Chapter One

The Glade turned out to be a vast courtyard which was entirely enclosed within four impossibly high walls, ancient and covered with ivy. Each of the walls had a gap in the middle that looked wide enough for a human to walk through, but, to my surprise, none of the girls seemed inclined to go near them. "Why don't you . . .?" I started to ask. But Harriet cut me short.

"Those lead to the Maze," she told me, seeing that my gaze was directed towards the nearest opening. "And no-one's allowed in the Maze except the Runners - under any circumstances. The rest of us just stay put and hope the Runners find a way out."

"A way out of where?" I asked. Even with my memories of my former life pretty much non-existent, I knew I had never been in a place like this before. A place where the entire population seemed to amount to a dozen young girls . . . No, wait - Harriet had said something about "Runners", who were presumably inside that mysterious Maze right now.

"A way out of the Maze, of course!" It was Flossie who spoke this time. She was a tall girl with long copper-coloured hair and ice-blue eyes, probably around sixteen years old. Indeed, most of the group seemed to be fifteen or sixteen years old or thereabouts, though one or two looked a little younger. "That's what they've been doing every day for the last month. For as long as any of us can remember," she added, looking straight at me.

I gave an involuntary gasp as the meaning of Flossie's word sunk in; it seemed that, like me, these girls had had their memories wiped before being sent here. But why? For what purpose? I was tempted to ask, but I sensed that they would have no more idea than I did. "So, how did you . . . sticks get here?" I asked instead, not entirely sure what they meant by "sticks", but sensing that it was some sort of slang they'd developed. "Did you all come up in that Box?"

"No idea," Flossie said, shrugging. "We just woke up here one day, unable to remember anything except our first names. Bet that happened to you, didn't it . . .?" She paused, waiting for me to supply my name.

"Jenny," I filled in, grateful to be able to tell them at least that much about myself. It was weird the way my memory had been wiped; somehow, whoever had done it had left my knowledge of the workings of the world intact, but removed anything associated with personal experiences. If anyone had asked me right then where I came from, whether I had any brothers or sisters, what sort of music I liked, if I even liked music, I couldn't have answered them. I knew what music was, but I had no memories of any specific tunes, much less how I felt about them. All I could remember was my first name.

"Right, Jenny," Flossie went on. "Anyway, we woke up here with our memories wiped and no idea how we were going to get out. Then some of us had the idea of exploring through there." She nodded towards one of the openings in the walls. "That's how we found out about the Maze."

The thirteen of us had been walking all the while and we presently reached what seemed to be a construction site with seven people working on it. The strange thing was that they were all teenaged girls too; there seemed to be no boys in this place, nor adults of either gender. No little kids either; the youngest people I'd seen so far were Emily and Tegan, who looked like they were about thirteen years old. That was another mystery to add to those that already surrounded this place called the Glade: why did the entire population consist of adolescent females? Including myself, there were twenty of us in the Glade itself, but I had no idea how many Runners were out in the Maze. "So how many of you are there?" I asked, thinking it sounded like a stupid question but needing to know. If only to satisfy my own curiosity.

"There were thirty of us," replied Indira. By now, most of the girls had dispersed and she and Flossie were the only ones near me. "Now we're down to twenty-seven." She nodded meaningfully to the far corner of the Glade. I did not need to ask what lay in that direction; her tone of voice said it all.

"Well, you can make that twenty-eight now I'm here," I said, trying not to think about how the three who'd died came to lose their lives. I remembered the moment in the Box when I'd wondered if I was on my way to be executed for some unknown crime; to my relief, it seemed that was not the case. Nevertheless, from what I'd seen of this place so far, I had a feeling it was far from being a safe haven. It was more like a vast prison whose only exit lay at the end of a Maze . . . Wait! If these girls had been here for a month, why hadn't they found a way out before now? Surely the Maze couldn't be that difficult to solve?! I put these questions to Indira and Flossie, both of whom responded with shrugs and shaken heads.

"How should we know?" Indira asked in reply. "We're not Runners and only Runners are allowed in the Maze." I remembered Harriet telling me the exact same thing. "But we do know that the walls move every night," Indira went on. "I guess that makes it difficult to keep track, not that they don't try." She pointed to a small windowless building whose door was securely bolted. "That's the Map Room; it's where the Runners go to draw up the latest Maps of the Maze. And they've been studying them every night for the past month . . ."

"But they're still no nearer to a solution," I finished, guessing what she was going to say next. I looked in the direction of the nearest opening, one of the four entrances to the mysterious Maze whose walls moved every night. The Maze which, even after a month, still remained unsolved, leaving over two dozen girls trapped in the middle of it. Then, a thought occurred to me. "Are you sure there isn't another way out? The Box, maybe?"

