Disclaimer: I do not own The Maze Runner triology, the plot, or any characters within it. I only claim my OCs and their story, and anything else that seems new to the story.

Great, with that out of the way: Welcome to my first Maze Runner Story! You guys are in for quite a rollercoaster, so in the spirit of that - Keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times, and remember to drop a note letting me know what you thought at the end! Enjoy, I'll see you on the other side...

Jack and Jill went up the hill

To fetch a pale of water

Jack fell down

And broke his crown

And Jill came tumbling after

I remember reading once that if any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject. It took me a long time to learn what that meant. Too long. I was raised to believe that the need of the many outweigh the need of the few; it's why I did what I did. It's why I went along with a lot of things I felt were wrong. How can something be wrong if it's ultimately going to save the world? Where's the fault in that, and is it not eventually the greater decision? The outcome justifies the means, and all that.

It wasn't until I was shoved to the edge of the world that I found out how wrong I had been.

The air was hot and metallic. It burned my eyes, and dried my throat. My tongue felt dense and heavy in my mouth, and the clothes on my body felt annoying. A strange infantile instinct begged me to peel my shirt and pants from my slick skin, but modesty dictated that I suffer. I was restless, and blinked widely at the darkness in front of me.

It was everywhere. Thick enough to keep me from seeing the nose on my own face, and my heart was pounding so heavily in my chest that I almost couldn't hear myself swallow. Blindly, I tentatively felt the ground beneath me.

Hot and metal, it seared the pads of my fingers, and I couldn't touch it for too long. Anywhere my body made contact with it baked. No wonder I was so hot… What is this? Some sort of oven?

No, that's ridiculous. It's clearly just…

Well, I don't know what it is. The metal felt strangely like caging, and I fumbled to make sense of my surroundings. Panic prickled the hairs on the back of my neck and a whimper clawed its way up my throat.

I only just managed to muffle myself when moist breath tickled my outstretched wrist. I jerked my hand back like I was bitten, clutching my hand tightly to my chest and straining to see.

That wasn't my breath.

It wasn't.

Was it?

I began to doubt myself, scrambling into a kneeling position, but then I heard it.

A cough.

Wherever I'm trapped, I'm not alone. This revelation struck a resounding crash of panic through me. Suddenly, I was hyper aware that I wasn't alone. Another cough, ended with a long intake of breath and someone clearing their throat.

That voice—it's familiar. Strange, how you could know someone by sound alone.

"J-Jack?" My voice was smoother than I anticipated, and higher than I remembered.

The figure, one that I could more sense than see—almost like a presence—froze in front of me. He held his breath, and a heartbeat passed before he reacted.

"…Jill?" His voice was deeper than I remembered, and raspier, too. "Is that—" he coughed again. "Where are you? I can't see!"

"I'm here," I scrambled forward without another thought, reaching blindly for my brother. "I'm coming!" Not that there seemed to be far to go. Wherever we were, it seemed pretty compact.

My fingers fumbled across his forearm, sliding down until our hands locked. We latched onto each other like life preservers; a piece of home to soothe us. He's always been my security blanket. My twin, but I'm treated more as the younger sibling. He's not afraid to admit that it's because I'm a girl, either.

My foot pressed uncomfortably against his ankle, and his knee dug sharply into my thigh, and I was twisted at an awkward angle so we could cling to each other, but it barely scraped my consciousness.

"Where are we?" I whispered, not daring to raise my voice now that we were together.

"I can't tell," Jack murmured, apparently of the same mind as me. No surprise there. "I think—I think we're in a cage of some kind."

"What? Why?" I barely took a breath between questions. "Who put us here? Why's it so hot? Why's it so dark? Does it smell like—barn animals to you? Oh my god, is that you? Jack! You stink!"

"I'm sorry!" He defensively snapped. "Its not like I can shower! Like you said, it's hot! I'm sweaty!" I curled my nose in distaste, and he lightly shoved me into a wall. "Besides, you don't exactly smell like peaches."

I opened my mouth to bite back, but before I got the chance, the entire floor shifted beneath us.

