Chapter 47.
Death Valley
How did I get here . . . and what do I do next?
Jimmy Donaldson can’t stop asking himself that question, now more than ever, on this speeding bus with a dozen or so other players—what The Host calls their “pod”—about to begin a hike across the vast northern stretch of the Mojave Desert known as Death Valley.
Without water.
This isn’t one of his videos. There’s no set he built. No safety team he trusts.
There is just the red pendant at his throat and the truth he’s starting to accept:
Someone else is writing the rules.
All of which have changed. These games are too dangerous. Lives are at stake every day. Jimmy stares out the window at the pale, empty land rolling past. He thinks of Luca Tommasi’s body on that inflatable boat, headed back across the water.
That wasn’t supposed to happen.
That can’t happen again.
And he needs to make things right, not just for the friends he’s made here, but also because of his mistaken complicity in all of it.
But first . . . the desert.
Jimmy is seated across the aisle from Lin Zhi, the Chinese gymnast who won in Rio de Janeiro—quiet, compact, eyes forward like he’s already visualizing the next movement. Jimmy idly wonders how many bus rides Zhi has taken on his way to various gymnastic events around the world.
Zhi said something on the flight that stuck with him.
“I am sure the other athletes here would tell you the same thing,” Zhi said quietly.
“Once I stopped competing, I found myself missing it more than I thought I would. No one except other athletes might understand, but entering these games was as much about getting that feeling back as it was about the money. It was about a new challenge.”
Jimmy feels that in his bones. Not because he’s obsessed with winning—he’s obsessed with meaning. Scale. Impact. With proving something is possible.
The truly crazy part of the whole thing?
He still doesn’t know who the backer is.
Or the banker. In the run-up to this version there had been encrypted correspondence.
He had provided feedback on challenges and been informed that the prize money had been upped all the way to a billion dollars.
He had trusted his instincts were right . . . but were they?
So much of this was starting to feel all wrong.
It had started with the death of Luca Tommasi. Now here they are in Death Valley, about to take an insane walk.
He knows that no one is forcing him to do this, the way nobody forced him to accept The Host’s challenge.
The titanium red button is still hanging around his neck.
But he can’t walk away. He can’t let these people down.
Can’t disappoint them.
Or himself.
Most of those on this bus—plus those in the pods on their way to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky or to an intense climbing expedition in New Hampshire—are easy for Jimmy to root for.
Jimmy looks down the row.
Alek Andrich is here. Marcelo Oliveira is here. Carlos Lopez is here too—an ex-boxer with the dangerous ease of someone who learned young that violence solves problems.
Jimmy still hears Lopez’s voice from Kentucky.
Since Ohio, Lopez has carried himself like a freewheeling gangster, giving off the same ruthless vibe as Tipton. Maybe that’s why Tipton and Lopez have been spending time together, deep in conversation, probably plotting against everyone else.
Jimmy has only talked to Lopez once, after dinner the other night in Kentucky. He asked Carlos if he believed he could win.
“I always win,” Lopez had said curtly. “In boxing and now in my business. For me it has always been: Muerte antes que el deshonor.”
Death before dishonor.
Lopez had smiled thinly.
Jimmy doesn’t like people like that. People who treat morality like an outfit they can swap.
He trusts Jack. He trusts Reg. He trusts Alek. He trusts Wyatt even when the kid annoys him a bit. He trusts Hannah’s brain, even if her heart is getting tangled in this. It’s why he’s gone out of his way to keep telling them that he’s there for them, no matter what.
And also lets them know this:
The one he trusts the least here, less than Tipton or Lopez or anyone, is The Host.
It’s more than not knowing who he is, his true identity, his name. Jimmy doesn’t know what The Host’s agenda is, or what his endgame might be.
Jimmy knows he’s never been faced with a challenge like this. Maybe no one has. But he has to find out who’s in control of these games.
The bus hits a bump. The pod sways. Someone laughs nervously.
Jimmy feels the red pendant shift against his chest.
He thinks, not for the first time:
I can quit.
Then he thinks:
If I quit, who protects them?