A baby's cry pierced through the lull of the rain. The tent see-sawed when it thundered and nearly toppled in the salty winds, but Minho glued himself to the entrance flap to observe the chaos, bracing against the icy chill.
"Where's Frypan?" Thomas brought up, shaking soil clumps off his leg.
"He left when I made some brilliant points. He's got a big case of denial about the twins."
Thomas yawned. He picked up the blanket questioningly. "And how do you explain this and the backpack?"
Minho almost smirked. Innocently, he replied,
"I borrowed them."
"You stole them."
They locked eyes, and Minho's grin went into full bloom. "Hey, you needed 'em more than the shanks in the next tent. It was their fault for leaving the stuff unattended."
"Minho," he scolded, smacking him on the arm.
"Stealing is only bad when there's consequences, and this place is the Wild West, bro," Minho lectured. "Anything goes." His gaze returned to the land outside, as if there was something out there watching him back.
Thomas tore the flap open wider and spoke through the corner of his mouth,
"What're you looking at?"
"Beetle blade. The little sucker's been crawling in that tree forever. Paige has some serious guts keeping 'em here with all these Munies."
Thomas inspected the branches of the spindly tree a few feet ahead of them, seeing nothing until his focus landed on a pair of red eye lights. The tiny machine curled its body over the bark, glinting bright silver as it moved. It navigated left and right, always watching, its head pointed at them.
"I hate those things," Thomas said.
Minho humphed, closing the flap to block the robotic creature's view. "Can't hurt us. That's all that matters."
"I guess, but what if—"
Thomas shushed himself when he heard footsteps on the other face of the tent, paired by Isaac's harsh, rocky voice. He shook Minho to get his attention and raised a finger to his lips. They crept closer to a more discreet rip in the tent's tarp and silently fought over who could peer out of it. After successfully elbowing Minho in the ribs, Thomas stuck his eye out of the irregularly shaped hole.
Isaac marched across the field. He didn't carry himself as the friendly boy he'd introduced himself as. A short girl with long cinnamon-brown hair hissed angry comments into his ear, none of which Thomas could make out until Isaac snapped at her,
"No. I can't take the chance they'll out us to the rest of them. The cook we could handle, but these guys tore us apart the second we said hello."
Minho warred to have a turn at the tarp hole, but Thomas nudged him backward. The girl replied something breathily, so faint that he only understood she was speaking by the calculated movement of her mouth. She held her chin up high and pushed her way past Isaac. He called after her in a forced whisper,
"You're making a mistake! We're nothing without a system!"
"Whoever you work for now," the girl stated callously, "tell them I'm out."
Finally, Minho rammed Thomas aside to glimpse through the tarp. "Who was that chick with him?" he said in a low tone.
"I didn't recognize her," Thomas replied, on edge. "Where's Isaac going now?"
"Into that Megalodon-sized tent. I'm ready to follow him in and have some payback. That shuck-face has his facts straight on us, that's for sure." Minho got up insistently, but Thomas tugged him down.
"That's a terrible idea. Why do all of your solutions involve beating people up?"
Minho flung him a disapproving glance. "It's easier than trying to reason with the unreasonable scum of the earth. Besides, if anyone deserves it, it's that guy, so I don't get why you're holding me back."
"Because he's obviously a spy." Thomas paused, attempting to sort out his thoughts. "And a bad one, at that."
Minho snorted. "Hm, yeah. He literally walked past us chatting about his evil plans."
"Right. So we can't just waltz into his tent."
"Why not?"
"Well, we could do this thing called eavesdropping instead. It's a pretty effective method in general logic that doesn't involve a bloodbath."
Minho's eyes widened. He held a hand on his heart, expressing,
"Was that sass? Thomas is capable of sass? Wow, I must really be rubbing off on you."
Thomas sighed at him, trying his best to maintain a serious mindset. "Minho, we need to be rational. We can go figure out what Isaac's motives are or even more about these." He poked at the Serum vial through his shirt.
Minho looked at him with pity. He nodded to the tree out front and retorted,
"Do you not see that beetle blade? We're not figuring out squat here that Paige doesn't want us to figure out."
Thomas paced back and forth in the small space. He groaned. "Okay, but maybe we're supposed to eavesdrop. Maybe they want us to—"
"Don't we wanna go against whatever WICKED wants?"
Throwing his hands out, Thomas fumed,
"I don't know! Please! Can we stop arguing for once and make an effort to get some answers?"
