Time is odd. Every so often one finds themselves from a situation where seconds seem to tick by at an abnormally slow rate, where the simple act of breathing out lasts for hours. Thomas would know; he'd had the chance to experience that very thing in the short while he'd been able to make actual memories. However, a situation with the exact opposite properties existed as well, and that was precisely what Thomas felt mere minutes after returning from the tour with Galileo.

Thoughts raced around in his head, often conveying the smallest of ideas that had no relevance to the topic at hand whatsoever, barely registering in his mind. The latter ones were the reason what gave the illusion of time passing by at a quicker pace than was the norm; it felt like he thought about far fewer things than he actually did. Well, it was one of the possibilities. The other was that time just enjoyed messing around and never being consistent.

A series of knocks brought Thomas out of his bubble. His gaze hopped from one place to another, lost, as his mind wakened itself from... whatever this had been. The room swam in shadows—was he really out for so long? When he'd returned, the sun had blasted its rays from somewhere the middle of the sky.

"Are you okay?" a familiar voice asked.

Thomas jumped. His gaze focused on Newt who now stood in his room and not behind the door, knocking. When had he come inside? "Yeah, I'm fine. Was just taking a nap," he lied casually. Newt didn't need to know about his weird experiences with time. Besides, it probably had a logical explanation anyway: whose brain wouldn't fuck up after being thrust into a strange environment with no memories of past life?

Newt's eyes narrowed; he didn't believe him. "You sure? It didn't look like it."

"Why would I lie?" Thomas asked in return. He moved his legs off from the bed, careful to hold his upper body still as he did so, and stood up. A bunch of black dots attacked his eyes and brought a sharp pain with them. He nearly fell back onto his bed.

"No offence, but I think your definition of fine doesn't quite match up with the actual definition. Should I go fetch Jeff?" Newt's tone, despite having a hint of humour in it, sounded worried.

Thomas shook his head to clear his vision and reached down to grab his shoes. "No, I really am fine. And who the hell is Jeff?" The fact that his voice came out a bit tense from putting on the shoes didn't really help his cause.

"Jeff's a Med—the Keeper of the Med-jacks. Nice guy."

"I thought Clint was the Keeper?" Galileo had sure told him so...

Newt answered after a second. "You thought wrong."

"Okay, I'm ready. Let's go?"

.oOo.

After walking for two or three minutes in pure silence, the air began to vibrate; it didn't take long to recognise the beat of a drum. Or rather, many drums.

"So, d'you always party in the evenings?" Thomas asked, curious. They passed by the last building in the Middle—that's how the Gladers called, surprise, surprise, the middle of the Glade, also known as the place where most of the buildings were located—and turned to the right. The music grew louder by the second now, and singing could be clearly distinguished from it. "Or is it just a one-time thing?"

Newt didn't turn around to give him an answer. "Guess you could say that. We definitely don't have them all evenings, but it's up to you to figure out the specifics. Because, you know, where would the fun in that be if I'd tell you?"

Thomas kicked a random rock with his foot. "How nice of you to always make sure I'm having the most fun I can."

"No problem, that's why I'm here," Newt said, sarcastic.

When it became clear Newt didn't plan on saying anything else, Thomas took a deep breath in. "Would you mind if I asked you a question?"

"Go for it."

Thomas kicked his rock in an unfortunate angle; it flew all the way to the left. He debated on whether or not he should go and get it, but by the time he decided that yes, yes he should, he'd walked too far away, and it would've been weird for him to run back. A part of him missed the thing after only ten seconds—his legs had gotten so used to chasing it and his eyes following it. He put his hands in his pockets and looked ahead. "How do I look like?"

When he'd been on his own, that question had become the most frequent one to bug him, making an appearance at least once every two minutes. And of course, the room didn't contain any mirrors.

Newt's pace slowed gradually until he stopped completely and turned around. "You want me to tell you how you look like?" he asked, unsure, looking Thomas straight in the eye.

"Well, yeah," he said, his right hand escaping from the pocket and moving higher to scratch the back of his neck. "I sorta discovered I don't have any fucking idea how I look like, and I haven't come across any reflective surfaces, either, so..."

Newt's eyes scanned Thomas' body up and down, and Thomas felt a little uneasy. Come on, don't be ridiculous. I'm the one who asked him to do that in the first place.

