Chapter 63.
Jimmy is silent now.
They all are.
Jimmy finally finds his voice. “Is it worth asking what your name is?”
“I go with Satan,” Wyatt says. “Or maybe Lucifer. Serpent. The Tempter.”
“Now now,” The Host says. “Who raised you? Did no one ever teach you manners, young man?”
Wyatt tries to hold eye contact but buckles first. Looks down. Sits.
The silver-haired man shows no signs of moving farther into the room. He seems comfortable where he is.
“More to the point, my name is of little or no consequence to any of you,” he says. “For your purposes, The Host will continue to serve us all just fine. That will do swimmingly.”
He chuckles now—that condescending laugh they’ve come to expect from him, in just about every encounter. Trapped in the same room with him, the sound is even more grating.
“For now, just be pleased that I’m here,” The Host says.
“Oh, we are thrilled,” Gabrielle Fontaine says. Her thick French accent has a way of underlining the sarcasm, and a few people laugh.
“This would be a good time for you to express some remorse for the latest people your competition killed,” Jimmy says.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” The Host snaps, clearly agitated.
“You people are competing for the opportunity to change lives, money aside, and for the better. You all see yourselves as heroes, whether you want to admit that or not. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t think you have what it takes.
You all volunteered for stakes like these.
What did you think you were signing up for—summer camp? ”
“These aren’t close to being the kinds of tests I suggested,” Jimmy says.
“Let’s just say,” The Host says, “that while we were impressed with your spirit and overall vision, Mr. Donaldson, once contractors were hired, permits bought, and cameras already in the walls—the Board of Directors decided to up the ante. And will continue to do so, as we see fit. But, your early framework was . . . charming.”
What “board”? Alek asks herself.
“Here’s what I think of you and your board,” Jimmy says. “You are nothing more than cowards who enjoy watching people suffer.”
“You can call me names until I walk out of here,” The Host says. “You’ve already pushed your red button. If this is too much for anybody else, feel free to do the same.”
He moves closer to the tables, stopping to point at Jack, then at Ant Tipton and another former soldier, and then a man named Amos Meyers.
Amos was once a celebrated member of an elite military unit from the Eastern Mediterranean Buffer Zone.
He had finally mustered out of his military service after a remote-operated bomb had blown up a hospital while he was inside evacuating civilians.
He spent three months in a hospital run by the people he was fighting against because of extensive shrapnel wounds.
They saved his life, despite him participating in taking so many of theirs.
“You know about war, don’t you, Mr. Meyers?” The Host says.
“Unfortunately, yes. More than you could ever imagine,” Amos says in a soft voice. “It was my natural state for years.”
They can all still see the scarring around his eyes.
“My whole life has been war, even once my military service ended,” he continues.
“You must know that as well as I do, or I wouldn’t be here.
I grew up hating the people we called our enemy.
And I knew they hated us. That shared hatred informed every day of our lives.
All I have known in my life, even as a boy, is that hatred. ”
Everyone else in the room has fallen silent. Amos Meyers has spoken little about his experiences as a soldier since the red tents in Ohio, choosing mostly to keep to himself. He told Jack McHenry that he’s found it useful to not open his mouth unless he has something to say.
But he has opened up here.
He breathes in, steadying. “War is the easiest thing in the world to start,” he says. “Hate makes it simple. Hate makes it feel righteous.”
The room doesn’t interrupt. Even Tipton holds his tongue.
Amos continues, not preaching, not performing—just telling a truth he can’t afford to soften. “My wife and children died in a strike two years ago,” he says. “Wrong place. Wrong time. That’s what people say when they want grief to sound clean.”
He looks around, voice still level. “The pain of that led me to do awful things. Awful things to the people who eventually saved my life. But who also did awful things to me. It was then that I saw past the stories and the history and the lies. We kept causing each other the same pain and blaming each other the same ways. Over and over. If there is a true enemy on this planet, it’s not a flag.
It’s not a language. It’s the thing inside us that loves watching someone else suffer and calls it justified. ”
For once, The Host doesn’t talk over someone.
“It is the hate that only stops briefly, and then flares up again, that never seems to stop, not really, not for long.”
When Amos finishes, The Host nods—performing approval.
“You know better than anyone the heavy cost of winning a war,” The Host says.
“You don’t win wars,” Amos corrects him. “If you are among the fortunate, you merely survive them.”
“You see?” The Host says to Jimmy. “This is why you’re here. These games are a necessary evil for a planet now seemingly dominated by evil.”
“No, you didn’t hear a word that man said,” Jimmy says. “They’re a choice you’re making and all it does is keep things as they are.”
The Host makes a sweeping gesture that takes in all the tables.
“You all knew the risks involved when you signed on for this competition,” he says.
“And you’ve been reminded repeatedly after becoming a part of it.
No one forced Reg Drummond to climb. No one pointed a gun at Elena Torres and forced her to make that leap into the water trying to save young Rupert.
The reality is that they accepted the same risks you all have.
They made choices. Heroic choices, if you insist on that word. ”
Jack’s hands curl into fists under the table.
Jimmy’s voice is ice. “Easy to say when you’re not the one bleeding.”
The Host’s smile returns. “And yet you came back.”
Jimmy stares at him. “Because I’m going to find out who you are. I think you’re just a sadist. And I think the people here who have risked their lives have a right to know exactly who’s behind this. Who are these deranged people on the Board of Directors, starting with you?”
The Host chuckles again. “I frankly don’t care whether you think of me as a monster or not,” he says. “The mission remains the same: To identify The One.”
“No matter what the cost?” Jimmy says.
“If you believe in The One, then yes,” The Host says. “That’s what real belief looks like.”
Somehow Jimmy and the silver-haired man are only a few feet away from each other now.
Jimmy stands firm. “You should warn them I’m coming.”
“Good luck with that,” The Host says.
He turns and starts to walk toward the door.
Jimmy’s voice stops him.
“At the very least these people have a right to know where they’re going next,” he says.
“To a real war, since you’ve all lost sight of the stakes,” The Host says. “Where some of them will die. It’s what happens in war. People die.”