The city is expansive and desolate, a desert wasteland of broken down cars and buildings. Ash wonders how much of the sand is from the eroded concrete, and how much is actually from The Scorch.
The dry heat and the bright sun do her headache no favors, but she does her best to power through. It's imperative they reach at least the edge of the city before nightfall; she doesn't want to imagine what might happen if they're stuck in the middle of it all.
Thomas and Minho end up taking the lead for a while, slightly reminiscent of the group's last excursion through the Maze. The pace is slower, the air much more dry, and the territory is unfamiliar. Instead of concrete and ivy, they're surrounded by sand, sand, and more sand.
As the sun steadily creeps higher and higher, its unforgiving rays shining down on the Gladers, they make some decent progress— but around noon, they have to scramble for cover when they hear helicopters in the distance, growing closer with each passing second.
WCKD is searching for them.
Taking shelter under some kind of bridge, likely part of a highway, the group decides to wait out the helicopters for a while.
Ash sits down with her back against a concrete pole, surprisingly cool to the touch. The shade now surrounding them does wonders on their morale, though their slowly dwindling water supply seems to balance that positivity out.
Teresa sits next to her, not more than a few inches between them, and closes her eyes.
The other's migraine is only getting worse, the harsh sunlight nearly blinding her. Her head feels both light and heavy at the same time, like some kind of lead balloon that defies all the laws of nature and gravity combined.
For the first time, she finally vocalizes her pain. Not very loudly, as even the sound of her own voice, the vibrations it sends through her skull, makes it worse.
"My head is killing me," she admits. "Ever since I woke up… Jesus, my brain feels like it's gonna explode."
"What do you mean?" Teresa asks her, looking over in concern.
"I think they did something to me," Ash says. "Just before we left— I mean, while Thomas and Aris were off doing their little investigation, WCKD pulled me from our room and said they needed to do more tests or something. They mentioned a lump in my neck, and sedated me."
Teresa's breath hitches, but she doesn't respond. In fact, she gets to her feet and wanders away. Ash doesn't know which way she goes, as her own eyes are hidden beneath her palms. She has to fight the urge to gouge her own eyes out, the same kind of intrusive thoughts she's always gotten whenever a migraine has gotten out of control, and freezes as a memory hits her.
Two little girls, shoved onto a subway train with their mother standing between them. A crowd of pleading people, begging to be let in. A blonde woman hugging the girls' mother, then crouching to hug each of the girls.
But it makes no sense.
Sitting in a darkened movie theater, watching as the girl on the screen recounts her trauma, and pleads for the boy standing before her to understand.
That— that makes much more sense. Letting out a shaky breath, Ash runs through the movie in her mind and tries to calculate what her and her friends' next step should be.
Escape the Maze, check.
Save Chuck, check.
Escape the compound, check.
Get out of the mall without anyone (particularly Winston) getting lost or infected, check.
Get to the settlement, find Jorge and Brenda, and hopefully avoid getting almost sold back to WCKD.
Meanwhile, Teresa goes to check on Thomas, who's standing atop a nearby sand dune and watching both the skies and the horizons. The helicopters seem to be gone now, which is a relief, but the mountains in the distance look very far away.
Newt calls after them, asking about their progress, and Thomas lies through his teeth to try and sound optimistic.
"What's going on with you?" Thomas asks Teresa, staring intently as she gently prods the back of her neck, where her own microchip had once been.
"WCKD did something to me, back at that facility," she says nervously. "And I think they did it to Ash, too, just before you came for us. She just told me— well, it was really similar to what the doctor told me on our first day there."
"What happened?"
Teresa glances behind her, back toward the rest of the group. Most of them are preparing to start moving again. Swallowing back her own worries, she answers him. "They gave me my memories back," she admits. "They're still a little fuzzy, but… they're there. I can remember the day we met— I was taller than you. And faster."
He scoffs, unable to keep the smile off his face as he shakes his head. "Yeah, okay… you think they did that to Ash, too?"
Teresa nods, her brief attempt at lightening the mood already fading. "But something's wrong… I'm worried that we might've been too hasty about taking out those chips. It might've messed with that process for her."
"What do you mean?"
"She was just telling me about how bad her head's been hurting, how it hasn't stopped since you guys found us and woke us up," Teresa explains. "Mine hurt at first, too— the first time I woke up after they'd done it. But it went away after just a couple hours. She said her head's only getting worse."
Thomas's brows furrow as he looks back down the dune toward the rest of their friends. Ash hasn't moved since Teresa had left her side, and Newt and Frypan are crouched on either side of her. Teresa follows his line of sight, letting out a soft gasp before heading straight over with Thomas hot on her heels.
As they get closer, they can hear her quietly crying. Her hands are balled into fists, pressed against her eyes, knuckles pale with the force of her grip.
