Page 73 of The Most Dangerous Games

Wyatt keeps thinking about what she whispered in the ballroom.

It wasn’t private.

So he doesn’t push her. Not now.

Before they left, The Host told them that their eventual destination would be Mount Washington in New Hampshire, seventy miles or so away.

“You may or may not know that it is the highest peak in the northeastern United States,” The Host said, “and the most prominent mountain east of the Mississippi River. One you will be expected to scale today after a quite scenic hike from Pinkham Notch, New Hampshire, to get there,” he adds.

He’s not quite finished.

“This style of climb is known as ‘free solo’ for the uninitiated,” The Host concludes.

Boom, Wyatt thinks.

There it is.

Wyatt knows what the expression means. Free Solo, one of his favorite movies ever, was about Alex Honnold’s historic climb up the 3,200-foot face of El Capitan without a rope or safety gear, taking a dangerous route known as Freerider.

The movie had visually blown Wyatt and his buddies away. He can’t imagine Mount Washington could possibly be more dangerous or difficult than El Capitan. But he’s been conditioned, because they’ve all been, to assume nothing.

What he mostly remembers from Free Solo is that it was as close as he’d ever come in a movie theater to suffering from vertigo.

Wyatt gets a little dizzy even thinking about any climb similar to that one.

He had tried one more time to start a conversation with Hannah on the plane, saying, “Are we ever going to talk about what we’re not talking about?” Her answer had been a quick shake of her head.

So on the bus from Portland, Wyatt sat next to Gabrielle Fontaine, player #301, another athlete, who had retired after winning a gold medal for France in the 4 x 100 medley relay at the Summer Games in Paris.

“I know The Host talked about us loving what we are about to do,” Gabrielle Fontaine says to Wyatt. “But to me, it just sounds like one more of his lies.”

Once they have arrived at Pinkham Notch, their driver, dressed in black like one of The Host’s guards, wordlessly leads them for the next hour and a half to an area at the base of the mountain known as the Huntington Ravine.

“Is there just one route up the mountain?” Reg Drummond asks the driver.

“Do I look like a tour guide?” the man asks.

Then the man says, “This is the end of my trip.” He shrugs and points toward the sky. “And the beginning of yours.”

“I would rather climb the Eiffel Tower,” Gabrielle says.

The Host’s voice comes through a phone the driver sets on a rock.

“Welcome,” The Host says, cheerful enough to be insulting. “Today you climb.”

Reg looks up at the steep ravine walls.

“This isn’t Mount Washington,” Reg says. “This is a death slide.”

The Host pauses, pleased.

“Yes,” he says. “Now you’re paying attention.”

All of their heads are tilted back as far as they’ll go.

“We had considered other climbs, in other parts of the country, including one in Boulder, Colorado, called the Wind Tower,” The Host says. “But we considered this one to be more fair, and perhaps not quite as dangerous.”

“Are we supposed to thank you?” Gabrielle asks.