“Where’s Dr. Paige?” Thomas asked, a little crestfallen. As much as he sometimes hated the routine, disrupting it made him uncomfortable. “Is she okay?”
“May I please come in?” the man replied, nodding down at the tray of food he’d brought. His voice had none of the warmth of Dr. Paige’s.
“Um, yeah.” Thomas stepped aside, opening the door wider. The stranger rolled the food cart past him and up to the small desk.
“Make sure you eat it all,” the man said. “You’re going to need a lot of strength today.”
Thomas really didn’t like his tone. “Why? And you didn’t answer my question—what’s wrong with Dr. Paige?”
The man straightened, as if trying to make himself taller, and folded his arms. “Why would anything be wrong with Dr. Paige? She’s perfectly fine. Make sure to speak with kindness and respect to your elders at all times.”
Thomas had his response on the tip of his tongue—the sharp words that always felt as though they came easy—but he stayed quiet and willed the man to just go away.
“You’ve got a half hour,” the stranger said. His eyes never left Thomas, a dark, unnatural gaze. “I’ll be back for you at eight o’clock sharp. You can call me Dr. Leavitt. I’m one of the Psychs.” He finally broke eye contact and left, gently closing the door behind him.
I’m one of the Psychs.
Thomas had no idea what that meant, though he’d heard the term Psych before. He had zero appetite. He sat down and ate anyway.
—
It seemed as though Dr. Leavitt banged on the door far harder than he needed to, right on schedule. Thomas had finished his breakfast in plenty of time, only wishing he could have another hour. Another half a day. He might as well wish for a month. But he didn’t want to go anywhere with this new guy. If Dr. Paige was gone for some reason, he’d be devastated.
When he opened the door, Leavitt was just as bald and just as droopy as he’d been a half hour earlier.
“Let’s go,” he said curtly.
They walked down the hallway in silence; Thomas gave Teresa’s door a wistful glance as he passed it. 31K. How many times had he seen that plaque on the door, wishing he could open it and meet the girl on the other side? What possible reason did these people have for keeping everyone separate? Surely it wasn’t mere cruelty? How could Dr. Paige be a part of such a thing?
“Look,” Dr. Leavitt said, snapping Thomas’s attention back to the white walls of the hallway, the fluorescent lights above. “I know I’ve been a little unfriendly this morning. I’m sorry. Today’s project has been quite an undertaking, and we have a lot riding on it.” He let out a strangled laugh that sounded like a frog being electrocuted. “You could say I’m under a pretty fair amount of stress.”
“It’s okay,” Thomas replied, not knowing what else to say. “We all have our bad days,” he added nervously. What could possibly have this guy so stressed out? He wasn’t the one taking all the tests.
“Yeah,” Dr. Leavitt grunted more than said.
They got in the elevator and the doctor pressed the button for a floor Thomas had never visited before. Nine. For some reason, that had an ominous feel to it. The ninth floor. Would it have felt so haunting if Dr. Paige were standing next to him? He had no idea.
The doors opened with a cheerful chime, and Dr. Leavitt exited to the left. Thomas followed, quickly taking in a desk in front of glass partitions. Beyond that he could see the blinking lights of monitors and instruments. This floor was some kind of hospital unit, by the looks of it.
Maybe something had happened to Dr. Paige—maybe they were going to visit her.
Thomas tried to sound as nice and as at ease as possible. “So, can you tell me what’s going on today?”
“No,” Leavitt replied. Then added a “Sorry, son” as an afterthought.
Thomas followed Leavitt past the front desk and beyond the glass. They continued down the hallway, passing door after door, but aside from the medical monitors outside each room, none gave up any clues. The doors were all numbered, but they were closed, and the walls of frosted glass were obscured with floor-to-ceiling curtains, firmly drawn. Thomas could swear he heard voices coming from inside one room, and jumped at a sharp cry that left no doubt. He kept walking until an echoing scream came bouncing down the hall behind them. Thomas stopped and spun around to take a look.
