Author's note: Here's a long chapter for you.

Chapter 38. Words.

Thomas had returned to his room and occupied himself with a fantasy novel from the bookshelf. He liked the book, but when he put it down to open the door as someone knocked on it, he couldn't remember anything about it.

He was greeted by Alby, who looked like he needed a cup of coffee. Of course, they probably didn't have any. Maybe that was why the older boy was so grumpy all the time.

"Breakfast," he said, looking past Thomas, searching. He took a step inside. "Where's Newt? I thought he was with you."

"He was in the gym last I saw him," Thomas informed him.

"I told him breakfast's at eight. Why would he go to the gym?" Alby looked at Thomas again. "Hang on, when was the last time you saw him?"

"Around three in the morning."

Alby looked very confused and left.

He sat next to Teresa in the Big Room, stirring the oatmeal in his bowl while he repeated all he'd seen from the journal entries he'd found earlier.

"So your telepathic ability is included in the future documents, but mine isn't?" Teresa asked.

"Yeah, yours stopped a while ago, but mine just says 'weak connection'."

"Maybe because you're the 'final candidate'. Oh, hi Alby."

Thomas looked up to see that Alby was making his way towards them.

"Morning," the other boy mumbled, taking a seat.

"You speak," Thomas noted. "I thought I had stunned you silent permanently."

"I don't know what's weirdest: Newt staying up all night exercising or you knowing that he did."

"Say what now?" Teresa said, sounding impressed. "No wonder he's so fit."

"It's not something he usually does. Not back in the Glade, at least. He helped create and maintain our daily schedule. Wouldn't make any sense to be up in the middle of the night."

"Is he still going?" Thomas asked.

Alby shook his head. "He said he was gonna take a shower and join us after."

Thomas sat in his seat, half-listening to Teresa's and Alby's conversation. He couldn't tell whether they were arguing or agreeing, mostly because he couldn't care less.

He stared at a tablet that lay on the table. Somebody had given it to Teresa, and Brenda was supposed to call it if she needed to get the Gladers and Glenners to trust her. Teresa claimed she'd received one call earlier that morning, and she'd seen a dozen people there already. A dozen in six hours. With those numbers, it would take at least twelve more hours to transport everyone. That was over nine hours to go now. He wanted to call Brenda himself to see how things were going, and he could barely contain himself from doing so. Would Brenda call if something went wrong? What would they be able to do for her in that case?

He looked up at the sound of someone entering the room and saw Newt, dressed in white. He sat down next to Thomas, close enough that he could smell the soap he'd used.

"Morning, Tommy," he smiled as if last night hadn't happened. At least he was in a better mood now.

"Took you long enough," Thomas said.

"Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed."

"better than not waking up on any side of the bed."

"Whatever. You've been here for twenty minutes and I'll still finish breakfast before you." He downed a spoonful of oatmeal to illustrate his point.

Thomas wasn't hungry, but he was not about to lose the competition.

"I won!" He said, after clearing the plate.

"You are one petty shank," Newt said, because he lost.

"I just need something to do. This waiting… It's insufferable."

"Of course."

"You need something to do?" Teresa smiled mischievously. "How about we go on an adventure?"

With nothing else to do, Thomas and Newt agreed to go exploring with Teresa. They hadn't seen all of the building yet, so there was some intrigue in it. Alby was strictly forbidden from joining them, because —as Teresa had explained— he already knew where everything was, and he would spoil the fun.

Teresa had acquired a pen and paper from the kitchen when they went to hand over their dirty dishes. She was the leader of their noble quest as well as cartographer. The two ex-runners did not mind following her lead. You needed serious leaders for serious situations, but they were trying to have fun, making Teresa's enthusiasm the perfect quality.

"We shall go left!" Teresa commanded.

"That's a dead-end," Thomas pointed out.

"And therefore an excellent place to start. Let's go!"

It wasn't too bad, walking through the building with Newt and Teresa. Teresa would order a search for hidden doors every few minutes and would stop at random to work on her map, using walls, furniture, or Thomas' back to put the paper against as she drew. They all knew it was an act. She was forcing the cheer into the atmosphere, and Thomas and Newt were playing along. It was an effective distraction. Only at momentary intervals would Thomas remember what was going on, and then he would look at his friends and make himself forget.

