Chapter 31. Calm.

The place Thomas woke up in was warm and very white. This confused him, as he could distinctly recall being somewhere else when he'd fallen asleep. He didn't know what was going on, but he didn't care all that much. He looked up at the ceiling. White as snow. Snow… running on snow… and grass… in a forest, headed to… WICKED!

All his knowledge came rushing back, and he sat bolt upright. He was in a bed, in what looked to be an infirmary. His wounded palms were bandaged. He had been covered by several blankets, and when he'd sat up they'd fallen from his upper body. The room was very cold without the blankets, and Thomas shivered. He was wearing a shirt he didn't recognize. It was light blue, thick, and made of wool. The place had to be incredibly cold if he froze in that.

The room was empty save for Thomas, but he had to tell someone about the Right Arm so they could prepare. He shoved the blankets off his legs and stood up. His dark pants were made out of wool like the shirt, and they didn't shut out the cold either.

He walked through the room unhindered and opened the door. It wasn't locked like he'd expected it to be.

He took a tentative step out into the corridor, then another. Nobody came to stop him.

He walked to the left, where he saw a door. He reached out to open it when a voice called out his name.

Thomas flinched and turned to see the man who'd just stepped around the corner. He looked surprised to see Thomas.

"You shouldn't be walking around," he said, coming closer. "Come." He went into the infirmary and Thomas followed him.

The man introduced himself as Mike. He seemed pleasant enough. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, and he was a bit shorter than Thomas. He explained that Thomas had passed out from exhaustion when he'd arrived ten hours ago, but that he was healthy otherwise.

He asked Thomas if he knew where the others who been sent out were. Thomas briefly considered telling him the whole story, but instead, he said it was important and he needed to speak with whoever was in charge. He had apparently been asleep for ten hours, and he didn't know how much time he had left. He had given the Right Arm one day to initiate their plan, so they could show up at any minute.

After making sure Thomas was feeling well, Mike had nodded and fished out a walkie-talkie from his pocket. He told someone called 'Jo' to 'gather everyone in the big room'.

The big room was a conference room with a large, oval table. Half the places were filled, with more people arriving every few seconds.

When Thomas looked at the people sitting at the table, he wondered if he had died outside the building, because why else would he see dead people?

There were Zart and Ben, and-

"Alby?" Thomas asked. He must be dead. He had seen Alby torn apart by Grievers, with no chance for survival.

The older boy turned towards him.

"It's you," Alby said coldly, eyes narrowed as he stood up and walked closer to Thomas.

Thomas wondered if Alby would punch him, or straight-up murder him. He didn't know what Alby knew, or what he had heard about Thomas. He didn't even know how he had survived the Grievers.

Alby —who had stopped in front of Thomas— seemed to tower over him, despite not being much taller.

"What are you doing here? Where are Newt and Minho?" He demanded, glaring daggers.

"I— I don't— how…?" Thomas couldn't get a sentence out.

"Where are they?! What did you do to them?!" Alby's voice rose to a shout.

"Fine! They're fine," Thomas said.

"Then where—"

"Alby! Don't yell at the poor boy. He was just about to explain everything," Mike chided. "Sit down, both of you."

Alby went back to his seat without complaint, looking furious. Thomas sat down on an empty chair on the other side of the table.

Once his surprise had faded and his thoughts had organized themselves, Thomas remembered what Rat Man had told them, that the boys who had been taken by Grievers or trapped out in the Maze were waiting for them at the second facility. He could see Zart, and Dave, and the other boys who had been thought to be dead when the walls hadn't closed and the Grievers took one person every night. He couldn't see Chuck anywhere. Maybe he had actually died. The thought made Thomas feel strangely empty.

Next to Zart was Ben, who was exchanging whispers with the boy on his left, occasionally glancing over at Thomas. He had been banished —thrown out into the Maze as the door closed right in front of his terrified face. It had been Thomas' fault, to a certain extent. He shouldn't have walked out alone into the Deadheads. Then Ben might not have found him. He might have recovered from the Changing and gone back to normal. At least he wasn't dead, unless this was another illusion. Unless Thomas was still in a simulation. He shuddered at the thought.

