Chapter 54.
Mammoth Cave
Jack McHenry tosses the flashlight to the ground and drops to his knees at the edge of the chute as he prepares to jump down into the darkness after the boy.
First, he takes one last listen for another shout from down below, even for help, hoping to gauge where Rupert might be. The chute is slick limestone and mud, angling down into darkness.
There is only the roar of the water, sounding louder and more intimidating than ever.
Conner grabs his arm.
“Jack, wait—” Conner starts.
“Don’t know, don’t care,” Jack says. “He’s fourteen.”
“C’mon man, we don’t know what’s down there,” Conner says.
Elena is behind them, one hand pressed to her own mouth.
“Jack,” she whispers. “Please don’t—”
Jack doesn’t answer. He’s already taking off his boots.
Conner’s voice is low, urgent. “You don’t know what’s down there.”
Jack looks back at him, eyes hard.
“Yeah,” Jack says. “I do.”
Conner holds his gaze for half a second.
“Then I’m going with you,” Lynch says, untying the laces of his own boots and tossing them aside along with his flashlight.
Elena crouches, hands shaking. “Wait—wait, we can call—”
Jack touches the earpiece in his ear. “The Host doesn’t rescue people,” Jack says. “He collects outcomes.”
He swings his legs into the chute and lowers himself down, testing friction with his bare socks, one hand braced on rock.
Jack takes a last look at Elena, wanting to tell her before he jumps how much it’s meant to him getting to know her. But he doesn’t. Something in her eyes tells him she already knows.
“I’ll be right behind you,” she says, and touches her hand briefly to her heart.
Jack commits.
He slides.
Conner drops in right behind him, sliding on his side, one arm pinned to his chest.
Elena comes last, slower, careful.
The roar gets louder. Air gets colder. The smell changes—wet stone, moving water.
Jack hits the bottom and stumbles forward into shin-deep current. It grabs him immediately. It’s stronger than it looks. He fights for balance, scanning the darkness.
“Rupert!” he yells.
No time to wait for the others.
No time, period.
The boy is down here somewhere.
A thin sound answers—barely audible over the water.
“Jack—!”
Jack turns toward it and wades into the current, arms out, moving by sound and instinct and the stubborn refusal to let a promise die. Conner splashes in beside him.
Jack and Conner are carried along by the surprisingly powerful current, which drags them toward the sliver of daylight they can see in the distance, the daylight The Host had promised was there.
A loud splash behind them. Elena, probably hitting the water. He wants to go to her. Find her. Make sure she’s okay. It feels like it took her so long to drop but it’s only been seconds that feel like hours because of the cold and the fear. He knows he can’t swim back. She’s strong.
Find the boy.
A few seconds later they hear Rupert’s voice from up ahead, barely audible over the din of the water all around them.
The boy is the only prize that matters now.
The boy is everything.
“Over there!” Conner shouts.
Jack came to these games looking for redemption. He had wanted to feel the sense of purpose he’d once felt as a Ranger, which he’d lost a long time ago, when he’d lost himself.
He swims toward the boy.
He promised Rupert he’d take care of him, no matter what.
“I’m coming!” Jack shouts, and swims furiously in the direction of Rupert’s voice.
He feels like a Ranger again, and Rangers live by a simple code. A code he never stopped believing, even when he stopped believing in himself:
I will never leave a fallen comrade.