CHAPTER ONE

      “It’s time,” I said to Kat.

      We double-checked our guns, made sure they were loaded, flicked off the safeties, and headed down the hall. We stopped at room 412. It was five in the morning.

      Ready? Kat mouthed.

      I nodded.

      I knocked on the door.

      This was it—what we had been preparing for all summer. We—just Kat and I—were knocking on the door of a Player. Raakel, the Minoan. Last week, Kat and I had planted a bomb next to her house in Istanbul, “inviting” her to come to Zero line’s fake Calling. We thought she might have died in the explosion—the bomb was supposed to imitate a sign from the heavens, a message from the alien Makers.

      And now we were supposed to reason with her, with this Player who was trained to be a killing machine. That’s what a Calling was meant to be: the starting point of a bloodbath in which twelve killing machines, representatives of their civilizations, would each try to be the last one standing in a global fight that would decide the fate of the world.

      And we needed to stop it.

      My M1911 pistol was tucked into the back of my pants, covered by a long Munich Olympics T-shirt. Kat was carrying a Beretta in the front pocket of her sweatshirt. I had my backpack for our walkie-talkie and a few other supplies we might need.

      There was the sound of the deadbolt being unlocked, and I tensed up, wishing my gun were in my hand. But no. We were here to talk to her, not to kill her.

      Kat and I already had blood on our hands, and we didn’t want more. The door opened.

      Raakel stood there, fully dressed in a pair of jeans and a loose blouse. Her black hair was pulled back in a ponytail. There was a smirk on her face. Despite the early hour, she looked fully awake and ready for the Calling.

      “I was wondering when you would show up,” she said with very little accent. “You followed me with all the stealth of stampeding bulls.

      You’re staying in a house with sixteen or seventeen others?”

      I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. We were supposed to be surprising her, not the other way around.

      “We’re here to talk to you,” Kat said.

      “How do you know who I am?” Raakel asked. “For that matter, who do you think I am?”

      Kat answered. “You’re the Player for the Minoans.”

      “How do you know this?” she asked. “What line are you from?”

      “Zero line,” I said, finally getting my voice back. “We have important things to talk to you about.”

      “There is no such line.” She opened the door an inch or two wider, just enough to let us pass. With her eyes trained carefully on us the whole time, she motioned us into her room. I caught a flash of metal at her side, and I realized she was carrying a blade that looked like a sword of some kind. My pulse was pounding so loud I was sure she could hear it.

      “Consider us a group of concerned citizens,” Kat said. I noticed the shake in her voice, and I wondered if Raakel could tell how nervous we were.

      Raakel laughed as she closed the door. I walked to the table in the corner of the room, and when we sat, I got a better look at the weapon she was holding: a long, skinny machete. My heart jumped into my throat at the look of the sword.

      “Oh, this?” she said with a cold smile, sitting on the foot of the bed and laying the sword across her lap. “It’s called a yatağan. I assume you’re both armed. I wanted to even