The book opens with Thomas still in the padded room he was placed in because, according to Teresa, the Flare took hold of him. His own stench bothers him more than the isolation, which he worries is a sign of his impending insanity. He considers the possibility that “Teresa hadn’t been lying after all that last time they’d spoken, when she’d said it was too late for [him] and insisted that he’d succumbed to the Flare rapidly” (11). Nearly overcome with anger, Thomas vows to destroy WICKED, the group that did this to him and his friends.

Each morning after breakfast, he watches the door, waiting and willing for it to open. He spends the time watching the door thinking about his friends. “But most of all, he thought about Teresa. He couldn’t get her out of his head, even though he hated her a little more with every passing moment. Her last words to him had been WICKED is good, and right or wrong, to Thomas she’d come to represent all the terrible things that had happened. Every time he thought of her, rage boiled inside him” (12).

On the 26th day, the door opens.