“I thought you went for that sort of thing,” Newt whispered back. Thomas could barely see him, but he knew his friend was smiling.
Thomas shook his head and nudged Newt toward the opening, then followed him through to the other side of the closet. They peered through the door to Group B. The soft sighs of sleep were broken here and there by a sharp snore or the creaks of springs as bodies repositioned.
Thomas waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He was scanning the room of bunks when a figure suddenly appeared in front of him. He stifled a yelp and stumbled backward. The girl followed him into the shadows of the closet.
“What do you want?” she whispered fiercely. “Who are you?”
Thomas finally recovered. “Sorry to sneak in like this—we’re from Group A. We’re here so Newt can say goodbye to his sister before the Maze Trials begin.” He couldn’t see Newt’s face because of the darkness, but he imagined the boy laughing at him for being so startled.
“You could’ve given us a warning,” the girl replied, “before creeping in like kidnappers. What are your names? Well, your name, if he’s Newt. We know all about Newt. Sonya is one of my best friends.”
“I’m Thomas.”
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. Or annoyed. Her group had probably heard just as much about him and Teresa as his friends had about Aris and Rachel. WICKED seemed to have spread the word. “My name’s Miyoko. Let me get Sonya.”
She slipped off into the barracks room, a shadow among shadows.
“I hope they’re on our side,” Newt said. “That girl’d take down half of us, yeah?”
Thomas didn’t answer; the darkness of the closet suddenly felt menacing. He knew that WICKED had the subjects separated into groups of girls and boys for various reasons. It had to do with how they were going to run out the Variables later in the trials. But he also knew there was more going on, and he didn’t like it.
Miyoko reappeared, this time with another girl right next to her. She was a blur as she ran past Thomas, streaking through the door and straight at Newt. They embraced in an unstable hug, stumbling back in the dark little room.
“Here,” Miyoko said, gently pushing Thomas out of the way so she could swing the closet door closed. Then she turned on a light that seemed as bright as two suns. He squinted and held a hand up to his eyes, temporarily blinded.
Newt was crying, and Thomas didn’t need vision to know it. The boy sobbed, the sounds muffled by his sister’s neck or shoulder. As Thomas’s sight returned, he saw that both of them had tears streaming down their faces, and they were hugging each other fiercely. He didn’t know how long it had been since the last time they’d seen each other, or if they were able to communicate somehow. But his heart hurt watching them.
“Come on,” Miyoko said to Thomas, grabbing his arm. “Let’s give them some—”
“I hate them,” Newt said loudly through his sniffles. He pulled back from his sister and wiped his cheeks. “I hate every one of them! How can they do this? How can they steal us from our homes and keep us separate like this? It’s not right!” He yelled the last word, and Miyoko winced, eyeing the door.
“No, no, no,” Sonya said in a soothing tone. She put her hands on both sides of her brother’s face, looking straight into his eyes. “Don’t say that. You’re looking at it all wrong. We’ve got it better than ninety-nine percent of kids out there. They saved us, big brother. What are the odds we’d be alive if they’d left us out there?” She pulled Newt back into a hug.
“But why do they keep us separate?” he asked, and the sadness in his voice broke Thomas’s heart. “Why all the tests and the games and the cruelty? I hate them, I don’t care what you say.”
“It’ll all be over someday,” the younger girl whispered. “Remember, you’re not immune. One day we’ll be able to make you safe and then we’ll be back together. Come on. You’re my big brother. You’re supposed to be the one comforting me.”
“I love you, Lizzy,” he replied, squeezing her hard. “I love you so much.” He leaned back and looked at her.
She smiled and Newt shook his head, pulling her back into a strong hug, and Thomas had a feeling that was about the best things would get for a while.
229.11.12 | 7:31 a.m.
They were days away from insertion. Days. Thomas could barely sleep. He and Teresa connected via telepathy at bedtime each night, but often they just lingered in silence, without much to say. The mere presence of the other person, somehow there, was always a comfort, though. Aside from his mother, whom he would always love, Teresa had become the closest thing to family—the closest thing to what Newt had with Lizzy—Thomas could ever imagine.
