Thomas was starting to think they’d actually reach the first buildings sometime the next day.

Even though they didn’t need the cover of their sheet at the moment, Aris still jogged right next to him, and Thomas felt like talking. “Tell me more about your whole Maze thing.”

Aris’s breaths were even; he seemed to be in just as good shape as Thomas. “My whole Maze thing? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ve never really told us the details. What was it like for you? How long were you there? How’d you get out?”

Aris answered over the soft crunch, crunch, crunch of their footsteps on the desert ground. “I’ve talked with some of your friends, and it sounds like a lot of it was exactly the same. Just… girls instead of guys. Some of them had been there for two years, the rest had shown up one at a time, once a month. Then came Rachel, then me the next day, in a coma. I barely remember anything, just those last few crazy days after I finally woke up.”

He went on to explain what had happened, and so much of it matched what Thomas and the Gladers had been through, it was just plain bizarre. Almost impossible to believe. Aris came out of his coma, said something about the Ending, the walls quit shutting at night, their Box stopped coming, they figured out the Maze had a code, on and on and on until the escape. Which went down almost the same as the Gladers’ terrifying experience, except less of the girl group died-if they were tough like Teresa, this didn’t surprise Thomas in the least.

In the end, once Aris and his group were in the final chamber, a girl named Beth-who’d disappeared days earlier, just like Gally had-killed Rachel, right before rescuers came in and whisked them away to the gym Aris had mentioned before. Then the rescuers took him to the place where the Gladers had finally discovered him-what had been Teresa’s room.

If that was what had happened. Who knew how things worked anymore, after seeing what could happen at the Cliff and the Flat Trans that had taken them to the tunnel. Not to mention the bricked-up walls and the name change on Aris’s door.

It all gave Thomas a big fat headache.

When he tried to think of Group B and imagine their roles-how he and Aris were basically switched, and how Aris was actually Teresa’s counterpart-it twisted his mind. The fact that Chuck had been killed in the end instead of him… that was the only major difference that stood out in the parallels. Were the setups meant to instigate certain conflicts or provoke reactions for WICKED’s studies?

“It’s all kind of freaky, huh?” Aris asked after letting Thomas digest his story for a while.

“I don’t know what the word for it is. But it blows me away how the two groups went through these trippy parallel experiments. Or tests, trials, whatever they were. I mean, if they’re testing our responses, I guess it makes sense that we were put through the same thing. Weird, though.”

Right when Thomas stopped speaking the girl in the distance let out a shriek even louder than her now-regular cries of pain and he felt a fresh rush of horror.

“I think I know,” Aris said, so quietly Thomas wasn’t sure he’d heard him correctly.

“Huh?”

“I think I know. Why there were two groups. Are two groups.”

Thomas looked over at him, could barely see the surprising look of calm on his face. “You do? What then?”

Aris still didn’t seem very winded. “Well, actually I have two ideas. One is I think these people-WICKED, whoever they are-are trying to weed out the best of both groups to use us somehow. Maybe even breed us or something like that.”

“What?” Thomas was so surprised he almost forgot about the screaming. He couldn’t believe anyone would be so sick. “Breed us? Come on.”

“After going through the Maze and what we just saw happen in that tunnel, you think breeding is far-fetched? Give me a break.”

“Good that.” Thomas had to admit that the kid had a point. “Okay, so what was your other theory?” As he asked it Thomas could feel the weariness brought on by the run settling in; his throat felt like someone had poured a glassful of sand down his gullet.

“Kind of the opposite,” Aris responded. “That instead of wanting survivors from both groups, they only want one group to live through to the end. So they’re either weeding out people from the guys and the girls, or an entire group altogether. Either way, it’s the only explanation I can think of.”

Thomas thought about what he’d said for quite some time before responding. “But what about the stuff the Rat Man said? That they’re testing our responses, building some kind of blueprint? Maybe it’s an experiment. Maybe they don’t plan for any of us to survive. Maybe they’re studying our brains and our reactions and our genes and everything else. When it’s all done, we’ll be dead and they’ll have lots of reports to read.”

“Hmm,” Aris grunted, considering. “Possibly. I keep trying to figure out why they had one member of the opposite sex in each group.”

“Maybe to see what kind of fights or problems it would cause. Study people’s reactions-it’s kind of a unique situation.” Thomas almost wanted to laugh. “I love how we’re talking about this-like we’re deciding when we need to stop for a klunk.”

Aris actually did laugh, a dry chuckle that made Thomas feel better-actually made him like the new kid even more. “Man, don’t say that. I’ve had to go for at least an hour.”

It was Thomas’s turn to snicker, and right on cue, like he’d heard Aris calling for it, Minho yelled out for everyone to stop.

“Potty break,” he said with his hands on his hips as he caught his breath. “Bury your klunk and don’t do it too close. We’ll rest for fifteen, then we’ll just walk awhile. I know you shanks can’t keep up with Runners like me and Thomas.”

Thomas tuned out-he didn’t need directions on how to use the bathroom-and turned to get a look at where they’d stopped. He took a deep, full breath, and when he relaxed his eyes caught on something. A dark shadow of a shape a few hundred yards in front of them, but not directly in the path of their journey. A square of darkness against the faint glow of the town up ahead. It stood out so distinctly he couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed it until now.

“Hey!” he yelled, pointing toward it. “Looks like a little building up there, just a few minutes away, to the right some. You guys see it?”

“Yeah, I see it,” Minho responded, walking up to stand next to him. “Wonder what it is.”

Before Thomas could respond, two things happened almost simultaneously.

First, the haunted screams of the mystery girl stopped, instantly, cut short as if a door had closed on her. Then, stepping out from behind the dark building up ahead, the figure of a girl appeared, long hair flowing from her shadowed head like black silk.

CHAPTER 20

Thomas couldn’t help it. His first instinct was to hope it was her, call out to her. To hope that against all odds she was there, just a few hundred yards away, waiting for him.

Teresa?

Nothing.

Teresa? Teresa!

Nothing. The abscess left when she disappeared was still in his head-like an empty pool. But… it could be her. Might be her. Maybe something had happened to their ability to communicate.

Once the girl had stepped out from behind the building, or more likely from inside the building, she just stood there. Despite being obscured completely by shadow, something about her stance made it obvious she was facing them, staring at them with arms folded.

“You think that’s Teresa?” Newt asked, as if he’d read Thomas’s mind.

Thomas nodded before he knew what he was doing. He quickly looked around to see if anyone had noticed. Didn’t seem so. “No clue,” he finally said.

“You think she was the one screaming?” Frypan asked. “It stopped right when she walked out.”