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mazegays · 29 days ago

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16 (no, 15) toothbrushes

A late birthday gift for @pathsofoak . I really hope you like it, despite how toothbrush-focused it became <3

Thomas doesn’t know what they expect to learn from him. It’s not like he’s doing anything–he doesn’t even have a treadmill this time.

If they’re using this room to invoke something in him, it’s not going to work. Thomas doesn’t remember what his childhood bedroom looked like, but it couldn’t have been like this. Grey walls bleed into grey tile floors, which creep up to the lighter grey of the metal bed frame. The sheets underneath the grey duvet are white, laundered every week. Thomas has spent days trying to get the corners of his bed made perfectly, but there’s always something off.

He looks at the desk when he needs a pop of color. It’s solid wood–no hidden drawers, false bottoms, or clues there–and the dark brown swirls aren’t giving up their secrets. He doesn’t have the chair anymore, not that he misses it. It had been grey, too, and less comfortable than his bed.

His door… in his head, a child’s door would have posters or drawings on it. His door used to slide open, that’s how it had worked when they’d put him in here, but on the last day he was allowed out they’d replaced it with a hinged door and a visible lock and a spot for food.

The lights go out automatically–or maybe controlled by someone else just to mess with him–before he can find the bathroom again, but he just runs his fingers over the wall until he finds it again.

The door to the bathroom is the original grey, blending in with the wall if you don’t know where to find the seams. The continuous plain grey tile is barely even helpful. The sink and toilet and too-neat towels are white, and the pre-programmed shower is tiled with grey hexagons instead of grey squares.

He’s not even allowed to make eye contact with himself in the bathroom mirror, because there isn’t one.

His toothbrush, which must be changed out when he’s asleep, is a dark blue right now. But he’s had light blue and green and yellow and purple.

You’re supposed to replace a toothbrush every three months. It’s one of those things Thomas knows he must have been taught, though he can’t remember who taught him. Four toothbrush changes… if they’re not just messing with him, then he’s been here for a year, and locked in for a little under half that.

The bathroom door opens easily, it never locks like the other one used to.

Why would they switch a locking door to another type of locking door? If they could keep him here anyway, why waste the resources and labor on it?

They must really want him to know that he’s locked in. That he can’t go anywhere.

It’s worse than last time, somehow.

finish on ao3 or continue reading

He’d thought the white walls would drive him crazy. But at least he’d had the treadmill. He’d been able to run.

This time, he’s talking to himself, describing the wooden desk and the food he gets out loud. He’d had to get used to his voice again, after not hearing for a while. Maybe he can avoid that this time. They’re going to let him out eventually.

He’s getting fed. He knows he’s being watched. He doesn’t even use the fully-charged tablet he has. One of the corners is chipped, and the screen is cracked on that side. The day after they locked him in, he’d checked it to make sure there wasn’t a code or puzzle or something he had to solve to get out. There’s not much left on it, if there was anything in the first place. They probably just gave him a random tablet to try and keep him busy.

Maybe they want to see if he’ll try taking it apart and making himself a way out. But the components of a tablet won’t pick the lock, and that’s assuming he could take it apart successfully.

Thomas isn’t sure why he hasn’t just smashed it on the floor yet, or thrown it at the wall. It’s not like he uses it.

He’s not sure what they’re going to do if he does. Maybe just replace it with a new one, the way they do his toothbrushes. Or would they leave the broken pieces scattered on the ground to see what he does with them?

Would they step in if the glass from the screen cut his hands open? Or would they leave him until he was passed out or asleep, to ensure that he didn’t get any interaction?

Thomas isn’t curious enough to find out the answer to that one yet.

He puts the tablet on the desk and goes to bed.

He doesn’t have anything else to do, anyway.

Thomas’s toothbrush has changed again. Pink, this time.

He hopes that they’re changing it at random, trying to throw him off. It can’t have been three months already. He would have noticed that much time passing.

