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