Читать книгу Origins - Джеймс Фрей, James Frey, Nils Johnson-Shelton - Страница 6

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.

He was nine years old when the moment finally arrived.

A tournament, elimination style, with the champion claiming a large gold trophy, a month’s worth of extra dessert, and bonus bragging rights. The Theseus Cup was held every two years as a showcase for campers—and a chance for them to prove their worth. There were rumors that the first to win the Theseus Cup was a shoo-in to be chosen as the Player. No one knew whether or not this was the case—but Marcus didn’t intend to risk it. He intended to win.

He swept his opening matches effortlessly, knocking one kid after another senseless, even the ones who were older and bigger. Bronze daggers, double axes, Turkish sabers—whatever the weapon, Marcus wielded it like a champion. Alexander, who’d started off in another bracket, cut a similar swath across the competition. This was as it should be, Marcus thought. It would be no fun to knock him out in an early round. The decisive blow needed to come when it counted, in the championship, with everyone watching.

The two nine-year-old finalists stepped into the ring for a final bout. Personal, hand-to-hand combat. No weapons, no intermediaries. Just the two of them. Finally.

They faced each other and bowed, as they’d been taught.

Bowing before you fought, offering up that token of respect, that was a rule.

After that, there were no rules.

Marcus opened with a karate kick. Alexander blocked it with ease, and they pitted their black belts against each other for a few seconds before Alexander took him in a judo hold and flipped him to the ground. Marcus allowed it—only so he could sweep his leg across Alexander’s knees and drop him close enough for a choke hold. Alexander wriggled out and smashed a fist toward Marcus’s face. Marcus rolled away just in time, and the punch came down hard against the mat.

The camp was on its feet, cheering, screaming Marcus’s and Alexander’s names—Marcus tried not to distract himself by trying to figure out whose cheering section was bigger. The fighters moved fluidly through techniques, meeting sanshou with savate, blocking a tae kwon do attack with an onslaught of aikido, their polished choreography disintegrating into the furious desperation of a street brawl. But even spitting and clawing like a pair of animals, they were perfectly matched.

The fight dragged on and on. Dodging punches, blocking kicks, throwing each other to the mat again and again, they fought for one hour, then two. It felt like years. Sweat poured down Marcus’s back and blood down his face. He gasped and panted, sucking in air and trying not to double over from the pain. His legs were jelly, his arms lead weights. Alexander looked like he’d been flattened by a steamroller, with both eyes blackened and a wide gap where his front teeth used to be. The kids fell silent, waiting for the referee to step in before the two boys killed each other.

But this was not that kind of camp.

They fought on.

They fought like they lived: Marcus creative and unpredictable, always in motion; Alexander cool, rational, every move a calculated decision.

Which made it even more of a shock when Alexander broke. Unleashing a scream of pure rage, he reached over the ropes to grab the referee’s stool, and smashed it over Marcus’s head.

Marcus didn’t see it coming.

He only felt the impact.

A thunderbolt of pain reverberating through his bones.

His body dropping to the ground, no longer under his control, his consciousness drifting away.

The last thing he saw, before everything faded to black, was Alexander’s face, stunned by his own loss of control. Marcus smiled, then started to laugh. Even in defeat, he’d won—he’d finally made the uptight control freak completely lose it.

The last thing he heard was Alexander laughing too.

“You always tell that story wrong,” Marcus says now. “You leave out the part where I let you win.”

Xander only laughs. At 14, he’s nearly twice the size he was at that first Theseus Cup, his shoulders broader, his voice several octaves deeper, his blond hair thicker and forested across his chest. But his laugh is still exactly the same as it was on the day of the fight.

Marcus remembers, as he remembers every detail of that day.

You never forget the moment you make your best friend.

“Yeah, that was really generous of you, deciding to get a concussion and pass out,” Xander says. “I owe you one.”

“You owe me two,” Marcus points out. “One for the concussion, one for the cheating.”

They are hanging off a sheer rock face, 50 meters off the ground. They will race each other to the top of the cliff, 70 meters above, then rappel back down to the bottom, dropping toward the ground at a stomach-twisting speed.

Marcus has heard that most kids his age fill up their empty hours playing video games. He thinks this is a little more fun.