His wooden desk, his only color, has been taken, too. It’s been replaced with a metal nightstand for the tablet to sit on. He’d stopped counting the swirls in the wood a while ago, but it had been something different to look at. What are they going to take next? His bed? Is he going to wake up and find the bathroom sealed off, a grey bucket in its place?

He stares at the tablet again. Turns it on, today. There’s no date, no time–not that he’d trust them to be accurate if there was. He’s too familiar with WCKD’s games for that.

Thomas can’t remember the last time he changed his clothes, but they’re all the same anyway: A black shirt and pants. Maybe he just grabs the same ones after he showers and puts them back on, over and over and over again.

Some days, he gets out of bed just long enough to eat and shower. He can only pace the room so many times, and walking in circles only makes him spiral further into his head.

He’s been coming up with names for his food, lately. He doesn’t usually say them out loud–he doesn’t want them to know what he’s doing. But he tells himself what every item on the tray is, and rates it out of ten. Sometimes if he closes his eyes, he can pretend he’s eating in the Glade–the food tastes too fresh for him to pretend it’s from the Scorch.

He misses Chuck. Chuck would ask him a million questions, if he were here. He would ask why he wouldn't try to find or make a way out, why he hasn’t bothered with the door.

He'd tell Chuck that WCKD wouldn't change out the door if they meant for him to try and get out.

He's meant to be stuck here.

Chuck wouldn’t get that–not that Thomas would really want him to. Teresa would, he thinks. She might be here now, watching him through the cameras. He doesn’t know what she wants from him anymore.

He doesn’t know what WCKD wants from him anymore.

When his toothbrush changes to brown, he thinks about Minho’s eyes, and then maybe his arms, too. He hopes the Right Arm is treating everyone well, at least better than WCKD did. Hopes that they all got somewhere safe.

Thomas stopped hoping that he’d see them again somewhere around the yellow toothbrush.

Maybe they’re all dead. Maybe they think he’s dead. Maybe they're searching for him. Probably they gave up already–not that Thomas can blame them for that.

Light blue again, to start the cycle over. Thomas inspects this toothbrush thoroughly, trying to memorize the swirls and patterns on the grip. He even takes a picture with the tablet.

He should have thought of this sooner. It could be just like the Maze, a hidden code that will reveal itself as he looks at the rest of the toothbrushes.

He's wasted so much time. He could have solved this sooner.

It doesn’t look like this toothbrush comes apart to pick a lock or hide a key or anything, but one of the others could. There’s got to be something to it.

When Thomas finishes his inspection, he puts the toothbrush back carefully. He doesn’t want to mess it up and risk missing a clue.

He counts the blueberries on his food tray when it comes; 54. He doesn’t count anything else, but he’s still giving each item a name. He’s trying to be original, but Thomas doesn’t know that many names–he doesn’t know that many people–and he doesn’t want to use the names of his dead friends because if he started calling his food ‘Chuck’ he’d probably stop eating it.

He doesn’t know why ‘Stephen’ keeps popping into his head as an option, but he steers clear of that one, too. It doesn’t feel right to use it.

Thomas studies the door again, trying to see if there’s something he’s missed. A spot for a toothbrush to click in, something like that. But there’s nothing, just a regular door with an old-fashioned lock that he can’t get through.

The pictures he took of the toothbrush stay on the tablet instead of being deleted in the middle of the night or even just remotely. He wonders who’s watching him. Wonders what they think of him.

Wonders if it’s Teresa. If this is something she’s involved in, again. He thinks–knows–they grew up together. Maybe she’s in her own room, set up like this, now. Maybe it only works if it’s happening to both of them.

Mostly, when he’s not trying to figure out the secrets of the toothbrush or scratch a mark into the walls or his bedframe (impossible), he thinks about Chuck, or Newt, or Alby. Any of the Gladers, really. But especially the dead ones. Even Gally. Thomas isn’t sure anymore if he dreamed up the whole thing about him still being alive.

He doesn’t know why he would dream up Newt begging to be killed, either, but that feels more real. Thomas can’t explain why.

Would they have thought up a way out by now? Tried something he hasn’t thought of?

