft. From Marcus’s perch on the rim, the lake of lava several hundred meters below is almost completely obscured by thick ash and smoke, but the red glow is unmistakable, like a second sun. The noise is thunderous, earsplitting, an engine roar that drowns out everything else. This is an alien place; humans are not meant to survive here.

      Marcus loves every inch of it.

      “Remind me again why I let you talk me into this?” Xander shouts over the noise as they hoist themselves over the lip of the volcano. It’s what he says every time. And every time, Marcus responds with Because you can’t say no to me.

      But that’s no longer true, of course. Xander is the Player: he can say no to anyone and anything he wants. It’s Marcus who’s obligated to serve Xander’s whims.

      So instead he says, “You don’t want to come, just wait here.” Then propels himself over the lip of the volcano without waiting to see whether Xander will follow.

      It’s like traveling back in time, into an age of tectonic creation and primordial ooze.

      It’s like descending into the mouth of hell.

      Hot air closes in with a pressure that makes his ears pop. Every breath is scalding poison. The walls are rainbowed with color, chemicals glazing the rock—orange iron, green manganese, white chlorine, cheerfully yellow sulfur. The sky above disappears behind a thick cloud, and there is only the cavernous volcano, and the sea of magma below.

      Marcus stares into the frothing, sparking abyss. It’s easy to imagine he’s staring into the molten center of the earth.

      Legend says it was a volcano that erased the ancient Minoan civilization from the face of the earth, and Marcus can believe it. His people spend so much time worrying about destruction coming from the stars—but if they knew what it was like down here, they would fear the earth just as much, its destructive power immense enough to consume itself.

      That’s how Marcus feels now, too: bent on destruction. Consuming himself.

      He swings himself down the cable and howls into the steaming pit. All his envy and despair, his rage and frustration, his disappointment in himself and his terror of what’s to come, he flings it out of himself and into the churning magma below.

      It feels good.

      Good enough that he looks up to the lip of the opening, where Xander still perches hesitantly on the edge, and shouts, “What are you waiting for, slowpoke?”

      Xander waves, then leaps off the edge, hurtling into the air. The cable stretches taut and he swings back toward the inner wall of the volcano—and that’s when it happens.

      Without warning. Without reason.

      The line snaps.

      “Xander!” Marcus screams. There’s nothing he can do but watch.

      Watch his best friend plummet down and down.

      Watch the broken cable dangle uselessly, too many meters overhead.

      Watch Xander fling out his arms, reach blindly and desperately for purchase, for something that will slow his fall.

      Watch, and hope.

      Xander does it. The impossible. Catches his fingertips on a jutting rock, halts his descent. He can’t stop his momentum, and his body smashes into the volcano wall with such impact that Marcus can nearly hear the crunch of bone.

      “Xander,” he whispers, panic stealing away his breath.

      Xander is dangling by his fingertips, nothing saving him from a drop to his death but vanishing strength and sheer will. It’s crazy that things could turn so wrong so quickly. But the craziest thing of all: Xander is grinning.

      “Little help up here?” he calls down to Marcus, barely audible over the volcano’s roar. There’s a lilt in his voice, and Marcus recognizes it, that adrenaline shot of pure joy that comes from facing death and surviving. “Or you going to leave me hanging?”

      It’s a joke, of course. It would never occur to Xander that Marcus would just leave him there.

      It wouldn’t have occurred to Marcus either.

      Not until Xander put the idea in his head.

      It will be easy for Marcus to save him. He need only climb up to where Xander is dangling and clip him on to the intact cable. So why would Xander look worried? He assumes Marcus will do exactly what he’s supposed to do. He assumes everything will work out.

      Because for Xander, everything always works out.

      Marcus works hard, Marcus tries, Marcus needs—while Xander just hangs around, waiting for good luck to drop into his lap. Expecting it.

      What if this time, things go differently?

      What if this time, Xander’s luck turns sour?

      Marcus doesn’t climb up the cable. He doesn’t do anything. He watches.

      He watches Xander’s arm muscles straining, his fingers turning white as the blood leaches out of him.

      Now you know how it feels to want, Marcus thinks. How it feels to be desperate.

       How do you like it?

      The desperation is painted across Xander’s face. “Marcus!” he shouts, no longer kidding around. “What are you waiting for?”

      There’s probably panic in his voice, but it’s hard to tell, over the noise.

      Marcus still doesn’t move.

      He tells himself: Just a few more seconds. Just enough to give Xander a taste of need. Just enough to scare him a little and remind him that he can’t always expect the world to fall at his feet, cater to his desires.

      “What the hell are you doing, Marcus!” Xander screams. “Marcus!”

      He’s losing his cool.

      Marcus has always been able to make Xander lose his cool.

      But what does that say? If Marcus can so easily throw Xander off his game, then how can anyone think Xander is the strong one? If Marcus can defeat him this easily, how can Xander expect to stand up to any of the other Players? How can he carry the fate of the Minoan people on his shoulders?

      It’s a mistake. Even Xander admitted that much.

      Letting him continue would mean risking all their lives.

      I should let him fall, Marcus thinks. I’d be doing everyone a favor.

      It’s just another joke, though.

      It has to be.

      Because surely he’s not serious about doing nothing, watching his best friend’s fingers slip from the rock, watching Xander frantically try to hang on.

      Even though the thought is in his head now—and the thought makes the deed possible.

      It would be that easy.

      To do nothing.

      To let gravity take its course.

      Let Xander save himself, if he can. What could be wrong with forcing the new Player to face one simple test? To prove that he’s the right man to

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