Tomas Endress

Quick Facts

A top graduate from Five Lakes Colony, bold and brilliant, Tomas Endress enters The Testing as the hometown golden boy and becomes the protagonist Malencia "Cia" Vale’s closest ally and love interest. First seen during selection and transport to the Testing center, he’s defined by his steady competence and early partnership with Cia. His choices drive the themes of Trust and Betrayal and The Price of Success, and his arc—under the watch of authorities like Dr. Jedidiah Barnes—tests the limits of idealism.

Who They Are

Bold yet understated, clever yet gentle, Tomas embodies the “best of Five Lakes” at the story’s start: a smart, handsome problem-solver whose quiet kindness makes him instantly trustworthy. The Testing remakes that persona. As pressures mount, his protective devotion to Cia hardens into secrecy and morally gray decisions. Tomas becomes the novel’s clearest case study in how a broken system can warp even the most promising candidate, illuminating not just romantic tension, but the cost of victory itself. Through him, the book’s coming-of-age story sharpens into something starker: the price of growing up in a world that rewards control over conscience.

Personality & Traits

Tomas’s persona is layered: his competence draws others in, his steadiness keeps them safe, and his secrecy ultimately endangers trust. He is both the savior on the bridge and the boy carrying a secret he can’t confess—a contradiction that makes him one of the story’s most unsettlingly human figures.

• Intelligent and resourceful: He’s regarded as the class’s top student and designed an advanced irrigation system for his family farm—evidence of practical ingenuity that translates directly to survival tasks.
• Kind and protective: He comforts Malachi Rourke during moments of panic and defends him when Roman Fry trips him, signaling a reflex to shield the vulnerable. That same reflex surfaces repeatedly with Cia as he scans for threats, plans routes, and physically pulls her to safety.
• Perceptive partner: Tomas reads Cia’s moods before she speaks and prompts her to share what’s wrong, pairing academic intelligence with emotional acuity that deepens their bond and makes him a stabilizing presence.
• Quiet leader: He rarely seizes authority outright, but his calm logic, clear plans, and soothing demeanor naturally center groups around him, especially in high-stress environments like the city maze.
• Morally compromised: Under escalating threat, Tomas becomes secretive and haunted. His off-page killing of Zandri Hicks and lies to Cia about it fracture his self-image as a good person, suggesting a survival ethic overtaking earlier ideals.
• Physical presence and style: Classically handsome with gray eyes, unruly hair, and a dimple that disarms. He favors practical clothes—faded pants and a simple shirt—that mirror Cia’s sensibility and signal function over display.

  • “Dimpled charm” in action:

    Tomas motions for me to take a seat next to him and gives me a dimpled smile that makes it impossible not to smile in return.

Character Journey

Tomas begins as the colony’s brightest hope, promising partnership the moment he and Cia reach the Testing: “We’ll be able to look out for each other.” He makes good on that pledge, rescuing her on the bridge and collaborating through the city’s deadly puzzles, his competence and care reinforcing an image of the dependable protector. The fourth test breaks that image. In the wilderness, Tomas encounters Zandri; by the time Cia later finds Zandri’s bracelet in his bag, the truth is unavoidable—he killed to survive and then concealed it. Afterward he withdraws, his tenderness toward Cia now braided with guilt and fear. He still throws himself between her and danger, even urging her to abandon him after he’s shot, but the cost is etched into the person he has become: he passes the Testing, and loses a piece of himself doing it. His arc crystallizes the story’s Coming of Age and Loss of Innocence, showing maturity not as triumph but as a compromise with a corrupt system.

Key Relationships

• Malencia “Cia” Vale: Tomas and Cia’s history and mutual respect create instant trust, and their alliance quickly becomes both strategic and romantic. He repeatedly protects her—most dramatically on the bridge and after Will’s attack—yet his secrecy about Zandri’s death plants doubt that Cia only fully understands at the end. Their bond is genuine, but it’s also the arena where the book tests whether love can survive necessary evils.

• Will: From the outset, Tomas reads Will as a danger to Cia and treats him with cool suspicion. When Will reveals himself as the crossbow shooter and later attacks, Tomas’s instincts are vindicated, but the episode also exposes Tomas’s capacity for harsh judgment—drawing a line between prudent vigilance and an almost fatalistic readiness to suspect.

• Zandri Hicks: Zandri’s crush on Tomas goes unreturned, and in the fourth test she becomes the pivot of his moral descent. Cia’s discovery of Zandri’s bracelet in Tomas’s bag reframes him in an instant—from protector to participant in the Testing’s violence—leaving a stain he can’t explain away.

Defining Moments

Tomas’s story turns on moments where care meets calculation, and survival demands a choice he can’t later undo.

• Forming the alliance: After Cia shares her father’s warnings, Tomas commits to teaming up. Why it matters: It establishes him as her partner in both strategy and feeling, making later betrayal more devastating.
• Saving Cia on the bridge: He hauls her up after the crossbow ambush nearly kills her. Why it matters: Heroism cements his protector role and earns deep trust precisely before the plot will test it.
• The exploding oasis: Injured by a blast at a seemingly safe watering hole, Tomas endures Cia’s improvised cauterization. Why it matters: Pain and vulnerability intensify their interdependence, complicating the ethics of what each will do to keep the other alive.
• Killing Zandri: The act happens off-page; Cia later finds Zandri’s bracelet hidden in his pack. Why it matters: This is the moral breaking point—survival at the cost of innocence—and the origin of his haunted secrecy.
• The final confrontation with Will: Shot and weakened, Tomas urges Cia to leave him to save herself. Why it matters: His self-sacrifice underscores that love and compromised morality coexist in him; Cia’s refusal to abandon him binds them together even as the truth threatens to pull them apart.

Essential Quotes

"It's a good thing we're in the same group. We'll be able to look out for each other."

Spoken early, this promise defines Tomas’s public self: the dependable partner who will match Cia’s courage with his own. The line frames their alliance as mutual care, which later heightens the shock of what he withholds.

"I know I wasn't your best friend back home, but you can trust me."

Tomas acknowledges gaps in their past relationship while explicitly asking for faith in the present. The statement works twice—both as genuine reassurance and as dramatic irony once his secrecy about Zandri comes to light.

"I can't imagine what I would do if something happened to you."

This confession reveals the depth of his attachment and foreshadows his protective (and occasionally controlling) choices. It also hints at motive: love becomes the justification for increasingly extreme acts.

"The only way for us to help anyone at home is to survive this test."

A succinct articulation of the Testing’s ruthless logic, this line reframes morality as a long game—survive now to do good later. It’s the ethical slippery slope that enables his later compromise.

"Because the first time I tell you that I'm in love with you, I'd rather not share the moment with Dr. Barnes and his friends."

Tender and wry, the line humanizes Tomas at the very moment surveillance turns intimacy into performance. It captures the friction between authentic feeling and an apparatus designed to manipulate—and helps explain how love and secrecy become entwined for him.