The Fever Code Page 13

  Dr. Leavitt spoke up. “Don’t worry about your reaction today, Thomas. It was pretty close to what we expected, and it’s not lost on us the passion you threw into trying to save your friend. I tell you what, the Psychs are going to have a field day with this one. Lots of data to analyze.”

  Thomas finally realized what the man was saying. “What do you mean you have three others to show…this?” He pointed to all the screens in front of him, the control deck, the ceiling above. “You do mean a recording of it, right?” The next half second seemed to stretch out forever. Please, please, please, he thought. Tell me that yes, you recorded it.

  “I’m sorry to say the answer is no,” Randall replied. “It’s more effective if Minho goes through it again.” He sighed. “On so many levels, Thomas.”

  228.04.03 | 7:00 a.m.

  Thomas reached over, hit snooze on his alarm clock, and dropped his arm over the side of his bed. He hated the wake-up on days after a maintenance room rendezvous, possibly hated that alarm more than a houseful of Cranks. Hungry Cranks.

  But he did relish those ten minutes that followed hitting snooze, before the alarm blared again. It was like a little bonus to himself every morning.

  He curled back into a ball, content, if just for a moment.

  He hadn’t seen Minho for over a year, even though he’d survived the punishment with the Griever. Well, at least physically. Alby said that mentally, emotionally…Minho was different. He wasn’t as talkative, or reckless, and he certainly never mentioned the word escape again. The passing of time can certainly heal a lot of wounds, but the way Alby described their mutual friend, Minho would need about twenty more years.

  The other members of their “maintenance room” clan met once a week. Everyone but Minho. He hadn’t shown up once since the fateful day, and Newt said their friend wouldn’t even consider it. He was a shell of the person they’d all gotten to know. It made Thomas incredibly sad. He’d really liked Minho, and everything about their situation seemed so unfair. Who could blame him for reacting this way after the horror show WICKED called his punishment?

  Thomas believed in the cure—at least, he told himself he did. But WICKED treating them like lab rats—sometimes that turned his sadness into anger. Often he’d have to kneel by his bed and pound on the mattress with both fists until he collapsed from exhaustion. He wanted it all to be over, a cure in hand, and he did his best to stay positive in that regard. Dr. Paige always said the data was plentiful and rolling in.

  Maybe, just maybe, the end was in sight, no matter how distant the horizon.

  He and Teresa were almost done with the maze, just slightly behind the pace of Group B, from what they’d been told. But that was just it. Thomas had a harder and harder time believing them. WICKED continued to isolate him and Teresa, so he relied on the latest gossip from Alby, Newt, and his most plentiful source, Chuck. That kid had a brain like a sponge, soaking in every little comment he ever heard or overheard. They might tease him without mercy, but when Chuck spoke, people listened.

  Thomas’s daily ten minutes of morning bliss ended in a cacophony of klaxon sounds when his alarm went off again. He hated it more than solar flares.

  —

  Dr. Paige showed up with breakfast, right on time. How long had he known this woman? Longer than his own mom, for sure. By years. And today he could read something different in her manner, a difference in her smile. A pain behind the bright intelligence her eyes always showed.

  He wanted to ask her what was wrong, but their relationship had never quite recovered after what WICKED had done to Minho. Still, of all the people who worked there, in whatever capacity, Dr. Paige was the one he liked most, and he had to fight to keep any kind of wall between them. Though it was a very thin wall, and the mortar holding it together had begun to crumble.

  “How are we today?” she asked him once she’d set the breakfast on his desk. “Work day today, right?”

  Thomas nodded, then sat down to eat. Normally they talked a little, about how tests were going, his classes, progress on the mazes, etc. But before Thomas could take one bite of his eggs, Dr. Paige was headed for the door. She’d just opened it and was about to step into the hallway when Thomas stopped her.

  “Hey,” he said. “Can you come back in for a second?”

  She paused, let out a heavy sigh. But then she closed the door and came back to the desk, took the other chair. She looked at him with sad eyes.

