Disclaimer: I don't own The Maze Runner (it belongs to the fantastic James Dashner). I just thought it would be fun to write a bit of fanfic for NaNoWriMo.
A/N: I've been playing with this idea for a few months now, and since it's now November, I've decided to go ahead and try it out. So this is an AU where a test subject from a different Maze and a different branch of WICKED is transported to the Group A's Maze. It's set one year pre-Thomas, and it'll go off the rails from the original storyline. So welcome to Variables, my NaNoWriMo 2016 project!
Variables
Chapter 1
It was cold out in the Rust. Even Athena's jacket couldn't keep out the biting chill of the early morning wind that whipped around the sharp corners of ruined buildings, tearing at her dark hair. She didn't even bother trying to pull up the hood of her hoodie. It wasn't like it would stay put with the wind blowing.
Overhead, the sun was starting to bleed pink across the pale lavender-blue sky as dawn broke over the Maze, or as the inhabitants called it, the Rust. Unfortunately, the Rust wouldn't get any warmer, even with the sun out. It was always a nippy temperature in their prison, no matter how bright and sunny the day was. Maybe that was some annoying trick their jailers had decided to pull on them. Athena wouldn't be surprised. Whoever stuck them there did seem to have a sadistic streak.
Unlike the Mappers and others who went out into the Rust, Athena didn't bother sprinting or even jogging through the maze to get to her pick-up points. Last night, she had put in a request at the Courtyard's mailbox for some new medical supplies, and the wardens or whoever they were always dropped the supplies in the same spots. They were close to the Courtyard, and she could get the meds and get back without exhausting herself.
Still, she kept a staff in hand. It was stupid to go into the Rust unarmed. It wasn't like the beasts could tell who was a medic and who wasn't.
The medicine she needed wasn't crucial, but she would be lying if she said she wasn't worried about Seph's cough. The younger girl couldn't seem to shake this cold, no matter how many cups of tea and hot soup Athena had her drink. A couple generic cold meds would hopefully get her back to full strength.
That was if the meds were approved.
Sometimes the wardens didn't give them the materials they asked for. It was sort of like making a wish to a spiteful genie. A spiteful, taciturn, flippant genie who didn't seem to have a particular code of ethics or morals that they followed.
Man, what she wouldn't give to have five minutes alone with the wardens. She would give them a piece of her mind and then some. Like a fist to the face.
Athena headed down a corridor, making her way to her first pick-up point. Her half-full medic's bag bounced against her shoulder as she walked. It was light brown, almost the same shade as her skin, and it had a big blue star stitched into the material. The star was her symbol around the Courtyard, something she put on almost everything she owned in some form or fashion. The other girls knew not to mess with her stuff without permission. Not that she would explode or anything. Nah, she'd just wait until they got hurt and then sew them up without anesthetic. That always did the trick.
She was getting close to her first pick-up, the one in the broken building with the statues in front of it. Buildings seemed to close in around her as she walked down an alley. There were shortcuts all over the Rust, but you had to be smart to remember where they were.
When she got to the part of the alley where there was a painting of a cactus on the wall, Athena smoothly ducked. Foot-long needles shot across the space where her head had once been and clattered against the needles that were already embedded in the opposite wall. Without pausing, she continued forward, keeping a steady pace.
You also had to remember what traps went with which shortcut.
The first pick-up turned out to be a bust. There wasn't anything in the box on the building's front stoop, so Athena turned around and took a left. Her sturdy boots crunched against the broken sidewalk and gravel, and again, she tried not to wonder too much about where all these buildings came from and where the people who had lived in them had gone.
Letting her mind drift off while she was in the Rust wasn't a good way to stay alive, and she had a decent survival instinct. Maybe less than some others, according to Tia, but whatever. Tia was a worrywart, and honestly it wasn't like she was a Mapper. She was just one of the few willing to go after a Mapper when they got injured in the Rust.
She was almost to her second pick-up point when one of the Mappers came across her path, nearly skidding into her. "E'yo, Thena," Rhian said, jogging in place, "How's it going? Got anything to go back?" Most of the girls were worried about Seph. She was the youngest and most innocent out of them all, and she was the newest. They tended to be pretty protective of their newbies.
"It's dandy," Athena said with a half-smile, "But I haven't got the meds yet, so keep going." She didn't want to keep the Mapper while the other girl could be making her rounds through the Rust, hopefully finding the way out.
"Gotcha," Rhian said, "Keep an eye out for the beasts."
