Endgame Read online

  “So I noticed.” I take the notebook from my pocket and toss it to him. “I found this on him.”

  Boone catches the notebook. He opens it, flipping through the pages.

  “Anything interesting?” I ask.

  He nods. “Very interesting. He has names and contact information for at least seven lines in here.” He looks at a few more pages, then shuts the notebook and tosses it back to me. “He told me he wasn’t Cahokian. That doesn’t surprise me, but I wonder how many other lines he’s been playing against each other.”

  “And how many know about the weapon,” I say as I look at the pages. As Boone said, there’s a lot of information. Many people would kill for the intelligence Kenney has scribbled in his book.

  At the mention of the weapon, a shadow passes over Boone’s face. “That’s another thing,” he says. “He claimed the plans we have are forgeries.”

  I look up. “Really?”

  “He says it was all a Minoan trap to test your loyalty. You said it felt too easy. Maybe you were right.”

  I think of Ianthe confronting me on the dock. I told her that my taking the plans wasn’t about disloyalty to my line, but it was clear she didn’t believe me. Still, she surely would have relayed my message back to the others. Would any of them believe what I said about wanting to use the weapon for a greater good? Would Cassandra?

  “You have the plans with you?” Brecht’s question interrupts the storm of thoughts raging in my head.

  “Yes,” Boone tells him.

  “May I see them?”

  “Will you be able to tell if they’re fake?” I ask.

  He nods. “Most likely.”

  I look at Boone, who says, “Can I borrow your knife?”

  I reach into my boot and remove the knife, which I hand to him. He uses it to cut the stitches on the lining of his coat, then gives it back. He slides the tube holding the plans out of its hiding place and gives it to Brecht.

  Brecht sits on a sofa, opens the tube, and tips the plans into his hand. He unrolls them and places them on a coffee table in front of him. He looks at them for a moment, running his fingers over them.

  “The paper is not the same,” he says almost immediately. “And the writing, while very similar to that on the originals, is different.”

  “You remember them that well?” I question him.

  He nods. “I’ve studied these plans in great detail,” he says. “Sometimes I even dream about them.” He looks up and smiles sadly. “It’s not every day you discover something this important. Evrard and I devoted much of our lives to deciphering the plans. I suspect either of us could have re-created our half from memory, although now I don’t know.”

  “Your half?” I say, not understanding.

  “He didn’t tell you?” says Brecht.

  “Tell us what?” Boone asks.

  “The plans were in two parts,” Brecht says. “They were kept separate to prevent anyone from getting the full set. Evrard had only one half.”

  “Where’s the other?” I say.

  Brecht rolls up the set of plans on the table and places them back in the tube. “Cappadocia,” he says. “Hidden. We never found it.”

  “Cappadocia?” Boone says.

  “We believe so.”

  “Why didn’t you find them?” I ask him.

  “If the device is really as powerful as we think it could be, Evrard and I didn’t want the people we were forced to work for to build it,” he says. “We kept the existence of the second set of plans a secret between us.” He looks at me. “Do you have the pieces as well?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Although those may be forgeries too.”

  He waves a hand at me. “That wouldn’t matter. We re-created those pieces from the plans.”

  “They’re not original?”

  Brecht shakes his head. “The pieces we found were damaged. Evrard and I built the ones that were in the box. May I see them?”

  He cannot. The box with the pieces is still hidden in the basement of the apartment building where Tolya and the others lived. At least, I hope it is. If Tolya was correct, Kenney didn’t find it.

  “The box is safe,” Boone says. “We just need to retrieve it.”

  “Then we should go,” says Brecht.

  “Not so quickly,” Ott says. He’s been silent throughout the conversation. Now we all look at him. “Kenney threatened my family. And yours,” he adds, looking at Brecht. “He might have been lying, but if there’s any truth to what he said, we need to find out.”

  “There are addresses in the notebook,” I tell them. “He at least knew where they lived.”

  “But there are a lot of addresses,” Boone says. “Including my family’s and Ariadne’s family’s. Kenney was obviously a collector of information. But who knows what he actually did with any of it.”

