The Fever Code

by James Dashner

  Thomas ran for her, his heart erupting into a rapid drumbeat. He’d left everything behind him—his pack, all the instruments of death it contained. It felt as if the air solidified, slowing his speed. No other sound had come from Teresa’s direction, and Aris and Rachel were too far away to help.

  He reached the wall, slammed his shoulder into it as he looked behind the sofa, saw Teresa on the ground, a man’s arm wrapped around her throat. She fought him with both hands, to no avail. He squeezed and squeezed, making her eyes bulge and terrible sounds escape her open mouth. Choking, gurgled sounds.

  “Let her go!” Thomas shouted. Words would mean nothing to this Crank—a bald man, sweaty, a huge gash across his forehead. Dr. Leavitt.

  It was Dr. Leavitt.

  Blood mixed with sweat, dripped down into his eyes, which were red-veined and fierce. Teresa, struggling, reached for something on the floor, just beyond her fingers.

  The gun.

  Thomas picked it up, felt the life of his best friend fleeing as if through the air, leaving her rapidly in the arms of death. He’d never actually fired a pistol before, worried about his ability to aim. Placing his finger lightly on the trigger, he returned his attention to Teresa and the Crank once known as Leavitt. The man hadn’t relented, his arm a closing vise of flesh, and Teresa’s skin had turned a frightening shade of purple.

  Thomas threw aim to the wind and jumped on top of them, landing stomach to stomach on Teresa, her face mere inches from his. Their eyes met, sharing the pain and fear. Leavitt used his other arm to swat at Thomas, his meaty palm slapping him in the side of the head. Thomas pulled up his hand, sliding the tip of the gun along the floor beside Teresa’s body. Up and up, past her ear, to the Crank’s head, to the side of it, to the temple.

  Leavitt’s face suddenly transformed, losing all its malice and empty hate, turning into a pitiful, childlike plea. His arm’s grip on Teresa loosened.

  “Please,” the man whimpered, “please don’t hurt me.”

  Thomas pulled the trigger and ended it. The shot was like a crack of thunder, the crack of the world splitting. His ears ringing, he grabbed Teresa and pulled her off her dead attacker. Thomas had never much liked him anyway.

  She trembled in his arms, a rare show of weakness after such a terrifying ordeal. He wrapped himself around her and held her tight. Aris came up behind him, put a hand on his shoulder, but Thomas didn’t turn to look.

  “Where’s the other one?” he asked, barely able to speak. “There should be one more.”

  “Rachel got him,” Aris replied. “Don’t worry. They’re all dead.”

  Thomas held on to Teresa as if he’d fall to the center of the world otherwise. “I can’t take much more of this.”

  Rachel responded from somewhere nearby.

  “Six,” she said. “There’s only six left.”

  —

  By lunchtime they’d killed the remaining Cranks. Compared to the nightmare of what they’d had to do in the rec room, the rest were a piece of cake. All asleep, their lives ended with the stab of a needle and the flow of poison.

  And that was it.

  The Purge was over.

  231.06.07 | 12:45 p.m.

  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.

  He’d even stayed away from the observation room lately, too depressed to watch the maze. But today, he’d forced himself to come in and catch up. The first thing he noticed was a display that showed Alby and Newt walking beside one of the huge Glade walls, but something was off. Newt leaned into Alby, who had an arm draped across Newt’s back, helping him stand. Newt could only put his full weight on one leg. He lurched with each step, his face grimacing in pain.

  Thomas sat down at the controls, took a moment to settle his mind on how to go about what he wanted to do. Then he started the meticulous process of finding the correct camera angles he’d need to put together a story.

  What in the world had happened to Newt?

  —

  Less than two hours later, Thomas had spliced together a series of camera clips from various beetle blades, the closest to a continuous feed that he could accomplish. It showed a tale that just about broke Thomas’s heart. On the large display screen in the middle of the wall, he started it up again from the beginning.

  Early in the morning of the previous day, Newt had been totally fine. He said goodbye to Minho and the other Runners—it was Newt’s day off from running, apparently. After the different groups disappeared around their respective corners, Newt spent some time walking around the Glade, checking on the various sections as if everything in the world was normal with him—as normal as things get living inside a giant maze. He spoke to Winston over at the Blood House, then chatted with Zart by the small cornfield in the Gardens. Newt even laughed a little, once slapping Zart on the back as if he’d just told a great joke.

  Newt wandered over to the Deadheads next, the grove in the southwest corner outlined by dying skeletons of trees that, to Thomas, always seemed like a premonition of bad things to come. There, Newt plopped down on a bench and sat for at least thirty minutes. Thomas forwarded the feed to the point when Newt finally stood up and walked into the tiny forest. The view switched to a beetle blade’s low perspective as it crawled along just a few feet behind him. Newt headed straight to the cemetery, where wooden posts marked the places they’d buried those Gladers who’d met their demise since entering the maze.

