Page 113 of The Most Dangerous Games

Wyatt’s voice is rough. “This is insane.”

Alek’s face hardens, and it isn’t anger—it’s memory.

She leans closer. “War and conflict don’t care how old you are. If it did . . . my sister would still be alive.”

Wyatt walks away from her, his breathing still painful from the fall, trying to find a patch of the lobby that isn’t overrun.

So his back is to the door when it’s flung open again and Zhi and Carlos come running in, Gabrielle and Fumio behind them, all screaming on top of the others as they scramble to get themselves and everyone else to safety.

“Get down!”

“Take cover!”

“They’re back, the soldiers are back!”

Wyatt locks eyes with Zhi when he yells, “GRENADE!”

Wyatt whirls—

He sees it. A small dark cylinder skittering across tile.

Time does that awful stretching thing.

And then, a flash. A concussion that punches the breath out of everyone at once. And something small goes flying across the lobby, weightless and wrong.

Another kid the war doesn’t care about being blown across the lobby of the public hospital:

Rupert Chadwick.

77.

Ant Tipton isn’t in the lobby when it happens.

He isn’t even inside.

He’s around the corner, in the narrow strip of street that still smells like smoke and diesel and hot stone, catching thirty seconds of air. Stolen. A few seconds of the closest thing to peace.

He sees the soldiers in uniforms and gear different than he’s seen so far running from the hospital but doesn’t think much of it. They don’t see him. He pretends not to see them.

He has one hand braced on the wall, head down, trying to steady his breathing.

“I’m fine,” he whispers to himself.

If he feels it, he breaks. He starts thinking about a mountain. A ledge. A man falling.

He lets out a long sigh when his burner phone rings. He knows who’s calling. Only one other person has this number. As far as Tipton knows, he’s the only one of the competitors with a phone like it.

He answers on the first ring.

“Was that a grenade?” Tipton asks.

“Unfortunately.”

“Did you have anything to do with it?”

“If I did, Mr. Tipton,” The Host says, “you’d already know.”

“Why should I believe you?”