Climax almost there…almost there…
I estimated twenty chapters, but I'm going to cut this down to eleven, maybe twelve. I put too many things into one chapter, and didn't go into as much detail as I would've liked, but hey, my muse is working good, so nothing to complain about. I might do another story after I finish this one, but depends-I'm involved in a state level competition and exams are after that, so yeah. Plus I really want to read the Fever Code before starting a new story but I've to wait for my friend to buy it. And he's not going to until next year. But look out for one shots!
Response to reviews:
DustyBooks: Thanks! I saw that you updated Fever Dreams, but didn't get around to reading it yet. And yeah, whenever I read stories formatted like that, I tend to skip over a lot of words and just read the key points, so a lot of awesomeness is lost. Are you uploading files or just typing straight into the Copy-n-Paste section whenever you upload a document?
Maze Runner Junkie: Thanks! I like the idea of Newt's name being passed on, because obviously tons of people are going to be naming children after Thomas, since most Immunes there were saved by him, and Minho obviously played a huge part, but the majority of Paradise's population have never met Newt. So it's up to the others to pass it on.
Peacock Girl: Ooh, you still want Newt to live, then. Well, I've a surprise for you at the end-wait for it XD And actually since it's a given that Thomas would most probably end up with Brenda, Minho would probably form a bond with someone who's been through similar things, who can understand him, and so that leaves the girls from Group B. Then he would find out one of them was Newt's sister, and since all the girls from Group B regained their memories, curious and stinging from leaving Newt behind, he would ask about Newt, dredging up every memory she had. Then tada, love forms and then marriage. XD
One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.
Prototype: Chapter Eight
"It needs to work!" Janson stared hungrily at the screen as brain patterns spiked and fell. "Why isn't it working?! It's been the sixty third prototype already, something has to change! Trigger the Flare, anything!"
"Sir. The subjects are too weak-" Dr. Jones tried to explain, but got shut off.
"You don't understand! Nobody understands!" He yelled in frustration. "We need to save the world and time is trickling away! Hope is going away!"
"Sir." Dr. Callestan tried. "Both subjects are too weak to experience any sort of extreme emotion, and the previous prototypes have slowed the Flare down, so it's highly unlikely that we will be able to trigger the Flare."
Janson turned on them, and the wild glint in his eyes made all the scientists take in a sharp breath. Rumors had been floating around, theories were formed, but now, in this brief, terrifying moment, there was no doubt that Janson had contracted the Flare.
"Whose body is in better condition?" He hissed out.
"Subject B7 is currently conscious and pacing around her room, sir." Dr. Greene kept her gaze trained low on the floor, between Janson's boots as she spoke.
"Subject A5 is currently kneeling on the floor unconscious in a pool of his own blood, sir." Dr. Hong tried to keep the venom out of her voice. Dr. Callestan shot her a warning look.
Janson glanced at the digital clock on the wall. It was ten in the morning.
"Have Prototype-63 administered to subject B7 now." He decided. "Subject A5 can wait, but the prototype must be administered latest by four o'clock."
Dr. Hong knew that arguing was useless. The fact that he extended the time by six hours for Newt was already a miracle by itself.
Newt.
When had she started to call the boy by name?
"Oh, and do not enter the room to disturb subject A5." Janson reminded after Dr. Jones and Dr. Greene were gone to fetch their subject. "Give him food and refill the IV drip, anything to prevent him from dying on us, but we must minimize contact. There's no way to know if the prototypes would make the Flare mutate and by then even you Munies won't be safe."
A shudder passed through Dr. Hong as she bowed slightly. "Thank you, sir. I shall keep that in mind."
Thomas opened his eyes.
"What-"
"They had to sedate you. Man, you sure hit hard, shank." Minho rubbed the bruise forming on his cheek. He grinned at Thomas. "Welcome back to the world of the living. They used more morphine on you than necessary because they wanted to make sure that you stayed down until the thing was completely removed. Wouldn't want you to get up and start kicking the klunk out of Hans with your brain half opened."
Thomas got up and felt his head. No brains exposed, thankfully.
"Do you remember?" He asked Minho. Already memories were returning, but slow and steady, a trickle. He remembered WICKED as his earliest memory. Before WICKED, he could only remember flashes and glimpses. A warm voice, calling him Stephen. Sunshine and butterflies. His own pudgy hand reaching out to grasp a calloused one.
