As Elle ran through the hangar area, she felt there was no way they could get out. Even though they managed to keep Janson and his group away, more guards than they could count were gathering behind them. When they approached the main doors they entered through just a few days ago, Thomas turned the red locking mechanism, and everyone waited with bated breath. The steel bolt heads began unlocking, swinging the door open, and letting in a powerful gust of air and dust. The wind howled in Elle's ears, and she squinted to avoid getting anything in her eyes.
"Come on, come on!" Thomas urged everyone to follow him, taking the first step out into the darkness without anyone telling them where to go.
The group followed him without hesitation; taking their chances in the Scorch was better than knowingly being in WICKED's control. As they left, the temperature change was impossible to ignore. Aside from the cold wind whipping in their ears and blowing their clothes, the temperature was slashed in half, and Elle was grateful for her black zip-up hoodie. Without it, she would be freezing in her white tank top.
Dust swirled in the night air as the Gladers ran up a steep, sandy hill to escape WICKED. They left the compound that was supposed to be their home between homes, trying to get away as quickly as possible as they heard the guards searching for them.
Someone was shouting orders, "Fan out! Fan out!"
"All right, come on. Keep going!" Thomas encouraged everyone, trying to drown out the sound of the WICKED guards.
Even as she struggled to climb the sandy hill on all fours, Elle turned around when she heard several engines revving. In the distance, she saw motorcycles and ATVs leaving the building with flashlights. Her heartbeat picked up when she realised how quickly WICKED would be able to spread out and find them if they didn't find shelter for the night.
"Shit," Thomas muttered beside her, having noticed the same thing. "Come on, go! Go! We'll lose them in the storm," he informed the others, helping Elle over the hill by putting his hand on her lower back for support.
"Thomas?" she whispered, fear apparent in her tone.
"It's okay," he replied, feeling equally unsure. "I've got you, and I won't let anything happen to you," Thomas promised her. "Come on, we have to keep up with the others."
The storm did seem to obscure the vision of WICKED's guards, allowing the Gladers to catch their breath behind a large sand dune and watch the action from afar.
Squinting, Elle noticed that the lights were getting closer even with the storm. "We have to stay low and move on," she decided for the group.
"Everybody, go, go, go. Stay low!" Thomas agreed, shuffling everyone over.
Teresa took off down the hill without waiting for anyone to follow her. She was panicking about leaving a seemingly safe space and reeling with the news of what happened to the boys from her Maze.
Thomas protested, "Teresa, hang on! Stay together!" She ignored him, racing ahead. Elle retraced her footsteps so she wouldn't be alone. "Keep going, guys. Let's go," Thomas motivated the group.
"Watch out!" Minho warned them as they started running downhill. "Where are we even going?!" he wondered hopelessly.
"Windows!" Elle exclaimed happily when she and Teresa reached the slanted windows of a large structure buried beneath the sand.
As the fastest runner in the group, Minho caught up with the girls first and spotted the same thing they did. "Over here!" he waved everyone over. "What the hell is this?" Minho wondered as Elle and Teresa stepped through a large broken window.
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."
"Figure what out?!" Newt was openly panicking at this point. "You said that--"
Remembering something, Aris interrupted their argument, "Wait. Janson said something about people hiding in the mountains. Some kind of resistance or army."
"The Right Arm," Thomas recalled, nodding. "If they're really against WICKED, maybe they can help us," he suggested.
Newt stared at them like they were crazy. "People..." He glanced between Aris and Thomas. "In the mountains. Mountain people. That's your plan?"
"It's the only chance we have," Thomas pointed out, eyeing Newt steadily.
"Hey, guys. Check this out," Winston caught their attention. He was kneeling on the ground. "Minho, give me a light!" Joining him, Minho shone the light on the floor. Everyone crowded around them and noticed footprints in the sand. "Someone's been down here."
Teresa and Elle shared a weary look. It was nice to have another girl who thought about things differently than the boys. While the boys thought it was opportunistic that other people had been here in the past, the complete silence of the building was making Teresa and Elle nervous rather than happy. In fact, it seemed dangerous that other people may be occupying the building or had occupied it in the past. There were no rules in Scorch, as far as they knew, and they had no means to protect themselves.
They decided to venture out to find anything useful, such as water or clothes. After some wandering, Minho discovered several water bottles behind a garage door. "Come on. Open up," he asked the others for help.
They complied, lifting the grate and entering an abandoned storeroom. There were lights throughout the place; Frypan found a camping light, while the others found smaller flashlights. Around the room, there were dusty piles of clothes and other supplies.
"Looks like people lived here," Minho commented, picking up a dusty jacket. He shook it to remove the dust and took it with him.
"Where are they now?" Newt wondered, voicing Elle's thoughts.
Following Minho's lead, Thomas took out a jacket and put it on. "Let's pack some of this stuff up," he suggested. "Anything you think you might need. We'll split up, see what else we can find. Meet back here." He turned to Elle. "Stay with the others and be safe," Thomas told her with concern swimming in his eyes. She nodded, cupping his jaw and giving him a chaste kiss.
Everyone split up into smaller groups. As the most adventurous, Thomas and Minho paired up and decided to leave the storeroom to explore further. Taking a flashlight from Newt, Thomas glanced at Elle over his shoulder until he and Minho were out of sight. Elle joined Teresa and gave her what she hoped was a comforting smile.
"We should probably find warmer jackets for when it gets cold at night," Elle suggested.