“Keep walking,” Dr. Leavitt directed. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
“What’s going on?” Thomas asked again. “What’s wrong with that—”
Leavitt grabbed Thomas’s arm—not hard enough to hurt, but not exactly gently, either. “Everything’s going to be okay. You have to trust me. Just keep walking—we’re almost there.”
Thomas obeyed.
—
They stopped in front of a door identical to all the others, an electronic chart next to it with a bunch of information too small for Thomas to see from where he stood. Dr. Leavitt studied it for a moment, then reached to open the door. He’d just turned the knob when a commotion down the hall erupted in the silence.
Thomas turned to see a door open, and a boy dressed in a hospital gown, his head bandaged, stumbled out, two nurses supporting him. He was staggering as if heavily drugged, and he fell to the ground. He then struggled back to his feet, fighting off the two people who had been helping him moments before. Thomas was frozen, staring at the boy as he fell again, then drunkenly clambered to his feet and attempted to run away, swerving from side to side as he headed straight for Thomas.
“Don’t go in there,” the boy slurred. He had dark hair, Asian features, was maybe a year older than Thomas. The boy’s face was flushed and sweaty; a tiny red spot blossomed on the bandage wrapped around his head, just above his ears.
Thomas watched in stunned disbelief. Then suddenly Dr. Leavitt was standing between Thomas and the oncoming boy. One of the two pursuing nurses shouted, “Minho! Stop! You’re in no condition…” But the words faded to nothing.
Minho. The boy’s name was Minho. Now Thomas knew at least two other names.
The boy slammed into Dr. Leavitt, almost as if he hadn’t seen him standing there. Minho’s eyes were completely focused on Thomas, bright with dazed fear.
“Don’t let them do it to you!” he yelled, now struggling with Leavitt, who’d wrapped his arms around him. Minho was way too small to break free from the man, but that didn’t stop him from trying.
“What…,” Thomas said, too quietly. He spoke louder. “What’s going on?”
“They’re putting things in our heads!” Minho called out to him, eyes still wild, boring into Thomas. “They said it wouldn’t hurt, but it does. It does! They’re a bunch of lying…”
That last word died in the boy’s mouth as one of the nurses injected something into his neck that made him go slack, his body slumping to the floor. Within seconds they were dragging him down the hallway toward the room he’d exited, his feet trailing along behind him.
Thomas turned to Leavitt. “What did they do to him?”
The doctor, his demeanor wrapped in a surprising calmness, simply said, “Don’t worry, he’s just having a reaction to the anesthesia. Nothing to worry about.”
He seemed to like that phrase.
—
Thomas thought about running. He thought about it the whole time he watched Leavitt open the door, as he followed him inside the room, as he heard the door close behind him.
I’m a coward, he thought. I’ve got nothing on that Minho kid.
It definitely looked like a hospital room. There were two beds, both with privacy curtains. The one to the left was open, revealing a newly made bed. The one to the right had the curtains drawn, hiding whoever lay there—Thomas could see the shadowy figure of a body through the thin material. Medical equipment filled the room, as state-of-the-art as any of the equipment he’d seen in the labs during his tests. Leavitt already stood at one of the displays, perusing a screen of charts and entering information.
&
nbsp; Thomas returned his attention to the closed curtain, the bed behind it. Leavitt was a good six or seven feet away from him, consumed by what he was reading on the charts.
I have to see who’s behind that curtain, Thomas thought. He couldn’t remember the last time an urge had struck him so powerfully.
To his left, Leavitt leaned closer to the screen, reading something in small print. Thomas went for it. He crept toward the closed curtain to the right and pulled it to the side, stepped around it, rushed to the bed. Another boy lay there, blond hair cropped short, eyes closed, covers pulled up to his chin. Leavitt was across the room in a second, fumbling with the curtain. He grabbed Thomas by the arm, yanking him away from the bed. Thomas had seen the boy, though. And he’d gotten a good look at two things.
First, just like the boy named Minho, this kid had a bandage above his ears, a bright red spot of blood seeping through on one side.
And second, he saw the name on the monitors.
Newt.
