Read Endgame Novella #1 for Free Online Page B

plans to conquer. Time is what lies between her present in this camp and her future beyond it. Her life is a ticking clock, hours to fill and be disposed of.
    She used to wonder if she would have liked her real name as much.
    The minders don’t like it when you say real name .
    This is the real you , they say. This is the only you there is .
    Blood muddies the water , they say. Players must stay clear .
    This is why they have no family but one another.
    Some of the Players-in-training in her cohort have bonded, formed tight cliques and pairings, but Kala has never bothered. She has always felt separate from them. She has always known herself to be different. It’s so easy for them to accept what they’ve been told, to believe what they’re meant to believe. They’ve been told they must want to win, they must need to win, and so they do. They’ve been told that this life, this training, should fill them up, and so it does.
    They’ve been told not to think about the world beyond this camp, or a future beyond Playing; they’ve been told nothing matters beyond the game.
    And so they do not; and so it does not.
    It would be easier, if she could be like them. But Kala has never been filled up by this life. She remains hollow. She stays in motion so she can ignore the empty hole at her center, so she doesn’t have to worry about what’s wrong with her that nothing is ever enough. She runs, because every step forward is a step away from here, into a future where she will have more. At least, she has to believe she will. That someday she will know what it is to feel, to want, to need.
    She has never been able to imagine what that might be like.
    Until now.
    She has never paid much attention to Alad. After the run, after the fall, he is everywhere. He sits beside her at meals. He manages to be chosen as her sparring partner in combat drills and her spotter in strength training. He fires beside her in target practice and grins when her perfectly aimed bullets tear the target to shreds. She nearly falls over him on the camouflage field, where he has turned himself into a creature of sand and lies still and prone in the seemingly unbroken stretch of brown. He distracts her with a wink as she’s arming grenades, and she nearly blows them both up.
    He distracts her a lot.
    He is always watching her. When she points this out to him, he grins. “How would you know?” he says. “Unless you’re watching me too.”
    She is watching. She notices things about him she somehow never saw before: The way his dark eyes crinkle when he smiles. The way his muscles ripple under his shirt, and the thin line of hair trailing down from his belly button when the shirt comes off. His forearms, and the way the veins bulge when he bears her weight. The curve of his neck, the line of his back, the glow of his skin in the sun, the languid grace of his movements, never urgent, always assured. His lips—quirked in a smile, pursed in a frown, tight with anger or loose with laughter, but always, always, full and soft and waiting.
    She really needs to stop noticing his lips.
    Alad is quiet like her, but there is a kindness to his quiet. While she is an isolated unit, closed off to distraction and connection, he is open to the world, noticing all. Noticing her. She is always in motion, but he is still. When she sits beside him, the silence filling the space between them, she can feel his stillness encompass her. When he is near, the urge to run, to fight, to move falls away. There is no need to escape from her thoughts, because her thoughts are of him.
    And she doesn’t mind.
    Alad pretends not to push himself. He doesn’t let the others see how hard he works to be the fastest or the best.
    “Why bother trying?” she hears him say to one of his bunkmates. “It’s not like it’s a race. Who knows how they choose the Player?”
    The truth is, no one knows. There are nearly 100 of them in this cohort. They were all born within a few months of one