Page 101 of The Most Dangerous Games

A. Do not go to the press first. You will be fed a narrative.

B. Go to your contacts in Bundeskriminalamt and request a quiet inquiry into the flight manifests connected to our movements from Ohio onward. You know how to phrase this so it doesn’t trigger bureaucracy.

C. Pull CCTV around any private aviation facilities near the last confirmed locations of “Jimmy Donaldson” (I cannot include certain details here without risking interceptions). Our movements require clearance and equipment you can’t fake: tail numbers, secured airfields, armed escorts, fuel, manifests. Look for repeats. Patterns will be the only fingerprints. He is not your target. He is an asset to your investigation. If you find him. He will be useful.

Proof and identifiers:

• The Host’s voice has a particular cadence and a recurring phrase structure (“for the uninitiated,” “not to make too fine a point,” “delightful”). This is not random. It’s a mask.

• He uses everything as a deliberate intimidation tactic. He wants us to imagine something untouchable.

• No one “sets up” a war zone. You rent it. Security contracts. “Aid” flights. Medical pallets that aren’t medical. That isn’t “one rich guy.” There’s a private apparatus that mimics a state—contractors, shell charities, and a security conglomerate that can buy access.

The boring parts are where the truth hides.

Now the part I don’t want to write, but I will, because you would hate me if I didn’t.

We’re about to go on our most dangerous test.

All we know is that we’re being sent off to a war, without knowing which one. In the world in which we live, that could be almost anywhere.

You both raised me to be brave and strong. And were always telling me—long before this came along—that I could grow up to change the world.

I just want you to know that if something happens to me, if I never see you again, that I’ve always loved you the way you loved me.

There’s another thing I need to admit, because it feels dishonest to die without saying it.

I care about someone here. Wyatt Jordan. He’s not what he seems, but neither am I anymore. I was forced into a choice: him or the game. Another “test.” Another way to make us bleed without leaving a mark. I chose the game. I did it to survive. I did it to stay close to what’s happening long enough to understand it. It also hurt him, and I’ll have to live with that.

If I don’t survive: Tell him this wasn’t a teenage fantasy. It was real. It was brief. It mattered.

Finally—because you’re my parents and you’ll want to protect me even from beyond the world—remember: You didn’t send me into this. I walked in with my eyes open. I just didn’t know how dark the room was.

If I come home, I’ll tell you everything.

If I don’t, remember me as brave, and I need you to do what you do best.

Justice.

Ich liebe euch

Hannah

Game #3

Steven Noble

66.

Unknown War Zone

At least this time The Host isn’t playing games with us, Alek thinks.

They really have been flown into a war zone. They never tell them the name of the country. They land in the middle of the night.

Alek steps down from the transport and feels heat that isn’t heat. It’s the air itself—thick, metallic, already bruised by smoke. Armed men usher them onto a bus with blacked-out windows. No insignia. No flags. Just rifles and faces that don’t invite questions.

They drive for a long time, mostly on back roads. Alek tries to count turns. Tries to keep a map in her head.