Disclaimer: Don't own The Scorch Trials.
Chapter Fifty:
"Hello?" I said stepping into the mildly lavish medical tent. The smell of antiseptic stings my nose as Brenda was out cold on a bed. Jorge sat beside her, stroking her hair softly. The woman was at her desk working with a blood culture, writing things down and labeling vials.
"Thanks for sticking your neck out for her, Hermano." Jorge said praising me for common decency.
"You did save our hides so, of course I was going to help."
"You and Thomas are really amazing, look I'm leave, keep an eye out okay?" I nod then shake his hand firmly as he pats me on the back.
"Please, please have a seat, Ross I'll be right with you in a moment.
"Ok ma'am."
"Please call me Mary."
Mary sat at her desk finishing her work as I got snug in the chair. Looking over at Brenda time to time, she was at ease. She didn't deserve to suffer the Flare, but she said Thomas was able to help her so I trust Mary on her word.
Minutes past by before she turns to face me. She had a serious look on her face, she clearly knows me and Thomas, but I haven't the foggiest on who she was in the past.
"Ross, can you tell me about what you've experienced. Do you remember anything from the past?
"For starters I helped make the Maze and it's Trials. Personally I had a hand in making the Grievers that WICKED used against those in the Maze. Snippets of a lasting friendship with Thomas. Then there blanks, like torn out pages. Both past and present, then just my arrival in the Maze all the way to here." I said recalling what remain in my mind.
"So beside that nothing else?" Mary probed.
"No, really just fracture pieces to a massive puzzle. I've had chairman's of the board try to kill me, two to be exact. Can't say why they wanted me dead.
"Interesting, anything else I should know?"
"My blood is toxic to Grievers and I had a tattoo on my back that once labeled me a biohazard. Other then that I have no inkling to my past, I wish I could be of more help.
"I could potentially help you with that, it wouldn't be as potent as what WICKED uses to recover memories. But in exchange I'd like to study your blood." She said rather intrigued.
"Sure. I just want to remember who I was, to any degree." I said rolling up my sleeve so she could draw blood.
Mary took a yellow elastic band and tied it around my wrist to constrict blood-flow. She rub some rubbing alcohol on lower wrist then began to lean in with a short needle, hitting my veins with sharp prick. Automatically it caused me to hiss in pain. She drew thtee vials full then bandage up the injection site.
"You're blood is rather dark, lack of water will do that." She smiles warmly but there was something else to it. She put the blood into a machine that gyrates for a few moments befot reaching into her desk for a unused syringe. Mary hurried over to her medicine cabinet and grabs a handful of liquids and mixes them into a sperate device, splicing together the hues of orange and green to a brown colored is left.
Swiftly she loads the syringe in the most perficent tactful motion as the liquid settles inside the syringe carefully.
"So what is it?"
"How can I explain?" She hums softly. "This concoction helps to open mental passways once blocked off, unlocking and retaining long term memory. Its not a strong as what WICKED wired you with, but with hope it should jog your deeper memories.
"Makes sense," I said trying to be brave. Rather surprisingly she shot the needle into my shoulder and pressed down on the plunger as the liquid ran out into my blood stream. My arm goes numb instantly.
Mary takes me by the hand leads me to a small cot and lays me back, as things start to flicker in my vision. "You might experience so mild discomfort before passing out. Not to worry you be out before you know it, but I hear the post dream state hallucinations are tense so pay them no mind." She say very gently as she places a pillow under my head before heading back to her work.
My eyes grow heavy, shadows and stars are dancing in my line of sight, my arm hurts and I began to sweat some as everything seems so far away, voices echo in and out my ear, I can see the Glade clear as day.. Suddenly I felt myself twitch and shake as Grievers, Stalkers and the bulb monster all lung forward at me. I shake and cry before closing my eyes, that's when the darkness grabs hold and everything is calm and stable. I was officially out cold.
Flash Back-
Test tube, machines attached to my body, there is endless pain. It courses through out my body like a tremendous fire burning in my veins. There a sereval people in the room with hazmat suits on. I can see my arm pulsing with dark blue veins stretching and extending around the rest of the body. It hurts, I want nothing more for it to stop.
"Negative Results Test Eight. Now performing Test Nine." Said a person standing above the bed which kept me locked in place.
"It hurts, why. Why are you doing this to me?"
"It's for the betterment of humanity, WICKED is good." Said a faintly blurry woman across from me. "Endure it for me son, if anyone can it's you."
There is a sharp jagged flash of pain across my skull. A man pulls down a laser beam from a over head device aimming it towards the crown of my head, before plunging a small syringe into my left eye. Then there was nothingness.
Weeks past as I lie in recovery before being allowed to Interact with the others. Thomas and Teresa rush up towards me, and pulls me into Teresa's room.
"Should I or you?" Teresa asks.
