"Won't do us any good?" the Crank said; he spit a wad of red goo from his mouth. "It'll do me a lot of good. That, I can guarantee, hermano." He balled both hands into fists at his sides.
Then he cocked his head, barely enough to be noticed. But as soon as he did, the Cranks behind him pulled all kinds of nasty things from within the hidden depths of their ragged clothes. Knives. Rusted machetes. Black spikes that had maybe once been in a railroad somewhere. Shards of glass with red-tinged smudges on their razor-thin tips. One girl, who couldn't have been more than thirteen years old, held a splintered shovel, its metal scoop ending in a jagged edge like the teeth of a saw.
Thomas had the sudden and absolute certainty that he was now pleading for their lives. The Gladers couldn't win in a fight against these people. No way. They weren't Grievers, but there also wasn't a magic code to shut them down.
"Listen," Thomas said, slowly getting to his feet, hoping Minho wouldn't be stupid enough to try anything. "There's something about us. We're not just random shanks who showed up on your doorstep. We're valuable. Alive, not dead."
The anger on Jorge's face lessened ever so slightly. Maybe a spark of curiosity. But what he said was "What's a shank?"
Thomas almost―almost―laughed. An irrational response that somehow would've seemed appropriate. "Me and you. Ten minutes. Alone. That's all I ask. Bring all the weapons you need."
Jorge did laugh at that, more of a wet snort than anything. "Sorry to burst your bubble, kid, but I don't think I'll need any."
He paused, and it felt like the next few seconds lasted a full hour.
"Ten minutes," the Crank finally said. "Rest of you stay here, watch these punks. If I give the word, let the death games begin." He held a hand out, gesturing to a dark hallway that led from the room on the side across from the broken doors.
"Ten minutes," he repeated.
Thomas nodded. When Jorge didn't move, he went first, walking toward their meeting place and maybe the most important discussion of his life.
And maybe the last.
CHAPTER 27
Thomas felt Jorge at his heels as he entered the dark hallway. It smelled of mildew and rot; water dripped from the ceiling, sending out creepy echoes that for some awful reason made him think of blood.
"Just keep going," Jorge said from behind. "There's a room at the end with chairs. Make even the slightest move against me, everyone dies."
Thomas wanted to turn and scream at the guy but kept walking. "I'm not an idiot. You can quit the whole tough-guy routine."
The Crank only snickered in response.
After several minutes of quiet, Thomas finally approached a wooden door with a round silver knob. He reached out and opened it without hesitating, trying to show Jorge that he still had some dignity. Once inside, however, he didn't know what to do. It was pitch-black.
He sensed Jorge stepping around him; then there was the loud flumping sound of heavy cloth being whipped in the air. A hot, blinding light appeared, and Thomas had to shield his eyes with his forearms. He could only squint at first, then eventually dropped his arms and was able to see okay; he realized that the Crank had pulled a large sheet of canvas from a window. An unbroken window. Outside, there was only sunlight and concrete.
"Sit down," Jorge said, his voice less gruff than Thomas would've expected. He hoped it was because the Crank had finally accepted that his new visitor was going to take a rational and calm approach to their situation. That maybe there really was something to this discussion that could end up benefiting the current residents of the dilapidated building. Of course, the guy was a Crank, so Thomas had no idea how he'd react.
The room had no furniture other than two small wooden chairs and a table between them. Thomas pulled out the one closer to him and took a seat. Jorge sat down on the other side, then leaned forward and put his elbows on the table, hands clasped. His face was blank, his eyes glued on Thomas.
"Talk."
Thomas wished he could take a second to sift through all the ideas that had run through his mind back in the larger room, but he knew there wasn't any time for that.
"Okay." He hesitated. One word. So far, not so good. He pulled in a breath. "Look, I heard you mention WICKED back there. We know all about those guys. It'd be really interesting to hear what you have to say about them."
Jorge didn't budge; his expression didn't change. "I'm not the one talking right now. You are."
"Yeah, I know." Thomas scooted his chair a little closer to the table. Then he pushed it back and put a foot up on his knee. He needed to calm down and just let the words flow. "Well, this is hard because I don't know what you know. So I guess I'll just pretend like you're stupid to the whole thing."
"I'd strongly advise you never to use the word stupid with me again."
Thomas had to force himself to swallow, his throat tight with fear. "Just a figure of speech."
"Get on with it."
Thomas took another deep breath. "We used to be a group of about fifty guys. And ... a girl." A prick of pain stuck him at that. "Now we're down to eleven. I don't know all the details, but WICKED is some kind of organization that's doing a whole load of nasty things to us for some reason. We started in a place called the Glade, inside a stone maze, surrounded by these creatures called Grievers."
He waited, searching Jorge's face for any reaction to his burst of strange information. But the Crank showed no signs of confusion or recognition. Nothing at all.
And so Thomas told him everything. What it had been like in the Maze, how they'd escaped, how they thought they were safe, how it ended up being just another layer of the WICKED plan. He told him about the Rat Man, and the mission he'd set them on: to survive long enough to make it one hundred miles to the north, to a place he referred to as the safe haven. He related how they'd gone down the long tunnel, been attacked by the flying silver goop, made the trek across the initial miles of their journey.