"The map's turning out pretty good," Thomas noted. It was a bit askew, but it was usable. The lines were drawn to a very small scale, and he wondered how they'd already managed to fill up so much of the paper.

"It's all crooked!" Teresa lamented. "Nowhere near as good as the Runners' maps."

"You think they drew the ones you saw in the Map Room?" Newt asked.

"They were the ones who went into the Maze. Who else?"

Newt laughed, shaking his head. "That's what the Map-makers were for. The Runners would go out there and draw on the run like you're doing, and the Map-makers would redraw it all neat. The walls here are better background, though. The ones in the Maze made the lines smudgy."

"I forgot. You used to be a Runner, didn't you?"

Newt's smile vanished. "Yes," he said.

"You weren't one when I got there. Were you on vacation or something?"

"We didn't have vacations. We needed to stay busy to maintain order."

"So you quit, then? Why?" Teresa looked down at his leg, and Thomas was worried she would ask about the limp. He looked at Newt, wondering if he should try to change the topic.

"Being a Runner… it took its toll. Let's just go back to what we were doing."

"Yeah," Thomas chimed in, "that floorboard is looking pretty suspicious if you ask me. Might be a hidden compartment."

Teresa looked at the completely normal floor, then back at Newt, looking as if she had just realized she had touched upon a sensitive subject. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry."

Newt nodded.

"Now, we must continue with our quest." She smiled, but her guilty eyes gave her away. Newt smiled back with equal genuineness, and Thomas added his own awkward smile to the group.

They continued, gradually slipping back into their act until they found the staircase.

"I didn't know there was a second story," Newt said.

"The building did look bigger on the outside, but I figured it was just machinery," Teresa recalled. "Wait. No. I remember… didn't Alby say that they put the attackers from the Right Arm up there?"

She was right. Alby had complained about him and Harriet having to drag all the people up the stairs.

"I guess that's where their jail is. Should we turn back?" Thomas looked at the top of the staircase. The handle attached to the ceiling above it could probably be used to open the attic easily, assuming it was unlocked. He wasn't sure he wanted to open the door and see what was inside.

Teresa stared off into space, considering. "No," she decided. "We should make sure they're being treated alright."

"They probably want us dead by now," Thomas pointed out.

"So they have some wrong priorities. Doesn't mean they should starve or freeze. And if we show them that we're not too bad…"

"What? They're gonna switch sides and work for us?"

"That's not what I said. I meant that it would be good if they saw us as something other than enemies."

"I don't think it's a good idea," Thomas said. He looked at Newt, hoping he would agree.

"Sorry, Tommy, but Teresa's got a point. If you really don't want to go up there I'll stay with you, but—"

"It's fine, I'll go with you," Thomas relented. He didn't think they would be met with anything short of hostility, but he knew that Teresa would go up alone if she had to, and there was safety in numbers.

They decided that the prisoners would probably not be amused by their exploration games, and their map ended up in Thomas' pocket.

The door was unlocked. Opening it was almost too easy, the door swinging to the side without a hint of squealing hinges, leaving a dark gap in its place.

When Teresa hesitated at the top of the stairs he allowed himself to hope she'd come to her senses, but it was only for a second. She pulled down a short ladder from the opening and disappeared. Thomas followed, letting Newt go last.

Upon climbing the ladder and standing up on solid ground, he couldn't see anything in the room aside from Teresa's silhouette next to him, the light below them barely helping at all. She was moving. He could hear her slow footsteps and a hand scraping against the wall in search of a light switch. Thomas, eager to get rid of the darkness, felt around with his hands for a wall, but all he felt was the air swooshing through his fingers. It was an uncanny feeling, almost like floating in space if he didn't think about the floor. He moved forward cautiously and still managed to trip over something. He flailed his arms, trying to regain his balance, and a pair of hands steadied him.

"Careful," Newt whispered.

