Page 16 of The Infinite Glade (The Maze Cutter #3)
CHAPTER EIGHT
Hidden Truths
“H ow will we know it’s the truth—what you tell us?” Jackie asked reasonably.
Hay que sentir el pensamiento y pensar el sentimiento. You have to feel the thought and think the feeling, Abuela would say. An old saying.
“You islanders . . .” Ximena shook her head at Isaac and Jackie.
“You went your whole lives without knowing things, and ignoring how bad the rest of the world was because your world was perfect. Well, now . . . now, you need to hear it.” She felt everyone’s eyes on her again as she turned to Cian and Erros.
“The truth. All of it.” Ximena held eye contact with Erros, the weaker of the two for sure. “ Who is the Cure for, Erros?”
He looked to Cian as if he needed approval to speak.
Cian rubbed above his eyebrows and winced. “Can’t go back, now.”
“?Qué pasa?” Ximena threw her hand in the air. “What truth could hurt you this much that you can’t even admit it to a bunch of strangers?” To her, telling the truth was easy. Maybe too easy sometimes. Adults in her Village chided her for being too honest.
“Well . . .” Frypan sat on the other side of Isaac. Ximena waited for Jackie to join, but she lingered in the shadows. “Say it as simply as you can, just out with it.” He held his walking stick tightly with both hands, as if it were a sword.
Cian shook his head. “Okay. A hundred years of hidden history is hardly simple . . .” His crossbow slid down the tree it had been leaned against and Jackie finally came close.
“Look, I’m sorry we offended you. You’re right, there were people within WICKED who were good .
And there were other people who held the responsibility of protecting certain families.
Families with special genetics. But they ended up dooming everyone in the long run because they believed in keeping secrets in order to keep power. ”
Keeping secrets in order to keep power.
Ximena felt the truth in that.
Cian took a deep breath. “The Sequencers held DNA they valued as the future of humankind.” He lit his own coltsfoot cigar.
“It’s messed up, but they decided in all their grand wisdom that people with certain patterns of sequences should be valued higher than others.
Those were the people, one from each family . . . that WICKED studied.”
“So . . .” Frypan took his time. “You’re talking about the Gladers? Each one of us came from a ‘special’ family?” The old man took in a breath so big that Ximena could hear the air fill his lungs, and again as he exhaled. “Go on . . .”
Erros chimed in. “Families with the best DNA sequences. The ones that the Flare Coalition deemed worthy and in need of protection . . .”
Cian took back the conversation. “Scientists. Doctors. Heads of Political Movements. The top geniuses of the time . . . and their families of course. But because the Coalition included scientists and the outcome of life after the sun flares was unknown, each and every family who participated was forced to agree to a control subject.”
“A control subject . . .” Isaac pondered, nudging Jackie. “That’s the same thing Cowan said to me. . . . Remember how I wasn’t on the list to get on the Maze Cutter . . . ?”
Jackie shook her head.
“Frypan and me . . . Cowan said . . .” Isaac paused. “How did she say it?” He paused again. “She said that I wasn’t supposed to be on the ship. I wasn’t on the original list to go . . .”
“Oh . . . that’s right!” Jackie tapped Isaac’s arm.
“I asked Carson and Lacy where you were because everyone made such a big deal about waiting for you. We went to Stone Point the weekend before and had a great time, but then we were all getting on the Maze Cutter without even inviting you . . .” She looked confused.
“Sadina begged her mom the whole way to bring you but Ms. Cowan kept saying no, that it wasn’t important to bring you and that you’d be better off for the island staying behind. ”
Isaac turned his whole body toward Jackie. “She told me when I first spotted her rash that it was because I didn’t have family on the island.”
Ximena couldn’t help but feel for Isaac. Why didn’t he have family? She felt the thought and thought the feeling.
Jackie shook her head. “See! All the more reason for you to go with the only family you’ve known since they died, right?” Their whispers had distracted Ximena from Cian.
“The important people?” Ximena asked Cian to repeat what she missed.
