Author's note: Chapter 48, as promised. I will not have a chapter ready by December first, as I will have my hands full with NaNoWriMo next month. I will try to get a chapter out in the first or second week of December. For now, I hope you will like this very interesting chapter.

Chapter 48. Telepathy.

The door slid open. Thomas rushed inside, faintly aware that a door on the observation room's other side had opened as well. He had been desperate to get to his friend, but stopped in front of him now, unsure of what to do.

"Newt?" He knelt next to his friend on the floor.

Muffled footsteps thudded over the padded surface and a hand was on his shoulder. Looking up for a second, he saw Minho, brow furrowed.

Lifting his head from his hands, Newt grinned dazedly. "Tommy." His tone matched his expression.

"No point in staying here," Minho mumbled.

Helping his friend find footing, Thomas felt a heat like fire blazing beneath Newt's skin.

Though he did not protest to being led into the other room, Newt's face twisted into a pained look as he moved. Thomas considered putting him down again, but looking around the observation room induced a strong discomfort that could not have been good for anyone. They progressed slowly, Thomas keeping his arm around the taller boy's shoulders to prevent him from swaying.

"A bit further," he said. "How do you feel?"

"I…" Newt tensed. He broke free and stumbled away, making gagging noises.

Catching on at the last second, Thomas tried to keep his friend's hair away as he rid himself of his stomach contents. This had not happened before. Was it a bad sign? The Cure being mostly untested, did anybody know?

Water and rest were the best they could do. Lying still on the mattress, eyes closed, Newt whispered: "The Flare… it's burning me. I think… Sorry."

"It's not the Flare. That's the Cure," Minho said.

"You will get better," Thomas said, trying to be reassuring.

Newt mumbled something.

"What was that?" Minho asked.

"Lizzy," Newt said. His eyelids shot open and he struggled to sit up. "Where's Lizzy? My sister. My Lizzy. I have to tell her. Promised I wouldn't forget. Elizabeth…" The burst of fervor had faded quickly. Newt sunk back to the mattress.

His sister. What was it he needed to tell her?

"You can see Lizzy soon, but you need to rest first," Thomas said. It seemed odd that Newt would use the old name. According to Sonya, he'd used to call her Lizzy, but Newt did not remember that time. He knew her as Sonya, as far as Thomas knew. And the second name, Elizabeth? Her full name? It must've been a guess. He distinctly remembered Sonya saying she didn't even know her real name.

Doubtful as he was, he could not help himself from asking: "How'd you know her name?"

Newt answered by drifting off to sleep.

Minho sighed, bravely sinking into one of the brittle chairs.

Thomas stood up. "You were right before."

"I was?"

"You said the Cure might have an effect like this."

"Guess I'm a genius," Minho said dryly.

Thomas leaned against the wall, not risking the other chair. "The guard who took you away, did he tell you anything useful?"

Clenching his fist, Minho said: "Did he ever? Shuckface said they were giving Newt the Cure, and that they'd never tried it before. He even told me the password, knowing I couldn't use it. They haven't tried it on a person before this! Can you— no, you definitely can believe that."

"That's not what Paige said. According to her, they tried it on people, just not anyone at this stage of infection."

"Stupid guard didn't even have his facts straight," Minho grumbled.

"Hang on. You knew the password, too?"

"Said so, didn't I? Question is how he got it." Minho nodded at their friend.

Thomas had been too caught up for implications earlier, but now it dawned on him. "It was me. I told him."

Minho raised an eyebrow, looking at Thomas as if he were an idiot. "No way. Nothing could get through those walls."

"I didn't talk to him. Well, I did, but not like talking talking. With my mind. It was telepathy."

A second's silence. Minho looked up at the ceiling. "I'm not even surprised anymore."

"I don't get how I did it. Normally I'd be thinking about getting the message across, using that method, but now it just happened. Suppose I was doing it subconsciously, still doesn't explain why I could talk to him. Did we learn it before the Glade, like Teresa and I?"

"Maybe you form telepathy-links to everyone you're into," Minho shrugged, looking back at Thomas.

"You think I was into Aris?"

"Alright, fine. I forgot about him. Have any better ideas?"

Thomas thought for a while before realizing the obvious. "WICKED wanted me —or at least, one of us— to form a mental connection to Newt. They made us watch his pain and told us how to get him out, though I don't see why they couldn't tell us outright to use telepathy."

"So you think they lied about not testing the Cure before? To make us worried?"

