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  “I’m going to ask you again,” Walter said, perfectly calm. “What happened to the three people that came to see you in Ethiopia?”

  The kid grinned. “You are all fools. Interfering in Endgame. You will all perish in the fire of the gods.”

  Walter turned to the counter and picked up a meat tenderizer.

  Kat grabbed my hand.

  He smacked a pane of glass with the mallet and it shattered into pieces.

  “What do you want me to say?” the Aksumite said. “That your friends are alive and waiting for you somewhere? You sent them to me to kill the people of my line and bring me to this counterfeit Calling. My people are not the kind to sit idly by.”

  John spoke. “So you killed them?”

  “We have eyes everywhere.”

  Walter grabbed the kid’s laughing face and picked up a piece of glass a little bit smaller than a playing card. He shoved it into the boy’s mouth, slicing the edges of his lips. The boy began to choke, and John swung a fist into the kid’s chin. Walter let go of him, and the Aksumite spewed out glass shards and blood. He struggled for breath, and moaned at the broken glass in his mouth and throat. He hacked and coughed, and then began to vomit.

  “You . . . ,” he panted. “You will burn.” Blood was pouring from his mouth.

  “You won’t be around to see it, kid,” Walter said, and punched him.

  “John,” Kat said. “John, we don’t need to do this.”

  The boy spit again, and I could see the tiny slivers of glass in the blood on the floor.

  “He doesn’t have any information,” I said.

  “Stay out of this, Mike,” John said.

  “You can’t just torture a kid,” I said back.

  John jumped up and grabbed me by the shirt. “He’s not a kid. When are you going to get that? These people do not deserve our pity. They deserve pain and death. And when he has experienced enough pain, I’ll give him death.”

  “This is not what I signed up for,” I said.

  “Me either,” Kat said.

  “You wanted to stop Endgame, didn’t you? Wasn’t that what you signed up for? Because that’s what we’re doing.”

  “You’re torturing him,” Kat said.

  “And what about Rodney, and Jim, and Julia?” John said. “They were my friends.”

  The Aksumite spit again, and formed as much of a smile as his torn face allowed him to. “They were p-p-poisoned before they ever . . . before they got off the plane.”

  Walter grabbed another piece of glass, but I didn’t give him time. I pulled the Colt Lawman from my belt and fired two rounds into the young boy’s chest.

  John pushed the gun away and shoved me backward. I slipped on the tile floor and landed on my tailbone, pain shooting up my spine.

  “Are you trying to make the other Players run away?” John shouted. “The Harappan’s been sitting out there for an hour. The others will be coming!”

  Kat answered for me. “Then shouldn’t you be focusing on them instead of torturing him? We were supposed to be stopping these guys, not even killing them. Just stopping them. And you’re torturing him for information you already knew? Tell me that you had any doubt Jim and Julia and Rodney were dead.”

  John stepped toward her, and I raised my gun again. “You do not threaten her.”

  “Keep it up, Mike,” John said. “Keep thinking with your dick. First Mary and now Kat. Is that the only thing that motivates you?”

  “Back off,” I said.

  We stared at each other for a long, silent minute. John could make any assumptions he wanted to, but I was here to save the world. Sure, I’d gotten into Zero line because of Mary, but now Kat and I had found something special. I was determined that, no matter what happened here in Munich, Kat and I were going to survive. We were going to stop the Players, and we were going to live.

  Just then a little bell jingled. The door to the café had opened.

  I turned my gun away from John and moved to the kitchen door.

  It was Mary.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Harappan, Nabataean, Donghu, Sumerian, Shang, Olmec. We’ve killed half of them,” I said. “The rest are all out there, waiting for whatever is supposed to happen at a Calling.”

  We were still in the café, the place still heavy with anger and the smell of blood and gun smoke. Through the big glass windows, we could see the six remaining Players. A few were looking in our direction. They must have heard the gun.

  But, instead of coming toward us, they all moved toward the sunburst, forming a circle around it. I moved to the window and opened it, hoping I could hear what was happening.

