James Dashner - The Scorch Trials

She leaned over until her face was only inches above his. Her hair whipped all around.

“I’m sorry,” she said, though he barely heard her. “I didn’t mean to-I mean, I know that you…” She fumbled for words, looked away.

What was she talking about? Why didn’t she tell him what was making that horrible noise! He hurt so bad…

A look of curious horror spread across her face, eyes widening, mouth dropping open. And then she was being pushed away by two…

Panic seized Thomas now. Two people, dressed in the strangest outfits he’d ever seen. One-piece, baggy and dark green-letters he couldn’t read scrawled across the chest. Goggles covering their faces. No, not goggles. Some kind of gas mask. They looked hideous and alien. They looked evil, like giant, demented, human-eating insects wrapped in plastic.

One of them grabbed his legs by the ankles. The other put his hands under him, gripped him by the armpits, and Thomas screamed. They lifted, and pain went coursing through his body. He’d almost grown used to the agony by now, but this felt even worse. It hurt too much to struggle, so he went limp.

Then they were moving, carrying him, and for the first time, Thomas’s eyes focused enough to read the letters on the chest of the person at his feet.

WICKED.

Darkness threatened to take him again. He let it, but the pain went with him.

Once again, he woke to a blinding white light-this one shining directly into his eyes from above. He knew immediately it wasn’t the sun-it was different. Plus, it shone from only a short distance away. Even as he clenched his eyes shut again, the afterimage of a bulb floated across the darkness.

He heard voices-more like whispers. He couldn’t understand a word. Too soft, just out-of-reach enough that they were impossible to decipher.

He heard the click and clack of metal against metal. Small sounds, and the first thing he thought of was medical instruments. Scalpels and those little rods with mirrors on the end. These images swam up from the murkiness of his memory bank, and combining them with the light, he knew.

He’d been taken to a hospital. A hospital. The last thing he could ever imagine existing anywhere in the Scorch. Or had he been taken away? Far away? Through a Flat Trans, maybe?

A shadow crossed the light, and Thomas opened his eyes. Someone was looking down at him, dressed in the same ridiculous outfit as those who’d brought him here. The gas mask, or whatever it was. Big goggles. Behind the protective glass, he saw dark eyes focused on him. A woman’s eyes, though he didn’t know how he could tell.

“Can you hear me?” she asked. Yes, a woman, even though the mask muffled her voice.

Thomas tried to nod, didn’t know if he actually did or not.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen.” She’d pulled her head back a bit and looked away, which made Thomas think she hadn’t meant that comment for him. “How’d a working gun get in the city? You have any idea the amount of rust and gunk must’ve been on that bullet? Not to mention the germs.”

She sounded very angry.

A man replied. “Just get on with it. We have to send him back. Quickly.”

Thomas barely had time to process what they were saying. A new pain blossomed in his shoulder, unbearable.

He passed out for the umpteenth time.

Awake again.

Something was off. He couldn’t tell what. The same light shone from the same spot above; he looked to the side this time instead of closing his eyes. He could see better, focus more. Silver squares of ceiling tile, a steel contraption with all kinds of dials and switches and monitors. None of it made sense.

Then it hit him. Hit him with such shock and wonder that he scarcely believed it could be true.

He felt no pain. None. Nothing at all.

No people stood around him. No crazy green alien suits, no goggles, no one sticking scalpels in his shoulder. He seemed to be alone, and the absence of pain was pure ecstasy. He didn’t know it was possible to feel this good.

It wasn’t. Had to be a drug.

He dozed off.

He stirred at the sound of soft voices, though it came through the haze of his drugged stupor.

Somehow he knew enough to keep his eyes shut, see if he could learn anything about the people who’d taken him. The people who’d evidently fixed him up and rid his body of the infection.

A man was talking. “Are we sure this doesn’t screw anything up?”

“I’m positive.” This from a woman. “Well, as positive as I can be. If anything, it may stimulate a pattern in the killzone that we hadn’t expected. A bonus, possibly? I can’t imagine it leading him or anyone else in a direction that would prevent the other patterns we’re looking for.”

“Dear God above, I hope you’re right,” the man responded.

Another woman spoke, her voice high, almost crystalline. “How many of the ones left do you think are still viable Candidates?” Thomas sensed the capital letter in that word- Candidates. Confused, he tried to remain still, listen.

“We’re down to four or five,” the first woman answered. “Thomas here is by far our greatest hope. He responds really sharply to the Variables. Wait, I think I just saw his eyes move.”

Thomas froze, tried to stare straight ahead into the darkness of his eyelids. It was hard, but he forced himself to breathe evenly, as if asleep. He didn’t know exactly what these people were talking about, but he desperately wanted to hear more. Knew he needed to hear more.

“Who cares if he’s listening?” the man asked. “He couldn’t possibly understand enough to affect his responses one way or the other. It’ll do him good to know we made a huge exception to get that infection out of him. That WICKED will do what it has to when necessary.”

The high-pitched-voice lady laughed, one of the most pleasant sounds Thomas had ever heard. “If you’re listening, Thomas, don’t get too excited. We’re about to dump you right back where we took you from.”

The drugs coursing through Thomas’s veins seemed to surge, and he felt himself fading into bliss. He tried to open his eyes, but couldn’t. Before he drifted off he did hear one last thing, from the first woman. Something very odd.

“It’s what you would’ve wanted us to do.”

The mysterious people were true to their word.

The next time Thomas woke up, he was hanging in the air, strung tightly to a canvas litter with handles, swaying back and forth. A large rope attached to a ring of blue metal held him as he was lowered from something huge, the whole time accompanied by the same explosion of hums and heavy thumps that he’d heard when they’d come to get him. He gripped the sides of the litter, terrified.

Finally, he felt a soft bump, and then a million faces appeared around him. Minho, Newt, Jorge, Brenda, Frypan, Aris, the other Gladers. The rope holding him detached and sprang up into the air. Then, almost instantaneously, the vessel from which he’d been lowered vaulted away, disappearing into the brilliance of the sun directly overhead. The sounds of its engines faded, and soon it was gone.

Then everyone spoke at once.

“What was that all about?”

“Are you okay?”

“What’d they do to you?”

“Who was that?”

“Have fun in the Berg?”

“How’s your shoulder?”

Thomas ignored it all and tried to get up, but realized that the ropes holding him to the litter still bound him tightly to it. He found Minho with his eyes. “A little help here?”

As Minho and a couple of others worked on untying him, Thomas had a disturbing thought. The people from WICKED had shown up to save him pretty quickly. From what they’d said, it was something they hadn’t planned on, but they’d done it anyway. Which meant they were watching and could swoop in to save them whenever they wanted to.