Thomas took one of the money cards Jorge had stolen, then left to catch another bus with Rachel, Newt and Beth. Even after only the one trip he had decided that he did not like public transport. Teresa and Aris were walking because their destination wasn't far.
During the journey Thomas stared out of the window again, now his amazement at the existence of a city had disappeared he could see the place for what it really was.
Some type of security force patrolled every street in great numbers—there were hundreds of them, all wearing red shirts and gas masks, a weapon in one hand and in the other a smaller version of the viral testing device Thomas and his friends had looked into before entering the city. The farther they got from the outside barrier wall, the dirtier the streets became. Trash was everywhere, windows were broken and graffiti decorated almost every wall. And despite the sun glinting off windows high above, a darkness had settled over the place.
The bus stop closest to what was apparently Gally's flat was made of glass, or had been before it was all smashed.
"Cosy place the shank chose." Newt remarked, staring at a large chunk of red stained rock abandoned on the pavement.
Thomas agreed. The place was far from inviting, and the drab gray bricks covered in graffiti made him nervous. He didn't want to walk up those steps and find out who was waiting inside.
"Come on. Sooner we do this the sooner we can leave." Rachel started up the steps, forcing the others to follow, she reached the door to Number 2792 and knocked.
Warring parts of Thomas's mind were glad she had just done it and wishing she hadn't.
Thomas could tell immediately that the black-haired kid who answered was Gally from the Glade. No doubt about it. But his face was badly scarred, covered in raised lines like thin white slugs. His right eye looked permanently swollen, and his nose, which had been big and slightly deformed before the Chuck incident, was markedly crooked.
"Glad you came," Gally said in his raspy voice. "Because the end of the world is upon us."
He stepped back and opened the door wider. "Come in."
They did so quickly, Thomas went last and shut the door behind him, hoping he hadn't made an awful decision.
The apartment was empty but tidy, the whole place was very brightly lit, despite the sheet hung over the window as a makeshift curtain.
Gally was staring at Beth as if he had seen a ghost, although the reverse would have been more fitting. Thomas realised that he must have prepared himself for her to be dead, almost expected it. The tension lasted a few moments before Gally moved forward in a flash and embraced his partner.
Newt, Rachel and Thomas all just watched the pair, they held onto each other for at least a minute before Beth pulled away.
"Good to see you to." She was smiling brighter than Thomas had ever seen.
"I remember, all of it." Gally sounded entirely numb, WICKED had done something to him, the effects of killing Chuck. How had he even got here?
"Let's sit down." Beth pulled him down to the floor beside him and everyone else copied her. "Now can you explain what this is, how you're here?"
"I spent a few weeks recovering." Gally tapped the scarring on his cheek. "But mentally I couldn't take it, and especially not with my memories back. I still can't. I acted crazy, like I had the Flare, so they sent me here. The Right Arm ambushed me, and now I'm with them." It was only a vague overview but it was obvious they wouldn't get any more information.
"I'm sorry about what I did, Gally." Thomas held the other boy's gaze with his own as he said it. He wanted Gally to believe him, to know that he understood that WICKED was their shared enemy.
"You're sorry? I killed Chuck. He's dead. Because of me."
Hearing him say that brought Thomas no relief, only sadness.
"It wasn't your fault," Beth shook her head sadly, "I couldn't stop myself either."
"That's a bunch of klunk," Gally said stiffly. "If I had any kind of guts I could've stopped them from Controlling me. But I let them do it to me 'cause I thought I'd be killing Thomas, not Chuck. Not in a million years would I have let myself murder that poor kid."
"Generous." Newt snickered but went ignored.
"So you wanted me dead?" Thomas asked, surprised at the boy's honesty.
Gally scoffed. "Don't get all whiny on me. I hated you and Rachel more than I'd ever hated anybody in my life. But what happened in the past doesn't matter one lick anymore. We need to talk about the future. About the end of the world."
"Go on then, and make it a real explanation." Rachel just looked bored.
After a long pause, Gally began. "The guy who gave you the note is named Richard. He's a member of a group called the Right Arm. They have people in every city and town left on this crappy planet. Their whole mission is to bring down our old friends—to use WICKED's money and influence for things that actually matter—but they don't have the resources to disrupt an organization so huge and powerful. They want to act, but they're still missing some information."
"We've heard of them," Newt said. "But how'd you get involved?"
"They have a couple of spies in the main complex at WICKED, and they got to me, explained how if I faked going crazy, I'd be sent away. I would've done anything to get out of that place. Anyway, the Right Arm wanted an insider who knew about how the building functions, the security systems, that kind of klunk. So they attacked my escort car and took me. Brought me here. As for how I knew you were coming, we got an anonymous message over the Netblock. I assumed you guys sent it."
Thomas hadn't known anything about that, and he knew no one had been sending any messages, although maybe Teresa should've.
"So it wasn't you," Gally said. "Then maybe it was someone at headquarters sending out an alert, trying to set up bounty hunters or whatever. Point is, once we knew about it, from there it was just a matter of hacking into the airport system to see where a Berg had shown up."
"And you brought us here to talk about taking down WICKED?" Thomas asked. Even the remote possibility of such a thing filled him with hope.