  “I need to contact my wife,” Ott says. “And Lottie.”

  “Can you do that?” I ask him.

  “With the radio back at the apartment, yes,” he tells me. “Or I can at least try.”

  “And then what?” I say. I look at Boone. “We need a plan.”

  “We can talk on the way to the apartment,” Boone answers.

  We leave, getting into the car Boone has stolen. As we drive back to the apartment building, we continue our discussion. I’m not entirely comfortable talking in front of Ott and Brecht, but we have few options.

  “If my line has the authentic plans, and they don’t know about the second set, we still have an advantage,” I say.

  “Also, they don’t have Brecht,” Boone reminds me.

  “But if they have our families, they have a bargaining chip,” Ott remarks.

  Only if you’re willing to make the bargain, I think to myself. Although I do not want to see Ott’s family or Jackson’s family hurt, they ultimately have nothing really to do with me. I know this is my Player mind reacting to the situation, but it’s how I’ve been trained to assess the situation. I wonder if Boone is thinking the same thing, or if he’s thinking about Lottie and Bernard.

  “Excuse me,” Brecht says from behind me. “But what is your plan for the weapon if it can be built?”

  This, of course, is the big question. How much Brecht knows about Endgame, or the Makers, is unclear to me. Will he understand, or believe me, if I say we want to use the weapon against its creators, to try to stop humanity from being almost entirely wiped out? It sounds ridiculous even to me.

  However, the way I answer him may determine whether or not he continues to help us. After all, what incentive does he have for helping to build the weapon? Maybe, like Sauer, he would rather see it lost forever. Although I don’t think so. If he did, he wouldn’t have mentioned the second set of plans. Perhaps he has other motivations, though, ones that work counter to ours. This is a tricky situation, and I’m unsure how to proceed.

  “We want to use it to stop bad guys,” Boone says in his typically brash manner.

  “Ah,” says Brecht. “In that case, I suppose the question I should be asking is, who do you think the bad guys are?”

  “We can talk about that later,” Boone says. We have arrived at the apartment building. Boone looks at me and says, “Maybe just Ott and I should go in. I can get the box, and he can try to radio Lottie or his wife.”

  I know what he’s doing. He’s leaving me to talk to Brecht. I still don’t know what I’m going to say, how I’m going to explain the situation we’re facing, but I say, “All right. Be quick.”

  The two of them leave, and Brecht and I are alone. Before I can decide how to begin, the scientist says, “You cannot trust Tobias.”

  It takes me a moment to realize that he means Ott. “No,” I agree. “I don’t think we can.”

  “He’s not a bad man,” Brecht continues. “But he is an angry one, and that makes his thinking unclear.”

  I turn around and look at him. “What about you?” I ask. “Aren’t you angry about what’s been done to you?”

  Surprisingly, he smile
s. “I’m a scientist,” he says. “I’m trained to look at situations impartially.”

  “That’s easier to do in a laboratory than in a Soviet prison cell,” I remind him. “Are you telling me you never think about revenge?”

  He shrugs. “What’s done is done.”

  His voice is calm, but I don’t know that I believe him. “And what about your daughter?” I say. “Would you not do anything to save her and your grandchild?”

  This time, he is slower to answer. When he does, it’s a simple “yes.” Then he looks into my eyes. “So let us hope no one has taken them.”

  I appreciate his honesty, although it does nothing to make me feel better about what might happen later on. I say nothing, but sit silently and wait for Boone and Ott to return. This game has become crowded with players, each of us with our own motivations. Yet we are all going to have to work together, at least temporarily.

  A few minutes later, the doors open and Boone and Ott get back into the car. Boone is carrying the box. “Right where we left it,” he says, handing it to me.

  “What about Lottie?” I ask. “Did you reach her or Greta?”

  My question is met with silence. Then Ott says curtly, “No.”

  “That doesn’t mean something has happened to them,” Boone says. “Just that we weren’t able to get through.”

  He and I exchange glances. This is going to be a problem. If Ott thinks his wife and child are threatened, he’s going to be even more on edge. And dangerous.