Indira let out an ironic laugh. "You think we haven't thought of that? First time it delivered supplies to the Glade, a couple of us tried climbing inside, hoping it would take them away from here. Fuzzing thing wouldn't move until they got out. And, as for trying to climb down the Box Hole when the Box isn't here, it's so black down there you can't see how far you have to go to reach the bottom. Much less what's down there." She shook her head in a way which said she had no intention of finding out any time soon.

I ended up spending the rest of the day in Flossie and Indira's company. The two of them had been good friends for as long as they could remember, which, of course, meant for the last month; they had no way of knowing if they had been friends before they came to the Glade, but they were friends now. Friends. I wished I could remember who my friends in the outside world were, but I couldn't begin to picture their faces, never mind remember their names. In fact, I couldn't even remember what I myself looked like and I hadn't seen a mirror since I found myself here. Mirrors. Why did I remember what mirrors were, but not what my own reflection looked like? My loss of memory confused and frightened me, but I suspected the rest of the girls felt the same. The difference was that they had all been here for a month and had had time to get to know each other, to forge friendships. I had only just arrived and, so far, the only people I'd spoken to at any length were Flossie and Indira.

"What do I look like?" I asked, as the three of us stood watching Emily and Tegan pulling up weeds in what Flossie had referred to as the "Garden". These two were the smallest and youngest girls in the Glade; the others had nicknamed them the Pips, short for Pipsqueaks. Emily had blonde hair which came down to her waist and emerald green eyes, while Tegan's hair was short and dark, her eyes hazel. I looked at the two of them for a moment, then back at Flossie and Indira and repeated my question. It sounded like a stupid thing to ask someone, but, when you can't remember anything about yourself except your first name . . .

"Well, you're slim," replied Indira. "You've got brown hair and brown eyes and I'd say you were about . . ." She paused for several seconds. ". . . fifteen years old. I think I'm fifteen too," she added. "And Flossie's about a year older. Not that I know for sure; none of us know exactly how old we are."

We continued to hang out for a while longer - I tried in vain to remember when I'd hung out with my friends from before I arrived in the Glade - before Flossie said we had to get back. It was getting late and the Runners were due back soon. And Harriet and Sonya (the leaders of this group of nearly thirty amnesiac teenaged girls, I'd learned from Flossie and Indira) liked to have everyone gathered together to hear the latest reports from the Maze. Not that these reports ever varied, Indira told me; for the past month, the Runners had always come back with the same news. No sign of a way out.

Indira, Flossie and I returned to the construction site; Flossie told me it was eventually going to be a Dwelling for the whole group, all twenty-eight of us. I was already beginning to think of myself as belonging to this little community, even though I'd only been here for a few hours. I might be trapped in this place, with no way out except through a Maze which no-one had managed to solve, but at least I wasn't alone here. Indira and Flossie seemed like decent . . . sticks. Sticks, fuzzing, Pips. The slang of the Glade. Even with my memory wiped, I knew I'd never heard anyone else use those words in the same context they were used by these girls.

Anyway, we were at the site of our future Dwelling and so were the rest of the girls. All of us were keeping watch for the Runners; they should be back any minute according to Flossie, who was wearing a digital watch on her wrist. She'd told me she was the Keeper of the Medics, whatever that meant, and that was why she'd been given the watch. All the Keepers - there were seven of them altogether - had been issued with these watches, as had all the Runners. "Helps them keep track of time in the Maze, I guess," she said when I asked about this. "Because you don't want to be caught out there at night." She shook her head and shuddered in a way which told me that whatever happened in the Maze at night couldn't be good.

"That's how Val, Connie and Linda died," Indira added. "The Doors were closed on the first day we were here. But, when they opened for the first time, ten of us went exploring in the Maze, only we didn't know the Doors closed every night then; we thought they were going to stay open all the time now that they were open. And we didn't know the walls inside the Maze moved too. You can imagine what a shock we had when they suddenly started rearranging themselves, but we knew it meant the Doors might be closing as well. We ran as fast as we could to get out of there, but three of us didn't make it. The Grievers got all of them." Her tone was grim. "That's why Harriet and Sonya made it a rule that only the Runners could enter the Maze and even they aren't allowed out there after dark. We haven't lost anyone since, so I guess that rule's working."

"What are Grievers?" I asked. The very word sounded evil and, from what Indira had said, these "Grievers" had killed the girls called Val, Connie and Linda.

But, before either Flossie or Indira could reply, a shout went up from Tegan. "They're coming! Yoko and Kate! They're coming!"

