Chapter 38.
The Host watches the monitors without expression.
Wyatt and Hannah. Jack and Elena. The little clusters of loyalty and attraction forming like algae in water.
Predictable. Useful.
He watched them walk toward the house like they’re coming home from a high school date. He’s more convinced than ever that Wyatt is an immature fool.
A few minutes earlier he watched on a different monitor as the cocky oil rigger from Texas, McHenry, took a walk across a different part of the vast property with Elena Torres, the newscaster from Madrid, before both of them disappeared from his sight.
McHenry and Elena Torres had looked as smitten with each other—do people still say that?—as the two teenagers do now.
He had expected some pairing off like this, various attractions, it was to be expected when you threw people together like this in life-threatening situations. Or even, in the case of the Italian policeman, life-ending situations.
The thing he finds most interesting, and even more entertaining, is that even after the situations in which they found themselves in Antarctica and Chile, they clearly have no idea what’s coming next.
Or the choices these happy couples are eventually going to have to make.
Would Jack McHenry be willing to save Elena Torres’s life if it meant losing his own?
And what about the spoiled boy from New York City?
If it comes right down to it, would he choose his life or the life of the lovely, brilliant girl from Germany?
Better yet:
How hard will he have to push any of these people to get them to push the red buttons around their necks?
He watches now as Wyatt Jordan walks with the German girl toward the cottages.
People think love is a weakness.
Sometimes it is.
Sometimes it’s leverage.
He changes the camera angle and watches Wyatt glance over his shoulder one last time, like he can feel the eyes on him.
You’re learning, The Host thinks.
Too late.
The Host thinks to himself, It would be a pity if one of them is the next to die.