Green. It’s got a slightly different pattern to it, and Thomas is sure now that he can’t have been here for…

He can’t have been here for two years. WCKD had been, at least externally, on the brink of collapse. That’s why he’d come back, he was going to help the Right Arm take down WCKD and get the Immunes somewhere safe.

He hopes his friends are safe. That, even if they’d been looking for him, they’d given up in favor of protecting themselves.

The lights flicker a little when they dim, which is new. Thomas should stay awake and see if they do it again, but he thinks they might add something to help him go to sleep when they want him to, because he’s never been able to count how long it takes for the lights to come back on.

It could be a full day, for all he knows. Or only a couple of hours. At least the bathroom lights don’t ever fully go off, not while he’s in it.

The green toothbrush is much harder to inspect in the dim lighting, but he’s still able to get a couple of pictures with the tablet before he can’t fight off the urge to sleep any longer.

Thomas wakes up to the smell of hot food, which he hasn’t had in so long. They usually don’t serve him anything warm, but it must be a special day, or maybe someone was feeling especially sorry for him. It’s toast with jam, scrambled eggs, and a waffle with chocolate chips and syrup. Thomas doesn’t take his time with the eggs, because they’re gross when they’re cold, but he savors the toast.

He cuts the waffle up into 25 pieces, not at all equally sized, and chews each one until it’s mush in his mouth. The chocolate chips he lets sit on his tongue until they melt all the way. He doesn’t know when he’s going to have chocolate again.

Thomas has barely slid the empty tray back through the door when another one comes through.

The food has never had a set schedule, but it doesn't usually come this close together… the waffle had still been warm, when he’d finished.

Thomas doesn't know what they would do if he tried to hoard food. They'd catch him immediately, but it’s not like he can eat this right now, even though it’s just a couple of apples.

He puts them in the drawer of the nightstand and slides the tray back.

Nothing else happens.

Maybe it’s some sort of code or clue, but it’s not one Thomas understands. Maybe it's just a mistake and he’s overthinking it.

It's not like they don't give him snacks sometimes. He'll just hold onto it until he’s hungry.

When Thomas wakes up, he checks his drawer for the apples. They're still there, and they're still giving him full meals, so he leaves them alone . He doesn’t get any more apples, and he doesn’t get hot food anymore. He misses Frypan’s cooking. Even if it was a bit suspicious at times.

Nothing else goes missing from his room, and the lights don’t flicker again, at least not in his room. Maybe the flicker was on purpose, to let him know they were turning the lights off, since he was still in the bathroom. He’s never been in the bathroom when they turned the lights off before.

Thomas decides that tomorrow, he’s not going to get out of bed at all–not even for food.

Maybe to go to the bathroom, if he really has to.

He wants to see what they’re going to do if they think he’s given up.

Maybe they’ll try to send Teresa in, if she’s here. Maybe she’ll tell him something. Give him some human contact for the first time in… he doesn’t know how long.

Thomas is up before his food arrives, and he doesn’t move when he hears the slot open. He hears it open again, later, and still doesn’t move. Normally, if he still has a tray, they won’t send a new one in.

When it opens a third time, he glances over at it as best he can while he’s laying down. He doesn’t want to move too much. Sitting up would be taking too much interest.

The first two trays look like his normal bland food with water–Thomas can’t tell if it’s cereal, oatmeal, or porridge–and a little side with either fruit or vegetables.

The third is just two apples.

Again. What are they trying to tell him? Thomas still doesn’t get up, even though he really wants to investigate.

When his lights come on again, he puts the apples with the other two in his nightstand. The other two trays are gone, but not moving for a day isn’t enough to warrant a visit, apparently.

They’re probably still tracking his brain waves. They’d know if something was wrong, at least with his brain activity. It’s not like they can see his thoughts.

They can make him and Teresa telepathic, though, so maybe he shouldn’t rule ‘seeing thoughts’ out of the list of things WCKD can do.

A hunger strike won't get him out of here–they'll probably force-feed him or knock him out and give him a feeding tube. He's not getting out until he solves their puzzle or they let him out.

