Chapter 123.
Jimmy and Wyatt remain standing next to each other at the front of the boardroom. Huge floor-to-ceiling windows tower behind them. They look like partners, or maybe conspirators, but definitely friends.
Alek finds herself thinking back to Ohio, when Wyatt turned into a starstruck kid upon first meeting his hero.
Wyatt: Not his father’s son. Gavin Hillshire’s grandson, in all the best ways.
Jimmy exhales like he’s been holding in anger for days.
“I want to say something else,” he tells Wyatt. “A bunch of things.”
“The floor is all yours,” Wyatt says.
“I didn’t ask for any of this,” Jimmy says. “But I’m not walking out the way I walked in.”
Jimmy takes a deep breath and goes on, almost like he’s caught a second wind. He faces the board and looks around the table, stopping at one face after another.
“Here’s what Gavin would’ve said if he were standing where I’m standing: You wanted to fix the ending. You wanted a winner you could control. You wanted Tipton because he was obedient. Because he’d do what you told him to do. Because he’d keep the machine running.”
Alek cuts in. “So he was supposed to win instead of me?”
“Tipton,” Wyatt says. “Yes. That was the plan.”
Ward opens his mouth.
Wyatt points at him. “Don’t.”
Thomas Waldrip, red-faced, stands before anyone else can speak. “You all keep calling it cruelty. I call it selection. The world doesn’t need kinder leaders. It needs effective ones.”
Jimmy doesn’t raise his voice. He sharpens it.
“Sit down,” Jimmy says.
“Security!” Wyatt calls.
Five uniformed guards enter the room.
Wyatt looks at Waldrip. “Sit.”
Waldrip bristles. “You can’t talk to me that way.”
Wyatt’s smile returns—small, dangerous.
“Just did.”
“Are you people really going to sit out a fight like this?” Jimmy asks. “Are you so deep into your own pockets that you’re not going to do anything to keep us all from going right over a cliff?”
“We were trying to save the world,” says Li Chang.
“It takes people like us to do that. People who are willing to do what needs to be done, despite the costs,” Jeanne Starr adds.
“You’re children. You’re being na?ve. Idealistic. You want the world to be a place that we can fix with rainbows and unicorns,” Helen Trengove mocks.
“We were trying to get you to see that,” Ward finally speaks up again. “We were trying to show you how dark the world is.”
Wyatt points a finger at his father.
“You know, Dad,” he says. “You really should have had me killed when you had the chance.”
“You all ignored something important, really important. We got this far without compromising our values,” says Alek.
Thomas Waldrip, still standing, barks out a harsh, mirthless laugh.
“You people actually think you’re going to save the world?” Waldrip says. “That’s adorable.”
“Enough,” Alek raises her voice, which is unusual for her. “More than enough! There’s still things I don’t understand. Why would Gavin Hillshire let Wyatt anywhere near this competition in the first place?”
“Mr. Hillshire told me that he had to find out once and for all who should be his real heir,” Jimmy says. “To carry on his work, his vision of the future. He wanted to see who Wyatt really was—by the games.”
Wyatt turns back to his father.
“You couldn’t have that, could you?” Wyatt says.
Wyatt gives his father the same disdainful look Jimmy had just trained on Thomas Waldrip.
Alek takes a step forward. “I still need one answer. Why am I The One?”
Wyatt doesn’t hesitate.
“Because my grandfather’s rules were written in steel,” he says. “Not feelings. Not fairness. Not ‘almost.’”
He looks at Alek.
“You never said the word.”
Alek can’t believe it’s that simple.
Wyatt continues, “Zhi said it and left his chamber, that’s why his door was unlocked. Jack said it. Tipton said it. Quietly. But the system recorded it.”
Jack nods once. “So she actually won.”
“She did,” Wyatt says. “By the only rule the system recognizes.”
“Makes sense to me,” Jack says.
Lin Zhi nods his head in agreement. “Congratulations,” he says.
“Thank you. But I don’t feel like The One,” Alek says.
Wyatt’s expression softens for the first time.
“My grandfather believed in The One. I don’t,” Wyatt says.
“Me either,” Jimmy says. “Not anymore.”
Wyatt continues, “One person can start something, but they can’t do everything alone. That’s the lesson of these games.”
Waldrip starts laughing. “Idealistic idiots. You’ll see. When the pressure is real, when the stakes are real, when the decisions are right in front of you, you’ll come to the same conclusions we did.”
Alek clears her throat, “Honestly, Waldrip, shut the hell up.”
The room goes still.
“One last question, and then I promise to stop,” Alek continues. “Where’s Tipton?”
“Still in his room downstairs,” Wyatt says. “I made a brief stop there. When I said I’d let him out if he told me the truth, he couldn’t wait to confess that he was supposed to let me die on Mount Washington.”
“Did you let him out then?” Alek asks.
“No,” Wyatt says.
He puts his hands out helplessly.
“What can I tell you. I told one more lie.”
Wyatt takes a long look around the boardroom.
“Do any of you have anything you’d like to add before I declare this meeting adjourned?” Wyatt says. “Because we all have a lot of work to do.”
“I have one more thing to say, for the record,” Thomas Waldrip snaps. “You’re not half the man your grandfather was.”
Wyatt smiles at the man.
“You know something?” he says. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Alek speaks again. She takes charge. “Guards! Take them away. The former board members. The rest of us have work to do.”
Patrick Arrasmith