The storm wailed over Minho's reply, and lightning flickered somewhere closeby. The tent swayed, beginning to cave in. Minho rephrased in a shout,
"Now that we don't have much of a choice, sure, why not?" He took Thomas's blanket and stretched it above himself like an umbrella. "Come on, the rain won't bite."
Thomas huddled underneath the poor cloak and they ran out of the collapsing tent, met by a rush of blowing rain. The sky bled bullets on them. They scampered through the field, slipping in mud puddles, dodging fallen planks. Minho steered them toward one of the camp's tallest tents and had Thomas crouch near the entrance, commanding,
"Listen up and listen fast. I'm freezing."
Thomas pressed his ear to a thin bed sheet wall, careful to hide from the shifting silhouettes behind it.
"—you did this. Do you expect me to report back with this disaster? They're—"
A gust of wind roared, muting the rest. Had that been Iris? He readjusted his ear.
"Hey, we did everything we were told and still accomplished the main objective. What the Group A boys think about us won't matter." This was Isaac.
Thomas flinched as Minho's heel crashed in the mud, attempting to squash the beetle blade scuttling around.
"Shh!" he said, listening harder. Iris was speaking.
"—if we don't. Paige will have us bound in something messy. She'll send Intels to counter the—"
A bolt of lightning collided with the plains, igniting the branch of a tree. Multiple frightened yells echoed across the Horizon. Even Minho jumped. Thomas pried himself from the tent and zipped back under the blanket with him. They jogged to a fork between three shelters.
"Choose!" Minho hollered.
Thomas pointed at the sturdiest one. "There!"
Six Immunes looked up in sync when they hurtled inside, or seven if he counted the fussing baby. Immediately, the group's shock turned to mistrust when they attached a mental label to Thomas and Minho: WICKED kids. The woman closest to Thomas hugged herself in her jacket, asking bluntly,
"You want shelter?"
Minho shook out his wet hair and flashed her a polite grin. "Right on, ma'am. Our tent fell apart."
"So will ours." A man with a bushy mustache leered at them. "We don't got no more room for...y'all."
The woman with the jacket spat a clear wad at their feet, and Thomas backed up from it. He glanced toward the tent flap and reconsidered their stay. But Minho wasn't ready to give up so easily. He stomped forward, declaring to the group,
"No more room? Maybe I'm blind, but this plot of grass I'm standin' on is plenty of room. You've got miles to spare in this klunk-smeared tent." To make his point, he sat down in a wet patch of weeds. "How're you gonna turn us down for seeking shelter, ya slintheads? We're not leaving."
Thomas stood awkwardly and prayed for a peaceful consensus. The Immunes jabbered to each other, then the mustached man grunted.
"You sons of WICKED are nothin' but trouble. Keep your revenge business outta ours, you hear? Don't need Brenda and Jorge lurkin' 'round here."
Minho sneered at him. "Oh, trust me, you'd be the last person to learn of any revenge business, old timer."
The insult must have burned, but Mustache didn't pick a fight with him on it. A couple people shuffled to allow Thomas a place to sit, and he accepted without a thought. He propped himself across from Minho and hoped the gratitude for his resolve showed through his gaze. Minho winked at him, folding his arms over his chest.
If only Thomas could tell him what he'd overheard from the twins.
***
For two hours, the thunderstorm raged on. They spent it in silent agony, surrounded by the rowdy bunch of belittling Munies who avoided them like the plague. Songs were sung, a flask was passed around, the baby cried. Yet Thomas felt as though he viewed the excitement through a screen. He was trapped in his corner of the tent bouncing his knee, craving to share a single word with Minho that wouldn't be nagged at by the others. Iris's sentences repeated in his head: Paige will have us bound in something messy. She'll send Intels to counter the—. Intels. Counter what? Was that the name for another mechanical monster breed, like Grievers?
The major takeaway Thomas received was that he and Minho had been right. Frypan, stubborn as ever, could be in serious danger. The possibility haunted Thomas for a long time. He was relieved when Mustache drew back the tent flap at twilight. Hues of yellow, pink and purple swirled in the gaps of the clouds, and the air smelled thickly of salt and dirt. Clamor resonated from the dilapidated shelters. Some people grazed outside to examine the storm damage.
"Is it clear out there?" the jacketed woman rasped to Mustache, rising from her spot.
"The storm ain't gone, but it's clear for now. We can head out."
