"All right," Minho said, pointing to a spot in the far end of the shade. "You sit there, get yourself all nice and comfy and start talking."
Thomas couldn't believe how good he felt―just a dull ache in his shoulder. And he didn't think he had any trace of drugs in him anymore. Whatever doctors WICKED had unleashed on him had been brilliant at what they did. He took a seat and waited for everyone to get situated in front of him, sitting cross-legged on the hot and dusty ground. He was like a schoolteacher readying to give a lesson―a blurry flash from his past.
Minho was the last to take a seat, right next to Brenda. "Okay, tell us about your adventures with the aliens in their big bad spaceship."
"You sure about this?" Thomas asked. "How many days left to get over those mountains, to the safe haven?"
"Five days, dude. But you know we can't go tramping around in this sun with nothing to protect us. You're gonna talk, then we're gonna sleep, then we're all gonna bust our humps walking all night. Get on it."
"Good that," Thomas said, wondering what they'd been doing while he was away, but realizing it didn't matter all that much. "Save all your questions till the end, children." When not a single person laughed, or even smiled, he coughed and hurried on. "It was WICKED that came and got me. I kept passing out, but they took me to some doctors who totally fixed me up. I heard them saying something about how it wasn't supposed to happen, how the gun had been a factor they hadn't expected. The bullet set off a nasty infection in me, and I guess they felt pretty strongly that it wasn't time for me to die."
Blank faces stared back at him.
Thomas knew it would be hard for them to accept―even after he'd told the whole story. "Just telling you what I heard."
He went on to explain more. Every detail of what he could remember, and about the odd bedside conversation he'd listened in on. Things about killzone patterns and Candidates. More about the Variables. None of it had made much sense the first time around, and it made even less now as he tried to recall it word for word. The Gladers―plus Jorge and Brenda―looked as frustrated as he felt.
"Well, that really cleared things up," Minho finally said. "Must have something to do with all those signs about you in the city."
Thomas shrugged. "Glad to know you're so happy to see me alive."
"Hey, if you wanna be the leader, no skin off my back. I am happy to see you alive."
"No thanks. You keep it."
Minho didn't respond. Thomas couldn't deny that the signs weighed heavily on him―what did it really mean that WICKED wanted him to be the leader? And what should he do about it?
Newt got to his feet, his face in a deep scowl of concentration. "So we're all potential candidates for something. And maybe the purpose of all the buggin' klunk we've been through is to weed out those who don't qualify. But for some reason the whole gun-and-rusty-bullet thing wasn't part of the ... normal tests. Or Variables, whatever. If Thomas is gonna croak and die, it wasn't supposed to come from a bloody infection."
Thomas pursed his lips and nodded. Sounded like a great summary to him.
"What this means is that they're watching us," Minho said. "Just like they did in the Maze. Has anyone seen a beetle blade running around anywhere?"
Several Gladers shook their heads.
"What the hell's a beetle blade?" Jorge asked.
Thomas answered. "Little mechanical lizard things that spied on us with cameras in the Maze."
Jorge rolled his eyes. "Of course. Sorry I asked."
"The Maze was definitely some kind of indoor facility," Aris said. "But there's just no way we're inside something anymore. Though they could be using satellites or long-range cameras, I guess."
Jorge cleared his throat. "What is it about Thomas that makes him so special? Those signs in the city about him being the real leader, them swooping in here and saving his butt when he got all sicky-sicky." He looked at Thomas. "I'm not trying to be mean, muchacho―I'm just curious. What makes you better than the rest of your buddies?"
"I'm not special," Thomas said, even though he knew he was hiding something. He just didn't know what. "You heard what they said. We have lots of ways to die out here, but that gun shouldn't be one of them. I think they would've saved anybody who'd gotten shot. It wasn't about me―it was the bullet that messed things up."
"Still," Jorge replied with a smirk. "I think I'll stay close to you from here on."
A few more discussions broke out, but Minho didn't let them last long. He insisted that they all needed sleep if they were planning on marching through the night. Thomas didn't complain―he'd grown more tired with every passing second of sitting in that hot air on that hot ground. Maybe it was his body healing, maybe just the heat. Either way, sleep called to him.
They didn't have blankets or pillows, so Thomas curled up on the ground in the very spot where he'd been sitting, resting his head on his folded arms. Brenda somehow ended up right next to him, though she didn't say anything, and she certainly didn't touch him. Thomas didn't know if he'd ever figure her out.
He sucked in a long, slow breath, closed his eyes, then welcomed the rest, welcomed that heavy feeling of slumber as it started pulling him into its depths. The sounds around him seemed to fade away, the air to thicken. A calm came over him, then sleep.
The sun was still blazing in the sky when a voice sounded in his mind, waking him up.
A girl's voice.
Teresa.
After days and days of utter silence, Teresa started talking to him telepathically, all at once, a rush of words.