Thomas

He fell into the grass while the sky above the Glade was still glowing golden. Thomas rolled onto his back, trying to breathe, but the air cut into his lungs. Alby glared, Newt held out his hand, and Leah stood by the barn—the only girl. Gladers didn't touch girls; that was the law. She wiped her hands and approached Newt.

"This one won't last three days. He has the eyes of a fugitive."

Thomas survived. Two weeks later, he began asking unnecessary questions. Why were the walls moving? Why did the stung Ben whisper Leah's name before he died?

One night he found her at the eastern wall. Leah stood barefoot, her palms pressed to the stone, her lips moving.

— Are you talking to the walls?

"He's listening," she replied. "Not the walls, silly, but the mechanism beneath them. Everything here is a clock, and the clock has a heart."

Thomas saw her wrists were scarred, forming the symbols on Minho's map.

— You were here before. You were brought back.

"I was the first Runner," Leah said. "I found a way out. They didn't lock me away, they rewrote my memory. They made me a girl who's afraid of spiders, but her bones remember... Tomorrow, Newt will offer to send you to the Labyrinth. Don't resist. You can help us."

• Why not you?

"He who is once dead to them is forever dead in the system. And you're a newbie. Go to sleep, fugitive."

Thomas stood next to her for a while, digesting the information.