Rachel couldn't help the gasp that escaped her when she exited the tunnels with Brenda.
"Wow."
All around her, tall glass buildings rose high up into the air and almost seemed to touch the sky. Soft blue lights lined all the buildings while large screens built into the sides of many of the buildings displayed various pictures or slogans on how to keep safe from possible contamination of the Flare. The streets were fairly quiet by now with most civilians inside their own homes due to the mandatory curfew; only WCKD employees and police officers continued to patrol around the city. The cold majesty of the city reminded Rachel of the many collapsed cities she had trekked through in the Scorch and she wondered if all of them had been like this city back in their heyday.
"It's something, huh?" Brenda asked and Rachel just nodded.
"It's definitely something." She murmured before she followed Brenda.
Together, the two women snuck deeper into the city, weaving their way in the shadows to avoid being detected by patrols while they moved toward the nearest bus depot. They had just managed to work their way inside (with some cutting of wires on Brenda's part) when Thomas's voice called over their walkie.
"Frypan, we're in. How you doing?"
Rachel breathed out in relief; they'd been worried that Thomas and the boys would be stopped before they even made it inside the WCKD building.
"Yeah, yeah… I'm getting there." Frypan answered, his voice a little bit strained - probably from the climbing he was doing. "Tell Minho 'Hi' for me."
"Hang in there, buddy." Thomas encouraged before calling, "Brenda, Rach - what's your status?"
"Status is, we're working on it." Brenda muttered back as she and Rachel snuck around the front of one of the many buses parked in the garage for the night.
"Copy." Thomas called back. "Just make sure you're ready on your end."
"Don't worry." Rachel answered. "You know we won't leave you hanging."
She and Brenda exchanged mutual looks of understanding before they hurried quickly along the line of buses. Hiding from the security guard's line of sight, Brenda scurried along until she reached one of the bus doors while Rachel snuck her way over to the guard office. She watched as the men walked inside after the end of their patrol and shut the door before they settled into their seats in front of their security monitors.
Rachel snuck around the back to the junction box where she quickly fastened the hacking device Gally had given her and taught her how to use. With the device in place, the rebels outside would be able to access the security guards' cameras and wipe Rachel and Brenda's theft from their security feed. As a last safety measure, Rachel carefully slid a crowbar through the security room door handles, locking the guards inside; by the time they realized one of the buses was gone, they wouldn't be able to do much about it.
With her job done for the moment, Rachel hurried back to Brenda where the woman had managed to break into one of the buses. Brenda was waiting for Rachel's return and the younger girl shook her head.
"You never cease to amaze me, Brenda." Rachel sighed as she clambered into the bus. "Why do you even know how to break into a bus?"
"I'm a woman of many talents." Brenda answered as she started the engines before smoothly taking them out of the bus depot.
Of course, the plan couldn't stay simple for long. As soon as Brenda turned into the WCKD building, both she and Rachel swore as they saw the alarms blaring all over the building.
"Sh*t!"
Rachel stood up, holding onto the bus seats to remain upright as she stared at the building where they could see through the glass walls that the WCKD soldiers swarming along the stairways and congregating toward one particular floor.
"Thomas? What's going on?" Rachel called into her walkie but there was no response.
Instead, Gally was the one to respond as he hissed, "Rachel, Brenda, where are you? We're here."
Brenda answered as she pulled the bus to a screeching halt in the back, basement parking lot of the building where Gally and the twenty-eight Immunes WCKD had held captive were waiting. Rachel hurried to the doors while Brenda pulled up the brakes and threw open the door.
"Come on, let's go!" Brenda shouted at the group while Rachel leapt out of the bus and moved out the way to let Gally and the other kids in. Gally stopped beside her, helping her usher the kids inside the bus.
"Quickly, front and back, front and back."
"Where're Newt and Thomas?" Rachel demanded as the kids hurried onto the bus between them. Gally stared at her.
"They're not with you guys?" He asked and Rachel shook her head.
"Why would they be?" She demanded and Gally stared at her with growing horror.