"I remember." Minho's gaze became faraway. "The world before the Flare. My grandparents, my parents. My homeland. Another language I never fully mastered before WICKED took me away."
Thomas suddenly felt a flash of envy as he realized that Minho had gotten the chance to experience more of the world before the sun flares, since he was born earlier. But then Chuck would probably be born somewhere in the middle of the entire apocalypse, among the first of an entire new generation who would know nothing but the scorching plains and Cranks.
He suddenly felt the need to store those memories of warmth, butterflies and cheesecake away in a treasure trove.
"Well, done reminiscing, shank?" Minho stood, and stretched. The sun rays spilled into the room through a dirty and cracked window. Thomas scrambled out of the bed as well, following Minho's long strides as he led them out of the room.
"Where are we going?" Thomas hurried to keep up. Despite being out of the Maze, Minho was still as good a Runner as ever.
Minho rounded another corner, bringing them abruptly into open air. Apparently the door had gone missing.
In front of them was numerous Bergs, people bustling about, prepping equipment and rushing about, yelling orders.
"What-" Thomas walked out, looking left and right, soaking in all the new information his senses were receiving.
"Thomas!" A voice yelled, and Thomas turned to find Brenda running towards them, a huge smile on her face.
"Brenda?" He exclaimed in surprise, and maybe a little happily, before he realized that he was supposed to be angry at her. Beside him, Minho was sighing and shaking his head, but he couldn't hide the little smile on his lips. "How did you find us?"
Brenda shrugged. "I went back to the alley, and you weren't there, so I figured that something happened and you had to move, so I went to Hans, since I figured that Jorge would take you there, according to our original plan. When I got there, you were crazy. Saying, 'WICKED is good' non-stop like that…Jorge and I figured that there had been some kind of failsafe, but none of us expected that failsafe to give us several bruises. We're lucky we managed to keep you away from the knives. Minho went after you were done, and his failsafe activated as well, but this time we were prepared and managed to subdue him without much trouble."
"And the correct amount of morphine as well. Seriously, I think that dumped a whole bucket of that into your system, you were out so hard." Minho grinned wolfishly.
"Well, Jorge just sent me to tell you to get ready." Brenda informed them. "And write down those WICKED plans. The Right Arm is sending in a whole fleet of Bergs, since they're quite confident you'll prove their theory right. So the plan is to drop you two off in a single Berg, and you are to infiltrate the WICKED base quietly. Vince will be going with you. When you prove them right, then you give him the plans and contact us to tell us that we can divulge all of our information, he adjusts the minute details of his plans according to the new information, then we take down WICKED."
"Actually from what I can remember, the most I'll be able to give them is just a floor layout, which you two can provide anyway." Thomas confessed. "The only thing I have that you two don't have is knowledge of the blueprint building and…Ava Paige…" He trailed off.
"Her phone number." Minho said suddenly.
"We'll give it to you." Thomas looked at Brenda. "Do you have a pen? I'm going to write it down."
Jorge handed over a pen, and Thomas grabbed Brenda's hand and scribbled the number down on her palm. "Careful not to smudge it. From my memories, Janson was a nasty shank, but Ava Paige was genuinely trying to help. Call her if…well. Call her when the right time comes."
Brenda withdrew her hand and stared at the numbers for a long time. "I understand." She finally said.
Minho shook his head again. "You shanks wanna go get a room?"
"No, thanks." Thomas could feel his face burn. "We should go."
"Bout time you realized that, shank." Minho slapped Thomas upside the head. He nodded at Brenda. "Lead the way."
Brenda tossed a grin at Thomas before leading them through workers and Bergs to reach an inconspicuous Berg by the edge of the compound. "Vince is aboard already. The rest of the fleet will leave later, so now it's just you three."
"Great, it's going to be a party." Thomas heard Minho mutter, but they ascended the ramp without making much fuss.
Vince emerged from the cockpit. "I saw you through the cam feed." He explained. "Ready to go?"
Minho eyed him dubiously. "You are piloting? I'm not tiptoeing around any feelings here, so pardon me, but you're a Crank!"
