Rachel Pennington

The Gladers walk farther until they run into Teresa and Group B with spears and sharp knives. Teresa whispers to Thomas to trust her, then Group B kidnaps Thomas, and drag him along the ground in a bag until they get to an uphill slope, where he has to be carried. When the girls of Group B are out of sight of the Gladers, they let Thomas walk the rest of the way to their camp, and never before has he enjoyed walking so much. When they reach the camp, he is tied to a tree and left to fall asleep. He tries to convince the girls that killing him is a bad idea, that it is part of the test, but they do not quite know who to believe. Teresa goes out to explore places, and the girls have a conversation about whether they should kill Thomas or not. When Teresa comes back, the girls convince Teresa that they should not kill him. But as they walk towards the Safe Haven, Teresa forces Thomas to follow her and Aris. Aris is a part of the murder, and Thomas feels betrayed, hurt, and scared. He follows them, and they push and beat him until he goes into a green room, with a concussion from Teresa’s spear. Teresa and Aris are together and act as though they are dating, as though they have always been best friends. Thomas is both emotionally and physically hurt, and uses all the energy he has left to push back, but ends up being trapped in the green room anyway. The room sprays gas at him, and he passes out, waking to an open green room, with Teresa and Aris waiting for him. He is still alive, and he hates Teresa for what she has done to him. Aris looks like he is the most embarrassed person in the world as Teresa explains to Thomas that they had to make him feel completely betrayed and take him to the room or WICKED would kill him. They walk down to join Group B and the Gladers, and Thomas explains to Minho and Newt what they did to him. Minho and Newt are furious, and want to kill Teresa. Thomas does not know how he feels about the situation. Soon, giant pods come floating down to the sand, and human-like creatures slip out of them. The creatures have orange, bulbous-like spheres on every joint and all over their backs and chests. There is about one creature for each person to fight. A storm brews and starts raining on them all. Thomas fights his creature, and soon realizes that with every orange sphere he breaks, the slower and weaker the creature gets. He can only hope that others have realized the same. Soon, when majority of the creatures are defeated, only a few left to crawl after them, lightning starts striking, and Thomas, Jorge, Brenda, and Teresa run to take shelter in one of the pods. It is completely dark inside, and lightning starts to strike the pod. The pod can only take so many hits before they’re all burnt to crisps. They soon hear a loud noise outside the pod, and open it up to see what is going on outside. A berg, a giant flying machine like the one that rescued Thomas after being shot, is floating outside, waiting for them to board. Thomas and the rest race to reach the flying ship, and almost miss it, but everybody makes it inside safe and sound. One of the people on the ships, a man with red hair, demands that Thomas tell them who Brenda and Jorge are, and why they brought them along. He demands that Thomas decide which one to keep and the other gets thrown outside into the storm. Thomas picks Brenda, hoping that the people of WICKED would then toss Jorge aside instead, but he is wrong. He attacks just as Brenda is about to be thrown out of the ship, and states that there will be no more deaths. The man with the red hair smiles, and tells them to get comfortable. Thomas falls asleep on a couch, but in his dream he hears Brenda in his head. She says to him to be ready, because things are going to get very bad. He then wakes up in a big white room, with nothing but a desk that he can not even touch.