The Death Cure (The Maze Runner Book 3) (1)
CHAPTER
1
It
was the smell that began to drive Thomas slightly mad.
Not
being alone for over three weeks. Not the white walls, ceiling and floor. Not
the lack of windows or the fact that they never turned off the lights. None of
that. They’d taken his watch; they fed him the exact same meal three times a
day—slab of ham, mashed potatoes, raw carrots, slice of bread, water—never spoke
to him, never allowed anyone else in the room. No books, no movies, no games.
Complete
isolation. For over three weeks now, though he’d begun to doubt his tracking of
time—which was based purely on instinct. He tried to best guess when night had
fallen, made sure he only slept what felt like normal hours. The meals helped,
though they didn’t seem to come regularly. As if he was meant to feel
disoriented.
Alone.
In a padded room devoid of color—the only exceptions a small, almost-hidden
stainless-steel toilet in the corner and an old wooden desk that Thomas had no
use for. Alone in an unbearable silence, with unlimited time to think about the
disease rooted inside him: the Flare, that silent, creeping virus that slowly
took away everything that made a person human.
None
of this drove him crazy.
But
he stank, and for some reason that set his nerves on a sharp wire, cutting into
the solid block of his sanity. They didn’t let him shower or bathe, hadn’t
provided him with a change of clothes since he’d arrived or anything to clean
his body with. A simple rag would’ve helped; he could dip it in the water they
gave him to drink and clean his face at least. But he had nothing, only the
dirty clothes he’d been wearing when they locked him away. Not even bedding—he
slept all curled up, his butt wedged in the corner of the room, arms folded,
trying to hug some warmth into himself, often shivering.
He
didn’t know why the stench of his own body was the thing that scared him the
most. Perhaps that in itself was a sign that he’d lost it. But for some reason
his deteriorating hygiene pushed against his mind, causing horrific thoughts.
Like he was rotting, decomposing, his insides turning as rancid as his outside felt.
That was what worried him, as irrational as it seemed. He had plenty of food
and just enough water to quench his thirst; he got plenty of rest, and he
exercised as best he could in the small room, often running in place for hours.
Logic told him that being filthy had nothing to do with the strength of your
heart or the functioning of your lungs. All the same, his mind was beginning to
believe that his unceasing stench represented death rushing in, about to
swallow him whole.
Those
dark thoughts, in turn, were starting to make him wonder if Teresa hadn’t been
lying after all that last time they’d spoken, when she’d said it was too late
for Thomas and insisted that he’d succumbed to the Flare rapidly, had become
crazy and violent. That he’d already lost his sanity before coming to
this awful place. Even Brenda had warned him that things were about to get bad.
Maybe they’d both been right.
And
underneath all that was the worry for his friends. What had happened to them?
Where were they? What was the Flare doing to their minds? After everything
they’d been subjected to, was this how it was all going to end?
The
rage crept in. Like a shivering rat looking for a spot of warmth, a crumb of
food. And with every passing day came an increasing anger so intense that
Thomas sometimes caught himself shaking uncontrollably before he reeled the
fury back in and pocketed it. He didn’t want it to go away for good; he only
wanted to store it and let it build. Wait for the right time, the right place,
to unleash it. WICKED had done all this to him. WICKED had taken his life and
those of his friends and were using them for whatever purposes they deemed
necessary. No matter the consequences.
And
for that, they would pay. Thomas swore this to himself a thousand times a day.
All
these things went through his mind as he sat, back against the wall, facing the
door—and the ugly wooden desk in front of it—in what he guessed was the late
morning of his twenty-second day as a captive in the white room. He always did
this—after eating breakfast, after exercising. Hoping against hope that the
door would open—actually open, all the way—the whole door, not just the
little slot on the bottom through which they slid his meals.
He’d
already tried countless times to get the door open himself. And the desk
drawers were empty, nothing there but the smell of mildew and cedar. He looked
every morning, just in case something might’ve magically appeared while he
slept. Those things happened sometimes when you were dealing with WICKED.
And
so he sat, staring at that door. Waiting. White walls and silence. The smell of
his own body. Left to think about his friends—Minho, Newt, Frypan, the other
few Gladers still alive. Brenda and Jorge, who’d vanished from sight after
their rescue on the giant Berg. Harriet and Sonya, the other girls from Group
B, Aris. About Brenda and her warning to him after he’d woken up in the white
room the first time. How had she spoken in his mind? Was she on his side or
not?
But
most of all, he thought about Teresa. He couldn’t get her out of his head, even
though he hated her a little more with every passing moment. Her last words to
him had been WICKED is good, and right or wrong, to Thomas she’d come to
represent all the terrible things that had happened. Every time he thought of
her, rage boiled inside him.
Maybe
all that anger was the last string tethering him to sanity as he waited.
Eat.
Sleep. Exercise. Thirst for revenge. That was what he did for three more days.
Alone.
On
the twenty-sixth day, the door opened.
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