"And a better pilot than any of you Munies." Vince retorted. "Let's get rolling. Help yourself to the weapons in that room, and some sweet equipment too. Oh, and eat up if you feel like it. Might be our last meal. We've eleven hours to get there, so just do whatever you want."
Vince disappeared into the cockpit, and Minho cocked his head at Thomas. "Well?"
It was seven in the morning. They would arrive at eight, when darkness would take over.
Twelve o'clock.
"Subject B7 is showing signs of blood poisoning." Dr. Jones reported. There was a slight tremor in his voice. "Dr. Janson, permission to-"
"No. Let this play out. It could be just Stage One of healing. Maybe it'll purge the Flare somehow." Janson looked thoughtful, reading an article printout on how snake venom can be used to create cures. None of the doctors wanted to know what would be inside the next prototype.
On screen, Joanne hurled again onto the floor. She let out a hoarse, broken croak of a sob.
Newt remained motionless, as if he were just a dead body.
Minho and Thomas looked at each other for a moment, then pounced upon the pizza.
"I call dibs on the largest slice!" Vince yelled from the cockpit.
One o'clock.
"Her vital signs are going haywire!" Dr. Greene raised her voice a notch, a bit desperately. "If we don't do something soon, she'll die!"
"Quiet." Janson snapped, observing the live feed of Joanne as she lay twitching in the bed, almost comatose.
Dr. Callestan remained silent, observing Dr. Hong as she bit her lip, keeping an eye on Newt's feed.
The boy hadn't given as much as a twitch.
"Hey, shank. What will we do when we get Newt out of there?" Minho asked quietly.
Thomas paused in the action of drawing his diagram. "We can all go away somewhere. Somewhere safe, away from WICKED, away from the Flare. We could bring some people along, Brenda, Jorge, Gally. Run away from everything."
"Newt's not gonna be the same." Minho reminded.
"I…don't know." He admitted. "He still has the Flare, right?"
Minho looked troubled. "If he still has the Flare, but is still sane, I think I know what he'll ask of us."
"What?" Thomas asked curiously.
"Never mind." Minho quickly shook his head. "If he asks what I think he'll ask, don't do it."
Two o'clock.
Dr. Greene ran out of the room.
"Send someone in to perform CPR. If there's no response after ten minutes, bag the body." Janson said.
Joanne lay on her side, hands wrapped tightly around her own neck, veins bulging.
Newt opened his eyes and promptly spat blood onto the floor.
"Get some sleep, shank." Minho said in an uncharacteristically gentle tone.
"No."
Thomas couldn't stop worrying. He had helped devise a few of the earlier prototypes, and thinking back on it, he knew that it wouldn't do any good to the body. Newt might already be dead, for all they knew.
"You aren't doing any good writing down all of those equations. We can figure out how to help Newt feel better if he's sick when we get there, but most importantly, we need to have to strength to carry him out."
To carry a corpse out, Thomas thought.
Three o'clock.
"Is Subject A5 ready?"
"No, sir. His condition is worsening. Permission to-" Dr. Hong tried, but knew there would be no use in asking.
"What, make him more comfortable? No. We'll send someone disposable in later to inject the prototype. You two stay here and debrief Dr. Jones and Dr. Greene on the subject. I'm reassigning them from Subject B7 to Subject A5." Janson absentmindedly clicked through a series of brain patterns. Joanne's dying brain patterns.
"Sir! The prototype is-" Dr. Jones tried.
"Subject A5 has proved more responsive to the prototypes. Take for example prototype 62. It succeeded in helping him regain his sanity, but had no such effect in Subject B7. We'll have to study the brain patterns further to determine the cause, but for now we will have to test this prototype on him, so that we can compare the last brain patterns Subject B7 had provided." Janson froze the brain patterns on the screen, looking at them.
Dr. Greene stifled a broken sob.
Minho ran the blade of the knife across his finger. It broke his skin with a gentle touch, and Minho strapped it to his thigh, satisfied. He looked at the couch, where Thomas lay, sleeping.
He smiled ever so slightly, went to another room at the far end of the Berg.
He shut the door, took a deep breath, and sobbed his heart out.
Four o'clock.
"I shall deliver the prototype to Grant." Janson rose. "Observe closely the reactions in the subject."