“Families of top generals, scientists, doctors, engineers, all of the professions and intellectuals a society would need to be born again—they were approached to be part of the Sequencers. They were told about the incoming Flares and WICKED didn’t know if the Solar flash would be small or large, or how much of the grid it would take out.
There were different contingency plans, but those families who signed up knew only about the most attractive parts of the plan. ”
“Manipulative language like hope, survival, interest of the human race . . .” Erros rubbed his throat again. “They weren’t lies but . . . it wasn’t the whole truth.”
“Might as well be a lie . . .” Ximena said.
Jackie tossed a rock into the center of the fire and ash floated up from the flames. “So we were tricked to come here.” She was finally getting it. “And Frypan’s family was tricked. WICKED is trick-ed.” She shook her head in anger.
Cian ignored her. “Frypan, your parents thought you would be protected by the Coalition and eventually what became WICKED . . . they didn’t realize until it was too late that you’d become their property .
” It didn’t seem to hit Old Man Frypan any less than hearing his family traded his life for theirs.
The tattoo on the back of Frypan’s neck was hard to read but everyone back at the Villa confirmed that it still said PROPERTY OF WICKED.
Ximena wasn’t exactly surprised at what Cian said. She’d been the Villa’s property since before her birth. “So . . . study a child from each family, in order to create an individualized protection for those families to have after the solar events?” Ximena asked.
Jackie piped in a somber reminder of the past. “Not everyone went so willingly, with so much hope and self-indulgence. We all know the story of Newt, how he was brutally kidnapped and separated from his own sister.”
Cian shrugged. “That’s most definitely true.”
Isaac took a turn. “Wait, based on what you said earlier, you’re making it seem like the Post Flare Coalition knew about the sun flares before they happened? The virus, too?”
The islanders were so naive.
Of course the government coalition knew.
“Isaac . . .” Ximena tried to tell him. “The truth is always hidden within the lie. . . . The fact that it was called the Post Flare Coalition meant they probably had a Flare Coalition too, one that prepared plans in place for any potential devastating Sun Flares.” Her ancestors had long known about the coalitions and how they failed to protect her Village.
“She’s right.” Erros finally acknowledged Ximena as he puffed on whatever coltsfoot was.
“Our government—they knew it was coming. It was formed long before the Flares, both solar and virus, hit the Earth. . . . They created WICKED and implementing their plans was just a matter of time. But that very time was against them, and they didn’t account for how many people within the organization would disagree.
They created the Flare Virus to mitigate the shortage of resources, but they didn’t have enough time to test it . . . to know what would happen.”
“The worst thing that could have happened, did happen,” Cian said.
“Well, what did happen? We weren’t there.” Jackie huffed as if no one was really coming out and saying anything of substance.
“Yeah,” Ximena agreed. She knew her Village’s account of what the fallout was but she wanted to hear this history in Cian’s own words. “Tell us the whole story.”
Cian began again. “The virus was meant to kill the weakest—thin out the herd, so to speak—but it ended up not killing them very quickly. Certainly not quick enough.”
“And it spread . . .” Old Man Frypan added. “It spread badly . . .”
Cian nodded. “Look, nothing happened the way it was planned . . . the Sequencers ended up creating their own problems, far worse than the original problem they were all trying to solve.”
“I still say, why should we believe you?” Jackie threw another rock into the flames.
“You don’t have to believe us at all. In fact, it’d be better if you didn’t.” Cian threw his red scarf at Erros. “There, are you happy? We told them.”
“No. I’m not happy . . .” Erros puffed the coltsfoot cigar and threw Cian’s scarf back at him.
“If these special people are so protected, why do they need the Cure?” Jackie asked.
“That’s a good question,” Frypan said.
Ximena’s face flushed with the realization that she still had what Annie Kletter and the Villa considered to be the Cure. Almost like she’d forgotten that she took it, all in a fit of anger, hoping to use it as leverage when the time came.
She glanced at the backpack, then Isaac’s eyes did the same before looking back up at her.
She pleaded with him, pleaded with her whole expression.
Please don’t say anything. Don’t tell them. Please. Please.
Isaac didn’t react. Didn’t say a word, didn’t make a face or offer a nod.
He turned away from her and refocused his attention on their new history teacher.