  He knelt on the ground there, staring numbly ahead, eyes glazed over, his face sinking further and further into despair. He sat that way for a long time, and Thomas thought he could guess what was going on inside his friend’s head. Debilitating guilt over all those who’d died. Thinking that maybe he could’ve saved them somehow. Sadness over the situation as a whole—the danger, the boredom, the frustration at not knowing why they were there. Frustration at the loss of memories. And, perhaps on some deep level, he was remembering the sister they’d wiped from his mind.

  Newt stood up. He turned away from the graveyard and marched out of the Deadheads, walking so swiftly that the beetle blade providing the camera view bounced as it hurried to keep up. Newt left the woods without slowing down, heading straight toward the west door, the closest one. Several Gladers waved at him or called out a greeting, but he ignored them, staring straight ahead with grim determination. Thomas sat up straighter, already knowing the end result of this and maddeningly curious as to how it happened.

  Newt left the Glade proper and entered the corridors of the maze. His gait didn’t slow, his pace hurried but steady. He turned left, then right, then left again. Several more turns. Finally he came to a long stretch where thick ivy covered the walls on both sides. He stopped next to the one to the left and faced it, leaning forward onto his hands, which disappeared in the greenery. He paused for a moment with his head down, then looked up, craning his neck as if he wanted to see the very top of the wall.

  Newt reached out and started climbing the ivy.

  His muscled arms made it look easy. Gripping one vine, he’d pull himself up high enough to find purchase somewhere in the stone with his feet. Then he’d grab another vine, and another, using both hands, both feet, and all his strength. He scaled the stone and ivy, reaching the halfway point between the ground and the false sky in a matter of minutes. Thomas knew that this was where he would think he couldn’t go much farther. A combination of built-in optical illusions and preprogrammed repressors within his implant would guarantee he’d never make it to the top. He did climb several more feet; then he stopp
ed, looking toward the sky, beaten.

  Thomas watched, and waited.

  Newt clung to the ivy on the wall, his whole body almost disappearing behind the greenery. A beetle blade that had been scaling the wall at his side crawled up and stopped within just a few inches from the boy’s face. Not for the first time, Thomas wondered about the software that ran these little mechanical creatures. How did it know what to do, when no one was around to feed them instructions?

  Newt looked directly into the camera, and for the first time in this constructed feed, spoke so that Thomas could hear what he said.

  “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!”

  Thomas turned off the feed. He couldn’t take it anymore. He already knew that someone had saved him, pulled him out of the maze back to the safety of the Glade. And he couldn’t bear to watch one more second of it.

  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.

  231.09.22 | 11:17 a.m.

  Thomas heard a gentle knock on his door and opened it to see Teresa. Things were almost back to normal at WICKED headquarters, as much as possible after something like the Purge had happened.

  “Hey,” he said, groggy. “You could’ve just buzzed my head. I was taking a nap.”

  In answer, she held up a tablet. “Did you see this?”

  “Huh?” He had no idea what she was talking about.

  She stepped into his room, brushing past him as he closed the door, and sat down at his desk. “Come here and look at this. Did you send a mass memo out? Or did Dr. Paige ask permission to use your name?”

  “What? No.”

  “Well.” She gestured to the glowing screen.

  Thomas leaned in to take a look.

  WICKED Memorandum, Date 231.5.22

  TO: The replacements

  FROM: Thomas [Subject A2]

  RE: The Purge

  I take total responsibility for what we’ve had to do over the last few days.

  What we have to keep in mind, though, is that WICKED is alive and stronger than ever. The maze is up and running, and our studies are in full swing. We’re on the path and we can’t stray from it.

  All I ask is that what we’ve done here remain within the organization and never be referred to again. What’s done is done, and it was a mercy. But now, every waking thought has to be devoted to building the blueprint.

  Ava Paige is the new chancellor of WICKED, effective immediately.

  Before he had time to process it completely, Teresa took the tablet back from him.

  “And look at this other one I found,” she said as she searched for something else. “Supposedly sent by Chancellor Anderson the very day before he typed up that crazy one we saw on his workstation about his fingers. There’s no way he wrote this. Check it out.”

  She handed the tablet back to him.

  WICKED Memorandum, Date 231.5.4

  TO: Fellow Partners

  FROM: Kevin Anderson, Chancellor

  RE: My farewell to you all

  I hope that each one of you will forgive me for doing this in such a cowardly manner, sending you a memo when it’s something I should do in person. However, I have no choice. The effects of the Flare are rampant in my actions, embarrassing and disheartening. And our decision not to allow the narcotic Bliss within our compound means I can’t fake it long enough to say goodbye properly.