"I sure hope so." Thomas glanced over at his sleeping friend. "But why did I manage to get across? Paige told me the Cure hadn't been tested on somebody near the Gone, but you were told it hadn't been tested at all. Wouldn't that make you more worried?"

"It could be about skill. I've never done the creepy mind-talking before. Maybe they wanted to even the playing field by giving me a worse idea of what was happening. Not that it worked."

"But that begs the question."

"Why are they doing this to us?"

Thomas paced back and forth, trying to come up with an answer. "Something's been going on with the telepathy, lately. Using it with Teresa made my head hurt like crazy, but she wasn't affected. There were some documents back at the northern facility about telepathy, like they were keeping track of it. They said that our connection was weakening for unknown reasons. I haven't been able to talk with Aris recently, either."

"Right," Minho said, crossing his arms. "So maybe you've been forming some connection to Newt and it's been interfering with the others."

"I don't know if it works like that. It's more…" he snapped his fingers. "Nothing, and then you break through. That's how it feels. But I don't remember learning it, obviously."

"And now? Who can you talk with now?"

Thomas focused on Minho, trying to replicate the strange combination of thought and speech. If it could happen just because he wanted it to, why shouldn't it work now?

Minho glared as he caught on, and made a shooing gesture with his good hand. "Nope. The mind-talking is creepy enough hearing about. You know what they say about slintheads hearing voices."

Thomas rolled his eyes and focused on Teresa instead. "Teresa? Please answer."

He gave up on that after a spike of pain was hammered through his skull. Willing the pain away, forcing his attention to the pacing, he soon felt up to repeating the attempt with Aris.

Not as painful, but even less successful. Something had felt off, as if he were not doing it properly. Teresa had not heard him, but it had felt close, and with Aris, it hadn't, thus the lack of pain, presumably.

"Newt?" Had it been a one-time thing, or…?

Newt stirred. Thomas stopped pacing. In the dead silence, he heard his name mumbled sleepily before the heavy breaths resumed.

"So I guess this is a thing now," Minho said.

Thomas nodded weakly.

"What does WICKED care who you can 'talk' to?" Minho wondered.

Thomas shrugged. "Academic interest?"

The more he thought about WICKED's intentions, the more nervous he grew. They had one goal alone, and that was finding the Cure. They'd done that, so now they should just nicely let Thomas steal it. They were not supposed to conduct side experiments. The telepathy had been useful in the trials, but those were supposed to be over, were they not? Trying to think optimistically, Thomas could say that any time spent on whatever this was would be more time for him and his allies to gather information, but the gaping unknown was too daunting.

Thomas and Minho passed the next few hours watching their friend's improvement. After some hours of mostly being asleep, Newt was alert enough to sit up and hold conversation. Minho was on the floor next to him, Thomas at the foot of the mattress.

"So this is the Cure? The real bloody Cure, this time."

"Is it working?" Minho asked.

"Thought it'd feel better, but yeah, must be." Newt sighed. "At the last moment, too. I heard… no, but then I heard you, Tommy. That was different, and then…"

"I told you the password to the door, remember?"

"Yeah… Wait. Were you in there, too?"

Thomas shook his head.

"Then how…?"

Minho cleared his throat. "Not to alarm you, dude, but you know that weird thing Thomas, Teresa, and Aris can do where they speak with their minds?"

"Maybe don't call it 'that weird thing'." Thomas winced. "But, yeah. I used telepathy to tell you the password."

Newt, not at full thinking capacity, nodded along with the statement, mildly confused.

"I could show you," Thomas offered.

"Alright."

"See? This is telepathy. I don't know what else to say, but…"

Newt looked at him in amazement, staring fixedly at his mouth to be certain it wasn't moving.

"So I could talk to you, too?" Newt asked.

"I don't see why not."

"How?"

"It's hard to describe. Try to aim the words at me, like you can send them from your thoughts to mine."

His friend closed his eyes in concentration, forehead creasing. Nothing happened.

"You can try again later," Thomas suggested. "Now, with the Flare still there…"

"Focus isn't… the best," Newt agreed. Eyes still closed, he leaned back against the wall, hands to his temples as if they pained him. Still, there was a small smile on his lips. "It's goin' away. Didn't think it ever would, but… the Flare, it's fading." He sounded so relieved, Thomas had to share the feeling.

He'd promised the Flare would not be the end of Newt, but seeing that promise fulfilled felt almost unreal.