"You've got brown hair, a normal build, and you're quite tall. That good enough for you?"

Thomas lowered his hand. "No, not really. Is my hair light or dark? What do you mean by normal build? How—"

"Bloody hell, shank, aren't you curious?" There was that word again. Shank. I'm sure Galileo explained what it means, but... Newt didn't give Thomas any time to answer. "Your hair's dark brown, your body's a bit muscular, and I'd say you're about—" he took a step closer to him, "—175 centimeters or so tall. Oh, and your eyes are dark brown, in case you were wondering."

For a couple of seconds there, Newt's face was mere centimeters away from his. Thomas wasn't sure what to think about that. But he could swear Newt's eyes looked exactly like tiny black holes; they were impossibly dark with a few specks of blue. They resembled a night's sky with a couple of brighter stars among them.

Had he really just thought that?

Thomas felt a rush of warmth in his neck area that steadily made its way upwards. God.

"Uh, thanks," he said as he pushed past Newt, hoping against hope that the other boy hadn't noticed a thing.

Silence fell between them, but Thomas wouldn't have gone as far as to say it was uncomfortable. It just felt like all the words ever invented had ceased to exist.

The road beneath them turned into a one of soil. A few lone trees towered over them a couple of meters away, but besides that, the ground stayed fairly even and tree-less for quite a while, right until the large walls put a stop to it. Some random thought at the back of his mind wondered how it would feel to just lay there, in the middle of the grassland, and stare into the night sky.

There, far off in front of him, were shadows. Dancing shadows, if he interpreted the moves correctly.

"Hey," began Newt, "have you remembered anything yet? Any vague faces, names, symbols? Because if you have..."

Thomas let out a sigh. "I wish. But no, nothing's come back to me yet, not even my fucking name. Why?"

Newt's voice developed a faint undercurrent, one that Thomas couldn't understand. "Oh, no reason. Just wondering."

Thomas nodded, his mind already on something else. The party. The beat of drums made its way under his skin, as if begging him to dance along with its rhythm. He felt like he had time-travelled thousands of years into the past, back into the time where the ancient people danced around the fire, faces hidden behind masks. The music sure sounded like something from that era, and there seemed to be even a fire going.

"So, am I stuck with you for the night, or can I go around and do stuff?" Thomas asked, his eyes scanning the surroundings.

There were a lot of people; he wouldn't have been able to tell the exact amount even if he'd tried. About a third of them danced, and all the others either walked around with cups in their hands or sat on tree trunks. A single maple tree grew about ten or so meters away from the fire, its thick branches forming almost a roof of sorts.

"Eager to get rid of me?" Newt asked, his voice falling flat. "And yeah, you're stuck with me for the night; I'm supposed to keep an eye on you so you wouldn't do anything... stupid."

"Cool," Thomas answered, distracted. He'd just noticed a literal girl walking past him, and he wondered how that could've been the case—Galileo had told him there were no girls in the Glade. Nevertheless, Thomas had seen the person's face clearly, and it'd been definitely feminine. "Dude, was that a girl I saw?" he asked, his voice full of disbelief. "I could swear..."

Newt was quick to answer. "No, that was Fex. You might not want to point it out to him that his appearance isn't the most masculine, though. There's this tiny chance you'd come off as rude, y'know?"

Thomas nodded, thinking he understood.

The two boys walked around aimlessly, Thomas in the front and Newt in the back. Newt reminded Thomas of his shadow: always there but never in the way. Because of that, actually, he forgot the guy's presence entirely.

"Oops, sorry," shouted Thomas after he bumped into a tall, lean boy who seemed to be about fourteen. The music, or rather, the drums, prevented Thomas from speaking in any way that was short from yelling. "Hey, where'd you get your drink?" Thomas had noticed the white cup in the boy's hand and now pointed at that with his two middle fingers. He'd seen majority of the people drink, but he'd failed to figure out where they'd gotten it from. And he quite fancied a drink right now.

The brunet shouted back, "Casso's handing them out near the tree! Don't worry, there's still a lot left!"

"Thanks, man," Thomas said with a smile and turned to the left, his new destination the maple-tree.

He didn't even know if the drink was laced with alcohol or not, but he didn't care. Truth be told, it'd probably be better if it would have alcohol in it—maybe then he'd feel confident enough to join the people dancing around the fire. They looked like they were having the time of their lives, and Thomas wouldn't have minded to feel like that as well. Especially if it got his mind off of things, things like the Death Circle. And the Grievers. God, Galileo's description of them had been so detailed, Thomas could envision them before his eyes as vividly as he could envision Galileo himself.

