The Immunity Illness

CHAPTER 10

He'd been rendered speechless. He considered if what Minho was saying could be true, but it didn't add up. None of it did. WICKED could only tamper with brains, not undo someone's whole immunity.
       "What? Don't lie to me. I hate it when people lie to me," Thomas retaliated icily.
       "I'm not lying! Dude, we need to get out of here. We can't have WICKED digging in our heads anymore. They'll kill us." He tugged at Thomas's bedsheets, overcome by a wild sense of incomprehensible urgency. "Get up!"
       If his goal was to make Thomas more irritated, he had succeeded. He thrust his sheets at Minho, temporarily distracting him so he could climb out of bed to scamper across the cold floor, woozy from the days he'd laid immobile. He snarled defiantly,
       "What—what if you're one of them? Like Brenda, Jorge, Paige and Teresa, like everyone I've ever given an ounce of trust to!" He shook with rage and heartbreak, staring at a stranger through a haze similar to a dream.
       Minho's features softened in a plea. "No. Take that second to focus, man. After all we've been through together, you know I'm not evil. You know me."
       "Don't lie to me! Everyone lies! Everyone always lies!"
       "Thomas, geez, I'm not a liar!"     
       Thomas desperately listened to him, snapping out of a possessed state. The previous events registered foggily, and he awoke from the murk with paranoia. A jarring fact unearthed itself from a web of lies: impossibly, he had the Flare, and the panic of such a spectacle felt like something he'd struggled with his entire life. Had he been stupid to turn down Teresa's offer to flee from the horror? Thomas retreated to his bed and sank into it, telling Minho,
       "You're right, I know you." He sprawled on his back, staring at the ceiling lostly. "I'm afraid of losing my mind, Minho. I think that's my worst fear. Deep down, I can tell it is. The idea of losing every part of myself to something invisible is terrifying."
       The bed caved in beside him. Minho picked at his nail, thinking things through. Grimly, he responded,
       "My worst fear is getting mauled to death by a Griever, but the Flare takes second place by a landslide. I'm pretty sure nothing about this has hit me yet. It all feels surreal."
       Thomas looked up at Minho keenly, trying to understand who he was through the many layers he'd sheathed himself in. They never had these types of conversations. Yet again, who else did they have to talk to now? Minho was one of the only friends he had left. The time for hiding behind jokes was over, and they'd both learned that the minute they stepped into the Horizon. It was time to be an adult. Thomas nodded at him in consideration.
       "How do you plan on getting out of here?"
       "I wasn't thinking about how we could, more like why." Minho leaned against the headboard, his expression darkening. "I bet we're bolted in this room by three locks."
       Thomas rotated so that he sat across from him at the foot of the bed. They passed anxious glances back and forth.
       "The Endtime might be over," Thomas suggested.
       Minho snorted. "They didn't build this place for a couple days' worth of slaughter, shank."
       "Why build it at all? Why put in so much time, effort and deceit to mess with our heads?" Thomas tucked his legs into his arms, and his pathetic hospital gown crinkled with the motion. He felt the same kind of shock Minho had described, where he was so overwhelmed that no emotion leaked through his composure.
       Minho grasped at the dangling IV needle to analyze the liquid flowing through its tube. He explained with scant interest,
       "Maybe the Dome was pre-built. Remember when sports stadiums were a thing?"
       Thomas grumbled, unsatisfied,
       "Yeah. Maybe."
       They fell silent, stripped of any words that could aid a progressive conversation. Minho released the tube and it skittered to the floor. Thomas returned to massaging his temples. The twinge of unsteadiness did not go away. The Flare. He couldn't help thinking that this was what Newt had felt in his early days—just a tick. A tick in the back of his head.
       A knock banged on the door. Both of them twirled around to glower at the frame, but no one entered. Minho hopped off the bed to investigate while Thomas peered over the footboard. A white envelope shimmied underneath the bottom crack. Minho snatched it, tore open its seal, and read the label.
       "Addressed to 'T and M'. Must be us." He wiggled a piece of paper and a photograph out of the envelope, smoothing them out on the bed. Thomas made room for them.
       They examined the photo first. To Thomas's amazement, it depicted himself with Teresa, and their faces were pudgy. Younger. They smiled, yet their stone hard eyes didn't match the cheeriness. The Maze walls towered in the background, strikingly lower than he recalled them being. The sky flaunted a dull, oppressive gray.
       Minho tore the photo from him and flipped it over. Disgustedly, he quoted aloud,
       "We started this as a team. Don't forget that, Tom. From, Teresa."
       Thomas huffed at the image and grabbed it again, shredding it down the middle. He tossed the pieces over his shoulder to lessen the sour taste of betrayal in his mouth. When he directed his gaze onto the other paper, he couldn't believe what he saw—an old entry written by Teresa.

WICKED Memorandum, Date
230.12.19, Time 3:04
TO: Leadership Council
FROM: Teresa Agnes
RE: Phases Four and Five