Текст книги "The maze runner"

Автор книги: James Dashner

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"Anything different today?" Thomas asked, curious.

Minho reached down and patted his backpack, where his notes rested. "Just the usual wall movements. Nothing to get your skinny butt excited about."

Thomas took a long swig of water, looking up at the ivy-covered wall opposite them. He caught a flash of silver and red, something he'd seen more than once that day.

"What's the deal with those beetle blades?" he asked. They seemed to be everywhere. Then Thomas remembered what he'd seen in the Maze—so much had happened he hadn't had the chance to mention it. "And why do they have the word wicked written on their backs?"

"Never been able to catch one." Minho finished up his meal and put his lunch box away. "And we don't know what that word means—probably just something to scare us. But they have to be spies. For them. Only thing we can reckon."

"Who is them, anyway?" Thomas asked, ready for more answers. He hated the people behind the Maze. "Anybody have a clue?"

"We don't know jack about the stupid Creators." Minho's face reddened as he squeezed his hands together like he was choking someone. "Can't wait to rip their—"

But before the Keeper could finish, Thomas was on his feet and across the corridor. "What's that?" he interrupted, heading for a dull glimmer of gray he'd just noticed behind the ivy on the wall, about head high.

"Oh, yeah, that," Minho said, his voice completely indifferent.

Thomas reached in and pulled apart the curtains of ivy, then stared blankly at a square of metal riveted to the stone with words stamped across it in big capital letters. He put his hand out to run his fingers across them, as if he didn't believe his eyes.

WORLD IN CATASTROPHE: KILLZONE EXPERIMENT DEPARTMENT

He read the words aloud, then looked back at Minho. "What's this?" It gave him a chill—it had to have something to do with the Creators. "I don't know, shank. They're all over the place, like freaking labels for the nice pretty Maze they built. I quit bothering to look at 'em a long time ago."

Thomas turned back to stare at the sign, trying to suppress the feeling of doom that had risen inside him. "Not much here that sounds very good. Catastrophe. Killzone. Experiment. Real nice."

"Yeah, real nice, Greenie. Let's go."

Reluctantly, Thomas let the vines fall back into place and swung his backpack over his shoulders. And off they went, those six words burning holes in his mind.

An hour after lunch, Minho stopped at the end of a long corridor. It was straight, the walls, solid, with no hallways branching off.

"The last dead end," he said to Thomas. "Time to go back."

Thomas sucked in a deep breath, trying not to think about only being halfway done for the day. "Nothing new?"

"Just the usual changes to the way we got here—day's half over," Minho replied as he looked at his watch emotionlessly. "Gotta go back." Without waiting for a response, the Keeper turned and set off at a run in the direction from which they'd just come.

Thomas followed, frustrated that they couldn't take time to examine the walls, explore a little. He finally pulled in stride with Minho. "But—"

"Just shut it, dude. Remember what I said earlier—can't take any chances. Plus, think about it. You really think there's an exit anywhere? A secret trapdoor or something?"

"I don't know . . . maybe. Why do you ask it that way?"

Minho shook his head, spat a big wad of something nasty to his left. "There's no exit. It's just more of the same. A wall is a wall is a wall. Solid."

Thomas felt the heavy truth of it, but pushed back anyway "How do you know?"

"Because people willing to send Grievers after us aren't gonna give us an easy way out."

This made Thomas doubt the whole point of what they were doing. "Then why even bother coming out here?"

Minho looked over at him. "Why bother? Because it's here—gotta be a reason. But if you think we're gonna find a nice little gate that leads to Happy Town, you're smokin' cow klunk."

Thomas looked straight ahead, feeling so hopeless he almost slowed to a stop. "This sucks."

"Smartest thing you've said yet, Greenie."

Minho blew out a big puff of air and kept running, and Thomas did the only thing he knew to do. He followed.

The rest of the day was a blur of exhaustion to Thomas. He and Minho made it back to the Glade, went to the Map Room, wrote up the day's Maze route, compared it to the previous day's. Then there were the walls closing and dinner. Chuck tried talking to him several times, but all Thomas could do was nod and shake his head, only half hearing, he was so tired.

Before twilight faded to blackness, he was already in his new favorite spot in the forest corner, curled up against the ivy, wondering if he could ever run again. Wondering how he could possibly do the same thing tomorrow. Especially when it seemed so pointless. Being a Runner had lost its glamour. After one day.

