Page 166 of The Most Dangerous Games

“Not by choice.”

“I know. Also like me you need a reason. Mine is the salvation of the world. Yours is her. The one person that you know I can still reach.”

His hand wanders to the chain around his neck, the last gift she gave him before she left.

Ant had made it entirely clear he was willing to kill whoever got in his way to save her. He had shown how far he was willing to go on the mountain, where he’d been ordered to kill Reg Drummond and make it look like an accident.

Knowing now that the man had wanted to kill his own son. That way Ward Hillshire would have been the last man standing in the family. He’d never come right out and told Ant to kill the boy. He’d never used those exact words. But it had been understood. The closest Hillshire had come was saying, “Once Reg is gone . . . it would be a shame if the boy didn’t make it down either.”

But Ant Tipton had failed in his mission that day. Wyatt had survived.

Looking back now, having never discussed this with Ward Hillshire when he still thought of him as The Host, Ant wonders if the grenade at the hospital was supposed to kill Wyatt.

But Tipton learned something that day: If you win by breaking someone, you lose. Maybe even if it meant losing her. Maybe even if it meant losing the world.

He’s in one of these rooms along with the others. Maybe, he can’t help but think, it’s because Hillshire has reneged on our deal. Maybe everything changed when I didn’t succeed in killing Wyatt. Maybe she’s already gone.

Or it’s as simple as this: Ant really does have to pass one final test before being declared the winner. Hillshire can’t hand him the trophy simply for showing up today.

Ant has never doubted, not for a minute, that he’s better than McHenry. Not just stronger. But more strong-minded than this oil rigger from Texas who fancied himself as such a tough guy because he’d been an Army Ranger once.

And as much as Alek Andrich has surprised him with her own toughness and resolve, she believed in the group more than she believed in herself. To Tipton, that seemed a fatal weakness. Even if he now saw there was a line that shouldn’t be crossed.

Zhi? Formidable for sure. But small and quiet. He couldn’t command a group, let alone humanity.

I’m supposed to be the last one in the room.

Just not this room.

He’s on fire.

He’s the one being burned alive.

Hillshire had spoken of mind games.

Ant is certain he’s in the process of losing his.

Tipton has always believed he can outlast anything.

That’s been the point.

Not the medals. Not the money. Not the talk.

Outlasting. For himself. For her.

But the room won’t let him outlast it.

Because it’s not testing his body.

It’s testing the part of him that was twelve years old and trapped in a world that suddenly decided to burn.

The heat in here feels real. The smoke looks real. It crawls across the ceiling and down the walls.

Tipton’s breath comes in ragged slices. His eyes sting. His throat burns.

His screams are once again drowned out by the primal screams he heard that day in the small plane, the last sounds he ever heard from his parents and brother.

Ant Tipton, survivor of that crash and survivor of war, is succumbing to a different kind of warfare.