Chapter 21.
Thomas stared at Brenda, wishing she'd turn around and explain what was going on. He knew she worked for WICKED, but he'd thought she was on his side. Was she waiting for the right moment to turn on the strangers like she had done to the people at WICKED in the simulation? Thomas knew he'd have to be patient, but not knowing was unbearable.
As Thomas looked around at their attackers he noticed that they weren't wearing the usual uniforms of the WICKED-guards. Their attire was a blend of normal clothes and armor, everything looking worn down and dirty.
Thomas guessed they were working for WICKED but pretending they weren't.
That made more sense than some random group of people deciding to attack a bunch of teenagers that they just happened to stumble upon out in the forest of what appeared to be the middle of nowhere.
Thomas' speculations were interrupted by a yell.
He looked in the direction it had come from and saw Harriet, struggling furiously but unsuccessfully to break free from the grasp of a large man. But her yell hadn't been directed at him.
"Be careful!" She shouted at one of the other strangers.
Said strange held up the still unconscious Sonya and shook her as if that would wake her up. Brenda had made her way over to them to see what all the fuss was about.
"What's going on?" She demanded, looking from Harriet to Sonya, her frown deepening when she saw the latter. She glared at the man holding her.
"Did you kill her? I told you not to do that! You know we need as many of them as we can get!" She said.
"I didn't do nothin'! she was like this when I found her!" He protested.
"She's not dead!" Harriet said angrily, "but she will be soon if you keep shaking her like that!"
The man stopped shaking her. He put his finger to her throat to feel for a pulse.
"She's alive," he confirmed, looking at Brenda as if waiting for instructions.
It struck Thomas that Brenda was the leader of the group, despite being younger than most of the others.
She turned to Harriet.
"What's wrong with her?" She asked.
"We don't know. A crank hit her in the head with a rock a few hours ago," she responded, looking torn between being grateful that Brenda stepped in and being angry at her for attacking them.
"And she's been like this ever since?"
"No, she woke up a while ago, but she just muttered incomprehensibly and passed out again."
Brenda looked at Sonya and pondered a few seconds before making a decision.
"We'll take her with us, we might be able to keep her alive long enough to use her," Brenda said.
"Use her for what?" Harriet demanded.
Brenda ignored her.
"Come on, let's go!" She called.
Their captors led them through the forest. No one spoke, except for the occasional 'walk faster', from the strangers.
Thomas tried to figure out what was happening. Brenda had said that they
needed as many of them as they could get. What did she mean by that? Maybe WICKED wanted to keep as many of them alive as possible so they'd be more likely to find a cure. Thomas guessed that was it.
He wondered what the point of interrupting the trial was. Maybe they weren't interrupting the trial, it was possible that they were doing it as some kind of test.
Or maybe, unlikely as it seemed, it wasn't WICKED. Maybe the strangers were part of another organization that was gathering immunes for their own research. Thomas didn't know how he felt about that idea. He didn't want to be put through a new set of trials, and they didn't have all the time in the world to find a cure, but he wanted to be free from WICKED, more than almost anything. They had taken his memories, his friends, they had almost taken his life several times. The worst part of it was that they didn't show any regret of what they had done. They acted like the gladers were nothing more than test subjects, lab rats. Thomas wanted to destroy the organization and everyone working for them. The only thing that kept him from doing that was the fact that his best friend had the flare. And, as ashamed as it made him feel, that was barely enough. In the simulation, it hadn't been enough. He knew that he was being selfish. He didn't particularly care about saving the world. It was just a bonus of saving his friend, not his main priority.
But he was getting ahead of himself. He needed to focus on the current situation, not on some fantasy that would almost certainly never become reality.
Thomas' hands had been tied together behind his back, so he couldn't check his watch, but he didn't need to know the time to know that they had been walking for a long time. He was starting to get tired and his body felt sore, but that pain was nothing compared to the hunger that was gnawing at him, seeming to grow with every step. He hoped their captors would be decent enough to give them food once they had finished walking.
After walking through a particularly thick grove of trees they stopped. The man who had been leading Thomas let go of him suddenly.
"Stay there," he muttered. Then he and a few of the other strangers went over to a pile of tree branches and started tossing them aside. At first, Thomas wondered what they were doing, they could just step around it, they didn't need to clear the path. But then he realized that they weren't going to keep walking, there was something under the branches.
That 'something' was soon revealed to be a large, metallic trapdoor.
Brenda pushed past the others and started fiddling with something in the corner of the trapdoor. There was a small 'click' and a cylinder –maybe five centimeters in diameter- popped up. The thing was covered with what must've been at least a hundred tiny buttons. Brenda crouched next to the cylinder, her body obscuring it from Thomas' sight, most likely on purpose, and started pressing the buttons, judging by the numerous clicking sounds. It wasn't really a necessary precaution since Thomas was pretty sure he wouldn't have been able to memorize the code judging by the number of buttons.
There was another, louder 'click' and the trapdoor shot open, Brenda stepped back just in time to avoid getting hit in the face by it.
Someone removed the rope tying his hands together and shoved Thomas forward.
"Go inside," said a hoarse voice. Thomas stepped closer to the door reluctantly, his friends following closely.
Once Thomas was close enough to look down the opening he saw nothing but darkness and a ladder leading into it.
Brenda took hold of the ladder and climbed down without hesitation.
Thomas watched her disappear into the darkness.
