“Not since we were born,” she says quickly. Because that’s the whole point.
“Get picked as the Player and you get everything,” he says. “It’s not just an honor; it’s being set for a lifetime. You watch so many movies—but do you know what the world’s really like? The world outside Hollywood? It’s hard and it’s expensive and it’s getting shittier every day. Yeah, I want to be the Player. I want the chance to save the world. And after, I’ll have enough money and power to live life the way I want to live it.” He gives her hands a very gentle squeeze. “And protect the people I love.”
Love. It is the first time either of them has said the word.
Except that Players don’t love. Everyone knows this. Those chosen to be the Player are broken of the habit of love, and they never regain it. Even those who live on to old age choose to die alone.
He must tell himself that he will be different. Kala has noticed this about human nature: everyone likes to believe they are the exception to the rule.
She’s not going to argue with him, certainly not after he’s used that word. Letting someone believe whatever he needs to—maybe that is also love.
“It was a good story,” she tells him. “Really good.”
“How about you?”
“I’m not really much for stories,” she says.
“No, I mean, what do you want?”
She reaches for him, with pointed purpose.
He laughs and pushes her away. “Aside from the obvious, I mean.”
Now is the moment. She can lie to him, make up some trivial desire, some stupid thing like a motorcycle or a Nobel Prize—or she can show him the part of herself that she’s been keeping secret all this time. Say it out loud, this truth that she’s never exposed to the light. She can trust him enough to hear her dark desire, the desperate wish at the base of her life, and love her anyway.
Maybe he will even understand her dream.
Maybe he will share it.
She turns away from him and, for good measure, closes her eyes. She doesn’t want to see his face when she admits it.
“I want a family,” she says.
“What, like kids? You know I want to give you that. I mean, not anytime soon, obviously, but—”
“No,” she says, though it would be easy enough to let it go. “I mean, yes, I want that too, someday, but that’s not what I mean. I want my family. The people I came from. The people they took me away from.”
“Oh.”
She can’t read his voice, and after a long moment of silence, she can’t stand it anymore. She turns back to him. He searches her face, and she loves him for trying to understand. But she can see that he doesn’t.
“Don’t you ever think about it?” she says. “Where you came from? Who you belong to?”
“Why would I think about that? They gave us away, Kala.”
“We don’t know that,” she says. “We don’t know anything. What makes you so sure it was their choice? Has anyone ever given us a choice?”
She’s ready now, charged with anger. If she can just make him see it, then she can tell him everything. About the late nights spent hacking through the camp’s firewalls, searching for back doors to password-locked archives, decoding encrypted files. About what she’s spent so long looking for—and what she’s found.
About how she hasn’t done anything about it, not yet. Hasn’t known what to do, until now.
Now, they can do it together.
“You know why it has to work this way,” he says, and it almost sounds like he’s chastising her. “You don’t give toddlers a choice. You make smart choices for them, for their own good. For everyone’s good.”
“And now? We’re not toddlers anymore, Alad.”
“And now we choose to do what needs to be done to protect our people,” he says. “Or at least I do.”
You sound like a robot, she wants to tell him. You sound brainwashed.
“This is bigger than us,” he says. “This is the end of the world. The survival of the race. If our birth families didn’t want to give us away, then they were being selfish. Some things are worth a sacrifice.”
“What if someone tried to take me away from you?” she asks.
“That’s never going to happen.”
“But if it did?”
“I would never let anyone take you away from me,” he says, voice deadly serious. “I promise.”
But a promise is more than just the word. They both know he can’t promise her anything, not really. Their lives have no space for any promises except the promise they’ve made to the cause. The promise they were forced to make.
She doesn’t point this out to him. She doesn’t want to argue, or to talk about duty or families or promises anymore. For once, she doesn’t want to talk at all. She kisses him to win his silence, and keep it.
Easier not to hear the judgment in his voice, the doubt.
There’s no doubt in his touch.
And in the quiet of his arms, she can imagine that, deep down, they are the same.
It happens the next day. There’s no warning, no portent in the sky or tension in the air, some flashing neon sign to indicate This is the day everything changes. There’s just a tap on her shoulder as she cools down after her afternoon run, a whisper in her ear that she’s wanted in the central office.
Her first thought, her only thought, is that they know about her and Alad. Because what else could it be?
Stepping into the office is like crossing into a different world. The only part of the camp with central air-conditioning, the room offers no hint that it’s in the middle of the Rub’ al-Khali, the biggest sand desert in the world. The room’s air is crisp and cool, its lines sleek and modern—they could be in a luxury high-rise in the heart of Abu Dhabi. Except that, through the window, the desert stretches on and on.
Three minders are seated along one side of a conference table: Adar, who runs the weapons range; Ninsuna, who oversees discipline; and Zikia, who teaches military strategy or, as she puts it, how to win. Unlike the other minders, Zikia has never stayed at the camp for more than a week or two—but also unlike the others, she always comes back. Hardened by training and age, Zikia seems molded from steel. Her expression is sharp enough to cut. It is from Zikia that Kala has learned to appear weak when she is strong, and appear strong when she is weak.
