God help us.
—LL
To: John Michael
From: Katie McVoy
Subject: Some last words
John,
There’s no way we can stop this. You’re right. I hate to admit it, but it’s true. Every effort we made to prevent the spread was pointless. The virus is jumping bodies every second. We can only hope that the rumors of the presence of Immunes are true. They might be the only chance we’ve got for survival.
A cure. I can’t think of any other possible solution. Somehow, we have to find a cure.
Did you hear what the media has taken to calling it? The Flare. I’m sure it’ll stick.
I have it. I know I do. I’m leaving. I don’t want to infect anyone.
You were a true friend in this madness.
Goodbye, John.
—Katie
Post-Flares Coalition Memorandum, Date 220.05.01, Time 11:23
TO: All board members
FROM: Chancellor John Michael
RE: Another solution
The killzone. That’s their word for the brain now. Where the Flare does its damage and slowly kills you with lunacy. And they already have a nickname for the Immunes, too. The Munies. What utter ridiculousness.
But jargon matters not. What matters is how it all connects. The killzone. The Flare. The Immunes. A world that’s in complete catastrophe. We need to find a cure. There is no other way to go forward.
We will meet tomorrow, 0800.
I have an idea.
Part III
Suppressed Memories
Thomas’s first memory of the Flare
It had been five days since they’d locked Thomas up in the white room. On that fifth day, after trying his best to go through the routine he’d established—exercise, eat, think, repeat—he decided to lie down and sleep. Let his terrible new world wash away for a while. Exhausted, he faded quickly and images began to bloom in his mind.
Thomas is young—he can’t tell how young exactly. He’s curled up in a corner, knees pulled up to his chest, shivering with fright. His dad—the man who holds him, reads to him, kisses him on the cheek, hugs him, bathes him—is on a rampage, screaming hateful things and turning over furniture. His mom tries to stop him, but he pushes her away without even seeming to realize who she is. She stumbles, tries to regain her balance, then slams into the wall a few feet from Thomas.
Sobbing, she crawls to him, pulls him into her arms.
“Don’t worry, honey,” she whispers. “They’re coming to take him away. They’ll be here soon.”
“Who?” Thomas asks. His voice sounds so young, and it breaks his dreaming heart.
“The people who are going to take care of him,” she answers. “Remember, your daddy’s sick, very sick. This isn’t really him doing all of this. It’s the disease.”
Suddenly Dad spins around to face them, his face aflame with anger. “Disease? Did I just hear you say disease?” Each word comes out of his mouth like a poisoned dart, full of venom.
Mom shakes her head, hugs Thomas tighter to her body.
“Why don’t you just say it, woman,” Dad continues, taking a step toward them. His chest is lurching with his attempts to suck in breath, and his hands are clenched into tight fists. “The Flare. Tell the boy how it is. Tell him the truth. Your dad has the Flare, Thomas. It’s comin’ along real nicely.” Another step closer. “Your mom has it, too. Oh yes. Soon she’ll be chewing on her fingers and feeding you dirt for breakfast. Laughing hysterically while she breaks the windows and tries to cut you. She’ll be bat crazy, boy, just like your daddy.”
Another step closer. Thomas squeezes his eyes shut, hoping it’ll all go away. The dreaming part of him doesn’t want to see anymore, either. Wants it to end.
“Look at me, boy,” Dad says with a snarl. “Look at me when I’m talking to you.”
Thomas can’t help it. He always does as he’s told. His dad looks calm now in every way except one: those fists. Fingers and knuckles white.
“That’s good,” Dad says. “Good boy. Look at your daddy. Do I look crazy to you? Huh? Do I?”
He shouts those last two words.
“No, sir,” Thomas says, surprised he can say it without shaking.
“Well, you’re wrong, then.” Dad’s face pinches with anger again. “I’m crazy, boy. I’m a madman. I could eat both of you for dinner and love every bite.”
“Stop it!” Mom screams, a sound so loud it pierces Thomas’s eardrums painfully. “You stop it right now! I swear to God I’ll rip your heart out if you touch my son!”
Dad laughs. Not just a chuckle, either. His whole body shakes and he throws his head back as booming laughter pours from him, filling the house with its noise. Thomas has never heard something sound so wrong before. But the man keeps it up, laughing and laughing and laughing. “Stop it!” Mom screams again. She repeats it over and over until finally Thomas can’t take it anymore and covers his ears.
Then the doorbell rings, barely loud enough to be heard. But both of his parents go silent. Dad looks in the direction of the front door, his face suddenly showing fear.
“They’re here to get you,” Mom says through a sob. “My sweet, the love of my life, they’re here to get you.”
Thomas woke up.
Frypan, Swipe Removal Operation
Frypan looked up at his nurse, and though nervousness filled his gut, he knew he was doing the right thing and forced himself to relax. He was about to get his memories back. His memories!
He couldn’t wait to see his past.
