Author's note:

My plans of posting a chapter every other week did not account for school or other projects, meaning I will change my posting schedule. One chapter per month is not a lot, so I should be able to post consistently. I wish I could do more, but at least it's better than abandoning the story, which I have no intention of doing. I will post on the first day of every month, so I'll be back on November first (I can't believe it's already the middle of autumn *shudder*). Have fun reading chapter 47, and remember that I appreciate feedback.

Chapter 47. Hear

Chancellor Ava Paige was in an excellent mood, but if Thomas had expected her to let her guard down, he was sorely mistaken. Any question there was to fire at her, she would brush off with some vague reassurance. He would have been exasperated had the eeriness of the chancellor left any room -that smile was disturbing. There was no thinly veiled annoyance however much he nagged, no coldness or any other sign of her happiness being unreal. It looked so genuine that it couldn't possibly be, and it made him tense with anticipation.

A single guard stood in the way of him strangling the head of WICKED, and it was a tempting thought. He wouldn't kill her; he'd snatch that carelessly concealed gun from the guard's belt and take her hostage. Take his friends and the Cure and Paige, run away to somewhere hidden. He slowed his pace minutely as they walked down the corridor, nearer to the gaunt guard whose weapon he would steal. Though his fingers itched to lash out and play out the scenario, he clenched them into a fist. It was a bad idea. If Paige thought she was safe, there was no doubt she was. As long as WICKED could take control of his body, he could only win through speed and stealth, and WICKED would have dozens of hostages to his one.

Their path was a strange one. They had walked for a few minutes when they passed a familiar picture on a wall and Thomas realized they had walked in a circle. To confuse him, probably, and that could not be a good sign. He was momentarily cheered by the appearance of Minho, slipping through a door with a guard behind him. He looked disheveled, clothes dripping and hair going in all directions. His arm was still in its cast. He made to walk next to Thomas, but some glares of unspoken threats from the guards told him this would not be the case. He fell in line between the two guards. Thomas turned his head to look at him as often as he dared, and was usually met with a look mirroring Thomas' own impatience. Something would happen, and they could do nothing but follow.

It was harder not to break free of the clearly established order when Newt joined the procession, leaning heavily on his guard and eyes shut in pain. Thomas broke the silence at least.

"Are you taking us to the Cure?" He asked the chancellor.

"All in due time," she said serenely.

"This has been going on for long enough. If you are as eager to help as you say…" He kept his tone neutral, reasonable.

"It has been too long for all of us," one of the guards snapped. "Take ten steps outside and you'll see how lucky you are."

"Lucky," Minho scoffed.

"Normal people have suffered twice as bad as you, and they complain half as much."

Another guard murmured something to him, a plea to stand down. The guard did stop, but it was because Paige fixed him with a look so cold he froze and returned to the silent walk that had been disrupted.

The chancellor pushed a door open. "We've all suffered, but we're near the end, now." She gestured through the door.

There was time to register the basics of the neatly furnished room and something white beyond one of the walls before things went wrong. Minho had not been allowed to follow Thomas inside, but was being ushered away. One guard held onto Thomas' arm as he tried to leave the room. A second guard led Newt inside, and the chancellor came last, closing the door and cutting off Minho's rising voice.

"What's this?" Thomas demanded.

"The path we need to take." She laughed kindly. "Don't look like that, Thomas. Minho will be fine, just somewhere else."

"Could you be less vague?" Thomas snapped.

A sharpness surfaced in Paige's eyes.

"Please," he amended. The chancellor was a mystery, and her unknown capacity for anger was a threat. Best to keep her in a good mood.

"Minho will be no worse off than you, Thomas."

"And what will you do to me?"

"Sit down."

Thomas kept his gaze fixed on hers as he sat in a chair. The question hung in the air, but Paige ignored it.

"You're hard to work with. Do you know that? Clever and capable, no doubt, but you care too much to be objective."

"Is caring bad?"

"Not at all. I wouldn't be heading up WICKED if I didn't care about humanity. The difference is that you won't accept the means to the end, or sacrifice those you care about. That's why we thought it would be a good idea to pair you and Teresa. She understood sacrifice. We didn't anticipate the second trial would take the toll it did on your relationship, but I'm glad you're on good terms again."

Yes, they were friends despite WICKED's manipulation and blackmail. How fortunate it was that the termination of their friendship would not weigh on the chancellor's conscience.