Gally nodded slowly and deliberately before he spoke. "You make it sound so easy. But yeah, that's about the gist of it. We've got two big problems on our hands, though."
"Which are?" Rachel pulled her gaze from her hands, now she was interested.
"First of all, word is that the Flare is running rampant through this whole shuck city and that all kinds of corruption is going on to hide it because the ones who are sick are government bigwigs. They're hiding the virus with the Bliss—it slows down the Flare so people who have it can blend in with everyone else, but the virus keeps spreading. My guess is it's the same all over the world. There's just no way to keep that beast out."
Thomas felt a fear in his gut. The idea of a world overwhelmed by hordes of Cranks was terrifying. He couldn't imagine how truly awful things could get—being immune wouldn't amount to much when that happened.
"What's the other problem?" Newt asked. "As if that one wasn't bad enough."
"People like us."
"People like us?" Beth repeated, a confused look on her face. "You mean Immunes?"
"Yeah." Gally leaned forward. "They're disappearing. Being kidnapped or running away, vanishing into thin air—no one knows. We've heard they're being sold to WICKED so they can conduct new Trials. Start all over if they have to. Whether that's true or not, the population of immune people in this city and others has been halved in the last six months, and most of them are disappearing without a trace. It's causing a lot of headaches. The city needs them more than people even realize."
Thomas's anxiety went up a notch. "Don't most people hate the Munies—isn't that what they call us? Maybe they're being killed or something." He hated the other possibility that was occurring to him: that WICKED might be kidnapping them and putting them through exactly what he'd been through. A terrible thought occurred to Thomas: what if Aris and Teresa found nothing, or walked into a trap.
"I doubt that," Gally said. "We have reliable sources, and this reeks of WICKED to the core. These problems make a bad combination. The Flare is all over the city even though the government claims it's not. And the Immunes are disappearing. Whatever's happening, there isn't gonna be anyone left in Denver. Who knows about other cities."
"So what does this have to do with us?" Rachel asked.
Gally looked surprised. "What, you don't care that civilization is about to come to an end? The cities are crumbling. Pretty soon it's just going to be a world of psychos who want to eat you for supper."
"Of course we care," Thomas answered. "But what do you want us to do about it?"
"Hey, all I know is that WICKED has one directive—to find a cure. And it's pretty obvious that's never gonna happen. If we had their money, their resources, we could use it to really help. To protect the healthy. I thought you'd want that."
Thomas did, of course. Desperately.
Gally shrugged when no one responded. "We don't have much to lose. We might as well try something. Who else is still around?"
"Apart from us. Teresa, Aris, Harriet, Minho, Sonya, Frypan, Jane, Mary, Clint, Emme and Alejandra." Thomas counted them off on his fingers. "We're with these people called Brenda and Jorge as well, they used to work for WICKED."
Gally's face fell. "That's it. Everyone else dead?" He looked broken, Thomas didn't think he would have taken it well either.
"Unfortunately. None of us are with WICKED any more." Rachel sighed. "And if what you said is true, soon they'll be no immunes left in the world."
"Gally, do you swear everything you told us is true?" Newt spoke for the first time in a while
"Every bit. The Right Arm wants to take action. They're planning something even as we speak. They need information about WICKED, though, and who better to help us than you? We need every warm body we can get."
Thomas decided to trust Gally. Maybe they'd never liked each other, but they had the same enemy, which put them on the same team. "What do we do if we want in?" he finally asked. "Do we come back here? Go somewhere else?"
Gally smiled. "Come back here. Any time before nine or so in the morning, for another week. I should be around. I don't think we'll make any moves before then."
"Moves?" Thomas was itching with curiosity.
"I've told you enough. You want more, you come back. I'll be here."
Thomas nodded, then held out a hand. Gally shook it.
"I don't blame you for anything," Thomas said. "You saw what I'd done for WICKED when you went through the Changing. I wouldn't have trusted me, either. And I know you didn't want to kill Chuck. Just don't plan on hugs every time I see you."
"The feeling's mutual."
They got up to leave, but Beth was reluctant, looking around the dingy room, the vitality that seemed to have left Gally's expression when he saw he would be alone again.
"Do you want me to stay here?" She asked carefully. "Would they allow that?"
"I'm quite sure." Gally's eyes had lit up, the pair didn't want to be separated so soon after being reunited. Thomas didn't blame them.
"Then I'll stay." There was a finality in Beth's tone that wasn't to be argued with.
"I'll tell Harriet about that then." Newt opened the door and left, Thomas glanced at Rachel then followed.
"That was weird." The words were out of Rachel's mouth as soon as they got to the bottom of the stairs. "Do we really want to join a terrorist group?"
"Doesn't seem like there's a choice." Thomas didn't like that part, but he did relish the idea of being revenged on WICKED, rescuing those they had kidnapped.
The three of them walked back to the bus stop, the peeling timetable saying that their bus would arrive in ten minutes.
"I wouldn't count on it to be on time neither." Newt leant against the cleanest stretch of wall available, dirt rubbing off onto his shirt.
"I can live with that. We've bigger problems now." Rachel said ominously. "I wonder how everyone else has been getting on?"
Suddenly, Thomas felt that something bad had happened, glancing at his friends told him they knew it too.