A-Thousand-Words | The Maze Runner - Newt/Thomas

7 | Finish What You Started

As Newt and I re-joined the others in front of the now completely destroyed council hall, Teresa stepped forward from Thomas' side and pulled me in for a hug. "Oh, thank goodness you're okay!" she gasped. "You were with us one second and then you were just gone. We thought we'd lost you!"

"Well, you almost did." I sighed as I released from the bone-crushing hug. "But apparently I'm not that easy to get rid of."

Turning back to look at the rest of the glade, I felt a knot form in my stomach as I saw the huts and everything the gladers had worked so hard to build now in piles of rubble on the ground or engulfed in flames. Everything was destroyed and over half of the gladers were gone.

"Who's that?" Chuck asked as a body started emerging from the smoke in the air. Everyone took a closer look before finally realizing who it was—and they didn't look happy.

"Gally-" Thomas held his hands out as Gally stalked towards him, but Gally's face was flushed with anger, and with one swift movement he punched Thomas hard in the face. The other gladers immediately started pushing and pulling Gally away from Thomas, who was now lying on the ground.

"This is all you, Thomas! Look around!" Gally yelled.

One of the gladers who was holding Gally back shook his head. "Back off, Gally! It's not Thomas' fault!"

"You heard what Alby said! He's one of them!" Gally kept fighting against the gladers so he could get back to Thomas. "He's one of them, and they sent him here to destroy everything, and now he has! Look around, Thomas! Look around! This is your fault! They sent him here, and now he's destroyed everything that we've built!"

Standing up from the ground, Thomas snatched something out of Teresa's hand and a wave of guilt washed over his face. "Maybe he's right." Thomas eyed the strange thing in his hands that resembled a very large syringe. "I need to remember."

Then, without any warning, Thomas stabbed the syringe into his thigh and let out a scream of pure agony. Everyone rushed over as Thomas fell back to the ground; his body shaking for a few seconds before turning completely still and rigid. "Chuck, get the other syringe!" I called as we all started lifting Thomas to take him somewhere safer, but that's when we remembered that everything had been destroyed.

"Take him to the cells!" Gally ordered. "I'm in charge now and when that shank wakes up, it's into the maze for him! I'm tired of him destroying everything we've worked for."

With that, Gally stormed off as Chuck ran back to us and stabbed the second syringe into Thomas' chest.

Letting out an overly-loud sigh, I raised my head towards the sky and closed my eyes; letting the warm beams from the sun hit my face. A few of us were sitting outside the cells, waiting for Thomas to wake up again. Teresa herself was actually inside the cell with Thomas though, holding his head in her lap. It wasn't hard to tell that she cared for him and that he cared for her, but I knew there was something deeper between them that linked themselves to each other.

"Still feeling okay?" Newt asked.

I chuckled slightly as I straightened out my neck again and opened my eyes. "Yes, I'm fine. No stings, no scratches. Only some bruises and a little bump on my head. You should be worried about Thomas."

"I am."

"Then act like it." I joked. I smiled at Newt for a few seconds before I changed my demeanor to a more serious one. "I never thanked you for coming into the woods after me...so thank you. You could have gotten yourself killed."

Newt flashed me a small smirk. "We've gotta stick together, right?"

"Right."

"Hey." Teresa's voice caught all of our attention. "Are you okay?" she asked as she looked down at a now awake Thomas.

"What the hell were you thinking?" Chuck switched from worried to angry in a matter of seconds.

Sitting up, Thomas looked around at all of us with a look of complete confusion on his face. "What happened?"

"Gally has taken control," Newt answered. "He said we had a choice. Either join him or get banished at sundown with you."

Thomas let out a groan as he now felt the pain of getting stabbed with two syringes in a row and lying on the hard ground for hours. "And the others agreed to that?"

"Gally has everyone convinced that you're the reason all this has happened," I explained. "Everyone's scared and with Alby gone...they're looking for anyone willing to lead them."

"Well, he's been right so far." Thomas nodded.

"What are you talking about?" Minho cocked a brow at Thomas.

Thomas swallowed hard before speaking. "This place...it's not what we thought it was. It's not a prison; it's a test. It all started when we were kids. They'd give us these challenges. They were experimenting on us. And then people started disappearing. Every month, one after the other, like clockwork."

"They were sending them up into the maze." Newt caught on to what Thomas was trying to tell us.

"Yeah, but not all of us."

"What do you mean?"

Thomas paused before answering and I knew that whatever came out of his mouth next was going to add yet another layer to this confusing situation we were in. "Guys, I'm one of them. The people who put you here, I worked with them. I-I watched you guys for years. The entire time you have been here, I...I was on the other side of it." Thomas said before looking at Teresa and I. "And so were you two."

"What?" Teresa asked as her eyes glazed over with fear. I, however, wasn't as surprised as she was. My dream, the one I had had during my first night in the glade, had pretty much told me that something was different about Teresa, Thomas, and I.

"Teresa, Norah...we did this to them."

Teresa shook her head as a single tear fell down her cheek. "No. That can't be true."

"It is." I finally spoke up. "I saw it in a dream. It was fuzzy and confusing but all three of us were there...standing in white lab coats and monitoring this girl. She was screaming and crying...she was being tested on."

"Why would they send us up if we were with them?" Teresa questioned.

Thomas shrugged. "It doesn't matter."

"He's right," Newt spoke softly from beside me; his head hung low. "It doesn't matter. Any of it. 'Cause the people we were before the maze, they don't even exist anymore. These Creators took care of that. But what does matter is who we are now and what we do right now. You went into the maze, and you found a way out."

"Yeah, but if I hadn't, Alby would still be alive." Thomas retorted.

Newt pressed his lips together in a tight line as the memory of Alby came to life in his mind. "Maybe. But I know that if he were here, he would be telling you the exact same thing. Pick your ass up and finish what you started. 'Cause if we do nothing, then that means Alby died for nothing, and I can't have that."

"Okay." Thomas agreed. "Okay, but we gotta get through Gally first."