  Typing these words is difficult enough. But at least I have the ability and time to write and edit in the small windows of sanity left to me.

  I don’t know why the virus affected me so quickly and so viciously. I deteriorated far quicker than almost all of the original group. But no matter. I’ve been decommissioned, and my replacement, Ava Paige, is ready to take charge. The Elites are well into their training to serve as the link between us and those who will continue to run WICKED. Ava herself admits that her purpose is almost more like that of a figurehead, with our elite subjects the true rulers.

  We are and will continue to be in good hands. The noble cause we began over a decade ago will see itself to fruition. Our efforts, and for almost all of us, our lives, will have been spent justly and for the greater good. The cure will be built.

  Honestly, this is more of a personal note. To thank you for your friendship, your compassion, your empathy in the face of implementing such difficult tasks.

  One word of warning: It gets bad in the end. Don’t fight the time of your decommission. I did, and now I regret it. Just leave and end the suffering.

  It’s become too much.

  Thank you.

  And goodbye.

  “What is this?” Thomas said, completely bewildered. “That’s not how it happened at all. What’s she trying to do, rewrite history so she looks more legit in the future?”

  Teresa shrugged. “I thought you’d want to see it.”

  “Come on,” he said. “We’re going to talk to her.”

  —

  Thomas knocked on Dr. Paige’s door until she finally opened it. He was so upset he could barely catch a decent breath.

  The doctor looked surprised. “Is there a problem?” she asked.

  “Why’d you do it?” Thomas asked, trying to stay calm. He felt betrayed, confused, and above all, angry. “Writing memos from other peoples’ accounts is your thing now?”

  “It helps the others deal with our current situation, Thomas,” Dr. Paige said, her surprise transforming to a bemused understanding. “Gives them a better sense of order. It also shows how involved you are in this organization and how mature you’ve all become.” She smiled at Thomas. She looked proud of him. “And I think it’s a simple but symbolic way to create a bridge in everyone’s mind. A link. Between the old and the new.”

  Thomas didn’t know how to respond, what to say. Why would she make him seem so important? And why would she send something from his messaging account without asking? Not to mention from Anderson’s, their leader at the time?

  “This does all that,” she continued, “while having a focal point of one person. It’s the best of both worlds.”

  Still he didn’t respond.

  “You could’ve at least asked him first,” Teresa said.

  Dr. Paige gave them a genuine enough look of regret. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I got way ahead of myself.”

  “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.

  —

  Thomas went straight back to his room. He told Teresa that he wasn’t feeling well and he returned to his bed. He closed his eyes and tried to calm his thoughts, rolled onto his side, wishing for sleep. Everything felt different. He couldn’t tell Teresa what he was thinking, and almost everyone he knew or cared about was inside the maze. And now these emails. It was just weird—if Dr. Paige was devious about that, what else was she hiding from them? He wished he’d said more when he confronted her. But instead, he’d chickened out.

  And here he was, staring at the wall of his room, thinking.

  Thinking.

  That was the worst part. 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 neighborhood, grow old together, sit around and stuff themselves with food and tell their kids stories about the time they’d saved the world. He pictured Minho in front of a big group of kids, acting out the life of a Runner, but for some reason he kept making giant ape movements, tickling his armpits, pounding his chest.

  If only it were that easy. Imagine Minho acting goofy in front of future grandkids and all would be well. That thought came up again—what now, more than ever, felt like the right thing to do. He wanted to go into the maze. Anything to be out of this place, back with his friends, and on to the next stage. Anything to get this cure done and done. Get to the happy future. He just wanted to lie to himself and do it.

  The future, a Crank-free world, he and his friends living in paradise.

  Talk about a load of crap.

  He let out a deep breath, and then, despite its being the middle of the day, he fell asleep.

  231.10.31 | 4:48 p.m.

  Thomas was back in his haven, the observation room.

  Over the last few weeks, the guilt and anger had continued to build, slow trickles that joined to become a deluge, and now he was drowning. There was only one way he could ever bring the air back into his lungs. Being here, watching his old friends in the maze.

  He and Teresa had grown distant lately—she seemed to have coped with her own difficulties after the Purge by throwing herself mind, body, and spirit into work, work, and more work—but Thomas didn’t mind. They spoke often enough through their telepathy to keep each other informed. Enough to know that they both were doing what was best for them.

  And for Thomas, that had been to stay out of sight as much as possible. He had to stick to the normal regimen of tests, checkups, and classes, but other than that he made himself scarce. Unless Chuck or Teresa were available to hang out, Thomas spent most of his free time in his room, reading or sleeping, or observing his friends in the maze, watching their every move. Those moves had become pretty routine, the Gladers establishing themselves in a pretty impressive little community. Law, order, routine, safety. No one had died or been stung for a while now.