"Minho wasn't in the holding cells, he'd been moved to the medical wing for whatever reason." He explained as he turned to look at the building he'd just escaped from. "Newt and Thomas took Teresa to go find him; they were supposed to be here by now."
"They're trapped in there." Rachel realized as she too looked back toward the building where the alarms were still blaring loudly.
She started forward when Gally pushed her back as he insisted, "Wait here, stay with the kids. I'll find them."
"Brenda can keep look after them." Rachel snapped back. "I'm coming with you.'
"Newt'll kill me if I let you come." Gally protested and Rachel just shot him a look.
"He doesn't control me and if you don't let me come, Gally, I'll stun your ass and leave you here." She threatened.
Gally stared at her, a little bit slack-jawed, while Brenda said dryly, "You should probably listen to her. She's nothing short of fierce when Newt's on the line."
Gally finally nodded and he pointed at Brenda.
"Just wait for us, okay?" He called as he pulled on his helmet and led the way back toward the WCKD building, Rachel hot on his heels as she pulled on her own mask.
The two raced toward the building where they blended into the troops of soldiers running around per orders. Gally indicated minutely at her and Rachel nodded to show she'd seen him before they split up, Gally heading out to the ground floor where the soldiers were starting to form a perimeter just in case Thomas and Newt managed to escape while Rachel followed a squadron headed up the stairs. She followed them to the twentieth floor; only to be hit by a sense of deja vu as soon as she walked out onto the floor.
'I know this place.' She realized as she remembered walking down this exact corridor toward the medical wing. When this was, she couldn't say but Rachel knew where she could go next.
Staying toward the rear of the squadron, Rachel slipped around a corner and away from the squadron that was intent on finding (and possibly killing) her friends. She sprinted down the length of the side hallway before emerging more composedly on the other side just in case she ran into anyone. It was clear as everyone gravitated towards the medical wing section, so Rachel sprinted again as she headed for the monitoring room.
The lab was surprisingly empty; apparently most of the workers had gone home at the end of the day. Reaching one of the computers, she quickly switched it on. It was locked and Rachel frowned. She'd seen Teresa's ID tag so she knew her user code but what would Teresa have used as a password? From her own vague memories of WCKD, Rachel recalled that passwords had to be letters or numbers or a combination of both - she remembered that she had been too lazy to bother adding numbers to her password. The security system had been a formality really, because WCKD was confident no-one could infiltrate their labs. And Rachel didn't doubt that mentality hadn't changed.
Rachel typed in 'WCKD is good'; she sighed when the computer denied her access. She leant back, thinking back to the fragments of memories she had of her past before the Maze. She knew from her dreams that Teresa had once used a password related to her mother although the name failed Rachel's memory now. But somehow, Rachel had a feeling Teresa would use Thomas's name: a constant reminder of what her betrayal had cost to push her to find a cure. Because that was the kind of person Teresa was. The ends would justify the means.
Rachel's wondering eyes paused on a book on the other side of the lab. On the spine was a series of numbers - and she suddenly knew exactly what Teresa would have used. A combination of Thomas's name and numbers: there were only two possible answers if she thought about it from Teresa's perspective.
She tried the first combination: 'Tom080868' - the date that Thomas and Rachel had betrayed WCKD. The computer beeped and the screen switched to a plain background with a few folders saved on the side. Rachel was in.
She quickly clicked on the most recently viewed files, most of which documented the tests that Teresa had been performing for WCKD and a few of which were the latest studies on the Flare. One file in particular outlined the detailed process, revised again and again, for taking an immune's blood and converting it into a serum that might cure the Flare. Every test so far had failed, and from Teresa's notes it seemed they had no idea why. Rachel frowned as she read the compounds that were combined and the theories that were being applied. Something in her mind was sparked from those notes, a knowledge of chemistry Rachel hadn't known she had.
