“Gally, chill,” Minho warned.
Gally threw his arms up. “They’re the ones who need to grow up!”
“Hey!” Alby shouted. “Don’t come in here all high and mighty. We didn’t invite you.”
“That’s it, I’m out,” Gally said as he walked toward the exit. Minho jumped in front of him, put a hand on his chest. Gally stopped.
Minho looked around. “Come on, guys. Can you give me the benefit of the doubt, here? Why do you think I’ve waited months to pull the trigger? Because I’m patient and not stupid. Gally’s figured out a way to communicate with a cousin in Canada—he’s close to the border. Gally used Chase’s transponder codes. We’ll have people waiting for us a few miles into the woods—they’re already on standby.”
Thomas couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Minho really meant it. Despite all the things they had better off than the rest of the world, he wanted out.
“Why?” Thomas asked. That one word got everyone’s attention. “Just tell us why, Minho. We know you’re not stupid, and I’m sure Gally isn’t, either. But why would you guys want to leave?”
“Because we’re prisoners,” Minho answered. “Because we’re held here against our will. That’s all the reason I need.”
“But you’ll never have it half as good as we do here!” Teresa almost shouted. “And how can you just turn your back on helping the world?”
For the first time since they’d met, Minho looked like maybe he didn’t like them so much.
“I guess we have different philosophies,” he said. “If you don’t get it, you don’t get it. You don’t take away my freedom without asking first.”
“Sorry we got off to a rough start,” Gally interjected. “I guess I’m just nervous being down here. But I promise you guys this can work.” He looked around at the group then and added, “Anyone coming with us?”
His words were met with graveyard silence.
“When?” Newt asked, breaking the quiet.
Minho and Gally answered at the same time.
“Tomorrow night.”
226.11.14 | 3:17 a.m.
They came for Thomas hours before dawn.
Randall, Dr. Leavitt, and Ramirez. The three musketeers. Thomas knew, despite his grogginess, that the three of them coming together meant that something really bad had happened. Or was about to happen. He was on his feet seconds after they shook him awake.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“I have an inkling you know very well what’s going on,” Randall replied, sharp and loud in the quiet of the night. “And that’s why you’re coming with us, right now. We need your help.”
Thomas started to ask another question, but Dr. Leavitt cut him off immediately.
“Come on, Thomas. Everything will be okay. Just do as you’re told.”
“Quickly, now,” Ramirez added, the first time Thomas had ever heard the chief of security speak.
—
The three men escorted Thomas through the building, often grabbing his arm at a turn in the hallway or getting off the elevator, even though he didn’t need it. They weren’t rough with him, but they were clearly in a hurry.
They stopped when they reached a heavily fortified door. Ramirez pressed his fingerprint to a glass panel and said his name. The door opened. Randall gave Thomas a little nudge to go through.
Thomas wanted answers, but he decided to suck it up and remain quiet. Randall was being nicer than he had the night of the Crank pits, and Thomas didn’t want to push him past some boundary he wasn’t yet willing to cross.
Thomas looked around the room he’d stepped into. It was new to him—what looked to be a control center for security. There was a large wall full of monitors showing everything from the medical rooms to dorms to progress on the maze construction. Oddly, the video feeds for the maze moved around skittishly, as if their cameras had been strapped to the backs of very angry cats. Nestled in the middle of the room, and facing the monitors, was a deck of equipment fitted out with more display screens and several chairs perched behind it. Two guards sat there now, their gazes fixed on a monitor to the right side of the wall.
Thomas looked closer and felt his heart drop. It showed Minho in a small room, strapped to a chair—the ropes digging into his skin—his face bloodied and bruised. He stared straight at the camera, unwavering, and his look of resolve made Thomas feel a little proud. And a little ashamed. He hadn’t wanted Minho to run and doubted he’d actually try.
“Hurts to say this,” Randall said, “but it looks like your friend didn’t learn from his last attempt to go outside. I guess we were too easy on him, on everyone. Now we have no choice but to step things up. Don’t you agree?”
Thomas stared at Minho. Minho stared back. Could it be possible there was a two-way camera? Thomas suddenly felt self-conscious.
“Silence is probably not your best option right now,” Dr. Leavitt said. “Sit down and we’ll talk. People like Minho and Gally—people who think they’re above the effort to help us here—have to be dealt with. Hopefully you can learn something by watching.”
Ramirez put a hand on Thomas’s shoulder and gently helped him find a seat between the two guards.
“You’re excused now,” Randall said.
For one split second Thomas thought Randall meant him, which would have been awfully strange since they’d just had him sit down. But it quickly became clear he was wrong when the guards got up and left.
Ramirez took the chair to Thomas’s left, Dr. Leavitt the one to his right. Randall stepped into the space between the controls and the monitors, then clasped his hands behind his back as if he were about to give a lecture.
“Thomas,” he began, “let’s be honest, here. You know we’ve been watching you and your friends gather at night, correct? You might be young, but you’re way too smart to think you were getting around us somehow.”
Thomas opened his mouth, then closed it. He’d at least hoped they were outsmarting them. He didn’t know why they’d let them continue to gather, but as he thought about it, he realized it had been wishful thinking. He nodded.
