The Scorch Trials - James Dashner [90]
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.”
CHAPTER 42
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