Every ounce of the noble courage he'd felt, the will to make a difference, the promise to himself to reunite Chuck with his family—it all vanished into an exhausted fog of hopeless, wretched weariness.

He was somewhere very close to sleep when a voice spoke in his head, a pretty, feminine voice that sounded as if it came from a fairy goddess trapped in his skull. The next morning, when everything started going crazy, he'd wonder if the voice had been real or part of a dream. But he heard it all the same, and remembered every word: Tom, I just triggered the Ending.

CHAPTER 34

Thomas awoke to a weak, lifeless light. His first thought was that he must've gotten up earlier than usual, that dawn was still an hour away. But then he heard the shouts. And then he looked up, through the leafy canopy of branches.

The sky was a dull slab of gray—not the natural pale light of morning.

He jumped to his feet, put his hand on the wall to steady himself as he craned his neck to gawk toward the heavens. There was no blue, no black, no stars, no purplish fan of a creeping dawn. The sky, every last inch of it, was slate gray. Colorless and dead.

He looked down at his watch—it was a full hour past his mandatory waking time. The brilliance of the sun should've awakened him—had done so easily since he'd arrived at the Glade. But not today.

He glanced upward again, half expecting it to have changed back to normal. But it was all gray. Not cloudy, not twilight, not the early minutes of dawn. Just gray.

The sun had disappeared.

Thomas found most of the Gladers standing near the entrance to the Box, pointing at the dead sky, everyone talking at once. Based on the time, breakfast should've already been served, people should be working. But there was something about the largest object in the solar system vanishing that tended to disrupt normal schedules.

In truth, as Thomas silently watched the commotion, he didn't feel nearly as panicked or frightened as his instincts told him he ought to be. And it surprised him that so many of the others looked like lost chicks thrown from the coop. It was, in fact, ridiculous.

The sun obviously had not disappeared—that wasn't possible.

Though that was what it seemed like—signs of the ball of furious fire nowhere to be seen, the slanting shadows of morning absent. But he and all the Gladers were far too rational and intelligent to conclude such a thing. No, there had to be a scientifically acceptable reason for what they were witnessing. And whatever it was, to Thomas it meant one thing: the fact they could no longer see the sun probably meant they'd never been able to in the first place. A sun couldn't just disappear. Their sky had to have been—and still was—fabricated. Artificial.

In other words, the sun that had shone down on these people for two years, providing heat and life to everything, was not the sun at all. Somehow, it had been fake. Everything about this place was fake.

Thomas didn't know what that meant, didn't know how it was possible. But he knew it to be true—it was the only explanation his rational mind could accept. And it was obvious from the other Gladers' reactions that none of them had figured this out until now.

Chuck found him, and the look of fear on the boy's face pinched Thomas's heart.

"What do you think happened?" Chuck said, a pitiful tremor in his voice, his eyes glued to the sky. Thomas thought his neck must hurt something awful. "Looks like a big gray ceiling—close enough you could almost touch it."

Thomas followed Chuck's gaze and looked up. "Yeah, makes you wonder about this place." For the second time in twenty-four hours, Chuck had nailed it. The sky did look like a ceiling. Like the ceiling of a massive room. "Maybe something's broken. I mean, maybe it'll be back."

Chuck finally quit gawking and made eye contact with Thomas. "Broken? What's that supposed to mean?"

Before Thomas could answer, the faint memory of last night, before he fell asleep, came to him, Teresa's words inside his mind. She'd said, J just triggered the Ending. It couldn't be a coincidence, could it? a sour rot crept into his belly. Whatever the explanation, whatever that had been in the sky, the real sun or not, it was gone. And that couldn't be a good thing.

"Thomas?" Chuck asked, lightly tapping him on the upper arm.

"Yeah?" Thomas's mind felt hazy.

"What'd you mean by broken?" Chuck repeated.

Thomas felt like he needed time to think about it all. "Oh. I don't know. Must be things about this place we obviously don't understand. But you can't just make the sun disappear from space. Plus, there's still enough light to see by, as faint as it is. Where's that coming from?"

Chuck's eyes widened, as if the darkest, deepest secret of the universe had just been revealed to him. "Yeah, where is it coming from? What's going on, Thomas?"

Thomas reached out and squeezed the younger boy's shoulder. He felt awkward. "No clue, Chuck. Not a clue. But I'm sure Newt and Alby'U figure things out."

"Thomas!" Minho was running up to them. "Quit your leisure time with Chucky here and let's get going. We're already late."

