Page 83 of The Most Dangerous Games

Jack and Conner are carried along by the surprisingly powerful current, which drags them toward the sliver of daylight they can see in the distance, the daylight The Host had promised was there.

A loud splash behind them. Elena, probably hitting the water. He wants to go to her. Find her. Make sure she’s okay. It feels like it took her so long to drop but it’s only been seconds that feel like hours because of the cold and the fear. He knows he can’t swim back. She’s strong.

Find the boy.

A few seconds later they hear Rupert’s voice from up ahead, barely audible over the din of the water all around them.

The boy is the only prize that matters now.

The boy is everything.

“Over there!” Conner shouts.

Jack came to these games looking for redemption. He had wanted to feel the sense of purpose he’d once felt as a Ranger, which he’d lost a long time ago, when he’d lost himself.

He swims toward the boy.

He promised Rupert he’d take care of him, no matter what.

“I’m coming!” Jack shouts, and swims furiously in the direction of Rupert’s voice.

He feels like a Ranger again, and Rangers live by a simple code. A code he never stopped believing, even when he stopped believing in himself:

I will never leave a fallen comrade.

55.

Mount Washington

The hike from Pinkham Notch along the Tuckerman Ravine took more than two hours.

They are allowed a brief rest when they arrive at the foot of the climb they’re about to make, at a side of the mountain known as the Pinnacle.

Reg’s lungs pull air like he’s been running. The exposure makes his stomach tighten, the world dropping away behind them in a way that has nothing to do with altitude and everything to do with possible consequences.

Tipton stands first.

Of course he does.

He adjusts his straps and looks up. “Listen,” Tipton says, and for the first time his voice is neutral, practical. “No hero moves. No lunges. You don’t ‘go for it.’ You place, you test, you commit.”

Reg watches him. Hates him. Respects him. Both at once.

Tipton adds, almost grudgingly, “If we had a rope, we’d simul. Four of us on one line. But we don’t. So we move like we are.”

A team without the thing that makes teams safe.

They slowly begin their ascent.

Reg stays close behind Tipton, Tipton reluctantly having become the group leader.

Insanity, Reg tells himself.

Pure insanity.

Tipton also tells them that as a boy growing up in England, he’d done a fair amount of climbing in what is known as the Peak District, not too terribly far from where he’d grown up in northern Derbyshire.

There is little conversation. They all just follow Tipton’s lead, focus on finding handholds and footholds in the schist rock in front of them.