“I most certainly did not cheat,” Xander says, trying to muster some of his habitual dignity. Most people think that’s the real him: solemn, uptight, deliberate, slow to smile. Marcus knows better. Over the last five years, he’s come to know the real Xander, the one who laughs at his jokes and even, occasionally, makes a few of his own. (Though, of course, they’re never any good.) “Not technically, at least,” Xander qualifies. He jams his fingers into a small crevice in the rock face and pulls himself up another foot, trying very hard to look like it costs him no effort.

Marcus scrambles up past him, grinning, because for him it actually is no effort. “Only because no one ever thought to put ‘don’t go nutball crazy and smash furniture over people’s heads’ in the rules before,” Marcus says.

“Lucky for both of us,” Xander says.

Normally, Marcus would shoot back a joke or an insult, something about how it’s not so lucky for him, because Xander’s been clinging to him like a barnacle ever since. Or maybe something about how it was luckier for Xander, because now, with Marcus as a wingman, he might someday, if he’s lucky, actually get himself a date.

But not today.

Not today, the last day before everything changes. Tomorrow, they will find out who has been selected as this generation’s Player. It’ll surely be either Marcus or Alexander; everyone knows that. They’re the best in the camp at everything; no one else even comes close. It’s what brought them together in the first place. After all that time wasted hating each other, they’d realized that where it counted, they were the same. No one else was so determined to win—and no one else was good enough to do so. Only Marcus could melt Xander’s cool; only Xander could challenge Marcus’s cockiness. In the end, what else could they do but become best friends? They pushed each other to go faster, to get stronger, to be better. Competition is all they know. Their friendship is built on the fact that they’re so well matched.

Tomorrow, all that changes. Tomorrow, one of them will leave this place as a winner, and embark on his hero’s journey. The other will leave a loser, and find some way to endure the rest of his pathetic life.

Which means today is not a day for joking. I couldn’t have made it through this place without you, Marcus would like to say. And no one knows me like you do. And maybe even you make me want to be my best self.

But he’s not that kind of guy.

“Yeah, lucky,” he agrees, and Xander knows him well enough to understand the rest.

They climb in silence for a while, battling gravity, scrabbling for purchase on the rock. Marcus’s muscles scream as he stretches for a handhold a few inches out of reach, finally getting leverage with his fingertips and dragging the rest of himself up and up.

“It’s probably going to be you,” Xander says finally, and they both know what he’s talking about. Marcus can tell Xander’s trying not to breathe heavily, but the strain in his voice is plain.

“No way. Totally you,” Marcus says, hoping the lie isn’t too obvious.

“It’s not like Endgame is even going to happen,” Xander says. “Think about it—after all this time, what are the odds?”

“Nil,” Marcus agrees, though this too feels like a lie. How could Endgame not happen for him? Ever since Marcus found out about the aliens, and the promise they’d made to return—ever since he found out about the Players, and the game—some part of him has known this was his fate. This is another difference between him and Xander, though it’s one they never talk about out loud.

Marcus believes.

When they were 11 years old, Marcus and Xander spent an afternoon digging for artifacts at the edge of the camp’s northern border. It was Xander’s favorite hobby, and occasionally he suckered Marcus into joining him. What else were friends for? That day, after several long hours sweating in the sun (Marcus complaining the whole time), Marcus hit gold.

Specifically a golden labrys, a double-headed ax. The labrys was one of the holiest symbols of the Minoan civilization, used to slice the throats of sacrificial bulls. Marcus gaped at the dirt-encrusted object. It had to be at least 3,500 years old. Yet it fit in his palm as if it had been designed just for him.

“No one’s ever found anything that good,” Xander said. “It’s got to be a sign. That it’s going to be you who gets chosen.”

“Whatever.” Marcus shrugged it off. But inside, he was glowing. Because Xander was right. It did have to be a sign. The ax had chosen him—had anointed him. Ever since then, he’s believed he will be chosen as the Player. It is his destiny.

But that’s not the kind of thing you say out loud.

“It doesn’t even matter which of us gets picked. Without Endgame, being the Player’s just a big waste of time,” Marcus says now. “Though I bet you’d be a chick magnet.”