Hopefully he's on the right track now.

When his toothbrush is changed out for a yellow one, Thomas studies it the way he'd studied the first two. There’s no easily apparent pattern, not that he’d expected it to be revealed so early in the cycle. He takes pictures of it to compare later. The texture is the same as the other two, which probably doesn't mean anything.

He keeps his normal routine outside of inspecting his toothbrushes. Nothing has gone missing for a while, though he also hasn't gotten a replacement desk yet. He wonders if they're ever going to put something in that empty spot or if it had just been a reminder that they can take anything they want from him, and he'll be unaware of it until they turn the lights back on to wake him up.

As he eats his bland beige food for the day, he tries to recall what the waffle tasted like on his tongue. How long had it taken for the chocolate chips to melt? The egg, too–he never thought he’d miss eating an egg. And the jam would probably go well with breakfast today, but he doesn't have any.

It feels like it’s been a month since he had food that tasted like anything. No, a year.

Whoever had been serving him that day must have felt bad for him, but they were probably fired or at least aren't allowed to feed him anymore.

Actually, Thomas isn't sure how employment at WCKD works. How many people working here know what’s going on?

The guards have to, they'd been chasing them down and everything. The scientists would, too. And everyone in charge does. What's the hiring process? Or has WCKD just been kidnapping all of their employees the same way they kidnapped all of their subjects?

Thomas is going to give himself a headache if he keeps thinking about it.

He tries to tell Teresa that he wants to talk to her, but it doesn't seem like it works.

He doesn’t know if she's even here. Or Ava, or Ratman. If they're not using the toothbrushes to mess with him, then it's been years. Ava and Ratman, unless they found their cure, might have succumbed to the Flare by now.

Teresa wouldn’t have, but Thomas can’t remember the full list of Immune Gladers, so he doesn’t let himself think about it. It’s difficult, because he doesn’t even have counting tiles to distract him.

He tries to remember what color toothbrush he got after yellow, last time. Was it the purple or the dark blue? Or maybe it was the pink.

He should have been paying better attention last time, and then he’d know already. Maybe he would even know the way out by now.

The next toothbrush is purple, and Thomas can only despair over how little information it gives him. There’s nothing helpful. He should only have three more colors after this one, he should know something by now!

He tries reaching out to Teresa again, but she’d been better at their telepathy than him. For a long time, probably. If what he remembers from the Changing is correct. If she gets it, she doesn’t respond.

He’d take ‘Captain Gally’ as a conversation partner right now, even though he’s pretty sure they’d end up fighting. They’re better than they were in the Glade, but if they were trapped together again it probably wouldn’t take long for them to come to blows.

He stares at the door wistfully. There’s no way they’d let him get so thin he could fit through the food slot. He wouldn’t be able to get his head and shoulders through, anyway. He just wants to leave.

“Can I leave now?”

He doesn’t expect a response, but he probably wouldn’t have heard it if one came. Has his voice always sounded like that? Or is it just echoing back at him?

He’d thought he’d been doing a good job, talking to himself and counting his food and everything. But it hasn’t been enough to save his voice from getting rough. He clears his throat a few times, but doesn’t speak until he has food to count again.

When he’s thinking about his food, he’s not thinking about his voice.

The dark blue toothbrush doesn’t have any clues, either. Thomas throws it against the wall and screams until his voice gives out.

He stays awake as long as they let him, trying to catch the person changing out his toothbrush and towels and he never does.

He thinks about throwing the apples in his nightstand, too. It would probably be more satisfying than a toothbrush. But he doesn’t trust WCKD enough to give up any food, in case he needs it.

Thomas tries to hide the pink toothbrush, not that he has many places to hide anything. Maybe he needs to keep all of them and put them together so that he can find a pattern that way, because he’s not finding one in the pictures.

A brown toothbrush is on the sink the next day, and Thomas can’t find the pink brush anywhere.

He remembers when he first got to the Glade, wondering how they hadn’t given up yet. It’s so much easier to reach out with trembling fingers and grasp at hope when it’s the only thing he has. (Physically, he’s grasping at his arms with untrimmed nails.)