"I'm still not used to it myself." Thomas said stretching his arms rather antsy.
'Hello do you read me?' I stumble to the floor in fear as I heard Thomas voice but didn't see his mouth move. Then I realized what it was, he was speaking me into my head.
"How… How are you speaking inside my head?" I blurt out.
"Easy, me and Thomas been doing it for sometime now, but Dr. Paige said it would take longer for you to adjust. Your mind and body really tried it's hardest to reject the surgery." Teresa explains.
"I don't recall much but did it hurt like you're going to die? Cause that all I felt during the operation."
"No…" They both shook their heads in confusion.
"Look you need to rest, adjust to the implant. You'res is a bit more advanced. You can connect a conversation between three people, unlike us which is one at a time." Thomas said leading me to the room.
"I want to see the others."
"What you need to see is your bed, Dr. Paige told us to make sure you'd rest. She is your- after all." Teresa said leading into the bed as Thomas pulled a wrapped package from my desk.
"What's this?" I question rather weakly.
"It's a little gift that all of us did for you. After all you were in a coma for two weeks so I guess what I'm trying to say is…"
"Happy 12th birthday." They said in unsion.
Thomas and Teresa parted ways with me as I'd settle into my bed. Did I really miss my birthday during the operation. I urge myself to resist opening it. But that falied as I torn through the construction paper. Wrapped neatly was a picture frame of everyone taking a photo. I'm surprised that they managed to pull it off. Everyone seem happy in the picture. But suddenly a memory resurged in my mind.
Eight people probing me over and over hours on end, the feeling of death hovering over. The termedously awful pain. The experiments, before thing's blacked out. They, they… The Psychs cut opened my head and dug around… Injecting me with different pathogens. Submerging me underwater for hours on end hook up to a rebreather. They slice open my lower arms pulling and experimenting with the very tendons inside my musclar system. They cut open my back and extracted bone marrow and probed my spinal cord.
Everything flooded my mind as the picture frame slips out of my hand and shatters on the floor. There is liquid running out my eyes, it isn't water it's blood. It hurts everything hurts so much as I rush out of my room and cling and glide along the walls screaming in misery as I try reaching for some to help. Eventually a tall man with all black hair grips me by carrying me out of the living quarters.
"Make it stop, please make the pain stop, the memories."
"Well get you help son!" He said so assure of himself.
"Kill me…!" I let out in a last agonizing breath before passing out.
When I awake I'm in a medical bay, as doctors swoon over me.
"Post Transfer Regression." A Pysch spoke.
"How, it shouldn't be possible? He had been drugged before exiting isolation. They should of repressed the incident!"
"Get Dr. Paige on the line, tell her it a code Zero. We're prepping for a short term swipe."
"Get away from me!"
"Calm down we're here to help."
"No! I know what you've done to me, don't touch me. You're evil every last one of you." I kicked and scream at the doctors.
"Get him sedated now! We're proceeding with the swipe."Over ten people force me into submission, before long I feel as docile and cooperative just as planned.
Flash Back Ends:
"Ross. Ross…. Ross.…..! This isn't good, he's going comatose. Bring me the EKG before he flat lines."
"Right away Mary."
"Oh dear, I should of know this wasn't a perfected way of connecting one's severed synapses. Hang in there."
Where am I. There is different then anything I've experienced, it just white void stretching endlessly. Was this the afterlife? No… It can't be.
"So you know?" A voice says before appearing from the blinding light.
"Who are you?" I ask.
"I'm you." Said the figure who became more apperent. It was a younger iteration of myself. He was short and dressed in white standard WICKED uniform.
"Am I dead?"
"Not exactly, but you'll be very soon unless." He said rather ominously.
"Unless what?" I ask more demanding.
"I can't list every contrived notion that might or might not save you." My younger self said walking closer.
"What about the memories?"
"That's not all of them. It's just a puzzle you might get to solve one day. But that's not what you're really concerned about, is it?" He question quizzically.
"You're right. If I'm not dead, then what is this place."
"Some would call Purgatory. Others would say it's your brain way of protecting you with something soothing. Just long enough as you pass from this life to the next. Either way this place is whatever you want it to be. Real or not, it's how you choose to interpret."
"Basically my body is lingering on, trying to save us."
"Basically."
"What about our future?"
"I don't know much, just as about the same as you. But wherever it leads. Our hands will be stained in blood and chaos. I'm not sure about the finer details though." My younger self said as he circles around me.
"That's not true, I wouldn't turn down that path. All of this suffering when's it gonna end?
"I couldn't say. But I do know our bonds to our friends, it's a reprieve in itself. Even if we're too blinded by the path ahead."
"Everything they did to us, the experiments the surgery's. It was real? But why?"
"That's something you'll have to ask her, if we ever see her again."
"Her who?"
"Ava Paige…. Our-" Then suddenly he was gone. And I was alone.