Thomas was stunned. For some reason he'd expected the weird sky to throw all normal plans out the window.

"You're still going out there?" Chuck asked, clearly surprised as well. Thomas was glad the boy had asked the question for him.

"Of course we are, shank," Minho said. "Don't you have some sloppin' to do?" He looked from Chuck to Thomas. "If anything, gives us even more reason to get our butts out there. If the sun's really gone, won't be long before plants and animals drop dead, too. I think the desperation level just went up a notch."

The last statement struck Thomas deep down. Despite all his ideas—all the things he'd pitched to Minho—he wasn't eager to change how things had been done for the last two years. A mixture of excitement and dread swept over him when he realized what Minho was saying. "You mean we're going to stay out there overnight? Explore the walls a little more closely?"

Minho shook his head. "No, not yet. Maybe soon, though." He looked up toward the sky. "Man—what a way to wake up. Come on, let's go.

Thomas was quiet as he and Minho got their things ready and ate a lightning-fast breakfast. His thoughts were churning too much about the gray sky and what Teresa—at least, he thought it had been the girl—had told him in his mind to participate in any conversation.

What had she meant by the Ending? Thomas couldn't knock the feeling that he should tell somebody. Everybody.

But he didn't know what it meant, and he didn't want them to know he had a girl's voice in his head. They'd think he'd really gone bonkers, maybe even lock him up—and for good this time.

After a lot of deliberation, he decided to keep his mouth shut and went running with Minho for his second day of training, below a bleak and colorless sky.

They saw the Griever before they'd even made it to the door leading from Section Eight to Section One.

Minho was a few feet ahead of Thomas. He'd just rounded a corner to the right when he slammed to a stop, his feet almost skidding out from under him. He jumped back and grabbed Thomas by the shirt, pushing him against the wall.

"Shh," Minho whispered. "There's a freaking Griever up there."

Thomas widened his eyes in question, felt his heart pick up the pace, even though it had already been pumping hard and steady.

Minho simply nodded, then put his finger to his lips. He let go of Thomas's shirt and took a step back, then crept up to the corner around which he'd seen the Griever. Very slowly, he leaned forward to take a peek. Thomas wanted to scream at him to be careful.

Minho's head jerked back and he turned to face Thomas. His voice was still a whisper. "It's just sitting up there—almost like that dead one we saw."

"What do we do?" Thomas asked, as quietly as possible. He tried to ignore the panic flaring inside him. "Is it coming toward us?"

"No, idiot—I just told you it was sitting there."

"Well?" Thomas raised his hands to his sides in frustration. "What do we do?" Standing so close to a Griever seemed like a really bad idea.

Minho paused a few seconds, thinking before he spoke. "We have to go that way to get to our section. Let's just watch it awhile—if it comes after us, we'll run back to the Glade." He took another peek, then quickly looked over his shoulder. "Crap—it's gone! Come on!"

Minho didn't wait for a response, didn't see the look of horror Thomas had just felt widen his own eyes. Minho took off running in the direction where he'd seen the Griever. Though his instincts told him not to, Thomas followed.

He sprinted down the long corridor after Minho, turned left, then right. At every turn, they slowed so the Keeper could look around the corner first. Each time he whispered back to Thomas that he'd seen the tail end of the Griever disappearing around the next turn. This went on for ten minutes, until they came to the long hallway that ended at the Cliff, where beyond lay nothing but the lifeless sky. The Griever was charging toward that sky.

Minho stopped so abruptly Thomas almost ran him over. Then Thomas stared in shock as up ahead the Griever dug in with its spikes and spun forward right up to the Cliff's edge, then off, into the gray abyss. The creature disappeared from sight, a shadow swallowed by more shadow.

CHAPTER 35

"That settles it," Minho said.

Thomas stood next to him on the edge of the Cliff, staring at the gray nothingness beyond. There was no sign of anything, to the left, right, down, up, or ahead, for as far as he could see. Nothing but a wall of blankness.

"Settles what?" Thomas asked.

"We've seen it three times now. Something's up."

"Yeah." Thomas knew what he meant, but waited for Minho's explanation anyway.

"That dead Griever I found—it ran this way, and we never saw it come back or go deeper into the Maze. Then those suckers we tricked into jumping past us."

"Tricked?" Thomas said. "Maybe not such a trick."

Minho looked over at him, contemplative. "Hmm. Anyway, then this." He pointed out at the abyss. "Not much doubt anymore– somehow the Grievers can leave the Maze this way. Looks like magic, but so does the sun disappearing."