"Of course, there is a reason you're the final candidate, a reason you gave us the cure to the Flare."

"That reason being?"

"As I just said: you care. The bonds you have with your friends are more important than you might think. Teresa was an outsider the moment she arrived in the Box. The Gladers didn't realize you were different at first sight, and they were more open. Unlike Teresa, you ended up growing quite close to them."

Yes, they had been very open, hostile to his curiosity as they were. Not to forget Gally's insistence that there was something wrong about him. It was worse for Teresa, though. She'd scarcely stood a chance of befriending the Gladers after her unexpected arrival and everything afterward. And whose fault was that?

"You must've known how they would react to Teresa, given all the mystery surrounding her. If friendship was important to finding the Cure, why make her an outsider?"

"Friendship is not necessary to evoke strong emotion. We didn't have the data we do now, so we needed to test different things."

Thomas refrained from agreeing that isolation and blackmail would cause emotional reactions -of one kind.

The chancellor saw through his feigned indifference and added with her own underlying annoyance: "Teresa agreed to everything the trials would put her through."

And it had still not been enough to provide a cure.

"Back to the matter at hand," Paige said through the tense silence. "After we've veered so far off track."

When she would not elaborate, Thomas looked around for her meaning. There was nothing noteworthy about the guard or the small picture on the wall… Where was…? Newt's eyes met his through a pane of glass.

The window took up the better part of a wall, showcasing an overwhelmingly white room on the other side. He'd been too focused on Paige to have noticed the opening and closing of a door that he couldn't see anywhere. The room had a padded floor, with two walls similarly made. The wall opposite was a mirror, but Thomas couldn't see himself reflected in it. Newt's gaze shifted as if he hadn't seen Thomas in the first place.

Next to him, a knock on the glass. "A one-way mirror," Paige said. "You can see in…"

"He can't see out. What about the mirror at the other end? Is that where Minho is?"

"Very good," the chancellor said. "Before we continue, I should mention that the glass is close to unbreakable, and it has a shield inside the observation room."

"Shield?"

"A light electronic field just in front of the glass. Completely harmless."

The brightly lit 'observation room' made Thomas uneasy. The room was basically a padded cell with windows from the outside.

"What am I supposed to observe?"

If Paige thought she would make him watch his friend go completely mad from the Flare, unable to do anything, she would be disappointed. If she gave him that answer, he would throw planning and caution to the wind. He did not think he would be able to keep himself from violent rage should this newly realized breaking point be crossed. After all they had done to get to where they were, inaction was the cruelest sentence to be passed. Had this 'cure' been a lie for a second -strike that, third- time? Another torturous trial, but without the distractions or hopes of a goal.

The chancellor had the strange audacity to chuckle. "When will your distrust end? I can see on your face that you expect me to do something horrible."

"And are you?"

His bluntness made the smile drop. "I promised a cure, and I did not lie."

Thomas tapped his fingers against the window, watching as the guard inside the white room produced a syringe from some pocket. Newt did not even flinch as the transparent liquid was injected into his neck. Was that it? Was he cured now? Thomas held onto his doubt if this should prove to be another trick. His hands stilled as he pressed himself closer to the glass.

Newt had sunk to his knees when the guard let go of him. No expression gave away if he understood what had just happened, or had any opinions about it. Thomas tore his wary gaze away and focused on the guard, who, done with his job, walked over to the wall near the corner.

"WICKED was justified," he said, and at once a portion of the wall slid open.

At his repetition of the phrase, the glass closed like the Maze's doors in the evening.

"The password only works from inside the observation room once the door is closed," Paige told him helpfully.

"Why would you lock him in there?" He asked.

The chancellor's silent look told him to have patience.

Attention once more fixed on his friend, Thomas noticed something change in Newt's expression. A widening of the eyes from surprise or fear. It was followed by heavier breaths, and a shudder as if the room was cold. Was this the Cure having its effect?

The sound from the observation room was not muffled by the wall —at least he hoped it wasn't. The pained scream could not have been any worse than it sounded.

Thomas turned to Ava Paige, expecting a frown and the proclamation that something had gone wrong. Her expression wasn't happy, but it wasn't alarmed either. She leaned closer curiously as Newt screamed again, clutching his head. Thomas would have asked what was happening, but he knew before forming the question that it was the Cure clashing with the Flare. He would have demanded something be done to ease his friend's suffering, but it was stupidly pointless to think that would accomplish anything. The situation was making itself clearer: Newt would stay in the observation room through the supposed healing process, and the others would observe. The reason for this unnecessary cruelty remained murky. He could find one, and it was not a good prospect, yet the chancellor's curiosity seemed to prove it.

