The Maze Runner

“Were you sleeping?” Thomas asked. He was relieved to see that she appeared okay, felt himself relax.

“I was,” she responded. “Until I heard something shred the Homestead to bits. What happened?”

Thomas shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t know how you could’ve slept through the sound of all those Grievers out here.”

“You try coming out of a coma sometime. See how you do.” Now answer my question, she said inside his head.

Thomas blinked, momentarily surprised by the voice since she hadn’t done it in a while. “Cut that junk out.”

“Just tell me what happened.”

Thomas sighed; it was such a long story, and he didn’t feel like telling the whole thing. “You don’t know Gally, but he’s a psycho kid who ran away. He showed up, jumped on a Griever, and they all took off into the Maze. It was really weird.” He still couldn’t believe it had actually happened.

“Which is saying a lot,” Teresa said.

“Yeah.” He looked behind him, hoping to see Alby somewhere. Surely he’d let Teresa out now. Gladers were scattered all over the complex, but there was no sign of their leader. He turned back to Teresa. “I just don’t get it. Why would the Grievers have left after getting Gally? He said something about them killing us one a night until we were all dead—he said it at least twice.”

Teresa put her hands through the bars, rested her forearms against the concrete sill. “Just one a night? Why?”

“I don’t know. He also said it had to do with … trials. Or variables. Something like that.” Thomas had the same strange urge he’d had the night before—to reach out and take one of her hands. He stopped himself, though.

“Tom, I was thinking about what you told me I said. That the Maze is a code. Being holed up in here does wonders for making the brain do what it was made for.”

“What do you think it means?” Intensely interested, he tried to block out the shouts and chatter rumbling through the Glade as others found out about the Map Room being burned.

“Well, the walls move every day, right?”

“Yeah.” He could tell she was really on to something.

“And Minho said they think there’s a pattern, right?”

“Right.” Gears were starting to shift into place inside Thomas’s head as well, almost as if a prior memory was beginning to break loose.

“Well, I can’t remember why I said that to you about the code. I know when I was coming out of the coma all sorts of thoughts and memories swirled through my head like crazy, almost as if I could feel someone emptying my mind, sucking them out. And I felt like I needed to say that thing about the code before I lost it. So there must be an important reason.”

Thomas almost didn’t hear her—he was thinking harder than he had in a while. “They always compare each section’s Map to the one from the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that, day by day, each Runner just analyzing their own Section. What if they’re supposed to compare the Maps to other sections …” He trailed off, feeling like he was on the cusp of something.

Teresa seemed to ignore him, doing her own theorizing. “The first thing the word code makes me think of is letters. Letters in the alphabet. Maybe the Maze is trying to spell something.”

Everything came together so quickly in Thomas’s mind, he almost heard an audible click, as if the pieces all snapped into place at once. “You’re right—you’re right! But the Runners have been looking at it wrong this whole time. They’ve been analyzing it the wrong way!”

Teresa gripped the bars now, her knuckles white, her face pressed against the iron rods. “What? What’re you talking about?”

Thomas grabbed the two bars outside of where she held on, moved close enough to smell her—a surprisingly pleasant scent of sweat and flowers. “Minho said the patterns repeat themselves, only they can’t figure out what it means. But they’ve always studied them section by section, comparing one day to the next. What if each day is a separate piece of the code, and they’re supposed to use all eight sections together somehow?”

“You think maybe each day is trying to reveal a word?” Teresa asked. “With the wall movements?”

Thomas nodded. “Or maybe a letter a day, I don’t know. But they’ve always thought the movements would reveal how to escape, not spell something. They’ve been studying it like a map, not like a picture of something. We’ve gotta—” Then he stopped, remembering what he’d just been told by Newt. “Oh, no.”

Teresa’s eyes flared with worry. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh no oh no oh no …” Thomas let go of the bars and stumbled back a step as the realization hit him. He turned to look at the Map Room. The smoke had lessened, but it still wafted out the door, a dark, hazy cloud covering the entire area.

“What’s wrong?” Teresa repeated. She couldn’t see the Map Room from her angle.

Thomas faced her again. “I didn’t think it mattered….”

“What!” she demanded.

“Someone burned all the Maps. If there was a code, it’s gone.”

CHAPTER 41

“I’ll be back,” Thomas said, turning to go. His stomach was full of acid. “I gotta find Newt, see if any of the Maps survived.”

“Wait!” Teresa yelled. “Get me out of here!”

But there was no time, and Thomas felt awful about it. “I can’t—I’ll be back, I promise.” He turned before she could protest and set off at a sprint for the Map Room and its foggy black cloud of smoke. Needles of pain pricked his insides. If Teresa was right, and they’d been that close to figuring out some kind of clue to get out of there, only to see it literally lost in flames … It was so upsetting it hurt.