Chapter 24 : The Confidant
[Teresa]
The boy with the sharp jawline and the careful eyes was lying to her.
Teresa didn't know how she knew this — the memory wipe had taken her analytical framework along with everything else, leaving behind instincts without context, judgments without evidence. But the instinct was clear: Walker Bancroft understood things he shouldn't, moved through the Glade with a purpose the other boys lacked, and had positioned himself at her side within hours of her arrival with a precision that suggested planning rather than coincidence.
She stood in the garden beds on her second morning, pulling weeds alongside a cheerful kid named Chuck who talked enough for three people, and watched Walker across the Glade. He was at the Map Room, pinning something to the wall — charts, maps, the analytical infrastructure of whatever role he'd carved for himself in this place. His movements were economical. No wasted motion. The body language of someone who'd been operating at high efficiency for long enough that it had become default.
The other Gladers treated him differently from each other. Minho — the Runner leader, fast-talking, physically dominant — deferred to Walker on route planning. Newt — the calm second-in-command with the limp — watched Walker with an expression that combined trust and suspicion in proportions Teresa couldn't parse. Alby — the leader, stern and careful — had authorized Walker's role with the reluctance of a man who knew he was betting on an unknown quantity.
And Gally. The Builder watched Walker the way a guard dog watches a stranger — unblinking, territorial, convinced that the threat was real even if nobody else could see it.
Teresa pulled a weed and considered her options. She had no memories, no allies, and a necklace she couldn't stop touching. The only person who'd offered understanding without conditions was the same person her instincts flagged as dangerous.
In her experience — which she couldn't remember but somehow still possessed — the dangerous ones were usually the most useful.
---
[Walker — Day 27, Gardens, 10:00 AM]
"Tell me about the white rooms."
Teresa's request came while we were both working the tomato beds. She'd been assigned to Track-hoes — the same default placement Zart had given me three weeks ago, the gardens being the Glade's catch-all for new arrivals who hadn't demonstrated a specialized skill. The parallel wasn't lost on me.
I drove the trowel into soil and considered my response. Every word I gave Teresa was a thread she could pull. Too much, and the fabricated memories would stretch thin enough to tear. Too little, and she'd seek answers from someone less controlled.
"Bright lights," I said. "Mounted in the ceiling, the kind that buzz. Panels, not bulbs. And people in coats — white coats, laboratory coats. They had clipboards. Equipment. Machines with screens showing... brainwaves, maybe. Something medical."
All consistent with what Ben had screamed during his fever, what the Changing revealed to stung Gladers, what the source material described as WCKD's pre-Maze processing facility. Nothing I'd said was specific enough to be wrong.
Teresa's hands stilled on the tomato plant she was staking. "I remember the same thing. The lights. The coats. And a woman's voice — calm, like she was reading from a script. Something about... trials. Selecting the best candidates."
Ava Paige. The Chancellor. Teresa was remembering fragments of WCKD's director — the same woman who'd appear in the video message at the end of the Maze escape, the same woman who'd orchestrated the entire trial system. Teresa's connection to Paige was deeper than most Gladers'. In the source material, Teresa had worked directly with WCKD before the memory wipe. She'd been a collaborator, not just a subject.
"Did the voice say anything about why?" I asked. Genuine curiosity mixed with calculated extraction. "Why they were selecting people?"
"Something about immunity. A disease — I can't remember the name. But they were looking for people who were resistant." She paused. Frowned. "Does that mean anything to you?"
The Flare. She was remembering the Flare — the virus that had driven the world to ruin, the reason WCKD existed, the cure they were torturing children to find. Teresa's fragmentary memories were clearer than most Gladers', which tracked with her deeper involvement in WCKD's operations.
"Maybe," I said. "I've had fragments about injections. Being tested. But I don't know what they were testing for."
A half-truth. The most dangerous kind and the most useful.
Teresa looked at me with those sharp eyes — the same evaluative gaze she'd used on the watchtower, the one that suggested she was running calculations behind a surface of apparent openness. "Walker. The things you can do. The patterns on the ground, the... formations. Is that from before? From the white rooms?"
