230.03.15 | 3:15 p.m.
The day had gone much like the ones before it. Breakfast, a couple of classes, more time in the observation room. Lunch. Observation room. All the while, Teresa by his side. Chuck was allowed to join them once his afternoon classes were done.
Chuck on the left.
Teresa on the right.
Thomas didn’t know exactly what his role with WICKED was developing into. They seemed to let him do whatever he wanted, go wherever he wanted. He usually ate his meals in the cafeteria with the subjects who hadn’t yet been sent into the maze. He didn’t click with them like he had with Newt, Alby, and Minho, but they were mostly cool. Two guys named Jeff and Leo were especially nice, although they were obviously preoccupied with what lay in store for them—they’d heard rumors about what the maze was like and what it might become. Mostly, though, they kept to themselves.
As Thomas watched the monitors, he decided he was okay. Satisfied with the status quo until something better presented itself.
“What’s going on over there?” Teresa asked, snapping Thomas out of his thoughts. She pointed at one of the monitors on the right. Thomas threw it onto the large central display to get a better look.
A group of boys, led by Alby and Newt, were standing suspiciously around a lean-to of lumber scraps against the stone wall near the northwest corner of the Glade. WICKED had started the boys off with a small, simple structure for them to take shelter, with hopes that the subjects would add to it as supplies were sent in, take some initiative and better their living conditions. They’d already started messing around with the idea the last couple of weeks, and they’d collected all the spare wood they had and leaned it against the wall. Some boys had even slept under there the last few nights.
But now the group standing at its opening nearest the corner of the walls looked…troubled. They stood oddly, for one thing, too close together, as if they didn’t want the beetle blades to catch a view of what was inside the lean-to. Their heads twisted this way and that, scanning the area around them like criminals waiting for a getaway car. Alby and Newt whispered furiously to each other, either arguing or mutually worried about something.
“What’re they up to?” Thomas said quietly, leaning forward to see if he could make out anything in the shadows. Nothing from that angle.
Teresa beat him to the punch by pushing a communications button that linked them to the command room—where the important people worked.
“Any way we can get a beetle blade in there?” Teresa asked whoever was listening.
“Nope,” replied a man. One of the Psychs, probably. They didn’t interact with the subjects much, if ever, even with Thomas and Teresa. “We want to see this play out before we let them know we’re watching closely.”
That made Thomas even more intrigued. “Can’t we at least zoom in from where it’s at right now?”
“We’ll do our best,” the man replied curtly. “Command room out.” There was a loud click that he obviously made audible on purpose. In other words, Leave us alone. They got that way sometimes.
Movement on the display stole Thomas’s attention. Alby had leaned into the triangular shelter and was struggling with something, his body tense with exertion. Newt joined the effort, and then they were dragging something out of the darkness and into the gray light—the false sun had already been eclipsed by the huge wall on the west side and thrown that area of the Glade into shadow.
“What…,” Teresa said. “What is that?”
“It’s a person!” Chuck yelled, making Thomas jump a full inch above his seat.
But the kid was right. Alby and Newt both held on to one leg each, dragging a person to the junction of the north and west walls. When they got there, Alby knelt next to the boy and punched him in the face. Teresa yelped in shock and Thomas scooted a couple of feet backward without thinking. Alby reared back and punched the boy again, then again. Newt grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away.
“Can you tell who it is?” Teresa asked.
Chuck had walked around the control deck so that his eyes were only a few inches from the screen. “I know him,” he said. “That’s George.”
“The one who welcomed Zart into the Glade?” Thomas asked. “That was barely over twenty-four hours ago. How could everything have gone wrong since then?”
“What went wrong?” Teresa added. “I mean, what in the world’s going on? Why is Alby trying to beat the hell out of George?”
Thomas noticed one of the camera views on the left side of the main display blur into motion, the beetle blade scuttling as fast as it could through the growth of vines.
“Chuck, get back over here,” Thomas snapped. “I can’t see all the views.”
Chuck obeyed, the look on his face somewhere between fear and glee. Thomas quickly grabbed the screen he wanted and swiped it onto the main display in the center. Just as it settled there, the camera angle popped out of the vines and showed a bird’s-eye view of Alby, Newt, and George. Despite the noise the beetle blade must’ve made in its hurry, none of the boys seemed to notice.
Now Thomas could see everything in perfect detail, and could hear their every breath and movement.
George was a mess. He squirmed on the ground, his muscles clenched as if they’d been permanently locked that way, cramped and tight. His eyes bulged; his lips pressed together into a pale line; the skin of his face looked as if it had been ripped off, boiled, then stapled back on. Thomas blinked, rubbed his eyes. George appeared almost animated, a product of studio special effects. As he writhed as if going through the worst pain imaginable, he let out sharp moans through his closed mouth that sounded rabid.
“What the bloody hell is wrong with him?” Newt shouted.
Another kid stood by him now, someone Thomas didn’t know. That boy said, “I told you guys. We were out exploring the maze. He was always ahead of me. I heard all these mechanical sounds, and then Georgie screamed. I could barely get him back here.” He looked angry, seething as he spoke.
“Who’s that?” Thomas asked. He almost felt like he was there in the Glade with his old friends.
“His name’s Nick,” Chuck replied. “Picks his nose.”
Thomas tore his eyes away from the display to look at the kid. “Seriously? Now?”
“That’s all I know about him!”
“I didn’t want the others to see him,” Alby said, bringing Thomas’s attention back to the large screen. “Get everybody spooked. Fat chance of avoiding that now.”
“Well, why were you just hitting him in the face?” the boy named Nick asked, still hopping mad. “He’s my friend, you know. He needs medical help, not some hothead beating on him.”
“He was trying to freaking bite me!” Alby yelled in Nick’s face. “Back off!”
“Boys, slim it,” Newt said, stepping in between them. “Let’s figure this out. What do we do?”
They stood over George, who’d gotten worse. His head actually looked like it might explode from the swelling. He was beet-red and puffy. Veins bulged along his forehead and temples. And his eyes…they were enormous. Thomas had never seen anything like it.
“Did you see what attacked him?” Alby asked Nick, seeming to have forgotten that a few seconds ago they were on the verge of a fight.
Nick shook his head. “Saw nothing.”
“Did George say anything?” Newt asked.
Nick nodded. “Well, yeah, I think so. Not sure, but…I think he kept whispering, ‘It stung me, it stung me, it stung me….’ It was weird, man. He sounded like he was possessed or something. What’re we gonna do!”
Thomas slumped back in his chair. For some reason, those words really chilled him.
It stung me.
