The crap’ll hit the fan soon enough, she finally agreed.
Finally they reached the wide double doors that led to the chamber holding the Box. With all the sophistication surrounding WICKED and their trials and experiments and technological wonders, there wasn’t much fanfare to the Box itself. It sat in a wide, dusty room at the bottom of a shaft that led up to the Glade, connected to enormous gears on the surface by chains and pulleys. A magical lift to a brand-new world.
Thomas shuddered to think what it must be like to wake up in that dark box of metal, memories gone. It had to be terrifying.
“Here we are,” Dr. Paige said as the nurses wheeled the gurney toward the looming wall of silvery steel. “I know we’ve spent the last few weeks getting more subjects into the maze as the Psychs make adjustments to the program, but after Zart we’re going to become a little more regimented. We’ll be sending one boy a month into the Glade, same day, same time. Like clockwork. Unless something changes.”
They always keep their options open, don’t they? Thomas said to Teresa.
They sure do. Somehow she projected the image of her sticking her tongue out and crossing her eyes. Made no sense, and yet seemed the perfect response.
The nurses stopped right next to the Box, which was about ten feet high. One of them went around the corner and came back dragging a large, sturdy stepladder on wheels.
“Where’s the door to the thing?” Chuck asked, examining the seamless wall closest to them, then venturing around to the other sides. No one answered until he rounded the entire container and ended up back where he started.
“Just watch,” Teresa said, not hiding her disdain for the process.
“It’s not what you’d call glamorous,” Thomas added.
“Can’t wait!” Chuck said, a little too cheerfully. Sometimes Thomas thought the boy had a drier sense of humor than anyone knew.
“Okay,” Dr. Paige said. “Let’s get him up the stairs. Everything should be set. They’re all ready in the command room.”
The nurses grabbed Zart—one by his legs, the other lifting him by curling his arms underneath his chest—and lifted him off the gurney. Then they slowly and carefully walked up the rolling stepladder, which shifted under their weight precariously. They reached the top, and then it became an exercise in awkwardness as the nurse holding Zart around the chest hefted him to the top edge of the Box, struggling until he could flap the boy’s arms over the lip of the metal to keep him in place. He waited, made sure the boy wouldn’t fall, then leaned down to help the other nurse lift Zart by the legs.
So lame, Thomas said to Teresa. They really couldn’t come up with a better way to do this? They have implants in our brains, Flat Transes, little robot bugs with cameras on them. And this is how they—
He cut off when the nurses accidentally released Zart’s body too early and the boy toppled over and vanished from sight, crashing into the bottom of the Box with a rattling boom that echoed off the high ceiling. Chuck snickered, then looked ashamed when Dr. Paige gave him a nasty glare.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“Is he okay?” Dr. Paige asked, her voice filled with annoyance.
Both nurses were on their tiptoes, leaning over the edge as they examined Zart down below.
“Looks fine,” one of them said. “He pulled himself up into a ball—he’s sleeping like a baby.”
“Why not put a door in the side of the Box?” Chuck asked it in a voice so sweet that it was obviously meant to be the opposite. As in, How could you guys be so stupid?
“Everything we do is for a reason,” Paige answered, but she didn’t try very hard to make it sound convincing. Had it maybe even been another joke? “Come on, let’s go watch his insertion.”
“What happens now?” Chuck asked as they walked back the way they came, down the impossibly long hallway. “When will he wake up?”
Surprisingly, Dr. Paige answered, for once humoring the boy’s wild curiosity. “In about an hour,” she said. “As soon as he does we’ll start the simulated ride up and begin our observations. We should see some new—and very interesting—patterns over the next day or two.”
Her mood had changed quickly, her tone and light step exuding excitement.
“Cool,” Chuck replied.
They kept walking.
—
Thomas watched, Teresa beside him. They’d made Chuck go back to his room, not wanting him to see the pure anguish the boys felt upon first waking up in the Box. No need to push it with preparing the boy for his future.
Together, Thomas and Teresa watched, and imagined what it must be like.
—
Zart awoke in darkness, the cameras in the Box barely able to catch his movements. He said nothing at first, stumbling around the metal compartment like a drunkard. But then he became aware of everything all at once. The loss of memory, the strange place, the movement, the sounds. He panicked, pounding on the walls, screaming, “Help me! Help me!”
The hysteria went on; a cut on his fist burst open, slicking his hand with blood. Finally he collapsed to the floor, then crawled into a corner. There, he pulled his legs in close to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. At first, the tears were only a trickle, but soon the sobs came, his shoulders shaking as he cried.
The Box came to a stop and a bubble of silence filled the air, like something that might pop and explode at the slightest touch. Zart almost jumped out of his clothes when the ceiling suddenly popped and squealed, two doors grinding as they slid open. The light of ten burning suns blinded him from above. He pressed both hands against his eyes, rolling back and forth on the floor as he groaned.