"Our what!?" I screamed with every ounce of my being."
Gradually the white void began falling apart. Piece by piece, then….
"Clear!" A voice shouts out loud.
Abruptly my eyes shot open and my chest rose with my body, exhaling what seem to be a breath I had been holding. I shot up in mild discomfort as there is a paddle on my chest. Mary, Vince, Brenda and Jorge surrounding me all shocked and surprised with worry smudge across their faces.
"Welcome back to world of the living Hermano." Jorge said but I only heard muffle static as the volume of the world was lowered.
"What happened?"
"He made it, interesting." Vince said also his voice was too lowered.
"I thought we lost you!" Brenda said hugging me. "They told me what you and Thomas did for me. Don't ever scare my like that again.
"Can someone please explain!" I finally bark.
"There was no easy way to say this," Mary began. "You were dead for a minute and forty six seconds."
My heart dropped and nearly stopped again as I crumble back into the cot. "I. I died?"
"Yes, it was shortly after you body began to twitch and seized. Your nose began to bleed and your eyes rolled back into your skull. After a hour under the influence of the drug, your vitals began to drop. At first you were heading to a comatose state. But all the compulsions, it was to much on your heart. It gave out under the strain. Something termedous in you're recognitive recollection must've trigger this episode, to say the least." Mary said rather nervous.
"The horrible, horrible things WICKED did to me when I was a child. That's what resurged. It was torture under the guise of medical advancement."
"You should take it easier we can discuss your memories later."
"I not going to be a burden, if we're leaving first light then I need to pitch in." I said getting up off the cot. Yet immediately the gravitas of my predicament surges along my body as I could barely stand. Thankfully Vince and Jorge are there to catch me.
"No way Hermano, you need to recover. There are enough able body people to take care of the heavy lifting."
"That's right kid, you just died. You shouldn't excerting yourself let alone be moving.
"Vince, please have food brought for Ross and Brenda, I need to start packing my medical supplies, as well find a pain meds for the two of them."
"Alright I'm on it." Mary and Vince both left the tent.
"Brenda make sure he doesn't get up. I'll be back shortly."
"I got it." She replied as he to left the tent. "Now just relax, I can guess what your thinking. Yoy need to see Thomas. Well don't, he knows the situation."
"I guess there no point in aguring."
"For once a guy takes my advice. Tell me again why you're single?"
"Seriously?" I rolled my eyes at her.
"Fine, but if I can take a guess it involves Teresa?"
"No!" I said rather quickly.
"Don't lie. You have feeling's for her. If anyone else did what they did to Thomas they be buried six feet under." She had a point. "But she generally doesn't feel the same way about you. I totally understand that feeling." She said a bit flustered.
"You're in love with Thomas, aren't you?"
"In love, no way!" Her face began to turn red.
"Sure…" I said rolling my eyes at her once more.
"Is it that obvious?"
"Yeah I suppose. I see myself in you. It's how you stare at Thomas it's the same way I stare at Teresa."
"It's pathetic isn't it?"
"I wouldn't say so, I believe true love waits." Suddenly Newt's face appears In my head. As I lay back staring at the ceiling.
"You're such the romantic." She laughs.
"Hopelessly romantic." I add.
"Hmmm. Say in a year or so from now, if neither one of us are with the one we want. We give it a shot?" Brenda said as I hear her turning on her side to face me.
"It's a date." I laugh a little.
"Yeah a future date." Brenda smile returned a little.
"Can I ask you something Brenda?" I ask turning to face her.
"Sure."
"Supposed I have feeling for someone close to me, but admitting them to said person changes the dynamic of our friendship for the worse. What should I do? And I don't mean Teresa."
"Life is short. Don't live on what ifs. If it's something that meaningful to you, do it. It will become a living hell for you if you have certain regrets you could of prevented."
"Thanks, I needed to hear that. Maybe just maybe I'll take the chance when it appears."
"I hope that helps."
"It did, I'm glad things work out the way they happen. It nice to have someone to talk to who doesn't feel the need to tell me what I want to hear."
"Then can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"If anything does happen to me, if I do turn I a Crank. Promise me you'll look after Jorge. He'll be lost without me. Knowing that he'll be okay after I'm gone is all I ask for."
"Brenda… You shouldn't talk that way. But if it put you at ease. Then I swear on my life, I will stand by his side to the end."
"Thank you." Brenda fell quiet she wasn't all that better but there was some improvement. Had she been straining herself to stay awake because of me. Brenda you can rest easy.
Dead huh? That's going to be a story to tell, but I really can't let things as they stand. Soon enough, our new lives can began. I can only wait to dawn to see what happens next. It's really anyone guess, but I feel a bit tense to think. I need to worry of my swift recovery post haste. And so I question no longer what doesn't need to be answered for now. Now we wait.
A/N: We are coming to ending, just five more to go.