"Alright, everyone. Settle down," said a woman at the end of the table. She was middle-aged, with dark skin and braided, dark hair. There was something familiar about her, but Thomas couldn't remember ever seeing her before.

Everyone quieted down. The table was crowded now, and there must've been at least eighty people in the room. The large table had an extra row of benches on one side just to fit everyone in.

The majority of the gathering was made up of teens. Around twenty-five boys and twenty girls. So many people who were believed to be gone. It seemed unfair that Thomas —who hadn't even been in the Glade for two weeks— should be the one find all these lost people. He barely recognised half of the boys, and knew the names of fewer. He wanted all the problems to be solved immediately so everyone could be reunited with their friends, and their siblings, and their partners.

"Welcome, Thomas," said the woman. "I'm Joan, and I'm the head physician here. Now, I believe you had something you wanted to tell us."

"Yeah, right," Thomas said. He stood up and cleared his throat.

"As you probably know, group A and B —the parts of the groups that were at the other facility, I mean— were sent on a trial and told to go here." Some of the people nodded, looking at him with impatience, or worry, or curiosity. He looked at Alby, and saw that he was staring eagerly at Thomas. He wanted to know who was still alive, no doubt.

"Shortly after the trial began, we were attacked and captured by the Right Arm."

There was a collective gasp at this.

"We were taken to an underground bunker and put in a cell. Shortly thereafter I was taken to their second base by train, along with a few others. They wanted us to help them seize control of this building. I wasn't informed about the details, but presumably, they wanted us to let them inside so they could take all the people here out."

"You say 'us', but you are the only one here," Joan pointed out.

"Our plan was to pretend to be on their side until we could subdue them and free our friends, but they were taking too long, so we decided to go here by ourselves to force them to initiate their plan earlier. Three of us left and the other two were apprehended. We left the other two to explain what we had done and to be sent in here with the plan. We gave them one day to send the two of them in, so they should be here soon."

Alby stood up abruptly. "We need to prepare an ambush, then. Hidden snipers at the main entrance, or outside if they don't try to get into the building."

"Wait. No. We can't shoot at them!" Thomas protested.

"And why not?" Alby asked. "Are you on their side?"

"No, but I have seen the people they are going to send. Most of them are just scared civilians looking for a roof over their heads and protection from the Cranks. There are children and old people among them."

"Then what do you suggest we do? Throw down our arms and welcome them inside?"

"We could trap them. Lock them in a room somewhere. I'm sure at least some of them would be willing to change sides if they were given reason to think they would be treated well."

Alby shook his head. "Trusting them would be too risky, and we can't keep them locked in a room forever."

"But-"

"We can't just take your word that you're on our side. It would be stupid to do what you tell us to do."

Anger welled up inside of Thomas. "Do you really think I'm on their side?" He asked, trying to keep his cool.

"Thomas," said Joan, "I'm sorry, but you must see this from our perspective. You could have been sent here by the Right Arm to gain our trust and trick us. We want to believe you, but we can't take your suggestions on this matter into consideration."

The anger was gone, replaced by a cold sensation. Thomas felt like he had just been slapped in the face. He was trying to help WICKED now, even if it was only temporarily. They should at least trust his desire to protect his friends. But then again, he had gone against WICKED before, in the simulation, when he had escaped. He had done that to protect his friends, too. It had been the wrong way to go about it. Running away guaranteed the death of one of the most important people in his life. He knew that now, and he wouldn't repeat that mistake, but what if they were all waiting for him to take off again? Waiting for him to side with their enemies and destroy them.

WICKED didn't trust Thomas. Fine then, Thomas didn't trust WICKED. He wasn't on their side, nor the Right Arm's. His allegiance was to Newt, and Teresa, and Minho, and everyone else who had suffered with him. If he needed WICKED's help to get something, he would do what needed to be done to get it, and then they would be done.

"I understand," Thomas said. Better to play along for now.

"Are there any other suggestions?" Joan asked the room.