"Sorry," Thomas whispered back. The three of them seemed to be alone, but a whisper was the only appropriate sound for the setting.

"Here, I think," Teresa mumbled as a light clicked into existence. The ceiling lamp was dim, but at least he could see now. He was standing in a small pile of electronic devices and weapons. He nudged a dagger which he'd nearly stepped on. "The Right Arm's," he stated.

"Uh-huh. D'you reckon they're in there?" Newt pointed to a door, the only door in the attic.

"Are you sure about this?" Thomas asked.

Teresa nodded and opened the door slowly.

There were lights on, but they were even fainter than the previous ones. The passage in front of them had a sloping ceiling, making the far side little more than a crawlspace. The walls were hung with long, glossy white curtains that swept the floor in the breeze of the opened door. He could hear their rustling, like short breaths. The ghosts are laughing at us, he thought, hypnotized by the motion.

But where were the prisoners? Had they missed something in the other room? He looked to Newt and Teresa and saw that they looked anxious.

"Hello?" A small voice called out.

Thomas took a step back in surprise. His reflexes did not remember that Newt was right behind him, and did not stop him from slamming into his poor friend, who lost his balance and ended up on the floor. While Thomas was helping him up, Teresa had gone to investigate. They approached her as she pulled a curtain aside. Thomas wasn't sure what to expect. He knew that the prisoners were behind the curtains, but he didn't know what state he would find them in. There must have been a point with hiding them from sight.

He took in the five prisoners inside the see-through box. He had braced himself for horror, but they looked fine. The cell had a pile of blankets, a sink, and a toilet. There was a stack of empty plates by a tiny door in the wall. There were too many of them, though. It was a small cell, and there wasn't enough room for all of them to lie flat on their backs at the same time. Four of them sat huddled together, staring at them blankly. The fifth stood up, short enough to do so comfortably. He recognized her as Rose, the girl who had tried to stop them from leaving, the one responsible for Thomas' wounded palms. He didn't remember her looking as young as she did at that moment. He'd known that she was younger than them, but he'd forgotten that as she attacked them and later ran with them through the dark forest as their hostage. The Right Arm had sent her, a girl who could not have been older than fourteen, to unknown ground. They had not anticipated that the force would meet resistance at the facility, but by the number of people he'd seen, they'd left some behind in the safety of their base. Now Rose stood in a cell, glaring in an attempt to look menacing that fell flat on her childlike face.

"What? Here to gloat?" She asked. Her voice was clear, coming through a set of small holes in the wall.
"We just wanted to make sure that WICKED is treating you well," Teresa said.

"What d'you think of this?" Rose gestured around her. "We didn't lock you up, you know. We were nice to you, and you just went back to WICKED as if that was nothing."

Thomas heard murmurs from behind the closed curtains of the other cells, agreeing with Rose.

"It's… it's not ideal," Teresa said carefully. "In this case, it would be too dangerous for WICKED to let you go free. Still, you have food, and water, and good clothes. I know that you don't want to be in there, but—"

"It's not about us," a boy said, standing up next to Rose. It was her friend, Ethan, who had wanted to shoot them earlier.

"We have people to protect," he continued. "You saw them. The old people. The kids. We went before them to make sure it was safe. Remember Jules? He thinks we're waiting for him to come here to have a better life. If he comes running from the forest, are you gonna shoot him down? Are you gonna bomb the base?"

"Of course not," Thomas said. "We don't have anything against you. You were the ones that captured us in the first place."

"We weren't even there when you were taken," Ethan pointed out.

"You tried to stop us from escaping," Teresa fired back, her pleasant demeanor dropping. You wanted to kill Newt and me back in the forest."

"So you'll leave all those people to get attacked by Cranks?"

"We could tell WICKED where they are," Newt suggested. "The people here are nice and they know that your friends aren't a threat."

"Yeah, they know about them, but they haven't talked about attacking them, and they haven't even asked where they are exactly," Teresa agreed.

"No!" Rose shrieked, looking panicked. "They're WICKED. They'll drop a bomb on the building if you tell them where it is."