  “We need to return to France,” he says.

  “May I see the box?” Brecht says before anyone can reply to Ott.

  I turn and hand him the box. He holds it on his lap and opens it. He looks at the pieces inside.

  “Are they forgeries?” I ask.

  “If they are, they’re very good ones,” he says. “But it doesn’t matter. Only one of them is truly important.” He selects one piece and picks it up. “This one.”

  “Why that one?” Boone asks him.

  “Because,” Brecht says, “this is not part of the weapon.”

  “What is it?” I say.

  “A key,” he answers.

  “A key to what?”

  “If I am correct, to the place where the second set of plans is hidden.”

  “In Cappadocia,” I say.

  “Yes.”

  Our problem has now become more difficult. France and Cappadocia are in different directions from Moscow. Getting to either one will take several days. I know everyone in the car is thinking this.

  “If we get the plans, we’ll have something they want,” Boone says.

  “It might be too late by then,” Ott counters. “They already think they have everything.”

  Again we’ve found ourselves between Scylla and Charybdis. I’d like to think that Boone and I are in control of what happens next, but the truth is, it’s Brecht who is commanding the ship. If he refuses to cooperate, going to Cappadocia will be useless. And if he chooses to go there instead of France, we will have to deal with Ott’s reaction.

  Boone looks at the scientist, who is still holding up the key and looking at it. “Well?” Boone says. “What do you think?”

  Brecht closes his hand around the key. “I think I want to see my daughter again.”

  Excerpt from ENDGAME: THE COMPLETE TRAINING DIARIES

  FOLLOW THE PLAYERS FROM

  ENDGAME: THE COMPLETE TRAINING DIARIES—

  BEFORE THEY WERE CHOSEN.

  KEEP READING FOR A SNEAK PEEK AT:

  MINOAN

  MARCUS

  When Marcus was a little kid, they called him the Monkey.

  This was meant to be a compliment. Which is exactly how Marcus took it.

  At seven years old, he monkeyed his way 30 meters up a climbing wall without fear, the only kid to ring the bell at the top. Ever since then he’s made sure he always goes higher than the other kids, always gets to the top faster. Always waits at the summit with a cocky grin and a “What took you so long?”

  He can climb anything. Trees, mountains, active volcanoes, a 90-degree granite incline or the sheer wall of a Tokyo skyscraper. The Asterousia Mountains of Crete were his childhood playground. He’s scrambled up all Seven Summits—the highest mountain on each continent—including Antarctica’s Mount Vinson, which meant a hike across the South Pole. He’s illegally scaled Dubai’s 800-meter-high Burj Khalifa without rope or harness, then BASE jumped from its silver tip. He’s the youngest person ever to summit Everest (not that the world is allowed to know it).

  If only someone would get around to building a tall enough ladder, he’s pretty sure he could climb to the moon.

  Climbing is an integral part of his training. Every Minoan child hoping to be named his or her generation’s Player learns to scale a peak. They’ve all logged hours defying gravity; they’ve all broken through the clouds. But Marcus knows that for the others, climbing is just one more skill to master, one more challenge to stare down. No different from sharpshooting or deep-sea diving or explosives disposal. For Marcus, it’s more.

  For Marcus, climbing is everything.

  It’s a fusion of mind and matter, the perfect way to channel all that frenetic energy that has him bouncing off the walls most of the time. It takes absolute focus, brute force, and a fearless confidence that comes naturally to Marcus, who feels most alive at 1,000 meters, looking down.

  He loves it for all those reasons, sure—but mostly he loves it because he’s the best.

  And because being the best, by definition, means being better than Alexander.

  It was clear from day one that Alexander Nicolaides was the kid to beat. It took only one day more to figure out he was also the kid to hate.

  Marcus’s parents called it camp, when they dropped him off that first day. But he was a smart kid, smart enough to wonder: What kind of parents dump their seven-year-old on Crete and head back to Istanbul without him? What kind of camp lets them do it?