At noon, with a sleepless night behind him, Thomas could not resist the temptation to take a nap. He hadn't known he was tired until he sat down on the floor, leaning against a wall.

A none too gentle hand shoved him out of sleep. He'd been out for two hours and felt groggy.

Head spinning as he stood up too quickly, he glared at Minho, who shrugged. "Someone knocked on the door."

"You sure somebody didn't just—" Thomas yawned, "—walk past us? Or—"

"Slim it!" Minho hissed.

Before he could resume his glaring, Thomas heard it. A soft knock on the door.

"Who do you think it is?" He asked, tiredness more or less forgotten.

"No idea, but we should open."

Figuring someone from WICKED would have barged in as always, but not daring to expect a friend, Thomas did not know what to think. He approached the door cautiously, not knowing if he would need an element of surprise. With both his friends unfit for fighting, he would have to deal with attackers mostly on his own, should attackers be the ones at their door. He pulled the door inwards, wide open, braced for battle.

A round-faced woman blinked at him, unimpressed. "If you would not… punch me, or …whatever you were planning to do. We're on a tight schedule."

"And what schedule is that?"

"One that doesn't have time for arguments." She craned her neck to look past Thomas. "Wake him up and let's go."

Thomas looked back to where Newt slept soundly. "He's sick. He needs to rest."

"We've been keeping track of his recovery. He can walk just fine. We have no problem unless you create one, in which case I must alert the guards."

"No need to get all worked up," Minho said. "We just wanna know—"

"Now." The woman said. She sneered at them, and Thomas concluded that he did not like her. That being said, if there was an easy and a hard way, there was only one good choice.

Newt was greatly recovered, able to keep up with the rest of them, though he was still too warm. There was something different in his walk, aside from the usual limp. There was a spring in his step, and his upright posture made him look even taller. Had he been like that before the Flare? It was chilling to think that the virus could corrupt something as simple as walking, and as an extension, all other mundane actions. The absence of the Flare made it clear how much it had affected his friend, beyond the more obvious symptoms. His friend would not be what Thomas had gotten used to, nor the person he had been before. He would be healthy again, but this time with the experience of the Flare. Thomas was hopeful of the change, happy to see Newt grow stronger. The Flare had been defeated. They would be alright.

The woman leading them through the WICKED-labyrinth would not say where they were headed, how long it would take them to reach their destination, or anything else -including her name. Thomas referred to her in his mind as 'Sneer', a name well earned. Sneer may have been a doctor or researcher, judging by her white WICKED-logo lab-coat. She had not turned to look at her followers in the last five minutes, but Thomas knew that if she did not sneer still, she was at least thinking about doing so. Sneer's short auburn hair bounced at the speed of her walk. When Thomas was not looking at his friends or surroundings, he was staring at the hair. That was how he realized they were finally there. The hair whipped around as Sneer cast the trio a characteristically disdainful look; a brief one, as she could presumably not stand the sight of them for more than a second. She pounded the door in a series of deliberate knocks. As it opened, Thomas was wondering why things were the way they were. Why did Sneer sneer? Why were they never told anything? Had they been brought to a meet-up of some sort of WICKED-cult with secret door-knocking codes?

He was not bothered by his questions for long. At his first good look into the room, his eyes met Teresa. Sneer and her white-clad colleagues moved out of the way, leaving a space in the middle of the dingy room. Teresa stood up. On her sides, Sonya, Aris, and the other non-immune —Ariadne— remained in their plastic chairs, though they looked welcoming enough.

"I thought you lot would've gotten yourselves killed by now," Teresa said, giving Thomas a brief embrace. Her unserious tone held a serious accusation

"Sorry. I will definitely try to pick the flat-trans over the cold, dark forest next time."

"Slinthead."

"You're learning," Minho remarked.

Teresa smiled at him, before turning to Newt. "So, you're cured now?"

Newt did not answer. In a blur of motion, he flew past Teresa. Sonya's eyes widened in surprise as her brother hugged her tightly. "Hello, Newt," she said, returning the hug uncertainly, all the while looking at Thomas and Minho as if asking them what was going on with their friend. Thomas shrugged, though he had his suspicions. With the Flare and its cure battling inside Newt's brain, what was to say the block on his memories could not have been tampered with?

"I'm so, so sorry, Lizzy," Newt spoke into his sister's hair. "I promised I would never forget you."

