229.11.23 | 10:28 a.m.
The very next day, Dr. Paige arrived right on schedule. Thomas had been awake all night thinking about what had happened, becoming angrier and angrier. By the time his alarm went off he was ready to unleash it all on her. But when he opened the door and saw the doctor’s face, he wilted. What had happened to him made him feel half crazy, and he was scared to bring it up.
“Don’t say a word, Thomas,” she said. “There are reasons for things that you don’t understand. Also know that I’m not the final say on any decision. But I did get you one victory today. How would you like the day off? You can spend it observing your friends in the maze. I feel like you deserve that much.”
Thomas’s spirit rose, then sank. “The only reason you guys want me to do that is so you can observe me observing them.”
She sighed. “Do you want to do it or not?”
He swallowed his pride. “Yeah.”
Dr. Paige led Thomas to the observation room in which he’d seen Minho tormented by a Griever once upon a time. This time the monitors showed various glimpses into the massive green space at the center of the maze—where most of his friends now resided. Dr. Paige showed him to a chair at the control deck, and he sat down, already glued to the various scenes playing out across the many monitors. Without saying another word, she left him, softly closing the door.
Thomas leaned forward.
He watched.
They’d had one night in their new home, though none of them had seen the actual maze yet. WICKED had yet to open the doors that led to the maze, saving that for the next day.
Thomas watched the boys wander about the large courtyard nestled within the giant walls of the maze itself. Their faces said it all. Their eyes said it all, often visible when a beetle blade could get close enough. They had no idea where they were. They looked disoriented—and the more Thomas watched, the more something felt wrong. Everyone had peeled off, and really seemed to be on their own.
He zeroed in on two of the boys he didn’t know very well, who were just crossing each other’s paths.
“Hey,” one of them said in a shaky voice. “Do you know where we are? How we got here?”
The other boy shook his head, looking on the verge of tears. “I don’t…I don’t even know…” He didn’t finish, but turned and walked briskly away.
Similar things were happening elsewhere. Most of the boys avoided each other, but when they did interact, it seemed as if they were acting like strangers. As if they didn’t know who anyone else was. Or even who they were themselves. A few names were thrown about, but even those were said with uncertainty.
Those masks. That was what the masks had been for. WICKED had done something terrible to their memories. Something to do with their implants, probably.
If that was the case, if this was something permanent, Thomas couldn’t imagine anything more horrible. It was all they had, their memories. He thought back to when Randall had taken away his name—it had felt like losing part of his soul. And this was far, far worse. How deep did it go? Was it possibly temporary?
He found Minho walking briskly along the walls, studying every inch of the structure. He could have been doing it for hours, since before the false sun came up. He was scared—that much was obvious. Losing your memories, combined with being thrown into a stone prison—that had to fill you with a panic beyond what most could imagine. He walked and walked and walked, down one expansive wall to the next, then the next, then the next. It couldn’t have been lost on him that he was going in circles.
On another feed, Alby sat near the copse of trees, his back against one of the skeletal pines. He was so still, he looked almost lifeless. He looked broken, and it killed Thomas. This young man, whom Thomas knew as fierce and determined, always ready to tackle what came at him. WICKED had been able to turn him into nothing more than a shell.
Newt was one of the wanderers. Aimlessly walking back and forth, from the barn to the fields to the small structure that was meant to be their home. It was nothing more than a shack, really. He had the same empty look in his eyes as Alby. Newt walked slowly to his old friend, as if he were approaching a complete stranger. Thomas pushed a button to get the audio feed from that monitor.
“Do you know where we are?” Newt asked.
Alby looked up sharply. “No, I don’t know where we are,” he snapped, as if Newt had asked him a hundred times and he was sick of hearing it.
“Well, bloody hell, neither do I.”
“Yeah, I think we all get that.”
They stared at each other for a long moment, neither dropping his gaze. Finally Newt said, “At least I know my name—it’s Newt. And you?”
“Alby.” He said it almost like a guess.
“Well, shouldn’t we start trying to figure things out?”
“Yeah, we should.” Alby looked as mean as the night they’d been caught outside the WICKED complex.
“Well then?” Newt asked.
“Tomorrow, man. Tomorrow. Give us a day to mope, for God’s sake.”
“Right.”
Newt walked away, kicking a loose stone to scatter across the dusty ground.
Late that afternoon, Minho tried to climb the wall.
The vines were tempting enough, beckoning those who dared to scale the leafy ivy. Minho did just that, gripping it with white-knuckled fists, finding perilous footholds as he inched his way up. Hand over hand, shifting his feet carefully, he climbed.
Ten feet.
Fifteen feet.
Twenty feet.
Twenty-five.
He stopped. He looked toward the sky, then craned his neck to look back down at the ground. A crowd had gathered, cheering him on. Another couple of boys had tackled the vines as well, trying to follow their fellow prisoner’s lead.
Minho looked up again. Down. At the wall. At his hands. Up to the sky again. The ground. The sky. The wall. His hands. Then, without any explanation, despite the abundance of ivy above him, he started back to the ground. He jumped the last few feet, then brushed his hands on his pants.
“Can’t be done here,” he said. “Let’s try another spot.”
Three hours and all four walls later, the sky almost dark, he gave up.
So did everyone else.
That evening, when Dr. Paige came to get him, Thomas couldn’t believe the day was over already.
“Time to go back to your room,” she said gently.
She’d had his meals brought to him throughout the day, so Thomas thought to take advantage of her accommodation by asking a favor. And he didn’t want to risk upsetting her by asking about the apparent memory loss—he’d save that for another time.
“Can I come back here in the morning?” he asked. “I feel like I need to see their reactions when the doors open for the first time. It’s important.” He tried to insinuate that he meant its importance to the study.
“Okay, Thomas. That’ll be fine. You can have breakfast in here.”
He stood up, his heart so heavy it felt as if it stayed in the seat. After one last look at his friends—settling down for the evening, talking in small groups, eating some of the food they’d been provided—he turned away.
The next morning, he got into the observation room just in time.
The entire maze shook and he flicked on the sound. The room he sat in was suddenly filled with the rumbling sound of thunder and the giant doors began to slide open, an impossible sight to anyone who had never witnessed it before. It was still an impressive sight to Thomas, who had helped build those doors.
Thomas’s friends gathered, confused. Some crying in fear. Some of them with such bright expressions of hope on their faces that it just about broke his heart. It seemed pretty obvious that their memories were still lost to them.
He watched as they filed out into the corridors of the maze proper and began to explore its vast array of halls, twisting and turning along their patterns. Thomas wondered what they would think the first time the walls out there moved, re-forming into a new pattern. He imagined the terrifying times that lay ahead for his friends, and then he remembered the gelatinous creature crouching over Minho, and what would happen the day WICKED decided to unleash that into the maze for the first time.
“Thomas?”
He turned, startled out of his thoughts, to find Dr. Paige behind him.
“There will be plenty of other opportunities to watch your friends,” she said. “But your responsibilities here take priority, okay? You still have a full schedule. Let’s go.”
He went, leaving his friends behind.