“But what good would it do you?” Xander points out. “It’s not like you’d have time to actually date.”

This is a game they play, the two of them. As the selection day draws closer, they’ve been playing it more often. Pretending they don’t care who gets picked, pretending it might be better to lose.

“Imagine getting out of here once and for all,” Xander continues. “Going to a real school.”

“Joining a football team,” Marcus says, trying to imagine himself scoring a winning goal before a stadium of screaming fans.

“Going to a concert,” Xander says. He plays the guitar. (Or at least tries to.)

“Meeting a girl whose idea of foreplay isn’t krav maga,” Marcus says. He’s still got an elbow-shaped bruise on his stomach, courtesy of Helena Loris.

“I don’t know . . . I’ll kind of miss that part,” Xander says fondly. He’s been fencing regularly with Cassandra Floros, who’s promised that if he can draw blood, she’ll reward him with a kiss. “But not much else.”

“Yeah, me neither,” Marcus says. “Bring on normal life.”

He’s a few meters above Xander, and it’s a good thing, because it means Xander can’t see his sickly, unconvincing grin. A normal life?

To Marcus, that’s a fate worse than death.

A fate he’d do anything to avoid.

The counselors try their best to give the kids some approximation of a normal upbringing. In their slivers of free time, campers are allowed to surf the Net, watch TV, and flirt with whomever they want. They even spend two months of every year back home with their families—for Marcus, these are the most excruciating days of all. Of course he loves his parents. He loves Turkey, its smells and tastes, the way the minarets spear the clouds on a stormy day. But it’s not his world anymore; it’s not his home. He spends his vacations counting the minutes until he can get back to camp, back to training, back to Xander.

Deep down, he knows this is another difference between them. Sure, Xander wants to be chosen. But Marcus wants it more.

Marcus needs it.

That has to count for something.

Marcus is happy to pretend that he and Xander are evenly matched, that the choice between them is a coin flip. It’s easier that way; it’s how friendship works. But surely, he thinks, their instructors can tell that it’s an illusion. That Marcus is just a little better, a little more determined. That between the two of them, only Marcus would sacrifice everything for the game, for his people. That only Marcus truly believes he’s meant to be the Player—and not just any Player, but the one who saves his people.

They’re both pretending not to be nervous, but deep down, Marcus really isn’t.

He knows it will be him.

It has to be.

He reaches the top with a whoop of triumph, Xander still several meters behind. Instead of savoring his victory or waiting for his best friend to catch up, he anchors his rappelling line, hooks himself on, and launches himself over the cliff. This moment, this leap of faith, it’s the reward that makes all that hard work worth it. There’s a pure joy in giving way to the inexorable, letting gravity speed him toward his fate.

Tomorrow, everything changes.

And it can’t come fast enough.

The amphitheater is filled to capacity. Every Minoan within 200 kilometers is here to learn who their new Player will be. Marcus sits in the front row with all the other prospects, remembering the last time he was at this ceremony. He was young then, too young to understand what it meant or imagine that someday it would be him.

It’s strange now, thinking about his life back then. It doesn’t feel real, or at least it doesn’t feel like his life. He was a different person then, before he knew the truth about the world and his place in it. His life, the one that matters, is defined by Endgame, and by his friendship with Xander. Before them, he was just a fraction of himself. Now he’s whole.

Elias Cassadine, the camp leader, takes the podium to deliver a speech about the import of this decision and the honor he is about to bestow. Marcus has endured many a lecture by Elias, and knows the man will drone on forever about the long-lost Minoan civilization and its tradition of heroes. How the legendary King Minos was actually an alien god, who chose the Minoans, of all peoples, to live among and rule. Elias will speak of Endgame as a sacred compact between the Minoans and the beings from the stars, a chance for this chosen people to rise above the rest—if their champion can rise to the challenge. He will boast about the camp’s rigorous training program and the care with which the instructors have selected their Player. As if it takes some kind of genius to pick out the best. Elias will talk duty and sacrifice, and how everyone in the audience owes a debt of gratitude to their new Player. He’ll blather on forever while everyone fidgets in their seat and pretends not to be bored out of their skulls.