  What kind of camp teaches that seven-year-old how to shoot?

  And how to arm live explosives?

  And how to read Chinese?

  It was the kind of camp where little kids were encouraged to play with matches.

  It was most definitely Marcus’s kind of place—and that was even before he found out the part about the alien invasion and how, if he played his cards right, he’d get to save the world.

  Best. Camp. Ever.

  Or it would have been, were it not for the impossible-to-ignore existence of Alexander Nicolaides. He was everything Marcus wasn’t. Marcus could never sit still, always acted without thinking; Alexander was calm and deliberate and even broke the camp’s meditation record, sitting silent and motionless and staring into a stupid candle for 28 hours straight. Marcus mastered languages and higher math with brute mental force, thudding his head against the logic problems until they broke; Alexander was fluent in Assyrian, Sumerian, ancient Greek, and, just for fun, medieval Icelandic, and he was capable of visualizing at least six dimensions. Marcus was better at climbing and shooting; Alexander had the edge in navigation and survival skills. They even looked like polar opposites: Alexander was a compact ball of tightly coiled energy, his wavy, white-blond hair nearly as pale as his skin, his eyes as blue as the Aegean Sea. Marcus was long-limbed and rangy, with close-cropped black hair. If they’d been ancient gods, Alexander would have had charge over the sky and the sea, all those peaceful stretches of cerulean and aquamarine. Marcus, with his dark green eyes and golden sheen, would have lorded it over the forests and the earth, all leaves and loam and living things. But the gods were long dead—or at least departed for the stars—and instead Marcus and Alexander jockeyed for rule over the same small domain. Marcus was the camp joker and prided himself on making even his sternest teachers laugh; Alexander was terse, serious, rarely speaking unless he had something important to say.

  Which was for the best, because his voice was so nails-on-chalkboard annoying that it made Marcus want to punch him in the mouth. />
  It didn’t help that Alexander was a good candidate for Player and an even better suck-up. The other kids definitely preferred Marcus, but Marcus knew that Alexander had a slight edge with the counselors, and it was their opinion that counted. Every seven years, the counselors invited a new crop of kids to the camp, the best and brightest of the Minoan line. The counselors trained them, judged them, pushed them to their limits, pitted them against one another and themselves, and eventually named a single one as the best. The Player. Everyone else got sent back home to their mind-numbingly normal lives.

  Maybe that kind of boring life was okay for other kids.

  Other kids dreamed of being astronauts, race-car drivers, rock stars—not Marcus. Since the day he found out about Endgame, Marcus had only one dream: to win it.

  Nothing was going to get in his way.

  Especially not Alexander Nicolaides.

  Tucked away in a secluded valley on the western edge of Crete, the Minoan camp was well hidden from prying eyes. The Greek isles were crowded with architectural ruins, most of them littered with regulations, tourists, and discarded cigarette butts. Few knew of the ruins nestled at the heart of the Lefka Ori range, where 50 carefully chosen Minoan children lived among the remnants of a vanished civilization. Tilting pillars, crumbling walls, the fading remains of a holy fresco—everywhere Marcus looked, there was evidence of a nobler time gone by. This was no museum: it was a living bond between present and past. The kids were encouraged to press their palms to crumbling stone, to trace carvings of heroes and bulls, to dig for artifacts buried thousands of years before. This was the sacred ground of their ancestors, and as candidates to be the Minoans’ champion, they were entitled to claim it for their own.

  The camp imposed a rigorous training schedule on the children, but none of them complained. They’d been chosen because they were the kind of kids who thought training was fun. They were kids who wanted to win. None more than Marcus. And other than the thorn in his side named Alexander Nicolaides, Marcus had never been so happy in his life.

  He endured Alexander for two years, biding his time, waiting for the other boy to reveal his weakness or, better yet, to flame out. He waited for the opportunity to triumph over Alexander so definitively, so absolutely, that everyone would know, once and for all, that Marcus was the best. Marcus liked to imagine how that day would go, how the other kids would carry him around on their shoulders, cheering his name, while Alexander slunk away in humiliated defeat.