  “So this is it?” the Sumerian asked. He was a short kid, maybe 16. He wore a red tunic and pants that reminded me of the clothes I’d seen people wear in martial arts classes. In fact, almost everyone appeared to be in fighting clothes, as if this were the Olympic judo trials. Most of them appeared to have a weapon of some kind—concealed, so as not to draw attention, but I knew what I was looking for.

  There were four boys: the Sumerian, the Harappan, the Shang, and the Nabataean. The Olmec and the Donghu were girls. The Donghu was bouncing from foot to foot as if she were preparing for a boxing match. The Olmec was gorgeous—a tall, tanned girl with long, black, curly hair. She looked about my age—19, maybe.

  She had a confused and angry look on her face.

  “Who is that?” she said, speaking to the other five Players but pointing over at our café. She had virtually no accent. “The girl who just went into the restaurant. Who is that?”

  “What are you talking about?” the Nabataean asked. He had a low voice, and he spoke perfect English, but with a British accent, and he stood as still as a tree, his arms folded. “This is about us.”

  “Have you noticed there are only six of us here?” the Olmec said. “That girl who just went into the café was in Mexico. She was there right before the sign from Huitzilopochtli. The explosion.”

  “Someone has already started Playing,” the Harappan said calmly. “And I don’t think that it’s Player versus Player. I think someone—one of you—has brought assassins from your line. They’re watching right now. Maybe they have us in their crosshairs. This is not in the rules. The Makers are watching us, and they know who is a Player and who is not. They will not tolerate cheating.”

  “I didn’t do this,” the Shang said. “I don’t need help to defeat the rest of you.”

  “Perhaps should go see who in the café,” the Donghu said in broken English.

  “Perhaps you should,” the Harappan said.

  The Olmec girl pulled an obsidian knife from her belt. “One of you is lying. But it won’t help you win. Let’s get this started.”

  “Do we wait for another sign?” the Shang said. “Or has the game begun?”

  The Harappan spoke. “Someone thinks the game has begun. I do not know what the Makers will rule about this breach, but I do know that you will not need to wait long.”

  The Shang, barely five feet tall, pulled a saber from his belt, eyeing the Olmec on his left and the Nabataean on his right. “Your lives will end on my blade.” The Harappan was directly across the circle from him. The Nabataean held out the walking staff he was holding and removed a leather cover that hid a spearhead. In response, the Harappan drew his sword—short, with a wicked curve.

  The Donghu laughed. “What is this? Middle Ages?” She reached into the folds of her clothes and pulled out a pistol. “Sorry. I prepared.” She aimed at the Shang.

  Next to me in the café windows, both John and Walter pointed rifles out the window, waiting for the action to start.

  The Sumerian was the only one who didn’t draw a weapon, but he was still smiling.

  “Wait for them to kill each other,” Mary said. “We don’t need to shoot if they’re going to settle this here themselves.”

  “We have clear lines of sight,” John said, “and there aren’t many tourists right now.”

  I heard a whistle,
and then a Munich police officer came running over, pulling out his pistol.

  “Halt! Nicht bewegen!”

  Before I even got a look at the cop, the Sumerian flicked his hand and a knife buried itself into the policeman’s chest.

  To my side I heard glass break, and for a split second I thought John and Walter were firing, but it was the opposite: Walter fell back, a bullet in his forehead.

  “No!” Mary shouted, and I grabbed Kat and pulled her down, out of sight. John fired his gun—a fully automatic AK-47. He had dropped low and was firing in long bursts, barely looking out the window.

  “Who shot Walter?” Mary cried, on her knees next to him.

  John ducked down and swapped out the magazine. “Shit. I think it was a sniper. Or it was that Donghu girl with the Sig Sauer.” He was scared. I’d never seen that look on John’s face before. He was the one who was supposed to keep the rest of us calm. “But it couldn’t have been the Donghu. Or it was just a really lucky shot.”

