Free (Maze Runner fanfic Newtmas Newt x Thomas)

Chapter 29

The boys were all gathered in the living room again, because it seemed Newt and Thomas' 'roommate' overheard their conversation, so now Thomas had everyone whinging and whining for him to tell him about the third phase. Barely any of them knew that was why he almost stayed, and now everybody sounded like hungry puppies. It wasn't that interesting.

The main question seemed to be, "why have a third phase if they had a cure by the second?"

Minho asked it first, mouth full of lasagne. "To develop it." Thomas answered with a shrug. "WICKED knew as soon as we got the ingredients it was going to wear off, or maybe even not work at all. I didn't know that until the day after you all left because I was snooping around and overheard them discussing it, as I've already explained. The third trial was only put together as a just in case, to keep us busy and away from the darkness so they could develop it properly."

"Well, into what? And wouldn't I have died!?" Newt exclaimed.

"No, they'd have given you more unstable cure whether I had to steal it or force it off of them."

"Could we leave the third place!?" Someone else cried.

"No, but chances are I probably could."

"So what's there? Another maze? Caves? Ice?"

"They called it paradise. If you ever bothered reading a bible or during our super old religion classes, paradise was sort of wide open plains with a lake and the weather is normal, sort of, and we would just kinda.. live there. Like the glade, but there's no danger, because they knew you guys missed it so much."

"That doesn't sound like paradise at all!" A few boys exclaimed, "we'd remember our friends! We worked hard! WICKED couldn't sustain forever! It's terrible!"

They all started arguing at once so Thomas just ate quietly and waited for them to calm down or their questions to run out. "That's it really.. but there would be girls there, do any of you remember Teresa? It's her and a load of others," Thomas glanced at Newt, but he was looking at his food as he took out the peas. "Granted they all attacked me when I tried to leave, but they were going to get their memories back." Newt visibly perked. "That really is it, just a picturesque place to live until the cure was properly made."

"What about when WICKED died? They're all older than we are, they won't just be replaced to keep us alive!"

"Well no- they'd take us out when they developed the cure properly so we could distribute it."

"What about me?" Newt piped, "I couldn't distribute it, I'd only catch another mutation, and living in this city will make me wary my whole life."

"They do weekly checks, it's fine." Minho waved him off, "once you get a job or get to school you'll find that out."

Thomas was hesitating. "I don't know, guess you'd come with us. We didn't talk that far! Remember I was told none of this until after we got out that desert and I just watched the computers, they barely told me anything proper."

"And that's why we left."

People still asked him questions and Thomas just answered as best he could, since he honestly didn't know everything, and that annoyed some of the boys, so he ended up ignoring the angry ones.

Newt still wasn't convinced. Thomas spoke too casually, as if it didn't really matter, but back at WICKED Thomas had tried his hardest to convince Newt to stay and make the others do so too, but nothing that he'd said so far had sounded remotely hard enough for him to have been so passionate before.

Out of all the survivors, Thomas had spent the least amount of time in the glade by a fair few months so he didn't have anywhere near close the attachment to the others that they all had, so maybe his idea of paradise was just being somewhere safe. The city wasn't safe, it was reality. Thomas seemed strong; clueless, but strong.. but maybe he wasn't.