Three now.
He knew three names.
224.9.2 | 8:42 a.m.
“What were you thinking?” Leavitt asked. He guided Thomas across the room to the empty bed. “We need to follow medical protocols, honor our safety zones, take the utmost care. Aren’t you aware of these things?”
Thomas almost laughed at the question. “Uh, no,” he replied, not trying to be sarcastic. He wasn’t even ten years old—of course he didn’t know those things!
“That boy has been through a surgery. He’s fragile. There are germs. Surely you know about germs?” Leavitt spoke with an eerie calm. “Viruses like the Flare?”
“I’m immune,” Thomas said. “Aren’t we all immune?”
“Most of you—” Leavitt broke off, sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose. “Never mind. Just…please don’t go through that curtain again. Is that understood?”
Thomas nodded.
“Now. I need to start prepping you.” Leavitt held his hands out and looked around the room as if getting his bearings. “The surgeon will be here in half an hour.”
A bubble of panic had been growing for some time in the pit of Thomas’s stomach. “So that kid…Minho…he was telling the truth? You’re going to do something crazy to my head?”
“Not something crazy,” Leavitt said, the strain of forced patience clear in his voice. He opened a drawer and pulled out a linen gown. “Something vital. And again, Minho was just having a reaction to the medicine we gave him—it happens only rarely. We’ll take care with your dosage, I promise.” He paused, turned toward Thomas. “Listen, you know the stakes. You know that you’re immune to the Flare. You also know that the human race is in serious trouble. Am I right? Do you know all this?”
Thomas had only one answer for that. “Yeah.”
“Then you understand why it’s so important that you cooperate.” Leavitt tossed him the hospital gown. “We’re studying the killzones of the immune so we can find a cure. You are immune. And all we’re doing today is placing a small instrument in your head that will help us understand what makes you different. I promise you’ll recover quickly, and you’ll be glad that we can monitor your vitals more efficiently. You won’t have to get your arm pricked quite so much!” He made this last statement with forced cheerfulness. “Now, that’s not all so bad, is it?”
Thomas kind of shrugged and nodded at the same time. The man made it sound so reasonable to cut open a kid’s brain. He looked down, turning the gown in his hands.
“There’s a bathroom right over there.” Leavitt pointed to a door in the corner. “Why don’t you get dressed, then get in bed. I give you my word that everything will be just fine. You’ll be knocked out, won’t feel a thing. Maybe a headache for a couple of days. And we have pills for that. Okay?”
“Okay.” Thomas took a step toward the bathroom, when he heard a girl scream out in the hallway. He looked at Leavitt, who met his eyes. For a long moment they stood like that, waiting to see who’d act first. Thomas did.
He was at the door in an instant. He threw it open and practically jumped into the hall, feeling Leavitt right on his tail. Just a few dozen feet away, a familiar scene played out in front of him. Two nurses—a man and a woman—were dragging a girl with brown hair down the hallway, and she was kicking and screaming the whole way. It was her. The girl from room 31K. Teresa.
There was no sense in what Thomas did next. He ran after her. The anguish on her face and the fear in her eyes had finally burst that bubble of panic swelling inside him.
“Let her go!” he yelled at the same time that Leavitt shouted at him to come back.
The nurses turned to look at Thomas and stopped, curiosity crossing their faces, maybe even a hint of amusement. That just angered him all the more. He picked up speed, already realizing that the entire thing was a lost cause. At least he would show Teresa that he tried.
At the last second he jumped, arms outstretched, as if he’d become a superhero, ready to take down the two—
One of the nurses swung a forearm in defense, connecting with the side of Thomas’s head. Sharp pain ignited along his cheek and ear as his world turned upside down and he landed hard on the ground; his nose banged into the wall just hard enough to stun him. He rolled over and looked up. Both nurses stared down at him as if to ask What’s wrong with you? Even Teresa had stopped struggling, though her face expressed something completely different: Awe. Wonder. Could that be almost a smile?
Thomas suddenly felt on top of the world.
