Page 116 of The Most Dangerous Games

Before walking over to him, Jimmy surveys the bar one last time. He’s trying to see if anyone has shown an unusual interest in his entrance. No one has. It’s an older crowd. If the crowd was younger, Jimmy would be mobbed by now.

No one looks over at him as a goal is scored. A loud cheer erupts from the well-lubricated patrons.

Jimmy walks to the table. He taps the man on his shoulder, clearly startling him.

“You can’t be sneaking up on people that way!” the man hisses.

Jimmy stares down at the man’s face, almost not believing what he’s seeing. He knows that voice. He knows that posture.

He knows that cap.

“You?” he whispers.

79.

Hours later, the survivors are extracted from the city under darkness and noise and orders barked in languages none of them fully understand. They are moved fast. Too fast to grieve properly. Too fast to even breathe. The Host’s people—soldiers, guards, shadows—push them through a corridor of destruction to a waiting transport. They are airlifted out that night to Brazil, then flown to Florence. From there they will be transported by bus to another estate, this one in the hills of Tuscany.

There are now twelve left out of the original one thousand.

By the grace of God—or dumb luck, or both—Rupert Chadwick is still one of them.

Somehow, he survived the grenade blast.

He’s alive.

Because the blast happened right inside the hospital, the doctors had gotten him into surgery almost immediately. In the process they saved his right eye and repaired the severe damage to his spleen, and to a collapsed lung.

When the boy is out of surgery and awake, he’s pale as paper and shaking, his voice barely more than air. As soon as he’s allowed to have visitors, Alek and Hannah and Wyatt and Jack visit him in the private room The Host arranged for the boy, a rare example of generosity.

Maybe the only one they’ve seen so far.

The doctor has already informed Rupert how long his rehabilitation is going to take. Alek is the one to tell him that the next trip Rupert will be taking is home to England.

As lucky as the boy knows he is—as lucky as they all are to be alive—he is the last of them to cry.

“Hey,” Jack says, standing at the foot of the bed like he’s afraid to get too close, like he’s afraid the world will take the boy just for touching him.

Rupert’s eyes are glassy. One is bandaged.

He whispers, “Please . . . take me with you.”

They can see how painful it is for him to get out even a few words at a time.

Alek’s throat tightens. She takes his hand carefully, like it might break.

“We can’t,” she says. “Not this time.”

They know how tough this fourteen-year-old is by now. How much rope he has in him, as Jack likes to say.

Rupert’s jaw trembles. He hates crying in front of people. They all know that about him now.

“They say . . . months,” Alek adds softly. “You need real recovery. Real doctors. A real bed.”

Rupert stares at the ceiling like he’s bargaining with it.

“I can heal . . . at the next place,” he whispers. “Wherever you go. I can stay out of the way.”

Wyatt steps closer. His ribs still ache every time he breathes, but he doesn’t let it show. “You’re never in the way,” Wyatt says. “You’re family.”