The Scorch Trials - James Dashner [58]
He told Jorge the whole story. And the more he talked, the crazier it seemed that he was sharing it. Yet he kept talking because he couldn’t think of anything else to do. He did it with the hope that WICKED was just as much the Cranks’ enemy as it was theirs.
He didn’t mention Teresa, however—she was the only thing he left out.
“So there must be something special about us,” Thomas said, trying to wrap things up. “They can’t be doing this just to be nasty. What’d be the point?”
“Speaking of points,” Jorge responded, the first he’d spoken in at least ten minutes, the allotted time already gone. “What’s yours?”
Thomas waited. This was it. His only chance.
“Well?” Jorge pushed.
Thomas went for it. “If you … help us … I mean, if you, or maybe just a few of you, go with us and help us make it to the safe haven …”
“Yeah?”
“Then maybe you’ll be safe, too. …” And this was what Thomas had planned all along—had been building toward—the hope strung out by the Rat Man. “They told us we have the Flare. And that if we make it to the safe haven, we’ll all be cured. They said they have a cure. If you help us get there, maybe you can get it, too.” Thomas stopped talking and looked at Jorge earnestly.
Something had changed—slightly—in the Crank’s face at that last thing he’d said, and Thomas knew he had won. The look was brief, but it was definitely hope, quickly replaced with a blank indifference. Yet Thomas knew what he’d seen.
“A cure,” the Crank repeated.
“A cure.” Thomas was determined to say as little as possible from here on out—he’d done his best.
Jorge leaned back in his chair, the wood creaking as if about to break, and folded his arms. He lowered his eyebrows in a look of contemplation. “What’s your name?”
Thomas was surprised by the question. Felt sure, in fact, that he’d already told him. Or at least it seemed like he should have told him at some point. But then again, this whole scenario wasn’t exactly your typical get-acquainted affair.
“Your name?” Jorge repeated. “I’m assuming you have one, hermano.”
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. It’s Thomas.”
Another flash across Jorge’s face—this time something like … recognition. Mixed with surprise. “Thomas, huh. You go by Tommy? Tom, maybe?”
That last one hurt, made him think of his dream about Teresa. “No,” he said, probably a little too quickly. “Just … Thomas.”
“Okay, Thomas. Let me ask you something. Do you have the slightest clue in that squishy brain of yours what the Flare does to people? Do I look like someone who has a hideous disease to you?”
That seemed an impossible question to answer without getting your face beaten in, but Thomas went with the safest bet. “No.”
“No? No to both questions?”
“Yes. I mean, no. I mean … yes, the answer to both questions is no.”
Jorge smiled—nothing but an uptick of the right corner of his mouth—and Thomas thought he must be enjoying every second of this. “The Flare works in stages, muchacho. Every person in this city has it, and I’m not shocked to hear that you and your sissy friends do, too. Someone like me is in the beginning, a Crank in name only. I caught it just a few weeks ago, tested positive at the quarantine checkpoint—government’s trying their damnedest to keep the sick and the well separate. Ain’t working. Saw my whole world go straight in the crap hole. Was sent here. Fought to capture this building with a bunch of other newbies.”
At that word, Thomas’s breath caught in his throat like a mote of dust. It brought back too many memories of the Glade.
“My friends out there with the weapons are all in the same boat as me. But you go and take a nice stroll around the city and you’ll see what happens as time goes by. You’ll see the stages, see what it’s like to be past the Gone, though you might not live to remember it for very long. And we don’t even have any of the numbing agent here. The Bliss. None.”
“Who sent you here?” Thomas asked, saving his curiosity