Chapter 66.
Unknown War Zone
At least this time The Host isn’t playing games with us, Alek thinks.
They really have been flown into a war zone. They never tell them the name of the country. They land in the middle of the night.
Alek steps down from the transport and feels heat that isn’t heat. It’s the air itself—thick, metallic, already bruised by smoke. Armed men usher them onto a bus with blacked-out windows. No insignia. No flags. Just rifles and faces that don’t invite questions.
They drive for a long time, mostly on back roads. Alek tries to count turns. Tries to keep a map in her head.
Then the first distant boom rolls through the bus like thunder. Not a test, Alek thinks. War.
They finally stop near a building that used to be beautiful—tall spires, old stone, a place tourists would have taken pictures of back when pictures mattered.
Once off the bus they are escorted by armed soldiers, who call themselves the local Defense Force, through an elaborate series of underground tunnels to what they’re assured is a bomb shelter as safe and secure as any in the city.
The air changes immediately. Cooler. Wet. Old concrete.
Alek hears the first blast before she feels it. A low concussion that makes dust drift from seams in the ceiling.
A soldier mutters to himself, “Well, suh much fuh de ceasefire.”
Hannah notices. This narrows where they could be.
Somewhere in South America, most likely.
Not that it matters much. The continent has seen a spike in ceasefire collapse.
Resource war. Here—two militias fight over water access and the road that brings food in.
Nobody here is “winning.” They’re just lasting.
Then the soldier looks at them and says, “We deh pon de same team now.”
Hannah just files it away: Ceasefire was real. Now it’s gone.
All of them had been given one last chance to quit before leaving Maine. No one did.
Jack looks around the shelter: reinforced concrete, metal benches, a few medical supplies stacked in crates. It reminds him of the bunkers in the Gulf—places that promised safety right up until they didn’t.
“I just hope the ceiling holds when another blast hits,” Jack says.
“Don’t say that,” Rupert whispers.
Jack doesn’t mean to scare the kid. He just can’t stop his brain from doing what it does: measuring exits, counting bodies, imagining the worst so he’s not surprised by it.
“They said this was the most secure shelter in the city,” Alek replies.
“And maybe it is,” Jack says.
“What does that mean?” Alek asks.
“Sometimes soldiers lie,” he says. “Even when they’re the good guys.”
“So now what?” Alek asks. “We just wait here?”
The speaker in the corner crackles.
The Host.
“Glad you asked, Ms. Andrich.”
Tipton’s voice cuts in. “Why do I feel like I got drafted into this war?”
“It frankly doesn’t matter how you got here, Mr. Tipton,” The Host says. “What matters is what you do while you’re here.”
The shelter shakes again, more violently than before, with another bomb blast. A few people flinch. Someone curses.
When the room is finally quiet again, with no immediate aftershocks, The Host continues:
“There are several hotspots we could have chosen for you. The list is sadly so long, as we all know. But this will do nicely.”
Jack’s fingers flex like he’s ready to swing.
“Try to rest,” The Host says. “In a few hours, your job will be saving as many lives as possible before—”
He pauses, indulgent.
“—some of you lose your own.”
Alek’s stomach turns. He’s enjoying this.
The next bomb blast comes then.
This one throws them all off their benches and to the floor, the blast sounding and feeling impossibly close, the whole room feeling like it’s been concussed.
The bench Alek was sitting on skids.
The lights flicker once.
The walls and ceiling come crashing down on all of them.
Patrick Arrasmith