Dr. Callestan moved the second Janson left, to a corner of the room where the security cameras barely managed to pick up. Dr. Hong took a brief glance at the monitor, her heart wrenching as she saw Newt struggling to stand, supporting himself on the bedframe.
"Listen here." He said in a low voice. "I know this Grant fellow. I've told him to stall as long as he can. You take my access card and get Newton out of here. I've been working on programming it to mimic Janson's access authority since Prototype-61. When Janson returns, I'll try to bluff him with the footage I've gotten from before, plus a little editing, so try your best to not set off any alarms. Take him to a vehicle, Berg or truck or whatever. Bring a first aid kit and basic necessities. Make sure he lives out his last few months in peace."
"What-"
"I know you feel as much compassion for the kid as I do. Take this, it'll explain more. Read it when you have a clearer head and not running for your life." He pressed a note into her trembling hands. "Now go."
Dr. Hong finally found the courage to speak. "Janson will have your head." She hissed angrily. "Literally. You know what he did. He cut off access to Paige, to any outside powers, not that there're any that can stand against WICKED. He doesn't have morals anymore. And people are desperate for a Cure. You won't survive, Luke."
Dr. Callestan smiled. It was a smile of someone truly at peace with himself. "The note will explain my next course of action. Go. Time is of the essence now."
Dr. Hong pocketed the note and took the access card. If he put it that way, then he probably had a backup plan for himself already. They had lost precious minutes arguing, and she would get to Newt in time. "See you later, Luke."
"See you later." Dr. Callestan smiled.
When the door slid shut behind Dr. Hong's back, he turned back to the computer and started the slow, daunting task of hacking WICKED's system.
Unnoticed on the screen behind Dr. Callestan, Newt pulled open the door of the bathroom, panting lightly, blood starting to trickle from his nose again. But he grinned in victory as he picked up the razor from the sink to add to his small weaponry of pens and one dictionary.
Vince decided that he could put the Berg on autopilot for an hour, with one of the boys watching over it. He walked out of the room, to meet Thomas coming in from another room. Seeing Vince come, he hastily put a finger to his lips in a 'shh' motion.
"Minho's crashing in there." He explained softly. "We should let him rest."
Vince nodded. He suspected that the kid needed more than physical rest. "Watch over the controls for me. I'm going to get a quick nap, refresh myself, eat something and gear up. You should do the same after I come back. Tell the other boy to do the same."
"Alright." Thomas agreed.
Vince turned away, and briefly tried to build a picture of the boy these two were so insistent on saving. He never thought to ask about him, but he imagined someone with soft features, a bright smile, eyes that held life and sparkle in them.
With a start, he realized that he was thinking of his own dead wife, Jenny.
Before she died, the features of her face had hardened and twisted garishly, her smile had become monstrous and creepy, and her eyes spat fury and hatred.
Vince wasn't sure how the boys would react to whatever monster they would find there.
Because it wasn't going to be whoever they cared for so much.
Four more hours to go.
"They did it!" His mother screamed in joy and delight, lifting Luke and spinning him around even though he was already seven, much too old for this. And yet he couldn't stop grinning.
"Stop it, mom!" He started to grin, guessing what it was.
"They did it they did it they did it!" His mother chanted, and his father hugged him tight. "You aren't going to die, son."
Luke's eyes widened, truly absorbing what it meant. "No more hospitals."
"No more hospitals." His mother agreed. Her smile was earsplittingly wide. "No more injections. No more cancer for the world!"
"You need to thank them, Luke." His father said. "They're the ones that saved your life."
"I'm not sick anymore." Luke said in wonder. "Granny and grandpa both thought it was a death sentence."
"Well, they beat death." His mother laughed jubiliantly.
"Who are they though?" Luke suddenly thought to ask. "I have to find them to say thank you!"
"They are the doctors." His father said, ruffling his hair. "They heal. They make sick people better. They chase the sickness away and bring back health for us."
Luke contemplated this as his mother rushed about the room, packing all the evidence of Luke's two month stay in the hospital. His father waited patiently, smiling at his son. He could spend an eternity looking at his child, thought lost but regained.
"I want to be one." He finally decided. "I want to make sick people better too."
"And you'll be a very good one." His mother pressed a kiss to his forehead. "Our little Dr. Callestan."