"I think so. Like muscle memory. The hands know what the brain forgot."
"The others believe that?"
"Some of them."
"But not all."
"Gally doesn't believe anything that isn't concrete and lumber." The deflection was gentle, self-deprecating, designed to steer the conversation away from the truth and toward the social dynamics of the Glade. "He'll come around. Or he won't. Either way, the formations work."
Teresa accepted the redirect. Not because she was satisfied — her expression said clearly that the topic was bookmarked, not closed — but because she had other questions and limited time before Chuck came bouncing back from whatever errand he'd invented to give us privacy.
"The note," she said. "In my hand when I arrived. 'She's the last one ever.' Do you know what it means?"
"It means no more new arrivals. The experiment — whatever they're doing to us up there — is entering its final phase."
"Final phase." She turned the words over. "That sounds like it ends."
"Everything ends, Teresa."
"Does it end well?"
I looked at her. Twenty-six days of integration, array building, Griever fighting, and poison drinking had taught me to control my expression under pressure. But the question — asked with the genuine uncertainty of someone who couldn't remember enough to answer it themselves — hit something that my poker face couldn't fully conceal.
"We have options," I said. The phrase came out in my Walker voice — tactical, measured, the response of a strategist who couldn't say everything will be okay because the words would be a lie. "I'm working on making sure it ends as well as possible."
---
[The Glade — Bonfire Area, 8:00 PM]
"She's WCKD."
Gally's voice cut through the evening crowd like a thrown stone. He stood near the bonfire with four Builders flanking him — his faction, the Gladers who'd gravitated toward his brand of aggressive caution. His target was Teresa, sitting on the far side of the fire with Chuck and Frypan, eating stew and pretending the Builder's glare wasn't boring through her.
"She arrives with a cryptic note. She screams a name nobody knows. She—" Gally jabbed a finger toward me. "—immediately attaches herself to the one shank in this Glade who draws magic symbols and predicts the future. You don't see the pattern?"
The accusation landed in the circle of Gladers like a dropped blade. Conversations died. Eyes shifted between Gally and Teresa and me, the social geometry of a community choosing sides in real time.
"Gally." Newt's voice, measured and firm. "Sit down."
"No. First the shuck wizard shows up, and now the mystery girl, and everyone's acting like it's normal. It's not normal. Something is happening to this Glade, and these two are at the center of it."
He wasn't wrong. The analysis was correct — my arrival had disrupted the Glade's equilibrium, Teresa's arrival was accelerating the disruption, and the two of us represented variables that WCKD's experiment hadn't accounted for. Gally's instinct for threat detection was one of his most valuable qualities, even when it made him insufferable.
I stood. The movement drew attention — not aggressive, just deliberate. Calm rising, the body language of someone addressing a room rather than confronting an individual.
"Gally's right about one thing. Something is happening. The Grievers are getting more aggressive. The patrols are increasing. The scratches on the walls are getting higher and deeper." I let the facts settle. "But Teresa isn't the cause. She's a symptom. Whatever the people who put us here are planning, it's approaching an endgame. A new girl with a note saying 'the last one ever' — that's a signal. The experiment is ending."
"And when it ends?" Gally's voice had lost some of its edge, replaced by something rawer. Fear. Underneath the aggression and the territorial bluster, Gally was afraid. Three years of survival built on routine and rules, and the routine was breaking.
"When it ends, we need to be ready. That's what the formations are for. That's what the intelligence work is for." I held his gaze. "That's what she's for, whether she knows it yet or not."
Teresa's eyes met mine across the bonfire. The look carried a weight of meaning I couldn't fully decode — gratitude, suspicion, the complex recognition of someone who'd just been defended by a person whose motives she didn't trust.
Gally sat down. Not satisfied — never satisfied — but outmaneuvered. The social momentum had shifted, and the Builder knew when to retreat from a losing position. He'd be back. His grievances were accumulating with the patience of water wearing stone.
