The mysterious people were true to their word.
The next time Thomas woke up, he was hanging in the air, strung tightly to a canvas litter with handles,
swaying back and forth. A large rope attached to a ring of blue metal held him as he was lowered from
something huge, the whole time accompanied by the same explosion of hums and heavy thumps that he’d
heard when they’d come to get him. He gripped the sides of the litter, terrified.
Finally, he felt a soft bump, and then a million faces appeared around him. Minho, Newt, Jorge,
Brenda, Frypan, Aris, the other Gladers. The rope holding him detached and sprang up into the air. Then,
almost instantaneously, the vessel from which he’d been lowered vaulted away, disappearing into the
brilliance of the sun directly overhead. The sounds of its engines faded, and soon it was gone.
Then everyone spoke at once.
“What was that all about?”
“Are you okay?”
“What’d they do to you?”
“Who was that?”
“Have fun in the Berg?”
“How’s your shoulder?”
Thomas ignored it all and tried to get up, but realized that the ropes holding him to the litter still bound
him tightly to it. He found Minho with his eyes. “A little help here?”
As Minho and a couple of others worked on untying him, Thomas had a disturbing thought. The people
from WICKED had shown up to save him pretty quickly. From what they’d said, it was something they
hadn’t planned on, but they’d done it anyway. Which meant they were watching and could swoop in to
save them whenever they wanted to.
But they hadn’t until now. How many people had died in the last few days while WICKED stood by
and watched? And why did that change for Thomas, just because he’d been shot by a rusty bullet?
It was too much to think about.
Once freed, he got to his feet and stretched out his muscles, refusing to acknowledge the second volley
of questions flung his way. The day was hot, brutally hot, and as he stretched, he realized that he felt no
pain other than the slightest of aches in his shoulder. He looked down to see that he was wearing fresh
clothes, and that there was the bulge of a bandage under the left sleeve of his shirt. But his thoughts
immediately went to something else.
“What are you guys doing out in the open? Your skin is gonna bake!”
Minho didn’t answer, just pointed at something behind him, and Thomas looked to see a very shabby
hut. It was made out of dry wood that seemed like it might crumble to pure dust at any second, but it was
big enough to provide shelter for everyone there.
“We better get back under that thing,” Minho said. Thomas realized that they must’ve run out just to see
him delivered from the huge flying … Berg? Jorge had called it a Berg.
The group trekked over to the shelter; Thomas told them a dozen times that he’d explain everything
from beginning to end once they were settled. Brenda found him, walked right next to him. But she didn’t
offer her hand, and Thomas felt an uneasy relief. She also didn’t say anything, and neither did he.
The miserable city of the Cranks lay a few miles distant, huddling in all its decay and madness to the
south. No sign of the infected people anywhere. To the north, the mountains loomed now, only a day or so
away. Craggy and lifeless, they sloped up higher and higher until they ended in jagged brown peaks.
Harsh cuts in the rock made the whole range appear as though a giant had hacked at it with a massive axe
for days and days, letting out all its giant frustration.
They reached the shelter, the wood dry as rotted bone. It looked as if it had stood there for a hundred
years—maybe built by a farmer in the days before the world was ravaged. How it had withstood
everything was a complete mystery. But one flick of a match and the thing would probably burn down in
three seconds.
“All right,” Minho said, pointing to a spot in the far end of the shade. “You sit there, get yourself all
nice and comfy and start talking.”
Thomas couldn’t believe how good he felt—just a dull ache in his shoulder. And he didn’t think he had
any trace of drugs in him anymore. Whatever doctors WICKED had unleashed on him had been brilliant at
what they did. He took a seat and waited for everyone to get situated in front of him, sitting cross-legged
on the hot and dusty ground. He was like a schoolteacher readying to give a lesson—a blurry flash from
his past.
Minho was the last to take a seat, right next to Brenda. “Okay, tell us about your adventures with the
aliens in their big bad spaceship.”
“You sure about this?” Thomas asked. “How many days left to get over those mountains, to the safe
haven?”
“Five days, dude. But you know we can’t go tramping around in this sun with nothing to protect us.
You’re gonna talk, then we’re gonna sleep, then we’re all gonna bust our humps walking all night. Get on
it.”
“Good that,” Thomas said, wondering what they’d been doing while he was away, but realizing it
didn’t matter all that much. “Save all your questions till the end, children.” When not a single person
laughed, or even smiled, he coughed and hurried on. “It was WICKED that came and got me. I kept
passing out, but they took me to some doctors who totally fixed me up. I heard them saying something
about how it wasn’t supposed to happen, how the gun had been a factor they hadn’t expected. The bullet
set off a nasty infection in me, and I guess they felt pretty strongly that it wasn’t time for me to die.”
