Free Endgame Novella #1 by James Frey Page A

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 Kaladefies 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