Chapter Forty-four

We were back on board the Berg, heading for Denver, the city where Teresa hoped to make contact with an organisation that shared her ambition of eliminating WICKED before they could start a fresh round of Trials. Ever since she underwent the procedure to remove the Swipe and restore her memory, her attitude to WICKED had changed from being prepared to go along with whatever they asked of her to being determined to put a stop to their inhuman experiments. "I only wanted to save people from the Flare," she was saying as we all gathered together in the Berg's mid-section. "That's why I went along with them for so many years. I told myself that, no matter what they did to us, it was all going to be worth it in the end. WICKED would find the cure and things could get back to how they used to be before the virus was unleashed."

"But that's not how I feel now." She sighed, then continued. "I feel . . . conflicted. I dedicated my life to WICKED, but, since I got my memory back, I've been able to see them for what they are. They're fanatics, completely obsessed with finding their precious cure, no matter how great the cost. And they're prepared to start the Trials over with new subjects if they have to; they've already got people capturing Immunes for them."

"How do you know all this?" It was Frypan who asked this question; he was sitting on the couch directly opposite the easy chair in which Teresa sat, with Clint and Aris on either side of him. The only males in our group now that we'd lost Bjorn and Jackson. Unless we could find Thomas and Minho - I discounted Newt since he was probably well on his way to becoming a Crank by now - and convince them to join us. But we didn't even know if they were still alive.

"When I came round after the Swipe removal, I overheard one of the doctors saying something to another," Teresa replied. "They didn't realise I was awake or they would've changed the subject, or gone somewhere more private. I hadn't heard much, just enough for me to know what they were talking about was important. So I pretended I was still unconscious and listened to what they were saying. Stuff about the Trials and how they weren't much closer to completing their blueprint than they were at the start. So they were gonna keep going until they found what they were looking for, even if all of us . . ." She gestured round at the kids in the mid-section. ". . . had to be sacrificed. And, just in case that still didn't lead to a cure, they'd made . . . arrangements for more Immunes to be brought to them."

"I think that's what got to me. The fact that WICKED weren't just prepared to treat us like lab rats, but would do the same to others. And that's when I realised they had to be stopped; otherwise they'd keep repeating the cycle over and over. Gathering Immunes, torturing them to stimulate their brains, letting them die. And for what? A shuck experiment that hasn't yielded the results the people behind it were hoping for and probably never will."

"And I helped with that experiment. I honestly thought it would work and, now that it hasn't . . ." Teresa's eyes filled with tears and she struggled to compose herself. "I can't change the past," she went on. "And I can't bring back all the kids we've lost. But I can make up for it by doing whatever I can to stop WICKED from wasting any more lives."


Teresa's speech got me thinking about what John Michael had written in the memo I'd found on the workpad. The one about collecting kids who were immune to the Flare and studying them in the hope that it would lead to a cure. According to this memo, the reason WICKED had done this was because they wanted "to save lives, not waste them", except wasting lives was precisely what they had done. Out of the dozens of kids they had used as human guinea pigs, only a handful were still alive; the rest had become the victims of a failed experiment. No matter how much WICKED tried to justify all these deaths as being part of the Variables, nothing altered the fact that their blueprint of the killzone, to use their term for the human brain, was nowhere near being completed. Even after more than a decade of research. And, in all probability, the breakthrough they were hoping for was never going to come.

Worse than that, WICKED were unable (or unwilling) to accept that their efforts were in vain. Which meant, if we ever ended up back in their clutches, we could look forward to being subjected to more and more extreme Variables as they pushed us to the limits of endurance. All in the name of completing their precious blueprint. And, when that didn't work and we all ended up dead, they'd just start over with new subjects. According to Teresa, Immunes were already being abducted and brought to their headquarters, though we had no way of knowing how long this had been going on. But we did know one thing.

WICKED had to be stopped.


By the time our little meeting broke up, we were agreed on our next course of action. On arriving in Denver, we would tell the authorities we were Immunes looking for a place to live where we wouldn't have to worry about being attacked by Cranks. Once we had been admitted into the city, we would blend in with the locals as best we could while we tried to make contact with an anti-WICKED group, hopefully without alerting the general population to the fact that we were fugitives from WICKED. In fact, Teresa said it would be best if we avoided being too open about our immunity, especially if there were people out there who were capturing our kind. A moment of carelessness from any of us and we could all end up back at the WICKED complex.

"Why would anyone want to sell Immunes to WICKED?" asked Emily, furrowing her brow.

"Because they're frightened," Teresa replied. "Don't forget, there's a lot of people out there who aren't immune. It's not just Yoko and Mona." She nodded towards the two girls; they were sitting apart from the rest of us, Yoko humming to herself again, Mona staring blankly ahead. "And naturally they're afraid of catching the Flare because they know what it will do to them. So they're desperate for a cure and they don't care how many people like us have to suffer before one is found. Also . . ."

