The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner Book 2) (8)
CHAPTER
8
Several
seconds passed before Thomas realized he’d stopped breathing. Sucking in a deep
pull of air, he gaped at the now-empty room. No bloated, purpled-skinned
bodies. No stink.
Newt
nudged past him, walking forward with his slight limp until he stood in the
very center of the room’s carpeted floor. “This is impossible,” he said,
turning in a slow circle, gazing up at the ceiling where the corpses had hung
from ropes only minutes earlier. “Not enough time passed for someone to get them
out. And no one else even came into this buggin’ room. We would’ve heard them!”
Thomas
stepped to the side and leaned against the wall as the other Gladers and Aris
came out of the small dorm room. A hushed sense of awe spread across the group
as one by one, each person noticed the missing dead. As for Thomas, he once
again felt a numbness, like he just might be done feeling surprised at
anything.
“You’re
right,” Minho said to Newt. “We were in there with the door closed for, what,
twenty minutes? No way anyone could’ve moved all those bodies that quickly.
Plus, this place is locked from the inside.”
“Not
to mention getting rid of the smell,” Thomas added.
Minho
nodded.
“Well,
you shanks are right smart,” Frypan said through a huff. “But take a look
around. They’re gone. So whatever you think, somehow they got rid of them.”
Thomas
didn’t feel like arguing about it—or even talking about it. So the dead bodies
were gone. They’d seen stranger stuff.
“Hey,”
Winston said. “Those crazy people quit screaming and yelling.”
Thomas
put his weight back on his feet, listened. Silence. “I thought we just couldn’t
hear them from Aris’s room. But you’re right—they stopped.”
Soon
everyone was running for the larger dorm room on the far side of the common
area. Thomas followed, intensely curious to look out the windows and see the
world outside. Before, with the Cranks screaming and pressing their faces
against the iron bars, he’d been too horrified to get a good view.
“No
way!” Minho yelled from up ahead, then, without further explanation, disappeared
inside the room.
As
Thomas moved in that direction, he noticed that every boy hesitated a second, wide-eyed
at the threshold of the door, then went ahead and entered the dorm. He waited
as each Glader and then Aris funneled their way inside, then followed.
He
felt the same shock he’d sensed from the other boys. As a whole, the room
looked much like it had when they’d walked out of it earlier. But there was one
monumental difference: at each window, without exception, a red brick wall had
been erected just outside the iron bars, completely blocking every inch of open
space. The only light in the room came from the panels on the ceiling.
“Even
if they were quick with those bodies,” Newt said, “I’m pretty sure they didn’t
have time to bloody throw up some brick walls. What’s going on here?”
Thomas
watched as Minho walked over to one of the windows and reached through the
bars, pressing his hand against the red bricks. “Solid,” he said, then slapped
at it.
“It
doesn’t even look fresh,” Thomas murmured, stepping up to one himself to get a
feel. Hard and cool. “The mortar’s dry. Somehow they’ve tricked us, that’s
all.”
“Tricked
us?” Frypan asked. “How?”
Thomas
shrugged, that numbness returning. Still wishing desperately that he could talk
to Teresa. “I don’t know. Remember the Cliff? We jumped into thin air and went
through an invisible hole. Who knows what these people can do.”
The
next half hour passed in a haze. Thomas wandered about, as did everyone else,
inspecting the brick walls, looking for signs of anything else that had
changed. Several things had, each one just as strange as the next. All the beds
in the Gladers’ dorm room were made, and there was no sign of the grungy
clothes they’d all worn before changing into the pajamas provided the night
before. The dressers had been rearranged, though the difference was subtle and
some people disagreed that they’d been moved at all. Either way, each one had
been stocked with fresh clothes and shoes, and new digital watches for each boy.
But
the biggest change of all—discovered by Minho—was the sign outside the room
where they’d found Aris. Instead of saying Teresa Agnes, Group A, Subject
A1, The Betrayer, it now said:
Aris
Jones, Group B, Subject B1
The
Partner
Everyone
observed the new plaque, then wandered away, but Thomas found himself standing
in front of it, unable to remove his eyes. To Thomas it felt like the new label
made it official—Teresa had been taken from him, replaced by Aris. None of it
made sense, and none of it mattered anymore. He went back to the boys’ dorm,
found the cot he’d slept on during the night—or at least, the one he thought
he’d slept on—and lay down, putting the pillow over his head, as if that
would make everyone else go away.
What
had happened to her? What had happened to them? Where were they? What
were they supposed to do? And the tattoos …
Turning
his head to the side, then his whole body, he squeezed his eyes shut and folded
his arms tightly, pulling his legs up until he lay in the fetal position. Then,
determined to keep trying until he heard back from her, he called out with his
thoughts.
Teresa?
A
pause. Teresa? A longer pause. Teresa! He shouted it mentally,
his whole body tensing with the effort. Teresa! Where are you? Please answer
me! Why aren’t you trying to contact me? Ter—
Get
out of my head!
The
words exploded inside his mind, so vivid and so strangely audible within his
skull that he felt lances of pain behind his eyes and in his ears. He sat up in
bed, then stood. It was her. It was definitely her.
Teresa?
He
pressed the first two fingers of both hands against his temples. Teresa?
Whoever
you are, get out of my shuck head!
Thomas
stumbled backward until he sat down once again on the bed. His eyes were closed
as he concentrated. Teresa, what are you talking about? It’s me. Thomas.
Where are you?
Shut
up! It
was her, he had no doubt, but her mental voice was full of fear and anger. Just
shut up! I don’t know who you are! Leave me alone!
But, Thomas began,
completely at a loss. Teresa, what’s wrong?
She
paused before answering, as if collecting her thoughts, and when she finally
spoke again, Thomas sensed an almost disturbing calm in her.
Leave
me alone, or I’ll hunt you down and cut your throat. I swear it.
And
then she was gone. Despite her warning, he tried calling for her again, but the
same emptiness he’d felt since that morning returned, her presence having
vanished.
Thomas
fell back on the bed, something horrible burning through his body. He quickly
buried his head in the pillow again and cried for the first time since Chuck
had been killed. But the words from the label outside her door—The Betrayer—kept
popping up in his mind. Each time, he pushed them away.
Amazingly,
no one bothered him or asked him what was wrong. His stifled sobs finally faded
into an occasional hitched breath, and eventually he fell asleep. Once again,
he dreamed.
He’s
a little older this time, probably seven or eight. A very bright light hovers
above his head like magic.
People
in strange green suits and funny glasses keep peeking at him, their heads
momentarily blocking the brilliance that shines down. He can see their eyes but
nothing else. Their mouths and noses are covered by masks. Thomas is somehow
both himself at that age and yet, as before, observing as an outsider. But he
feels the boy’s fear.
People
are talking, voices muted and dull. Some are men, some are women, but he can’t
tell which is which or who is who.
He
can’t understand much of it at all.
Only
glimpses. Fragments of conversation. All of it terrifying.
“We’ll
have to cut deeper with him and the girl.”
“Can
their brains handle this?”
“This
is so amazing, you know? The Flare is rooted inside him.”
“He
might die.”
“Or
worse. He might live.”
He
hears one last thing, finally something that doesn’t make him shiver in disgust
or fright.
“Or
he and the others might save us. Save us all.”
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