Page 7 of The Most Dangerous Games

No, the immediate problem was the sharks, now that they’ve been informed this is as far as the ship is going. That they will be expected to swim the rest of the way to the End of the World.

He sees bull sharks down there, and tiger sharks too. Jack knows them by sight from growing up on Galveston Bay and having gotten pretty darn close to some of them when he was a hardheaded kid. Something else he knows? Those sharks aren’t down there sightseeing.

Fine. Bring it on. This is what we’re here for, isn’t it? A real test.

He hadn’t come this far from that oil rig in the Midland Basin to lose before he even got to the island. Not with stakes like these, not with the chance to win money beyond his wildest dreams.

But there’s something else on the table along with the money, something that had made Jack want to become an Army Ranger in the first place:

What he truly does think of as a second chance—his last chance—to put meaning back into his life.

So, he tells himself now what he used to say downrange, when it was go time:

“We’re going to have to pick a different day to die.”

He misses the mission. That’s the problem.

He gives one last look around for Rupert Chadwick, hoping against hope that the boy is a good swimmer.

If he’s not, the sharks won’t care how brave he is.

3.

Alek

Antarctica

After a few seconds in the water, Alek Andrich is more afraid than she’s ever been in her life. Her thermal parka is waterlogged, dragging her down. Cold knifes through her suit. Her fingers stop obeying.

She tries to see past whales that look to be twenty, maybe thirty feet long. A low pulse rolls through the water. Not a whale. Not natural. The whales don’t fit any plan she can imagine. Which means no one’s in control out here. But she doesn’t have time for that. She starts looking for others who’ve been thrown out of the Zodiac with her.

And she’s still looking for Hannah.

We’ll get through this together, Alek had told her friend. I promised her.

Already she can see shapes floating face down up ahead—dark parkas, limbs, maybe people. Are they dead? She can’t tell. She tries to say a quick prayer for them anyway. But her lips are heavy and stiff.

She tries to scream Hannah’s name.

But her tongue is already too thick from the cold. Her lungs feel frozen, like she’s trying to breathe through glass.

The scream dies in her throat.

She starts to sink. She’s going under.

This is it.

Thoughts come too fast, out of order—like her mind is dumping files from across her life as it starts to power down. She can’t help it. She thinks of her little sister, back when she used to call Alek the Ice Queen, from an animated film they used to watch together. It was about sisterhood. Like theirs.

Alek hadn’t been able to save her sister when a bomb hit her school, but she’s going to save Hannah before she freezes to death. She just has to find Hannah first.

Don’t you dare die on me, Hannah Wagner.

Alek finally spots a few of the others swimming toward the capsized Zodiac, looking for something—anything—to hold on to. The whales keep splashing around them, as if this is some game for them.

She doesn’t know what orcas do to a human swimming near them, but that hardly matters. It’s the water that’s going to get her first.

There’s no way out of this. No escape she can imagine.