"They hate us," said Victoria, concluding Teresa's last sentence for her. "Because they know we'll never get sick even if we have the fuzzing Flare virus rooted inside us. Did I ever tell you sticks how I ended up at WICKED?" I knew she had been one of the last kids from Group B to arrive at WICKED's headquarters - only Christie, Helen and Samantha had come later, the last two not arriving until after the Maze Trials had begun - but not how she came to be part of the Trials. Come to think of it, I didn't know that about most of the kids with me; even though we'd had our memories restored, it was something we didn't talk about.

"Well, I'll tell you," Victoria went on. "I was eleven years old. My parents and I had spent the last few years moving from place to place, trying to hide the fact that I was immune. They knew people would hate me because of it and they also knew WICKED were after kids like me; that's another reason we kept moving. But then someone found out about me - I don't know how - and they must've told WICKED because these people in suits turned up at our house one night. Except, it wasn't really our house; we'd just moved in because we'd found it empty. Anyway, they came to our house, saying they needed me to take part in an experiment. "What sort of experiment?" my dad wanted to know. They said it was to find a cure for the Flare and they hoped my parents would allow me to be a part of it, but my parents wouldn't let me go. That's when the people turned nasty, saying stuff about how there was no room for sentiment when there was a killer disease running rampant and, if my parents didn't agree to give me up, they'd shoot them and take me anyway. I knew then that I had to get away, even if it meant never seeing my parents again."

"My bedroom was at the back of the house, so I tied my sheets together and climbed out the window. I tried to run, but one of the people got me with a Launcher grenade and, by the time I recovered, I was on a Berg, being flown to the WICKED complex. I don't know what happened to my parents, but it's unlikely they're still alive." She sighed, then continued. "As soon as I arrived, I was told I had to call myself Victoria from now on. I said I'd rather keep my old name, but they quickly made it clear that wasn't an option. "We saved you from what's out there, you ungrateful Munie bitch!" they shouted at me. "The least you can do in return is accept your new name!" Then, when I still wouldn't change my name, they . . ."

At this point, Victoria trailed off, but I needed no-one to tell me what had happened next. The same thing which had happened to Flossie, Emily and however many other kids had tried to resist being renamed.


After we'd been flying for several hours, Tony brought the Berg down a few miles outside Denver. "This is as far as I can take you," he told us as he entered the mid-section. "From now on, you kids are on your own."

"Why can't you come with us?" asked Shelley, who was standing nearby with Martha and Clint beside her.

"Because," Tony replied, glaring round at all of us as though what he wanted to do right now was fly us straight back to WICKED, "I'm not immune and, after being around Yoko, Mona and the others, chances are I've caught the Flare. And Denver's a quarantine zone; the moment I try to enter the city, they'll identify me as a VCT - that's a Viral Contagion Threat - and haul my ass to the Crank Palace. Yoko and Mona too. And, even if you managed to sneak us past the checkpoint, there'd still be the Flare testers to worry about. They're pretty much what their name suggests, a sort of security force who randomly test people for the Flare. And, if they get a positive result, it's off to the Palace with you."

"What exactly is a Crank Palace?" I asked, recalling that Teresa had used those two words earlier. Like I said before, I vaguely remembered hearing the term when I was younger, but not what it meant.

In reply, Tony told us about how, a year or so after the Flare was unleashed, the Crank Palaces had been set up to give the infected one last chance to live a normal life before they passed the Gone, at which point they would be shipped out to areas which had been turned into wastelands by the solar flares and dumped there to die. It was meant to be a humane solution to the problem of what to do with a large number of people infected with a degenerative brain disease. At least that was the theory. In practice, the Crank Palaces had quickly become notorious for lawlessness; those sent there, knowing no punishment could be worse than the fate which awaited them, began to indulge in some of the worst kinds of criminal behaviour. Vandalism, assault and even murder were commonplace and nothing was ever done to stop it. Immunes were employed to act as guards, but they were more concerned with making sure the Cranks stayed behind the barricades which surrounded each Palace than stopping them from trashing the places which were meant to be their homes.

"So they're just left there to fight among themselves?" I asked, thinking it was a wonder any Cranks survived long enough to pass the Gone if the Palaces were as bad as Tony said. And that was the sort of place Flossie, Bjorn and Jackson would have been sent to had they not been dead already. Not to mention that there was still a strong probability of Yoko and Mona (and Newt if he was still alive) becoming the latest residents of the Crank Palace near Denver.