  “Why would there be a sniper?” Kat asked.

  John shook his head. “It’s like they said. Maybe one of their lines really did send someone with them.”

  “Isn’t that cheating?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. Walter would know.”

  “We’re going to lose them,” I said. When no one responded, I peeked out the window.

  “Don’t!” Kat said, grabbing my arm. But I stayed where I was.

  “I don’t see anyone on the roofs,” I said. “No snipers. And we’re safe.” The Donghu with the pistol was dead, lying in a crumpled heap, the Harappan standing above her, sword fighting with the Shang. The Olmec was running, no knife in her hand anymore—I didn’t know where it had gone. She leaped for the Donghu’s gun, but it was knocked away from her at the last minute by the back end of the Nabataean’s spear. She turned the leap into a roll and was up on her feet in an instant, dodging the sharp end of the spear and trying for the gun again. The Sumerian was all alone, hunched over the dead cop’s body.

  The Olmec ran for the gun again, but the Nabataean was too fast and hit her in the face with the spear shaft. She fell to the ground, unconscious. The Nabataean looked at the fighting all around him, spotted the Sumerian, and threw his spear.

  He had good aim, but, it seemed by luck, the Sumerian turned at the last minute, the blade slicing his clothes and skittering to a stop several yards away.

  “We have to get out there,” John said. “We have to kill them all.”

  Mary grabbed up Walter’s rifle—an M14. That was what I’d trained on all summer. I knew the gun inside and out, but so did she. I grabbed for the pistol at Walter’s side—a Beretta. I gave it to Kat, and took back my M1911. I kept the Colt Lawman with me, too, tucked in the back of my pants. It only had four rounds left.

  John opened the door, ran into the square, dropped to one knee, and—didn’t fire. He was searching for the sniper, if there even was one. Mary ran out and crouched behind a cement planter full of yellow and red flowers. She too looked for the sniper.

  The Sumerian was up from the cop, holding his pistol. I aimed at him with mine, but he was at least fifty yards away, farther than I ever trained for.

  I fired twice, from a standing position, both hands on the gun. But I missed. He ducked back into a crouch and shot back at me. I dove down next to Mary, trying to catch my breath. We had them vastly outgunned, but they were moving with the skill and grace of Players, not wasting a motion, not ever unfocused.

  I could hear the rat-a-tat of John’s gun. He was taking short bursts now, but shooting up into an empty window.

  “Shoot the Players!” I called to him.

  “There has to be a sniper. That’s the only open window.”

  “You can’t see a sniper,” I said. “And we need to kill the Players.”

  “I will,” Mary said, taking a deep breath and then peering up over the planter to shoot through the flowers. Petals exploded into the air as she fired the semiautomatic rifle. I dared to look out to see what she was hitting.

  Nothing. She couldn’t see anything through those flowers. She was firing blind.

  “Mary!” I shouted. “Give me the gun.”

  “No,” she said, ducking back down.

  “You’re not hitting anything. You can’t see.”

  “It’s suppressing fire,” she said, as she tremblingly fumbled with loading a new magazine—the last magazine we had with us, unless there was more ammunition on Walter’s body I hadn’t seen. “I’m fine. You shoot.”

  Kat was using an upturned outdoor table as cover and was firing at the Sumerian, but because of her injury she was forced to use her left hand, and she wasn’t hitting anything.

  I took aim at the Harappan, who was still struggling against the Shang, their swords swinging and clashing, parrying and lunging. I squeezed the trigger and the gun jumped up. I wasn’t good at these distances. I fired again and hit the Shang in the leg. He stumbled, and immediately the Harappan swung at his neck and practically beheaded him. The Shang fell to the ground, blood spurting out of his severed arteries. The Harappan was close to the unconscious Olmec, and he ran over to her and stabbed her in the chest.

