Chapter 97.
The Host studies Wyatt Jordan and says, “There’s much I still don’t know about you.”
Wyatt snorts. “Yeah. No kidding.”
The Host’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Have you ever fired a gun before?”
“At another person?”
“That was the implication, yes.”
“I’ve wanted to point one at you plenty of times,” Wyatt says. “But you have to know that by now.”
Wyatt turns to his opponent, Zhi. By now they’re all aware that Zhi speaks fluent English. It happens to be one of many languages he speaks flawlessly.
“How about you?” Wyatt says. “Do you know how to shoot?”
Zhi nods.
“In my country,” he says, “college students and sometimes even high school students are required to pass a course in military training.” He shrugs. “Along the way there were many tests, I guess you could call them. I came out first in most of them.”
The Host has stepped away for a moment. Zhi follows him. The two men speak quietly.
When he comes back, Wyatt says, “What was that?”
“I asked him if this was going to be a fair fight,” Zhi says.
“And?”
Zhi looks straight at him. “He told me to trust him.”
They both see the trap.
Wyatt keeps his voice as low as possible. “I guess we’re going to have to trust each other one more time,” he says. “Just know that I don’t want to do this any more than you do.”
“I do what I have to do to win,” Zhi says.
So do I, Wyatt thinks.
He grips the handle of the gun hanging at his side a little tighter now.
So. Do. I.
A million thoughts come rushing over him now, all the way back to being in the freezing water that first day in Antarctica, when he’d been overwhelmed with fear, more for Hannah’s survival than his own.
He thinks about Reg Drummond, because he can’t help thinking about Reg Drummond, someone he had admired more than anyone else in this competition.
All the talk, from the very beginning, about heroes.
Reg hadn’t talked about it. He’d just been one, starting with that first day in the water and then later when that hole had opened up in the Ice Tongue and he had saved Alek’s life, and Wyatt had helped him do it.
That courage—the kind Wyatt needed now—had seemed to come so naturally to Reg. He had never hesitated to put his life on the line and was still saving lives on Mount Washington until no one could save him.
He needs Reg to tell him what a hero does when the only way out is through another person.
Ever since that day, Wyatt has had the same recurring nightmare about Reg losing his grip—Wyatt reaching for him—before Wyatt would wake up again in a cold sweat, heart pounding.
Sometimes he woke up crying, dreaming of being back up on the mountain, Reg still gone.
He needs Reg to be here now.
Wonders what Reg would do if the duel were between him and Wyatt.
Which one of them would have walked away first?
Or would both of them have played this out to the end, Reg especially, because he had never walked away from a fight in his life, at the Olympics or anywhere else?
Would Reg have walked out the door the way Gabrielle and Logan Bergeron had this morning?
It’s not just the weight of the gun in his hands that Wyatt Jordan feels now.
It isn’t just the weight of metal in his hand.
It’s the weight of Reg Drummond.
It’s the weight of what he’s about to become.