Existence. James Frey
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2015
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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Endgame: The Training Diaries Volume 3: Existence © 2015 by Third Floor Fun, LLC
Cover design and logo by Rodrigo Corral Design
Conditions of Sale
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form, binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. All rights reserved.
Source ISBN: 9780062332691
EPub Edition © May 2015 ISBN 9780007585182
Version: 2015-06-03
CONTENTS
Excerpt from Endgame: The Calling
Excerpt from Endgame: The Training Diaries Volume 1: Origins
Excerpt from Endgame: The Training Diaries Volume 2: Descendant
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 of Endgame 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.
Jago falls in love with her at first sight. It’s like some cheesy movie cliché—it’s like every cheesy movie cliché. Their eyes meet across a crowded room. His heart skips a beat. Fireworks explode. The earth shakes. He hears music, smells flowers, sizzles with a lightning bolt of love.
The girl is lithe and lovely, whirling to the techno salsa beat as if her body is made of music. Hair like blond silk whips through the air; slender arms twirl overhead. A radiant smile lights up the room, and Jago’s heart.
Then the strobe lights flash and go dark, the song changes, dancers flood the club floor, and she disappears behind a sea of bodies.
Jago forgets her in a heartbeat.
It’s like that for him: love, girls, beauty. He loves to love, falls hard and fast, gets distracted just as quickly. Sometimes it takes a month, sometimes a week, sometimes, like tonight, only a few minutes. Nothing pleases him more than parading through the streets of Juliaca with a beautiful girl on his arm, lying beside a warm body on the shores of Lago Titicaca, stroking an exquisite face in the moonlight. And because he is Jago Tlaloc, every girl in the city is happy to be loved by him—because to be loved by Jago is to be showered with expensive gifts, to be admired and envied, to be on the arm of the scion of the most powerful organized-crime syndicate in Peru. He knows they love him only for his money and power, and he forgives it. To be loved by Jago is to be forgiven all sins.
To be loved by Jago is to be left by Jago, but ask any girl in Juliaca and she’ll tell you: it’s worth it.
He hasn’t come to the club tonight looking for love. He came to dance, to sweat away the week, to forget himself in a storm of noise and motion. To lose himself in a crowd. Thrashing at the heart of the dance floor, pressed body to body with the crush of strangers, this is the only way Jago can be anonymous, a stranger to himself. He’s spent the last several days doing odd jobs for his family, paying visits to those who thought to cross the mighty Tlalocs … and making them understand the consequences of their poor choices. Reminding them where their loyalties should lie.
The Tlaloc syndicate, of course, employs plenty of muscle—but some acts demand stronger reminders. Some unfortunate souls demand a visit from Jago himself, heir to the family business,