The Fever Code (30 page)

231.12.11
|
10:46 a.m.

It was only Thomas's second time on a Berg, and the first he could scarcely remember.

At first he hated it—his stomach bouncing and churning, waves of nausea filling his mouth with saliva—but when he got used to it, he kind of liked it. Then he hated it again. Being inside the large flying beast was exhilarating, unlike anything he'd ever experienced. Living in such a ruined world really made you appreciate something so powerful that even gravity couldn't keep it down.

Teresa hadn't come, staying back to do her part in testing the long-range abilities of their implants. Every day they grew more distant. She buried herself in WICKED and their mission, and Thomas sometimes hesitated to tell her what he was thinking. But they needed to have a talk—a big talk. Soon.

Thomas looked out one of the viewing ports set into the floor of the Berg. He watched countless landscapes flash by below him, in complete and utter awe. Despite the devastation that had been wreaked on his planet, it remained beautiful. Breathtaking. Greens and blues and oranges mixed with lots of pale brown. Of course, this high up, you couldn't see the details. You couldn't see the Cranks and the starvation and the poverty and the terror.

No wonder back before the sun flares, every kid wanted to be an astronaut.

“Hey.”

He looked up and saw Brenda, who'd been busy with Jorge prepping all their supplies for the Crank city expedition. They were also delivering a bunch of equipment to the Scorch for WICKED, for reasons no one shared with Thomas.

“Hey there,” he said back. “You guys about ready?”

She sat down next to him. “As ready as we'll ever be. Jorge made me check everything about a hundred times. He likes to be prepared.”

“When are we supposed to get there?” He knew almost nothing. But the land below had already started to look like a desert, various shades of red and orange and yellow taking over the palette. There were almost no signs of life, or that life had ever been there, for that matter.

“I think a half hour or so.” She rubbed her hands together, and her expression looked strained. “Man, I'm getting nervous. This all sounded like a fun adventure until about ten minutes ago.”

“What's there to be scared about?” Thomas asked. “A postapocalyptic city with no government or security, surrounded by a desert and swarming with Cranks. I mean, come on. Don't be a sissy.” He flashed the girl a quick smile to let her know he was joking.

Brenda rolled her eyes.

“Or…,” he said with exaggerated chagrin, “it could be scary.”

“You should be nicer to Teresa, you know,” she said after a long beat of them staring down at the wasteland, the hum of the Berg's engines so soothing Thomas suddenly wanted a nap.

“What do you mean?”

“She obviously feels strongly about you. And it just seems like you haven't been that nice to her. Sorry if it's none of my business.”

Thomas thought about it, a topic he usually tried to avoid in his own mind. “No, it's okay. She's my best friend. We've been together for more than half our lives, and we can talk to each other…like no one else can. Without even speaking sometimes. Maybe that's why it seems like I'm not nice.”

Brenda nodded as if that made sense to her. “
Just
friends? After all this time? I've never seen you two holding hands or kissing or anything. You're one slow mover.” She laughed at the last part.

“It's complicated,” Thomas said, surprised at this conversation, the things it was making him think about. “She means the world to me, and nothing will ever change that. But it's kinda hard to be romantic when you have a dying world outside your home and your friends are stuck inside an experiment.”

Brenda seemed disappointed. “Yeah, but come on. People
love,
Thomas. Best of times, worst of times. People love. You should make sure she knows how you feel. That's all I'm saying.”

Thomas felt a surge of emotion he didn't understand. He thought of his mom, and his dad, and his friends. And it all just welled up inside him and tears began to leak from his eyes. He didn't know what he needed in life, or what he was meant to accomplish. Friends were what he had, and they were all that mattered. Somehow he had to save them.

Brenda noticed his tears, and her face melted into something so soft and full of kindness that Thomas shook. She pulled him into a hug, and he hugged her back, felt like he was hugging everyone who'd just flashed through his thoughts. They stayed that way, pressed together, until the Berg tilted to the right and started its descent.

They'd arrived at the Scorch.

WICKED had sent armed guards with them, and they spilled down the open ramp first, to the dusty, blistering-hot ground below. When they gave the all clear, Thomas walked down with Brenda and Jorge, all three of them squinting against the blinding brightness of the sun.