He got shoved again. It was a hard shove, Thomas almost stumbled and fell into the abyss.
"Go inside," repeated the same hoarse voice he'd heard before. Thomas carefully put his hands and feet on the ladder. It was metallic and cold as ice. It made an unsettling screeching sound, making Thomas wonder just how stable it was.
Since he didn't want to get shoved again he started climbing, gripping the ladder tightly.
He was engulfed in darkness much faster than should have been possible seeing as it was relatively sunny outside. He then realized that he wasn't climbing straight down, the ladder was leaning slightly.
Climbing down a ladder in the dark was pretty scary, Thomas had no idea how wide the hole was, he had no idea if it was a narrow tunnel or a gigantic underground cave.
He could hear the sounds of his friends climbing above him, he could feel it too, the movement made the ladder rock slightly as it groaned in protest at their combined weight.
Just as he was starting to wonder how much farther the ladder went he stepped off the rung he was standing on to reach the next, but he felt nothing. He felt around with his foot but there was nothing there. He went further down, using only his hands to climb, but the ladder had ended. He couldn't feel a floor either. He wasn't sure what to do. Was he supposed to let go of the ladder and fall the rest of the way? He wondered if it was some sort of trap, designed to kill all of them. But that couldn't be it, could it? Brenda had gone before him, and he hadn't heard screaming or anything else that indicated something was wrong.
Before he could make up his mind the person above him stepped on his hands.
Thomas instinctively let go of the ladder, clutching his poor fingers to his chest.
A scream formed in his throat as he realized his mistake, but he didn't fall for long. His feet had actually only been a few decimeters above the floor. Had he known that he could have easily landed on his feet, but in his terror, he was unprepared for the landing and hit the floor with his back first.
The floor was hard stone, not comfortable to fall on.
"Tommy, what happened?" He heard Newt's voice asking. He had probably heard the thump of Thomas' failed landing.
"I hit the floor," Thomas answered.
He stood up quickly and backed away from the place he'd fallen to avoid his friend landing on him. He used his hands to feel around so he didn't back into a wall.
He didn't feel a wall, but he felt something else, it was someone's arm. At first, he didn't realize that it was just Brenda, and for that short moment, he was terrified.
The arm was suddenly gone, the person it belonged to having moved away.
Just as suddenly a sharp light was pointed at his face. He shut his eyes and covered them with his still aching hands.
He removed his hands from his face and squinted at the light.
It wasn't directed at his face anymore, so he was able to open his eyes.
He saw Brenda, holding a flashlight. The beam of light was directed at a hole in the roof, where Thomas had just come from.
Newt jumped off the ladder, landing on his feet and going over to where Thomas was standing.
"Sorry for stepping on your fingers," he apologized quietly.
Thomas was too busy looking at the room they were in to respond.
The room was small and the walls and roof were made out of metal. It was damp and cold, and it smelled like dirt. The only thing worth noting was the corridor behind him, which went on for a few meters before there was a turn to the side that hid the rest of the corridor.
Brenda stood still as a statue, directing the flashlight at the entrance. The room was starting to fill up as more people entered. When one of their other captors came into the room Brenda handed him the flashlight and told Thomas and his friends to come with her. She went into the corridor and they followed. Since she didn't have the flashlight anymore it quickly got hard to see once more. Once they turned the corner of the corridor they couldn't see anything at all. But they didn't stop. Thomas could hear the sound of Brenda's shoes hitting the stone floor, so he followed, hoping she knew where they were going. The corridor shifted direction twice. The first time it happened, Thomas walked face first into the wall. After that incident, he held his hands out in front of himself like a mummy, which would have looked stupid if the complete darkness hadn't prevented everyone from seeing anything, but he didn't walk into another wall, so at least it was effective.
"Stop," Brenda said after a few minutes of walking. Thomas obeyed, standing in the darkness and waiting for whatever was about to happen.
Without warning, Thomas was blinded for the second time that day. This time it wasn't a flashlight, though, it was a door that Brenda must have opened. The light wasn't as strong this time around, so Thomas just had to blink a few times to get used to it.
The room in front of him appeared to be a long hallway, with several doors along the sides. The hallway was made entirely out of concrete, with fluorescent lights in the ceiling. There were no decorations on the walls unless you counted the five security cameras and the seven devices that looked like gun barrels and probably were gun barrels, that were spread throughout the room, near the ceiling and out of reach.
Brenda went inside and Thomas followed.
"I wouldn't try anything if I were you," She warned them, with a small wave at the devices, proving Thomas' theory on what they were.
Once he'd entered the room he saw that there were another one of the weapons positioned above the door, pointing right at him. Thomas' body tingled with adrenaline, he wanted to run away, but he knew that would probably not end well for him, so he did as instructed. Brenda knocked on a door on the far side of the hallway. A voice called something in response, but the door blocked most of the sound. Brenda must've taken that as permission to open the door because that's what she did.
Brenda didn't walk inside, she held the door open and pointed at Thomas.
"In," she said. Thomas edged closer to the opening, his friends made to follow.
"No, not you, only him," she said
"Any day now," she said impatiently to Thomas.
Newt began protesting, but Thomas shook his head and his friend's complaints stopped.
Thomas, having no other choice, entered the room. The door closed after him.
The room looked like an office, albeit a rather dirty and shabby one.
And behind a small desk was a man that Thomas -to his surprise- recognized.
"Vince?"