My breath was stolen from me as we were yanked violently into motion, the entire metal box shooting up through the air like an elevator. A red light flickered on, allowing me to see Jack's blonde tousled hair and my own sweat-coated freckled skin. He opened his mouth and he might've said something, but if he was still whispering then it was too loud now for me to catch his words. There were blaring sounds of chains and metal gears whirring and clicking as the contraption worked to catapult us up, up, up.

My grip on his hands tightened as he tried to shake me off, and a noise erupted beside us, barely loud enough to hear. It took me a moment to register what the sound was, but when the word popped into my mind, I was only heavily confused. It sounded like—like a bleat?

Was that a goat?

Jack gave me a facial expression that said he was just as confused as I was.

I shook my head with a frown, my way of saying I had no idea what that was either. Or, I had an idea, but I wasn't sure if it was true.

Another bleat, this time from beside me, and I staggered to the side and fell from my knees in fright. The bleat was masked by a deafening screech, and the entire cage accelerated so fast that my hair was whipping all around my face—in my mouth, in my eyes, in Jack's face.

Jack, his protective instinct taking over, threw himself over me and pinned me to the ground. "Stay down!" He hollered, shielding me from whatever we were flying towards. At first I thought I was hallucinating. But then the silhouette of his arm grew more pronounced, and I knew I wasn't seeing things. It was gradually getting brighter. I tried to sit up when I could've sworn I heard voices on the wind, but Jack roughly shoved my shoulder back to the ground. "Stay down, Jill!"

Before I had the chance to say anything, we ground to an abrupt halt. Sunlight blared down at us, and voices that I didn't even know had been speaking stopped like someone flipped a television off.

I could hear the hum of the day as it filled the cage, and quickly covered my eyes with my hands to help deflect some of the searing sunlight.

"What's wrong with him?"

"Move over, I can't see!"

"Why's he laying like that?"

"Is he dead?"

"Slim it, Gally!"

"He's not dead!... Is he?"

"Wait—look at that! He's got three legs!"

"What?"

"Shut up, man! Stop making stuff up!"

"No, really! Look! One, two—three!"

"There's another one."

"Another leg?"

"No. Another greenie, shuck head, look. There's two of them!"

A chorus of gasps.

Jack, apparently having decided there was no immediate danger, rolled away from me. I squinted through the blazing sun, and up at a crowd of teenagers staring down at us. I don't know what I was expecting, but this was not it, and apparently the feeling was mutual. Some of them jerked back in surprise upon seeing us. Or, specifically, me.

"It's a girl!"

"Bro! Look at her!"

"Two of them!"

"Are they together?"

"What? Obviously!"

"No, like—together, together,"

"How am I supposed to know?"

Then, quietly, "Go get 'em, Gally."

A hush fell over the crowd as they peered down at us. I looked over at Jack with wide eyes, confused, begging him to explain. He was looking up at one of the boys standing over us, ignorant of my silent question.

One of the boys jumped down, the metal echoing harshly in my ears as his feet shook the cage dangerously. It was then that I noticed several things at once.

First, we weren't alone in the cage. There was a smattering of supplies, including a live goat and some barrels with the letters WCKD on them. So that explained the bleating…

Second, all the faces above us were—boys. And only boys. A rational part of my mind reassured me that there had to be girls nearby. They just… weren't around. It's fine.

The boy who jumped down wore a brown shirt, strangely stitched with a patch of tan fabric over the chest, and what can only be described as capris. His shoes were black, with thick black soles, and he had grey socks that sagged around his meaty ankles.

But his most notable features were his eyebrows. I mean, he might've had some other distinguishing characteristic—like, he might've had a face, but I couldn't see it around his eyebrows. They were thin, but they had a life of their own. And they apparently liked to wiggle.

Currently, they were arched at the ends like question marks that had been laid above his eyes. He paused, looking between us. His eyebrows twitched. He focused on Jack. Just as he seemed ready to say something, I spoke.

"Are you Gally?" I boldly demanded.

Hey guys! I'm tentatively venturing into the Maze Runner world... XD Do you like it? If so, let me know somehow! You can leave a review, follow, or even favorite if you'd like! I have a pretty good idea I think you guys will like, but if you don't respond well to this first chapter I might not continue at all. It will have romance, but I can't think of anyone to pair Jill with quite yet. Anyways, I'm excited to start this if you guys are liking it!