The Scorch Trials - James Dashner [114]
“Shuck it,” Thomas finally said. “Just keep talking.”
“All right,” Teresa said. “There’s a lot of stuff to explain, so from now on just keep quiet and listen. Got it?”
Thomas’s legs were starting to burn from their steady pace on the slope. “Okay, but … how do you know when you’re talking to me and when you’re talking to him? How does that work?”
“It just does. That’s like me asking how you know when you’re telling your right leg to move and when you’re telling your left leg to move. I just … know. It’s built into my brain somehow.”
“We’ve done it, too, man,” Aris said. “Don’t you remember?”
“Of course I remember,” Thomas muttered, annoyed and frustrated on so many levels. If only he could have everything back—every last memory—he knew the pieces would fall into place and he could just move forward. He couldn’t fathom why WICKED felt it was so important to keep their minds clean of memory. And why the occasional leakage lately? Was that on purpose or an accident? A lingering effect of the Changing?
Too many questions. Too many shuck questions, all without answers. “All right,” he finally said. “I’ll keep my mouth and brain shut. Keep going.”
“We can talk about Aris and me later. I don’t even remember what we spoke about—I lost almost everything when I woke up. Our comas had to be part of the Variables, so maybe we could communicate just so we wouldn’t go crazy. I mean, we were part of setting it all up, right?”
“Setting it all up?” Thomas asked. “I don’t—”
Teresa reached forward and swatted him on the back. “Thought you were gonna be quiet?”
“Yeah,” Thomas grumbled.
“Anyway, these people came into my room dressed in those creepy outfits and my telepathy with you cut off. I was scared and only half awake. Part of me thought it was just a bad nightmare. Then the next thing I knew, they put something over my mouth that smelled horrible and then I passed out. When I woke up I was lying in a bed in a different room and a bunch of people were sitting in chairs on the opposite side of this weird glass wall. I couldn’t see it until I touched it—almost like a force field or something.”
“Yeah,” Thomas said. “We had something like that, too.”
“So then they started talking to me. That’s when they told me this whole plan of what Aris and I had to do to you—and they expected me to tell him. By, you know, speaking in his mind, even though he was now with your group. Our group. Group A. They took me from my room and sent me to be with Group B; then they told us about the mission to the safe haven, about having the Flare. We were scared, confused, but we had no choice. We went through these underground tunnels until we got to the mountains—we avoided the city altogether. When you and I met in that little building, and then everything that happened from the time we came down to you in the valley with all those weapons—all of that was planned.”
Thomas thought about the sketchy memories he’d had in his dreams. Something told him he’d known that a scenario like this might need to happen before he ever went to the Glade and the Maze. He had a hundred questions to ask Teresa, but decided to hold back for a little while longer.
They turned at another switchback; then Teresa continued. “I only know two things for sure. One, they said that if I did anything against their plan they’d kill you. Said they ‘had other options,’ whatever that means. The second thing I know is that the reason for all this was that you had to truly and absolutely feel betrayed. The whole purpose of what we did to you was to ensure that that happened.”
Again Thomas thought of the memories. He and Teresa had both used the word patterns right before he left her. What did