Chapter 36 Chapter Thirty-Six The Most Miserable Area

The Palace of Vertigo is horrible and dirty everywhere.As they made their way through the cluttered and frightening area, the short guard talked a lot, endlessly, and provided more information than Thomas had originally wanted to know. He said the place where the infected lived was a giant colony, rings within rings, in which all the common areas—the cafeteria, the infirmary, the recreational facilities—are located in the very center, surrounded by rows of very high-quality poor housing.The Palace of Vertigo was also considered a human option, a sanctuary for the infected until they reached the insane stage, before they were transported to remote deserted places where solar flares erupted.The people who built these palaces of madness wanted the infected to enjoy their last moments of decent life, and the rest of the world's cities basically adopted this plan.

Although the intention was good, the reality turned out to be very bad.When a place is filled with hopeless people who also know they are about to fall into the horrible vortex of decay and madness, this ends up creating some of the most miserable areas ever.Knowing that there would be no real punishment for the residents, and no worse consequences than they had already faced, the crime rate skyrocketed and it developed into a sensual paradise. A group of people walked past one house after another...the house was just a wooden shed in a state of disrepair, and Thomas felt terrible at the thought of living in such a place.Most of the windows in the house were broken, and the guard explained that the use of glass windows in the city was one of the biggest mistakes, and it became the biggest source of weapons.The streets were littered with rubbish, and although they hadn't seen anyone yet, Thomas and his friends already felt that someone was watching them from the shadows.He heard a few expletives in the distance, and then heard a scream from the other direction, and Thomas' nerves tightened even more.

"Why didn't they close the place?" he was the first of the group to ask. "I mean, if it's this bad." "So bad?" said the guard, "kid, bad is a relative word, that's all. What else can you do to these people? You can't let them mix with healthy people in a guarded city. You Can't just throw them in a place full of Crazies as soon as they get out of control and let them be eaten alive. No government is desperate enough for people to start killing people as soon as they get the Flare, that's all. And It’s also a way for us immunized people to get rich because no one else wants to work here.”

After hearing these words, Thomas was even more depressed, the world is so pitiful.Maybe it was a selfish expression that he didn't help WICKED complete the experiment. Brenda spoke, her face scrunched up in disgust since entering the city. "Why don't you just be honest and say: you let the infected run around these hapless places until they can't get any worse and you can get rid of them with a clear conscience." "That's all right," the guard replied solemnly. Thomas didn't like the guy so much that he almost felt sorry for him. They kept going, passing rows of houses, not one of which was not dilapidated and dirty.

"Where's everyone?" Thomas asked. "I thought the place was overcrowded. Also, earlier you said something happened. What do you mean?" At this time, the guy with the long beard spoke up, and it would be a good thing to listen to another voice. "Some, the lucky ones, smoke heaven in their own homes. But most are in the core, eating, drinking, or just doing nothing. They're sending us too many of them faster than we can. Besides this One thing, another problem is that a lot of immune people around us are gone, don't know where, we are getting smaller and smaller, this chaos will become unmanageable one day. Let's say this morning , the water is finally a little hot."

"The immune person around him is gone?" Thomas repeated.It looks like WICKED is using every resource available to experiment even more, despite the dangerous consequences of what they do. "Yeah, almost half of our workers have disappeared in the past few months. No trace, no explanation, just made my job a thousand times harder than before." Thomas mumbled, "Let's get away from these people and get us somewhere safer until you find Newt." "It's more or less the same." Minho added. The guard just shrugged. "Okay, as long as I can get the money."

The guards finally stopped two laps away from the core and told them to wait.Thomas and the others huddled in the shadows behind a shed.Every minute passed, those noisy voices became louder and louder, and now that they were so close to the most populated part of the Palace of Madness, it sounded like a large-scale brawl was happening nearby.Thomas hated every second of sitting there waiting, listening to the horrible noise, wondering if the guard was coming back, not thinking much about Newt. About ten minutes after the guard walked away, two people emerged from the cabin across the narrow passage.Thomas's pulse quickened, and he was about to get up and run when he realized that they didn't look threatening at all.They were a couple, holding hands, and apart from being a bit dirty and wearing crumpled and worn clothes, they looked normal.

The two approached several of them and stopped in front of them. "When did you come here?" the woman asked. Thomas fumbled to say something, but Brenda spoke first. "We came with the last batch. We're actually looking for an old friend. His name is Newt. He has blond hair and a limp. Have you seen him?" The man seemed to think it was the dumbest question he'd ever heard in his life, and replied, "There's a lot of blond hair here, how do we know who's who? Besides, what's Newt's name like?" ?” Just as Minho opened his mouth to answer, the noise in the center of the city rang out again, so everyone turned their heads to look, and the couple looked at each other with concern.Then, without saying a word, they ran back into the house.As they closed the door, Thomas heard the lock click.Seconds later, a plank appeared over the window, covering the entire window, and a shard of glass fell to the ground outside.

"They seemed as happy to be here as we were," Thomas said. Jorge grunted. "Really friendly, I think I'll be back to visit them." "They obviously haven't been here long," Brenda said. "I can't imagine what it's like. You know you're infected, you're sent here, you're living with a demented person, and you see yourself going Be the same person you see before your eyes." Thomas just shook his head slowly, misfortune in the purest sense of the word. "Where did those guards go?" Minho asked, with a clearly impatient tone, "How long will it take to find someone and tell him his friend is waiting here?"

Ten minutes later, the two guards reappeared around the corner, and Thomas and his friends stood up. "Did you find him?" Minho asked urgently. The short guy looked irritable, with vacillating eyes, as if he had lost his previous brazenness, and Thomas wondered if a trip to what they called the heartland had made him that way. His companion replied, "We asked around, and I think we found what you were looking for. It looked exactly like what you described, we called his name, and he turned towards us, but..." The two The guards looked at each other uncomfortably. "But what?" Minho urged.

"He said - categorically, I should add - to get you people off."