Till The WICKED End | A Maze Runner Story (English Version)

28. Family constellations

My hands were shaking as I walked along the bright corridor with Thomas behind Dr Shepherd. In the lift, my brother seemed to notice this and he reached for my right hand, squeezing it tightly, giving me a reassuring feeling. I nodded gratefully to him.
We reached the right level and exited the lift again. The corridor was completely empty once again and I couldn't make out any guards in the room where the Cranks were either. Shepherd was really sure of her.
Immediately my gaze wandered to the second cell, but horrified to find that it was deserted. Just as I was about to ask the woman what that meant, a phone beeped in her smock and she pulled it out with a sigh.
"I'm listening."
"Dr Shepherd, we've finished the preparations. The transport can go ahead as soon as they arrange it."
"Excellent, Dr Avery. I still have work to do, but if all goes according to plan, it won't be necessary to schedule Subject A5." With those words, she put the device away again and turned to the control panel in the middle of the room.
"Where is he?" I asked, confused. "What have you done with him?"
"He's in the next room, ready for vaccination."
I breathed a sigh of relief.
"What does that mean? What did the man mean?" Thomas asked then.
The woman looked at him with a raised eyebrow, almost amused. "You didn't really think we'd stay here with your people knowing where you were, did you?"
Confused, I looked from Thomas to the doctor. Why were they talking about this now? When would we finally give Newt the vaccine? What did it all mean?
"What do you mean?" Thomas eyed her in confusion, but was distracted by a loud bang behind us as a Crank bounced its head against the bulletproof glass of his cell.
Shepherd gave the infected a reproving look and then turned back to my brother.
"We're moving, to where your friends won't be looking for us."
"Us? What do you mean?" I interjected again after all.
"We - you two, our doctors, the High Council, the soldiers and our patients." She gestured to the Cranks.
"And the kids?" Thomas asked.
"Oh, we don't need them now that we have you, do we? Unlike yours, their blood has an awfully low value."
"What are you going to do with them?"
She gave him a similarly reproving look as she had given the Crank earlier, as if disappointed in his intelligence. "What should we do with them? They are free to do as they please as soon as we leave."
"But there's nothing here for miles! We saw it when we arrived. They'll starve to death if they're not killed by Cranks!" I groaned in horror.
"Quite possibly. But that's not our problem then. If we have accomplished what Dr Paige has been planning for decades, the Flare will soon no longer exist. The infected will starve or be cured by us. A new generation will grow up and rebuild this world. The lives of these few kids are worth nothing compared to what we will create with your blood."
"You don't sound like Paige. She felt sorry for those kids. She would never have just left them to die!"
She smiled that crooked smile at me one more time, her chin twitching in the way I'd only seen on one other person before.
"You almost sound like -" Thomas began, but his breath caught as he seemed to realise what I also understood at the same moment.
"Janson!" I groaned in horror.
She grinned broadly at me. "Well combined. He was my uncle, my mother's brother. And the last one I had left. But you two made sure he was taken from me, too. Now I will carry on his legacy."
I stared at her open-mouthed, certain that Thomas must be equally horrified. I hadn't been aware that Janson had had a niece who was alive and working for WICKED. And then now she was the new Paige, too. In fact, she was horror personified, with the intelligence and skills of her gentle predecessor and the apparent malevolence of her uncle.
Did she know I had killed her last family member? She couldn't. And I certainly wouldn't tell her, my fear of what she would do to me then was far too great. She did blame Thomas and me for his death, but that was obviously because she assumed that we had been the string-pullers in the operation that had destroyed the last town. Yet we had simply wanted to save Minho - and admittedly kill Paige and Janson.
I shook my head to get my thoughts straight again. We had to put such things aside and finally get around to healing Newt. Or at least try to, since we didn't know if my blood really had the same healing abilities as Thomas'.
"Newt... What about him?" I asked.
"We're about to find out. Follow me."
Shepherd turned away from the control panel and paid no more attention to the still raging Cranks, nor to Thomas who was still standing rooted to the spot. I followed her to a door on the other side of the room.
"Tommy, come!" I shouted and at last he moved again and came after us with quick steps.
The doctor opened the door with her fingerprint and stepped first into the room beyond, closely followed by Thomas and me. Again we held hands.
And there he was, strapped to a cot, snapping wildly and grunting animalistically.
"Newt..." I whispered, immediately feeling another lump in my throat at the sight of him.
Thomas next to me gasped for air, after all he had only seen his best friend, who was thought dead, on a screen so far.
Shepherd walked past the chair without giving him a glance and obviously switched on a camera at another control panel, which quietly whirred along the ceiling above Newt and stopped there. Then she pressed the record button on a modern dictaphone and began to speak.
"First injection of the serum, prepared from the blood of subject A6, to a stage three infected, currently known as subject A5 and hereafter referred to as such. Subject A5 has shown the urge to fight the Flare in the past, but without much success."
She stepped up to a small mobile operating table and took down a cannula containing transparent blue liquid and a syringe head.
"Present are Dr Jean Shepherd, and subjects A2 and A6. I, Jean Shepherd, will now prepare the injection, with subject A6 assisting me."
Now she turned the syringe head onto the needle and handed me the finished product. From the small table she took a ribbon which she tied around Newt's left upper arm and then a swab which she soaked with disinfectant. With this swab she moistened the crook of his arm and then tapped it, looking for a vein. I had seen this kind of thing many times before in my health checks during my childhood and adolescence at WICKED, but wondered why she was doing all these things to get at his veins, after all they were clearly showing under the skin due to the infection. But I didn't ask any questions, just held the serum while she prepared everything. Newt tried to free himself from his bonds with all his might.
"I am now injecting the serum containing the immune blood of subject A6," Shepherd continued loudly and clearly.
I silently held the syringe out to her and then moved to Newt's other side where our eyes met.
"Newt, it's me. It's going to be okay," I whispered.
He paused for a moment and stared at me with wide eyes. But then the doctor gave the injection and he went furious again before he suddenly began to twitch wildly. Foam formed in front of his mouth and his eyes turned up into his head so you could see the whites.
"What's happening to him?!" Thomas groaned.
"He's fighting," Shepherd replied.