I Know Places [Thomas The Maze Runner]

[30: The Supply Stop]

It was unclear what awaited them inside, but Elle thought it would be an appropriate reprieve from WICKED and the storm. "Let's go," she decided, waving everyone after her as she entered the building and slowly descended the hill.

"Elle, wait!" Thomas objected.

"No, don't go in there!" Frypan agreed.

"Elle!" Thomas shouted.

Ignoring them, Teresa and Minho went after Elle and found that it seemed to be safe inside. "Get in here and we can avoid the storm," Elle declared.

Without another option of finding shelter, Thomas agreed. "Get inside! Get inside!"

They descended into the dark chamber and looked around curiously. Finding a flashlight on the floor, Minho turned it on and looked at their surroundings. It seemed like it was a floor of a building with a circular shape, and there were more floors buried below the sand.

"Where the hell are we?" Minho asked, squinting curiously.

"We gotta go," Thomas urged everyone to walk deeper into the building.

The Gladers started moving, but Teresa was rooted to the spot. "No," she protested quietly, shaking her head.

"We gotta keep moving--"

"Elle, stop!" Teresa shrieked. Everyone paused and looked back at her. Teresa's blue eyes and dark hair were wild and shaken. Slowly, Elle approached her friend with a concerned expression. "Tell me what's going on," Teresa requested.

"It's WICKED," Elle recapped what she had already told the Gladers. "They lied about everything from the moment we left the Maze. We never escaped, we were never saved," she said. "Aris and Thomas saw these bodies disappearing into a locked room every night. I went in with them to see what was going on and it was a lab full of bodies, too many to count. It was all the people who we thought left to start their new lives."

Teresa started tearing up, shaking her head in denial. "They were dead?" she asked.

Elle glanced at Thomas for help. "No," he admitted. Teresa's blue eyes shifted in his direction as he approached the girls. "But they weren't alive either. They had them strung up. With tubes coming out of them." Teresa rubbed the back of her neck nervously. "They were being... being drained. There's something inside of us that WICKED wants," Thomas explained.

"But you don't know for sure that my friends were there," Teresa pointed out. "Y-you've never even met them, they could have made it out!"

"I'm sorry but they didn't," Elle denied, placing a comforting hand on Teresa's shoulder. "Nobody got out. Everyone whose name was called ended up in that room and is being used by WICKED for their cure. That's what this always comes back to, sacrificing us in the name of a cure."

"So we have to get as far away from them as possible," Thomas added.

Panting, Newt put his hands on his hips to recover. "Okay," he agreed. "So, what's the plan?" Thomas and Elle exchanged an unsure glance. "You do have a plan, right?" Newt added.

"Yeah. I don't know," Thomas mumbled.

Everyone gaped at him. "Well, we followed you out here, Thomas," Newt shouted, voice cracking. "And now you're saying that you have no idea where we're going or what we're doing."

"What were we supposed to do, Newt?" Elle defended their decision to leave. "Stay there and be harvested next?" Her brash words made Teresa whimper quietly beside her. "I'm sorry," Elle acknowledged. "I don't mean to be brutal but we had no other choice. Back there our future is set. At least here we can figure something else out."