Page 111 of The Most Dangerous Games

When Alek gets to them, she sees what they’re seeing:

On the floor, on an Army blanket, lies Amos Meyers. Someone has had the good grace to fold his weathered hands across his chest. An orderly appears, reaches down, and pulls the blanket all the way over Amos’s face.

Next to him is the young local soldier Jack saluted earlier. He’s not much older than Hannah is. What a waste of a life.

Zhi walks up behind Alek. “Lopez tried to tell you. When you rushed past him.”

“What happened?” she responds.

Zhi recounts their arrival. They all came into the hospital lobby much the same way. It wasn’t just triage then, as a wave of people running from the violence had flooded in—it was a stampede. A second wave of civilians came after them, pushed in as a nurse tried to unsuccessfully shout order into the chaos.

Amos saw and heard it first. Not the screaming. Not the blood. The small, wrong sound under it all—a dull clink on tile. A metal cylinder rolling.

A grenade.

Some of the opposing forces must have chased the people down and didn’t care it was a hospital. For half a second, nobody understood what they were looking at. A mother froze. A little boy just stared at it like it was a toy.

Amos didn’t freeze.

He was already across the lobby before anyone could even shout. He kicked the grenade toward the thickest wall he could find—behind an overturned gurney—and threw himself down over the boy and the mother, shoulder to shoulder with two orderlies who reacted a heartbeat after he did.

He didn’t look up.

He just said, almost calmly, “Down.” Everyone took cover, even those on the team in the room. Zhi among them.

The blast didn’t tear the building apart. Objectively and relatively, it was minor. But it was all pressure and shrapnel in a crowded room. When the smoke cleared, the boy coughed—alive. The mother started screaming—alive.

And Amos was lying on his back, eyes open, not seeing. Blood soaking through his shirt in a spreading, unstoppable bloom. By the time Zhi got to him, it was too late.

Jack salutes them both one last time. He does it fast, like if he holds the salute too long, he’ll break apart. Then he turns and walks out before anyone can see what’s in his eyes.

Alek leaves Zhi and steps closer to Hannah.

And Hannah—who held it together through fire and falling and screaming—finally cracks. Alek holds her as her tears come, hot and unstoppable. It hits Alek in the ribs—same grief, different uniform. When her sister died . . . it was all too much.

It isn’t just the horror.

It’s the cost.

75.

The Host sits in front of a monitor, first watching scenes from the war the street cameras are providing him. Then secret videos taken inside the public hospital. Faces he recognizes now—because he’s made it his job to recognize them.

He’s seen Hannah Wagner turning panic into a plan. Wyatt Jordan hand the girl they’ve just saved over to the doctors. Jack McHenry saluting two dead soldiers like it’s the only language he trusts. He’s seen the anguish when they realized one of the fallen was their own.

The Host has felt some of that anguish himself.

He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t celebrate. He sits very still. Because this is the point.

Not the stunts. Not the spectacle.

The consequence.

He takes no joy in this, nor any relief that so many of them have made it to the hospital alive.

They came here believing they could change the world.

Now they’ve seen what the world actually looks like when it breaks. Leadership isn’t speeches, The Host thinks. It’s what you do when it’s burning.