"We won't let them do that," Thomas promised.

"If you tell WICKED where they are, I'm going to kill you. Slowly." Rose's age only made the threat sadder. Here she was, a child threatening to kill whoever put her friends in danger.

"Rose…" Ethan said, putting a hand on her shoulder, though he looked at Thomas with contempt as he did it.

Rose shook him off. "I could do it, you know." She looked at them and spotted Thomas' hands.

"See? I did that. Are they gonna have to cut off your hands now?"

"No," Thomas said, clutching his bandaged hands to his chest. Last he'd checked, they were healing up nicely, and might not even leave scars.

"If you tell WICKED about where they are, I can cut them off for you."

"Leave him alone," Newt said, putting his hand on top of Thomas' protectively.

Rose sneered at him. "You're the Crank. From what I've seen, Cranks are sort of like sharks. They can smell blood from a mile, and they go crazy over it. If I cut off his hands, are you gonna lose it and tear him to shreds?"

Newt slammed his hand against the wall. "Don't forget where you are. We're out here, and you're stuck in there."

But Rose was on a rampage. "Losing your temper? When our people started showing symptoms they'd kill themselves or get as far away as possible. They knew what was right, but you're selfish. At least we'll be safe in here when you start killing people."

Thomas didn't care that Rose was a girl or that she was younger than him. If the wall had not been there, he would have hit her. Newt let his hand fall from the wall and stood there, looking stunned.

"I think it's time for us to go," Teresa said, glaring at Rose as she closed the curtain over her enraged face. Voices rose up around them, yelling insults that thundered down on them like hail as they marched out. Thomas ushered his friends out the door so he could close it quickly behind them.

The effect was instant. The shouting was cut off abruptly with the closing of the door, and a terrifying silence filled the air. He looked at Newt, whose face displayed some kind of sad blankness. He saw Teresa out of the corner of his eye, concerned, and she didn't even know the potential extent to which those words had hurt. Rose hadn't known either, but in that very moment, she must have been sitting in her cell gloating about the nerve that she had struck. What she had said had been horrible enough on its own, without the memories that could have been brought out as a result. They should never have gone in. Why had he let himself be swayed? There were too many things he wanted to say now that they were where they were, but he couldn't find a way to choose. His thoughts were muffled by the pounding anger at Rose and the concern for his friend. Why wouldn't somebody say something?

"You can stop looking at me like that now," Newt said.

"But, what she said in there—" Teresa started.

"Didn't bother me."

"Yes, it did," Teresa said.

"And so what if it did?" Newt snapped. "It's not like I'm gonna… like I'll run away!"

"Of course not, we just want you to know—"

"Stop pretending like you care about any of us!" Newt's features relaxed, but his eyes remained angry and bitter. He gave a hollow laugh. "You're just here to rub it in our faces, aren't you? WICKED's little helper, pretending to be one of us. You know. You always knew. You're just hoping to get rid of me so you can trick Tommy into joining WICKED with you, and have a cup of tea with Ratman while you send the rest of the Gladers to the Grievers."

Now Teresa was getting angry. "That is not true. You know that. I know you do. Just take a moment to think."

You don't know me, but I know that you're a bloody liar," Newt insisted.

"I know that you're a reasonable person. I've seen it. Tom said so too."

"So that's what you were doing when the two of you snuck off to where nobody would find you, you were discussing me?"

"Newt, that's enough!" Thomas protested. "I know that you're upset. You have every right to be, but can't you see that we're trying to help? Stop attacking Teresa like that."

Newt shook his head in disbelief. "Tommy, she's lying. She's trying to trick you. Can't you—"

"No," Thomas said firmly. "Just… stop. Stop speaking. It's making Teresa upset, it's making me upset, and it makes you upset. Will you just calm down and listen?"

"I'll stop upsetting you," Newt promised. He stepped onto the ladder and began the short climb down. He paused on the last rung to look up at Thomas. "You can tell her if you really think she doesn't know. Tell me later if her acting's any good."

Then he was out of sight, his angry footsteps soon out of hearing range.

Teresa turned to Thomas, eyes wide and urgent. "Tell me what? What happened to him?"

