Chapter 92.
Alek Andrich knows she would kill to protect her mother, without a second thought. She would have done the same for her sister if it had ever come to that, had she even gotten the chance. Or for her father.
Killing to protect her mother was simple.
Killing to win a game wasn’t.
She tightens her grip on the knife.
“Don’t let them turn you into a story,” Hannah had said once. Lopez smiles like he’s already written her ending.
As insane as these duels are—as insane as hers is about to be with this armed and frightening man—she has come too far and done too much and seen too much to turn back now.
More than ever, even faced with perhaps making the ultimate sacrifice, she continues to keep her eyes on the prize.
She would never say it to the others, but she has come to believe she really is meant for a higher calling.
Whatever the risks.
She didn’t die in Death Valley and isn’t going to die today.
Alek still can’t believe that Hannah and Jack, two of the best people involved with these games, had been paired off. Or maybe, if she really thinks about it, she shouldn’t be surprised, knowing by now how sadistic The Host can be.
What person in their right mind could even call these “games” at this point? Alek thinks. She knows Ant Tipton and Saad al-Harbi have just been sent off into the woods with their dueling pistols.
Alek is convinced only one of them will come back alive.
Lopez had said nothing to her when they were handed Darter combat knives that look so much more frightening and so much more lethal than the steak knife Tipton had waved at Jack in the dining room before that fight was stopped.
But would anyone stop Lopez from killing her?
Will anyone stop me?
The Host walks them into what might have been at some point an exercise room, but is empty of any equipment today. Two of the walls are floor-to-ceiling mirrors, as if this actually had once served as a gym. Today it’s a room built to break them.
“Are you going to watch?” Alek asks.
“From the next room,” The Host says. “Ready to intercede if necessary.”
Alek doesn’t hide her contempt. “And when might that be?”
“One more thing that is for me to know and for you to find out, Ms. Andrich,” he says. “I will simply ask you and Mr. Lopez to once more trust the process.”
Alek feels her breath catch.
Trust the process.
She watches the bloodless silver-haired man walk out of the room, whistling softly to himself.
Then Alek hears Bohdan’s voice in her memory, the night before he’d left to join a fight he believed in.
Alek’s boyfriend Bohdan had been two years older than her during her short stint at university.
When he was old enough he had joined the war, like everyone else, saying it was his duty to fight for his country.
That was a few months before Alek had gone to Ohio.
She hasn’t heard from him since he left.
The night before he’d enlisted, though, he’d told her, “I refuse to live like a victim. Promise me you never will, either.”
She had made that promise.
She wasn’t going to be a victim today.
Or ever.
Alek is still watching the door close softly behind The Host when Carlos Lopez, without warning, slashes the top of Alek’s hand with his knife.
Her own knife goes clattering to the floor.