Nodding, Teresa followed her around the room as they searched for clothes and other supplies. Since Elle already had a backpack, she felt good about packing anything they could find. The two girls ventured further into the storeroom and saw ragged clothes hanging from different places in an adjacent room. Piles of old mattresses and bedding indicated that people once lived there long-term. Beside Teresa, Elle followed her flashlight, and they gasped in unison when it illuminated a person. When they realised it was just a clothes mannequin, they exhaled in relief.
"You all right?" Newt called out to them from the other room.
"Fine," Teresa and Elle chorus, exchanging embarrassed smiles.
"This looks promising," Elle commented as they found a table with a pile of clothes on it. Most of them were dusty but looked relatively clean.
Frypan looked up and stopped packing when he noticed Teresa and Elle trying on jackets in the adjacent room. Even though they were wearing tank tops and were decently dressed, their movements caught his attention, and he couldn't tear his eyes away. Noticing Frypan's gaze, Newt put two fingers on his friend's chin and repositioned his head away from the girls.
"What?" Frypan asked innocently.
Newt chuckled, shaking his head. "Don't let Thomas catch you eyeing his girl," he warned. "He doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would take kindly to that."
"I wasn't--" Frypan cut himself off when Newt sent him a knowing look. "Please don't tell Thomas?" Newt laughed.
"I think this fits well," Elle noted, moving her arms to see if the jacket wasn't too tight. "How's yours?"
"Good too," Teresa confirmed. They packed the jackets inside Elle's backpack since they still had their zip-up hoodies from WICKED. "Hey, Elle? Is everyone okay with me being here?" Teresa wondered as they kept searching the room.
"Of course they are," Elle assured her friend. "What makes you ask that?"
"I just feel out of place here," Teresa confessed. "You all know each other and have this history, and I don't fit into that."
Elle corrected her, "You definitely fit into that. We all went through a lot in the Maze, and we've all suffered because of WICKED. Trust me when I say that those things bind us together."
Teresa hummed non-committedly. She looked at a photograph of a little girl with a teddy bear and smiled at it, wondering where all these people went. "I can't believe you really came back from me today," Teresa admitted when she joined Elle at a different table.
"Of course I came back for you, you're my friend," Elle grinned at her. "In fact, you're my only friend who's a girl, so you're actually pretty important to me." They chuckled. "I promised you that my friends would have your back and I wasn't going to go back on my word."
"They must have thought you were out of your mind," Teresa commented. "Going back for someone you've barely known a day seems like something anyone would protest when they're in a hurry."
"They were unsure at first but they saw reason when I explained that your friends aren't around to help you," Elle admitted. Teresa visibly tensed at the mention of her friends, and Elle wondered how she could approach the subject. "Besides, I think they've gotten used to me changing or making plans based on what I think is important," she tried to joke and cheer Teresa up. "I know you've been through a lot today and the news about your friends isn't exactly what you expected to hear, so I want you to know that I'm here if you want to talk."
"Thanks," Teresa acknowledged quietly. "I don't think I'm quite ready for that yet, but you'll be the first to know when I am."
Elle nodded. "I'm not the only good listener in the group, by the way," she added. "All of the boys are really great if you ever need to be cheered up or you want to talk about something other than your feelings. Not that they aren't good at talking about their feelings, too; they've actually gotten a lot better since I first met them."
"Tell me more about your friends," Teresa requested as they rifled through a few bags lying on the floor. "What are they like?"
"Hard-headed and brave," Elle commented. "Newt, he's the one with the accent, he was our second in command in the Maze and I think he's brilliant. He's kind of like my best friend, we got to know each other pretty well in the Maze and he means a lot to me. Then there's Minho, the guy with dark hair and muscular arms. He's smart and thinks well on his feet, especially when it comes to a mouthy comeback." That elicited a laugh from Teresa. "Winston and Frypan were also some of the leaders in the Maze and they're the first people to back you up or support you when things go wrong. And I only just met Aris this evening but he seems like he's willing to stick his neck out to do the right thing, and that's something I admire."
"What about Thomas?" Teresa asked, putting down an old picture and meeting Elle's eyes. "The two of you are really close but you haven't said anything about him yet."
If she was being honest, Elle didn't know how to go about describing Thomas with words. He was special; not just to her but as a person. "Thomas is... Thomas," Elle grinned shyly. "I don't really know what to say about him."
Curious, Teresa wondered, "Is he your boyfriend?"
"I'm not sure," Elle replied, feeling vulnerable with all the questions. She wasn't always comfortable talking about her complicated relationship with Thomas. But she also didn't want to make Teresa stop talking now that she was opening up. "The boys call him my boyfriend as a joke sometimes but we haven't exactly had the time to talk about the specifics of any of that."
"Of course, that makes sense," Teresa agreed, eyes widening as she realised she may have overstepped. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry."
"No, that's okay!" Elle replied. "You were just curious, it's totally fine. You're right, Thomas is really important to me and I think he might be the best person I've ever met. He's unbelievably brave and oftentimes impulsive, but I think that's just because he has a good gut and knows that he can trust his judgement. When I'm with him I feel like I'll never truly be alone, you know? We just understand each other and he always comes back for me," she explained.
Swallowing harshly, Teresa shyly looked at the floor after hearing Elle's honest portrayal of her thoughts on Thomas. "That sounds pretty great," Teresa acknowledged. "I can't wait until I know all of them as well as you do. If that day ever comes," she added.
"I'm sure it will. We have no plans to leave you behind and you'll feel like one of us in no time," Elle promised.
Teresa beamed. Even after the emotional roller coaster they had gone through, she really liked Elle. Not only was she the only female friend she had ever made, she was genuine and generous, and Teresa couldn't believe how lucky she was to be her friend.