The last thing he remembered before the knock that woke him up that morning was Teresa humming to herself. She seemed to do it without thinking. The vibration and tone and feel of it traveled through their connection, and it had sent him off to a deep sleep like he hadn’t enjoyed in quite some time.
He groggily got up from bed and opened the door. Dr. Paige was there, and she looked worried.
“Sorry,” Thomas said, rubbing his eyes. “I slept in. But trust me, I needed it.” They’d been working themselves to the bone to get ready for the Maze Trials.
“It’s okay,” she replied. She seemed distracted. “Chancellor Anderson wants to meet with you and Teresa really fast this morning. Aris and Rachel will be there, too. It’s urgent. Hurry and get dressed. You can have breakfast after the meeting.”
Thomas realized then that she was a little disheveled, her face pale, and paused before answering.
“I mean it, Thomas!” she snapped. “Hurry.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll be ready in five minutes.”
“Make it three.”
—
It was the same conference room in which he’d seen Aris and Rachel for the first time a few months ago. That last time the room was filled with people. This time around, only three people were in attendance besides Thomas and the three other “elite” candidates. Chancellor Anderson, the security officer, Ramirez, and Dr. Paige. They sat on one side of the table, and Thomas, Teresa, Aris, and Rachel sat across from them on the other. No one in the room looked very happy.
“Thanks for coming,” Anderson began. They always started these things with statements like that—as if Thomas or his friends had a choice in the matter. “I’m afraid I have some sobering news. And I’m not going to beat around the bush—I’m going to just come out and say it.”
Instead, he did the opposite. He went silent, trading looks with Ramirez and Paige. Thomas watched this until it almost became comical. But the dread in Anderson’s voice had been real, and heavy.
“Then just say it,” Aris said.
Anderson nodded stiffly. “We think…we believe that we might have an outbreak on our hands.” He sat back in his chair and let out a weary breath. Looked again to Dr. Paige.
“An outbreak,” Teresa repeated. “Of the Flare?”
“Paige, say something,” Anderson grumbled.
Dr. Paige folded her hands on the table and looked at the teenagers. “Yes, the Flare. As you can imagine, none of the adults here are immune, so we’ve taken extreme caution to ensure our safety from the virus. A few months ago, however, we began to worry that we’d had a breach, even though none of our staff exhibited symptoms or tested positive.”
“Then what made you worry about it?” Rachel asked. Not for the first time, Thomas wished that WICKED would let the four of them work together more.
“You’re aware of the Crank pits?” Anderson said, more of a statement than a question. “That’s the riskiest part of our facilities, but a vital one. It’s a trap and a holding facility for Cranks that wander onto our grounds, and it provides biological material for our study regarding the virus.”
“So what happened?” Thomas asked.
“We keep a strict inventory,” Ramirez answered. It was always a surprise when the gruff man spoke. “It’s almost like an old-fashioned bee trap d
own there—they wander in but can’t get back out. The holding facility is constantly monitored—we have cameras everywhere.” He paused, and made an awful phlegmy sound somewhere deep in his throat. “There’s a strict no-contact rule without a containment suit—actually, a twenty-foot-distance rule—unless you’re a Munie, of course. Like you folks.” He sniffed, as if offended by his own words.
“You still haven’t told us what happened,” Teresa said, not bothering to hide her disgust for this man—Thomas knew full well that she, like he, associated the man with all things Randall.
“One of the Cranks went missing,” Ramirez said. “Three times a day we take an inventory, accounting for newcomers from the outside forests, less those who are removed for lab needs. There has never been a discrepancy, not once in all my years. Until a few months ago. One up and vanished.”
Those words settled for a moment, no one speaking. Thomas felt a shivery fear despite being immune. He wasn’t really afraid of the virus—it was the Cranks that terrified him. And to think that one might be hiding somewhere inside the WICKED complex made his stomach feel watery.
