Author's Note

Hi! Welcome to my new story about our beloved Brit salamander. This is a trial run (haha, get it? No? No?), so I will come back to this and edit some stuff, if not all. This story will NOT be updated frequently. At all. I'm writing this after I fell in love with the Maze Runner Trilogy all over again after seeing The Scorch Trials, but that's also exactly why I'm winging it. No plan whatsoever.

I combined bits and pieces from the movies (all their looks) and the novels (geographic description of the Glade and many other basic stuff), and some I just plain altered (like the fact that several of our beloved Gladers are already part of the original 30 that came up). This is obviously very early on in the timeline, and I'll be using the book's 2 instead of 3 years.

I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did writing it. Please point out any mistakes either through reviews or PM (if you don't want to increase my review count due to a stupid mistake).

Well, here goes.

UPDATE:

I've just done some minor editing. No plot changes at all.

Disclaimer: Newt is mine. (Yeah right I wish).

Chapter 1

She remembered what cake smells like, the humid warmth as the aroma wafted in the air, the grainy sweetness tickling her nose. She remembered how careful you have to be when taking it out of the oven. She remembered feeling the heat against her skin.

But she couldn't, for the life of her, remember how it tastes like. The sugary scent trickled into her nose as she took hold of the memory, but it vanished right before it touched her tongue.

Always.

That scared her most, because cake was the only thing she remembered, and even then her knowledge on the delicacy was extremely limited.

She woke up gasping for air in the darkness, as if she had been drowning, several minutes earlier. She didn't know what she was drowning in; she didn't have the word for it.

Then—all of a sudden—she did.

Water, she whispered in her mind. Even her thoughts sounded silent. Water, water water. She grabbed the word and held it to her chest as tightly as she could. Who knew when it would escape her again. Cake, water. Cake, water. Cake—

Cage, her mind supplied. Cage. It sounded similar to "cake," but what was it? She shivered when she thought of the word. It didn't sound nice, but she took it and added it to her pitiful collection of words anyway. Beggars can't be choosers. Cake, water, cage. Cake, water, cage. Cake, water, cage.

She chanted the words over and over and over again, part willing and part terrified to stop. Her forehead rested on her knees as she made herself smaller, smaller, smaller, until she was a ball of flesh and bones and three words barely hanging onto sanity.

There was something shuffling next to her, but she barely registered it. Her ears were occupied by the grating clinks and clanks of…something. It was so loud it drowned everything else. Sometimes even her thoughts. So she concentrated harder, breathed in deeper; it made her dizzy.

A second later, her head hit the floor with a loud BANG. Disoriented, it took her a moment to lift her body off the ground, only to fall back down again. She felt so heavy, so tired. It took her a few minutes to notice that the—the—

Cage. The word came again, but this time she understood it. This was the "cage." She was in it. And it had stopped moving.

Then she heard voices from outside the cage, and she was torn between hiding and screaming for help. The former seemed to be the better option, so she bolted upright and scurried to a corner, crouching behind the boxes. Her fingers met with something soft, long, folded neatly into a rectangle. Without any further thought, she spread it open and covered herself with it, praying that the darkness would help conceal her.

Her hopes were dashed. There was a terrible moan, then the cage opened slowly, allowing a sliver of light to come through, illuminating everything. The cloth covering her had tiny holes she was able to see through, and she saw something dancing in the light, and it took all she had not to reach out. It was so beautiful it made her forget her fears for a moment. Just a very short moment, until she felt the whole cage vibrate. Somebody was down here, with her. A lot of somebodies were up there; she could tell from the chattering.

"…S'just supplies, like last week." The voices exploded into a mixture of disbelieving gasps shouts.

"But the alarm's never rung before!"

"Yeah, but was the alarm for the Box, though?"

"It rang about half an hour before the Box came up."

"For a good long while too."

"…Maybe it was for something else?" It was this last question that silenced everyone. The quiet lingered, thickening the atmosphere and making it hard to breathe.

"Right," the person near her said, wiping away the gloom that shrouded the area. There was something in his tone that drew everybody's attention. Drew hers. "Split up and look for anythin' out of place. Anythin' at all. Head to the direction where the alarm was the loudest. 'Cept you." Nothing more was said as she heard footsteps heading away from the cage. The person near her grabbed a box, and her heart skipped a beat. They were unloading. They were going to find her. Blind panic overtook her, paralyzed her, and she could do nothing but tremble in silence. They were going to find her.

"Alby, help me get these up." One by one the boxes disappeared. Either by luck or chance, they started with the ones furthest away from her, working their way around. She took the extra minute it bought her to think of what to say. Hello? Nice to meet you? …Help?

They were too quick, or she was too slow, that by the time they took the upper box that was hiding her from their view, she knew something was wrong. She couldn't see them, but she felt that they stopped moving.

"Are those…?"

"…feet?"

Oh no. She sneaked a peek down, and sure enough her toes were sticking out of the protective garment.

"Are they messin' with us?" She squeaked when she felt a hard poke on her leg. Judging by their exclamations, she wasn't the only one surprised. There was a moment of hesitation, of fear, before one of them pulled the garb away from her; her hands instinctively tried to pull it back in vain. The person was a great deal stronger.