"If they can leave this way," Thomas added, continuing Minho's line of reasoning, "so could we." A thrill of excitement shot through him.

Minho laughed. "There's your death wish again. Wanna hang out with the Grievers, have a sandwich, maybe?"

Thomas felt his hopes drop. "Got any better ideas?"

"One thing at a time, Greenie. Let's get some rocks and test this place out. There has to be some kind of hidden exit."

Thomas helped Minho as they scrabbled around the corners and crannies of the Maze, picking up as many loose stones as possible. They got more by thumbing cracks in the wall, spilling broken chunks onto the ground. When they finally had a sizable pile, they hauled it over right next to the edge and took a seat, feet dangling over the side. Thomas looked down and saw nothing but a gray descent.

Minho pulled out his pad and pencil, placed them on the ground next to him. "All right, we gotta take good notes. And memorize it in that shuck head of yours, too. If there's some kind of optical illusion hiding an exit from this place, I don't wanna be the one who screws up when the first shank tries to jump into it."

"That shank oughtta be the Keeper of the Runners," Thomas said, trying to make a joke to hide his fear. Being this close to a place where Grievers might come out at any second was making him sweat. "You'd wanna hold on to one beauty of a rope."

Minho picked up a rock from their pile. "Yeah. Okay, let's take turns tossing them, zigzagging back and forth out there. If there's some kind of magical exit, hopefully it'll work with rocks, too—make them disappear."

Thomas took a rock and carefully threw it to their left, just in front of where the left wall of the corridor leading to the Cliff met the edge. The jagged piece of stone fell. And fell. Then disappeared into the gray emptiness.

Minho went next. He tossed his rock just a foot or so farther out than Thomas had. It also fell far below. Thomas threw another one, another foot out. Then Minho. Each rock fell to the depths. Thomas kept following Minho's orders—they continued until they'd marked a line reaching at least a dozen feet from the Cliff, then moved their target pattern a foot to the right and started coming back toward the Maze.

All the rocks fell. Another line out, another line back. All the rocks fell. They threw enough rocks to cover the entire left half of the area in front of them, covering the distance anyone—or anything—could possibly jump. Thomas's discouragement grew with every toss, until it turned into a heavy mass of blah.

He couldn't help chiding himself–it'd been a stupid idea.

Then Minho's next rock disappeared.

It was the strangest, most hard-to-believe thing Thomas had ever seen.

Minho had thrown a large chunk, a piece that had fallen from one of the cracks in the wall. Thomas had watched, deeply concentrating on each and every rock. This one left Minho's hand, sailed forward, almost in the exact center of the Cliff line, started its descent to the unseen ground far below. Then it vanished, as if it had fallen through a plane of water or mist.

One second there, falling. Next second gone.

Thomas couldn't speak.

"We've thrown stuff off the Cliff before," Minho said. "How could we have ever missed that? I never saw anything disappear. Never."

Thomas coughed; his throat felt raw. "Do it again—maybe we blinked weird or something."

Minho did, throwing it at the same spot. And once again, it winked out of existence.

"Maybe you weren't looking carefully other times you threw stuff over," Thomas said. "I mean, it should be impossible—sometimes you don't look very hard for things you don't believe will or can happen."

They threw the rest of the rocks, aiming at the original spot and every inch around it. To Thomas's surprise, the spot in which the rocks disappeared proved only to be a few feet square.

"No wonder we missed it," Minho said, furiously writing down notes and dimensions, his best attempt at a diagram. "It's kind of small."

"The Grievers must barely fit through that thing." Thomas kept his eyes riveted to the area of the invisible floating square, trying to burn the distance and location in his mind, remember exactly where it was. "And when they come out, they must balance on the rim of the hole and jump over the empty space to the Cliff edge—it's not that far. If I could jump it, I'm sure it's easy for them."

Minho finished drawing, then looked up at the special spot. "How's this possible, dude? What're we looking at?"

"Like you said, it's not magic. Must be something like our sky turning gray. Some kind of optical illusion or hologram, hiding a doorway. This place is all jacked up." And, Thomas admitted to himself, kind of cool. His mind craved to know what kind of technology could be behind it all.

"Yeah, jacked up is right. Come on." Minho got up with a grunt and put on his backpack. "Better get as much of the Maze run as we can. With our new decorated sky, maybe other weird things have happened out there. "We'll tell Newt and Alby about this tonight. Don't know how it helps, but at least we know now where the shuck Grievers go."

