Into The WICKED Maze | A Maze Runner Story (English Version)

64. One of them

"Hey, Anna, wake up!"
Newt gently shook my shoulder. I opened my eyes and realised it was light day. Sleepily I sat up and looked around. Next to me, Newt was just waking Chuck and a few metres away Minho was shaking Fry Pan's shoulder. Winston was already awake and stretching.
We had fallen asleep late, on the grass of course, because everything else had been destroyed after all. We hadn't seen anything more of Gally and the other gladers, only that they had brought the unconscious Thomas and Teresa into the hole had been impossible to miss, because she had shouted at Gally in one go.
"Come on, let's go check on Thomas," Newt said, holding out a hand for me to pull myself up by.
Together with Minho and Chuck we made our way to the Slammer, for which we had to cross the entire glade. All around us the fires had gone out by now and the gladers were just carrying the bodies away. Winston and Fry Pan also began to help.
We reached the pit and saw that Thomas was still unconscious. Teresa was kneeling on the floor and had put his head on her lap while she stroked his hair, lost in thought. Somehow it looked sweet, I thought, and immediately wondered how I could think about such a thing in such a situation.
"Morning," we greeted her and sat down in front of the bars.
She nodded at us and I rested my chin on a bar while we waited for Thomas to finally regain consciousness.
At some point, it must have been half an hour or even more during which I had almost fallen back asleep, he suddenly opened his eyes and looked at Teresa.
"Hey," she said, stroking his hair again, "are you okay?"
He moved his head a little and was looking steadfastly into her eyes when Chuck interrupted.
"What the hell were you thinking?!" he asked angrily.
Now Thomas sat up and looked at us. "What happened?"
"Gally's taken control. He said we had a choice. Either join him or get banished at sundown with you." Newt sounded calm, but Thomas looked at him in horror as he straightened even more.
"And the others agreed to that?"
"Gally has everyone convinced that you're the reason all this has happened..." Teresa looked at him sadly.
Now Thomas sat down on his bottom and leaned against the wall.
"Well, he's been right so far," he said resignedly.
We looked at him confused.
"What are you talking about?" Minho asked.
"Did you remember?" Actually, I already knew the answer.
"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." Thomas paused and I stared at him. Suddenly I felt as if I remembered something. As he sat there looking at us, full of remorse or whatever it was, he looked so familiar that I was sure I remembered him.
As he continued to speak, my heart beat faster and faster and more and more fragmentary memories flashed before my mind's eye. My eyes fell on Teresa and she, too, seemed to remember something, for she stared blankly into space.
"They'd give us these challenges. They were experimenting on us. And then People started disappearing. Every month, one after the other, like clockwork."
"Sending them up into the maze?" Newt asked.
"Yeah, but not all of us."
"What do you mean?" Now he sounded suspicious.
Thomas paused before continuing to speak. I was still staring at him with wide eyes as I remembered the dreams I had had. The monitors that had shown the glade. The boy and girl who had sat there with Newt and me. Then Newt had no longer been with us. I remembered the sadness and despair I had felt when he had been taken from me. And suddenly they both had faces. I recognised Thomas and Teresa.
Everything became clearer now. I squinted my eyes and let the images fill my mind as Thomas continued to speak. And with every word he said, a new image appeared.
"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've been here, I... I was on the other side of it. And so were you," he said, looking at Teresa
"What?" she asked weakly.
"Teresa, we did this to them."
She shook her head in confusion. "No. That can't be true." A tear ran down her cheek.
"It is. I saw it."
"Why would they send us up if we were with them?"
Thomas shook his head. "It doesn't matter."
Now all the memories I was able to grasp seemed to be there. I had thought that if I remembered, I would then remember everything. But that was not the case. I remembered the monitors, Thomas and Teresa. I remembered that Newt and I had worked for them for a short time, but then they had brought him up first and then, apparently, me. But I didn't remember the other things, other people, other stories. A veil covered what I knew and shielded everything else from it. The memories seemed to me as if from another world, from another life, as if it had not been me who had experienced them.
And now, as Newt began to speak, I knew he was right. It didn't matter if and what I remembered. I was here now and this was my life, not what had been there before. And suddenly it didn't matter that I had forgotten my old self and my old life. What mattered were the people sitting next to me right now and what became of them - nothing more.
"He's right," he said. "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."
"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."
I hadn't even realised I had started to cry, but now I wiped the tears from my cheeks and reached for Newt's hand.
"Okay." Thomas's eyes were moist as well. "Okay, but we got to get through Gally first."
"I might know how to do that." Now everyone was looking at me.
And I started to tell them my plan.