Xander catches his eye and Marcus mimes choking himself. Put me out of my misery, he means, and of course Xander knows it, because Xander always knows what he means. For the last five years, everything he’s done, he’s done with Xander. It’s going to be strange, going forward alone. Yes, he can do it on his own, but why would he want to?

Marcus wonders whether he might be able to talk Elias into defying tradition and letting him keep Xander around. Batman had Robin, Theseus had Daedalus—why couldn’t Marcus have Xander?

It’s a brilliant idea, and he can’t believe he didn’t think of it before. He’s working up some good arguments in favor of it when he realizes that Elias Cassadine has stopped droning and excited murmurs are rippling across the crowd. Beside him, Xander has gone pale.

“Meet our new Player,” Elias says, and Marcus is already rising to his feet when his brain kicks in and processes what he’s just heard. What he’s hearing now, as Elias says it one more time, almost drowned out by the thunder of the cheering Minoans.

Xander’s name.

Xander’s name, not Marcus’s.

This isn’t happening, Marcus thinks, because it can’t be happening.

This is just a dream, Marcus thinks, because he’s had many like it—nightmares, really, but then he always wakes up.

There is no waking up this time.

This is real. The announcement has been made. The choice has been made, and it’s Xander who steps hesitantly up to the podium, lowers his head as Elias sets the golden horns atop his wild curls. A tribute to the legend of the Minotaur, these horns are the official marker of the chosen Player, and it’s Xander who will bear them. Xander who clasps his hands over his head in triumph, Xander who’s been named the best. Xander who’s been named the Player.

It’s Xander who’s won.

It’s Marcus who’s been left behind.

Things move quickly after that. They are all expected to leave the camp by the end of the week. Soon a new group of children will arrive to begin seven years of training and claim the camp as their own. Marcus and the others will go back to their families, while Xander goes forward. Somewhere.

“You really can’t tell me where?” Marcus says. They’re packing up the room they share. Seven years of memories dumped into a few cardboard boxes, taped up, and sent away. Of all these belongings, the only one that means anything to Marcus is the golden ax—and even that has lost its shine. The labrys was supposed to mean something, was supposed to mean he was chosen. Now? It’s nothing but a rusty old ax. Marcus thinks that he should offer it to Xander as a gift, a way of saying without saying, The future belongs to you.

Instead he tosses it in a box, and resolves to throw it away as soon as he gets the chance.

“I really can’t tell you.” Xander pulls out a pizza box that must have been sitting under his bed for weeks. That would explain the smell. “They swore me to secrecy about all Player stuff, and I don’t think they’re kidding around.”

Don’t be jealous, Marcus reminds himself, like this is even possible. Like he’s not seething with rage.

“No worries,” Marcus says. “Feel free to lord it over me with your super-special Player secrets and your exotic classified missions. I’ve got secrets too, you know. You’ll never guess what I’ve got hidden in this sock drawer.”

“A pack of condoms you ordered online and have been hoarding for so long they’ve probably turned to dust,” Xander says, without missing a beat. “Plus some incredibly foul socks.”

He’s right on both counts. It only makes Marcus angrier.

How dare Xander keep secrets?

How dare he act like everything is the same between them, like they’re still best friends, like everything is fine—when everything is ruined?

How dare he win?

There’s an awkwardness between them now, a stiff silence, and Marcus knows it’s his fault.

“I really thought it would be you,” Xander says, not for the first time. It makes Marcus want to punch him, because how’s he supposed to respond? “So did I”?

Actually, that’s not a bad idea. So he says it out loud. Then laughs, like it was a joke.

Xander laughs too. Fakely. It’s even worse than the silence.

Marcus knows he’s acting like a spoiled brat. Like a child who doesn’t get what he wants and throws a temper tantrum. But it’s not like Xander’s any better, with this humble aw, shucks act, like he’s not loving every minute of this. Maybe it would be different if Xander would just own it, rub his victory in Marcus’s face.

That’s always been the way between them—always crowing, always bragging, never apologizing.

They could afford to be honest, because they were on such even ground.

Not now.

Now every word out of Xander’s mouth sounds like an apology, and Marcus sees that for what it is: pity.

“We’ll still be friends,” Xander says, tossing a sweatshirt in his suitcase. It’s Marcus’s sweatshirt, but Marcus doesn’t say anything. Xander’s already taken everything that matters. What’s one sweatshirt more?