"Um… if we do the attack, but just… don't shoot to kill unless they do that," said a small girl.

"Yes, we shouldn't kill anybody unless necessary," Joan said, leaving out the 'we probably won't have much of a choice, though'.

When nobody had any other ideas, Joan sent two people to check on the weapons, and said that they were going to have another meeting when they knew more about the Right Arm's plan.

People got up and left the room. Thomas wasn't sure what to do, or where he could go, but it turned out he didn't have to worry about that. Before he knew it he was surrounded by the other teens. Alby stood in the middle with him.

"Let's go," he said. He didn't offer further explanation, but Thomas didn't have any choice in the matter. The group around him was moving, and he didn't want to get trampled.

They left the meeting room and walked down a long corridor. As soon as they crossed a corner, Alby rounded on him.

"Tell us. Now. Who is alive? Where are the others? Don't you dare trick us."

Thomas got tongue-tied for a moment. He was back against a wall with fifty probably hostile teens looking at him expectantly. There were so many of them that they took up the whole corridor.

Thomas took a deep breath, collecting himself. He rattled off all the names of the people in group A that were still alive. Group B was harder. He didn't know many names. He tried to describe a few others by their appearance, but his memory wasn't good enough to recall everyone.

Still, they kept asking. Names— so many names, and he didn't know most of them.

He kept telling them that he didn't know, that Harriet and Newt would come soon and they would know, but the mob wouldn't quiet until Alby yelled at them to shut up. He looked at Thomas with immense dislike.

"You're saying Newt and Harriet are coming. Who else?"

"Teresa and Sonya."

"Only them? Everyone else is still locked away in that bunker?"

Thomas nodded.

"And the two who went with you and got caught?"

"Newt and Teresa. I'm sure they're fine. One of the men who chased us let me get away, and he told me they wouldn't get hurt."

"Anyone infected?"

Thomas was surprised to hear him ask that. The Flare hadn't been revealed to them before Alby had seemingly died. He must've been told by someone else.

"A girl in group B— I don't know her name. And… Newt."
Alby's face fell. Thomas hadn't wanted to tell him; he knew that the two of them had been close, but lying wouldn't be any better.

"Both are okay, though. There's still time to find the cure."

"The cure? Really? I've seen the scientists, running around like headless chickens with no idea what to do. Either you're as stupid as those shanks or you're blindly loyal to them."

"You don't know that! You don't know what happened to the rest of us while you were here," Thomas said, clenching his fists.

"Walk with me, Thomas," Alby said. He sounded calm but it was a cold, steely kind of calm. "The rest of you, scram."

Alby walked down the corridor. The others walked in the opposite direction, and Thomas pushed past them to get to Alby. He wanted to know what the older boy had to say.

They walked until the other teens were long gone. All the while, Thomas waited for Alby to say something, but he didn't even look at Thomas.

"We're alone. Are you going to answer my question now?" He asked.

"what?"

"How do you know we won't find a cure to the Flare?"

"Isn't it obvious? They've been going at it for years with no results. They will just get more and more desperate and their experiments will get worse until everyone is dead. They saved whoever they could and kept us here so we could be used when the active group got wiped out. I told you, I've seen the people here work. They're in the library for hours on end until they come up with some new idea that might work, and then they do some experiments and realise that it doesn't. One guy got infected a few months ago during one of those experiments. Took a while for anyone to realise, and by then his whole family had the virus. They had me and a few others take them out and get rid of the bodies since we couldn't get sick. They will keep trying until they destroy themselves, and they will make sure to take us with them. We should go to the Right Arm. We can help them take out the guards and then we can leave this place."

"Are you kidding me? The Right Arm is holding people hostage. They're holding your friends hostage. And they wouldn't just let everyone go once they had this place, they are starting their own experiments!"

"Then we escape from them. They will be weakened after the attack. If everyone here unites with the ones who are captured, we can overpower them."

"And what about Newt? What do you think will happen to him if we escape and give up on the cure?"

"He doesn't stand a chance either way. If we stay to continue the useless research, he will continue to get worse, until someone has to take him out before he can hurt somebody. If we let him accept his fate, he can at least go with some shucking dignity."

