Page 172 of The Most Dangerous Games

Ward presses the elevator button.

“All is about to be explained,” he says, sounding very tired all of a sudden. “By your new hosts.”

The elevator doors open. They all step inside.

The next voice they hear is Wyatt’s, coming from a small box high up in the corner of the elevator.

“I’d like to congratulate you on your great victory, Alek,” Wyatt says. “Well done.”

Alek looks up at the speaker. “Go to hell,” she says. “But heads-up—you’re not going to like it much. We were all just there.”

Jack looks up at the small box. “Where are you, Wyatt?” he asks. “I’d still like a word.”

“Waiting for you a couple floors up,” Wyatt says. “And before you say it—yes, I know. I know what it looked like. I know what it felt like.”

Alek’s hands curl into fists. “You let it happen.”

Then Wyatt says, “I didn’t design those chambers. And I didn’t have the legal authority to stop them once they started.”

“Legal,” Jack spits.

Wyatt exhales. “It’s frustrating because my father used the rules as weapons. He knew what the contract demands and where the wiggle room is. But when it comes to the final outcome: Rules are rules. The only way any of you could win the money was to finish the final stage. You can hate that. We do too. But it’s true.”

Alek’s eyes narrow. “You said ‘we.’ Who else is involved?”

Wyatt doesn’t answer.

The doors begin to close. A hand shoots in and stops them.

Jimmy steps into the elevator. There is a bruise on his left cheek. There is a bandage over his puffy right eye.

But it’s him.

“Don’t worry,” he says, “I won the fight.”

Without saying a word, he reaches past Ward and presses “PH.”

He looks at Alek and Jack and Zhi.

Jimmy touches the bruise on his cheek.

“We don’t get to quit,” he says. “So we get smart.”

They ride the elevator in silence.

119.

Alek keeps replaying Ward’s words.

You never said the word.

She can still hear Tipton’s muffled voice behind that door, like the building itself is swallowing him.

Then the doors open into another conference room—bright, expensive, unreal.

Wyatt is there waiting for them.

So is Hannah Wagner.