"That about sums it up. Like I said, you can't punish someone who's about to descend into madness, so . . ." Tony shook his head grimly. "About the only thing which doesn't happen in a Crank Palace is rape and that's only because all male Cranks are chemically castrated before being sent there. Can't risk them getting any of the females pregnant. Besides, how long do you think a newborn baby would last in such a place?"

Not very long, I thought to myself. Based on what I knew about Cranks, it was unlikely that a woman afflicted with the Flare would have any kind of mothering instinct left; more likely, she would see her baby as a source of food. Perhaps, if she was in the early stages, she might attempt to raise the child, but there would still be the matter of keeping it safe from other Cranks. Not to mention that she herself would ultimately become a danger to her offspring as the Flare virus turned her from a rational human being to a creature driven by base animal instincts. So it was best for all concerned if the Cranks in the Palaces were prevented from breeding, though this didn't rule out the possibility that a Crank woman might give birth to a child conceived before she was infected. Unless all newly infected females of child-bearing age were screened for pregnancy before being sent to the Palaces. I did not allow myself to think about what would happen if one of them was found to be carrying a child.

Just then, Indira, who had been looking troubled from the moment Tony brought up the subject of Cranks breeding - or rather the steps that were being taken to make sure they couldn't - turned and walked out of the mid-section without saying a word to anyone. Sensing that she needed a friend, I followed her.


I found her in the room where I had checked out the workpad, sitting on the floor. She had her back to the door, so I couldn't see her face, but I could clearly hear the sniffling sounds she was making. I knelt down beside her, touched her on the shoulder. "Indira?" I ventured. "Indira, what's wrong?" It wasn't like her to get upset for no reason, so I quickly racked my brain for anything that might possibly be troubling her. "Is this about Flossie?" The first thing I could think of that might explain Indira's behaviour. "Because, if it is, you should try to remember that you saved her from becoming . . . one of them." I couldn't bring myself to say the words "a Crank", not when they related to someone who had been one of my best friends.

"No, it's not about her." Indira turned and looked at me out of dark eyes that were brimming with tears. "Jenny," she said, "I haven't told any of the others yet, but . . ." A pause followed before she added: "I'm going to have a baby."

I didn't know what to say. How, I wondered, had this happened? As far as I knew, Indira had never done the necessary deed with either Aris or any of the boys from Group A, unless it had happened during the month I'd spent in that suite of plainly furnished rooms. The month during which I had been led to believe I was the only subject left alive. Certainly that was the only time she could possibly have conceived, but who was the father? And why was she telling me and not him? Perhaps it was because the boy in question was not currently part of our group, which left five possible candidates, none of whom struck me as very likely. Then again, there were the words that had been tattooed on Indira's neck a few days before the Scorch Trials began. Property of WICKED. Group B, Subject B25. The Mother. Could that have something to do with this?

"How long have you known?" I asked finally, reaching out to touch her on the arm.

"Since that rat-faced stick Janson debriefed me. I've been trying to find the right moment to tell everyone, but . . ." She sighed and looked down at her hands for a few moments before asking: "When WICKED brought us back from the Scorch, what did they do to you?"

In reply, I explained that I had woken to the news that Cranks had broken into the WICKED complex and killed all the survivors of the Scorch Trials apart from myself. I talked about being taken to the suite that had been my home for the next month and left there, about being deprived of almost all visual stimuli, leaving me with no means of distracting myself from my grief. Apart from when doctors came to test me, supposedly to see how well I was responding to the "cure" I'd been given, the "cure" which had turned out to be part of the test I'd been subjected to as part of Phase Three. I'd often wondered what WICKED had been doing to the others during that time, but I'd never asked any of them and none of them had volunteered the information.

Now, however, Indira began to tell me what had happened to her during Phase Three. "I woke up to find a man looking down at me. There was something about him I didn't like; I could tell from the way he was looking at me that he . . . wanted me. Then, he told me to undress and lie on the bed." Tears began to trace their way down her cheeks, but she forced herself to continue. "I knew what he wanted to do and I wanted to resist, but . . . It was like a switch had flipped inside me. I couldn't control my own body; I did what he wanted, then I lay there and let him . . ." That was as far as she got before she, overwhelmed by the ordeal she was reliving, broke down sobbing. I wrapped my arms around her, comforting her as best I could, feeling a burning anger as I thought of what had been done to her. And something told me it hadn't been a one-off, that she had received further visits from this man.

And, thanks to him, she was pregnant; she was going to become The Mother like her tattoo said. Had WICKED been planning to do this to her all along? And, if we hadn't escaped, what would they have done to her and her unborn child? Would she have been allowed to carry it to term and, if so, would she then have been forced to watch as they did unspeakable things to the child in the name of collecting more killzone patterns? I could not begin to answer any of those questions, but I did know one thing.

This gave us another reason to bring WICKED down.