But staring at the annotations and the notes that Teresa had made on a formula that had clearly been revisited constantly, Rachel realized that she knew the base the formula was built on: she and Thomas had helped create it. Her eyes raced over the notes, the marks Teresa had made on when the formula seemed to work before it was scrapped as the formula failed. The most recent note was related to a breakthrough Teresa had thought she had made in the formula as a little girl with the Flare showed signs of recovering only for her to succumb to the disease just mere hours before Rachel and her friends had kidnapped Teresa. Rachel stopped at those notes, staring hard at the formula.
It didn't look wrong - yet it hadn't worked. The Immune's blood they had used (from Minho, Rachel realized with brief anger) had been stronger than the ones they used before but it hadn't been strong enough in battling the Flare in the little girl. Eventually she had succumbed as the Flare grew too strong for the Immune's blood to suppress the symptoms. Rachel stopped as she thought back to when Dr. Mary Cooper had taken Thomas aside when Brenda had been infected. She had used his blood and Brenda was fine.
As realization struck her, Rachel was typing before she was even fully aware of what she was doing. She pulled up Thomas's file; ignoring the 'Threat' status and descriptions of why Thomas was dangerous that covered the first page, Rachel clicked around as she searched for his medical facts. She found what she had suspected: his blood status and his blood type. Immune; O. And apparently what WCKD didn't know yet was that his blood was more potent than other Immunes. Because how else was Brenda still alive and completely well when every single one of WCKD's tests had failed?
Rachel knew she didn't have much time left but something, maybe some instinct or gut feeling that her subconscious was aware of even if her conscious wasn't, had her typing in Newt's name. Again, she ignored the large 'Level 1 Threat' that was emblazoned on the front of Newt's file; instead she went straight to his medical data. And her heart stopped.
Rachel's hand dropped from the computer, her lips parted in shock as she re-read the same 6 words. Blood type: AB. Blood status: Non-immune.
Non-immune.
Suddenly, Rachel thought back to the article she had seen earlier from the files she had skimmed before focusing on Teresa's research: the latest research WCKD had on the Flare. It was now airborne. Her mind leapt to the notes she'd read on the early symptoms of the Flare: headaches. Paranoia. Poor balance. Sudden mood swings. Irrational anger. Aggression. Symptoms typically lasted for approximately three months but were exacerbated under stress.
"And he's gotta be pretty stressed." Jorge said. "You almost died twice today then he thought he lost you like I thought I lost Brenda."
And Rachel herself had thought it.
In the seven months she'd known Newt, they'd escaped gruesome death by Cranks several times, been captured upside down, run away from explosions on three separate occasions and narrowly escaped WCKD more times than they liked to count. And that wasn't even counting the crazy stunt they had pulled on that train that saved Aris and Sonya. The point was, they'd rarely not been in stressful situations since they'd first met and Newt had never once lost his cool even when Thomas or Minho had.
Then there was the multiple times Newt had rubbed his forehead in the past day; she'd assumed it was just because he was stressed and Newt generally had a habit of rubbing his face or running his fingers through his hair when he was thinking. But now, she realized he was hiding his headaches. Until he couldn't hide it anymore.
"Sorry." Newt muttered, backing away from Thomas and glancing down at Rachel, who was pale-faced as she stared up at him. "I'm sorry."
It was like a bucket of cold water had been splashed in her face. Rachel continued to stare at the screen where Newt's picture was staring back at her, his face lacking the warm smile she had grown to love, and she couldn't believe how stupid she had been. All the signs had been there. Newt clearly knew he was infected.
"Newt, what's wrong?" "I'll tell you later - I promise."
And that was why Rachel hadn't known. Newt had hidden the symptoms as best as he could because he didn't want them to worry. Didn't want her to worry.
"Newt." Rachel whispered, when suddenly the door to the lab opened.
"Hey you! What are you doing in there?!"
Rachel didn't hesitate as she fired at the man and sent him flying back where he screamed as he was electrocuted. Grabbing a couple syringes from the cart on the edge of the room and tucking them into her suit pockets, Rachel sprinted out of the lab.
"Hey! Over there!"