"Are you sure you want to—"

"Tell me!" her tone was almost pleading.

Thomas didn't know why she was acting like that, but he didn't ask again. He told her what Newt had told him back in the simulation.

"He… oh my… oh my god." Teresa's eyes welled up with tears. Those ugly words almost made him tear up just by saying them, but he hadn't expected Teresa to start crying.

"I— I shouldn't have snapped at him! Is he okay? We should go after him." She made for the ladder, but Thomas stopped her. She let him hold her as she wept into his shoulder.

"He just wants some space right now, but he'll be fine," Thomas assured her. He wasn't so sure about the latter, but they would only make things worse by going after him. "And besides, you couldn't have known."

Teresa pushed away from him, shaking her head. "I should have— should have known."

"Teresa, no."

"Just listen." She took as deep a breath as the crying would allow. "WICKED… Not all of them, but… My memories. They didn't wipe them away."

"What?" Thomas wasn't sure how to react. Had she been working with WICKED all along? Had she been acting like Newt had accused her of doing?

He knew that he should be angry. She had lied to him. But he didn't have it in him to be angry with her when there were tears dripping from her chin. And he knew at least that she was a good person. He would let her explain. She tried to say more, but her voice wouldn't stop breaking.

Thomas embraced her once more. "Calm down. Then you can tell me."

Teresa nodded and hugged him back tightly.

Thomas took in the precious last moments of not knowing. He was afraid of what he would think of her after he knew what she had done.

After Teresa had regained her composure, they sat down on the floor opposite each other.

"I used to think WICKED was good," she said mournfully. "They told me I could help them find the cure to the Flare. I'd seen my parents, the people in my village. I wanted to stop it. I did all the tests, did whatever they told me to. They told me to befriend you, so I did. I wanted to be your friend for real, but they told me that I couldn't trust you, so I didn't. They told me what to do in the Maze. By the time we were out, I didn't want to help them anymore, but they just said that it would be worse for everyone if I didn't. It was always wrong, but I didn't know what to do. I was afraid of what would happen if I came clean. What if it got worse? I couldn't do it. All the people that died… But I didn't know that the Maze would drive someone to wish for it to happen to them. I could convince myself that the deaths were unavoidable, but that was never supposed to happen."

"Do you think they removed your memories of it or did you just never know? Either way, you can't blame yourself for not knowing." Thomas only felt pity for his friend. He couldn't be angry at Teresa for being manipulated since childhood. He wished she would have confided in him, but what would that actually have accomplished? He liked to believe that he would have found a way to communicate the information to the other Gladers secretly, but if he didn't think before running to tell everybody if they even used the information at all, WICKED would know, and he did not think their interference would have been a good thing.

"They had to have taken the memory. I remember watching the Glade from the cameras, studying the Gladers' behavior. At one point, I noticed that Newt had changed. It was a small change, but it was sudden. I knew that it was related to his injury, but that was from being told so. That's why it doesn't make sense. I would have wanted to know what had happened, I would have looked at the footage, but I can't remember doing that, and what I remember about the whole thing is fuzzy. It's not just that, I think they took memories from me before. There are these blanks in my memory that don't make any sense."

"So they took stuff that would have made you doubtful of them?"

"They must have. The Maze trial was hard enough. They tried to save most of the people the Gladers thought died, but they couldn't— they didn't do that for everyone. If I had any doubts about WICKED… If I had known about this, I would have done something. I would've snuck a clue in, or insisted I go inside earlier. I suppose that's why they gave me as much freedom as they did. Because they controlled my knowledge."

"Exactly. You didn't remember. You shouldn't be so hard on yourself."

But Teresa shook her head. "I should have realized that something was wrong. I may not have seen the accident, but I could see the effect it had. I knew how to control the Beetle Blades. I could have used one to send a message to the Gladers. They would have known how to get out then."

