Chapter 15.
When Thomas heard the word 'library' he would think of vast rooms with bookshelves standing in neat rows, filled to the brim with colorful books. Comfortable armchairs to read in and tables for studying and doing homework.
He wondered briefly if the image was imagination or a glimpse of his past.
The room before him was not what he'd expected.
It was small and shabby, with bookshelves that looked liked they'd seen better years (or centuries), they appeared to have been placed in the room randomly, standing in no discernible pattern. The only place to sit was a sofa in the corner of the room. It might once have been yellow, though the color was too faded for Thomas to be sure. There was a table in front of it that had only three legs (not like it had been built that way, but like it'd had the fourth leg broken off).
Thomas coughed as he entered the room. The warm air smelled like mildew and dust. Thomas wondered when the door had been opened last.
"You okay, Tommy?" Newt asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine," Thomas said, though it was far from the truth. He felt weak and shaky, and his head may not be throbbing anymore, but the pain wasn't completely gone.
"Where should we start?" Teresa wondered.
"We can start on that side," Newt gestured at the left side of the room, "then we'll work our way over to the other side. Take whatever seems most helpful and start readin'," his voice was a bit cold, but at least he didn't ignore Teresa. Thomas wondered if his distrust of her could have something to do with the flare. He vaguely recalled paranoia being a symptom.
"Newt, do you have those pills on you?" Thomas asked.
"Yeah, why're you askin'"
"Maybe you should take one. No offense, but you're acting a bit…," Thomas trailed off, not knowing what word to use.
"Cranky?" Newt suggested, he sounded annoyed.
"Yeah," Thomas said, hoping he hadn't made his friend mad.
There was a tense silence, Thomas waited anxiously for what Newt would say.
"Maybe you're right," he said with a sigh.
He took out the box from his pocket. He took out a pill, using only one hand since he was still holding Thomas. He swallowed it and put the box back into his pocket.
"Let's get started then," he said.
They moved toward the first bookshelf.
The books looked as old as the rest of the library. Thomas suspected they would fall apart if he removed one from the shelf.
They had decided that Teresa would examine the books in the lower part of the shelf, Newt would take the ones on the top and Thomas got the ones in the middle.
The first book Thomas took out remained intact, thankfully. The only problem was that the title was too faded to read. He could pick out a few letters, but it wasn't enough to put together what the words were.
He flipped the book open. The first yellowed page displayed the words 'The art of fishing' and a name that must belong to the author.
Thomas flipped through the pages, which mostly showed pictures of fishes and short texts informing the reader about the different species and how best to catch them.
Thomas wasn't particularly interested in fishing, but he decided it wouldn't hurt to know. WICKED could be sending them on some kind of mission where they would have to sail across the ocean for all he knew, so he held onto the book.
He soon found out that all the other books on the shelf were also about fishing. At least now he knew that the books hadn't just been placed there randomly.
"Have you found something interesting?" Thomas asked his friends.
"Do you consider fishes interesting?" Teresa questioned.
"Not really. Newt, did you find anything else?"
"No, I'm guessing this shelf is entirely dedicated to fishing," Newt said.
"Maybe we should just take the thickest book and move on," Thomas suggested. He knew that the number of pages in a book didn't necessarily determine it's usefulness, but it would take ages to check every book.
He put back the book he'd first found since it was barely fifty pages long.
"There could be something hidden here that we'd miss if we did that," Newt said, "on the other hand, we don't have the time to search the entire shelf for something that might not even be there. We'll just do what you said, Tommy."
"It might just be this part of the shelf that's about fishing, I'll check the other side of it to make sure," Teresa said.
Once Teresa had confirmed that the whole shelf contained fishing books, they began their search for the thickest book.
Thomas scanned the shelf. Most of the books looked like they had less than a hundred pages, but after a while, Thomas spotted a thick book, which must've had at least five hundred pages, a number that was drastically changed once Thomas pulled the book out and half its content fell out.
Most of the papers landed on Thomas' and Newt's feet with a soft thump, though a fair amount floated -as if carried by an undetectable wind- before they landed. the wooden floor was littered with papers, it was completely covered where Thomas was standing. A mat of paper stretching at least three feet around him.
"Sorry," Thomas said.
"It was only a matter of time before it happened," Teresa said, kicking off a paper that had landed on her foot.
"Do you reckon we have to clean it all up?" Newt asked.
"Nah," Teresa responded, "let's just leave it here so WICKED has to clean it up, as revenge for the simulation."
"That's a pretty small revenge, but why not?" Newt said, "We'll just have to be careful so we don't slip on the pages," he added as an afterthought.
Thomas let go of the now ruined book he was still holding. It fell to the floor with a thud, which resulted in a small dust cloud and more pages falling out.
"We should keep looking, hopefully, the other books will stay intact," he said.
After a few more minutes Teresa found another thick book that was in good condition, at least compared to the other books.
She flicked through the pages and she must have deemed it useful since she didn't put it back in the shelf.
"I think this'll do," she said.
No one argued, so they moved on to the next shelf.
That shelf had books about scientists. Thomas recognized most of the names, but some were new to him.
They might not have a lot of use for those books during their trial, but Thomas wanted to learn about the scientists he didn't know about.
By pure luck, he found a book with 'The encyclopedia of famous scientists' written on it.
He opened it and saw a list of names written in alphabetical order, each name accompanied by a number (presumably the page they were featured on).
He looked at the list of names and found the scientists he and his friends had been named after. Thomas Edison, Isaac Newton, he also found the name George Minho. He hadn't heard about Minho's namesake before, Thomas wondered what he'd done.
