Chapter 9 Chapter 9 Childhood Memories

Thomas watched for over an hour in the dark, but finally fell asleep.And when he did fall asleep, all he dreamed was a mess of loose images and memories. A woman sat at a table looking across the table, looking straight into his eyes and smiling.As he observed her, she picked up a glass of the steaming liquid and tasted it.She smiled again, and then she said, "Now eat your porridge, that's right, my boy." It was his mother, a kind face that showed every time she grinned. Deep love.She watched him finish his last mouthful of cereal, then ruffle his hair and set the bowl in the sink.

Then he was in a small carpeted room, playing with silver blocks that seemed to stick together as he built a huge castle.His mother was crying in a chair in the corner, and Thomas knew right away what was going on: According to the diagnosis, his dad had the Flare and was already showing some symptoms.This clearly indicated that his mother had the disease, too, or would soon.Thomas in the dream knew that the doctors would soon know that he also had the virus at a young age, but that he was immune and unaffected, and that they would conduct experiments to confirm. Then he rode his bike in a scorching heat that billowed off the sidewalks, where weeds grew on both sides of the road where green grass had once grown.There was a smile on his sweaty face as his mother watched him.He could feel that she was enjoying every second of happy time.They walked to a nearby pond, stagnant and stank.She grabbed a handful of stones for him, and he threw them into the depths of the murky water.At first, he threw it as far as he could, then he tried to float it, like his dad taught him last summer, but he couldn't do it yet.Weary from the suffocating weather, he and his mother soon got tired and headed home.

Then, the scene in the dream, those memories, slowly dimmed. When he got home, he saw a man in a black suit sitting on the sofa, holding a stack of papers in his hand, with a serious face.Thomas stood beside his mother, holding her hand.WICKED was formed, a coalition of governments around the world that had escaped the Flare.This happened before Thomas was born.WICKED's goal was to study the part of the Flare that wreaked havoc in what is now known as the kill zone, the brain. The man said Thomas was immune to it, and so were others, not more than one percent of the population, mostly under the age of twenty.The world is dangerous for them, and because they are immune to these terrible viruses, they are hated by people and ridiculed by others as immune guys.People do terrible things to these people.WICKED says they can protect Thomas, and Thomas can help them find a cure.They said he was very smart, the smartest person who ever took part in the experiment.His mother had no choice but to let him go, and she certainly didn't want her son to watch him slowly go crazy.

She then told Thomas that she loved him and that she was glad he would never experience what they had seen happen to his dad.That madness drained him of everything, that is to say, everything that made him human. When the dream faded, Thomas fell into a deep sleep. Early the next morning, a loud knock on the door woke him up.Before he could get up on his elbows, the door opened, and five guards with launchers walked in yesterday, followed by Jensen. "Get up, boys," said the Rat Man, "at any rate, we've decided to restore your memories, whether you like it or not."