Lights blazed throughout the Homestead. Gladers ran about, everyone talking at once. A couple of boys cried in a corner. Chaos ruled.

Thomas ignored all of it. He had to make decision. Do I stay here to check on an look after an unconcious Newt? Or do I chase after Minho? Thomas felt as if this decision decided the fate of the world, life or death. Minho was getting away; he needed to decide quickly.

The Griever was gone; Newt would be fine. But what if woke up and Thomas wasn't there? How would that affect their already shattering relationship? Obviously Minho needed Thomas more right now. Was he delusional? Why would he chase after the Griever? He could die.

Thomas decided. He ran into the hallway, then leaped down the stairs three at a time. He pushed his way through a crowd in the foyer, tore out of the Homestead and toward the West Door, sprinting. He pulled up just short of the threshold of the Maze, his instincts forcing him to think twice about entering. Newt called to him from behind, delaying the decision. He'd woken up already.

"Minho followed it out there!" Thomas yelled when Newt caught up to him, a small towel pressed against the wound on his head. A patchy spot of blood had already seeped through the white material.

"Someone told me," Newt said, pulling the towel away to look at it; he grimaced and put it back. "Fuck it, that hurts like a mother. Minho must've finally fried his last bit of brain cells—not to mention Gally. Always knew he was crazy."

Thomas could only worry about Minho. "I'm going after him."

"Time to be a bloody hero again?!" Newt snapped.

Thomas looked at Newt sharply, hurt by the rebuke. That was three times and counting. Thomas couldn't continue to accept Newt speaking to him that way. Maybe this rift forming in their relationship was needed. Maybe Thomas had subconsiuously cheated on purpose. Maybe a part of him wanted things to be over with Newt.

Thomas quickly snapped back. "You think I do things to impress you shanks? Please. All I care about is getting out of here."

"Yeah, well, you're a regular toughie. But right now we've got worse problems."

"What?" Thomas knew if he wanted to catch up with Minho he had no time for this.

"Somebody—" Newt began.

"There he is!" Thomas shouted. Minho had just turned a corner up ahead and was coming straight for them. Thomas cupped his hands. "You fucking idiot! What were you doing?"

Minho waited until he made it back through the Door, then bent over, hands on his knees, and sucked in a few breaths before answering. "I just… wanted to… make sure."

"Make sure of what?" Newt asked. "Lotta good you'd be, taken with Gally."

Minho straightened and put his hands on his hips, still breathing heavily. "Slim it... I just wanted to see if they went toward the Cliff... Toward the Griever Hole."

"And?" Thomas said.

"Bingo." Minho wiped sweat from his forehead.

"I just can't believe it," Newt said, almost whispering. "What a night."

Thomas's thoughts tried to drift toward the Hole and what it all meant, but he couldn't shake the thought of what Newt had been about to say before they saw Minho return. "What were you about to tell me?" he asked. "You said we had worse—"

"Yeah." Newt pointed his thumb over his shoulder. "You can still see the buggin' smoke."

Thomas looked in that direction. The heavy metal door of the Map Room was slightly ajar, a wispy trail of black smoke drifting out and into the gray sky.

"Somebody burned the Map trunks," Newt said. "Every last one of 'em."

The maps are important, Tom. The girl's words, echoed across Thomas's mind. As much as he didn't want to. He needed to talk to her. Alone. If he followed his first thought and brought Newt with him, she might not be as open and honest.

Thomas now stood outside the window of the Slammer, having left Newt and Minho when they went to investigate the sabotage of the Map Room. Thomas had noticed them exchange an odd look before they split up, almost as if communicating some secret with their eyes. But Thomas could think of only one thing. Wishing he could be anywhere else, Thomas found himself at the bars of the Slammer.

"Teresa?" he asked, roughly. He wanted her to understand that he didn't like her.

Her face appeared, hands rubbing her eyes. "Was anybody killed?" she asked, somewhat groggy.

"Were you sleeping?" Thomas asked, increduolsly.

"I was," she responded. "Until I heard something shred the Homestead to bits. What happened?"

Thomas shook his head in disbelief. "I don't know how you could've slept through the sound of all those Grievers out here."

"You try coming out of a coma sometime. See how you do." Now answer my question, she said inside his head.

Thomas blinked, momentarily surprised by the voice since she hadn't done it in a while. "Cut that shit out!" he snapped. That was one of the main reasons he didn't like her. The mind link tied him to her somehow and he didn't want it.

Teresa looked wounded. "Tom, do you really not remember me?" Her voice was soft, a contrast from the crazed, hard sound he'd heard from her after she first arrived, when she'd delivered the message that everything was going to change.

"You mean you remember me?" he asked, the words a little heated.