"Dignity?" Thomas said in disbelief. "You wanna know what happened the last time we tried to run away from WICKED?"

Alby began to say something, but Thomas wouldn't let him.

"We had to go into a city to remove these things WICKED put in our heads. Of course, we couldn't bring an infected person into the city, so we left him in the berg to wait. When we returned, he was gone. He'd been taken to a Crank Palace. Do you know what that is? A Crank Palace?"

Again, he didn't wait for Alby's response.

"It's this small town, filthy and torn to pieces by all the Cranks that live there. The guards would remove the ones past the Gone, or so they said, but there were fights breaking out all over the place. It didn't help that the immunes who guarded the place were disappearing"

Alby paled. "And you left him there?"

"It's not like we wanted to leave him there. We came to get him, but he told us to go away. He didn't want to be around us so we could watch him go insane. Do you want him to go to a place like that?"

"N-"

"But the story doesn't end there. He actually did make it out of the Crank Palace, and I happened upon him. Long story short, he made me kill him. There was nothing dignant about it. It's either that all over again or staying, unless you plan on killing him before it happens."

"I will do it if he asks me to," Alby said, but he sounded strained

Thomas regarded Alby. He looked disturbed by the story. Thomas wondered if he was capable of killing a friend if asked, and decided that he didn't want to find out. He had to trust Newt not to make the request, that's what it came down to, in the end. Whether or not he believed he could be cured. Whether or not he believed Thomas. If he did, if he stayed, then surely Alby would stay, too. They had been friends for as long as they could remember, and Newt was just too shucking likeable to leave behind. And if Alby can order the people here around like lackeys, they will go where he goes.

Alby was an important player in the game of WICKED and the Right Arm and the Flare. Annoyed as Thomas was, he had to stay in Alby's good graces, or as close as he could get to it, anyway. He decided to start with some friendly conversation.

"How are you not dead?"

Alby stared at him suspiciously. "What?"

"You heard me. You ran at half a dozen Grievers and they ripped you apart. We all saw it. How could you possibly have survived that?"

"You know what WICKED can do, don't you? How they can control us? They made me walk over there and I stood frozen in place, surrounded by Grievers. They moved around a bit, shoved at me, nicked me with their blades once or twice. They made you see what they wanted you to see. Got both your reactions and a living munie to keep as a reserve. They did the same thing with a few others, but they didn't have the manpower to keep them all."

Thomas nodded. He remembered how Alby had walked toward the Grievers; trancelike, calm. He hadn't screamed once as he was seemingly killed.

"Just one thing," Thomas said, " he was trying to get to you —Newt, I mean. I stopped him, but what if I hadn't? Would he be here with you right now if I hadn't?"

"Nah, they wanted him in the trials. He's important, I heard them say so. Not sure why, they have other control-subjects, but I heard what I heard. They might've killed me, the illusion wouldn't have worked if he'd got too close, but they seem to think I'm important, too. They might've frozen him in place, or made someone else hold him back. They might even have made a Griever fight him for a bit as a distraction."

Thomas felt relieved. For a moment he'd been afraid he'd made a terrible mistake. That maybe his friend wouldn't have gone to the Scorch and gotten infected. The moment was over.

"Maybe I should thank you," Alby said thoughtfully. "If it had been real, you would've saved his life. Or maybe you knew what WICKED was planning all along, and tried to help them. I'll be generous and believe you acted out of the goodness of your heart. For now."

Thomas snorted.

He considered saying something else, preferably something sarcastic, but a loud beeping blared from above.

"The alarm." Alby said.

"A fire?" Thomas guessed. "Oh. No, of course not. It's them, it has to be!"

"Time to see if you've been telling the truth, Greenie," Alby said. He was smiling, but not at Thomas. He ran down a corridor, and Thomas followed closely behind, knowing Alby would lead him to the entrance.

He was happy to reunite with Newt and Teresa, Harriet too, he supposed, But the happiness was made bittersweet by the knowledge that they would have to make their move now. Time was running short, and what they told him could change the game entirely.