First Published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers in 2015.
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ENDGAME: THE TRAINING DIARIES VOLUME 2: DESCENDANT. Copyright © 2015 by Third Floor Fun, LLC. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Source ISBN: 97800062332684
Ebook Edition © February 2015 ISBN: 9780007585175
Version: 2015-02-18
Contents
Excerpt from Endgame: The Calling
Excerpt from Endgame: The Training Diaries Volume 1: Origins
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.
This is the story Aisling Kopp, Player of the 3rd line, does not know.
This is the story Aisling Kopp will never know, because the only one who could tell it is dead.
This is the story of her life and her line—the story of how she began and how the world will end.
This is the story of a hero and a traitor, neither of them certain which is which.
This is the story before the story.
Before Aisling.
The end:
Declan Kopp stands at the mouth of the cave, a 2,500-year-old sword in his hand. The heft of it calms him. The familiar grip reminds him of a time when the Falcata was rightfully his to wield, a simpler time, when he could lay its blade against flesh and enjoy the kill.
A time before Aisling was alive, a time before Lorelei was dead, a time when he was young and foolish and the sword was a symbol of all things just and good.
Now it’s nothing but a symbol of the lines he’s crossed.
The people he’s betrayed.
The home he’s left behind and the family to which he can never return.
The ancient sword, like the polished stone in his pocket, like the baby whimpering in the dark depths of the cave, is a precious stolen good.
Not his to take—but taken nonetheless.
That’s what they would say, at least.
They: the High Council. The La Tène Player. His father.
Everyone who matters to him, or once did.
Once, he had so much in his life. Family, love, hope—the belief that his life’s mission was just and his future was fated. Once, he had certainty.
Now he has only his stolen child, and her birthright.
He has the Falcata, whose razor-sharp blade has taken 3,890 lives and awaits its next kill.
And he has a few precious hours, or maybe minutes, before they come for him and try to reclaim what he’s stolen—before he and the sword make their last stand.
The child’s cries echo through the dark.
“Peace, Aisling,” he calls to her. “Daddy’s here. Daddy will protect you, I promise.”
She’s