  The Nabataean was running to the Sumerian, or to retrieve his spear—I wasn’t sure. I didn’t even try wasting bullets on him while he ran. Instead I focused on the Sumerian. I tried to follow all my training—sight the target, pull the trigger, don’t squeeze it, and let out a long slow breath—but by the time I had let out the breath, the Sumerian was on his feet, running. I fired one shot at him and missed.

  “Sniper!” John called, and started firing again.

  I looked all around for him, trying to see what John was shooting at.

  “Where?” I asked.

  But he couldn’t hear me over the noise of his gun. I turned to Mary.

  “Mary.”

  She was lying next to me, still bent at the knees but lying on her back.

  She’d been shot in the eye, and there was a spray of blood out the back of her head, splattered across the cobblestones.

  “Mary,” I said, tears immediately springing to my eyes. I reached a hand out to touch her cheek, but then recoiled. Her face was distorted and broken. The bullet hadn’t gone cleanly through her eye but had hit her cheekbone and torn a hole through her face, fracturing the bones. It was too much, too horrible to see, too horrible to remember. But I knew I was going to remember this every day of my life. It was burning into my mind, searing my eyes like a cattle brand.

  “I got him,” John said, letting out a long breath. “I got the bastard.”

  “Where?”

  He pointed up at the roofline. “Behind that chimney.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Kat answered. “I saw him fall. He’s over there. By the Olmec.”

  “Where did they go?” I asked, numbly noticing that the Players were gone.

  Mary was dead.

  “The Sumerian ran, and the Nabataean followed. The Harappan, calm son of a bitch, stabbed an extra time into all of the bodies. Made sure they were dead.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kat said, eyes wet. “I tried to shoot him. I really tried. But my hand. I couldn’t hold the gun steady. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “We don’t outnumber them anymore,” John said, dropping his gun. “We need to move, and fast.”

  “Don’t we have to follow them?” I said.

  “Of course,” John said, visibly shaken. “Who has bullets?”

  “I have some,” Kat said, standing. “I wasn’t counting my shots.”

  “I’ve got three or four,” I said.

  “Hide your guns,” John said. “I’ve got a Walther. One full magazine.”

  “Then we’re going to have to figure this out. But first we need to follow them. Hopefully they’ll kill each other.”

  I took Mary’s hand and squeezed it one last time. I didn’t care what she had done to me at that point. She didn’t deserve to die, an
d not like this. And she deserved more than my just leaving her on the side of the road for some paramedics to find.

  But like so many things in my life lately, I had no choice.

  We ran after the Players.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I helped Kat check her magazine and saw she had four bullets left.

  She was bleeding through the bandage on her arm—it was dribbling down her wrist and hand—but there was nothing we could do about it. We needed to follow the Players, and we needed to stay away from the cops.

  All of us concealed our pistols.

  “Will they split up?” Kat asked.

  “No,” John said, speaking softly. “They were expecting the beginning of the game. But they didn’t get any direction, any puzzle to solve, any answer to look for. So all they have as an objective is to kill each other. They have to do it now, today, because there’s nothing else.”

  “And we can’t let them get away because we’ll never track them down again,” I said.

  “And they’ll stick together, because there’s nowhere else to go.”

  We heard a whistle, and John stopped running. Kat and I did too. I took her good hand in mine. Moments later two policemen jogged past us toward the plaza.

  “Are we still in this?” I asked. “I mean, do we even have a chance anymore? We’ve lost everybody. Kat can’t shoot because of her hand. We are almost out of bullets, and we’re going up against these guys? Did you see how they fight?”

  “It was unbelievable,” Kat said. “Who can move like that?”

  “And what if they have more backup, like that sniper?”

  John took a deep breath. “We knew it was going to be hard.”

  “What?” I asked, incredulous. “We knew it was going to be hard. We didn’t know that it was going to kill us all.”

  “Walter and I tried to prepare you,” he said, but the words sounded hollow. “We’re trying to save the world, remember? We trained all summer. Were you expecting this to be easy?”

  “We trained all summer as a group. We were hunting as a team, in everything we did.”

  “We’re still a group.”