The Kill Order by James Dashner

thought he might explode, so confused was he by what had transpired over the last half an hour or so. He
wanted
to talk. But Trina turned away from him when he faced her. She slumped to the ground and curled up with a blanket, stifling some sobs. It broke Mark’s heart—they’d gone several months without tears, and now it was happening all over again.
    She was an enigma to him. From the beginning she’d been stronger, tougher and braver than he ever was. At first it had embarrassed and shamed him, but he loved it in her so much that he got over it. Yet she also wore her emotions on her sleeve and wasn’t scared at all to let them all out in a good cry.
    Lana went about her business silently, eventually lying down next to a tree on the outskirts of their small camp. Mark tried to settle into a comfortable position himself, but he was wide awake. Alec finally returned. No one had anything to say, and the sounds of the forest slowly came back to Mark’s awareness: insects and a soft breeze through the trees. But his thoughts still spun wildly.
    What had just happened? What had Alec done to the Toad? Could it really be what Mark thought? Had it been painful? How in the world could things be so messed up?
    At least he had the small blessing of a dreamless sleep after he finally drifted off.
    “This virus from the darts,” Lana said the next morning as they all sat, zombielike, around a crackling fire. “I think there’s something wrong with it.”
    It was a strange statement. Mark looked up at her. He had been staring at the flames, going over the events of the night before, until she’d spoken, and he was suddenly back in the present.
    Alec voiced his thoughts bluntly. “I think there’s something wrong with most viruses.”
    Lana gave him a sharp glare. “Come on. You know what I mean. Can’t you all see it?”
    “See what?” Mark asked.
    “That it seems to be affecting people differently?” Trina asked.
    “Exactly,” Lana responded, pointing at her as if she were proud. “The people who were hit by those darts died within hours. Then Darnell and the people who’d helped the ones who were shot took a couple of days to die. Their main symptom was intense pressure in their skulls—they acted like their heads were being squeezed in vises. Then there’s Misty, who didn’t have symptoms for several days.”
    Mark remembered the moment they’d left her all too well. “Yeah,” he murmured. “She was singing the last time we saw her. Curled up in a ball on the ground. She said her head hurt.”
    “There was just something different about her,” Lana pointed out. “You weren’t there when Darnell first got sick. He didn’t die as fast as the others, but he started acting strangely really quickly. Misty seemed fine up until her head started hurting. But something was off up here with both of them.” She tapped on her temple several times.
    “And we all saw the Toad last night,” Alec added. “Who knows when he got it—if he had it as long as Misty, or just got it from being with her when she died—but he was crazy like mad cow disease.”
    “Show some respect,” Trina snapped at him.
    Mark expected Alec to retaliate or defend himself, but he appeared humbled by the rebuke. “I’m sorry, Trina. Really I am. But Lana and I are just trying to assess our situation as best we can. Figure things out. And the Toad was obviously not lucid last night.”
    Trina didn’t back down. “So you killed him.”
    “That’s not fair,” Alec said coolly. “If Misty died that quickly after her symptoms hit, it’s fair to say that the Toad was going to die also. He was a threat to all of us, but he was also a friend. I did him a mercy and hopefully bought
us
another day or two.”
    “Unless you caught something from him,” Lana said tonelessly.
    “I was careful. And I immediately scrubbed myself clean.”
    “Seems pointless,” Mark said. He was sinking farther into the doldrums with every second.