The Immunity Illness

CHAPTER 5

"What?" he breathed incredulously.
       Teresa explained,
       "I could get you both out before it's too late, but I can only take one at a time. Let me save you."
       "No." The declaration sounded valiant. "I can't leave the rest of my friends behind. I'll tough out whatever WICKED has planned for me."
       "Tom, there's no way out of this. You're in a high-tech superdome with unpredictable Variables. It's either you come with me, or you die."
       He met Teresa's glossy eyes. They begged to be forgiven. He would never forgive them.
       "I'm not going with you. And if you're smart, you won't come back for me. You can tell Chancellor Paige to go shuck herself, by the way."
       Any trace of hope vanished from her. Teresa reached inside of her coat. Tears drizzled down her cheeks as she pulled out a thin glass syringe with dark blue liquid sloshing within it. Thomas swung his legs onto the Cliff in an attempt to leap away from her, but Teresa tackled him to the ground. The shriek that broke his lips got softened by the hand she skillfully clamped over his mouth. Writhing, he tried over and over again to roll her off of him.
       "I can't let you see me leave," Teresa heaved, pinning his arms down.
       Thomas shook his head, thrashing wildly. He had to see the exit. The way out. He watched with dread as she plunged the thin needle into his left arm. Liquid flowed through his veins speedily, unnaturally climbing up to his neck like a spiderweb. Instant fatigue. Colors danced around the edges of his vision. His muscles locked, then relaxed. Hesitantly, Teresa removed the hand over his mouth. To his chagrin, Thomas couldn't utter a word. Blotting at her crying eyes, she concluded chillingly,
       "Goodbye, Tom. I'll keep including the memories in your dreams while I'm permitted."
       Thomas wanted to kick her away, anything, something, but his limbs wouldn't function.
***
       He's fourteen, lying on his bed five days after the meeting. The alarm clock reads eleven forty-two at night, but his eyelids refuse to droop. His mind races with adrenaline and ideas—all thanks to Randall who'd kept him glued to the Denver Project till ten. As much as he hates to admit it, plotting out the escape from their headquarters on a Berg and having the whole city fall to Cranks has been captivating to theorize. And the Right Arm bluff really tops things off.
       Randall is just as annoying as he's always been, but he's a good instructor to him overall. He fills in the blanks that Thomas doesn't see and makes suggestions to enhance the Trial in ways he can't think up himself. The work makes Thomas feel like a Psych. Full of trial and error, never with satisfaction. He's pleased it will be over soon so he can give the real Psychs the simulated patterns they need.
       Bored of tossing and turning, he opens his eyes and contacts Teresa.
       Are you asleep? he whispers in his mind.
       Nope. Your project wiring you up too?
       He can sense her sleeplessness and quickly feels better about bugging her.
       Yep. I want to wack Randall in the face with a hammer.
       Sucks to be you. Dr. Paige is nice to me.
       That's great! I'm so incredibly happy for you! He places special emphasis on his sarcasm. Teresa pretends she doesn't hear him and chatters back,
       She's got me building this huge indoor environment. It's supposed to be as big as the maze cavern, I think. Incredible stuff, Tom. She says it's wrapped in holotech and would look just like a real landscape if it ever got built. I wanted to put mountains in there, but I guess they won't fit even though the place is literally enormous.
       Something doesn't settle right with how Teresa tells him that. Thomas gets a bad vibe that the scenarios are too detailed—too well thought out. If they sound appealing enough, WICKED might want to use them in the future. He brings up these concerns with Teresa, but she sighs at him in turn.
       Look, I know you're scared for Newt, Minho, and Alby, but Dr. Paige is confident that the killzone patterns will be collected by the end of the Maze Trials. I, for one, take her word on that. These Trials are pretend, Tom. Don't you want to help get the patterns faster and speed up the cure?
       Thomas groans and flips onto the cool side of his mattress. He clutches his pillow in his arms like a stuffed animal. Yeah. I guess you're right.