Leavitt appeared, looming over him, a syringe in his hand. “I thought we’d come to an understanding, son. I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to do this.” He knelt down and stuck the needle in Thomas’s neck, compressed the syringe with his thumb.
Before he passed out, Thomas looked at Teresa again, their eyes meeting for just a few precious seconds. The world had already started to blur when they dragged her away, but he clearly heard what she called out to him.
“Someday we’ll be bigger.”
—
He had crazy dreams.
Flying through the air with some kind of machine strapped to his back, watching the world below him, scorched and ruined and lifeless. He saw small figures running across the sand, and then they grew, getting closer to him. He saw wings, then hideous faces, then arms outstretched, monsters reaching for him.
Luckily that one ended before he got ripped apart. The next one was much more pleasant.
Thomas, his mom, his dad. A picnic. By a river. He didn’t know if it was a memory or a wish, but he enjoyed it all the same. It created an ache in his chest that he thought might linger for a very long time.
At some point he dreamed about Teresa. The mysterious girl who lived so close—literally next door—and yet only one sentence had ever been spoken between them.
Someday we’ll be bigger.
He clung to those words. Saw her say them over and over in his dreams. There was something so tough about them, so…rebellious. He liked her for saying them. In his dream, he and Teresa were both sitting in the same room—his room, he on the bed, she in a chair. They weren’t talking, just…there. Together. He wanted a friend so desperately that he wished the surgery would go on forever, leave him in this dream.
But then Teresa started saying his name, over and over, only it wasn’t her voice. On some level, he knew what was happening, and his heart melted in sadness. The harder he tried to hold on to the counterfeit moment, the more quickly it faded. Soon there was only darkness and the repeated sound of his name.
Time to wake up.
—
He opened his eyes and blinked at the bright lights of the hospital room. A woman stared down at him. Dr. Paige.
“Doct—” he started, but she shushed him.
“Don’t say a word.” She smiled then, and everything seemed okay. Dr. Paige wouldn’t have done anything bad to him. No way. “You’re still under a heavy dose of drugs. You’ll be woozy. Just lie there and relax, enjoy the medicine.” She lau
ghed, a thing that didn’t happen very often.
Thomas did feel floaty, peaceful. The whole incident with Teresa seemed almost funny now. He could only imagine what those nurses had thought at seeing this little kid charging down the hallway, leaping into the air like Superman. At least he’d shown Teresa that he cared. That he was brave. He sighed happily.
“Wow,” Dr. Paige said, looking over from the monitor she’d been studying. “I’d say you’re taking my advice to heart.”
“What did you do to me?” Thomas mumbled, each word slurred.
“Oh, now you’re ignoring my advice. I said not to speak.”
“What…did you do?” he asked again.
Dr. Paige turned to face him, then sat down on the bed. The shifting of the mattress hurt something somewhere on his body. But it was a dull, distant ache.
“I think the Psych told you what we were going to do, right?” she asked. “Dr. Leavitt?” She looked around as if to make sure he hadn’t come back into the room. He wasn’t there.
Thomas nodded. “But…”
“I know. It sounds horrible. Putting something inside you.” She smiled again. “But you’ve learned to trust me a little, haven’t you?”
Thomas nodded again.
“It’ll be so much better for you, for everyone, in the long run. We can measure your killzone activity so much faster and more efficiently now. Plus, you won’t have to come to the lab quite as often to extract data. It’ll all be instantaneous, real-time. Trust me, you’ll be glad we did it.”
Thomas didn’t say anything. He wouldn’t have, even if he could speak normally. What she said made sense. Mostly. He just wondered why Minho and Teresa had freaked out so much. Maybe their surgeries hadn’t gone as smoothly.
Dr. Paige stood up from the bed, patted Thomas’s arm. “All right, young man. Time for you to let those drugs pull you back to sleep. You’ll be doing a lot of that in the next couple of days. Enjoy the rest.” She started to walk away, but then turned around and came back. She leaned down and whispered something into Thomas’s ear, but his eyes were already closed and he was fading fast. He caught the words surprise and special.