Chapter 14.
Thomas and Teresa were both silent as Thomas led the way to the other gladers.
Thomas figured Teresa was trying to gather up some confidence for the somewhat unexpected reunion. That's what Thomas would have done in her place. The other gladers didn't think much of Teresa, but they might at least respect her if she strode in with her head held high.
Thomas would try his best to get his friends to accept her as part of the group, because she was one of them, for better or worse. He was hoping they would be a bit less hostile after her earlier sacrifice, but only time would tell.
The walk to the room felt much shorter on the way back, before long they were standing in front of the door.
Thomas looked at Teresa to see if she looked nervous. She didn't. The look on her face was one of determination.
"Don't worry, I'll be fine," she said when she saw him looking at her.
Then she reached for the door handle.
The gladers saw Thomas first. They looked at him with anticipation. Minho opened his mouth to say something, but Thomas would never know what it was.
He had seen Teresa. His mouth closed and the look on his face hardened, the lacy smile gone. He stood up, crossing his arms as he stepped in front of the others like he thought she was going to attack them or something.
The others looked at her with varying levels of distrust. The only one who didn't was Newt, he appeared to have woken up recently and was just staring at them groggily.
"What is she doing here?" Minho demanded, looking at Thomas.
"She-" Thomas began.
"'She' is standing right here, and she can speak for herself," Teresa said. Her voice was steely.
"Well excuse me for not wanting to speak to the chick who almost convinced the other group to kidnap and kill one of my friends while working with WICKED and lying about everything."
"Excuse me for being controlled and manipulated by WICKED you absolute-"
"Guys, stop it," Thomas said, deciding it would be best to intervene since the looks on their faces and clenched fists suggested the argument would not end well if it continued.
"Teresa only did what she did in the scorch because she was forced to, she ended up saving my life afterwards. I trust her, why can't you just give her a chance?"
"She's always lying! How can we possibly trust her when we have no idea whose side she's on?" Minho replied, looking unconvinced.
"I'm a part of this group whether you like it or not. I don't care if you trust me or not, that's your problem, but you'll have to deal with me regardless," Teresa said.
"Fine! But I'll be watching you, if you pull a stunt like the scorch again it will not end well for you," Minho threatened.
Teresa nodded, if the threat had worried her she didn't let on.
"Fair enough," she said, "does anyone else have a problem?"
She looked at the other gladers, challenging them to say something. No one responded.
"Good. I think Thomas has something to tell you now,"
Thomas and Teresa sat down with the others. There were still suspicious glances sent Teresa's way, but she ignored them.
"I have good news and bad news," Thomas began, "the good news is that Rat man agreed to the deal, they answer our questions, we're allowed to go wherever we want in the building and no one dies. Also, Frypan will get to cook the food during the next trial."
Thomas looked at the others to see how they reacted. They looked relieved but somewhat tense with the anticipation of the bad news.
"The bad news is that there's going to be another trial, and we're apparently gonna be free to act on our own a lot, but it sounds like they planned something really bad for us. Rat man said they should have the cure within a few weeks afterward."
Thomas glanced at Newt to see how he would take the last part of what he'd said. His friend looked a bit more alert than when he'd entered the room with Teresa, but he still looked tired. His expression didn't change. Either he was too tired to process the information, was concealing his emotions, or he simply didn't care.
"Do we have some kind of strategy?" Gally asked.
"Focus on the task at hand and get it done as fast as possible," Minho said.
"Think things through properly before doing them," Teresa suggested.
Then they were all looking at Thomas. For a split moment he wondered why, then he remembered that he was kind of the leader.
"Um…" he had no idea what to say, at that moment he felt incredibly stupid. The silence was starting to get awkward, but Newt saved Thomas from the embarrassing situation.
"We stick together," he said, drawing the attention of the gladers, "we'll be stronger that way. And we need to trust each other. If we don't this group will fall apart, and if anyone thinks differently they're bein' bloody stupid."
"Exactly," Thomas agreed, "but other than that we can't really decide on what to do, we'll have to wait until we know more about what we're up against. Right now we have the opportunity to explore this place and ask questions, learn more about what's happening. That's what we should do now, we might come across something useful."
"Right. So we'll split into groups of maybe three or two and take a look around," Minho said, then he looked at Thomas, "can you do your telepathy thing and tell Aris to have group B do the same thing?"
Thomas nodded.
"Aris, are you there?" He thought. He waited, but there was no response.
"Aris!" Still nothing, nothing from Aris anyway. He saw Teresa flinching from the corner of his eye.
"I don't think he can hear you, now will you please refrain from shouting all the time? You're giving me a headache," Teresa said.
"You try it then," Thomas replied sourly.
Teresa didn't respond, Thomas assumed she was trying to talk to Aris.
"Aris said they were already planning on doing that, but I think he just made that up," Teresa informed the group a minute later.
