Chapter 61.
Maine
There are now twenty of them left. Out of the thousand invited to Ohio, out of the hundred shipped to the ends of the earth, out of the ones who made it through ice and sand and stone.
Luca Tommasi is dead.
Reg Drummond is dead.
Elena Torres is dead.
Others have pushed their red buttons and departed, sometimes in full view of the other contestants. Sometimes it has happened in the middle of the night, and they’re just gone, without a goodbye or a trace, just an empty bed in the morning and that awful understanding: Someone quit in silence.
The survivors have been transported to another estate, this one in a remote section of the Appalachian Trail in Maine, close enough to the 100-Mile Wilderness that the air smells like pine and wet earth.
They are told by The Host that they will be flying again tomorrow, to an undisclosed location, for what he promises will be their most perilous mission yet.
The Host said this over the speakers with that same bored amusement.
Hannah, Wyatt, Jack, and Rupert have gathered in Alek’s cottage before dinner. This is the first chance for them to all be together after the events of the past few days. So much has happened, so much of it terrible. The loss of two more friends has staggered them all.
They’ve already talked about a different kind of loss—Jimmy Donaldson.
Alek has described the scene in detail: Jimmy showing up with water that saved her life. Then, after the others were stable, Jimmy pushing his red button anyway. Alek had grabbed him, furious and shaking, and demanded to know why. All Jimmy said was: “A conversation for another day.”
Then: “Trust me.”
Alek was running short on trust after everything she’d been through, but she did. Still. Despite her reservations.
Now the air in the cottage is different—heavier. The conversation has shifted to the names no one wants to say.
“I don’t know if I’m ready to talk about Reg,” Wyatt says. His voice is thin, like it’s coming from a place inside him that’s still clinging to the rocks. “I’m not sure I ever will be.”
Jack nods once. He looks older than he did in Ohio. “It’s good to talk about it,” Jack says. “That’s something I’ve learned the hard way. You don’t, it rots you from the inside.”
Hannah’s hands are wrapped around a mug she isn’t drinking from. “I keep thinking about him,” she says. “He saved me. And then—” She stops. Her throat works. “And then when he needed someone . . .”
Wyatt’s eyes flash. “Don’t.”
She sighs.
“It’s not her fault,” Alek says fast. “Or yours. Or anybody’s. That’s the whole sickness of it. We’re up there, trying not to die, and someone still . . . still—”
She can’t finish.
Wyatt sits up. “You know what I can’t help thinking about with Reg? How happy he’d been that day.”
Rupert is tucked beside Jack on the sofa.
The boy’s face has that look grief gives kids: too old, too alert, like his body keeps expecting more bad news.
“Luca and Elena and Reg were all so brave,” he says.
“Love and were loved, and now we lie.” Rupert looks almost embarrassed at the words that have just come out of him.
“It’s a poem. ‘In Flanders Fields,’” he explains.
“You’re brave, too, kid,” Jack says, patting Rupert on the shoulder.
Rupert shakes his head. “I miss them.”
“We all do,” Alek says.
Then Rupert looks down at his hands like he’s reading something invisible and softly quotes more of the poem he had partially recited in the red tent that day:
“To you from failing hands we throw the torch; be yours to hold it high.”
No one speaks right away, until Alek raises her arm as high as it will go. One by one they follow. They all do. It’s awkward and small and almost ridiculous. Which is why it works.
A knock comes at the door—time to walk to dinner. But before they leave Alek says, “I still can’t believe Jimmy left.”
Jack stares at the floor. When he speaks, it’s flat with certainty, the same certainty he’d had in war when he told men what they needed to hear to keep moving.
“I’ll just say what I said before,” Jack says.
“He must have had his reasons. Damn good ones. And if he said he’ll explain when the time is right, he will. ”
Wyatt doesn’t argue.
Hannah doesn’t either.
But none of them look comforted.