"Always. Be careful!" Athena said, waving as the Mapper took off, dashing down the corridor. Too fast. Rhian never had been very good at pacing herself. Seriously, trying to keep all of these girls in good health was an all time job. Luckily she did have to lead them at the same time. That was Tia's job.
A couple more turns took her to the street where her second pick-up point was located. It was hidden better than the first point, beneath a storm drain on the side of the road, and it had taken her a few weeks to find it after she had first been dropped in the maze.
She was almost there when something glinted off to the side, down an alley that she knew better than to take. This one didn't lead anywhere in particular, but there was a wall that would fall on you if you walked down that way. Iris had died last year when the wall had crushed her leg, and she lost too much blood. It wasn't a sight that Athena was ever going to forget, and she didn't want to go down that way if she could help it.
However, as a member of the Courtyard, she couldn't ignore anything new that popped up in the Rust. It was part of their rules that new additions to the maze were supposed to be examined, just in case the exit to the maze only opened on certain days or at certain times.
Sighing, Athena readjusted the straps on her medic's bag and trotted over to the mouth of the alleyway, ignoring the shiver of apprehension that traveled down her spine. She paused, one hand on the cracked wall by the alleyway. Down at the dead end, something was glimmering behind a half-ripped tarp. For a moment, Athena considered calling out for Rhian to come back, but the other girl was probably too far away to hear her clearly. If she didn't take this chance, she might miss a potential exit and let the rest of her group down.
Steeling herself, Athena pushed away her anxiousness and bad memories and walked down the alley. Picking up a brick, she hurled it from her, causing the motion sensor for the wall to trick. Cursing it, she walked over it, stepping off the end just as it started hauling itself into position. Even if they could have broken it, the wall would have fixed itself in the morning. Every trap in the Rust fixed itself if it was sprung or broken, no matter what the girls did.
She walked to the end of the alley, her staff held out in front of her just in case this was another death trap. Behind the tarp, the wall glistened and gleaned, like it was made out of quicksilver instead of the usual metal of the Rust. Huh. Weirdness. Weirdness was good, it was different, and different meant a possible escape from the Rust.
Athena's heart pounded in her chest, rattling her rib cage as she shifted from foot to foot in front of the wall. Maybe she was about to have a heart attack. That'd be poetic, the medic dying of a heart attack. She needed to get her bravery up and just go for it.
Gingerly, she pressed her staff into the wall, and it passed through. Like, it literally went right through the shiny grey stuff as if it wasn't even there.
"Holy..." Athena pulled her staff back and looked at it, inspecting it for scorch marks or acid or, you know, anything that would indicate that it had gone somewhere dangerous. The wall must have been a hologram. She needed to find someone, she needed to see if this was the way out. What if it disappeared? What if it went away the moment she moved from in front of it from it? She also needed to check and see what was on the other side, so the Mappers and whoever she brought back would be prepared.
Ugh, choices. She needed to think, but what if this opportunity closed while she rolled over the options in her mind?
"Just do it," she encouraged herself, her hands balling up into fists.
Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and walked through the wall, stepping into possible freedom.
Where she was promptly knocked to the ground by a jumble of arms and legs and fluffy blond hair. She gave an uncharacteristic scream and whacked her attacker with her staff, thrashing the threat around the neck and shoulders.
"Bloody hell, stop that!" the attacker shouted. The distinctly male voice made her freeze, and he took that chance to grab her staff and pull it out of her hands. He looked just as shocked as she felt as he stared at her, his mouth open. "You're a...where'd you come from?"
A boy. A boy. She hadn't seen a boy in...well, she couldn't remember. Blame the amnesia everyone in the Courtyard suffered from, but she couldn't remember the last time she had been this close to a teenage boy. She almost reached out to touch him, as if to make sure he was real, but instead, she jumped up and hurled herself back through the illusion.
Or tried to.
"Damn it!" she shouted as she stumbled back from the solid wall, pain bursting across her forehead. The grey glimmer was gone, replaced by a stone wall that she had never seen before. Athena put her hands against the wall. "Where'd it go, where is it—" She had never been the type to panic, but she could feel the frantic worry welling up in her chest.
"Where'd what go?" the boy asked, hands up, his voice calm and wary, like he was talking to an injured animal. Probably safer for him that way.
"Where's the maze?" she demanded, fingernails scrambling against the stone wall, as if she could drag the grey out of it and get back through.
That's when the boy said something that made her stop, fingers pressed into the cracks of the wall.
"You're in it."