The crowd gradually thinned out, and Thomas now stood in front of a makeshift counter. A short boy with an unbelievably muscular build sat behind it, his back against the tree. From where he was standing, Thomas couldn't see what the blond guy was sitting on, but he could bet it was another one of those tree trunks.

Thomas opened his mouth to ask if he could get a drink when he felt hands on his shoulders. In an instant, he was pulled back and directed away. "Wh—"

"You're so not going to drink that," came Newt's voice from somewhere behind him. If he wasn't mistaken, the blond was pushing him towards a slightly less crowded place. There were even benches—if one could call them that.

"Why the hell not?" Thomas protested. Newt gave him one last push towards the bench, and Thomas almost lost his balance.

"Because," he said as he took a seat, "you won't like it. Trust me."

Thomas, having caught back his balance, sat down next to him. "You can't know that. All the others seem to like it, so why—"

"Yeah, because they're already used to its god-awful taste and, more importantly, grown immune to its power to make you drunk out of your mind in two nanoseconds."

"You're bluffing." There was no way a drink could've possibly been that strong, not to mention people being able to 'grow immune' to it.

"Am not," Newt answered, his face serious. "I've seen enough shanks drinking it to last a lifetime."

Thomas wasn't sure whether the guy was playing with him or not, so he said nothing. Until a thought hit him. "Why do you care if I get drunk or not?"

"I don't."

Thomas looked him in the eye, the position of his eyebrows demonstrating his skepticism. "Then why am I not allowed to drink?"

"Because," Newt said, his eyes meeting Thomas', "I say so."

Thomas was incapable of accepting that as an answer. "And why, exactly, do you say so?"

A glimmer of something made its way into Newt's eyes, but Thomas couldn't for the life of him figure out what it meant. Was he irritated? Amused?

"Because I can."

Oh, so he's playing that game, Thomas thought. "Is that so? Well, it doesn't mean I have to listen to it."

"Actually, you do," Newt said, nothing in his face or posture giving away any hint as of what he thought of the situation. But really, it was like the boy wanted him to ask questions.

"I do?" Thomas asked, his voice a mix of humour and disbelief.

"Yes, you do," Newt answered, still holding Thomas' gaze.

"And why's that?"

"Because I'm a One and you're a Nine," he said simply.

For a second there, Thomas was entirely convinced the guy was trying to hit on him but had forgotten half his lines. After all, there was a pick-up line that sounded pretty similar. On a scale from one to ten, you're a nine and I'm the one you need, or something like that.

But then he remembered: there was this weird Caste System going on here. Galileo had briefed him in on it before, but he'd managed to forget it almost immediately after hearing it.

Thomas came out of his thoughts to find Newt smirking at him. Smirking. His expression told Thomas everything he needed to know: the other boy knew exactly what he'd been just thinking about. Despite his best efforts to not blush, he felt his cheeks warming up. God, twice in one day? That must've been some kind of a record. Or not, he realised. He really didn't know himself well enough to tell if it was a normal occurrence for him or not.

"Don't look at me like that," he finally managed to say. "How was I supposed to know what you... Never mind. Wait, so you're a One? How come? Isn't that, like, a really high Rank to be in?" Although both of them saw through Thomas' rather obvious attempt at changing the topic, neither one commented on it.

"Yeah, it indeed is, like, a really high Rank to be in."

"Don't mock me," Thomas said as he put his hand on his chest dramatically. "I'm just a new bean in this strange place that you call the Shade—wait, no, the Glade."

Newt's lips quirked up in a smile. An actual smile, not that barely-even-there-smirk that he'd been doing. He shook his head, his blond hair flying in all kinds of directions, but before he could say anything...

A loud boom exploded through the air, vaguely reminding of cannons going off, followed by a strange sound that couldn't have been put into words. Thomas jumped up, heart pounding fast. "The fuck was that?"

"Hey, easy there," Newt said in an attempt to calm Thomas down. Everybody else around them continued doing what they were doing, not paying any attention whatsoever to the new and impossibly loud noise that they just had to have heard. "It's just the walls; they're closing. I thought Gally told you about that?"