  Thomas couldn’t help himself—curiosity always won.

  “I wasn’t going to ask,” he said, “but…is there something wrong?” For a long moment he was scared. What if one of his friends had died? Not Teresa, though. He would definitely have felt her absence, or her last moments. He would have had some clue.

  “Thomas…,” Dr. Paige began. She looked around the room as if she might literally find words posted on the walls. “We’re getting very close to sending subjects into the mazes.” She let out a little laugh and met his eyes again. “Well, you would know that better than anyone. How is your work going in there?”

  She meant his and Teresa’s efforts in the maze cavern.

  “It’s going fine. Pretty fun. I don’t know.”

  “You sound less than enthused.”

  “It’s just been hard for me to get over some things. There are secrets—things you’ve been keeping from us. Some of it just doesn’t seem right. And people could be nicer. Like Randall. Like Ramirez. Dr. Leavitt.” It felt good to get some of this off his chest.

  She crossed her legs and gave him a look of sincere concern.

  “I don’t know if you’ll believe this, Thomas, but I’ve struggled with these very things myself. I could offer you excuses—but I’m guessing that’s not what you want to hear.”

  Thomas shook his head. “Even the fact that you call us subjects. I mean, we’re human, not a bunch of mice.” His voice had gotten a little firmer, but Paige kept her cool, nodding as if she understood completely.

  “I think it boils down to two things,” she said. “First, even though everything we’re doing at the moment is leading to the Maze Trials, that doesn’t mean that the Psychs haven’t been looking for every opportunity to seek out killzone patterns. Every second of every day matters, as I’m sure you understand. Just in the time we’ve spoken this morning, how many hundreds or thousands of people have caught the Flare out there in the world? How many have died?”

  “So your solution is…take it out on kids?” Thomas asked, even though he knew it was a stupid thing to say. These people had saved them from almost certain death.

  Anger flashed across Dr. Paige’s face. “This is a harsh, brutal virus that needs to be dealt with by…using harsh and brutal will, Thomas. If you would just…stop thinking about how hard things are for you. You have no idea…” She faltered and a look of regret shadowed her face. “I’m sorry. I’m…sorry. The truth is just too damn hard to talk about.”

  She stood up, her eyes moist with tears. She appeared to be on the verge of saying something else, but then she turned her back to him and left the room, closing the door gently behind her.

  228.04.03 | 8:04 a.m.

  Thomas had struck a nerve. He’d had her talking more honestly than ever before, and he wasn’t going to waste the opportunity, no matter how much her sudden display of emotion surprised him. He got up and went after her.

  She was walking briskly down the hall, almost jogging, so he had to run to catch up. He grabbed her arm to stop her.

  She wrenched away from him, took a step back until she met the wall. Breathing heavily, she looked at him with something like disgust. Her eyes flared with a moment of anger. But then everything melted away and she was back to the same old Dr. Paige he’d always known. Caring, kind Dr. Paige. Although the sadness painted over her features almost made Thomas apologize and go back to his room.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. “What aren’t you telling me?” When she just shook her head, he kept at it. “Every day I go out there and make y
our gigantic maze a little closer to test-ready. I don’t whine or complain—I just do it. I work my butt off, and so does Teresa. We both know what the stakes are.”

  Dr. Paige nodded. “Yes. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “But that’s exactly what I’m talking about,” he continued. “Because we’ve had to grow up fast, we deserve to be treated like adults. Not like babies, not like mice in a cage, not like idiots. We all want the same thing. Why can’t we be treated like partners instead of…subjects? Minho, Alby, Newt—everyone I know in here would be a lot more cooperative if you’d just show a little respect.”

  Dr. Paige had recovered from whatever had caught her off guard. She now stood tall and serene as ever, arms folded, eyes sharp and focused on him. “Listen to me. Back in your room I told you it boiled down to two issues. First, some of these episodes of what you call harshness have actually been planned out by the Psychs. They are ways to stimulate brain patterns before we get to the big tests inside the mazes. Okay?”