"Have you tested the Cure before now?" Thomas struggled to keep the fear from his voice.

"On a human this far gone? No."

There was a feeling like a punch to his stomach. "You had no idea what would happen, and you still—"

"We do have an idea. Plenty of them. Our theories don't show any major threat of complications," Paige said with reproach. "Would you have preferred to test it on someone else past the Gone first?"

"He's not past the Gone."

"He would be by the time he'd get the Cure if we waited for that long, and our predictions become less certain the more the virus has spread."

"And what about these 'complications'? You said the password only works from inside. What will you do if his heart stops?"

"That is highly unlikely."

"But what if?"

Paige turned away from him, addressing one of the guards. "I forgot to bring the notebook with me. Must've forgotten it back in A3." Without even looking at Thomas, she made for the door.

"Wait!" Thomas reached out to stop her. She hasn't answered his question, and there were more things he needed to ask.

With lightning reflexes, a guard pulled a small gun on him. It had a menacing shimmer that made it unclear whether it fired bullets or launcher grenades. Neither of those options were good, and Thomas stepped back quickly.

He tried again. "Chancellor, I have a question."

Paige turned once, pity in her eyes. It was a look he recognized and hated, but the sense of desperation was clawing its way up his throat and turning into speech. "Please, you can't leave him like that."

Ava Paige had no interest in being told what she couldn't do. The two guards followed her out. Thomas rushed forwards to stop the door from closing, and the armed guard fired at him. He pressed himself to the wall, narrowly avoiding the sparking sphere that instead bounced against the wall and rolled to a stop by his feet. The closing of the door sounded like a jail cell slammed shut, and it was just as locked.

Thomas kicked the launcher grenade in frustration. The sparks were lessened by his shoe —thankfully dry by then— and presented as nothing worse than a small sting across his toes. After glaring at the door, he sat down on the floor by the window, as close as he could get to his friend. Newt had stopped screaming, but he didn't look any better for it. He was lying on the white floor, curled up with hands pressed to the sides of his head, eyes tightly shut. The window was soundproof on his end, not that it stopped Thomas from trying to make contact. His friend didn't hear, the lock-mechanism didn't react to the password no matter how loudly he shouted it, and neither of the doors he wanted open would respond to force.

Not one for helplessness, Thomas searched the room for a solution. There was a mattress shoved into a corner, grey blankets piled atop it. Useless. A carpet that was more rag than rug and didn't have the decency to conceal a secret trap door underneath. Two dusty chairs stood against the wall, but there was no table or desk. The wood looked brittle, unsuited for sitting on and useless for barricading a door. A small refrigerator with a pantry on top of it revealed bottled water and a few morsels of food. Good, but he couldn't move the furniture. The most attractive option for that purpose was the bookshelf. It was empty, and though it looked old, it was thicker than the chairs and much sturdier. It was, naturally, attached to the wall. The last thing remaining was the painting, a shock of bright colors whose vibrancy was not deterred by the room's gloomy, dirty atmosphere. Because it was the last thing he checked and so at odds with everything else, it should have given some kind of answer. With a sigh of disappointment, he went for the third door. It was a bathroom, small and simple. There was no shower, which begged the question: how long would he be kept here? The other question followed, wondering how long Newt would be locked in the observation room. For all the bleakness of Thomas' room, there was food and a bed. His friend's prison had a hole in the wall with a button that must have been a water tap. A hole in the floor was the bathroom. Besides that, there was nothing but white walls and mirrors. Remembering how his own stay in an empty room had led him to believe he was going insane, Thomas hoped his stay would be short, preferably ending immediately.

Confusion regarding WICKED's objective turned into anger and suspicion. It was understandable that they wanted to observe the Cure's effect on an infected, but there were surely more humane methods that would not destroy all the results, and they had done too much already to consider further cruelty. It wasn't like people would be secluded in white rooms while being cured, anyway, so why isolate him? And if the door would not open until Newt spoke a password he didn't know, he wouldn't last for long. This made no sense if WICKED wished to see the Cure's effect. It meant he was not supposed to stay in that room for long, and Thomas was supposed to get him out. That much he was sure of. Ava Paige, though mysterious, had not seemed the type to enjoy torturing people, and if Thomas was not there to suffer through watching his friend's pain, he was there to do something else. The question was how, and he didn't have an answer.

