The Death Cure

They go to a coffee shop for some food. When they walk in, Thomas notices a man near the door who is staring across the café. Brenda speculates that he is on the Bliss. They finish eating and Brenda asks Minho and Jorge to wait outside while she speaks to Thomas. She begins to try to tell him something, but Thomas tells her he doesn’t want to know anything. As they sit in silence for a moment, Thomas notices a guard approaching the man who was staring off. He points out the situation to Brenda who tells him they need to leave now and stands up quickly. Before Thomas can leave, the man attacks the guard and the guard yells out that the man is infected. Everyone in the café rushes the door.

“Thomas realized that though it was possible he could get hurt by the fleeing crowd, he really had nothing to worry about. He was immune” (143). He wants to watch the guard and the infected man wrestle, but Brenda and the others are motioning him from outside to get out. Thomas realizes all the patrons are gone, and the guard asks him to find his gun. He tells the guard the infected man has looked weird since he got there and the guard gets angry, questioning why he didn’t tell anyone.

The guard makes Thomas sit down and wants to test him for the Flare. Backup arrives for the guard: four people dressed in green suits. They approach the man with a blue object. Thomas continues to watch as the man cries and says he did not know he was infected. The guards treat the man poorly and then use the blue object to encase him in a shell-like coating. The original guard tells Thomas that after they finish with the infected, he will take Thomas with him.

Minho tries to get Thomas, but the guard tells him Thomas will not be going anywhere. After the guard asks if Minho is immune too, Minho runs off with Brenda and Jorge. At gunpoint, Thomas is lead out of the café. The guard will not tell him where they are going, except that it will make the guard a lot of money. They head down the street, and Thomas looks at the posters on the walls. He reads one about how to identify people with the Flare.

They arrive at the end of a street where a white car awaits. “Thomas hesitated, searching the streets for anyone, anything. The area is deserted, but out of the corner of his eye he noticed movement. A hovering machine almost as large as a car. He spun to look and the cop machine swerved onto the street two blocks down and started heading their way” (151). Thomas gets in the car. Outside, the guard is shot down. The cop machine asks Thomas to get out of the car and he recognizes the voice: the Rat Man.

The Rat Man is not there physically, but his image is projected on the cop machine. He tells Thomas he is welcome since Janson has just saved him from a bounty hunter. Janson explains that WICKED has not come to retrieve him because of the high infection rate. He asks Thomas to come back and finish testing. Janson attempts to make Thomas’s decision easier by telling him that Newt’s condition is worsening rapidly and that he will be mad sooner rather than later.

The Rat Man tells him to think about it, and the cop machine goes away. Minho, Brenda, and Jorge find Thomas and he explains what happened. He wants to check on Newt, and Minho appears to become upset by the news. Brenda suggests they get off the street because it is getting dark, and Jorge seconds this suggestion because he notices the people he has seen on the street do not look right.

They walk for an hour, but do not find a cab. They are still far from the airport, and Brenda suggests they settle down and sleep for the night. Thomas notices Minho is anxious. As they get closer to the hotel, “Jorge pulled up short, holding one hand in the air and putting a finger to his lips with the other. Thomas stopped dead in his tracks, alarm suddenly tingling through his nerves” (157). They scan the area, looking for something. Jorge swears he heard a noise. Minho tries to get whoever is following them to show him or herself, but no one comes out of the darkness. They make it back to their room and go to sleep.