“We don’t want to alarm you or anyone else,” Chancellor Anderson said, “but we’ve brought you in to let you know we’ve made some decisions. Some hard decisions. For starters, we’ve decided to shorten the Maze Trials from five years to two. For all we talk about this being a long, slow process, the possibility of a breakout has given us pause. We might have to be a little more…intense with the Variables.”
Thomas had never felt so uneasy. Anderson was dancing around something here, but he wasn’t sure what. Teresa didn’t say anything specific in his mind, but she opened up her emotions to him, showing that she shared his ominous feeling.
“We’ve been working on several possibilities for a Phase Two, even a Phase Three if it comes to that. Once we get past the initial maze insertions, we’ll see how things go.”
Thomas immediately thought of what he and Newt had seen in the R&D laboratory: the glass-topped container, the veined skin, the bulbous tumors…
Anderson sighed, then put his head in his hands before looking up again. Thomas had never seen him so frustrated.
“I feel like there’s too much to do sometimes,” the man continued. He slapped an open hand on the table. “Look, things can be worked out over the next few months as we study and analyze the results within the mazes. Suffice it to say we have Flat Trans technology, we have the potential for more human resources, and we’re even scouting locations for further trials. It can all happen, and it will happen, everything in its own time. Reducing the Maze Trials from five to two years is simply the right thing to do.” He smiled a weak smile. “I think half of my frustration with this change is that it took so much effort to build the damn things that it’s a shame to see them utilized for less than half the time that we intended.”
He’s stalling, Teresa said in Thomas’s mind. There’s something he has to say that he doesn’t want to say.
Thomas gave her a barely perceptible nod. She was exactly right.
“What are you not telling us?” Aris asked.
Anderson at first acted surprised at the question, but then gave a knowing smile. “Sometimes I forget just how perceptive you kids are. Here’s the thing. I’m just nervous, okay? I shouldn’t show you that, much less admit it, but there’s the truth.” His eyes flicked around the room, then came to rest on the table in front of him before he looked up at each of the kids and let out a breath. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that this is going to be hard, but I know you’re all up to it.”
More things were said, more information exchanged during the meeting. But Thomas didn’t hear much of it, because it was all dressing. Something had changed. Or someone had chickened out. Somehow Thomas knew that for some reason, at the last second, Chancellor Anderson and his two partners had decided not to tell them everything.
What’s he hiding? Thomas asked Teresa when they were finally getting up to leave. But then he looked at Dr. Paige, and the odd expression on her face made him realize that he had asked about the wrong person.
229.11.22 | 8:47 a.m.
Look at Minho, Teresa said to Thomas.
It was the morning before the big day—the first insertion into the maze. Forty boys from Group A were lined up along the walls of the hallway, ready for their final medical examinations. Newt, Minho, Alby, Gally—all the boys Thomas had gotten to know over the last few years of his life would be part of the group. Orderlies walked up and down the hall, prepping them to enter the medical rooms—taking temperatures, blood pressures, checking eyes, tongues.
Yeah, I see him, Thomas replied. He and Teresa were there at Chancellor Anderson’s request—to observe and provide moral support. But all he felt was a heavy, heavy sadness at saying goodbye, and he’d stayed silent since arriving.
Minho was about ten boys away from where he and Teresa stood, and he’d been fidgeting all morning. But now it had turned into something worse—his body reminded Thomas of a cocked gun, his muscles coiled as if he were about to spring into action.
Man, Thomas said. There’s no way he’d try something again. Right?
Although there were plenty of things to upset their friend. Inside the medical rooms, clearly visible from their place in the hallway, menacing devices hung over each bed—they looked like robot masks, metallic and full of wires and tubes. Thomas assumed they were meant to capture every type of killzone measurement imaginable, a foundation from which they could study progress within the Maze Trials.
