The Fever Code

by James Dashner

‘The ends justify the means,’ Rachel said somewhat bitterly. ‘It should be WICKED’s official logo. They should have a giant banner draped across the front entrance. The ends justify the means. But I’m in.’

He didn’t respond. He stared at the floor. ‘Tom?’ Teresa said. ‘I need you with me on this. With us. Please.’ He didn’t feel well. He didn’t feel well at all. He stood up. His thoughts raced as he searched for the perfect words. He knew that they would do what Dr Paige needed them to do. They’d come too far to turn back now. He had friends out in the Maze, Chuck to think about, a world to think about. He’d do it. The Purge. It had to be done. And now he needed to say something smart, something profound, something that would bind them together and start the terrible journey. ‘This sucks.’

So we kill them. It felt like letting go of some vital part of being human.

I only have two fingers left. I wrote the lies of my farewell with two fingers. That is the truth. We are evil. They are kids. We are evil. We should stop, let the Munies have the world. We are evil. We can’t play God. We can’t do this to kids. You’re evil, I’m evil. My two fingers tell me so. How can we lie to our replacements? We give them hope when there is none. Everyone will die. No matter what. Let nature win.

‘They’ll take your brain in the end,’ Anderson said. ‘They’ll take it out, look at it for a few hours, then probably eat it. You should’ve run when you had the chance.’ Thomas couldn’t move; the sudden clarity in the man’s eyes scared him more than anything else that day.

‘Cranks,’ Teresa replied, finally letting herself relax as she dropped the gun to her side. ‘Not people, Cranks.’ Thomas got to his feet. ‘I didn’t realize those were two different things.’ She gave him a hard look that scared him.

He lifted his head just in time to see the Crank topple off him and slump to the ground. A bloody hole marked the side of his temple, and signs of life had already fled his eyes. Thomas looked up at Teresa, who was trembling, still aiming the gun at the same place where she’d shot it. ‘There’s two more,’ Thomas said, feeling the detachment in his voice.

What a world Thomas lived in. Illness, death, betrayal. His friends subjected to cruel trials that might never mean a thing. A world baked, lying in ruin. A month ago, he’d helped murder more than a dozen human beings in a matter of hours. And every day since, he’d lived in a pit of self-loathing and guilt, avoiding his friends at all costs. Even living in a complex bursting to the seams with so-called Psychs, no amount of therapy had helped him cope with the horrors of the Purge. Nor would it ever. He was changed. At least he understood that.

Newt reached out and started climbing the ivy. His muscled arms made it look easy.

‘I don’t know who you people are, but I hope you’re happy. I hope you get a real buggin’ kick out of watching us suffer. And then you can die and go to hell. This is on you.’ Newt let go of the vines and kicked away from the wall, plummeting out of the camera’s view. The beetle blade hurried to reposition itself, and all Thomas heard was the rustling of its movement and then a distant hard thump. The view bounced its way down to the ground, then locked on Newt. He was lying on his side with a leg pulled up, arms wrapped around it. He rocked back and forth, groaning. Those groans turned into sobs. A deep, painful cry that made Thomas’s chest hurt. Newt suddenly let out an anguished howl, then screamed into the air. ‘I hate you. I hate you!’

Newt, Newt, Newt, Thomas thought, feeling as if the very air around him were turning black. You’re not even immune, man. You’re not even immune.

‘It’s not okay,’ Thomas said. He turned and walked away, scared he’d say something he might regret. Dr Paige was full of lies. Just full of them.

If only he, Teresa and Chuck could run away and start a new life together. But then he thought of Newt. About his friend falling from the wall and how he wasn’t immune. They needed a cure. And if they found one, everyone would be released – Alby, Minho, Newt, Chuck, Teresa, even Aris and Rachel. Maybe they could all live in the same neighbourhood, grow old together, sit around and stuff themselves with food and tell their kids stories about the time they’d saved the world.

Newt was talking to Minho, who’d just returned from running the vast maze itself. ‘Anything new out there?’ Newt asked, the sarcasm obvious. ‘Did a bloody Griever come out and ask for a snog?’ Minho leaned against the stone, still catching his breath. ‘How’d you know? I told him maybe some other time – not really my type.’

Dr Paige said the Psychs were really interested in how the memory loss affected the Gladers. Sometimes there were surprises, like the invention of totally new words. A few of them came from Minho, who’d had quite the mouth even before entering the Maze. The Swipe seemed to heighten the trait, which the Psychs also found interesting. Of course, the Psychs found everything interesting.

There was more going on here that they weren’t telling him, and he had a bad feeling about it. A feeling he’d had for a while but could only now admit to himself. It made him feel sick. WICKED was never going to stop. They were never, never going to stop.

Chuck nodded, but when Thomas made the first move to get up, his friend catapulted forwards and pulled him into a hug, squeezing him fiercely with both arms ‘I’m gonna miss you,’ the boy said through a sob. ‘I’m gonna miss you so much.’ Thomas hugged him back, his own tears dropping into Chuck’s hair. ‘I know, man. I know. I’m going to miss you, too.’

Despite the devastation that had been wreaked on his planet, it remained beautiful. Breathtaking. Greens and blues and oranges mixed with lots of pale brown. Of course, this high up, you couldn’t see the details. You couldn’t see the Cranks and the starvation and the poverty and the terror. No wonder back before the sun flares, every kid wanted to be an astronaut.

Thomas asked. ‘A post-apocalyptic city with no government or security, surrounded by a desert and swarming with Cranks. I mean, come on. Don’t be a sissy.’ He flashed the girl a quick smile to let her know he was joking. Brenda rolled her eyes.