  No, not okay. Thomas didn’t like it, though at least it was an explanation. “Fine. And the second thing?”

  “These people are survivors, Thomas. I know you were young—terribly young—but surely you remember the awful state of the world after the virus spread and reached us out here. Things weren’t supposed to…”

  She paused, and something in her eyes told Thomas that she’d said something she hadn’t meant to. “But my point…the world became a place of horror and death and madness. By nature…by definition…anyone who survived those first waves of sheer terror had to be a little hardened. Tougher than normal. It’s what helped them survive. The weak—they either died or will soon.”

  Thomas, a little stunned by her flurry of words, didn’t know what to say.

  “So yes,” she continued. “Most of the people here aren’t the nicest you’ll ever meet. They don’t have the time or the inclination to worry about feelings. Okay? They’ve seen the depths of hell out there in the world, and they’re ready to do anything and everything possible to find a cure and stop those horrors. And you’re just going to have to accept that.”

  “Okay,” Thomas said, overwhelmed by all he’d just heard. Her impassioned speech had drained him of any desire to pursue the argument.

  “Now buck up and get to work,” Dr. Paige said. The corner of her mouth twitched in a semi-smile, which he figured was the best he could ask for that morning.

  “Will do,” he replied, the words as sullen as he could make them.

  —

  Thomas walked along the corridors of the maze, proud of the progress they’d made over the last few months. He couldn’t take much credit for the majestic walls themselves—the cracked gray stone, the ivy that crawled like veins across their surfaces, the sheer magnitude of it all. Especially the advanced level of engineering that went into the moving walls, the changing configurations of the maze itself. It was cool to watch, but he had no idea how it worked—the engineers weren’t the friendliest folk in the world, and were too busy to get much information out of.

  But so many of the finer details around him—the little things that really made the place come alive and feel real—were due to his and Teresa’s tireless efforts.

  He was thinking about all they’d done as he turned a corner and headed down a long stretch of the labyrinth. Even the doctors, Psychs, and technicians of WICKED were surprised at how valuable the telepathy had ended up being. Not only could Thomas and Teresa instantly communicate, they’d become much better at sensing the other’s feelings, anticipating their thoughts, understanding things that were impossible to articulate. No one really believed him when he tried to explain it, so he’d stopped trying a long time ago.

  You there yet? Teresa asked him from the control center.

  Give me a second, he responded. I’m just enjoying our handiwork. He looked up at the bright blue sky, the sun just peeking over the tall stone wall to his left. The sky on its own had taken countless days of painstaking effort to perfect, but seeing the end result—seeing that beautiful sky that looked so real—made him forget just how hard it had been.

  The sound of little clattering metal feet approached from behind, and he knew what it was. The beetle-blade cameras that were now spread all over the complex, ready to record every single thing that happened during the trials. He was going to ignore the thing, until it jumped onto the back of his leg and crawled up his body.

  “Ahh!” he yelped, and leaped into the air, twisting, reaching for his back, trying to swat the creature off. He spun in a circle as the thing scuttled all over his clothes, pecking his skin with those sharp legs. It reached his neck and latched on, digging in until it hurt.

  You were saying again? Teresa asked. He felt every morsel of her evil glee. That’s a really nice dance you put on down there. Don’t worry, I have it recorded, ready to show Newt and everybody else next time we get together.

  “Not funny!” he yelled out loud. The beetle blade was knocking its head into his ear, right in a spot that hurt like crazy. Thomas finally got a grip on the metal body and flung the creature off. It landed on its feet and scampered away, disappearing into the ivy of the wall to his right.

  You win, he said. I’m coming. He tried not to smile, but he couldn’t help it.

  Next time I’ll send a Griever, she replied. Or worse—Randall.

  He laughed and so did she, one of those things he knew and felt without understanding how.