"He... he did, but I didn't expect it to be so..."

"You'll get used to that after a while." Newt gave Thomas a half-smile, as if saying it's no big deal.

Heart still thumping painfully against his chest, Thomas sat back down and rested his head on his hands. "This is so weird. Giant walls closing around us and trapping us inside is considered normal."

After a brief silence, Newt said, "I wouldn't call it that. I'd say the walls are more like protecting us than anything. Think about what'd happen if the Grievers got inside the Glade... it'd be a real bloodbath, I can tell you that."

As it turned out, the party went on for several hours—until the midnight. In Thomas' opinion, it should've ended much earlier; by the end, nearly everybody was so drunk they could barely walk. I guess nobody can truly be immune to that weird drink... It just takes more time for its effects to show up. Thomas himself didn't even get to taste the said thing—mostly because of Newt's warning— but he didn't mind. At least, when he saw the results of it, he didn't.

Shortly after his and Newt's conversation, a dark-skinned boy had come over to summon him for whatever reason, so Thomas was left alone for the rest of the night. In the beginning, he'd been rather lost, not knowing what he should or even could do, but after observing the others for twenty minutes, he decided that no, he wasn't going to sit the party out. He'd stood up and joined the dancing crowd, feeling a bit—okay, very— awkward as he tried to imitate other people's movements. However, he soon realised the boys themselves had no idea what they were doing, and that thought calmed him down enough to let go. To dance around, to sing along to the wordless song that was apparently a thing, to blend in seamlessly.

That was, until Galileo and Newt came back from wherever the fuck they'd been and told everybody to leave, that the party was over. To Thomas' utter surprise, the place cleared up within minutes, despite the fact that some of them had to use all four limbs for moving.

Right now, Thomas was on his way back to his room, his mind buzzing with thoughts. He followed a tiny trail that seemed to go in the general direction of the Middle. The only reason he even had noticed it, though, was that somebody had lit up the lanterns during the party. But who? Who'd prefer to do that instead of, well, partying? Especially if the party itself didn't take place every day? I have to ask Galileo or Newt about that.

The party had been amazing. Perhaps not so much towards the end, but... The feeling of letting go, of moving with the rhythm, of moving with the crowd—perfect. Though, he didn't want to do it often; once every few weeks would be more than enough. Because try as he might, he couldn't deny that it had tired him out. His ears buzzed from the music, and his chest hurt more than it should have. A lot more. But it'd been worth it, all of it.

He reached the first building of the Middle, and he was glad; he didn't think his legs could carry him for much longer now. In his quest for his room, he didn't see a single soul wandering the streets, but he heard their voices all the same. It looked like they, or at least some of them, moved towards a certain building somewhere farther off.

He turned a corner... and took a step back. Two boys stood about seven meters away, their bodies just centimeters away from each other. Are they...? No. After taking a closer look, he clearly saw the defensive pose of one boys and the offensive one of the other.

"I already told you; I have no idea what you're talking about! What shuck maze? What gatherings?"

"Don't act all innocent with me; I have irrefutable evidence that you—"

"Are you high? Did you have too much Hys? I haven't—"

The boys stood in a shadow, so Thomas couldn't see them very well, but to him it seemed like the one that was being accused of something couldn't have been older than 13, and the one who accused him was...

"Galileo?" Shit. Why the fuck did he have to open his mouth? Why, why, why? "Is that you? What's going—"

"You and I will talk about this the first thing tomorrow, no excuses. Come to the Skizzle, and do not be late." With those words, Galileo pushed the poor boy away from him, and the kid nearly fell face-first to the ground. Then, he ran.

Galileo turned towards Thomas, his whole being showing how upset—well, angry would've been the correct word—he was. "Thomas."

"What did you do to that kid? He was scared to death!"

"What did I do to him? The real question is what he did to me." He took a long breath to calm himself before he continued. "It's a long story."

Thomas crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows. "I have ti—"

"What I meant to say," cut Galileo him off, "was that it's nothing you should worry about. Get to your shuck room, okay? You don't want to be out tonight." With that, he walked away.


A/N. Do you see now why I couldn't make the previous chapter longer? Well, I could've, but the editing would've taken up too much time, and time's something I don't have. Also, I'm glad to see a few of you are enjoying the story! I gotta admit, I was pretty nervous at first to put my story out there, so I'm really happy I haven't had to regret it.