Page 69 of The Most Dangerous Games

Tipton stands at the window a moment longer.

Then he watches Drummond laugh at something Alek said, and he makes a decision he doesn’t like.

He will deal with Drummond.

Not because he wants to.

Because he’s being told to.

In that moment, he’s afraid.

Steven Noble

47.

Death Valley

How did I get here . . . and what do I do next?

Jimmy Donaldson can’t stop asking himself that question, now more than ever, on this speeding bus with a dozen or so other players—what The Host calls their “pod”—about to begin a hike across the vast northern stretch of the Mojave Desert known as Death Valley.

In 120-degree heat.

Without water.

This isn’t one of his videos. There’s no set he built. No safety team he trusts.

There is just the red pendant at his throat and the truth he’s starting to accept:

Someone else is writing the rules.

All of which have changed. These games are too dangerous. Lives are at stake every day. Jimmy stares out the window at the pale, empty land rolling past. He thinks of Luca Tommasi’s body on that inflatable boat, headed back across the water.

That wasn’t supposed to happen.

That can’t happen again.

And he needs to make things right, not just for the friends he’s made here, but also because of his mistaken complicity in all of it.

But first . . . the desert.

Jimmy is seated across the aisle from Lin Zhi, the Chinese gymnast who won in Rio de Janeiro—quiet, compact, eyes forward like he’s already visualizing the next movement. Jimmy idly wonders how many bus rides Zhi has taken on his way to various gymnastic events around the world.

Zhi said something on the flight that stuck with him.

“I am sure the other athletes here would tell you the same thing,” Zhi said quietly. “Once I stopped competing, I found myself missing it more than I thought I would. No one except other athletes might understand, but entering these games was as much about getting that feeling back as it was about the money. It was about a new challenge.”

Jimmy feels that in his bones. Not because he’s obsessed with winning—he’s obsessed with meaning. Scale. Impact. With proving something is possible.

The truly crazy part of the whole thing? He still doesn’t know who the backer is. Or the banker. In the run-up to this version there had been encrypted correspondence. He had provided feedback on challenges and been informed that the prize money had been upped all the way to a billion dollars. He had trusted his instincts were right . . . but were they?

So much of this was starting to feel all wrong.

It had started with the death of Luca Tommasi. Now here they are in Death Valley, about to take an insane walk.

He knows that no one is forcing him to do this, the way nobody forced him to accept The Host’s challenge.

The titanium red button is still hanging around his neck.