“I’m s-s-sorry,” he stuttered. “P-p-please don’t tell on me.”
Thomas slowly crossed the distance between them and put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, trying to reassure him. “It’s okay, man, we’re just like you. Nothing to worry about.”
“What’s your name?” Teresa asked. Their whole plan was now in jeopardy, but the kid seemed so young, so innocent, so scared.
The boy burst into another round of tears, then answered through one of his sobs.
“They’re making me call myself Charles.”
Thomas shook his head. “Well, that’s lame. We’re going to call you Chuck.”
226.05.17 | 2:42 a.m.
“Are you staying in the barracks?” Thomas asked the boy.
“Barracks? No. I’ve got my own room. At least for now.”
Teresa looked at Thomas, and he knew what she was thinking even without the telepathy. Why did this kid have his own room? “Is it close?” Teresa asked the boy. “Maybe we can go in there to talk.” She glanced at Thomas again. “We have other friends we could get. Would that help you feel a little better?”
Chuck nodded, relief filling his eyes. He probably thought he’d never have friends again. He turned around and led them to his room, and Thomas got comfortable in the chair by the desk while Teresa went to get Newt, Alby, and Minho. According to her setup of camera loops, they had a few hours before they needed to be back in their own rooms.
Chuck lay on his bed, and Thomas pulled the desk chair to within a couple of feet.
“How long since they brought you in here?” Thomas asked.
“A couple of weeks. I don’t know if my parents knew about it. I don’t even know if they had the Flare!” He started sobbing again, and Thomas didn’t know what to do.
“It’s okay,” he said, a pitiful attempt to make the kid feel better. “Teresa and I have been here for years. You get kind of used to it. I know they can be jerks when it comes to renaming you, but after that it gets a lot better. As long as you basically do what they tell you to do.”
Chuck didn’t seem too appeased. A few more tears trickled down his face.
“What’re they gonna do to me?” the boy asked, sniffing back more tears. “So far they’ve pricked me with needles about a million times.”
“Well, yeah. They’ll be doing that to you for years. You get used to it.” Just be glad you don’t know about the implants yet, he refrained from saying. “But most of what happens is like school. You’ll go to classes, learn lots of stuff. It’s fun, actually. Plus, you’ll make new friends.” He wondered again why Chuck was in a single room, not in the barracks with the other boys in Group A.
Chuck sat up on the edge of his bed, curious about what Thomas could tell him, and started unloading questions.
“Why do you think we’re immune? Did your parents get the Flare? Did you see them go crazy? Did you have any brothers or sisters?” A few other inquiries flew out, Chuck not allowing Thomas a single second to attempt an answer to any of them. Luckily, Thomas was saved when the door opened. In marched Alby, then Minho, then Newt, then Teresa.
“What’s up, Tommy?” Newt exclaimed, his face filled with genuine happiness at the pleasant surprise that’d been sprung on him. Thomas couldn’t remember exactly how long it’d been since the last time he’d seen Newt. “You look bloody fantastic for three in the morning.”
“Who’s the new kid?” Minho asked.
Alby, a bit more thoughtful, went up to Chuck and shook his hand. “What’s your name? Mine’s Alby.”
“I’m Chuck. I just got here.”
Alby nodded. “Cool, man. They’ll probably move you into the barracks with us soon. It’ll be fun, don’t worry. This place is all fun and games.”
Thomas had never heard such kind lies.
The next couple of hours passed with light conversation, lots of laughs, and dreams of the future that no one actually expected to happen. But for a little while, anyway, it was nice to pretend, to relax, to let themselves think they had a future and could do whatever they wished with it.
It was the best night Thomas could remember having since he’d first met his friends. He laughed even more than he remembered laughing that first night. He also felt at peace as they talked, often over each other, many times needing to repeat what they’d said because of being drowned out. Chuck’s demeanor had gone from blurry eyes and a tear-streaked face to the joy and wonder of a kid at a birthday party. And that made Thomas feel good.
This place, he thought. WICKED. There were a million ways it could be worse. He’d been spared having to watch his mom succumb to the Flare, been spared from the harsh realities of the outside world. Spared a terrifying death at the hands of a Crank. Spared a lot of sorrow and horror in his life.
And what was the price? Boredom? A few tests? Dealing with a bunch of strange grown-ups who didn’t always know how to handle children? And here Thomas was, sitting with a group of friends, joking, laughing, feeling good. And hey, a cure. Why not?
“Tommy?” It was Newt, breaking him out of his thoughts. “I can see your wheels spinnin’ up there.” He tapped the side of his head. “Care to share?”
Thomas shrugged. “I don’t know. We keep…well, I keep thinking that WICKED did something terrible by stealing us from our families.”
“Yeah,” Alby said, though the half grin on his face showed that he’d probably considered what Thomas was about to say next.
“But I’m not so sure that’s true.”
“So WICKED isn’t bad?” Chuck asked, perking up. There was so much hope in the boy’s voice that it hurt Thomas a little.
Thomas looked up at his group of friends, then looked at Chuck. “A man once gave us a message that we’ll never forget,” he said. “ ‘WICKED is good.’ I think our lives might have a lot more purpose than we could ever know. I think we need to remember to look at the big picture.”
