Page 182 of The Most Dangerous Games

“I won, maty,” she says. “Me. Your daughter. I won.”

She says it again, softer this time, careful, almost afraid.

“I won.”

Then she can’t help herself, she really is laughing at the sheer improbability of it all.

She tells her mother she loves her and ends the call.

Alek sits for a minute and thinks about the journey here from Ohio, the one that really began for her in the freezing water of Antarctica. That was the first time she nearly died.

She closes her eyes and remembers those who did lose their lives.

She thinks about the child they’d saved from fire, picturing Wyatt and the girl falling out of the sky one more time.

Now the whole world seems on fire.

Now we’re the ones who have to take a leap of faith.

The entire time, she’d had one question she couldn’t shake: Can one person really save the world?

That was the story The Host sold them. What the board treated as religion. Find The One. Crown The One. Let The One do whatever needs to be done.

The end justifies the means.

Alek understands now why people want to believe that story. How it could even come from the right place. When the world is burning, you want somebody to put it out. But she’s seen what that story becomes when you push it far enough.

That story buys you one thing: permission. And once you have permission, you’ll call anything “necessary.”

You can call cruelty “necessary” and feel proud of it.

Alek thinks about the duels. The rooms. The dead. The way they tried to turn fear into a weapon.

That wasn’t leadership.

That was control.

And the “one” wasn’t a person.

It was an excuse.

Alek closes her eyes and sees Reg again. Sees Hannah’s face. Sees Jack crawling out of his own hell. Sees Zhi forcing himself to breathe through his terror. Sees Jimmy showing up bruised and smiling like the whole world can still be fixed.

And she thinks of Tipton, too—shaking in that room, finally learning what it feels like to be powerless. A man who’d told himself he’d do anything, right up until “anything” meant losing the last piece of himself.

There are lines you don’t cross. Not for money. Not for power. Not even to save the world.

Because if you win by becoming the thing you’re fighting . . . you didn’t win.

Alek opens her eyes and looks out at the city again. Maybe the truth is simpler than all of them wanted it to be.

Nobody saves the world alone.

You save it the only way it’s ever been saved.

Together.

With loyalty. With courage. With care.