Two Days Later
“Newt! Alby!” Chuck yelled, running towards me with arms waving, “Thomas woke up! He wants to have a Gathering!”
“I’ll go.” I said, handing the hammer and nails I was holding to Alby. We had been repairing barricades— something that felt utterly futile anyway.
Pushing my negative thoughts aside, I limped up the stairs, trying to ignore my leg. It was growing stiffer with every passing day.
The long trek to the top of the stairs was rewarded instantly.
Thomas was sitting on the infirmary bed, looking healthy. The color had returned to his face, and his eyes were alight with some emotion I could not identify.
I sat down next to him on the foot of the bed, ignoring the uncomfortable jangle of my own emotions. “Tommy- you barely look sick.”
He nodded, his face growing weary, “I feel a little queasy, but other than that, I’m fine. Thought it’d be a lot worse."
The shank. So I had been right. He had been planning it. I shook my head, annoyed and awed at the same time. “I know why you did it. What memories came back? Anything that’ll help?”
“We need to have a Gathering,” Tommy said, sounding more confident than I thought anybody could after the Changing, “Before I start forgetting some of this stuff.”
“Yeah, Chuck told me- we’ll do it. But why? What did you figure out?”
The answer didn’t surprise me. “It’s a test, Newt- the whole thing is a test.”
I nodded. “Like a experiment.”
He shook his head, looking pained, “No, you don’t get it. They’re weeding us out, seeing if we’ll give up, finding the best of us. Throwing variables at us, trying to make us quit. Testing our ability to hope and fight,” he said.
I cringed, my chest tightening sickeningly. I had lost hope. I had given up the fight. What did that make me?
It was pure dumb luck that had kept me here.
Otherwise I would be dead.
Biting my lips, I pushed away my thoughts, deliberating on what Thomas was saying.
“Sending Teresa here and shutting us down was only the last part, one more... final analysis. Now it’s time for the last test. To escape.”
One word was important of that whole sentence. One word. Escape.
My body seemed to hum, in spite of my best instincts. Was Tommy saying there was an exit? “What do you mean? You know a way out?”
“Yeah. Call the Gathering. Now.”
A way out...
With those three words, the hope that had withered and died within me so long ago exploded to life in brilliant flame.
A way out.
To Tommy, the idiot hero who had made it all happen, I could not voice my thoughts. Instead I nodded, and went to call the Gladers to order.
YOU ARE READING
The Glader
Fiksi PenggemarWhat happened after Thomas came to the Glade? Sure, he was sent by WICKED to solve it, but he wouldn't have gotten far without Newt, Alby, Minho and Teresa. And Newt has his own story to tell. Now that the Ending is happening, nothing is for c...