Blank faces stared back at him.
Thomas knew it would be hard for them to accept—even after he’d told the whole story. “Just telling
you what I heard.”
He went on to explain more. Every detail of what he could remember, and about the odd bedside
conversation he’d listened in on. Things about killzone patterns and Candidates. More about the
Variables. None of it had made much sense the first time around, and it made even less now as he tried to
recall it word for word. The Gladers—plus Jorge and Brenda—looked as frustrated as he felt.
“Well, that really cleared things up,” Minho finally said. “Must have something to do with all those
signs about you in the city.”
Thomas shrugged. “Glad to know you’re so happy to see me alive.”
“Hey, if you wanna be the leader, no skin off my back. I am happy to see you alive.”
“No thanks. You keep it.”
Minho didn’t respond. Thomas couldn’t deny that the signs weighed heavily on him—what did it really
mean that WICKED wanted him to be the leader? And what should he do about it?
Newt got to his feet, his face in a deep scowl of concentration. “So we’re all potential candidates for
something. And maybe the purpose of all the buggin’ klunk we’ve been through is to weed out those who
don’t qualify. But for some reason the whole gun-and-rusty-bullet thing wasn’t part of the … normal tests.
Or Variables, whatever. If Thomas is gonna croak and die, it wasn’t supposed to come from a bloody
infection.”
Thomas pursed his lips and nodded. Sounded like a great summary to him.
“What this means is that they’re watching us,” Minho said. “Just like they did in the Maze. Has anyone
seen a beetle blade running around anywhere?”
Several Gladers shook their heads.
“What the hell’s a beetle blade?” Jorge asked.
Thomas answered. “Little mechanical lizard things that spied on us with cameras in the Maze.”
Jorge rolled his eyes. “Of course. Sorry I asked.”
“The Maze was definitely some kind of indoor facility,” Aris said. “But there’s just no way we’re
inside something anymore. Though they could be using satellites or long-range cameras, I guess.”
Jorge cleared his throat. “What is it about Thomas that makes him so special? Those signs in the city
about him being the real leader, them swooping in here and saving his butt when he got all sicky-sicky.”
He looked at Thomas. “I’m not trying to be mean, muchacho—I’m just curious. What makes you better
than the rest of your buddies?”
“I’m not special,” Thomas said, even though he knew he was hiding something. He just didn’t know
what. “You heard what they said. We have lots of ways to die out here, but that gun shouldn’t be one of
them. I think they would’ve saved anybody who’d gotten shot. It wasn’t about me—it was the bullet that
messed things up.”
“Still,” Jorge replied with a smirk. “I think I’ll stay close to you from here on.”
A few more discussions broke out, but Minho didn’t let them last long. He insisted that they all needed
sleep if they were planning on marching through the night. Thomas didn’t complain—he’d grown more
tired with every passing second of sitting in that hot air on that hot ground. Maybe it was his body healing,
maybe just the heat. Either way, sleep called to him.
They didn’t have blankets or pillows, so Thomas curled up on the ground in the very spot where he’d
been sitting, resting his head on his folded arms. Brenda somehow ended up right next to him, though she
didn’t say anything, and she certainly didn’t touch him. Thomas didn’t know if he’d ever figure her out.
He sucked in a long, slow breath, closed his eyes, then welcomed the rest, welcomed that heavy feeling
of slumber as it started pulling him into its depths. The sounds around him seemed to fade away, the air to
thicken. A calm came over him, then sleep.
The sun was still blazing in the sky when a voice sounded in his mind, waking him up.
A girl’s voice.
Teresa.
After days and days of utter silence, Teresa started talking to him telepathically, all at once, a rush of
words.
Tom, don’t even try to talk back, just listen. Something terrible is going to happen to you tomorrow.
An awful, awful thing. You’re gonna be hurt and you’re gonna be scared. But you have to trust me. No
matter what happens, no matter what you see, no matter what you hear, no matter what you think. You
have to trust me. I won’t be able to talk to you.
She paused, but Thomas was so stunned and trying so hard to understand what she’d said—make sure
he remembered it—that he couldn’t get a word in before she started up again.
I have to go. You won’t hear from me for a while.
Another pause.
Not until we’re back together.
He fumbled for something to say, but her voice and her presence slipped away, leaving him empty once
more.
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