"Yes. No. Maybe." She threw her arms up in disgust. "I can't explain it. I remember remembering," she muttered, sitting down with a heavy sigh; she pulled her legs up to wrap her arms around her knees. "Feelings. Emotions. Like I have all these shelves in my head, labeled for memories and faces, but they're empty. As if everything before this is just on the other side of a white curtain. Including you."

"But how do you know me?" He felt like the walls were spinning around him.

Teresa turned toward him. "I don't know. Something about before we came to the Maze. Something about us. It's mostly empty, like I said."

"You know about the Maze? Who told you? You just woke up."

"I … It's all very confusing right now." She held a hand out. "But I know you're my friend."

"I am not your friend," Thomas almost growled it. "You came here and ruined everything."

Teresa blanched. "How can you say that?" She appeared on the verge or tears. Thomas found that he didn't care. He completely ignored her question. He'd come here for a reason.

"You said something to me—in my head—right before you found me over here. You said 'The Maze is a code. The maps are important.' What did you mean?"

She shook her head slightly. "When I first woke up, it was like I'd entered an insane asylum—these strange guys hovering over my bed, the world tipping around me, memories swirling in my brain. I tried to reach out and grasp a few, and that was one of them. I can't really remember why I said it."

"Was there anything else?"

"Actually, yeah." She pulled up the sleeve of her left arm, exposing her bicep. Small letters were written across the skin in thin black ink.

"What's that?" he asked, leaning in for a better look.

"Read it yourself."

The letters were messy, but he could make them out when he got close enough.

WICKED is good

Thomas's heart beat faster. There that word was again. WICKED. "What does that mean?" Thomas asked fiercely.

Teresa's eyes hardened, as if she'd come to a determined resolution. "I'm done being interrogated like this. If you want more from me, you're going to answer some of my questions. What happened with the Grievers earlier?" She stared back at Thomas just as fiercely.

He narrowed his eyes at her. Then he sighed in defeat. It was such a long story, and he didn't feel like telling the whole thing. "You don't know Gally, but he's a psycho kid who ran away. He showed up, jumped on a Griever, and they all took off into the Maze. It was really weird." He still couldn't believe it had actually happened.

"Which is saying a lot," Teresa said.

"Yeah. He said something about them killing us one a night until we were all dead—he said it at least twice."

Teresa frowned. "Just one a night? Why?"

"I don't know. He also said it had to do with… trials. Or variables. Something like that." Thomas switched gears.

Teresa eyed widened, as if she'd iust had an epiphany. "I don't know why I wrote this on my arm, but I just about what you told me I said. That the Maze is a code."

"What do you think it means?" Intensely interested, he tried to block out the shouts and chatter rumbling through the Glade as others found out about the Map Room being burned.

"Well, the walls move every day, right?"

"Yeah." He could tell she was really on to something.

"And Minho said they think there's a pattern, right?"

"Right." Gears were starting to shift into place inside Thomas's head as well, almost as if a prior memory was beginning to break loose.

"Well, I can't remember why I said that to you about the code. I know when I was coming out of the coma all sorts of thoughts and memories swirled through my head like crazy, almost as if I could feel someone emptying my mind, sucking them out. And I felt like I needed to say that thing about the code before I lost it. So there must be an important reason."

Thomas almost didn't hear her—he was thinking harder than he had in a while. "They always compare each section's Map to the one from the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that, day by day, each Runner just analyzing their own Section. What if they're supposed to compare the Maps to other sections…" He trailed off, feeling like he was on the cusp of something.

Teresa seemed to ignore him, doing her own theorizing. "The first thing the word code makes me think of is letters. Letters in the alphabet. Maybe the Maze is trying to spell something."

Everything came together so quickly in Thomas's mind, he almost heard an audible click, as if the pieces all snapped into place at once. "You're right—you're right! But the Runners have been looking at it wrong this whole time. They've been analyzing it the wrong way!"

Teresa gripped the bars now, her knuckles white, her face pressed against the iron rods. "What? What're you talking about?"

"Minho said the patterns repeat themselves, only they can't figure out what it means. But they've always studied them section by section, comparing one day to the next. What if each day is a separate piece of the code, and they're supposed to use all eight sections together somehow?"

"You think maybe each day is trying to reveal a word?" Teresa asked. "With the wall movements?"

Thomas nodded. "Or maybe a letter a day, I don't know. But they've always thought the movements would reveal how to escape, not spell something. They've been studying it like a map, not like a picture of something. We've gotta—" Then he stopped, remembering what he'd just been told by Newt. "Oh, no."

Teresa's eyes flared with worry. "What's wrong?"

"Oh no oh no oh no …" He turned to look at the Map Room. The smoke had lessened, but it still wafted out the door, a dark, hazy cloud covering the entire area.

"What's wrong?" Teresa repeated. She couldn't see the Map Room from her angle.

"Someone burned all the Maps. If there was a code, it's gone."