"And probably where they come from," Thomas said as he took one last look at the hidden doorway. "The Griever Hole."

"Yeah, good a name as any. Let's go."

Thomas sat and stared, waiting for Minho to make a move. Several minutes passed in silence and Thomas realized his friend must be as fascinated as he was. Finally, without saying a word, Minho turned to leave. Thomas reluctantly followed and they ran into the gray-dark Maze.

* * *

Thomas and Minho found nothing but stone walls and ivy.

Thomas did the vine cutting and all the note-taking. It was hard for him to notice any changes from the day before, but Minho pointed out without thinking about it where the walls had moved. When they reached the final dead end and it was time to head back home, Thomas felt an almost uncontrollable urge to bag everything and stay there overnight, see what happened.

Minho seemed to sense it and grabbed his shoulder. "Not yet, dude. Not yet."

And so they'd gone back.

A somber mood rested over the Glade, an easy thing to happen when all is gray. The dim light hadn't changed a bit since they'd woken up that morning, and Thomas wondered if anything would change at "sunset" either.

Minho headed straight for the Map Room as they came through the West Door.

Thomas was surprised. He thought it was the last thing they should do. "Aren't you dying to tell Newt and Alby about the Griever Hole?"

"Hey, we're still Runners," Minho said, "and we still have a job." Thomas followed him to the steel door of the big concrete block and Minho turned to give him a wan smile. "But yeah, we'll do it quick so we can talk to them."

There were already other Runners milling about the room, drawing up their Maps when they entered. No one said a word, as if all speculation on the new sky had been exhausted. The hopelessness in the room made Thomas feel as if he were walking through mud-thick water. He knew he should also be exhausted, but he was too excited to feel it—he couldn't wait to see Newt's and Alby's reactions to the news about the Cliff.

He sat down at the table and drew up the day's Map based on his memory and notes, Minho looking over his shoulder the whole time, giving pointers. "I think that hall was actually cut off here, not there," and "Watch your proportions," and "Draw straighter, you shank." He was annoying but helpful, and fifteen minutes after entering the room, Thomas examined his finished product. Pride washed through him—it was just as good as any other Map he'd seen.

"Not bad," Minho said. "For a Greenie, anyway."

Minho got up and walked over to the Section One trunk and opened it. Thomas knelt down in front of it and took out the Map from the day before and held it up side by side with the one he'd just drawn.

"What am I looking for?" he asked.

"Patterns. But looking at two days' worth isn't gonna tell you jack. You really need to study several weeks, look for patterns, anything. I know there's something there, something that'll help us. Just can't find it yet. Like I said, it sucks."

Thomas had an itch in the back of his mind, the same one he'd felt the very first time in this room. The Maze walls, moving. Patterns. All those straight lines—were they suggesting an entirely different kind of map? Pointing to something? He had such a heavy feeling that he was missing an obvious hint or clue.

Minho tapped him on the shoulder. "You can always come back and study your butt off after dinner, after we talk to Newt and Alby. Come on."

Thomas put the papers in the trunk and closed it, hating the twinge of unease he felt. It was like a prick in his side. Walls moving, straight lines, patterns . . . There had to be an answer. "Okay, let's go."

They'd just stepped outside the Map Room, the heavy door clanging shut behind them, when Newt and Alby walked up, neither one of them looking very happy. Thomas's excitement immediately turned to worry.

"Hey," Minho said. "We were just—"

"Get on with it," Alby interrupted. "Ain't got time to waste. Find anything? Anything?"

Minho actually recoiled at the harsh rebuke, but his face seemed more confused to Thomas than hurt or angry. "Nice to see you, too. Yeah, we did find something, actually."

Oddly, Alby almost looked disappointed. "Cuz this whole shuck place is fallin' to pieces." He shot Thomas a nasty glare as if it were all his fault.

What's wrong with him? Thomas thought, feeling his own anger light up. They'd been working hard all day and this was their thanks?

"What do you mean?" Minho asked. "What else happened?"

Newt answered, nodding toward the Box as he did so. "Bloody supplies didn't come today. Come every week for two years, same time, same day. But not today."

All four of them looked over at the steel doors attached to the ground. To Thomas, there seemed to be a shadow hovering over it darker than the gray air surrounding everything else.

"Oh, we're shucked for good now," Minho whispered, his reaction alerting Thomas to how grave the situation really was.