“Yeah, sure,” Marcus says, not even bothering to sound like he means it. “Of course.” Because what’s Xander going to do, come home from swimming the English Channel or battling a fleet of ninjas—then go play video games in Marcus’s basement? Not going to happen.

“Anyway, I’ve got kind of a surprise for you,” Xander says.

Marcus grunts. He’s tired of surprises.

“They gave me three days before I have to leave,” Xander says.

“For your magical mystery tour.”

“Yeah. That. Three days . . . and access to a helicopter.”

Marcus freezes. Despite his foul mood, he feels his lips drawing back in a smile. He can’t stop himself.

Because he knows what a helicopter means.

“So?” Xander says, hope lighting up his face. “You in?”

With a helicopter at their disposal, they can fly from the nearby Daskalogiannis airport to Nea Kameni, a remote, uninhabited island where an active volcano pokes out of the Aegean and into the clouds. They can, as they have done before, hike up to the lip of the volcano and then rappel down into the maw of the beast, feel the heat of the lava on their backs, test themselves against the most powerful foe nature has to offer. Thirty-five hundred years ago, a volcanic eruption on the island of Thera destroyed the Minoan settlement at Akrotiri and devastated communities all along the coast of Crete. The eruption spelled the beginning of the end of Minoan civilization—now, every time Marcus bests a volcano, he feels he’s striking a blow on behalf of his ancestors. It’s rare they can find a way to get themselves to Nea Kameni—rarer still that Xander agrees to try. He may have overcome his childish fear of heights, but he’s never much liked the idea of climbing into a massive cauldron of boiling lava. Marcus usually has to butter him up for days, whine and plead and promise to do his homework, before Xander finally gives in.

Not this time, obviously.

Xander knows what he’s doing, dangling this trip before Marcus. A volcano climb is the one thing he can’t resist.

“No way will they let you,” Marcus says, trying hard to maintain his sulk. It’s tough: Even thinking about the climb has him jittery with excitement. “You think they’re going to let their precious Player risk himself on a stupid volcano?”

“Leave that to me,” Xander says. “If I can’t handle a few overprotective instructors, how am I supposed to save the world?”

Good question, Marcus thinks.

Then he thinks:

Enough.

Yes, a mistake has been made. Yes, Marcus deserved this win. Yes, he is in despair, and his life is pretty much over. But that’s not Xander’s fault. And if their positions were reversed, Xander would find a way to accept it. He would find a way to be happy for Marcus, because that’s the kind of person he is.

Marcus resolves to be that kind of person too.

He resolves to be happy for Xander.

Or at least do a better job of faking it.

It is easy, at the base of the volcano, to imagine they are the last two people on Earth. That Endgame has come and gone, the human species wiped off the face of the planet, the two of them abandoned to live out their days on this bare rock. It wouldn’t be so bad, Marcus thinks. Blue sky and turquoise sea, days in the sand and nights by the campfire, nothing to do but race each other up and down the volcano, no one to say who won and who lost, who is special and who is not—no obligations to their people or to the future. Only the present moment, only the two of them.

The first night, sitting around the campfire, toasting marshmallows and doing their best impressions of Elias Cassadine, it’s hard to remember that this won’t last forever.

They’ve brought tents, of course, but both of them prefer sleeping under the stars. They lie on their backs, side by side, the silence between them comfortable instead of awkward. Like it used to be, before.

“What if I can’t hack it?” Xander says quietly.

“It’s only a couple thousand meters,” Marcus says. “You can do that in your sleep. And if you can’t, I’ll just toss you over my shoulder and carry you up. Not like I haven’t done it before.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Xander says.

Marcus knew that.

He doesn’t want to talk about it—not now, in this place where it’s so easy to forget. Once they leave here, Marcus will begin the rest of his life. His loser’s life. He’ll never be able to forget again. This is supposed to be their escape from all of that. And Xander is about to ruin it.

“What if it actually happens? Endgame. And it’s all on me.” Xander speaks slowly, like he knows this isn’t anything he should admit out loud. “How do they know I’ll be good enough? What if they’re wrong?”