Minho lurched upward and Thomas followed, crawling out of the stuffy tent. Minho walked with a purpose, murmuring to him once they were far from the group,
"What'd you hear?"
Thomas practically gushed after bottling up the secrets for an eternity,
"They're spies, through and through. Isaac said they'd already accomplished some main objective and Iris didn't seem satisfied. She was worried Paige would send Intels or something."
"What are Intels?"
"No clue. Do you have a destination or are we speed-walking for fun?" Thomas fell in equal stride with Minho as he moved on the sunken path.
"Oh, I've definitely got a destination." His lips thinned. "We're gonna go get Frypan if he's not being a hateful shank, tell 'em everything, march out to the Woods, then find Aris. It'll settle all of this in one go."
Thomas stopped dead in his tracks.
"You sure he'll hear us out?" he asked.
"Who knows." Minho shoved his hands in his pockets. "We'll hold an intervention if Frypan doesn't wanna listen. I'm tired of betrayals."
They trekked on. Thomas's thoughts ran ablaze. Frypan was not going to be happy with Minho. They'd only end up fighting. And what was he supposed to do if they spotted Aris? Wrestle him to the ground and tie him up? Hold him hostage for when, if ever, there was a cure? Kill him like he'd had to with Newt? The last option made his stomach drop.
No, there had to be another way.
Thomas didn't have it in him to do that again or subject his friends to it. It hurt too much.
Minho pointed. "There he is."
The tent wasn't much of a tent. Its supporting fabric leaned on one massive branch, soaked by water, dripping down on its sole inhabitant—Frypan—who snored his head off.
Minho made a beeline for him, announcing,
"Rise and shine."
Frypan jerked up and moaned. "Go away."
"We eavesdropped on your pals. Surprise, surprise, they're WICKED spies. I was right, you were wrong." Minho held his hands on his hips and circled the pathetic shelter.
Thickly, Frypan replied,
"I'll believe it when I see it. You word's as good as horse klunk."
Minho's cheeks flared red. "All right, then how about Thomas's word?"
Frypan's double take at Thomas was degrading. He said,
"The word of a know-it-all Greenbean who's been clinging to our heels since his First Day, wreaking all sorts of havoc? His word's the devil's word."
A ripple of resentment bridged through Thomas's stable mood. He balled his fists at his sides. Minho kicked Frypan in the arm, snapping at him,
"You better lie there and listen! Need me to pull the cotton outta your ears?"
Thomas approached them with his jaw wired shut. He wasn't sure anything he said would help.
Frypan laughed unkindly. "Go away, Minho. Come back when you've got Isaac and Iris's mugshots. Better yet, how about written confessions? Add some spice to the delusion."
Minho yelled and booted his shoe into the beam holding up the tent. The structure crumpled, flattening on top of Frypan. Thomas spun in the opposite direction of the wreckage and led the way toward the Woods, sensing Minho beside him without having to look.
"Jerk," Thomas mumbled. "What's he got on me?"
"Well, I'd assume he's suspicious of what Aris said about you and Newt."
"Oh." He hadn't accounted for the possibility that Frypan might've actually listened to Aris's ramblings. That would make a conversation for another day, when he'd have to explain Newt's passing for the upteenth painful time.
After the tallgrass transformed into trees, he slowed his steps to make as little noise as possible. Minho copied the idea. Resultantly, the landscape went sinisterly quiet. A goldfinch shot up from the earth floor with a worm in its beak. Strangely, that seemed to be the only lifeform in the forest besides the two of them. The farther they hiked into the trees, the more the foliage obstructed the daylight. A timeless sensation hung in the air.
"We should split up. One takes the east and the other the west," Minho proposed.
"Which way do you want to go?"
"Hmm...east." He nodded to the right.
"Isn't that technically south?" Thomas inquired.
"No? East."
"But the sun sets in the west behind us, so wouldn't that make—"
"Thomas." Minho looked done with him. "East."
"South."
"East."
"South."
"Okay, dude! You win. I'll head south and you can waddle your merry butt to the North Pole." Minho combed his hand through his hair. "If one of us finds Aris, whistle or yell."
Despite his low spirits, Thomas grinned, muttering,
"The Keeper of the Runners should know east from south."
He couldn't evade the whack on the back of his head.
"You are impossible, y'know that?" Minho complained.
"More than you think."