Randall placed his hands on the outer edge of the control deck and leaned forward, closer to Thomas. “Listen,” the man said. “We’re not here to beat you up over Minho’s mistake. If anything, we were able to see that most of you tried to talk him out of it. But there are some valuable lessons to be learned from all this, and we’re going to take advantage of the situation.”
Thomas wished desperately that the guy would make his point already.
“You are going to sit with us and watch how we’re going to teach Minho his lesson. We need witnesses, to be frank. We need the word to get around. We can’t let something like this ever happen again. Our subjects need to know that actions have consequences.”
“What’re you going to do to him?” Thomas shouted, really scared for his friend.
Randall flinched at the sudden loud noise, then continued as if he hadn’t heard the question. “After this is done, we’ll bring in Teresa and show her. Same for Aris and Rachel over in the control room for Group B. But we wanted you all to be alone on this, all reactions your own and not influenced by friends.”
“It’s also a big step in another way,” Dr. Leavitt added. “The Maze Trials will be only a year or two from now, based on our current pace, and this?” He gestured around the room. “This is something you’re going to see a lot of once we put the first batch of subjects into the mazes. So look at this little exercise as practice. Sound good?”
Thomas stayed quiet. Sometimes they could be so condescending.
“Thomas? Sound good?” Leavitt repeated.
Thomas felt a rage so strong he could barely contain it, like a fire starving for oxygen He didn’t understand how, but somehow he kept it all in.
“Sounds good,” he muttered.
Randall pointed to a different screen from the one showing Minho. In the new one Thomas could see an oval container of some sort. It had a se
am along one side and hinges on the other. It looked like the coffin for a fat, very wealthy alien.
“What’s that?” Thomas asked, falling right into their trap. Curiosity often won when it came to him.
“Those are pods,” Randall replied. “Pods for a biomechanical creature that the military was able to help us design. At the moment we’re calling them Grievers. They’re still in the early stages of development, but huge progress was made with this last round. I think we’re just two or more modifications away from having our perfect maze monster.”
Thomas was so taken aback by the seemingly simple statement that he could imagine the ridiculous look that must be on his face. He closed his mouth and forced himself to blink a few times.
“Not what you were expecting?” Randall asked.
“I…I don’t…Expecting?” He was at a loss for words. “What’re you even talking about? Biomechanical creatures? Monsters in the maze? What’d you call them? Grievers?”
Ramirez spoke up. “You’ll learn all the details soon enough. Honestly, we had no intention of sharing this with you for a while yet, but this opportunity arose and, well…I will say, as one who’s been on the committee leading the development of these living weapons, that they’re an achievement by any standard.”
“In short,” Randall added, “if we’re going to understand how the Munies’ brains function despite being inflicted with the Flare, we have to be able to stimulate in them every kind of feeling and brain activity known to humans. Once we start the Maze Trials these creatures will help with that in a big way. You should see the Psych reports. Very interesting.”
Thomas felt like a dark shadow had passed over him. Something that sucked the life out of the air, and the air from his lungs. Everything these men were telling him—it was all feeling worse by the moment.
“Let’s get on with it,” Randall said. He reached over and pressed something. “Go ahead, Alice. Open the pod.”
Thomas watched as the seam alongside the oval pod split open. Jets of steam hissed from the opening, obscuring any clear view of the pod itself. Swirling, eddying mists filled the room on the screen. Thomas glanced over at the screen showing Minho really fast, and the true horror of what was about to happen became evident. Minho had finally broken his gaze and was looking anxiously to his right. Tendrils of fog slid along the floor from that side of the screen.
Thomas stood up, his skin now cold.
Minho was in the same room as that opening pod.
226.11.14 | 5:52 a.m.
“Stop!” Thomas yelled. “Stop that…thing!” His imagination had run wild, trying to picture what terrible thing was about to reveal itself. “I get the point, okay?”
“Sit down!” Ramirez yelled from behind Thomas, and the man grabbed both Thomas’s shoulders and slammed him back down into his seat. Thomas had no idea when the man had moved from his chair.
Randall turned away from the mist-filled screen.
“If we don’t act on our threats,” he said, “then how will we ever have control in this experiment? If we let people escape—or try to—with no consequences, what does that tell the other subjects? Minho made his choice. Now things have to play out the way they’re supposed to.”
“Please,” Thomas whispered, feeling the fight drain out of him. Minho—tough, reckless, always-joking Minho—had a look of such terror on his face that Thomas couldn’t bear to watch anymore. He turned his attention to the pod.
The mist had dissipated enough to reveal the container, its two halves resting on the floor. Thomas stared mutely as something began to climb out.
Whatever he had expected, he never could have dreamed up what he saw next. It was impossible to tell its shape; the creature was wet and glistening, with patches of hair covering parts of its surface. But there was metal too—flashes of steel appendages, and sharp disks protruding from the quivering mass. Thomas watched the hideous creature push itself over the lip of the container and crash down to the floor, revealing a sluglike body about the size of a small cow.