“They’re not wrong,” Marcus says, glad Xander can’t see his face in the dark. “They know what they’re doing. They’ve been doing this for centuries, right? If they picked you, then it’s supposed to be you.”

“You sound so sure,” Xander says. “Everyone is so sure—except for me. Doesn’t that mean something? That I’m not sure?”

“Not everything has to mean something,” Marcus says. “You take things too seriously.”

“We’re talking about the end of the world,” Xander says, frustration leaking through. “I’m not supposed to take that seriously?”

Marcus says nothing.

“You wouldn’t have any doubts,” Xander says—and, incredibly, he sounds jealous. As if Xander has reason for envy. “You’d know you could do it. You’re probably thinking right now that you could do a better job than me. Admit it.”

“Maybe I am,” Marcus says, because Xander is his best friend. And because it’s easier to be honest in the dark. “But maybe being sure isn’t always the important thing. Maybe having doubts will make you stronger.”

“How?” Xander’s voice is small, almost afraid. Eager for Marcus to tell him what to do. And for that one moment, Marcus truly wishes he had the answer—knew the words that would calm Xander’s fears and help him believe in himself.

But he doesn’t.

“I don’t know,” Marcus admits.

“Exactly.”

The morning is crisp and clear, perfect for a climb.

Neither of them is in the mood to talk.

They pack up their ropes and carabiners, then begin the long haul to the summit. The volcano looms above them, hissing smoke and ash into blue sky. It’s like climbing any mountain, but it feels different when you know what’s waiting for you at the top. When, at any moment, the cavernous mouth could spit out a glob of lava that would incinerate you in seconds.

Marcus focuses on that feeling of approaching danger. He focuses on finding handholds and footholds, on pulling himself up one arm-length at a time. On the crumbling rock beneath his fingers and the heat of the sun on his back. On the loamy smell of the rock and the twitter of distant birds. On his body, pushed to its limits; on this lonely wilderness at the edge of the world. Tunnel vision: it’s another reason he’s so good at climbing. To summit the great peaks, you have to shut everything else out. You have to believe nothing matters but making it to the top.

He and Xander do not race, not this time. Competition seems beside the point for them now. They climb at a steady pace, Marcus leading the way. Until, impatient to reach the summit, Marcus pushes himself to climb faster.

“Thought we weren’t racing,” Xander pants from behind him, which only makes Marcus speed up more.

He tells himself it’s only about getting to the top. That it has nothing to do with wanting to exhaust Xander, to prove to both of them that Marcus is still the best.

But 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 protect his people? Or give way to the one who can?

Marcus isn’t doing anything wrong.

He’s just not doing anything.

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. Just as they would make him uncomfortable, pretending to be impressed by his triumph when they all know he was really a runner-up. It’s better for all of them if he stays away.

So the week stretches on, endless and empty. Marcus stares at the football posters on his wall and the picture of Xander on his desk, and in the silence, the stillness, everything he’s tried not to think about is impossible to escape.

One night after another, he doesn’t sleep. Can’t sleep.

He stays up all night, staring at the ceiling.

The last day, he visits Xander’s grave for the first time.

He stands before the gravestone, shivering in the sticky summer air. It’s a simple marker, bearing only Xander’s name and the dates of his birth and death.

So close together.

There was a funeral, but Marcus wasn’t there. He was too busy with his new training regimen.

He was too afraid.

In his hand, Marcus holds the golden horns, the official marker of his selection as a Player. It’s such a silly thing, a flimsy band of fake bull horns that no one in his right mind would actually wear—but for so long, it was everything. A symbol of the life he wanted so desperately. And then it was a symbol of everything Xander had taken from him. The band fit so comfortably on Xander’s head. Even though it didn’t belong there.

Marcus sets the golden horns on the stone.

“I did what I had to do,” he says. “What a champion would do. That’s all.”

Elias teaches that winning at all costs is more than just a phrase. That Endgame is not football, and it’s not war—it’s not a place for rules or for honor, for loyalty or mercy. Winning means doing whatever it takes, without hesitation or regret.

Marcus is working very hard to believe it.

“I thought you might be here,” a voice says behind him.

Marcus turns around. Elias is leaning against a gravestone, a strange, knowing smile on his face. He gestures toward the horns. “I hope you’re not planning to leave those here. They belong to you.”