No routine to keep him busy, keep him moving. Nothing else to think about.

What good does this data do WCKD? Thomas has never been able to decide, and they’ll probably never tell him.

He’s tired. He wants to leave, but there’s nothing he can use here to get out and his only idea has completely fallen apart.

Thomas lets the food trays pile up for a few days before he goes back to eating. Long enough that the smell starts to make him gag without even getting out of bed.

It’s the only form of control he has.

Thomas compares the new light blue toothbrush to the pictures he has of the last one, and the pattern is different.

Okay, so maybe it’s the colors that go together, and not the patterns. That still means he’s missed one of the patterns already, but maybe he can figure it out anyway. Thomas will get out of here or die trying.

He’s stopped trying to reach out to Teresa, though he’s been catching himself talking out loud as if she were here with him. Sometimes he has conversations with Chuck. Sometimes it’s Newt or Minho, or even Brenda.

Thomas wishes that surprised him more, but he’s been alone for so long that he doesn’t know what his other options would be. It’s not like he hadn’t already been talking to his food, anyway. This is just another form of that.

He gets a couple more apples, and puts them in his nightstand with the others. The oldest ones haven’t gone mushy or molded yet, though Thomas hasn’t bitten into them to see what’s inside. They don’t even give him flimsy knives to cut his food with, so he can’t check unless he wants to eat one.

Maybe they’re genetically engineered to be shelf-stable for a long time. Thomas doesn’t know if that’s something WCKD would have a hand in, but maybe they did. Or maybe it’s not a recent change.

It doesn’t matter, anyway. He’ll leave them there until he has to eat them or until they go bad.

He wakes up and the lights are off. Does WCKD have power outages? Surely they must have generators.

He doesn’t manage to stay awake long enough to get out of bed. Thomas does have some interesting dreams, though. One is about a stampede of elephants, which he’s pretty sure are extinct, and he doesn’t think that they stampede anyway. But what does he know?

The other is about dodo birds, which have been extinct for centuries. They’d been saying his name. Thomas doesn’t know that much about them–extinct birds weren’t on WCKD’s priority list, apparently–but he doesn’t think that they were able to speak.

Thomas takes as long of a shower as he can when he wakes up for real, thinking over what little he can remember about his dreams. The water shuts off automatically around what feels like twenty minutes, though Thomas knows he’ll never be sure. Especially not now, with his sense of time as warped as it is. It doesn’t turn back on, and he doesn’t expect it to. Maybe tomorrow.

While he’s trying to figure out how long he was in the shower for, the dreams slip to the back of his mind, details fading away and leaving only a sense of strangeness.

He doesn’t wake up in the middle of the night again.

When the green toothbrush appears, Thomas doesn’t use it for a few days. He hardly does anything other than stare at the pictures and try to put together a pattern. There’s a drawing app on the tablet, and he traces over the pattern lines to try and isolate something that he might not be able to see while it’s on a rounded surface.

He doesn’t find anything, but the door opens anyway.

Thomas doesn’t look even when there are hands on his arms, trying to take the tablet and toothbrush away. He grips them tightly, ready to scratch and bite if he needs to. He needs these.

“Greenie, come on, you’re scaring me here.” Thomas knows this voice. Hadn’t he just wished he could speak to Gally? Maybe not quite that, but something like it.

He’s probably hallucinating now.

“I have to get out. I have to figure out the pattern so I can open the door, Gally, just leave me alone so I can finish it!”

“Thomas, the door was unlocked.”

“No, it wasn’t. It can’t be that simple.”

“I walked right in.”

“They changed the door. They put a new lock on. It can’t be that easy, there has to be something I have to solve. I always have to solve something, I have to figure it out before I can leave.”

“No, we can just leave. I don’t know if it’s been that way the whole time, but we can leave. I’m making you leave.” Gally sounds like he’s trying to convince someone, and that makes Thomas more sure that he’s making the whole thing up. Gally’s not here. No one is here, because it’s always going to be him by himself in the end. That’s how WCKD made him start, and that’s how they’re going to make him end. Alone.