       A quick silence passes. Then, excitedly, Teresa does the mental equivalent of chirping into his eardrum,
       Hey, wanna see the stuff I've been working on? Bolt to my room in exactly fifteen seconds.
       Uh, okay. Sure.
       He throws off his covers and dashes to his door, counting off as he's been instructed to. Fifteen seconds later, he sprints across the hall to Teresa's room, shutting her door with an abominable squeak. She looks mysterious in the dark folded over her desk, digging through one of the drawers. She pulls out what he discerns to be a diagram, then flattens it out on the counter.
       "Okay," Teresa breathes, grabbing his hand to tug him closer to her. "So, the whole purpose of this Trial is to get the Candidates to be as pressured as possible and on the move. The catch? Two hundred and twelve Munies in the superdome don't know they're in a superdome."
       Thomas giggles in spite of himself. "How is that possible?"
       "It's a big dome, Tom," she states like it's common sense. Teresa traces her index finger on the grooves of the structure's sketch. She swaps to their telepathy and strategizes,
       Now, this puppy has ten timed days to function before the ecosystem shrivels up and dies. During this period, the Candidates would have to think pretty hard about what they're going to do. I mean, two hundred uninformed Munies? Nasty secret to protect from them. The goal would be to see who acts the most logically in this situation, and then they'd become the main interest for collecting killzone patterns.
       Thomas whistles to himself, scrutinizing the grid paper.
       Man, I wouldn't want to be in one of those Candidates' shoes, he thinks, oddly worried for his friends. Teresa smirks and swings his hand back and forth.
       Mr. Elite's scared of a pretend trial. Can't wait to tell Chuck about that one.
       Tell Chuck and I'll scream in your head all night long.
       Thomas takes a deep breath, grinning as well. He glances down at the model again; it contains novelty sketches of a hill, an ocean, a woodland area, and the backdrop of a mountain range. Teresa has designed it all with Dr. Paige.         
***
       "Wakey-wakey, ya sore lump."
       He couldn't pinpoint who the speaker was.
       "Guys, get yourselves over here! The shank is finally stirring!"
       This time, he assumed the pitchy, husky voice was Gally's. A cool breeze hit him. Something scraped at his neck—a leaf? Thomas made an educated guess that he'd been taken to the Woods. Through his mental muck, he started to recall Teresa and the dream. It made him grow increasingly eager to tell Minho and Brenda about it.
       "Is he okay?" Brenda spoke somewhere close by, confused and concerned.
       "Don't know," Gally remarked. "Hasn't opened his eyes yet."
       Every comment in Thomas's ears had a muffled echo. He shuddered, getting sick to his stomach.
       "He's not looking too good," Gally continued. "Whatever's in his system's not gonna leave him easily. He looks about as bad as a sucker in the Changing, without the nasty side effects."
       "For shuck's sake, Gally, you sound like a Med-jack," Minho jabbered.
       Thomas felt like his insides were being torn out. He groaned as discomfort rose up his throat.
        "Woah, stand back. He's going pale," Frypan cautioned.
       Thomas turned over onto his side and threw up. A couple gasps occurred and people slid away from him. Nauseated, he opened his eyes. He'd been sprawled onto an array of tree roots, and he squirmed to get away from his vomit. Pairs of helping arms met him immediately: Gally's and Minho's.
        "Over here," Brenda ordered.
        They dropped him on a tree stump. Disoriented, Thomas nodded in thanks. The four of them peered down at him puzzledly.
       "What happened?" he decided to be the first to ask.
       "Uh, well, you were passed out on the Cliff holding this," Minho said. He displayed the syringe that Teresa had injected him with. "I found you this morning after my walk. You scared the living klunk out of me, dude. I thought you'd gone to glory."
       Thomas wrinkled his nose. "Why aren't you all in the search parties?"
       "They got put on hold because of you, princess," Gally grumbled. "Now it's your turn to fess up."
        "How do I even begin to explain?"
       "Well, how about how ya ended up on the Cliff in the first place," Minho muttered.
       "Teresa. She told me to meet her there."
       "Woah, woah, woah. Teresa told you?" Brenda questioned.
