THE SCORCH TRIALS

Thomas shrugged, hoping his face didn't betray how annoyed he was. How was he supposed to know what was going on?

Minho and Aris had reappeared from the bathroom, both of them absently rubbing the backs of their necks as they searched the room for answers. It didn't take long for them to realize that the others had similar tattoos. Frypan had walked over to the door leading back out to the common room and was just about to touch the palm of his hand to the spot where the broken handle used to be.

'Wait!' Thomas shouted on impulse. He ran over to join Frypan at the door, sensing Newt right behind him.

'Why?' Frypan asked, his hand still hovering just inches from the door.

'I don't know,' Thomas replied, not sure if he could even be heard over the clanging sounds. 'It's an alarm. Maybe something really bad is happening.'

'Yeah!' Frypan yelled back. 'And maybe we need to get out of here!'

Without waiting to see what Thomas said, he pushed the door. When it didn't move, he pushed harder. When it still didn't budge, he leaned up against it with his full weight, shoulder first.

Nothing. It was closed as tight as if it were bricked shut.

'You broke the shuck handle!' Frypan screamed, then slapped the door with the palm of his hand.

Thomas didn't want to shout anymore; he was tired and his throat hurt. He turned and leaned back against the wall, folded his arms. Most of the Gladers seemed as run-down as Thomas—sick of looking for answers or a way out. All of them were either sitting on the beds or standing around with blank expressions on their faces.

Out of desperation more than anything, Thomas called to Teresa again. Then several times more. But she didn't respond, and with all the blaring noise, he didn't know if he could have focused enough to hear her anyway. He still felt her absence; it was like waking up one day with no teeth in your mouth. You wouldn't need to run to the mirror to know they were gone.

Then the alarm stopped.

Never before had silence seemed to have its own sound. Like a buzzing hive of bees, it settled on the room with ferocity, making Thomas reach up and wiggle a finger in each ear. Every breath, every sigh in the room was like an explosion compared to the bizarre haze of quiet.

Newt was the first one to speak. 'Don't tell me we're still gonna get bloody Newbies thrown in our laps.'

'Where's the Box in this shuck place?' Minho muttered sarcastically. A slight creak made Thomas look sharply over at the door to the common area. It had swung open several inches, a slice of darkness marking where it now stood ajar. Someone had turned off the lights on the other side. Frypan backed up a step. 'Guessin' they want us to go out there now,' Minho said. 'Then why don't you go first,' Frypan offered.

Minho had already started moving. 'No problem. Maybe we'll have a new little shank to pick on and kick in the butt when we got nothin' else to do.' He made it to the door, then paused and looked sideways at Thomas. His voice turned surprisingly soft. 'We could use another Chuck.'

Thomas knew he shouldn't have been upset. If anything, Minho was trying—in his own strange way—to show that he missed Chuck just as much as everyone else. But being reminded of his friend, and at such an odd moment, made Thomas angry. Instinct told him to ignore it—he was having a hard enough time dealing with the things going on around him. He needed to separate himself from his feelings for a while and just move forward. Step by step. Figure it all out.

'Yeah,' he finally said. 'You going through or you need me to go first?'

'What did your tattoo say?' Minho responded quietly, ignoring Thomas's question.

'Doesn't matter. Let's go out there.'

Minho nodded, still not looking directly at him. Then he smiled, and whatever had been troubling him so deeply appeared to vanish, replaced by his usual laid-back attitude. 'Good that. If some zombie starts eating my leg, save me.'

'Deal.' Thomas wanted him to hurry and get on with it. He knew they were on the edge of yet another great change in their ridiculous journey, and he didn't want to draw it out any longer.

Minho pushed open the door. The single bar of blackness became a wide swath of it, the common area now as dark as it had been when they'd first left the boys' dorm. Minho stepped through the doorway, and Thomas followed right on his heels.

'Wait here,' Minho whispered. 'No need playing bumper cars with the dead folks again. Let me find the light switches first.'

'Why would they have turned them off?'Thomas asked. 'I mean, who turned them off?'

Minho looked back at him; the light from Aris's room spilled across his face, illuminating the smirk set firmly there. 'Why do you even bother asking questions, dude? Nothing has ever made sense and it probably never will. Now slim it and sit still.'

Minho was quickly swallowed by the darkness. Thomas heard his soft footsteps on the carpet and the swish sound of his hand running along the wall as he walked.

'Here they are!' he shouted from the spot that seemed about right to Thomas.

A few clicks sounded and then lights blazed throughout the room. For the tiniest fraction of a second, Thomas didn't realize what was so starkly different about the place. But then it hit him, and as if that awakened his other senses as well, he realized that the horrible smell of rotting corpses had vanished. And now he knew why.

The bodies were gone, with no sign that they'd ever been there in the first place.

CHAPTER 8

Several seconds passed before Thomas realized he'd stopped breathing. Sucking in a deep pull of air, he gaped at the now-empty room. No bloated, purpled-skinned bodies. No stink.

Newt nudged past him, walking forward with his slight limp until he stood in the very center of the room's carpeted floor. 'This is impossible,' he said, turning in a slow circle, gazing up at the ceiling where the corpses had hung from ropes only minutes earlier. 'Not enough time passed for someone to get them out. And no one else even came into this buggin' room. We would've heard them!'

Thomas stepped to the side and leaned against the wall as the other Gladers and Aris came out of the small dorm room. A hushed sense of awe spread across the group as one by one, each person noticed the missing dead. As for Thomas, he once again felt a numbness, like he just might be done feeling surprised at anything.

'You're right,' Minho said to Newt. 'We were in there with the door closed for, what, twenty minutes? No way anyone could've moved all those bodies that quickly. Plus, this place is locked from the inside.'

'Not to mention getting rid of the smell,'Thomas added. Minho nodded.

'Well, you shanks are right smart,' Frypan said through a huff. 'But take a look around. They're gone. So whatever you think, somehow they got rid of them.'

Thomas didn't feel like arguing about it—or even talking about it. So the dead bodies were gone. They'd seen stranger stuff.

'Hey,' Winston said. 'Those crazy people quit screaming and yelling.'

Thomas put his weight back on his feet, listened. Silence. 'I thought we just couldn't hear them from Aris's room. But you're right—they stopped.'

Soon everyone was running for the larger dorm room on the far side of the common area. Thomas followed, intensely curious to look out the windows and see the world outside. Before, with the Cranks screaming and pressing their faces against the iron bars, he'd been too horrified to get a good view.