James Dashner - The Scorch Trials

Thomas felt all this like a festering disease, and seeing the others only made it worse, a stark reminder that this wasn’t something he could just ignore. That it was real, and death waited just around the corner.

Listless sleep. Bathroom. Water. Trudge back to bed. Listless sleep-without any more of the memory-dreams he’d experienced. It became a horrendous cycle, broken up only by thoughts of Teresa, her harsh words to him the only thing that lightened the prospect of death, even if only a little. She’d been the only thing he could grasp for hope after the Maze and Chuck’s death. And now she was gone, there was no food, and three long days had passed.

Hunger. Misery.

He’d quit bothering to look at his watch-it only made time drag and reminded his body how long it’d been since he’d eaten-but he thought it was roughly midafternoon of the third day when a humming sound abruptly began from the common area.

He stared at the door leading out there, knew he should get up and go check it out. But his mind had already been slipping into another one of those hazy half-naps, the world around him foggy.

Maybe he’d imagined it. But then he heard it again.

He told himself to get up.

He fell asleep instead.

“Thomas.”

It was Minho’s voice. Weak, but stronger than it had been the last time he’d heard it.

“Thomas. Dude, wake up.”

Thomas opened his eyes, amazed he’d survived another nap without dying. Things were blurry for a second, and at first he didn’t believe that what he thought was just a few inches from his face was real. But then its image sharpened, and the red roundness of it, with flecks of green scattered across its shiny surface, made him feel like he was looking on heaven itself.

An apple.

“Where’d you…” He didn’t bother to finish, those two words alone sapping his strength.

“Just eat it,” Minho said, followed by a wet crunch.

Thomas glanced up to see his friend munching on his own apple. Then, drawing the last remnants of energy from somewhere deep inside himself, he pushed himself up onto an elbow and grabbed the fruit lying on the bed. He lifted it to his mouth and took a small bite. The burst of flavor and juice was a glorious thing.

Moaning, he attacked the rest of it and had eaten down to its stumpy core before Minho had even finished his-despite the head start.

“Slim yourself nice and calm,” Minho said. “Eat like that and you’ll just throw it right back up. Here’s another one-try slowing down this time.”

He handed a second apple to Thomas, who took it without saying thank you and chomped a big bite. As he chewed, resolving to swallow before stuffing another chunk in his mouth, he realized he could actually feel the first traces of energy trickling through his body.

“This is so good,” he mumbled. “This is so shuckin’ good.”

“You still sound like an idiot when you use Glader words,” Minho responded before taking another bite of his apple.

Thomas ignored him. “Where’d these come from?”

Minho hesitated in the middle of chewing, then resumed. “Found them out in the common room. Along with… something else. Shanks who found it all claim they’d just looked a few minutes earlier and nothing had been there, but whatever, I don’t care.”

Thomas swung his legs off the bed and sat up. “What else did they find?”

Minho took a bite, then nodded toward the door. “Go look for yourself.”

Thomas rolled his eyes and slowly stood up. The miserable weakness was still there, like most of his insides had been sucked right out and all he had left were a few bones and tendons to hold himself erect. But he steadied, feeling even after a few seconds that he was already better than the last time he’d made the long, lifeless trek to the bathroom.

Once he thought he had his balance, he walked over to the door and entered the common area. Only three days before, the room had been filled with dead bodies-now it was crowded with Gladers picking things off a big pile of food that had seemingly been dumped there without any order. Fruit, vegetables, small packages.

But he’d barely registered this when an even more bizarre sight on the far side of the room caught his attention. He reached out to steady himself on the wall behind him.

A large wooden desk had been placed opposite the door to the other dorm room.

Behind the desk, a thin man in a white suit sat in a chair, his feet propped up and crossed at the ankles.

The man was reading a book.

Thomas stood there for a full minute, staring at the man casually sitting at the desk, reading. It was as if he’d been reading that way and in that very spot every day for his whole life. Thin black hair combed across a pale, bald head; a long nose, twisted slightly to the right; and shifty brown eyes darting back and forth as he read-the man somehow looked relaxed and nervous at the same time.

And the white suit. Pants, shirt, tie, coat. Socks. Shoes. All white.

What in the world?

Thomas looked over at the Gladers munching on fruit and a snack from a bag that looked like a mixture of nuts and seeds. They seemed oblivious to the man at the desk.

“Who is that guy?” Thomas called out to no one in particular.

One of the boys looked up, stopped chewing for a second. Then he quickly finished off his mouthful and swallowed. “He won’t tell us anything. Told us we had to wait till he’s ready.” The boy shrugged as if that wasn’t a big deal and took another bite of a peeled orange.

Thomas returned his attention to the stranger. Still sitting there, still reading. He turned a page with a whispery scrape and continued scanning the words.

Baffled, and with a stomach rumbling for more food, Thomas still couldn’t help but walk toward the man to investigate. Of all the strange things to wake up to…

“Careful,” one of the Gladers called out, but it was too late.

Just ten feet in front of the desk, Thomas slammed into an invisible wall. His nose hit first, smashing against what felt like a cold sheet of glass. The rest of his body followed suit, bumping against the unseen wall and making him stumble backward. He instinctively reached up to rub his nose as he squinted to see how he could’ve possibly missed a glass barrier.

But no matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t see anything. Not the slightest glare or reflection, not a smudge anywhere. All he saw was air. All the while, the man hadn’t bothered to move or give even the least hint he’d noticed anything.

More slowly this time, Thomas approached the spot, holding his hands out. Soon he made contact with the wall of completely invisible… what? It felt like glass-smooth, hard and cool to the touch. But he saw absolutely nothing to indicate that something solid stood there.

Frustrated, Thomas moved to the left, then the right, feeling along the unseen yet solid wall. It spanned the entire room; there was no way to approach the stranger at the desk. Thomas finally pounded on it, making a series of dull thumps, but nothing else happened. Some of the Gladers behind him, Aris included, remarked how they’d already tried that.

The strangely dressed man, just a dozen or so feet in front of him, let out an exaggerated sigh as he pulled his crossed feet from the desk and let them drop to the floor. He placed a finger in his book to mark his place and looked up at Thomas, making no effort to hide his annoyance.

“How many times do I have to repeat this?” the man said, his nasally voice a perfect match for his pale skin, thin hair and skinny body. And that suit. That stupid white suit. Oddly, his words weren’t muffled at all by the barrier. “We still have forty-seven minutes before I’ve been authorized to implement Phase Two of the Trials. Please show your patience and leave me alone. You’ve been given this time to eat and replenish yourselves, and I strongly suggest you take advantage of it, young man. Now, if you don’t mind…”