Follow my lead, Teresa said. She pushed away from the wall and walked toward Minho. Thomas followed right on her heels. She had an air of authority about her, so the medical attendants barely glanced her way. She stopped when she got to Minho, and put a hand on his shoulder. He flinched, and for an instant Thomas thought he might actually strike out, but then his eyes met hers and a wave of calm seemed to wash over him, relaxing his muscles as it flowed through his body. To Thomas’s surprise, tears formed in the boy’s eyes.
“It’s okay,” Teresa said to him. “Don’t make it worse by fighting them. Everything will be fine inside the maze. You’ll see.”
“Aren’t you going in with us?” Minho asked.
The response took both Thomas and Teresa by surprise.
“Uh, w-well…,” Teresa stammered.
“Not yet,” Thomas quickly interjected, leaving it at that. Hoping his friends wouldn’t dig further.
A hint of anger flushed Minho’s face again, but this time it set firmly. “Seriously? So you’re telling me not to fight them? Are you sure you don’t mean us? What exactly are you doing here, Thomas? I don’t see you being poked and prodded like cattle.”
Alby, just a few feet down the hall, turned to look at the three. “Yeah,” he said. “He’s got a good point, if you ask me. You’re just gonna throw us into a big experiment, then go back to your cush bed and relax? Were you ever going to tell us? Or just let us think you were going in, then, Surprise!”
Thomas had no idea what to say. He’d been able to convince himself that he was the same as his friends. That they didn’t care that he’d been separated out, that he had different responsibilities than they did. How could he have ever thought it wouldn’t matter? That it wouldn’t blow up in his face?
“What? Forget the script you’re supposed to follow?” Alby asked. “Or are you just worried about upsetting your buddies?” He nodded toward the doctors and nurses, who all continued their work as if nothing was happening.
“Guys, come on,” Teresa said, finally finding her voice. “We’re no different from anyone else—we just do what they ask.”
“Say whatever makes you feel better,” Alby answered. He folded his arms and leaned against the wall, looked the other way. They were understandably on edge.
And then the truth was clear as day. Thomas’s friends were being sent into the maze and he wasn’t. He didn’t know if he’d ever be sent in. He was different from his friends, and no one
could ignore it anymore. They stood, backs against the wall, some glaring at him as if he’d known about this the whole time. As if he’d been lying to them. Even Newt, down at the end of the line, looked at Thomas, anger twisting his face.
Thomas was absolutely crushed.
Minho hadn’t said anything, but the fierce, coiled-snake look had returned. Anger, fear, anxiety about what this new change meant—Thomas understood how they felt. And he was the perfect one to blame.
Minho flung Teresa’s hand off his shoulder. “Alby’s right,” he said. “I’ve tried and tried to give you guys the benefit of the doubt. Figured you were going to be able to help us. But now it’s obvious what you were doing. You’ve been helping them the whole time. It’s all been about getting ready to do this to us, hasn’t it!” He pounded his chest twice as he emphasized the words.
“Minho, listen—” Teresa began.
“Get out of my face!” Minho yelled.
The world was falling apart, and Thomas could think of nothing to say. Alby, Minho, Newt. Until five minutes ago he’d considered them his best friends, and just assumed they understood his mind and heart. And now it had all collapsed and here he was, standing in front of them like a complete idiot. Anything he said sounded like a lie, even to himself.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed someone approaching down the hall. He looked and saw it was Gally. He’d left his place in line and his face was aflame with anger. Two nurses followed him, trying to catch up to him before he reached Thomas.
“Thomas!” the boy yelled, picking up his pace, only now that he was closer Thomas could see that his expression wasn’t anger—it was fear. “You have to help us! Can’t you help us?” Two orderlies grabbed the boy before he could get closer, holding him back. “We know you have some power with them. Help us!” He sounded desperate and struggled to keep his eyes on Thomas as orderlies roughly turned him around and dragged him into an exam room.
Thomas felt powerless. He looked down the line of boys who had been his friends, and his heart broke over and over. Minho, Alby, Newt—their eyes brimming with resentment. How had everything crashed so suddenly?