       "Yeah, telepathically. I told you I wasn't crazy, Minho. Well, I went, and she was waiting for me there."
       "And?" Brenda prompted.
       "She..." Thomas stopped himself, anxious about who to trust.
       "What is it, Thomas?" Minho pressed, speaking an octave higher than normal.
       "Since you and I aren't the Main Candidates anymore, WICKED is going to kill us."
       Minho's face twisted, first shocked, then scared, then blank. Thomas added breathlessly,
       "I guess Teresa didn't want me finding out where she left, because the next thing I knew she was stabbing me in the arm with that injection of evil."
       Brenda illuminated after he spoke.
       "Not evil, science," she informed him. "I learned about that stuff before. WICKED calls it Serum AB-6. It was one of the original basic test Serums used to put subjects through the Changing in the Maze Trials. I'm not sure if they've altered its chemical composition or purpose since then, but basically, Gally wasn't far off in his analogy. Tom just went through a mini Changing."
       "Maybe I should be a Med-jack," Gally snickered, bumping Minho on the arm.
       "They've got real doctors here, idiot," he countered.
       "Did you tell everyone about the Endtime Trial?" Thomas asked Minho.
       "Yeah, I told 'em."
       "Good. Teresa said that the Variables are going to get worse," he tacked on. "She's been replacing my dreams with memories, which are also helping me piece this stuff together. And if they're accurate, then I can say that me, Minho, Newt, Alby, and Chuck have known each other before the Maze."   
       Frypan shuffled his feet, disturbed. "That's the truth. You knew me too, but I sure wasn't pals with you."
       "Did she explain anything else? About why she came here and told you to meet her?" Brenda insisted.
       Thomas carried himself upright on weak knees to face her. She wore a personal expression, aimed only at him. They spoke things to each other that went beyond words. He eventually responded,
       "She wanted to get Minho and I out of here before it's too late."
       "And you didn't go," she mumbled.
       "I could never leave you." He lingered closer to her. "I'll beat the Variable somehow."
       They balanced their foreheads together and sighed.
       "Hey lovebirds, we've got company," Minho asserted, dissolving their moment.
       On cue, a rugged man with a salt and pepper beard tramped over to their group, ghosted by two other hairy giants. The trio held similar worn appearances, caused by long days of chopping wood, endless fishing, and sleeping on hard soil. They towed a body behind them, made indistinguishable by their wide figures.
       "Is this your friend?" the leading man growled. He stepped aside to reveal a familiar face.
       Aris.
       His eyes were bloodshot and empty. He jittered all over like he'd had one too many cups of coffee.
       "We found him crouched by the lumber heap," the same guy notified Thomas. "He looked like a Crank, chanting the name 'Thomas' like a broken record, but he's a Munie, right?"
       "Yeah," he squeaked in bafflement.
       The two men carrying Aris behind Big Beard chatted briefly with each other. Beard went on,
       "That's what we thought. We figured you had something to do with this, Thomas, so we brought him to Jorge and he said you'd be here. This kid's got a screw loose. He's in your hands now."
       Thomas felt overly confused. What was wrong with Aris? The men released the boy, and he fell to his knees with a permanent empty expression. Beard tipped his chin at them and led the others away. Minho grimaced, taking a step forward.
       Like someone had pulled a switch, Aris erupted into a crazed mantra, harshly whispering,
       "Thomas, Thomas, Thomas..."
       Goosebumps danced across Thomas's skin, and his heart skipped a beat. Mystified, he drew toward him and stooped down on one knee. Aris did not blink. Upon thorough observation, the redness around his irises wasn't from exhaustion—but crying? At a crossroads over what to do, Thomas commanded,
       "Somebody get him some water. He could be dehydrated."
       "What?" Frypan scoffed.
       "Do it! There's not much else we can do for the shank."
       "There's a rainwater pail somewhere by here. I'll go get it," Brenda maintained, already excusing herself from the group.
