Antidote | A3

c h a p t e r . t e n

Jorge's announcement hung in the air, causing some of the ravenous Gladers' spoons to freeze on the way to their mouths.

After a second to take in the new plan, I grinned to myself and kept eating. Thomas was clever. He'd thought up an offer the two Cranks couldn't refuse, and in exchange we'd have the locals accompany us through the city. I slurped up the last of my beans, a flicker of relief and hope settling into my newly filled stomach.

"Thomas filled me in on your gang's little adventures," Jorge continued. "Put in a Maze by WICKED, memories wiped. Escaped to discover there were two groups of you, and told you've got the Flare. Now you're here, tasked with crossing the big bad Scorch to get to your safe haven and your - our - cure, with not the faintest idea of what the real world is like."

Well, that was one way of summing it up.

"You asked why I wasn't with the girls," I piped up, the curiosity from his earlier comment gnawing at me. "How did you know about the other group already?"

"I'd heard talk of a girl group appearing in town," Jorge replied, his gaze landing on me. "Makes a lot more sense after hearing your story. I wonder if they're your competition. If they are, they're definitely ahead already, and that doesn't fill me with confidence."

"Can you tell us about the real world?" Leo asked diplomatically. "Clue us up a little on what we're dealing with?"

Jorge paused for a moment, cracking a slight, almost sarcastically pitying smile. "Sure."

He began to pace again, up and down the corridor through the middle of us. "The sun flares scorched the earth a long time ago. Completely unexpected and unpredictable. They wiped out half the planet, killed everything around the equatorial regions. Changed climates everywhere else. The survivors gathered, and some governments combined. Wasn't too long before they discovered that a nasty virus had been unleashed from some disease-control place. Called it the Flare right from the beginning."

"So the governments combining..." Aris interjected. "They're WICKED?"

"Pretty much," Brenda said, taking over the lecture from her place down the hallway beside Thomas. "There are still countries, but they're more unified. Piled their resources and technology and whatever once the Flare started spreading like crazy, to start up WICKED. They set up this elaborate testing system and tried really hard to quarantine areas. They slowed the Flare down, but they can't stop it. If they do have a cure, like you say, they sure haven't shared it with the public yet."

All this new information was sort of breaking my brain, but I was desperate to learn more. "So is this city like, the opposite of a quarantined zone, then?" I asked.

"Yep," Jorge said, his pacing having landed him right in front of me. "Shipped all of us crazies off out here, and other places like this, to keep us away from the uninfected. Obviously there's Cranks at all stages in the city. Some like us, some worse, and some way past the Gone."

"You slintheads seemed pretty shucking gone when you pulled all those rusty weapons on us," Minho muttered, sat opposite me.

Jorge whirled around to him. "Look who's talking, muchacho. Your arrogant little mouth nearly got your whole group killed. Your friend Thomas is the only reason you're sat here, and not chopped up into tiny little pieces."

Newt reached out and kicked Minho's leg before he could retort. He winced as Newt clearly caught some burned skin, but did well to cover it up. Thankfully the warning worked, as Minho kept his mouth shut.

"Everyone all nice and full?" Jorge said instead, turning around to face the rest of the Gladers again. "We can probably pack some of this stuff up in those handy little bags you've got, and scram before my lot notice we're all missing."