"What the—"

"It's a—"

Her eyes fixated on the two boys, towering over her and staring like she was something they've never seen before. One of them was full on glaring before quickly making his way to grab her.

She didn't know what else to do, so she screamed.

"I think we found our problem."

"Get girly-face over here NOW!" Nick shouted over the shrill wailing of the—the—kid, still drowning in her own tears on the bottom of the Box. He tried to toss her out of it, but every time he came near she would just shriek louder, kicking and flailing her arms wildly in an effort to scratch. His ears couldn't take it, and his body certainly didn't need any more injuries.

She sounds worse than the stupid alarm, he grumbled, followed by a string of profanities that he kept to himself, only stopping once he saw the person he requested approaching. By this time, a crowd was starting to gather around the Box.

"Took your time!" he barked at the smaller boy, who sent him a scowl back. It wasn't the least bit menacing. Girly-face and all that.

"Was doing what you ordered 'til Alby stopped me," Newt scoffed. "What d'ya need me for?"

He gestured at the Box. The blond sneaked a peek.

"What the hell am I supposed to do with a crying kid?"

"I dunno. Something. Freaked when she saw me. She'd prolly have a mental breakdown if she saw Alby." A "Hey!" was shouted, and a few snickers echoed throughout the crowd.

"So what? You send the most good-looking guy down?" He smirked. The older boy smirked wider.

"No, just the baby-faced one." That earned him a shove, which didn't move him much, but it seemed to appease the other boy anyway.

"Wait, you said 'she'?"

"Yeah. That's why I thought you her and will get along well, seeing as you're both girls—" He was shoved harder this time, and most of the boys were blatantly laughing now. To avoid further derogatory comments, the skinny boy jumped down, landing lightly on his feet and his eyes on the small curled-up ball that was supposed to be a human being, or so he was told.

"Hey. Hey." He shook her shoulder, but apparently that was a big mistake as she doubled her efforts to cry louder. "Bloody hell." He didn't remember ever meeting any girls, but if they were all like this then he would do just fine without ever meeting one for the rest of his life, thank you very much.

"Hey, you," he said in a sterner voice. It didn't work. "Look, cryin's not going to do ya any good. Might as well stop now or you'll have a headache later." He gave her a few seconds, but she didn't stop. The boy pulled his hair in frustration and looked up, only to meet the amused gazes of the other boys, looking down. "Don't any of you have anythin' better to do?"

"Nope," a boy replied nonchalantly. He heard some snorts and cackling from those further away, but they all dispersed obediently when their leader told them to. Newt realized then that he hadn't heard laughter in a long while, but it didn't mean he was happy with people laughing at him. Even Nick himself left in the end, having stood by the side of the Box for a good five minutes with no progress. Newt sat down then, right across the blubbering mess, and sighed.

He took this moment to actually look at the new arrival. The boy could tell right away that she was very young. Maybe even younger than anybody else here in this hell hole. He couldn't see her face—it was still hidden by her curtain of hair and legs—but he didn't need anything else to assign a word to the girl.

Small, he thought. He didn't remember ever seeing anybody of this stature before. Was she supposed to be that tiny? Was she sick? Why would they—whoever they were—send someone so young?

He ran a hand through his hair, finding that it was sticking up after the hair-pulling he just did. He continued to stare at the girl, racking his abused brain for a conversation topic. Really, he grumbled, how am I supposed to know what to do. Never even seen one before. His eyes wandered to the wooden box to her left; the animal in it seemed distressed, keeping its eyes on the only source of noise warily, wearily.

It felt like an elastic snapping back to its place after being stretched out beyond its limit.

"Did you know there is a goat in the crate beside you?" The sobbing halted, like she was choking for a bit, but then it continued. Still, she seemed less hysterical than a minute ago, so he persisted. "It's lookin' at you right now. S'got the weirdest eyes. Creepy. But it's lookin' at you. Hasn't moved an inch since I got here. I think you were so loud you scared him." Her sobs turned to snivels, and her snivels turned to hiccups, but she eventually lifted her head slightly to look at the animal next to her. Their eyes met. She extended a hand towards the creature, but it gave a spooked bleet and kicked itself further away from her hand. He could see her frowning now, and looking at her own hand as if she had never seen it before.

"Sorry," she croaked, and her hands flew to her throat in record speed. He knew that feeling—had it when he first came here with the other boys.

"S'okay." Although he didn't know whether the apology was intended for the goat or for him, he took it as a peace offering anyway. "What's your name?"

Her mouth opened to answer, but nothing came out. It closed, and her frowned deepened before reopening her mouth to try again. The first time it only opened out of reflex, because she knew she had been asked that questions hundreds of times; she just didn't remember. Her mind didn't. Her body did. The second time it was to say, "I don't know."

"It'll come back to you soon, don't worry. We couldn't remember anythin' when we first got her either," he lied. All of them remembered their names right off the bat, but it was useless to scare the already terrified girl even further.

"…I remember cake." He involuntarily chuckled at that. Out of all the things.

"Should we start callin' you that, then?"

"…I'm not cake," she mumbled, although there was a hint of irritation in the sentence.

"Fine, 'Not-Cake,'" he smiled, countering her scowl, as he stood up and brushed dust off his only pair of trousers. "Welcome to whatever-the-heck-this-place-is."