He would, unfortunately, have to wait with reading about him, because Newt and Teresa looked like they wanted to move on.
They spent the next hour going through the rest of the bookshelves. They found a bunch of books on hunting and other skills they would need if they were to be sent out into the wilderness.
The books had of course been written before the solar flares, and Thomas wasn't sure how relevant they would be in the current environment. He hoped the books would say something about how to survive in the desert.
During the search for books, Thomas had regained some of his strength and was finally able to stand on his own, albeit somewhat shakily.
By the time they had gone through all the shelves, Newt and Teresa were each holding large piles of books (Newt had insisted on carrying all the books Thomas found too), and they made their way over to the sofa.
Newt and Teresa put the books next to the broken table.
Then Thomas got the idea to fill the space where the table's fourth leg had used to be with a pile of books from the nearest shelf.
They put half of the books on the table, not wanting to place to much weight on it since it looked pretty unsteady.
Teresa sat down on the sofa, picked up a book, put her feet on the table and started reading. The table creaked threateningly, but Teresa either didn't notice or didn't care.
Thomas and Newt sat down next to each other. The sofa creaked, even though they sat down carefully. Thomas wondered for a brief moment if it would break under their combined weight. Thankfully it didn't.
Thomas grabbed the closest book, a slightly faded blue book with the title 'Camping for beginners', at least, that's what he assumed it was called, a few letters were missing so he couldn't be a hundred percent sure. He was about to start reading it when Newt nudged him with his elbow.
"What's this?" His friend asked, gesturing at the book he was holding. Thomas recognized it as the book about scientists he'd picked out earlier.
"I was planning on taking that with me to read if I have any spare time," he explained, "I doubt we'll have any use for it, but I think it looks interesting."
"Really?" Newt asked, obviously not sharing Thomas' interest in the book. He put it back on the table and picked up another book.
"Can we take books with us?" Teresa asked like the idea had just occurred to her.
"Well this is a library, I don't see why we couldn't borrow the books as long as we try to return them later," Thomas pointed out.
"I know, we can take them with us on the next trial, then WICKED can't kill us, because then they won't get their books back," Teresa said jokingly.
"They could just take them from our packs or something," Newt pointed out.
"Not if we use our last dying moments on finding some matches and setting the books on fire," Teresa said.
"Good thinking," Newt said, "you hear that?!" He shouted at whatever spying equipment WICKED was using to eavesdrop on them, "if we die we'll take your books with us!" Then he laughed, a sound Thomas hadn't thought he would hear again.
Thomas and Teresa started laughing too, they couldn't help it, Newt's laugh was infectious.
It felt good to laugh, Thomas felt as if maybe all wasn't lost, there was still good in the world, if only for a few moments.
Thomas eventually tried to stop, but he couldn't, the three of them just sat there laughing like lunatics.
Suffice it to say their friends were pretty surprised when they came barging in.
They stood there for a moment while the three of them tried to snap out of the laughing fits.
"What's so funny?" Minho asked.
"Nothing," Newt said, being the first to somewhat regain control, "what took you so long?"
"We had an argument with a guard," Minho explained, "we were trying to convince him to give us the keys to the other rooms in this corridor, but he wasn't very cooperative."
"I don't think it helped that you threw water in his face," Gally said
"That was an accident."
"You picked your glass up and threw the water at him, how was that an accident?"
"Fine, so maybe it wasn't an accident, but it was his own fault for calling us 'stupid lab rats' and refusing to give us the keys. Besides, you called him a slinthead, I don't think that helped either."
Gally started to protest, but Frypan cut him off.
"You were both being unhelpful."
"Whatever," Minho said, "so anyways, the guard looked like he was about to punch me, but that weird guard from earlier stopped him, then she gave us her key card, so now we can open at least some of the locked doors here."
"Great," Newt said, "we'll stay here for a while and do some readin'."
"We'll split up and start searching the other rooms, see you later," Minho said, "oh, and Newt, I got you this." He held up a sandwich. Then he tossed it at Newt, who caught it reflexively.
"Thanks," he said, scanning the sandwich for mold, biting into it when he deemed it edible.
When the other gladers left they sat quietly and read.
Thomas tried to read as quickly as possible, skipping the parts that wouldn't be useful, like how to make a fire, which they already knew how to do. He couldn't be completely sure how much the other gladers had learned about wilderness survival skills in the maze, so he read most of the book.
After a while, he finished his book. He put it back on the table and looked to see how his friends were doing before picking up another book.
Teresa was reading quickly, her eyes flew over the words with ease.
Newt, on the other hand, wasn't doing so great, he was staring at the words like he couldn't understand them, and he was rubbing his temples like he had a headache.
"Are you okay?" Thomas asked.
"Yeah, I just can't bloody concentrate," Newt responded.
"Maybe we should go to the others, help them search the other rooms, we can just take the books with us and read later," Thomas suggested.
"Sounds like a plan," Teresa agreed.
They got up from the couch and gathered up the books they hadn't read. Thomas had read one book, and Teresa had read two, so they left those behind.
They started to move for the exit when Newt stopped.
"Teresa?" He asked.
"Yes?"
"I owe you an apology. You know, for not trusting you earlier. I was the one who said we should trust each other, and I meant it, but then I just… I don't know, I wasn't thinking clearly," Newt said, looking at Teresa to see what she would say.
"It's okay, I get it, I don't think I would trust me either," Teresa said, "and the flare isn't your fault, I've decided not to judge you too harshly until you're cured."
"So, we're cool then?"
"Totally," Teresa promised.
Then they left the library to go look for their friends.