       Thomas reached under Aris's chin and tilted it up so that they were eye to eye. His pupils darted in every direction, never once settling. He hadn't ceased the chanting of Thomas's name.
       "Aris, I'm right here. It's Thomas."
       "Thomas, Thomas, Thomas..."
       "Can you understand me?"
       "Thomas, Thomas, Thomas..."
       "What happened to you?"
       Aris's pupils snapped into position at the last question, glaring at Thomas with so much intensity that he began to feel scared.
       "Thomas!" he roared, behaving like the word was the key to the universe.
       Minho closed in on them, ready to break up a brawl if it came to one, but Thomas held out a hand to halt him.
       "Let me take care of this," he said.
       "Your funeral."
       Thomas looked back at Aris, who was now smiling, but not a sane smile. It was the smile of a Crank. There was one major problem with that: Aris wasn't a Crank. Thomas imagined he'd prepared himself for whatever his challenger devised to say next, but he wasn't.
       "You killed him, didn't you Tommy?"
       He fell backward off his knee. He didn't know why it hit him so hard. Maybe it was the tone or the look of total glee on Aris's face as he'd said it. But then it got worse, because he started laughing. It was loud, crazed laughter, and he repeated on and on,
       "You killed him, didn't you Tommy? You killed him..."
       Minho shoved Thomas out of the way, and he didn't object.
       "What's wrong with him?" Frypan demanded in a stammer. Gally rebuked,
       "No shuckin' idea. He's actin' like he's past the Gone, and last I checked, we were all immune!"
       "Somebody get Aris on his feet," Minho advised them. "We gotta shut him up!"
       Thomas could barely listen. All that filtered into his ears were Aris's lunacized shrieks.
       "You killed him, didn't you Tommy?"
       Yes. Yes he did. Shot him right in the skull, point blank.
       Brenda arrived, yelling over the wails,
       "Thomas, what's going on?" She dropped the bucket she hauled in her hands and water sloshed over its rim rebelliously.
       Thomas didn't answer her, but he turned just in time to watch Gally slap Aris across the face harder than he would've had the guts to do himself. The screams cut short abruptly. A gurgle rose in Aris's throat; he'd been stunned into another expressionless trance. He put up no fight as Gally and Minho lifted him upward. Minho angrily proclaimed,
       "Now, let's take him to—"
       "—Poor Newt, insane in the head. Thanks to Tommy, now he's dead," Aris sang softly, recovering from the slap. He exploded into giggles. Suddenly it felt like Thomas was the one who'd been slapped. Aris had lost it. Completely lost it. "Poor Newt, poor Newt, poor Newt...pooooor Newt!"
       "Shut your hole, slinthead!" Minho barked.
       Thomas went numb again. Teresa might as well have injected him with another sedative—he would feel no different than he did now. Brenda crouched by him in slow motion, giving him instructions to do something. Her lips moved but he couldn't process what she said. He'd shut down. Why did he keep shutting down?
       She hooked her arm with his and they got up together. Minho, Gally and Frypan dragged Aris farther into the Woods. An enraged part of him wished he'd never come out, that he'd die alone in the trees, left to rot with his insanity and bitter words. Brenda steered him from the coverage of the leaves and into the field. They stood still for a moment, breathing in harmony with one another. Sounds began to rush back in, though it was unclear if he'd feel anything but numb again.
       "Brenda..." He froze up.
       "It's okay, Tom," she soothed, running her fingers through his hair. "Look at me."
       He held her gaze like a lifeline, battling to feel something again. He wrapped his hands around her neck and stared at her lips. Nothing yet. He kissed her. Clutched her waist. The bad things melted away, one after the other, until she was the single reason for his existence, his devotion, his everything. But Brenda pulled away as he dipped in for more. She held him back and gave him no choice but to gather his bearings. Faintly, saddened, she told him,
       "I'm not the answer to this."
       At last, Thomas's raw emotions materialized.
       "I know," he mouthed in response.
       They didn't move for a long time, and he replayed Aris's screeches in his mind with devastation.
       Poor Newt, insane in the head. Thanks to Tommy, now he's dead.