But this depends on knowing the difference between face and mask, and in this moment, Kala does not. She feels strong and weak in equal measure.
If Zikia is here, summoning her, then this is bigger than she expected.
This is real trouble.
“5SIGMA,” Zikia says, giving her a sharp nod. Kala has always liked the tough old woman. An aging former Player, she is good at mustering charm when she needs to persuade, but there is always steel in her eye. Kala appreciates that, unlike the other minders, she does not pretend to care about any of them.
Kala stops midway between the minders and the doorway, and waits for them to speak her transgression, and her punishment.
As long as she and Alad can stay together, nothing else matters.
And they will stay together.
He promised.
Zikia pulls her lips back in a chilling smile. “Congratulations,” she says. “You’ve been chosen.”
It’s so far from what Kala is expecting to hear that it takes her a moment to understand. “Chosen for what?” she asks, and then the foolishness of the question sinks in. What else is there to be chosen for? What has there ever been?
“You will be our Player.”
Now all three of them are smiling. They have the look of jackals watching the weakest member of a herd fall behind, biding time before they pounce.
“I don’t understand,” she says.
“Six months from today, the current Player will age out,” Zikia says. “At which point the honor will fall to you.”
Kala told Alad she didn’t know whether she wanted to be the Player. That wasn’t a lie. It had seemed so u
nlikely, and so huge, even her imagination couldn’t encompass it.
Now that the moment is here, she knows exactly what she does and doesn’t want.
She doesn’t want the responsibility.
She doesn’t want a new life that’s even more restricted, more circumscribed by obligation, more dictated by the needs of others.
She doesn’t want to sacrifice herself, even for the survival of her people.
She doesn’t want to spend years waiting for death to rain down from the sky, knowing that when it does, she will have to act.
She wants to cry.
But Kala has been well trained. She has been molded into a warrior, a flesh-and-blood weapon, sleek and strong and always in control. She is not capable of falling apart, even when she wants to.
When she speaks, her voice does not tremble. “Can I ask you, ma’am, why me? Britney is a better fighter, Farzin is much better at military strategy, and—” She cuts herself off just before she can say his name.
Alad wants this so much, for himself.
What will he think when he finds out she’s taken it from him?
“You can ask, but we’re under no obligation to answer,” Zikia says. “All you need know is that we have faith in our choice. Yes, along some vectors, others are superior to you. But you are the only one capable of Playing the game as it needs to be Played. It must be you.”
The message is clear: the choice is theirs, not Kala’s.
No one is going to ask her whether this is what she wants. This is what it is, and she’s meant to accept it.
“Tomorrow you and I will begin your training.”
“Begin?” she says. Her mouth is working of its own accord. Her mind is frozen. Stunned. “I’ve been training for my whole life. Training is my life.”
“You don’t know true training,” Zikia says. “But you will.”
“Pack up your belongings,” Adar says. “Tomorrow you leave this place.”
“Wait, leave? What? To go where?”
“We can’t tell you that,” Zikia says. “And Kala, we trust that you’ll keep this discreet—better the others not know of our decision until you’re gone. People can be . . . unpredictable.”
“I’m not even supposed to say good-bye?” she says, her voice catching on the word. There’s only one person she would care to say good-bye to.
And she can never say good-bye to him.
“It’s even more important, now, that your only attachment is to the matter at hand,” Zikia says. “If you’ve got anything here that matters to you, anyone—trust me when I say, it’s better to sever that cleanly, while you can.”
The way Zikia is looking at her, the way she says anyone, it’s as if she knows. That there is a someone. That the someone matters.
But she can’t know. If she knew, she would never have chosen Kala to be the Player.
Maybe if Kala admits it, the minders will change their minds.
But she can’t speak.
“You have sixteen hours to wrap things up,” Zikia says. “We leave at dawn.”
There is nothing to pack. There is only one thing in this place she holds precious, and he won’t fit in a backpack.
So she goes about the rest of her day as if nothing has happened. She forces herself not to panic, not to rush into Alad’s arms until they can be alone. They have until dawn. That’s plenty of time to plan.
Kala has spent years learning to power through pain and fear. She’s an expert at deception, and so it’s nothing for her to lie to her cohorts, to put on a happy face, to go to sleep beside them as if she’ll be there when they wake.
Even as she lies in bed, staring into the darkness, she keeps up the mental wall. The minders have trained her to visualize an actual wall, hundreds of feet high and thick with steel, as strong as it needs to be to keep unwanted thoughts at bay.
It’s only when Alad appears at the window that the wall begins to crumble.
It’s only when they’ve reached their special clearing, and he takes her in his arms, that she tears the whole damn thing down and lets herself break.
“What? What is it? Kala, what’s wrong?” Alad is panicked, desperate, searching her for wounds, for something that would explain the quivering mess in his arms. Kala is not like this; Kala is never like this.
