LITMIR.BIZ

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      Xander sees it in his face—knows what Marcus is going to do before Marcus knows it himself. It’s always been this way between them.

      “You’re better than this,” Xander pleads.

      But it turns out he’s not.

      After, in his nightmares, he sees it again and again.

      Xander’s fingers slipping, giving way.

      Xander falling.

      The fall seems to take forever.

      It takes enough time for Marcus to realize what he’s done.

      To regret.

      To scream Xander’s name.

      To watch helplessly as Xander plunges into the lake of fire.

      The churning molten rock sucks him under. Marcus doesn’t see the burning lava strip away his flesh, flood his lungs, melt his bones, turn him to ash. Not in real life, at least.

      In his nightmares, he sees every detail.

      “I don’t know what happened,” Marcus tells people, and this part of the lie is easy, because it’s true. “He was there—and then he wasn’t.”

      He tells the same story to everyone: The ground crew that greets him when he staggers off the helicopter. Elias Cassadine, who collects him from the airfield, patting him on the shoulder in some sorry approximation of comfort. The other kids from camp, who gossip about every gruesome detail. Xander’s parents, who will not stop crying.

      “His line snapped, and I tried to help him, but I couldn’t,” Marcus says, over and over again. “I couldn’t get there in time.”

      And everyone—even Xander’s mother, through her tears—says, “Don’t blame yourself.”

      He acts like a zombie, shuffling through one day and the next. It’s not just for show. He feels dead inside. Hollowed out. He has to force himself to go through the motions of life. Put one foot in front of the other. Remember to eat. Remember to breathe. Do not tell the truth.

      Do not.

      He wants to shout it to the world, the truth of what he’s done.

      But maybe that’s a lie too. Because if he really wanted to, he would.

      Instead he lies, and keeps lying. He misses Xander and blames himself, and every night as he falls asleep, he whispers a plea for forgiveness and swears that in the morning, he’ll turn himself in.

      Then morning comes, and he lies. And every time he does, it’s like killing Xander all over again.

      He is chosen to be the Player in Xander’s place.

      “Think of it as a tribute to your friend,” Elias says. Marcus tries.

      There is no ceremony this time around. No amphitheater filled with screaming hordes, no long speech about his impressive accomplishments and glorious future.

      There is only a quiet conversation in Elias’s office, an offer extended and accepted.

      Of course Marcus will take Xander’s place, Marcus says. Of course he will do his friend, and his people, proud.

      He will keep the golden horns in a safe place, and try not to wonder whether they weighed this heavily on Xander’s head.

      Before Marcus can slink out of the office, Elias opens a steel safe and withdraws a clay disk, about the size of an outstretched palm. Carved with a spiraling formation of strange symbols, the artifact looks ancient. Elias places it gently in Marcus’s hands. The hardened clay seems to warm to his touch.

      “Do you know what this is?” Elias asks.

      Marcus shakes his head.

      “A century ago, archaeologists found a disk in the ruins of the Minoan palace at Phaistos,” Elias explains. “It was stamped with two hundred forty-one symbols, in a language never before seen and, to this day, never deciphered. No one knows what it was for or what it might mean. It’s on display in a museum in Heraklion, where historians and tourists alike can puzzle over its significance. Or”—he pauses, tapping the disk in Marcus’s hands—“so we would have them believe.”

      “The one in the museum is a copy,” Marcus guesses.

      Elias nods. “The Phaistos Disk, this disk, belongs to the Minoan people. It is the most sacred talisman of our line. This language you see here is the language of the gods—those beings from the stars who birthed our civilization and will one day return to put it to the test. The disk’s message spells out a challenge and a promise.”

      “Endgame,” Marcus says in a hushed voice, awed by the thought of a message echoing through three millennia.

      “Endgame,” Elias agrees. “The gods love the Minoans over all peoples. The starry god King Minos descended from great heights to rule our society, to help us flourish and reign. Endgame will be our chance to prove ourselves worthy of that love. It will be your chance. So I ask you now, Marcus Loxias Megalos, do you swear on these sacred words that you will live up to the challenge? That you will forsake all, in the name of Endgame? That from now and ever on, you will live for the game, and for your people?”

      Marcus doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t have to.

      He has already forsaken the only person who matters to him. He has nothing left but this.

      “I do,” Marcus says. “I swear.”

      “Then so it shall be,” Elias says.

      And so it is.

      It turns out that supersecret Player training is pretty much like the training he got before, except that now he has to do it alone. There are no other campers—there’s no Xander. No one to challenge him, to push him to greater and greater heights, no one to beat. No one to celebrate his victories or console him through his losses. Only Elias, who has taken over all his training and who spends most of his time droning about what life was like back when he was a Player. Which is almost worse than being alone.

      Marcus is kept busy, jetting halfway across the world to pit his survival skills against the Amazon jungle, infiltrating Middle Eastern warlord encampments, studying ancient scrolls with a cloistered sect of Tibetan monks, building his strength, testing his limits, trying never to stop and think, never to remember. Never to regret.

      He doesn’t climb anymore, not unless he has to. Whatever joy he took in it is gone.

      He gets by.

      More than that, he excels.

      “It’s like you were born to be the Player,” Elias says, more than once. Words that a younger Marcus would have killed to hear. The worst part is that Marcus knows he’s right.

      In a way, it’s Elias’s fault—if he’d only realized Marcus’s greatness sooner, if he’d named Marcus the Player in the first place, then everything would have been fine. Xander would still be here. Marcus tries his best to hate Elias for this, but it’s hard, because Elias Cassadine is now the closest thing he has to a friend.

      Imagine how hard Xander would laugh at that.

      “You need a rest,” Elias says one day, after Marcus fumbles with the bomb he’s disarming and nearly blows them both up.

      “No way,” Marcus says. “I’ll get it the next time. I just need one more shot.”

      “You need some time off,” Elias says. “Take a week. Hang out with your friends. You deserve it.”

      There’s no arguing with Elias—and certainly no admitting that he has no friends anymore, which is exactly what he deserves. He knows the other kids from camp hang out together sometimes now that they are off living their regular lives, telling stories of better days. But Marcus wouldn’t go, even if he were invited. He knows he would make them uncomfortable, a living reminder of their failure, and of the dead.

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