Everyone looked in the direction she was pointing. I looked too. A pair of girls were running towards us; one of them was short with black hair and almond-shaped eyes, while her companion had light brown hair tied back in a ponytail. They were sweating, breathing heavily as if they had been running hard for some time; that must be why the people who went into the Maze were called Runners. But they didn't stop, not even to acknowledge those who had been waiting for them to return, and made straight for the windowless building which Indira had called the Map Room. The black-haired Runner, Yoko, unbolted the door and disappeared inside, followed by Kate. I wondered for a moment how I'd known Yoko was the Runner with black hair, then I remembered something. Yoko was a Japanese name and Japanese people were short with black hair and almond shaped eyes, like the girl I'd just seen. Again, I couldn't say where I'd learned that information; it was just something I knew.

At length, two more pairs of Runners appeared and went into the Map Room; I learned their names from Indira and Flossie. First came Ada and Felicia, who looked so alike with their fair hair and blue eyes that I wondered if they were sisters. Indira said they might be, but she didn't know for sure and, of course, Ada and Felicia couldn't remember anything about themselves except their first names. The other pair comprised Cass, who had coffee-coloured skin and frizzy black hair, and Caroline, whose auburn hair was pinned to her head in a braid. Cass, the last one to enter the Map Room, was about to close the door when Harriet stopped her.

"Wait. Patra and Anne aren't back yet. Better give 'em a few minutes." There was something about her tone of voice that told me the last two Runners - Patra and Anne, according to Harriet - would only have a matter of minutes to get back to the Glade. "If they're not back by the time the Doors start to close . . ." She looked as though she was about to say something, but changed her mind at the last minute. "Anyway, if they're not back by then, you sticks get about your map-making." The way she said it was completely matter-of-fact, as if she didn't care that two people would effectively be condemned to death if they got trapped in the Maze.

I turned to Indira and Flossie. "Why doesn't she send someone in after them?" But, even as I asked that question, I knew what the answer would be. Flossie's next words only confirmed it.

"It's too risky. The Doors are about to close and Patra and Anne could be anywhere in there. Going after them would only lead to more of us being trapped. We'll just have to hope the Runners find them. Or," she added grimly, "whatever's left of them."

I did not like the sound of that; from the way Flossie spoke, it sounded as though Patra and Anne would be facing a fate far worse than death if they got caught in the Maze. Which seemed to be inevitable unless they showed up soon. "What do you mean, whatever's left of them?" I asked, my voice trembling even though I tried to control it. I'd already been told there were creatures called Grievers in the Maze and that they had killed three people, a death toll which seemed set to increase to five. But how did the Grievers kill their victims?

Flossie hesitated as though what she was about to tell me was so horrible that she didn't know how to put it into words. "It was three days before they found Val, Connie and Linda," she told me. "Linda's body was more-or-less intact, but all they could find of Val and Connie was a few leftover pieces. So . . ." She was cut off abruptly as a deafening boom echoed through the Glade, followed by the sound of something grinding, like gears only many times louder. The vibrations were so strong that I had to struggle to stay on my feet; it felt like an earthquake, something else I could remember with no personal references to go with that memory. Had I ever been in an earthquake? Or had I only read about them in books? Books. I could remember what books were, but not which ones I'd read.

Just as I was wondering why whoever had sent me here had erased nearly all my personal memories but left my knowledge of cold, hard facts intact, I saw something I wouldn't have believed possible if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. The walls, those enormous stone walls which had to be at least a hundred feet tall, were moving or at least the ones on the right were, sliding to meet their neighbours on the left. I'd expected huge metal barriers to slam down, but this . . .

"Someone's coming!"

The shout, audible even above the grinding of the moving walls, startled me out of my thoughts. It was Tegan again; she was pointing to one of the now half-closed Doors. I looked and saw someone running up the passage which lay beyond, but only one person which meant the other missing girl's chances of making it back in time were not looking good. I silently willed this girl on, praying for her to reach the Glade before she was sealed into the Maze. From where I stood, I could see that she was getting nearer the exit, but at the same time the opening was getting narrower. "Please hurry," I found myself whispering, not that it was likely to make any difference. She would either make it to the Glade and live to run the Maze another day or she would be trapped with the deadly creatures which Flossie and Indira called Grievers.

In the end, with moments to spare, the girl emerged from the Maze, sweating and panting even more than the first six Runners. She had the same dark skin as Harriet, but, whereas Harriet's hair was so short that she was practically bald, this girl's hair was long and had been arranged in dreadlocks. And she was clearly in a state of exhaustion, suggesting that something bad must have happened to her in the Maze, something which had delayed her return. I wondered what that was, but I didn't have to wait long to find out.

Harriet and Sonya had hurried over to her the moment she emerged from the Maze. "Patra?" I heard Sonya say. "What happened in there?"

Patra was panting so heavily she could hardly speak. "Griever . . . chased . . . me . . . Anne . . . drew . . . it . . . off . . ." That was as much as she could get out before she collapsed, falling unconscious against Sonya.

At the same instant, the Doors closed with a final resounding boom.