Free Endgame Novella #1 by James Frey

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, any one —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 anexpert 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 nolonger 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