A wristwatch allowed for the time to be tracked. Painstaking hours passed and Thomas had no idea how to make it stop. He made silent promises of vengeance, though he cared little for the prospect when looking at his friend. Alas, the future was something he could imagine controlling. He forced himself to want more than to take his friend's pain away. Convincing himself that he would want a plan eventually, he tried to connect the pieces he had. WICKED's use for him and his friends was the Cure, which they had. There would be no need for immunes when anybody could be cured, and who would keep around a bunch of teenagers with unknown loyalties and a grudge? After studying Newt and presumably the girl from Group B, they would all be asked to leave in some way. Dropped off by a Berg or left out on WICKED's doorstep, they would have to find their own way to someplace safe and secret where the war could be started from. But before that, they had to take back the Cure; they needed it to gain any leverage. Not only did they have to take it, they had to do so before WICKED could replicate the precious enzyme used in it, and who knew when that would be? They would have to work quickly, as soon as Thomas was free. Now that Ava Paige was out of the shadows, she had to be included in the plan somehow. He had to stay close, figure out her deal, and work out how to play around the obstacle she posed. She had seemed to like Thomas and Teresa well enough, which was something they would use. Thomas had been doing a bad job of hiding his animosity, but he could use that. If he pretended to take an interest in the Cure or whatever Paige was working with, he could make it seem as if he were warming up to the chancellor, and he would then get closer to the necessary information. Teresa, genuinely interested in research and good at acting, was a better choice for the mission, but having both of them there would increase the chance of Paige slipping up and telling them something important. Getting out with the Cure would be more difficult. They would have to create a confusion massive enough to go unnoticed. The worst part was that they would probably need to split up somehow, to avoid being tracked as they moved to this hiding place of theirs. Something would have to be done to get rid of the tracking devices and whatever other unpleasant features WICKED had installed into their heads, which meant they would have to go through a city. Wherever that was, it would be the last place WICKED could trace their path to, and they would have to leave swiftly after getting the implants removed.

There were too many 'have to's and not enough data. With all the time in the world, there was more than enough time to consider the results of the failure to comply with any one of these demands. Would they be killed? Tortured? Imprisoned? There was the even darker prospect of living in a world where WICKED was good. 'WICKED was justified'. Like the room, the truth could only be unlocked from inside, and if he should fail, the world would speak the password and believe the lie. Unless he told them, nobody would know about the boy locked away and in pain, and they would never ask.

The illness swept over his friend in waves of varying intensity. One moment screaming, the next quiet. Fast, shallow breaths were exchanged for deep and sleep-like, though Newt did not sleep at any point. Every scream stung Thomas' ears. He feared for his friend's life whenever the pace of his breathing increased. Neither of those things broke Thomas, but he did break. At one point where Newt looked almost normal, he began to cry as if all hope had left him. As if everyone had left him. Thomas had to show that he was there and that there was hope, refusing to accept that there was nothing he could do. He pounded the window until his hands hurt and kept going. He shouted the password until his throat hurt and kept going. He directed his pleas at anyone who would hear and kept pleading with the silence.

Sinking to his knees, hands pressed to the cold glass after the last weak punches, Thomas still did not accept it. WICKED was justified. Please, Newt, just say that WICKED was justified. He repeated it in his head as if it were speech and Newt would hear. Maybe Thomas had been meant to overhear the password so that he would repeat it like this, calling WICKED justified in his head until, maybe, he believed it. Or else it was a sick joke, staring at the pain WICKED caused and saying that they should not have to pay in blood.

"Say it, Newt. Please." Thomas' head hurt from the force of his thoughts. "WICKED was justified. Say it."

Newt turned his face up, bloodshot eyes wide. "Tommy?" He wiped at his face, standing up shakily and looking around. "Tommy? Where are you? What did you say?"

He'd heard him? That wasn't possible. He wasn't reacting to Thomas' shouts from earlier, and only a mindreader could have heard his thoughts. But then, how..? Mind-reading…

"WICKED was justified. Say it. Say: 'WICKED was justified'" Thomas was afraid the pressure would make his head crack like an egg, but he didn't care. Was it possible..?

"WICKED…. Was justified?"