The Death Cure Page 0,109

is gonna fall down,” Gally added.

Thomas scanned the ceiling as if he expected it to happen right that second. “I know. I told them to hurry. We’ll all be out of here in a—”

“Well, what do we have here?” a voice shouted from the back of the room.

A few gasps sounded around Thomas as he turned to see who’d spoken. The Rat Man had just come through the door from the outside hallway, and he wasn’t alone. He was surrounded by WICKED security guards. Thomas counted seven total, which meant that he and his friends still had the advantage.

Janson stopped and cupped his hands to shout over the rumble of another explosion. “Strange place to hide out when everything’s about to come down!” Pieces of metal fell from the ceiling, clattering to the ground.

“You know what’s here!” Thomas shouted back. “It’s too late—we’re already going!”

Janson pulled out the same long knife he had outside and flashed it. And as if on cue, the others revealed similar weapons.

“But we can salvage a few,” Janson said. “And it looks like we have the strongest and brightest right here in front of us. Even our Final Candidate, no less! The one we need most, yet who refuses to cooperate.”

Thomas and his friends had spread out in a line between the dwindling crowd of prisoners and the guards. The others in Thomas’s group were searching the floor for anything they could find to use as a weapon—pipes, long screws, the jagged edge of a metal grid. Thomas spotted a warped piece of thick cabling that ended in a spike of rigid wires, as deadly-looking as a spear. He grabbed it just as another explosion rocked the room, sending a huge section of the metal shelving crashing to the floor

“I’ve never seen such a menacing bunch of thugs!” the Rat Man yelled, but his face was crazed, his mouth contorted into a wild sneer. “I have to admit I’m terrified!”

“Just shut your shuck mouth and let’s get this over with!” Minho shouted back at him.

Janson focused his cold, mad gaze on the teenagers facing him.

“Gladly,” he said.

Thomas ached to lash out for all the fear and pain and suffering that had defined his life for so long. “Go!” he shouted.

The two groups charged each other, their yells of battle drowned out by the sudden concussion of detonating explosives that shook the building around them.

CHAPTER 72

Somehow Thomas kept his balance, despite the entire room quaking from the closest series of explosions yet. Most of the racks collapsed, and objects were launched across the room. He dodged a jagged chunk of wood, then jumped over a round piece of machinery that spun past him.

Gally, who was at Thomas’s side, tripped and fell; Thomas helped him up. They continued charging. Brenda slipped but caught her balance.

They crashed into the others like the first line of soldiers in an ancient foot battle. Thomas met the Rat Man himself, who was at least half a foot taller than him, wielding his blade; it came down in an arc toward Thomas’s shoulder, but Thomas thrust upward with his stiff cable and connected with the man’s armpit. Janson screamed and dropped his weapon as a stream of blood gushed from the wound; he clamped his other hand over it and backed away, glaring at Thomas with hate-filled eyes.

To his right and left, everyone was fighting. Thomas’s head was full of the sounds of metal against metal, screams and shouts and grunts. Some had matched up two-on-one; Minho ended up fighting a woman who seemed twice as strong as any of the men. Brenda was on the ground, wrestling a skinny man, trying to knock a machete out of his hand. Thomas saw all this with a quick glance but then returned his attention to his own foe.

“I don’t care if I bleed to death,” Janson said with a grimace. “As long as I die after I get you back up there.”

Another explosion jolted the floor beneath him and Thomas stumbled forward, dropping his scavenged weapon and slamming into Janson’s chest. They both crashed to the ground, and Thomas struggled to push off the man with one hand while swinging as hard as he could with the other. He smashed Janson’s left cheek with his balled fist and watched as the Rat Man’s head snapped to the side, blood spraying from his mouth. Thomas reached back to swing again, but the man arched his body violently, throwing him off; he landed on his