"Even if you did, the damage had already been done by that point. I didn't hear of any similar situation after that. You probably did Newt a favor by not giving them information. If they knew how to get out, they would try as soon as possible. He had a broken leg, and the Maze itself, well he was scared of it by the time I got there, so imagine what it would have been like right after it happened. He would have been an easy target for the Grievers. I know that they were supposed to use illusions to fake people's deaths, but if the Gladers suddenly ran out of the Maze, WICKED might not have been prepared. People could have died for real, including him."

"Still, if I had known more about the Scorch, about Chuck's death…" She looked at the floor, her eyes blank again.

Could she have saved Chuck? No, he didn't want to entertain the thought of it being a lost possibility.

"You did what we all were doing and more. We were trying to stay alive, but you were trying to save the world at the same time, and you couldn't even tell anyone. What's done is done."

"How can you be so calm? I thought you would be storming out by now to tell everybody that I was a traitor."

"If you're a traitor, then so am I."

Teresa shook her head. "You were different. At first, you went along with it, but you wanted to be sent in with your memories so that you could save them. WICKED agreed, but they wiped your memory anyway. I knew what they would do, and I didn't warn you. If you'd had your memories, you would have done the right thing and told them the truth."

"Who cares about right and wrong? It wouldn't have been the smart thing to do. WICKED had every shucking detail planned out. They would have known right away. You were trying to protect them. At least you had good intentions."

"Yeah. You know what those pave the path for."

"You're not going to hell, Teresa. Your past doesn't define you. There's still time."

"Time for what exactly? You're being suspiciously accepting of all this, but the others won't be. I want to tell them. I owe them that. But if I do, they won't ever trust me again. How am I supposed to pay for what I've done if they won't let me help them?"

That was a problem. Thomas knew that lies did not resolve themselves over time, nor did they stay hidden. It would be best for Teresa to just reveal it on her own terms, but she was right: most of the others would distrust her in a best-case scenario.

"I think you should wait," Thomas said. "Not for too long, but at least until the Right Arm situation is taken care of."

"Right. I'll just play extra nice in the meantime so they won't be able to hate me as much when I tell them."

"It's a difficult situation. It takes a difficult solution."

Teresa sighed. "It's got to be soon, while there's still something going on. I don't know if WICKED anticipated that I would reveal it to them, or if they're hearing me now, but I can't just call everyone together to tell them. It has to be hidden."

"Whenever you're ready. I'll be by your side."

"I'm still not sure I deserve it, but I'm glad you don't hate me."

"We're friends, remember?" Thomas smiled. "The only person who would be happy if I hated you is Rose. She would love it if she ruined our friendship, and I don't want to give her anything that she wants."

"She makes me sad. She's younger than us, and now she's in prison for helping the people that kept her safe." Teresa fidgeted with something she'd found in the pile of abandoned stuff, speaking thoughtfully.

"Chuck was even younger, and he wasn't like that. He wouldn't have been under her circumstances."

"She's not like Chuck though. The kid back at their base, Jules, he's like, her Chuck or something. What would you do if you thought Chuck was in danger and you couldn't do anything?"

"I wouldn't say what she said, that's for sure," Thomas said, fed up with Teresa's defense of that brat. Any previous feelings of pity had dissipated.

"Look, all I'm saying is that I feel sorry that there are kids in her situation and that I understand why she would want to hurt us. What she said was horrible, even if she didn't know that it was a sensitive topic. Scared kids act out."

"Tell that to Newt. He's already worried about losing control and hurting somebody. He didn't need it thrown in his face like that. She knew that much when she said it."

"Do we need to tell him?" Teresa looked up, worried once more. "He seemed mostly fed up with us when he left, and I get why he'd want to be alone, but do you think he took it to heart?"

Nervousness rose in his stomach but he tied to push it down. "I don't know. He already knew what we would tell him, and if he knew what we thought he was thinking… I've made him promise not to think like that, but nobody can just shut out their thoughts, especially not when they're tied to memories."

"You don't think that… that he might be in danger?" Teresa got up. "We should look for him, just to make sure he's okay."

Thomas stood up. He wanted desperately to do just that. He wanted to tell Newt how much he meant to him until he was sure that not even the Flare would make him forget. But he knew that Newt wouldn't appreciate it.

