Chapter 78.
Jimmy Donaldson is in London.
Normally he wouldn’t, but right now, he hates that sentence. Because it means he’s far away from the people he’s grown to care about. And he’s getting closer to the people he’s trying to take down.
He’s moved through a chain of doors that seem to lead only to more doors and no answers.
He’s traveled from Maine to Washington, DC, where a DHS analyst slid him one file: shipping manifests for “medical” cargo tied to the games.
The pallets were the right size for IVs and body bags.
Also for restraint rigs and AR housings.
Same supplier. Same signature. The trail ended in NYC.
Where the money trail sent him to London.
The lead in London has a solid connection to the estate of the reclusive billionaire Gavin Hillshire. In the later stages of his life, Hillshire started a blog that railed endlessly about the Apocalypse, and how world leaders weren’t doing enough to sound deafening alarms about it.
The lead ties the manifests to Hillshire’s estate—his holding companies, his air charter accounts, and one “charitable foundation” that doesn’t treat patients. It moves cargo.
Jimmy feels he’s as close as he’s come yet to discovering the identity of The Host, as well as the mysterious Board of Directors that controls the game.
Every meeting has been in a place with too much noise and too many exits. Every person has said the same thing in a different way: This isn’t one man. This is a group. A board. A network. A machine. And Jimmy is not stupid. He knows machines don’t care about the names of the people they crush.
But he cares.
Luca.
Elena.
Reg.
And now—others. He doesn’t have a scoreboard anymore. He doesn’t have a red button hanging from his neck. He has something worse.
He’s running out of time.
He knows there are more he doesn’t know about. Jimmy hoped for the best but feared the worst. When he’d left his friends in a dining room in Maine, they were about to be shipped off to a war zone.
Jimmy is no longer competing to be The One, but the stakes here in London feel even more urgent. He’s going to find out who’s behind this competition; find out the identity of The Host, whom he holds responsible for many deaths.
Now someone with insider knowledge of the board has reached out, indicating he has useful answers to the questions Jimmy has been asking. He’s more confident than ever he can find out how the original vision for a competition of this scale—this magnitude—has gotten so distorted.
Jimmy is as terrified as anyone by what he sees as a dangerous pre-dystopian world. Drastic measures are required. It’s why he signed on in the first place, willing to help in any way possible.
The quest to identify The One was new and bold and necessary.
Maybe he was na?ve to believe in it. But Jimmy still considers himself an idealist. He believes that one great man or woman is capable of changing the course of history, the same way great leaders always have in moments of crisis for civilization.
Maybe even a group of great men and women. Maybe it wasn’t down to one person . . . but a movement, growing until it hit a crescendo, a wave so strong it cannot be ignored.
Before that can happen, Jimmy knows he has to do everything in his power to regain control of these games. That has to happen. He doesn’t want anyone else to die. Not one person. Not even Ant Tipton.
He runs.
He knows he can’t stop.
Or let himself be stopped.
He’s certain he’s being watched. He felt it in New York. He’s certain he’s been followed to London. He’s already changed hotels once, using fake names at both. But he doesn’t care if he’s in danger. If the others can put their lives on the line, so can he.
He’s doing a lot more than scrambling international phone calls now.
Jimmy has taken a taxi from his new hotel in Kensington, switched to a train, gotten off at the Green Park station, eventually walked across St. James’s Park. Jimmy constantly looks over his shoulder to see if he has picked up the tail he’d spotted back in New York.
He walks. He loops twice around a block for no reason except to see if anyone loops with him. No one does. That doesn’t mean he’s safe. It means whoever’s following him is good.
Jimmy makes his way past Buckingham Palace until he arrives at a pub off Caxton Street called the Stewart Arms. Good crowd at the bar, pints and shots in front of them, watching a Premier League soccer game. A place where nobody expects to see MrBeast.
Alek and Hannah, Jack and Wyatt—they talked all the time about how far they’d come. They have no idea how far Jimmy has come.
Alone in a corner a man is crouched over a beer, where he’d said he’d be in the encrypted message Jimmy had received an hour ago. A New York Yankees baseball cap is pulled down so low Jimmy’s surprised he can even see.
Before walking over to him, Jimmy surveys the bar one last time. He’s trying to see if anyone has shown an unusual interest in his entrance. No one has. It’s an older crowd. If the crowd was younger, Jimmy would be mobbed by now.
No one looks over at him as a goal is scored. A loud cheer erupts from the well-lubricated patrons.
Jimmy walks to the table. He taps the man on his shoulder, clearly startling him.
“You can’t be sneaking up on people that way!” the man hisses.
Jimmy stares down at the man’s face, almost not believing what he’s seeing. He knows that voice. He knows that posture.
He knows that cap.
“You?” he whispers.