Chapter 20 Chapter 20 Bits and pieces of memory

Thomas woke up to find Brenda staring at him.She looked worried, pale, with dried blood on her face, soot on her forehead and bruises on her face.As if her injury had reminded him, he suddenly felt needle-like pain all over his body.He had no way of knowing how the launcher grenades worked, but he was glad he had only been hit once. "I'm just recovering, too," Brenda said. "How are you feeling?" Thomas shifted and leaned on his elbow.There was a sharp pain in his thigh grazed by the bullet, and he frowned. "Like a fool!" He was lying on a low bed in a large shelf, and there was nothing in it for the time being, just a pile of messy furniture.Minho and Newt lay on some ugly couches, finally able to take a good nap, with blankets tucked under their chins—Thomas secretly thought it was Brenda—they looked like Little ones, warm and cozy.

Brenda, who should have been kneeling by his cot, stood up now, and took a seat in the scruffy armchair beside her. "We slept almost ten hours." "Really?" Thomas couldn't believe he had slept for so long, it felt like he just dozed off.Or more accurately, he lost consciousness. Brenda nodded. "Have we been flying for so long? Where are we going? To the moon?" Thomas threw his legs aside and sat on the edge of the crude bed. "No, Jorge flew us about a hundred kilometers away, and now he stopped in a large open space. In fact, he is already snoring, we can't have a tired pilot."

"I can't believe it, we both got shot by that current shooter, whoever pulled the trigger must have had a blast." Thomas rubbed his face, yawned, and checked the burn on his arm , "Do you think these leave scars?" Brenda laughed and said, "Is that what you're worried about?" Thomas couldn't help laughing, she was right. "So," he began, and then continued slowly, "in WICKED, it was really nice to think about escaping from that place, but... I don't know anything about the real world... probably not Like Scorched Earth, huh?"

Brenda replied: "No, only the areas between the tropics are wilderness, other places have extremely different climates, we can only go to a few safe cities. Besides, we are immune, we It might be easier to find a job." "Work," Thomas repeated the word as if it was the strangest word he'd ever heard, "are you already thinking about getting a job?" "You have to eat, right?" Thomas didn't answer, feeling the weight of reality.If they can really escape back to the real world, they have to live like real people.But in a world where the Flare exists, is that possible?He thought of his friends.

"Theresa," he said. Brenda was taken aback, and withdrew her thoughts: "What happened to her?" "Is it possible to find out where she went with the others?" "Jorge has already found it. He checked the tracking system of the Berg spacecraft. They ran to a city called Denver." Thomas panicked: "Does this mean that WICKED can find us?" "You don't know Jorge yet." She smiled strangely. "You can't imagine how he will manipulate the system. We might be one step ahead of them, at least one step." "Denver," Thomas said after a moment, when the name sounded odd, "where is it?"

"Over there in the Rocky Mountains, at high altitude. As an isolation area, it was one of the obvious choices, because the sun shines there, the weather recovers quickly, a place that suits us very well." Thomas didn't care too much about the location, he just knew that finding Teresa and the others would bring everyone together.He wasn't quite sure why he had to do this, and he wasn't really ready to discuss it with Brenda, so he'd have to wait until the right time. "What kind of place is that?" he finally asked. "Honestly, like most big cities, they're ruthless, they don't let people with dementia go in, and the residents are often randomly tested. In fact, they built another town on the other side of the valley to send newly infected people to Get there. The immunizers who look after them are well paid, though dangerous, and both places are heavily guarded."

Although the memory came back a little, Thomas had no idea how many people were immune to the Flare, but he remembered something the Rat Man had said to him. "Jenson said that people hate immune people very much and call them immune people. What did he mean?" "When you get the Flare, you know you're going to go crazy and die. It's not a question of if, it's when. The world tries hard, but the virus always finds a way out Imagine that you knew about this situation, and also knew that the immune people were safe, that the Flare couldn't affect them at all, that they wouldn't even spread the virus, wouldn't you hate the healthy people?"

