Minho took it on himself to answer, doing a great job of hiding his pain. "You admit you're a Crank? That you're freaking crazy?"
"He just said he likes the taste of eyeballs." This from Frypan. "I think that qualifies as crazy."
Jorge laughed, and there was a definite tone of menace in it. "Come, come, my new friends. I'd only eat your eyes if you were already dead. Course, I might help you get that way if I needed to. Understand what I'm saying?" All mirth vanished from his expression, replaced with a look of stern warning. Almost as if he was daring them to confront him.
No one spoke for a long moment. Then Newt asked, "How many of you are here?"
Jorge's gaze snapped to Newt. "How many? How many Cranks? We're all Cranks around here, hermano."
"That's not what I meant and you know it," Newt replied flatly.
Jorge started pacing the room, stepping over and around Gladers, taking everyone in as he spoke. "Lot of things you people need to understand about how things work in this city. About the Cranks and WICKED, about the government, about why they left us here to rot in our disease, kill each other, go completely and utterly insane. About how there's different levels of the Flare. About how it's too late for you―the ill is gonna catch ya if you don't already have it."
Thomas had followed the stranger with his eyes as he walked around the room making these horrible statements. The Flare. He thought he'd gotten used to the fear of having the disease, but with this Crank standing right in front of him, he was more scared than ever. And helpless to do anything about it.
Jorge stopped near him and his friends, his feet almost touching Minho. He continued to talk.
"But that's not the way it's gonna work, comprende? Those who are at a disadvantage are those who speak first. I want to know everything about you. Where you came from, why you're here, what in God's name your purpose could be. Now."
Minho let out a low, dangerous-sounding chuckle. "We're the ones at a disadvantage?" Minho swiveled his head around mockingly. "Unless that lightning storm fried my retinas, I'd say there are eleven of us and one of you. Maybe you should start talking."
Thomas really wished Minho hadn't said that. It was stupid and arrogant, and it could very well get them killed. The guy obviously wasn't alone. There could be a hundred Cranks hiding out in the torn-up remains of the upper floors, spying on them, waiting with who-knew-what kind of horrific weapons. Or worse, the savagery of their own hands and teeth and madness.
Jorge looked at Minho for a long time, his face blank. "You didn't just say that to me, did you? Please tell me you didn't just speak to me like a dog. You have ten seconds to apologize."
Minho looked over at Thomas with a smirk.
"One," Jorge said. "Two. Three. Four."
Thomas tried to shoot a look of warning to Minho, nodded at him. Do it.
"Five. Six."
"Do it," Thomas finally said aloud.
"Seven. Eight."
Jorge's voice was rising with each number. Thomas thought he caught a glimpse of movement somewhere far above, just a blur of streaking shadow. Maybe Minho noticed it, too; any arrogance drained from his face.
"Nine."
"I'm sorry," Minho blurted out, with little feeling.
"I don't think you meant that," Jorge said. Then he kicked Minho in the leg.
Thomas's hands clenched into fists when his friend cried out in pain; the Crank must've gotten him right in a burnt spot.
"Say it with meaning, hermano."
Thomas looked up at the Crank, hated him. Irrational thoughts started swimming through his mind―he wanted to jump up and attack, beat him like he'd beaten Gally after escaping the Maze.
Jorge pulled his leg back and kicked Minho again, twice as hard in the same spot. "Say it with meaning!" He screamed the last word with a harshness that sounded crazed.
Minho wailed, grabbing the wound with both hands. "I'm ... sorry," he said between heavy breaths, his voice strained and full of pain. But as soon as Jorge smiled and relaxed, satisfied with the humiliation he'd inflicted, Minho swung an arm out and slammed it into the Crank's shin. The man leaped onto his other foot, then fell, crashing to the ground with his own yelp, a shriek that was half surprise, half hurt.
Then Minho was on top of him, yelling a string of obscenities Thomas had never heard come out of his friend before. Their leader squeezed his thighs to trap Jorge's body, then started punching.
"Minho!" Thomas shouted. "Stop!" He got to his feet, ignoring the stiffness in his joints, the soreness in his muscles. He took a quick glance upward as he made for Minho, ready to tackle him off Jorge's body. There was movement up there, in several places. Then he saw people looking down, people readying to jump. Ropes appeared, dangled over the sides of the jagged holes.
Thomas rammed into Minho, sent him sprawling off Jorge's body; they crashed to the ground. Thomas quickly spun to grab his friend, wrapped his arms around his chest and squeezed against his struggles to escape.
"There's more of them up there!" Thomas screamed in his ear from behind. "You have to stop! They'll kill you! They'll kill all of us!"
Jorge had staggered to his feet, slowly wiping a thin trail of blood from the corner of his mouth. The look on his face was enough to ram a spike of fear straight through Thomas's heart. There was no telling what the guy would do.
"Wait!" Thomas shouted. "Please, wait!"
Jorge made eye contact with him just as a few more Cranks dropped to the ground from above. Some of them did the jump-and-roll like Jorge had done; others slid down ropes and landed squarely on their feet. All of them quickly gathered in a pack behind their leader, maybe fifteen of them. Men and women; a few were teenagers. All filthy and dressed in tattered clothing. Most of them skinny and frail-looking.
Minho had quit fighting, and Thomas finally loosened his grip. By the looks of it, he had only a few seconds before a dire situation turned into a slaughterhouse. He pressed one hand firmly down on Minho's back, then held the other one up toward Jorge in a conciliatory gesture.
