Page 82 of The Most Dangerous Games

Conner grabs his arm.

“Jack, wait—” Conner starts.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Jack says. “He’s fourteen.”

“C’mon man, we don’t know what’s down there,” Conner says.

Elena is behind them, one hand pressed to her own mouth.

“Jack,” she whispers. “Please don’t—”

Jack doesn’t answer. He’s already taking off his boots.

Conner’s voice is low, urgent. “You don’t know what’s down there.”

Jack looks back at him, eyes hard.

“Yeah,” Jack says. “I do.”

Conner holds his gaze for half a second.

“Then I’m going with you,” Lynch says, untying the laces of his own boots and tossing them aside along with his flashlight.

Elena crouches, hands shaking. “Wait—wait, we can call—”

Jack touches the earpiece in his ear. “The Host doesn’t rescue people,” Jack says. “He collects outcomes.”

He swings his legs into the chute and lowers himself down, testing friction with his bare socks, one hand braced on rock.

Jack takes a last look at Elena, wanting to tell her before he jumps how much it’s meant to him getting to know her. But he doesn’t. Something in her eyes tells him she already knows.

“I’ll be right behind you,” she says, and touches her hand briefly to her heart.

Jack commits.

He slides.

Conner drops in right behind him, sliding on his side, one arm pinned to his chest.

Elena comes last, slower, careful.

The roar gets louder. Air gets colder. The smell changes—wet stone, moving water.

Jack hits the bottom and stumbles forward into shin-deep current. It grabs him immediately. It’s stronger than it looks. He fights for balance, scanning the darkness.

“Rupert!” he yells.

No time to wait for the others.

No time, period.

The boy is down here somewhere.

A thin sound answers—barely audible over the water.

“Jack—!”

Jack turns toward it and wades into the current, arms out, moving by sound and instinct and the stubborn refusal to let a promise die. Conner splashes in beside him.