Marcus shrugs, hoping Elias can’t see all the emotions, the pain, churning just beneath his surface. He’s supposed to be stronger than that now. He’s supposed to be invulnerable. “They were his first. All of this was.”

“Until you took it from him.”

Marcus has trained in relaxation and control. He knows how to master his breathing and his heart rate, how to tamp down his body’s reaction to stimuli and remain physiologically unmoved by panic. There may be fireworks going off in his head, but outwardly, he’s perfectly calm. Elias, he has learned, always has an agenda. Marcus waits for him to reveal it.

“What happened on that volcano, Marcus?” Elias says.

“I told you what happened.”

“And now I’m asking again.”

“His cable snapped,” Marcus says—Marcus always says. “I tried to help him, but I couldn’t.” He’s gotten used to lying about it—he’s gotten good at lying about it—but it feels especially wrong to do so here, in the shadow of the grave. “I couldn’t get there in time.”

“You’re an excellent liar,” Elias says. “That will come in handy.”

Marcus stops breathing.

Elias bursts into laughter. “Oh, wipe that deer-in-the-headlights look off your face, Marcus, you’re better than that.”

Marcus tries to remember what he’s been taught, remember his breathing, but it’s hard to find his calm center when every nerve ending in his body is screaming.

Elias knows the truth.

He knows.

He knows.

“We’re both men here,” Elias says. “It’s time to be honest.”

“His cable snapped. I tried to help him, but I couldn’t.” Marcus knows he sounds like a robot, but he’s capable of nothing else. “I couldn’t get there in time.”

Elias shakes his head, still chuckling. “Okay, then, how about I tell the truth. His cable snapped? Yes. You tried to help him? No. You watched and did nothing while your best friend hung on for dear life? Yes. You watched and did nothing while he fell to his death, then came home and lied about it, stole everything that was supposed to be his?”

Marcus swallows hard. His tongue feels huge in his mouth, clumsy and incapable of speech. His throat is clenched, his breath gone. But he manages to squeeze out the necessary word: “Yes.”

“Yes,” Elias says. “Yes. Good. Yes. That’s a start. And don’t you want to ask me something now?”

Marcus stares at him blankly. He’s waited for this moment for so long, for someone to ferret out the truth, for the consequences to crush him. He’s pictured this moment, but never past it. He doesn’t know what happens next.

“You want to ask me how I know,” Elias prompts.

“How do you know?” Marcus says obediently, although he doesn’t care. He doesn’t see how it could matter.

“I know because I was there,” Elias says. “Many of us were. We all wanted to see for ourselves what you would do when the opportunity presented itself.”

Marcus gapes at him, wheels turning. Because if Elias was there, waiting and watching, that meant he knew something would happen, which meant—

“Good, you’re keeping up,” Elias says. “Alexander’s cable snapped because our sniper shot it.”

“You were testing him?” Marcus says in wonder.

Elias sighs, obviously disappointed. “For someone who’s so sure he deserves to be a Player, you’re not very quick on the uptake. We were testing you.”

The words are like an explosion; Marcus could swear the ground is shaking beneath him. Thunder roars in his ear. The muted colors of the graveyard burst so bright he needs to shut his eyes against the pain of them.

This is how it feels, when your world falls apart and remakes itself into something you don’t recognize.

When everything you thought was solid melts away.

“It was always going to be you, Marcus,” Elias says. “It was obvious the first day I met you. But we had to know how much you wanted it. We had to know how far you would go—how much you would sacrifice for victory.”

Marcus concentrates on standing still. It takes all the energy he has to hold his muscles rigid. He fears that if he relaxes his control, even for a second, he will collapse. Or he will lunge at Elias and pummel him to death.

He thinks about relaxing his control.

Thinks hard.

Instead he forces out the obvious question. “Why are you telling me this? Why now?”

“Because it’s time for you to grow up,” Elias says. He takes the golden horns off Xander’s grave. “Stop sulking. Stop beating yourself up—what’s done is done. You made a choice, and it’s a part of you now. You know what you’re capable of, and that’s a good thing. It’s something you won’t soon forget.” He presses the horns into Marcus’s hands.