Epilogue
Alek is taking one last look at the City of Gold from this awesome height when the door opens.
Ward Hillshire walks back in.
“We need to talk,” he says to Alek.
Alek doesn’t turn right away. When she does, her face is calm. “I’ve said everything to you I needed to say. Enough to last a lifetime.”
He smiles at her, as smug as ever.
Finally: “Make it fast. I’ve got somewhere to be.”
Ward sits—far end of the table. Not the head.
“You think you’re walking into a clean world?” he asks. Then, in the same dismissive tone he’d used with them before today: “While you’ve been in Dubai, winning, the map has started bleeding, the world has continued burning. That’s the part you don’t get to pause.”
She doesn’t respond right away, making him wait.
“Thanks for the apocalypse briefing,” she says.
“Do you not understand where I’m going with this, Alek?” Ward says.
“I don’t,” she says. “But I’m sure you’re going to enlighten.”
He sighs.
“Do you really think you can be ‘The One’”—he puts air brackets around that—“to solve the kinds of problems that are literally cropping up every day, and all over the map?” he asks.
“The only thing we can do is try,” she says.
“Good luck with that,” he says. “Though you’re going to need a lot more than luck.”
“On that we agree,” Alek says.
She stands.
“Are we done here?” she asks.
“Almost,” Ward Hillshire says.
“To the end, you remain in love with the sound of your own voice,” Alek says.
“I actually came back here to do you a favor,” he says.
“Did you?” she says drily.
Ward’s smile sharpens.
“I came back here to tell you about the other games,” he says. “Just concluded on the other side of the world, but just as dangerous as your own.”
Alek finally stills.
“What other games?” she asks.
He chuckles one last time, as if he has once again become The Host.
“Let me put it to you another way,” he says. “You may be The One.”
There is one last dramatic pause from him.
“Just not the only one,” he says.
THE END