little immune {the scorch trials} (request)

˜"*°• 28 •°*"˜

"My name is Mary, by the way," the woman said once she, Thomas, and Jorge had reached the tent and set both Y/n and Brenda down. "I realize now that you wouldn't exactly have remembered that."

"Nice to meet you," Thomas said distractedly. He wasn't really sure what else to say to that. "Or, well, again, I guess."

Mary jabbed a vein in Thomas's forearm with a needle, and hooked him up to a tube which would take blood and send it into a container. "In the beginning," she said, "we were lost. All we knew for sure was that the younger you were, the stronger your chances."

Thomas and Jorge exchanged a surprised glance. "You worked for WICKED?" Thomas asked.

Mary nodded, fiddling with various beakers and test tubes of strange liquids. "A long time ago. You know, at first, we had the best intentions. Find a cure, save the world. It was clear you kids were the key, because you were immune. But why?" She paused in her work, meeting Thomas eyes for a brief moment. "Eventually, we found an answer. An enzyme produced by the brains of the immune. Once separated from the bloodstream, it can serve as a powerful agent to slow the spread of the virus."

Thomas's eyes widened. "You found a cure?"

"Not exactly," Mary replied sadly. "The enzyme can't be manufactured, only harvested from the immune. The young. Though of course, that didn't stop WICKED. If they had their way, they'd sacrifice an entire generation. All for this. A gift of biology. Of evolution. But one not meant for all of us." She held up a syringe full of cyan liquid and brought it over to Brenda. The needle went in Brenda's arm, and instantly, her breathing became more relaxed.

Thomas was still concerned. "How long with that give her?"

"It's different for everyone," said Mary, watching Brenda drift into unconsciousness as Jorge held her face in his hands. "A few months, maybe. But that's the catch, isn't it? She'll always need more."

The group pondered this for a second, until Mary cleared her throat and stood up. "Alright, Thomas, let's let Brenda and Jorge rest for a bit. Now, I think we should try and help this poor little girl, right?"

Thomas immediately snapped to attention. "Yes. But I just— I don't even know what's wrong with her."

Mary flashed him a reassuring smile. "Oh, I wouldn't worry about that. I have some theories, and I don't think it's anything that isn't curable. Come on now, let's bring her to another tent."

***

"From the looks of it," Mary stated after examining Y/n for quite some time, "it appears your young friend has a fever. It is definitely hurting her, but like I said, it'll absolutely be curable. Do you know what a fever is, Thomas?"

Thomas racked his brain. "I-I think so. I know it's some kind of sickness, but I'm not sure what exactly it is."

"That's because it never quite affected your generation. Nor several of the previous generations, for that matter. Cures were discovered long before the sun flares, and cases of fevers eventually began to diminish. People were still affected by them, but not nearly as often and definitely not as badly. After the apocalypse, though, fevers became completely irrelevant. What was a small sickness compared to something as terrible as the Flare?"

"Right," Thomas nodded. "I just don't get how this has to do with her." He gestured to Y/n.

"I was just getting to that," Mary assured him. "I see that she has a unique kind of fever, one that's certainly going to affect her more strongly than it would the average person. Then again, she is still very young and hasn't had her whole life to build immunity to these kinds of things—being stuck inside a lab since she was a baby and all. But firstly, we should try to figure out a point in time where she could have potentially gotten sick. So to start, can you tell me everything you know about this girl?"

Thomas shook his head. "There's not much."

"Just tell me what you do know. Anything."

"I mean, we found her at the WICKED compound after escaping the Maze, but we never actually found out who she is or why she was there. One of the leaders, Ratm— um, I mean Janson, always seemed to have it out to get her or something."

Mary had a pensive look in her eyes. "Hm. Well, I think maybe I could answer all your questions for you. This is Y/n, right? She'd be about, what, seven now? No, six. Yeah, definitely six. But damn, she's growing up fast."

Thomas stared at Mary in shock. "You know her?"

"Of course I do," Mary smiled. "I helped raise her for a little while. But, if this is really her ..." She trailed off, her smile fading. "What did you feel when you met her, Thomas? Did she seem, like, familiar in any way?"

"I-I'm not sure." Thomas narrowed his eyes. "I don't think she was familiar. I didn't get the sensation that I'd seen her before, like I did with Teresa and some of the other Gladers. But I did somehow feel ... connected to Y/n. Look, I know that sounds crazy, I just don't know how else to explain—"

"No, no." Mary was shaking her head. "That's exactly what I would have expected. It makes sense that you wouldn't recognize her since your memory of her existence was erased way before you were even sent up into the Maze. It happened practically as soon as you arrived at WICKED, actually. Trust me, I tried to talk Ava Paige out of it; it was just so cruel. But she was insisting that it had to be done. Said we couldn't afford to have anything distracting you from fulfilling your purpose. I'm so sorry, Thomas. I should have tried harder."

"W-what are you saying?"

Mary sighed. "I'm going to have to do a DNA test to confirm it, but if this girl really is who we think, then that means Y/n is your sister, Thomas."