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 down 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.