That’s some deep thinking, Teresa said telepathically. Makes you look cute.
Don’t, not in front of the others! He did his best to shout it at her, and he felt a prick of pride when he saw her flinch a little.
“Thomas, dude,” Alby said, “there you go again, drifting off. Staring into space like an idiot.”
He had too much on his mind to try to put it all into words. “I just think we need to keep things in perspective. We’re safe, we’re warm, we’re fed. We’re protected from the weather and the Cranks.”
“You make it sound like a bloody holiday,” Newt murmured.
“It could be a lot worse,” Thomas countered. “Not to mention the small fact that we’re trying to help save the entire human race.”
“And that means you, Newt,” Alby added. “I don’t wanna watch you go all Crank on me someday.”
That sobered Newt right up. Even Teresa looked sad. Thomas had ruined it for everybody, even though he’d tried to be positive about their ordeal.
Thomas glanced over at Minho, who’d been quiet for a while. He sat in the corner, his back against the wall, staring at the floor. He caught Thomas’s eye and stood up.
“Make up all the fantasies about WICKED you want,” he said. “Tell yourselves this is all a good cause, that they treat us well. I’m not buying it, though. It looks like I’m the only one still working on…” Minho stopped midsentence and shook his head. “I’m heading back to my room now. Later.”
Minho was at the door and had it opened before anyone had time to recover.
Alby found his voice before Minho disappeared.
“What are you talking about?” Alby asked.
Minho had his back to them, but he didn’t even turn his head to answer.
“We used to talk about escaping before Thomas and Teresa came around,” he said. “Well, I never stopped thinking about it. Or planning for it. We should be here by our own choice, not by theirs. Not treated like prisoners. I hope you guys’ll come with me. When I’m ready.”
Then he left, shutting the door behind him.
226.11.12 | 11:21 a.m.
That was the last Thomas heard of Minho’s great escape plan for six months. During that time, life was fascinating and fun. About once a week, Teresa worked her magic on the security camera loops and they had a get-together in one of their rooms or, more frequently, in the old maintenance room, deep below everything else.
And it was always the same group: Alby, Minho, Newt, Thomas, Teresa. And sometimes little Chuck. He’d become their favorite. He was goofy, innocent, and gullible, and he took all their jokes in stride. He’d become like the little brother they’d lost or, in Thomas’s case, never had in the first place.
Sometimes they smuggled in food and ate as they talked and laughed. After a few months of these nights, they’d mostly forgotten that fear they’d all had. The fear of Randall or Ramirez walking in at any moment. Of being sent back to the Crank pits. Maybe this time there would be no fences to protect them.
They forgot to be scared, and they felt safe. It was the best time of their lives.
—
Okay, Teresa said in Thomas’s mind. Let me know when you see a red dot flash in the exact center of the ceiling.
Roger that, he replied.
Would you please stop saying that?
Thomas held back a laugh. He stood surrounded by mountainous walls of stone that the heavy construction crews had built around skeletons of steel and fiberglass. At least half of the maze was complete, and it was starting to look spectacular. As he waited for Teresa’s signal, he tried to imagine what the place would be like when it was finished, especially with the optical-illusion technology in place. The technology would work alongside certain…powerful suggestions provided by the subjects’ brain implants to make everything seem three times as tall, as wide, as long. And it was big already.
Even though he and Teresa were helping with the creation of it all, their WICKED overseers didn’t share a lot of information about how exactly things would work once they opened the maze for business. He’d heard the word Variables thrown around a lot, and he knew that the Psychs had spent years planning for these killzone experiments.
He also knew there’d be some harshness. Thomas and Teresa were far from stupid, and they took every opportunity to find out more about the project they were working on. Once, they’d come across a page listing preliminary Variables, and a couple of things really stood out. Words like forced pain and attack and elimination of comforts. Those were mixed in with a bunch of scientific writing that didn’t always make sense.
But things were moving forward, if a little behind schedule. One day, maybe with just a few years of intense research and testing, WICKED would have its cure. And Thomas could always say he’d been a big part of it. He’d started telling himself this a lot. It was easy, and it made him feel better.
Have you seriously not seen it yet? Teresa asked, sending a jolt of annoyance along with her words.
Oh! Sorry. He was constantly losing himself in his thoughts lately. Yeah, yeah, there’s a bright red dot, practically right above me.
Practically? Or is it exactly in the right spot?
Um, well. It might be about ten feet off, actually. And, um, maybe a dozen or so more are blurry and scattered. Sorry.
It had to be one. Just one red dot, centered.
Tom, we have to get this right before we can move on to another project. And I’m sick of this one.
Tell me about it. My neck is killing me from looking up at all these mistakes.
She ignored him, having learned that that was the best way to get back at him for lame sarcastic comments.
Let me try again, she said.
They’d been at this for at least two weeks, trying and failing, trying and failing. Ms. McVoy had assigned them to the Sky Project, and their job was to program and fine-tune the systems to look like a normal sky to those below. Blue sky, night sky, the stars, the passing of the sun, everything. Thomas couldn’t wait to see the result in all its glory.