Alby called for order. The bonfire conversation resumed. Teresa went back to her stew. Chuck, who'd been vibrating with the restrained energy of a kid who'd wanted to jump into the argument but knew he'd make it worse, grabbed my arm as I sat down.
"That was cool," he whispered.
"That was necessary."
"Same thing."
I ate my stew and monitored the detection arrays' passive feed. Four Griever contacts on the perimeter. Standard formation. Nothing unusual. The algorithm was running its quiet cycle, conserving resources while WCKD studied its newest test subject.
---
[The Glade — Garden Beds, Day 28, 6:00 PM]
Teresa and I spent the afternoon in the gardens, which had become our default meeting ground — neutral territory between the Map Room's analytical intensity and the Homestead's social pressure. She weeded with quick, precise movements that suggested fine motor skills the memory wipe hadn't touched. Medical training, maybe. Laboratory work. The same hands that would eventually help WCKD design their extraction protocols were currently pulling crabgrass from between tomato plants.
"Gally said something interesting last night," Teresa said. "About patterns."
"Gally says a lot of things."
"He called you a wizard." Her mouth twitched — not quite a smile, but the precursor to one. "Is that accurate?"
"The formations are technology. Something from before the wipe — a skill set that survived the memory erasure. Same category as the Runners knowing how to run before anyone teaches them."
"Except nobody else draws glowing symbols on the ground."
"Nobody else survived the particular program I was in." The lie came easily now. Smooth, practiced, layered with just enough emotional weight to discourage follow-up questions. "Whatever WCKD did to me before the Box — whatever training or modification — it left me with tools. I'm using them."
Teresa studied me with the same sharp attention she'd shown on the watchtower. "You use the word 'tools' a lot. Like everything's a resource to be managed."
"Isn't it?"
"People aren't resources."
The statement landed with the moral clarity of someone who believed it instinctively, whose ethical framework had survived the memory wipe intact even when the memories hadn't. Teresa Agnes was, at her core, someone who cared about the distinction between using people and helping them. It was the same quality that would eventually make her vulnerable to WCKD's arguments — the belief that sacrificing a few could save many, that the equation justified the cost.
I would need to address that vulnerability before WCKD activated it. But not now. Not yet.
"You're right," I said. "People aren't resources."
I meant it. The twelve-year-old who saved me dinner. The Runner who charged a Griever with a sharpened pole. The moral compass who offered patience instead of interrogation. The leader who authorized a role he didn't understand because the results justified the risk.
People. Not characters. Not plot points in a story I'd once consumed from a comfortable distance. People who ate burned bread and told bad jokes and stood watch against the dark because someone had to and they were the ones who were here.
Teresa's expression softened. Not the strategic softening of someone gaining an advantage, but the genuine relaxation of a person who'd heard what they needed to hear.
"Show me," she said. "The formations. How they work. I want to understand."
"Tomorrow. I'll show you a basic detection array. It's not flashy, but it's the foundation of everything else."
"Tomorrow."
Gally stood in the Homestead entrance, arms folded, watching us talk. His expression had settled into something permanent — not the hot anger of two days ago, but the cold calculation of a man marking enemies for future reference. Behind him, three of his Builders mirrored his posture.
The opposition was organizing. Gally had gone from individual objector to faction leader, and his faction's grievance — that Walker Bancroft's presence was destabilizing the Glade — would only grow as Teresa's influence added another variable to the equation.
From the Map Room, my detection arrays tracked the nightly Griever deployment. Six contacts tonight — up from four yesterday. The algorithm was incrementing again. The quiet cycle was ending.
And somewhere in the Maze, moving through corridors that my arrays couldn't reach, a figure was running — not a Griever, not a scheduled patrol, but a human-sized contact moving at sprint speed through Section Six's outer perimeter. The detection array at the East Door registered it at the extreme edge of its range: a single biosignature, moving fast, heading toward the Glade.
A person. In the Maze. At night.
The meta-knowledge fired before I could suppress it: Thomas.
The protagonist was arriving early.
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