Rachel dashed quickly down the hallway as gunfire started to rain all around her. She fired back once, but didn't waste any more of her bullets; she had a feeling she would need them soon. Her fears turned to reality as she raced around a corner to find herself in the path of an entire squadron of WCKD soldiers.
Unmasked as she was, it didn't take them long to fire at her while Rachel fired back as she backtracked quickly. She turned down another hallway, sprinting away from the soldiers who started yelling as they gave chase. She fired back as she skid around a corner and she just glimpsed two of the soldiers falling with shrieks as they were electrocuted.
"Minho!"
Rachel's head whipped to the side as she heard Thomas's shouts, faint but coming from somewhere deeper inside the medical wing.
"Minho!"
Rachel raced toward the shouts, where she could also hear faint gunshots. They'd been hard to hear above the din the soldiers chasing her were making and the shots she was exchanging with them, but now that she was listening for it she could hear the fainter shots. She sprinted in their direction, her strong Navigator legs taking her quickly away from the men chasing her. After all, while the soldiers weren't exactly slow, they were nothing compared to the monsters that had hunted her at night in the Maze.
The problem was, she needed to find Thomas and Newt; and just staying alive was proving to be enough of a challenge. As if on cue to her thoughts, her gun clicked - she was out of rounds.
Rachel swore under her breath; all she had left was her pistol which she was very against using unless she absolutely had to. But she was close now, she could hear the gunshots further down the hallway. If she could just get to the others… and Thomas rounded the corner to slam right into her.
"Sh*t!" Thomas swore while Rachel fell back from the force of the run-in.
"Rachel?!"
"Not now, Newt!" Rachel answered as she grabbed him by the arm and hauled him down a different hallway as the boys' chasers caught up while Rachel's chasers rounded the corner from behind.
Thomas hastily followed them while Newt demanded, "What the hell are you doing here? You're supposed to be out of here by now!"
"Yeah, and so were you two sticks!" Rachel snapped as she cocked her pistol and fired.
Thomas's gun clicked from beside her as he also ran out of rounds; the boy tossed aside his empty gun and pulled his own pistol. Newt meanwhile turned as he heard noises coming from a side corridor and he shot down two soldiers who appeared around the corner, stunning them before they could even aim at the trio. But they were slowly running out of options as the soldiers who had been chasing the trio caught up to them at last while the trio were left with no cover.
Another soldier came running around the corner of a side hallway and Newt shot the man down while Thomas and Rachel fired on the men who were keeping to the end of the hallway, using the wall as a cover while they tried to bring the trio down. Their cover gave those men an advantage that Rachel knew would outlast them.
"Thomas, over here!" Rachel shouted as she grabbed Newt and skid around the man Newt had downed and around the corner into the side hallway.
Thomas followed quickly, barely avoiding getting shot as he did.
"I'm almost out." Thomas swore as he checked his pistol and Rachel agreed, "So am I."
A bullet ricocheted off the corner they were hiding behind and Thomas grit his teeth as he got up on his knees to peer around the edge of the wall so he could fire back at their assailants. Rachel prepared to do the same, when suddenly Newt lunged forward and grabbed something off the unconscious body of the man he'd shot earlier.
"Get back!" He shouted as he activated a stun grenade. Rachel's eyes widened and she pulled Thomas back while Newt tossed the grenade out into the hallway where it exploded and knocked out all the men who had been chasing them.
"Nice." Thomas gasped; Newt barely paid attention as he whirled on Rachel.
"Rachel, seriously, what are you doing here?" He demanded and she stared up at him.
He was sweating badly, his golden hair matted against his scalp, and Rachel knew instinctively that it wasn't because of all the running they had clearly been doing. The bags under his eyes were also more noticeable now, dark shadows that would only get worse. Newt frowned at the pain in Rachel's expression and he glanced down in confusion as she gently took his free hand.
"You really think I would have left without you?" She asked.
Newt stilled as he caught the tremor in her voice; he examined her more intently and his expression grew drawn as he realized she knew.