“Good glory,” Brenda said. “Imagine what it was like down here when the flares actually hit.”

“You sure you don't want to come with us,
hermano
?” Jorge asked. “We're going to have ourselves quite the party.”

He and Brenda both laughed, but Thomas had a hard time finding anything funny about it. This place was terrible.

The Berg had landed surprisingly far from the Crank city, and the technicians Thomas was supposed to work with were gathering their things as if they intended to go in the opposite direction. He saw nothing that way but a wasteland, which made him more than a little nervous. He found himself anxious to head back to Alaska, and hoped the tests they wanted to run didn't take terribly long.

Thomas shielded his eyes and looked toward the city. It appeared to be several miles away. Dirt and rust and shattered glass made up half of it. Ruined skyscrapers reached for the sky like broken fingers. It was hard to believe anyone could live there, even Cranks. Beyond the devastated city, mountains rose. The sun flares might have taken some of its plant life away, but the stone and soil seemed to call out, “We're still here. What else ya got?”

Thomas tore his eyes away from the scene and saw Brenda staring at her soon-to-be new home.

“You sure about this?” Thomas asked. “You sure you want to go into that place?” He'd meant it to be a little lighthearted, but he knew how serious it was as it came out of his mouth.

“If we had a cure, a lot of people I love would still be alive,” she said, gazing unwaveringly into the distance. “People like my mom and dad, people like my brother.”

“I know, I know,” he murmured. “Believe me, I know.”

“That's why Jorge and I volunteered,” she continued. “Not just in general, but for this.” She nodded toward the broken city in the distance. “I have to do my part.”

“Yeah,” he said.

Before he could add something nicer, Jorge yelled that his group needed to get going. He wanted to be in the city well before the sunset.

“Be careful,” Thomas said, trying to communicate with his eyes that he was sorry. That no one else should have to give up their life for this sickness. “Seriously. Be careful.”

“I will,” she said. “Hard to believe they're going to bring your friends out here next, huh? Poor guys. Well, see you later, alligator.”

She gave him a feeble wave, then hurried after Jorge.

“Wait, what did you say?” he yelled.

She didn't respond, running farther away.

He stared at her for a long moment, noticed the sands shifting beneath her feet.

“What did you mean?” he whispered.

231.12.11
|
4:40 p.m.

Phase Two.

That was all he could get out of the WICKED technicians he'd been assigned to.
Phase Two.
He asked each one of them about what Brenda had said, and those were the only words he got back. Other than things like
Go ask Dr. Paige. It's not my place to talk about it. I'm just doing my job.

But none of that mattered because Thomas knew exactly what was going on. He should have seen it long before Brenda let it slip.

WICKED planned to send the Gladers into this wretched place for another phase of trials. That was the reason they wanted to test the long-range monitoring of his implant technology—so they would know how effectively they'd be able to do it with the others once
they
were there. The lies just stacked up higher and higher. Things were even worse than he'd imagined. Far worse.

If there'd been the tiniest seed of doubt before, it was now gone completely. No matter what it took, Thomas was going into the maze to save his friends.

The Scorch got nastier with every step.

He walked with the WICKED technicians across the hard, dead land, gripping a towel beneath his chin. He'd wrapped the rest of it around his head to shield himself from the sun, which beat down on them, raining pure heat. The only relief was a breeze, though it covered him in sand as well. They were heading for some kind of underground tunnel where they supposedly needed to run tests and set up equipment. And now Thomas knew what for.

As he and the others trekked across the wasteland, he had plenty of time to think over his budding plan to save his friends. It could happen. It really could. He just needed to convince WICKED of two things—insert him into the maze, and do it without erasing his memories. For any kind of plan to work, he had to have his mind intact. Only then would he know how to get them out.

There were details to figure out. How, when, and where to get weapons. How to shut down the Grievers. Where to go if they
did
somehow escape the WICKED complex. But he had time.

It really could work.

He tried to stay that positive and kept moving through the desert.

One foot in front of the other. Sweating profusely.