But first he and Teresa had to get the balance right. Thomas suspected that WICKED knew they’d been communicating telepathically before they were “officially” told about it and “taught” how to use it, but no one said anything. He supposed WICKED could only benefit from their having mastered the technique, as the instant communication made them ideal for these types of projects, which appeared to be plentiful.
Teresa was projecting a red dot from a thousand different sources around the vast interior surface of the maze cavern, and until Thomas saw it as a single dot, in a specific location, the technicians couldn’t move forward with the projecting software.
A half hour later, Teresa tried it again. This time, there were only six red dots, and the largest one was only four or five feet from center. They were very close.
Let’s wrap this up tomorrow, Thomas said after the test. I gotta get a nap in before our rendezvous tonight with the fellas.
Deal.
Only one word, not spoken aloud, but she sounded exhausted all the same.
—
They gathered in the maintenance room around one o’clock in the morning. Thomas had taken a good three- or four-hour nap but still felt groggy when Minho passed around some awful liquid concoction that made Thomas’s throat burn. Alby had a giant bag of potato chips, stolen from where, no one had any idea—and no one bothered to ask. The salty, crunchy goodness of every bite was especially powerful at such a late hour. Chuck had way more than his fair share.
“I’ve got a new guy coming tonight,” Minho said, not ten minutes after they’d settled in to eat their junk food.
Thomas’s hand froze halfway to his mouth, holding a tantalizing chip waiting to be chomped. Teresa leaned forward. Newt raised his eyebrows. Alby simply said, “Come again?” Chuck didn’t pause for a second. He continued to eat as if a cure for the Flare might depend on it.
Minho, seeing how unexpected his pronouncement had been taken, stood up and waved an arm to say it was no big deal. “Nothing to worry about, folks. He’s a good enough guy.” He stopped talking, though his eyes showed he had a lot more to say.
“ ‘Good enough’?” Teresa repeated. “That’s the criteria now for trusting our secret to someone new?”
The confidence and swagger that had defined Minho just twenty seconds earlier suddenly vanished. “His name is Gally. And, he’s, uh…You remember that plan I told you about. To escape?”
Thomas felt his heart sink a little at that. He’d assumed—hoped—that Minho’s notion had died a quick and lasting death.
“Yeah, we remember,” Alby said. “We also remember the Crank pits, and the beds we have, and the food we get, and the walls that protect us from the insane asylum they call the world. Your point?”
“Gally’s going to help me,” Minho replied, looking sheepishly around the room. “He should be here any second.”
With seemingly perfect timing, someone knocked on the door as soon as he’d finished his sentence.
226.11.13 | 1:34 a.m.
Thomas felt sorry for Gally the second he walked into the room. Nothing really stood out about the kid—black hair, tall and skinny, pale skin. He had some ugly teeth, but that wasn’t so unusual. Thomas couldn’t remember ever going to a dentist himself.
Still, Gally seemed…pathetic somehow. His eyes, maybe. If you looked into his eyes, you could tell that something had broken inside him a long time ago.
“Everyone, meet Gally,” Minho said. “Gally, meet everyone. Some of you know him, or at least have seen him around. I’m sure we’ll all get along peachy.”
“Good that,” Newt said.
Gally gave everyone a nice-enough nod, a sincere attempt at a smile. Thomas and the others did their best to return it.
After a long, awkward silence, Alby asked exactly what Thomas was wondering.
“So how’s Gally supposed to help with this idiotic plan to escape?”
“I’ll let him tell you,” Minho replied, thumping the new boy on the back.
Gally cleared his thr
oat. “I work out on the grounds with a couple others. Mostly landscaping stuff—cutting down weeds, shoveling snow when the odd storm hits, trying to get bushes and flowers to grow. But I also do electrical work, maintenance, whatever. The three of us work under a guy named Chase.”
“And this will help you how?” Alby pressed, making it clear how he felt about an escape plan. “You going to push Minho to the woods in a wheelbarrow?”
Newt snickered, then caught himself. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
Gally, instead of getting offended, smiled right along. “If anyone gets to be pushed around in a wheelbarrow, it’s gonna be me. Minho owes me.”
“Why?” Teresa asked.
Minho answered. “Because he’s the only way this thing works.”
Everyone looked to Gally for an explanation. Everyone except Chuck, who’d fallen asleep on the floor, a dirty mop as his pillow.
“Chase isn’t the smartest dude at WICKED, let’s just say that.” Gally stared at the floor as he spoke—Thomas didn’t know how to interpret that. “I’ve been setting up little things for weeks now, things that’ll help someone get past the WICKED security measures. Truth is, WICKED relies on the threat of Cranks and the state of the world to prevent us from trying anything. It’s a lot harder to get into WICKED than to get out.”
“And what in the world do you plan to do once you’re out in the great Alaskan wilderness?” Teresa asked. “Rent a car, go find a nice apartment in Juneau?”
“Man, you guys really like your sarcasm,” Gally said. “I mean, do you think I’m stupid? Just because I don’t sneak out and have little parties with the cleaning supplies?”
The Fever Code Page 11