"It's… fine," Sonya said, patting his back. "You seem to remember now, so…"

Newt released her, stepping back quickly. "Sorry. I just started rememberin' all of a sudden. Two years and I didn't even know I had a sister, and you told me, but now I remember." He paused, looking around. "And now I'm making it weird."

"Well, yes. But I get it. If you've got your memories—"

Somebody cleared their throat dramatically. It had been Sneer, whose expression needn't be stated. "There will be time for chit-chat later. Settle down. And Newton, we'd prefer you to address the other su… participants by their proper names."

"Didn't I?" Newt asked coldly.

"No. Sit down."

Newt did not argue further. Though relieved he didn't, Thomas himself wanted to show his hate for WICKED and their cruelty. They had stolen the identities of the children they imprisoned, through taking their names as much as wiping their memories. They had taken Lizzy and whoever Newt had been. Sonya did not have a brother. Newt did not have a sister. None of the Gladers or Glenners did. They were made to act as test subjects, clean of experiences and families. On their own. None of the adults spoke up either for or against the woman. Thomas did not like them any better if they were willing to go along with it all.

He pulled out a chair between Teresa and Aris. The white plastic was infused with grime and uncomfortable, a description that would have fit the room as a whole. Very white. Very grimy. Unpleasant and impersonal. One wall was lined with tall, closed cabinets, while the rest were mostly covered by scribbled-on boards, disrupted by several doors going different directions. The room was not quite large enough for the eight adults to be standing next to each other in a row as they more or less did, stepping into lecturing-mode.

"We will be conducting a few experiments today, relating to the study of telepathy," said a thin, sour-faced man in the middle of the line. "They may be draining, but these experiments will not cause you any physical harm, as long as you follow our instructions."

Was he reading off an invisible script? Also—

"What do you mean 'as long as we follow your instructions'? You gonna torture us if we don't?" Minho demanded.

The man continued, ignoring Minho's questions. "You three—" he indicated Thomas, Teresa, and Aris, "—through the door on the left. You—" Minho and Sonya, "—in that room. Non-immunes in the room next to that."

Thomas didn't stand up, nor did the others.

Crossing his arms, he said: "This isn't how things work. We cooperate given we get the knowledge we need, and you have not given us any. We made a deal with the assistant director—"

"I am assistant director, and I remember no such agreement," said the man.

"I meant Janson."

"He does no longer hold that rank. I am the assistant director, and your so-called deal has not been broken. You don't need to know what we are doing to obey."

"Actually, we do," said Teresa. "We have a right to know. Would you want to be kept in the dark?"

"I am not a subject."

"Neither are we."

"I don't want to return to your friends, but I'm sure the lot of you do, and if you want to leave today—"

"I want to speak with chancellor Paige." Thomas did not like that he would call on her for help, but who else was there?"

"She is busy."

"We can wait."

"You will do as we say. Go to your assigned rooms so we can begin."

A shared look among Thomas and his friends made it clear that none of them had any plans on doing as instructed. Their individual unease and confusion became confidence at their shared front. That front shattered as Thomas' own body turned traitor. With no effort on his part, one leg moved, then the other. His hands pushed off of the chair, and he realized as he stood that he was not the one in control. Only his eyes could move freely, darting from side to side in search of the cause. Nobody stood at a control panel. There was no screen, no remote. As if control could be stolen from him at a thought. Maybe it was related to telepathy.

"Do you see your position now?" Asked the sour-looking man.

Thomas was made to nod. At least they could not stop his blood from boiling.

"You're controlling him!" Newt realized. He moved to Thomas' side, glaring daggers at the eight lab-coats. "Which of you bloody—" His mouth closed abruptly.

"What do we have to do to make you brats understand?" Asked sneer.

Thomas could feel the tension in him fade ever so slightly. He could move his head. Remembering what the man had said, that they would not be hurt if they followed instructions, and knowing what that implied for disobedience, he said: "We understand. Come on, guys."

His friends looked grim but nodded along.

"One more thing, " said the new assistant director. "You had better cooperate with your best efforts. If we have any reason to think you're being unhelpful…"

These experiments will not cause you any physical harm, as long as you follow our instructions.

There had been threats in the past, but WICKED did not usually present them this directly, or without any benefit to completing their tasks. Before they had acted on the need of getting the Cure for their friends, but their only reward for doing as told this time was to get out unscathed. What did it mean that these people didn't care about staying on their good side? What had they gotten caught up in?