“I tried the door.” He must have. He must have, right? He wouldn’t… he wouldn’t not try the door. It’s the simplest solution, the first thing to do.

But he hadn’t. He hadn’t, because he’d convinced himself that it was going to be harder than that. That it had to be harder than that.

He still doesn’t let go of the tablet or the toothbrush; Gally’s given up on getting them out of his grasp.

“No, I didn’t. I didn’t even try. It can’t be this easy. It’s not supposed to be this easy.”

“Thomas, come on, I’ve got to get you outta here. You’re bleeding.”

“You never call me Thomas. You’re not real.”

“Slim it, shuckface, we’re leaving. I don’t know what’s goin’ on in that klunk head of yours, but I’ll carry you if I have to.” That’s what Gally sounds like. Maybe it is Gally, then.

Gally doesn’t make Thomas leave anything behind, and he even agrees to carry the apples instead of Thomas.

He keeps up the steady stream of talking he’s been doing recently, not really aware that he’s speaking every thought that comes to mind.

“–haven’t had anyone to talk to in so long, I think it’s been like three years. Maybe longer. Because of the toothbrushes.” Thomas doesn’t pause for anyone else to speak, and he hardly notices that Minho’s there until he’s forced to look him in the eye.

“Gal, what did they do to him?”

“Just put him in a room alone, I think. He thinks the toothbrushes are his way out. The door wasn’t even locked. He’s been talking to himself like this the whole time.”

“Hermanos, we can figure this all out when we’re safe. Move it.” Jorge? He doesn’t look much older. Neither does Gally or Minho, they all look about the same. Maybe they got haircuts or something, but that’s it.

“How long has it been?” It’s the first thing he’s aware of saying since Gally first got to his room.

“About six months.”

“That’s wrong. You’re supposed to change toothbrushes every three months, and I’ve had five colors twice and two colors three times.” That’s right, he knows it is. “One of them got taken early, but it should have been at least five years.”

“No, Thomas.”

The only reason Thomas doesn’t drop the tablet and the toothbrush is because Minho’s grabbing at him.

He doesn’t know where they’re going, he doesn’t know who else is there, and it doesn’t matter because Thomas doesn’t know how he got things so wrong.

It was supposed to be a test.

It was supposed to be difficult.

Thomas shouldn’t have gotten things this wrong. He’s supposed to be smart. He’s supposed to solve puzzles and fix things.

Gally and Minho don’t make him put a door on their cabin until it starts to snow, and the only lock it has is a simple latch to keep it from swinging open in the wind.

This doesn’t stop Thomas from spending hours staring at it if he’s left on his own, but they’re working on that.

Usually he’s just not left alone. Especially when he starts talking to Teresa or Chuck.

By the time it’s warm enough for the blanket door to suffice, he can handle a few hours alone in the cabin without talking to the door, so they leave it up.

The scars on his arms have faded a little more by then, too. They’re never going to go away–infection had set into the oldest of the wounds by the time Gally found him and he’s lucky it hadn’t spread upward–but when everyone knows what happened, no one asks any questions.

Thomas doesn’t remember making them, doesn’t remember digging his nails in again and again. He doesn’t think he wants to. Maybe he did it in his sleep. Maybe he was awake and just didn’t notice. He’s never going to know.

He doesn’t remember a lot of what happened right after they left, either. He knows he thought Gally wasn’t real. Actually leaving? Nothing. It’s normal, apparently, but it unnerves him more than he’ll ever admit. That he doesn’t remember what he said and did that makes Minho and Gally and Jorge watch him so closely.

He doesn’t want to ask them, not yet. Maybe he will, someday. When he’s wrapped his head around his five years of isolation only being six months, when he’s figured out how to stop talking to ghosts whenever he’s alone.

Maybe then. Maybe they’ll tell him before that, slip it into their stories of what they did while he was in that room.

Thomas doesn’t care, as long as they don’t make him go back.