Origins. James Frey
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2014.
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Copyright © 2014 by Third Floor Fun, LLC.
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Source ISBN: 9780007554492
Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007585151
Version: 2014-12-01
Contents
Excerpt from Endgame: The Calling
Twelve thousand years ago, they came. They descended from the sky amid smoke and fire, and created humanity and gave us rules to live by. They needed gold and they built our earliest civilizations to mine it for them. When they had what they needed, they left. But before they left, they told us that someday they would come back, and that when they did, a game would be played. A game that would determine our future.
This is Endgame.
For 10,000 years the lines have existed in secret. The 12 original lines of humanity. Each has to have a Player prepared at all times. A Player becomes eligible at 13 and ages out at 19. Each bloodline has its own measure of who is worthy to be chosen. Who is worthy of saving their people. They have trained generation after generation after generation in weapons, languages, history, tactics, disguise, assassination. Together the Players are everything: strong, kind, ruthless, loyal, smart, stupid, ugly, lustful, mean, fickle, beautiful, calculating, lazy, exuberant, weak. They are good and evil. Like you. Like all.
This is Endgame.
When the game starts, the Players will have to find three keys. The keys are somewhere on Earth. The only rule is that there are no rules. Whoever finds the keys first wins the game.
These are the stories of the Players before they were chosen—of how they shed their normal lives and transformed into the Players they were meant to be.
These are the Training Diaries.
When Marcus was a little kid, they called him the Monkey.
This was meant to be a compliment. Which is exactly how Marcus took it.
At seven years old, he monkeyed his way 30 meters up a climbing wall without fear, the only kid to ring the bell at the top. Ever since then he’s made sure he always goes higher than the other kids, always gets to the top faster. Always waits at the summit with a cocky grin and a “What took you so long?”
He can climb anything. Trees, mountains, active volcanoes, a 90-degree granite incline or the sheer wall of a Tokyo skyscraper. The Asterousia Mountains of Crete were his childhood playground. He’s scrambled up all Seven Summits—the highest mountain on each continent—including Antarctica’s Mount Vinson, which meant a hike across the South Pole. He’s illegally scaled Dubai’s 800-meter-high Burj Khalifa without rope or harness, then BASE jumped from its silver tip. He’s the youngest person ever to summit Everest (not that the world is allowed to know it).
If only someone would get around to building a tall enough ladder, he’s pretty sure he could climb to the moon.
Climbing is an integral part of his training. Every Minoan child hoping to be named his or her generation’s Player learns to scale a peak. They’ve all logged hours defying gravity; they’ve all broken through the clouds. But Marcus knows that for the others, climbing is just one more skill to master, one more challenge to stare down. No different from sharpshooting or deep-sea diving or explosives disposal. For Marcus, it’s more.
For Marcus, climbing is everything.
It’s a fusion of mind and matter, the perfect way to channel all that frenetic energy that has him bouncing off the walls most of the time. It takes absolute focus, brute force, and a fearless confidence that comes naturally to Marcus, who feels most alive at 1,000 meters, looking down.
He loves it for all those reasons, sure—but mostly he loves it because he’s the best.
And because being the best, by definition, means being better than Alexander.
It was clear from day one that Alexander Nicolaides was the kid to beat. It took only one day more to figure out he was also the kid to hate.
Marcus’s parents called it camp, when they dropped him off that first day. But he was a smart kid, smart enough to wonder: What kind of parents dump their seven-year-old on Crete and head back to Istanbul without him? What kind of camp lets them do it?
What kind of camp teaches that seven-year-old how to shoot?
And how to arm live explosives?
And how to read Chinese?
It was the kind of camp where little kids were encouraged to play with matches.
It was most definitely Marcus’s kind of place—and that was even