of his beloved is a SIG 226 and a small collection of custom-made grenades. All of these are hidden from view by a cotton shirt.
He pushes north for South Park Street Cemetery. Pushes, pushes, pushes.
The cemetery. It is where he is. One of the Players who Chiyoko had nicked with a tracker. One of the Players that An is now tracking.
The cemetery is where he will find the Nabataean. Maccabee Adlai. Who has Earth Key and Sky Key. Who is winning.
Or believes he is winning.
Because there is a difference between these.
If An gets there soon, there will certainly be a difference.
If An gets there, Maccabee will not be winning. Not at all.
He will be dead.
And An is less than two kilometers away.
So close.
But the streets are full. Kolkata has poured her citizens out of doors this evening, all of them clamoring for information, for loved ones, for a decent cell signal. An dodges businessmen and spice wallahs, brightly dressed women and stray dogs, crying children and stalled Ambassador taxis, rickshaws with reed-thin men pulling their carriages along haphazard streets like fish working upstream. He curls the bike around an oblivious Brahman bull. Some people get in An’s way. These either get nudged by the bike or get a swift kick from An’s foot.
Out of SHIVERSHIVER out of the way.
In his wake are screams and bruises and cursing and shaking fists. There are no cops. Not a single officer of the law.
Is it because the world is on the cusp of lawlessness?
Is it because of Abaddon, even now, before it has struck?
Could it be?
Yes.
An smiles.
Yes, Chiyoko. The end is near.
Two large men appear at the intersection of Lower Range Road and Circus Avenue. They point and shout. They recognize him. They saw his video—everyone in the world has seen his video by now—and they want to stop him. They may try to kill him, which An finds preposterous. He revs the bike and people scatter, but the men hold strong and lock arms.
Fools.
An rides straight for them, through them, knocking them aside and running over one, tearing skin from an arm. The men yell and one produces an ancient-looking pistol from nowhere. He pulls the trigger, but instead of firing properly it explodes in his hands.
He falls, screaming.
The gun was faulty. Old. Broken.
Like this BLINKBLINKBLINK this world.
An might feel sorry for the man and his mangled hand, but he is the Shang and he doesn’t care. He jams the throttle and rises out of the saddle and weaves the bike’s rear wheel back and forth and scuttles away, one of the men screaming as his leg is momentarily caught under the rubber and made bloody and raw.
An’s smile grows.
He leaves the men behind. Passes a barbershop, a sweetshop, a mobile phone shop, an electronics shop crowded with people. On the screens in the windows of this store An catches the image of kepler 22b.
The alien outed himself when he gave his announcement about Sky Key. kepler 22b began to show his true colors. Endgame is real for everyone now. It is real for rich people and poor people, the powerful and the impotent. The brutal and the kind. Everyone.
And An loves it.
Now the whole world knows that the first two keys are together. That Maccabee has them. That Endgame continues despite some of the other Players’ misguided attempts to stop it. That it continues despite fear and hope and murder and even love.
Best of all, kepler 22b told the people of Earth that Abaddon can’t be stopped. That the giant asteroid will fall in less than three days and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
That millions will die.
An loves it.
The bike churns. The street widens. The crowds part and An moves a little faster, up to 60 kph now. He glances at Chiyoko’s watch. Sees the tracker’s display screened over the numbers.
Blip-blip.
There. Maccabee Adlai.
So BLINK so SHIVER so close.
So close that An can smell them.
An screams across Shakespeare Sarani Road and goes two more blocks and spins northwest on Park Street. He looks at the watch again and sees it.
Blip-blip.
Blip-blip.
Only blocks away.
BLINKshiver
Chiyoko Played for life.
SHIVERblink
But I
SHIVER
I Play for death.
SARAH ALOPAY, JAGO TLALOC, AISLING KOPP, POP KOPP, GREG JORDAN, GRIFFIN MARRS
The Depths,
“Everybody chill the fuck out!” a man yells. He’s mid-40s, weathered, drenched in sweat, a little chubby. He stands in the middle of the hallway that is crowded with Players and their friends.
Sarah and Jago are at the far end, their backs to an open doorway. The Donghu, the Harappan, the Nabataean, and both Earth Key and Sky Key were in the room beyond the doorway not minutes before. Baitsakhan was very alive and very intent on killing Shari Chopra out of a psychotic sense of revenge, but Maccabee felt sorry for the Harappan, and he stopped the Donghu. He was about to take sole possession of both Earth Key and Sky Key when Sarah and Jago surged into the room. As Baitsakhan lay dying, the Olmec jumped forward and attacked Maccabee, and while the fight was close, Jago won. Sarah had a chance to kill Little Alice Chopra, the girl who is Sky Key, a death that should have put a stop to Endgame.
But Sarah couldn’t do it.
And Jago couldn’t do it either.
Aisling’s