"I don't want to make things worse," Thomas said. "He left because he didn't want to hear our reassurances, even if he needs them. This isn't just him. The Flare is getting worse by the day. If we intrude on him while he wants to be alone, he might just snap."

"That would be bad, but what if he needs to hear what we have to say? Isn't it worth the risk?"

Thomas sighed. "Yes. I'm sure he's alright, but…" What if he wasn't? "We should be discreet about it. We can ask Alby and the others if they've seen him, and once we find him we can get close enough to see whether it looks like it's safe to approach him."

They went down the ladder and found a group of people —Alby included— hanging out nearby.

"Hey, you were with Newt, weren't you? Why's he so upset?" Alby asked upon seeing them.

"You saw him? Where is he?" Thomas asked.

Alby gestured for them to follow him, saying a hasty goodbye to the others as he left.

"What's going on?" he asked.

Teresa told him what Rose had said. Alby looked angry, then concerned. He glanced at the two of them, maybe wondering how much they knew. His steps got quicker.

"Are we headed to the basement?" Thomas asked, recognizing the corridors.

"He went in this direction. Not much else over here. The dorm is usually pretty empty around this time, so he might be there."

To their disappointment, they found Ben, Zart, and a few others in the large dorm.

"What's the matter?" Ben asked.

"It's nothing. Have you seen Newt?" Alby asked.

"He was here just a few minutes ago," Ben said, frowning. "But when he saw us he just turned and left without saying anything. He's okay, right?"

"Yeah. So he went back upstairs?"

"No, I think he went next-doors."

"We heard it," Zart chimed in. "You know how the corridor echoes."

After a mumbled thanks, Thomas, Teresa, and Alby exited the dorm and went down the smaller corridor next to it.

Thomas stopped them. "How should we do this? He might get angry if he sees us, and that would only make things worse."

"Wait, there's surveillance of that room, right? We could check that to see if he's alright without being there," Teresa suggested.

"The only problem is that we need to be there," Thomas said. "I don't believe that he wants to be alone. Maybe it's the Flare, or maybe he just feels like he should pull away, but he'll only feel worse alone with his thoughts. We need to be there with him, he needs us to be. We're his friends, aren't we?"

Teresa shifted her weight to the other foot. "Maybe I should leave," she said.

"No. You're his friend too," Thomas insisted.

He looked at the metal door at the end of the passage. It had a door-handle, but no keyhole. It looked like it might be soundproof, or at least well isolated. He couldn't bear getting closer to it.

"How are we supposed to tell him something if he doesn't want to listen?" Thomas asked.

"We'll say what we need to and he will understand," Alby said.

Thomas wasn't sure how well that would work, but Alby was moving.

Thomas and Teresa followed closely as Alby opened the door carefully.

The room was a kind of engine storage it seemed, with tanks and pipes running through the small space. Newt sat on the floor, leaning against a large metal barrel. He looked up, not happy to see them, but too tired to be properly angry.

"I don't want to hear it," he said.

"We're not here to make you listen," Thomas said. He stepped into the room and sat down next to Newt. Alby and Teresa joined them on the floor.

He understood what Alby had meant, about saying what they needed to say. Silence could convey more than a thousand words, and actions spoke louder.

Maybe it was the silence, or maybe the warm air made him imagine things, but Thomas felt connected to the other three in a different way. Another level of togetherness. It didn't matter that Alby couldn't stand Thomas, or that Newt was distrustful of Teresa because at that moment it was all forgotten. They didn't have to tell Newt how much he meant to them, their presence was enough to let him know. None of them smiled, but when a pair of eyes locked they would stare for a few knowing seconds, with a kind of comforting openness.

Thomas had been right about Newt not wanting to be alone. His friend relaxed, relieved to have them there. At one point he put his head against Thomas' shoulder, maybe out of tiredness —although he didn't close his eyes— or maybe because it felt right. That was what Thomas thought. It felt as if all their troubles had disappeared.

The door was thrown open. Their trance broke with the excited voices and blaring sirens.

"It's them!" Was said over and over. "They're here!"