The woman swabbed a spot clean on the side of his neck, then poked the needle into a vein before he could get another word out. There was a sharp sting and then warmth flowed through his body.
“There,” she said. “Just rest for a few minutes. We’ll lower the mask as soon as you fall asleep.”
“How does it work?” Frypan whispered; he couldn’t help himself—he wanted answers. “What is the Swipe, anyway?”
“Just relax now” was all she said in response.
Frypan closed his eyes and resolved to shut up. The answers would come soon enough. He breathed deeply, doing his best to follow directions, to calm his nerves. The warmth he’d been feeling expanded as weariness trickled in, pulling him toward sleep.
“You ready?”
Frypan’s eyes snapped open to see his nurse staring down at him through what seemed like a white haze. He tried to speak, but only a mumble of something unintelligible came out.
“You look ready,” she said. “Just wanted to let you know I’m about to lower the mask. You don’t need to do anything—go ahead and close your eyes again. When you wake up you’ll remember everything.”
He grunted, closed his eyes. He hadn’t been this tired in a long time.
Something squeaked, followed by a grating sound, then a few hard clinks. He felt the pads of the mask on his skin. Something whirred, reminding him of the Grievers, which sent a brief spurt of panic through him before it got swallowed by his exhaustion.
Just before he lost consciousness, he swore he could feel cold worms trying to burrow their way into his ears.
* * *
Frypan swam in a pool of darkness.
Somewhere on the outside, in the periphery, he was aware of pain. It bit at his nerves, sliced through his head and brain. But a dullness, the fog of drugs, numbed it, made it a thing he didn’t care about.
As he floated in the absence of light, he remembered how others back in the Maze had described the Changing—an awful journey into a swirling white tornado of their imagination. And that was when recalling only a few flashes of memory. They talked about the extreme pain, and he wondered if he was about to go through something like that. He wasn’t too keen on the idea—a good burn from the stove was about the worst thing he’d been through before.
Things developed differently than he could’ve ever guessed.
He floated in an impossible vacuum—with no gravity, no sense of direction or space. Finally an unseen ground solidified below him and his feet touched a hard surface. He pulled himself together and looked around, hoping for a light to banish the darkness that pressed in on him, scaring him.
Something creaked close by and he turned toward the sound, saw an open door, a soft light spilling out to reveal a stone path between him and the entrance to who-knew-where. He knew this all had to be imagined, that he wasn’t actually in this place, seeing what he was seeing. It had to be symbolic, something formed in his imagination to be able to process whatever the doctors were doing to his brain with their mask machine.
He reached the door in just four steps, hesitated in front of it, then pushed it open wider and entered a sea of blackness. As his eyes adjusted, he realized he was in a long hallway that stretched into the distance as far as he could see. The walls, floor, and ceiling were no longer black, but white. They went on until they converged into a single point.
A series of screens was set into the right wall, one about every three feet, seeming to continue as far as the hallway itself did. The screen closest to him suddenly flickered with static; then a moving image formed within its square, perfectly clear and crisp. Frypan stepped closer to get a better look.
A man, standing at a kitchen counter, his arm moving furiously as he mixes something in a bowl. Frypan is sitting on the floor, staring up at this man. His … dad. The man turns to face Frypan, a huge smile on his face. “These are going to be the best pancakes ever eaten by humans. Almost ready!” Frypan laughs.
The screen goes black. Frypan realizes this was his first memory, the earliest his mind can go back; he was maybe three years old. He is remembering his dad, his kind face full of love as he smiled and spoke.
Frypan knows what to do next, reminds himself that it’s all imagined—this is how his brain has chosen to give him his life back. He walks to the next screen.
He’s sitting in a small pool, splashing and shrieking, crying when too much water gets in his eyes. Warm hands reach down—a woman’s hands—and wipe his face; then he begins all over again. A ball is thrown in and he kicks it. His mom’s body keeps appearing and disappearing in the background as she paces back and forth. She’s just learned some awful news about the disease spreading across the world.
He doesn’t know how all this is so clear from just watching a few images. But it is. He moves on to the next screen.
A little older, helping his dad in the kitchen. They’re making stew, chopping up all the veggies and meat. His dad is crying. Frypan knows that his mom has been taken away for further testing, and that they’ve said his dad will be next.
On to the next screen.
A man in a dark suit, standing by a car. Papers in his fist, a grave look on his face. Frypan is holding hands with his dad on the porch. WICKED has been formed, a joint venture of the world’s governments—those that survived the sun flares, an event that happened long before Frypan was born. WICKED’s purpose is to study what is now known as the killzone, where the Flare does its damage. The brain.
Frypan is immune. Others are immune. Less than one percent of the population, most of them under the age of twenty. Many people have developed hatred toward those who are immune, call them the Munies and do terrible things out of jealousy. WICKED says they can protect Frypan while they’re working toward a cure.