“Patterns. But looking at two days’ worth isn’t gonna tell you jack. You really need to study several weeks, look for patterns, anything. I know there’s something there, something that’ll help us. Just can’t find it yet. Like I said, it sucks.”
Thomas had an itch in the back of his mind, the same one he’d felt the very first time in this room. The Maze walls, moving. Patterns. All those straight lines—were they suggesting an entirely different kind of map? Pointing to something? He had such a heavy feeling that he was missing an obvious hint or clue.
Minho tapped him on the shoulder. “You can always come back and study your butt off after dinner, after we talk to Newt and Alby. Come on.”
Thomas put the papers in the trunk and closed it, hating the twinge of unease he felt. It was like a prick in his side. Walls moving, straight lines, patterns … There had to be an answer. “Okay, let’s go.”
They’d just stepped outside the Map Room, the heavy door clanging shut behind them, when Newt and Alby walked up, neither one of them looking very happy. Thomas’s excitement immediately turned to worry.
“Hey,” Minho said. “We were just—”
“Get on with it,” Alby interrupted. “Ain’t got time to waste. Find anything? Anything?”
Minho actually recoiled at the harsh rebuke, but his face seemed more confused to Thomas than hurt or angry. “Nice to see you, too. Yeah, we did find something, actually.”
Oddly, Alby almost looked disappointed. “Cuz this whole shuck place is fallin’ to pieces.” He shot Thomas a nasty glare as if it were all his fault.
What’s wrong with him? Thomas thought, feeling his own anger light up. They’d been working hard all day and this was their thanks?
“What do you mean?” Minho asked. “What else happened?”
Newt answered, nodding toward the Box as he did so. “Bloody supplies didn’t come today. Come every week for two years, same time, same day. But not today.”
All four of them looked over at the steel doors attached to the ground. To Thomas, there seemed to be a shadow hovering over it darker than the gray air surrounding everything else.
“Oh, we’re shucked for good now,” Minho whispered, his reaction alerting Thomas to how grave the situation really was.
“No sun for the plants,” Newt said, “no supplies from the bloody Box—yeah, I’d say we’re shucked, all right.”
Alby had folded his arms, still glaring at the Box as if trying to open the doors with his mind. Thomas hoped their leader didn’t bring up what he’d seen in the Changing—or anything related to Thomas, for that matter. Especially now.
“Yeah, anyway,” Minho continued. “We found something weird.”
Thomas waited, hoping that Newt or Alby would have a positive reaction to the news, maybe even have further information to shed light on the mystery.
Newt raised his eyebrows. “What?”
Minho took a full three minutes to explain, starting with the Griever they followed and ending with the results of their rock-throwing experiment.
“Must lead to where the … ya know … Grievers live,” he said when finished.
“The Griever Hole,” Thomas added. All three of them looked at him, annoyed, as if he had no right to speak. But for the first time, being treated like the Greenie didn’t bother him that much.
“Gotta bloody see that for myself,” Newt said. Then murmured, “Hard to believe.” Thomas couldn’t have agreed more.
“I don’t know what we can do,” Minho said. “Maybe we could build something to block off that corridor.”
“No way,” Newt said. “Shuck things can climb the bloody walls, remember? Nothing we could build would keep them out.”
But a commotion outside the Homestead shifted their attention away from the conversation. A group of Gladers stood at the front door of the house, shouting to be heard over each other. Chuck was in the group, and when he saw Thomas and the others he ran over, a look of excitement spread across his face. Thomas could only wonder what crazy thing had happened now.
“What’s going on?” Newt asked.
“She’s awake!” Chuck yelled. “The girl’s awake!”
Thomas’s insides twisted; he leaned against the concrete wall of the Map Room. The girl. The girl who spoke in his head. He wanted to run before it happened again, before she spoke to him in his mind.
But it was too late.
Tom, I don’t know any of these people. Come get me! It’s all fading…. I’m forgetting everything but you…. I have to tell you things! But it’s all fading….
He couldn’t understand how she did it, how she was inside his head.
Teresa paused, then said something that made no sense.
The Maze is a code, Tom. The Maze is a code.
CHAPTER 36
Thomas didn’t want to see her. He didn’t want to see anybody.
As soon as Newt set off to go and talk to the girl, Thomas silently slipped away, hoping no one would notice him in the excitement. With everyone’s thoughts on the stranger waking up from her coma, it proved easy. He skirted the edge of the Glade, then, breaking into a run, he headed for his place of seclusion behind the Deadhead forest.
He crouched in the corner, nestled in the ivy, and threw his blanket over himself, head and all. Somehow, it seemed like a way to hide from Teresa’s intrusion into his mind. A few minutes passed, his heart finally calming to a slow roll.
“Forgetting about you was the worst part.”