He shuddered, watching the…abomination maneuver. He looked back at Minho, saw the boy thrashing against his restraints, screaming with no sound. The fog had washed over him. It was lingering in the background, melting toward the ceiling.
Thomas lost every bit of his restraint.
“Stop that thing!” he yelled, standing up. Ramirez was there instantly, pushing him down again. “You can’t do this!”
Randall glanced over his shoulder—he’d been watching Minho intently—and gave Thomas a tired expression.
“We have no choice,” the man said simply.
Teresa! He screamed in his mind. You have to do something. They’ve got Minho tied up in a chair and…this…thing, this monster, is about to attack him!
The words inside his mind felt strange this time, hollow. It felt like some invisible barrier was up and everything he said was bouncing back at him.
Of course, he thought. Of course WICKED can turn it off. They can do whatever the hell they want.
Minho continued to struggle and scream. He managed to move his chair, sliding it back until he hit the wall farthest from the Griever. On the left side of the screen, something flashed into view, a blob with spikes dragging it along the ground. Right before it ran into Minho, it stopped. The metal spikes receded into its skin and the creature flattened out.
Thomas was desperate now, seeing one of his few friends on the verge of serious damage—possibly even death.
“Randall!” he begged. “Listen to me! Please, just…stop that thing. Just stop it! Just…hear me out! Let me talk, and then if you don’t change your mind you can start it again. Please.”
Part of the creature’s body was rising now, and several lengths of metal extended where the spikes had been. They were solid, covered in deadly objects—blades and saws and claws that snapped open and closed. Thomas watched, nearly in tears, as very slowly, the weapons extended toward Minho’s body.
Thomas tried to take a calmer approach. He sucked in a breath. “Randall, please. Minho is too valuable for this. If you don’t stop that thing, I’m not helping you anymore. With anything. I don’t care what you guys do to me.”
The creature had risen on its hindquarters, and it now stood several feet higher than Minho’s head. The metal arms that had extended from its skin wrapped around Minho, encircling him, trapping him against the wall he’d backed into.
“Randall,” Thomas said, fighting to keep calm. “Go get Dr. Paige. The Psychs. Go get the chancellor. Go get all of them! They need me, and they need Minho. He has too much potential to help your trial to waste him here.”
The creature lifted its saw appendage and the blade spun to life, the arm inching closer to Minho’s forehead. He’d already pressed his head back against the wall. Thomas watched as his friend’s face now contorted in pure fear.
“Last chance!” Thomas yelled. “If he dies, I might as well—”
He cut off abruptly when Randall pressed the call button again.
“Pause,” he commanded, a little urgently, as if he’d let it go too far, too late to stop it.
The creature froze. And Thomas let out a huge, shuddering breath. He slumped back down into his seat and dropped his head into his hands. It took everything he had not to burst into tears.
“Look at him, please,” Randall said quietly. “Look at the screen.”
Thomas raised his head and focused on Minho’s display.
“You see that?” Randall asked. He was also watching Minho. The creature was draped over the boy, almost like a blanket. “Did I not tell you that we’re almost there, we’ve almost perfected the greatest soldier?”
Thomas didn’t see anything besides his friend, literally inches from death, and a man who seemed to have lost his grip on reality—if he’d ever had it in the first place.
“I think this goes without saying,” Randall continued, his voice still imbued with a sense of awe. “I need you to never forget what you’ve seen here today. I
need you to understand the power and the danger of these creatures. The pattern of your empathy could end up being one of the biggest pieces of our puzzle.”
Thomas found it hard to focus on the man’s words. All he could do was stare at Minho and his sweat-streaked face. The blade, even though it had stopped inching forward, still spun as fast as ever. Thomas found it hard to breathe, knowing it would only take one word from Randall to end Minho’s life.
The man pressed his magic button again and said, “Okay, go ahead and call it back.”
Seconds later, the metal arms of the Griever withdrew, folding away from Minho and retracting into the moist, fatty body. The Griever seemed to melt into a flat slab of flesh on the floor, then wrapped itself into a rounded ball, traction spikes extending; finally it pulled itself end over end until it had rolled out of sight on the screen. Thomas turned his attention to the other screen and the creature appeared, spinning until it reached the pod, retracted its spikes, and oozed its way back inside. The pod hatch was closing even before the creature had disappeared into its home. A few seconds and a hiss of steam later, the pod closed and all went still.
Thomas looked back at Minho, hoping to see that some piece of his friend’s rebellious nature had returned to him.
But not this time.
Minho’s head hung low, and his body shook with sobs. Thomas just dropped his own head sadly. He was at a complete loss trying to understand what he’d just watched.
“Let’s get you back to your room,” Randall said. “We still have three more subjects to witness what you just saw. If I were you, I’d write down anything of importance you learned today.”
Thomas had missed something. “Wait…what?”
Randall ignored him. “You do realize that we never would have let the Griever hurt Minho, much less kill him. You’re smart enough to know that, right? We only want everyone to learn a valuable lesson: the rules must be followed. Going outside, much less leaving the WICKED compound…Now you know the consequences.”
“But…” Thomas was so shaken, he couldn’t put together the question he wanted to ask.