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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.
    Marcus wants to let them drop to the dirt—but instead his fingers close around them, the sharp point of a horn digging into his palm.
    “You’re the Player now,” Elias says. “ You , not Alexander. Time to start acting like it.”
    It should make some kind of difference.
    It should make all the difference.
    It means that everything Marcus has been telling himself, all those liesabout obligation and noble sacrifice, about doing what must be done for the good of his people . . . they’re all true. If Endgame comes during his tenure—and it must come, it has to come, or else what was the sacrifice for?—the Minoans will have a champion worthy of them. A Player who knows exactly what he’s capable of, and can never forget it.
    It means death was simply Xander’s fate. Letting him die, that was Marcus’s.
    He only did what he was supposed to do.
    What he was meant to do.
    This is the gift Elias has given him: his new truth.
    He’ll spend the rest of his life trying to believe it.

SUMERIAN
    KALA

    It begins in motion.
    For Kala, life is motion.
    Life is blazing sun and endless desert dunes. Life is duty and honor. Life is Playing and life is winning.
    And winning means staying in motion. Being the fastest. Being the strongest. Being the best.
    She is running.
    Mile after mile, noon sun scorching the earth, sweat soaking her shirt and brow, feet pound-pound-pound ing the sand, muscles screaming, joints pulsing, heart thumping, brain willing go go go .
    But she cannot go as fast as she needs, because the boy in front of her is too slow. This is a team training exercise, run in single file, let the leader set the pace, and Kala is not the leader. She pumps and gasps behind him, her breath on his neck, hoping he’ll get the message.
    Kala hates this kind of exercise, hates having to depend on someone else to get things right.
    Faster .
    Behind her, the long tail of her cohort stretches along the sand. If she looked back, she would see a straight line of identical black uniforms and identically determined runners, their feet pounding in lockstep, their dreams fixed on the same distant goal of becoming the Player. But Kala never looks back.
    The boy in front of her, unfortunately, follows a different rule. He turns toward her, opens his mouth as if to speak—and stumbles over hisown feet. He catches himself, but not soon enough: Kala slams into him, and they both go down in a tangle of sweaty limbs.
    The line of Players-in-training races on. Even in team exercises, the fallen are to be left behind.
    “Watch it!” Kala snaps, extricating herself from the boy.
    “It’s impossible not to,” he says. She is already back on her feet, but he sprawls in the sand as if lounging at the beach. His eyes pin her in place.
    For a moment, all is still.
    As if time has stopped.
    And the world has narrowed, so there is only her.
    And only him.
    “Whatever,” she says, then shakes it off and starts running. If she’s fast enough, she can catch up with the group.
    She’s always fast enough.
    The boy’s name is Alad. That’s what he calls himself, at least. His official designation is 37DELTA. All the Players-in-training are assigned numbers instead of names. They had names when they were born, just like they had families. But when the minders choose a child for training, all record of the past is erased. The children are snatched from their homes at age four, raised in a communal camp, assigned a number and a series of minders, and, very quickly, they forget there is any other way. When they’re old enough to care, they choose a name for themselves.
    Kala is 5SIGMA. She chose the name Kala because it means “time,” and time is the enemy she