  Okay, I’m here, he said. He’d reached the end of the corridor, which had a drop-off of about twenty feet to a black-painted floor. This was one of those weird areas inside the maze where the optical-illusion technology wasn’t yet complete, making you think you’d lost your mind. When he looked up, he saw a perfect sky. When he looked down, over the edge of the cliff, he saw a black floor that led to a black wall—the edge of the maze cavern. But straight ahead, the sky and the wall didn’t exactly meet—the boundary between the two bounced here and there, blended and unblended, mixed and swirled. It made him dizzy and nauseous.

  Can you see the Griever hatch? Teresa asked.

  He’d closed his eyes to keep his stomach from swimming, but opened them again. Somewhere in the middle of that crazy kaleidoscope of illusion and real world mixing together, he saw a shaft towering up from the floor below, with an open circle at its top. This was the hole from which the Grievers would enter and exit the maze.

  I can see it, he replied to Teresa, but it keeps swimming in and out of the illusion. It’s gonna make me throw up.

  She didn’t return a hint of sympathy. Let me know when it disappears completely.

  He watched, squinting, hoping that would help his stomach. The image in front of him shimmered, went out of focus, bounced, then shimmered again. But soon the shaft of the Griever entrance vanished from his sight, and as long as he didn’t look down, the illusion of endless blue sky opened up before him. Now, instead of dizziness, he felt an overwhelming sense of vertigo, almost like falling. He took a step backward.

  It worked! he yelled. It looks perfect!

  She let out a big whoop, something he felt all the way to his bones. They’d been working on this section for a month, and now they were so close.

  Good job, he said. Seriously. What would these people do without us?

  They’d need another few years at least.

  Thomas stared at the vista before him, in disbelief at how realistic it appeared. As if the corridor of the maze ended in a cliff at the end of the world, at the end of existence.

  I wonder who’ll be the first one to see a Griever, he said. And will they crap their pants? Should we bet on it?

  He was surprised by the somber tone that rebounded back to him. And even more so by her words.

  And who’ll be the first to die?

  They won’t let it go that far, Thomas replied. There’s no way.

  Teresa cut off their connection without an answer.

  229.06.12 | 10:03 a.m.

  Thomas couldn’t bel
ieve the people who sat around the table. Every important person he knew or had heard about, and then some. Psychs, doctors, technicians. Randall and Ramirez and Leavitt. Dr. Paige sat next to Thomas and Teresa. Chancellor Kevin Anderson at the head of the table, Katie McVoy by his side. There were only two other teenagers in the room—Aris and Rachel. Even though they’d never met, Thomas knew exactly who they were.

  Are they ever going to let us hang out with them? Teresa asked in his mind.

  Thomas sent an image of himself shrugging. I was just thinking that maybe it’s a contest or something. Maybe they’re hoping the two groups will do better if they’re trying to…do it first. What if there’s a prize!

  A lifetime supply of WICKED T-shirts!

  Thomas snickered under his breath.

  Chancellor Anderson cleared his throat to get the meeting started.

  “I’d like to welcome our lead candidates to their very first meeting of the Chancellor’s Committee, an important step in their continued progress. Thomas, Teresa, Aris, Rachel…we’re really proud of you. The work you’ve done during the maze projects has been phenomenal. Just phenomenal. We pegged the four of you early on in this process as standouts, and we weren’t wrong. Congratulations.” He beamed a smile that seemed about three orders too strong to be genuine, but Thomas imagined the man was under a lot of stress.

  Thomas looked at Aris—olive skin, brown hair, eyes sharp with awareness—then Rachel—dark skin, tightly curled hair, smiling. Nothing stood out about them, but they were instantly likable. Their faces were kind, and they had none of the arrogance or haughtiness that Thomas would have expected.

  “Now,” Chancellor Anderson continued, “it’s been ten years since the first inkling of WICKED was conceived by John Michael, and we’ve come a long way in our research since we began gathering those who are immune to the Flare. The progress in those first years was slow, of course. Trying to understand the disease itself, testing our subjects to ensure that they were actually immune, learning about the virus and how it interacts with your bodies and your brains. Slow but steady. Not a year has passed when we didn’t have some kind of significant achievement, and I’d say that’s better than anyone could have hoped for.”