"No sun for the plants," Newt said, "no supplies from the bloody Box—yeah, I'd say we're shucked, all right."

Alby had folded his arms, still glaring at the Box as if trying to open the doors with his mind. Thomas hoped their leader didn't bring up what he'd seen in the Changing—or anything related to Thomas, for that matter. Especially now.

"Yeah, anyway," Minho continued. "We found something weird."

Thomas waited, hoping that Newt or Alby would have a positive reaction to the news, maybe even have further information to shed light on the mystery.

Newt raised his eyebrows. "What?" Minho took a full three minutes to explane, staring with the Griever they followed and ending with the results of their rock-throwing experiment.

"Must lead to where the . . . ya know... Grievers live," he said when finished.

"The Griever Hole," Thomas added. All three of them looked at him, annoyed, as if he had no right to speak. But for the first time, being treated like the Greenie didn't bother him that much.

"Gotta bloody see that for myself," Newt said. Then murmured, "Hard to believe." Thomas couldn't have agreed more.

"I don't know what we can do," Minho said. "Maybe we could build something to block off that corridor."

"No way," Newt said. "Shuck things can climb the bloody walls, remember? Nothing we could build would keep them out.

But a commotion outside the Homestead shifted their attention away from the conversation. A group of Gladers stood at the front door of the house, shouting to be heard over each other. Chuck was in the group, and when he saw Thomas and the others he ran over, a look of excitement spread across his face. Thomas could only wonder what crazy thing had happened now.

"What's going on? " Newt asked. "She's awake!" Chuck yelled. "The girl's awak!"

Thomas's insides twisted; he leaned against the concrete wall of the Map Room. The girl. The girl who spoke in his head. He wanted to run before it happened again, before she spoke to him in his mind.

But it was too late.

Tom, I don't know any of these people. Come get me! It's all fading. . .

I'm forgetting everything but you. . . . I have to tell you things! But it's all fading. . . .

He couldn't understand how she did it, how she was inside his head.

Teresa paused, then said something that made no sense. The Maze is a code, Tom. The Maze is a code.

CHAPTER 36

Thomas didn't want to see her. He didn't want to see anybody.

As soon as Newt set off to go and talk to the girl, Thomas silently slipped away, hoping no one would notice him in the excitement. With everyone's thoughts on the stranger waking up from her coma, it proved easy. He skirted the edge of the Glade, then, breaking into a run, he headed for his place of seclusion behind the Deadhead forest.

He crouched in the corner, nestled in the ivy, and threw his blanket over himself, head and all. Somehow, it seemed like a way to hide from Teresa's intrusion into his mind. A few minutes passed, his heart finally calming to a slow roll.

"Forgetting about you was the worst part."

At first, Thomas thought it was another message in his head; he squeezed his fists against his ears. But no, it'd been . . . different. He'd heard it with his ears. A girl's voice. Chills creeping up his spine, he slowly lowered the blanket.

Teresa stood to his right, leaning against the massive stone wall. She looked so different now, awake and alert—standing. Wearing a long-sleeved white shirt, blue jeans, and brown shoes, she looked– impossibly—even more striking than when he'd seen her in the coma. Black hair framed the fair skin of her face, with eyes the blue of pure flame.

"Tom, do you really not remember me?" Her voice was soft, a contrast from the crazed, hard sound he'd heard from her after she first arrived, when she'd delivered the message that everything was going to change.

"You mean . . . you remember me?" he asked, embarrassed at the squeak that escaped on the last word.

"Yes. No. Maybe." She threw her arms up in disgust. "I can't explain it."

Thomas opened his mouth, then closed it without saying anything.

"I remember remembering," she muttered, sitting down with a heavy sigh; she pulled her legs up to wrap her arms around her knees. "Feelings. Emotions. Like I have all these shelves in my head, labeled for memories and faces, but they're empty. As if everything before this is just on the other side of a white curtain. Including you."

"But how do you know me?" He felt like the walls were spinning around him.

Teresa turned toward him. "I don't know. Something about before we came to the Maze. Something about us. It's mostly empty, like I said."

"You know about the Maze? Who told you? You just woke up."

"I . . . It's all very confusing right now." She held a hand out. "But I know you're my friend."

Almost in a daze, Thomas pulled the blanket completely off and leaned forward to shake her hand. "I like how you call me Tom." As soon as it came out, he was sure he couldn't have possibly said anything dumber.