On and on they went.

“Here!” the man leading the group eventually yelled out. The others crowded around him as he dropped to his knees, then felt around in the sand. He swept away a thin layer of dirt and revealed a metal hatch with a simple handle on top. It didn't even have a lock to secure it—what were the odds of someone stumbling upon the tunnel entrance out here in the middle of a ruined nowhere?

A woman leaned in and took hold of the handle along with the man, and they heaved the covering up and open. Thomas stood on the tips of his toes to catch a glimpse over someone's shoulder—a long flight of stairs disappeared into darkness below.

“Believe it or not,” the woman said, shouting over the wind, “there used to be a prison nearby. This was an escape route built by the cartels. We just adapted it for our purposes. It'll be about another hour's walk down there.”

She didn't say anything else, just began descending the steps. One by one, the group followed, Thomas going down last.

It was a long, surprisingly cool, unsurprisingly creepy descent into the depths and down the endless tunnel that WICKED had commandeered. No one spoke much as they walked and walked and walked, but when they did, it was usually in a whisper that echoed like a ghost's haunting call.

“Almost there,” a man named David announced, spooking Thomas. He'd become accustomed to the quiet, and the sudden voice jarred him from his thoughts.

“Almost where?” Thomas asked, his words bouncing back at him off the walls.

“There's a Flat Trans up ahead that we installed on our last trip here. It's finally ready to be activated.”

“A Flat Trans?” Thomas repeated. Was that how they planned to transport the Gladers to the Scorch?

“Yeah,” David replied. “Let's hope it works, because that's how we're going to get back home tonight!”

Thomas almost stumbled when he heard that.

“You have no idea how much these things cost,” the man continued. “Before the Flares, only billionaires could afford them—there were even some governments who only wished they'd had enough money to get one.”

“WICKED's that rich?” Thomas asked.

David laughed. “They don't need to buy this stuff. They just steal it from billionaires who are too dead to care anymore. Or too Cranked past the Gone. Anyway, don't worry, once it's up and running, there's nothing to be scared of. It's a cool way to travel, that's for sure.”

“Here we are,” a woman called back. She shined a light on a tall rectangular structure that looked like a large door to nowhere. Or, more accurately, a doorframe that was missing its actual door. A panel of controls, dark at the moment, was attached to the right side of the device.

David moved forward to stand next to the woman. “We've run every test imaginable. All that's left is to turn the sucker on.”

Thomas stepped away from the WICKED staff as they pulled out tools and began doing their jobs. He didn't know any of these people very well, so he felt like a total outsider. He went to the wall of the tunnel, just on the edge of the pool of light, and leaned back against the dirt and stone. He folded his arms, watching the people go about their business.

A humming sound filled the air that made his bones rattle. A green glow lit up the control panel of the Flat Trans. The hum grew louder. He couldn't believe that in a matter of minutes he was going to step through a magical wall of engineering and reappear thousands of miles away. It made him nervous, made him worry he'd end up scattered across the quantum universe, nothing but a galaxy of atoms and molecules that had nothing to do with each other.

A loud buzz made him stand upright; then a shimmering wall of staticky gray filled the space between the rectangular frame of the Flat Trans. It wavered, flashed into and out of existence a few times, then held steady. The soft, continuous pulse of its energy made the skin on Thomas's arms tingle. He was really going to do this. He was really going to walk through that wall of power.

“All signs are steady,” David announced, looking at the display screen on the control panel. “Sending a test item now.” Then, like a kid standing beside a lake with a skipping stone, he tossed his flashlight through the Flat Trans. A few seconds later, it popped right back out and he caught it. He laughed. “Guess we're good.”

“Who wants to go first?” a woman asked. “Thomas, how about you?” She gave him a teasing smile.

“Actually, yeah.” Not knowing what had come over him, he squared his shoulders and walked straight for the Flat Trans, trying desperately to show no hesitation or fear. He figured if there were any cause for concern, they'd stop him in the few seconds it took to walk from one spot to the other. But no one said a thing. A couple of them let out a whoop. One person clapped.

Thomas stepped right into the shimmering wall of gray.