"Maybe," Thomas said, pleased that he was part of the immune group. It's better to be hated than sick. "But don't you think it's nice to have these people around? I mean, it's nice to know they won't get this disease." Brenda shrugged: "They're definitely going to be used, especially as government and security personnel, but other people treat them like crap. Also, there are more people who aren't immune. That's why the immune guy leads the way. Well paid guards, otherwise they wouldn't want to do it. A lot of people are trying so hard not to let people know they're immune. Or go work for WICKED, like Jorge and I did before."

"Did you two know each other before you went there?" “We met in Alaska when we were both tested for immunity. There was a colony of people like us there, sort of a secret concentration camp. Jorge was kind of like an uncle to me, and he swore Be my protector. My dad was killed, and my mom pushed me out of the house as soon as she found out I had the Flare." Thomas leaned forward, elbows on knees. "You told me WICKED killed your dad, but you volunteered to serve them?" "To survive, Thomas." Her face darkened. "You don't understand how good it is to grow up under the wings of WICKED. In the real world, most people would do anything to survive another day. Dazzling The sick have different issues than the immune, yeah, but it's all about survival, and everybody wants to live."

Thomas didn't respond to her, and didn't know what to say.Life as he knew it was mazes and scorched earth, and bits and pieces of memories from his childhood with WICKED.He felt empty and bewildered for a moment, as if he never belonged anywhere. Suddenly he felt a pain in his heart. "I was wondering what the hell happened to my mother." He surprised even himself when he said this. "Your mother?" Brenda asked. "You remember her?" "I had a few dreams, and I dreamed of her. I think it should be a memory." "What do you remember? What does she look like?"

"She's just... a mother, you know, who loves me and cares about me and worries about me." Thomas' voice changed. "No one did that to me after they took me away from her. Thinking of her going crazy I just feel sad, and I feel sad thinking about what might have happened to her. What about those crazy bloodthirsty lunatics—” "Stop talking, Thomas, really stop talking." She grabbed his hand tightly and interrupted him, "Think how happy she would be if she knew you were still alive and continued to fight .She died knowing you were immune, and that you had a chance to grow up, no matter how bad the world was. Also, you were dead wrong." Thomas had been staring at the floor, but at the last sentence he looked up at Brenda. "what?" "Minho, Newt, Frypan, all your friends care about you, worry about you. Even Teresa, she did those things in the Scorched Earth because she felt like she had no choice." Brenda pauses A moment, then added quietly, "Chuck." Thomas' heart tightened even more. "Chuck, he...he's..." He had to pause to collect himself.After all, Chuck is the most direct reason for his disdain for WICKED, what kind of good fruit can kill a child like Chuck? He then went on to say: "I watched that kid die, and in the last few seconds of his life, you could see the terror in his eyes. You can't do that, you can't treat a person like that. Even if someone told me, I don't care how many people go crazy and die, and I don't care if the whole stinking human race dies. Even if it's the only thing that can be done to find a cure, I'm still against it." "Thomas, take it easy, you're about to squeeze your fingers out." He didn't remember letting go of her hand, he looked down at his clasped hands, the skin had turned completely white, he let go and felt the blood rush back. Brenda nodded seriously, "I got better forever in the Scorched Earth, and I apologize for everything." Thomas shook his head. "You're not like me. You don't have a single reason to apologize. This is a mess." He groaned and lay back on the cot, staring at the metal grid on the ceiling. After a long silence, Brenda finally spoke again: "You know, maybe we'll find Teresa and the others, all together, and their rioting means they're on our side. I think the result of us being so suspicious of them is that maybe they have no choice but to go away from us, so it's not surprising that they go to a place where there is a choice." Thomas looked back at her, wishing she was right. "So you think we should go—" "Denver." Thomas nodded in agreement, even suddenly liking it a little bit. "Yes, to Denver." "But going to your friends isn't the only reason," Brenda said with a smile. "There are other, more important things out there."