Thomas felt a surge of emotion he didn’t understand. He thought of his mom, and his dad, and his friends. And it all just welled up inside him and tears began to leak from his eyes. He didn’t know what he needed in life, or what he was meant to accomplish. Friends were what he had, and they were all that mattered. Somehow he had to save them.

Beyond the devastated city, mountains rose. The sun flares might have taken some of its plant life away, but the stone and soil seemed to call out, ‘We’re still here. What else ya got?’

The lies just stacked up higher and higher. Things were even worse than he’d imagined. Far worse. If there’d been the tiniest seed of doubt before, it was now gone completely. No matter what it took, Thomas was going into the Maze to save his friends.

A humming sound filled the air that made his bones rattle. A green glow lit up the control panel of the Flat Trans. The hum grew louder. He couldn’t believe that in a matter of minutes he was going to step through a magical wall of engineering and reappear thousands of miles away. It made him nervous, made him worry he’d end up scattered across the quantum universe, nothing but a galaxy of atoms and molecules that had nothing to do with each other.

He was spooked, and wished he’d just taken a ride with Teresa and everyone else. An owl hooted so loud that Thomas jumped. Then he laughed, and so did the guard behind him. ‘An owl?’ Thomas said. ‘Seriously? I feel like I’m in a horror movie.’

He thought of the guards then. A wave of sadness and guilt crashed over him. The men were dead because Thomas needed to take a walk, like some over-privileged spoiled brat. More lives on his hands. How many more would there be?

Teresa found him kneeling next to the dead body, staring down at it, transfixed. A man he’d once known, a man he’d never really liked. Never liked at all, actually. But no one deserved an ending like that. No one. She practically had to carry him to the transport. He was as dazed mentally as physically. Spent in every way. He planned to sleep for a week. Teresa, he said with his mind on the way back to the complex. Yeah? After a long pause, he finally said it. They’ll never find a cure.

‘Sorry, this is just really important to me. So … Look, I’m at the end of my rope, Teresa. The absolute end. The Purge, the lies, the cruelty in the maze. And I’ve heard enough things over the last few days to figure out that WICKED has plans for an entirely new phase of trials – in the Scorch – and who knows what else. Did you know about any of this?’ Teresa shook her head adamantly, looking genuinely horrified.

‘Sometimes they really do make it hard to believe in them, don’t they?’ Her reaction made Thomas feel like he’d cleared the first hurdle.

‘The cure?’ Thomas scoffed. ‘It’s never going to happen. I just don’t believe in it. After all this time and all this work, they don’t even have a preliminary treatment, no trial runs of drugs, nothing. All they do is get more vicious with their Variables, chasing this ridiculous blueprint they’re always spouting about.’

‘Those are our friends, Teresa. Think back to the good times we had together. My God, if nothing else, think of them throwing Chuck into the Scorch, much less to the wolves in that Crank city.’ That seemed to really get her. Her eyes moistened.

Thomas thought of Newt’s sister, Lizzy, somewhere off in Group B’s maze. Wouldn’t that be a thing, to save both of them? ‘I’m coming for you, Newt,’ Thomas whispered, so softly that no one could possibly hear him. ‘I’m coming for every last one of you.’

‘It’s your incalculable ability to trust others that has always touched me,’ she said, looking sadly into his eyes. Her face had started to blur. ‘And I’m sorry to have taken advantage of it so many times. I’ve just always done what needed to be done.’ She stood up, but he saw three or four of her now, warping, expanding, retracting.

‘It was me, Thomas. I know you won’t remember this, but I want to say the words to you anyway. Explain myself. It was me who infected Chancellor Anderson and his senior staff. They wanted to end things after the Maze Trials. They wanted to give up. And I could never allow that, could I? What we’re trying to achieve is much too important.’

Soon the memories that haunted him so much, made him so sad, would be gone. He didn’t want them gone. WICKED had tricked him. Of course they’d tricked him. Hadn’t he known this was who they were all along? Wasn’t that why he’d planned to rebel in the first place? Because these people were nothing but manipulative, single-minded monsters? And Dr Paige had confirmed it all. If only he could see Teresa one last time. His last words to her – ‘See you tomorrow’ – they hurt so much. Yes, it was true. They would be reunited the next day, but their memories would be gone. He wouldn’t even recognize her. WICKED had played them both to the very end. Unbearable anguish filled him. Then the relief of sleep swept in and took him away.

He was a boy. Sitting on a couch, his dad beside him, an open book shared between their laps. His dad’s lips moved, his eyes lit up with mock drama, reading the story that obviously enraptured the very young version of Thomas. A small spark of joy flashed in his chest. He didn’t want it to end. No, he thought. Please don’t take this away. I’ll do anything. Please don’t do this to me. The bubble popped.

Thomas felt as if he were a flower wilting from lack of sun. He’d never felt such confusion, such … emptiness. The world spun above him. And he grew ever emptier, his mind being sucked away, lost in the towering twister stealing him. Stealing what made him him. Gone. It was all gone. He closed his eyes. He wept without weeping. A deep blackness consumed his mind and body. Time stretched before him like an endless sea, no horizon ever to come. Nothing ahead, everything left behind.

I plan to write three words on my arm before entering the Box, hoping that its simple message will plant a seed in the Gladers who see it. To remind them, even subconsciously, what it is we fight for. It’s a phrase I saw on a cold, dark night long ago, the Crank pits seething behind me. It’s a phrase that I believe with all my heart, despite the horrors. I think you know what it is.