"Well the important thing is that they're gonna do it," Minho said, "but before we start we should have lunch. I think it's lunchtime at least."
"Teresa and I already had lunch," Thomas said.
"Did you have a lunch date?" Frypan asked teasingly.
"No, we didn't have a 'lunch date'," Thomas said, though he doubted his red face was helping his case.
"Then maybe you two should get started on explorin' the building," Newt said, sounding somewhat grumpy, which Thomas assumed was due to him still being tired.
They got up and left the room. Thomas and Teresa weren't going with the others to the cafeteria, but they decided to follow them until they found an unlocked door or a side corridor. Thomas checked all the doors on the right and Teresa the ones on the left, though they didn't pass many doors and all of those were locked.
"You'd think they'd give us a key card or something if they said we could go anywhere," Teresa complained. Thomas was about to reply, but an explosion of pain materialized in his head, there was no warning, just pain. He gripped his head with both hands as if that would make it stop. It didn't. He might have screamed, but he wasn't sure.
He could register people flocking around him, saying words Thomas couldn't understand.
He wasn't sure how, but he'd ended up on the floor, sitting with his back against a wall. He considered banging his head against it, maybe that would miraculously make the excruciating pain go away, if not, then at least he might hit it hard enough to pass out, which was preferable to staying awake and in pain.
Whether or not that would've worked he'd never know, he couldn't move his head, or the rest of his body for that matter.
He wasn't sure how long the agony lasted, but after what felt like an eternity it lessened ever so slightly. He could register a voice, saying something over and over. At first he couldn't hear what, but it slowly came into focus.
"Tommy," it was saying. No, not 'it', 'he'. Thomas recognized the voice, it was Newt.
He opened his eyes, which had been shut tight without him realizing it, and saw his friend crouched on the floor next to him.
The pain receded to a dull throb, though his entire body was trembling.
"What happened?" Newt asked once he saw he had Thomas' attention.
"I-I don't know," Thomas said, trying to keep his voice steady without success, "Teresa was talking to me telepathically. When I tried to respond…" he tried to gesture at his head, but his hand was shaking and he doubted Newt realized what he was trying to do.
But Newt wasn't looking at him anymore, he was glaring at Teresa, who was also crouching next to Thomas, though she was on his other side.
"What did you do to him?" he demanded, his voice was low and threatening, he looked downright terrifying.
"I didn't do anything!" she protested, "I was just talking to him, I didn't-"
"Stop lying! I know you did something," Newt cut her off.
Thomas noticed that Newt was clenching his fists as he spoke.
"Newt, calm down, she didn't do anything," Thomas said.
Newt scoffed, but he didn't make any threatening moves to Thomas' relief. He took his gaze of Teresa and looked at Thomas instead. He looked like he was about to say something, possibly about how Thomas shouldn't trust Teresa, but he apparently decided against it.
"Can you stand?" he asked instead.
"I think so," Thomas said.
By the time Newt had helped Thomas to his feet the throbbing in his head had disappeared completely, though he was still trembling slightly. He felt weak, and if it hadn't been for Newt still holding him he would have fallen to the floor again.
"Should we keep going?" Minho asked, looking at Thomas.
"Yeah, we'd just be wasting time otherwise," Thomas said, trying to sound stronger than he felt.
Newt had an arm around Thomas to support him as they continued walking. Teresa was moving from the left to the right and back again, to check all the doors, which had grown in number.
The sound of door handles being pulled accompanied their footsteps, then it stopped.
"Guys! This door's open!" she called from behind.
Thomas turned to see Teresa holding open a door, she was looking inside.
"Anything interesting?" Gally asked.
"Yeah, it looks like a library, we could definitely find something useful there," she said.
"That's great," Thomas said. He tried to break free of Newt's grip, hoping he would be able to stand on his own, but Newt didn't let go.
"Hang on, you can't go off alone with her after what she just did," Newt protested.
"How many times do I have to tell you I didn't do anything?" Teresa said in exasperation, "besides, you were the one who said we need to trust each other."
Newt scowled at her.
"That implied you had to do something to gain our trust in the first place. Besides, I don't think Tommy can walk on his own and I doubt you're strong enough to support him,"
"I can walk," Thomas said.
"Prove it then," Newt said, letting go of Thomas.
Thomas bent all his willpower on standing steadily, but his knees gave out almost immediately.
Newt caught him easily, having expected it.
"Told ya that would happen," he said.
"Well, we don't have much time to explore, there's a higher possibility of finding something useful if I go with Teresa," Thomas pointed out.
"Fine, then I'll go with you," Newt said.
"Aren't you hungry?" Thomas asked.
"I am, but the others can just take something with them once they're done. Looking through an entire library will take some time, we'll still be here by then so we won't exactly be hard to find.
"Well, now that we've solved that we better get going," Minho said, "see you later."
"Bye," Thomas said as he and Newt made their way to where Teresa was standing.