She’s never fallen apart before, and so had no idea how much strength it would take to piece herself back together. She clings to him, holding herself up, holding herself here. “It’s me,” she says, when she can speak. Snot and tears flow freely, and she almost laughs, thinking about how pretty crying looks in the movies. There is nothing pretty about this. “They picked me.”
“To what?”
“To Play.”
He is holding her up—so when he lets go, she staggers and nearly falls. Suddenly it’s as if there are miles of space between them. As if today’s decision has carved a fissure through her life: before, after. They stand on opposite sides of a chasm, staring across.
“Congratulations,” he says in a wooden voice.
“No. No congratulations!” If she can make him understand, the space will close again. It will have to. “There’s nothing to congratulate. I don’t want this! Who could want this?”
He flinches, and she would take the words back if she could. Even though they are true. She sees what her life will be now, how it will no longer be her own. He wouldn’t want this, if he knew how it felt.
It feels like falling.
“I wish it had been you,” she says, reaching out to touch him. He pulls away. He can hear the lie in her voice, she knows. He just doesn’t understand it.
She could never wish this for him.
“So this is it,” he says. “This is good-bye.”
No one knows how Players are chosen; no one knows where they disappear to when they are. But everyone knows they come back different.
They come back hard.
The Players are all, at some level, like Zikia. They can be kind, charming; they know how to make their eyes twinkle to get what they want. But there is ice in their hearts. Kala would like to believe it’s impossible, that it could happen to her—that this mysterious training will strip away the fundamentals of who she is, will take away her ability to love just as she’s found it again.
But she is a girl raised on stories of alien invasion and imminent apocalypse.
She knows nothing is impossible.
“Run away with me,” she says. The words are out before she realizes she’s going to say them, before she realizes it’s what she wants to do.
That she’s never wanted anything more.
“What?” he says, stunned dumb as she was a few hours before.
“Let’s just go,” she says, excitement building. Hope building. “We can leave tonight. Get away from here, away from them; screw being the Player and their stupid Endgame.” This is possible, she realizes—more than possible, this is necessary. This is the answer, the miracle she’s been waiting for, as if a solution would drop out of the sky. She’s smarter than that. Miracles only happen when you make them happen. Maybe the same is true for lives.
“And exactly where are we supposed to go?” Alad asks.
They both know that the Sumerian reach is wide and powerful. If Kala defies their edict, they will hunt her down. They will punish.
“There’s nothing out there for us,” Alad says. “Our lives are here.”
“Your life,” she says. “I’m leaving here tomorrow no matter what; the only question is if I go where I’m told—or where I want.”
“It’s a few years, Kala. You can do that in your sleep. A few years and then it’s behind you and you can have everything. We can have everything.” He puts his arms around her and she can breathe again.
Will he still want to hold on when he knows the truth?
Because there’s no time left.
She has to tell him.
“There is something out there for me,” Kala says. “I . . .” She swallows. It’s beyond
forbidden, what she’s done. It’s unthinkable. “I tracked down my family. My birth family. I know where they live. I know everything about them.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” His voice is unreadable. But he is still holding on.
“I couldn’t. I knew what you’d think, that it was, I don’t know, weak. Stupid.”
“Nothing you do is weak or stupid, Kala.”
“I wasn’t even going to do anything about it, not at first,” she admits. Now that she’s broken the floodgate, the words spill out of her. “I just wanted to know. But now . . . I need to see them. I can’t stand it anymore, having them out there but not knowing. Not seeing their faces. I know you don’t understand it. I know you don’t feel this way, that no one does, that I’m the freak, but I can’t help it. It’s always felt like something was missing, and something was. Them. They’re a part of me. Like you’re a part of me, Alad. I have to go. I have to. But I don’t want to go without you. I never want to go anywhere without you again. Come with me, just to see them, and then we can go anywhere, do anything we want. We can make our own choices, for once. Make our own lives.”
He says nothing.
He doesn’t look at her.
So this is how it ends, she thinks.
She tells herself: I can go without him.
She tells herself: I don’t need him.
She tells herself: I don’t need anyone.
But then his ice melts and his smile breaks through and he lifts her off the ground and buries his face in her hair and whispers “yes, yes, yes,” and she knows that this is the only answer she could have survived.
They will go two hours before dawn.
She is reluctant to leave Alad, even for the time it takes them to gather supplies—water and weapons and enough cash pilfered from the minders’ cabins to get them where they need to go. But it will be faster if they separate, and the faster the better.
She waits for him by the rendezvous point, fifty yards south of the guard tower, steeling herself for him not to show. Seconds tick past, then minutes, and he doesn’t come, and he still doesn’t come . . .
And then he does.
They have chosen the guard tower staffed, at this hour, by Dilshad and Javed, because everyone knows that Dilshad regularly sneaks away from her post to play poker with the kitchen staff, while Javed spends his shift down the internet porn rabbit hole and wouldn’t notice if a freight train blasted through the gate.