"Ash," Teresa says softly, nudging Newt out of the way so that she can kneel in front of the other girl. "Ash, talk to me, please?"
"It won't stop hurting," she mumbles. "I've never had a migraine hurt this bad before— and now my brain's going fuzzy and nothing's making sense—"
"Is she infected?" Gally speaks up, sounding more worried than Teresa has ever heard him.
"No, she's immune," she replies confidently. "This is something WCKD did to her back there— they did it to me too, but it was a couple days ago."
Ash draws her legs up, bringing her knees to her chest and burying her face in her arms.
"It's gonna be over soon," Teresa soothes, hoping she's not lying. "Okay? It'll stop soon."
"What exactly did they do?" Frypan asks, and Teresa hesitates before giving in.
These are your friends, she reminds herself. Whether they remember the long term or not.
"They gave me my memories back," she finally says. "Like I was just telling Thomas; they're fuzzy, but they're coming back. I'd be willing to bet that WCKD's done the same to her."
"No—" Ash cries, her voice muffled by her own limbs. "They can't be— it doesn't make sense!"
Teresa sighs, rubbing the other's back as soothingly as she can. "Ash, we've gotta keep moving. I know the light and heat are only making the pain worse, but we can't stay here."
"Hold up, I think I might've found something back in that mall that could help," Jeff says, digging through his satchel with his good hand. He pulls out a small bottle of pills, the label rather faded and scratched up, but still barely recognizable.
"Anyone have any water left?" Teresa asks, taking the pill bottle, and Gally silently hands her a near-empty canteen. It should be just enough to get two pills down, as long as Ash can manage it in one go.
It takes some coaxing, but she eventually lifts her head, eyes squeezed tightly shut, and blindly accepts the help.
"We can give her a few more minutes for those to kick in," Thomas says, patting Teresa's shoulder as she gives Jeff back the pill bottle, and Gally his now-empty canteen.
Ash goes back to hiding her face, letting out only the occasional quiet sniffle. The others, with the exception of Gally, move away to give her some room.
"WCKD really gave you your memories back?" Chuck asks, his eyes wide. "Does that mean you remember your parents?"
Teresa nods, a sad smile on her face. "Yeah— my mom's actually with the Right Arm, I think. It might've been another anti-WCKD group… She used to work for WCKD, back when they were more ethical. Then she left about two years ago. It's a long story, and I'm still trying to piece some of it together myself…"
She stops herself from saying more, wanting to actually figure it out before sharing, and changes the subject.
"So what else did you find back there, Jeff?" she asks, and he opens up his satchel again.
"A whole bunch of stuff, actually," he says, rifling around. "Ash knows way more than I do about this, but I tried to grab some of everything I could recognize. Hell, I even have a couple of these little rubber sheets— even she didn't know what they were back in the Glade."
Before Teresa can request to see the item in question, Ash shuffles into the little circle they'd formed. She's still rubbing at one eye, but not as harshly as before.
"I'm ready to go," she says, following the statement with a sheepish apology. "Still hurts, but it's bearable enough now."
"That's good," Frypan says, patting her shoulder.
"If you're sure, then we should get moving," Thomas says.
"I'm sure," she says firmly.
Thomas nods, and takes the lead as the group treks out from under their shelter and back into the sun. It's been over an hour since they'd taken shelter, and the unshaded Scorch is— well, scorching.
Each of them has some kind of face covering, whether it's a scarf, a small towel, or an extra shirt. As they reach the flatlands between the city and the mountains, the wind starts to pick up. Sand gets blown into their faces, but nothing too crazy.
Near the rear of the pack, Ash is still struggling. Luckily the migraine is finally subsiding— she hadn't been lying about that— but the confusion and light-headedness persists.
On the one hand, she can still remember everything she had when she'd first woken up in the Glade; her childhood in Kentucky, going to school, reading excessively at every free moment she could find. Especially the books she'd somehow managed to find herself in.
Well, technically the movie version of it, but still.
And of course she also still has her memories of being in the Glade, everything that's happened since she'd woken up that afternoon in the medjack hut. Daily life, bonfires, and the eventual escape.
But now she has new memories. The ones that don't make sense.
Before her time here in this world, she'd been an only child. Now she's getting memories of a sister, whose exact face and name are just out of reach. Her mother, so different from the other one she remembers. But her father's the same in both… until he gets infected with the Flare.
Ash has to shake herself out of it as night finally begins to fall, and the group agrees it's time to stop and make camp.
Still in these flatlands, there's no shelter for them to take, so the Gladers have to resort to huddling up in a small radius, using their backpacks as makeshift pillows, and laying down right where they are. They have no supplies to make a campfire, but thankfully the heat of the day isn't sapped from the ground so quickly as it is the air.
There's no making themselves comfortable, but the Gladers make due. Some of them even manage to fall asleep…
Until the first roll of thunder in the distance.