"Please give me a minute," Thomas said, urging his heart and voice to calm down. "Won't do you people any good to ... hurt us."
"Won't do us any good?" the Crank said; he spit a wad of red goo from his mouth. "It'll do me a lot of good. That, I can guarantee, hermano." He balled both hands into fists at his sides.
Then he cocked his head, barely enough to be noticed. But as soon as he did, the Cranks behind him pulled all kinds of nasty things from within the hidden depths of their ragged clothes. Knives. Rusted machetes. Black spikes that had maybe once been in a railroad somewhere. Shards of glass with red-tinged smudges on their razor-thin tips. One girl, who couldn't have been more than thirteen years old, held a splintered shovel, its metal scoop ending in a jagged edge like the teeth of a saw.
Thomas had the sudden and absolute certainty that he was now pleading for their lives. The Gladers couldn't win in a fight against these people. No way. They weren't Grievers, but there also wasn't a magic code to shut them down.
"Listen," Thomas said, slowly getting to his feet, hoping Minho wouldn't be stupid enough to try anything. "There's something about us. We're not just random shanks who showed up on your doorstep. We're valuable. Alive, not dead."
The anger on Jorge's face lessened ever so slightly. Maybe a spark of curiosity. But what he said was "What's a shank?"
Thomas almost―almost―laughed. An irrational response that somehow would've seemed appropriate. "Me and you. Ten minutes. Alone. That's all I ask. Bring all the weapons you need."
Jorge did laugh at that, more of a wet snort than anything. "Sorry to burst your bubble, kid, but I don't think I'll need any."
He paused, and it felt like the next few seconds lasted a full hour.
"Ten minutes," the Crank finally said. "Rest of you stay here, watch these punks. If I give the word, let the death games begin." He held a hand out, gesturing to a dark hallway that led from the room on the side across from the broken doors.
"Ten minutes," he repeated.
Thomas nodded. When Jorge didn't move, he went first, walking toward their meeting place and maybe the most important discussion of his life.
And maybe the last.
CHAPTER 27
Thomas felt Jorge at his heels as he entered the dark hallway. It smelled of mildew and rot; water dripped from the ceiling, sending out creepy echoes that for some awful reason made him think of blood.
"Just keep going," Jorge said from behind. "There's a room at the end with chairs. Make even the slightest move against me, everyone dies."
Thomas wanted to turn and scream at the guy but kept walking. "I'm not an idiot. You can quit the whole tough-guy routine."
The Crank only snickered in response.
After several minutes of quiet, Thomas finally approached a wooden door with a round silver knob. He reached out and opened it without hesitating, trying to show Jorge that he still had some dignity. Once inside, however, he didn't know what to do. It was pitch-black.
He sensed Jorge stepping around him; then there was the loud flumping sound of heavy cloth being whipped in the air. A hot, blinding light appeared, and Thomas had to shield his eyes with his forearms. He could only squint at first, then eventually dropped his arms and was able to see okay; he realized that the Crank had pulled a large sheet of canvas from a window. An unbroken window. Outside, there was only sunlight and concrete.
"Sit down," Jorge said, his voice less gruff than Thomas would've expected. He hoped it was because the Crank had finally accepted that his new visitor was going to take a rational and calm approach to their situation. That maybe there really was something to this discussion that could end up benefiting the current residents of the dilapidated building. Of course, the guy was a Crank, so Thomas had no idea how he'd react.
The room had no furniture other than two small wooden chairs and a table between them. Thomas pulled out the one closer to him and took a seat. Jorge sat down on the other side, then leaned forward and put his elbows on the table, hands clasped. His face was blank, his eyes glued on Thomas.
"Talk."
Thomas wished he could take a second to sift through all the ideas that had run through his mind back in the larger room, but he knew there wasn't any time for that.
"Okay." He hesitated. One word. So far, not so good. He pulled in a breath. "Look, I heard you mention WICKED back there. We know all about those guys. It'd be really interesting to hear what you have to say about them."
Jorge didn't budge; his expression didn't change. "I'm not the one talking right now. You are."
"Yeah, I know." Thomas scooted his chair a little closer to the table. Then he pushed it back and put a foot up on his knee. He needed to calm down and just let the words flow. "Well, this is hard because I don't know what you know. So I guess I'll just pretend like you're stupid to the whole thing."
"I'd strongly advise you never to use the word stupid with me again."
Thomas had to force himself to swallow, his throat tight with fear. "Just a figure of speech."
"Get on with it."
Thomas took another deep breath. "We used to be a group of about fifty guys. And ... a girl." A prick of pain stuck him at that. "Now we're down to eleven. I don't know all the details, but WICKED is some kind of organization that's doing a whole load of nasty things to us for some reason. We started in a place called the Glade, inside a stone maze, surrounded by these creatures called Grievers."
He waited, searching Jorge's face for any reaction to his burst of strange information. But the Crank showed no signs of confusion or recognition. Nothing at all.
And so Thomas told him everything. What it had been like in the Maze, how they'd escaped, how they thought they were safe, how it ended up being just another layer of the WICKED plan. He told him about the Rat Man, and the mission he'd set them on: to survive long enough to make it one hundred miles to the north, to a place he referred to as the safe haven. He related how they'd gone down the long tunnel, been attacked by the flying silver goop, made the trek across the initial miles of their journey.
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.