They parted to go their separate ways, and Thomas wandered bleakly around the Woods, having less and less hope for a successful rescue. Aris, wherever he was, was long gone. Maybe he'd starved to death. The image made him shiver, and he squinted distantly up at the sun poking through the leaves. Since he wasn't paying attention, a branch snagged on his shirt sleeve and grazed his arm. He cursed to himself, detangling the poking wood from the fabric to pick at the bloody scrape.
A hand clamped over his mouth, thrusting him backward into a tree trunk. Thomas attempted to pull away, but another palm smashed into his stomach. He crumpled on its impact.
"I have to do this now," a boy swiftly breathed into his ear, "while I'm still myself. Listen."
Thomas gasped when the hand over his mouth lifted. He spun to face the person in a state of incredulity, who studied him with a sickly yet notably sane expression. Aris's olive skin flushed ghoulishly pale, almost bloodless. His irises took on a milky white film and his matted hair had thinned since their last encounter. None of that disturbed Thomas the most. The true tragedy was that Aris wasn't past the Gone like he'd hoped.
"You and Minho are gonna be Cranks, Thomas," Aris informed him, but Thomas relieved him of it,
"I already know."
Aris twitched, bringing his palm to the back of his head as if there was an insect crawling on it.
"I have to tell you a lot of stuff," he babbled, his pupils fixing on him, "and fast. It wasn't me who was saying those rhymes about Newt to you. I would never disrespect him like that. I didn't even know he was dead."
Poor Newt, poor Newt, poor Newt.
Aris didn't sound crazy at all when he said this. Thomas stuttered confusedly,
"Then—then who was it?"
Aris's white-green eyes narrowed in on him. He swatted at the back of his head absentmindedly. "Teresa. She makes me see awful things that aren't there. Do things I don't want to do."
"Aris, what—"
"She doesn't want me talking to you." His movements grew frantic. "She's trying to get me to run away and I won't, so she's making me remember again. Rachel's standing right behind you, and the knife, oh, it's sticking out of her chest."
Thomas twirled around in anticipation and witnessed an undisturbed swath of forest. He reassured Aris,
"There's nobody there."
"Maybe t-to you," he stammered, swatting his head again. He shrank down to the ground like a frightened child. "But she's making me see things right now, and you might see them too if she wants you to."
A pat landed on Thomas's back as Gally moved into his sight.
"How's it going, old shank?" the illusion asked him. "Been a while, hasn't it?" He slumped against a tree.
"You're not real," Thomas gulped. The hairs on his arms needled straight up.
"I'm as real as real's gonna get."
The false impersonator stepped toward Thomas and held up his arm, positioning his hand into a finger gun stance. He observed it boredly.
"Tell me something, Thomas," he said. "Is this real enough for ya?"
Gally pretended to pull the trigger on his finger gun and an actual gunshot blasted through the Woods. His neck snapped back and the side of his skull imploded; the momentum dragged his body to the forest floor. Thomas almost cried out, but Aris sprung onto his feet and re-clamped his hand over his mouth. He explained calmly,
"She makes me see them all the time, those visions. And Paige is force-feeding you all of this Serum—"
Thomas broke from his grasp and touched his shirt, telling him numbly,
"Yeah, I have a vial of it."
Aris twitched distractedly, whimpering to someone or something else over his shoulder,
"I'm gonna tell him. You're gonna have to kill me, because nothing in the world is gonna stop me from telling him."
"What's going on?" Thomas pleaded.
Aris wore a grave expression. "Frypan's gonna—"
His palms clasped onto his own throat to prevent himself from speaking. Thomas shifted to help him, but Aris's face went blank. His arms fell and dangled limply. Then he jumped in panic, coming to his senses.
"Oh shoot. I had something to say. I did." Aris blinked away his perplexion and added, "But everything else. I know everything about this place. Teresa—" His eyes glazed over. Consciousness winked in and out of him, buffering, and it was clear he was battling with his own mind.
"Aris, you're freaking me out." Thomas slid around the tree trunk.
"No," Aris moaned, stumbling about haphazardly. "Shut up, shut up!" he begged an undetectable force.
You can't see this, Teresa snapped in Thomas's thoughts.
Then his body shut down.
YOU ARE READING
The Immunity Illness
Fiksi IlmiahParadise. They had walked straight through a cold wall into paradise, where time remained perfectly still. Thomas's mind finally silenced itself of all things related to the trials, tests, and lies. The Cranks of his dreams became just that: dreams...
