Chapter Three
Suran (ft. Dean) – 1+1=0
Despite its cold walls and shady home behind a bramble bush, under a mid-day sun, the Slammer baked Rose. It was a miserable cube made of stone, a shoddy-looking but surprisingly sturdy door, and a rusty lock as strong as diamonds. The mocking adornment of a rickety chair made her long for the comparatively homey bliss of her hut.
It was like a sauna inside. Except for the meager air that blew in through the window cut out in the door, there was no ventilation, and Rose had no choice but to face the fact that she desperately needed a shower. There was no telling how long it had been since she'd been clean, but judging by the ripe stink of her shirt, it might have been a few days longer than she had even been in the Glade.
No one had been by in hours to check on her, and Rose assumed it was either because they were still mad at her or they simply weren't allowed. Her stomach rumbled. Her breakfast had long since been exhausted and left her lamenting for that one extra blueberry Gally had swiped from her.
Maybe it was the heat or her hunger or a combination of the two, but the longer the hours scratched on, the crazier Rose felt. She paced the already well-worn tracks in the dirt until she had made a satisfactory trough. Finally, when there was nothing left to do but sulk, she sank down onto the lone chair in the room and slouched, staring hard at one of the walls.
The longer she stared, the more worried Rose was for her own sanity. The stone shifted and swirled. Murky shapes formed just out of focus, things she thought she recognized but couldn't quite place. Tunnels, maybe, and something glowing, like a computer monitor or a television. Amorphous shadows patrolled the scene in varying shades of beige and gray and black, always coming and going as though they had very specific destinations in mind. One of them waved something above its head, and new shadows raced into the vision until they formed a blob in front of a glowing screen, but it was impossible to see what they saw. There was no sound, as if the auxiliary jack in her brain had been unplugged.
Rose rapped the butt of her palm against her temple, trying to dislodge the strange images from her vision. "If these boys are trying to make me crazy, it's working," she grumbled. "And now I'm talking to myself. Terrific."
There was a knock at the door. Right on cue to drag her off to the looney bin.
Another knock. Whoever it was waited for her okay. How quaint. That ruled out both Alby and Minho.
"Come in," Rose said.
The ragged click of the lock's tumbler thundered off the walls. Ripe sunlight blasted the dank space, and she shielded her eyes with her arm at the flood of brilliance. Chuck's plump face waited smiling for her as her vision adjusted.
"Hi, Rose," he said softly. "How you holding up in here?"
"First, promise me you're a real person, and then I can answer."
Chuck nodded with a laugh for reassurance. "That's pretty good. Last time Gally was in here, we found him sniveling in a corner come morning. That was totally worth it."
Rose ran her hands over her face. "What time is it out there?"
"Same as it is in here," he joked.
"Doesn't feel like it. I feel like I've been in here for a week."
"Dinner time, which is why I'm here. Alby must really like you, he even gave me the key rather than making me shove this in through the window." Chuck deposited a tray laden with food along with a bucket of water on the floor. "I picked out the food for you myself. I hope you like it."
Even though her eyes had been playing tricks on her for hours, Rose thought she detected a darling pink on the boy's ample face. She glanced down to the tray and found a plate piled high with green beans, carrots and noodles covered in a chunky tomato sauce. Beside that was a charred chicken breast and one rather dense muffin. Chuck had even smuggled in a whole orange for her.
"It looks amazing, Chuck. Thank you," she beamed.
His flush deepened. "Should be enough water to last you through tonight. I tried to get you a blanket but couldn't find a spare. If I can't find one, I'll bring you mine."
"Please don't," Rose insisted. "I can handle one night in here, no matter what all those guys out there say."
Chuck leaned in the open door. "You'd be surprised," he said. "Most of them are actually kinda impressed you lasted that long without crying. And just ignore the rest of 'em acting like they're better than you. I can't even remember the last time a Greenie came up without totally breaking down—well, Thomas, but they broke the mold with that shank. I dunno, I think when you don't have a lot, some shanks try and take stuff from others so they can feel better about it. Don't let them take any of that from you."
Rose felt that familiar prick of tears again, but this time they weren't funneling up from some untapped trauma, they were coming from a well of gratitude. Before she could think better of it, she had closed the gap between Chuck and herself, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. She had a couple inches on Chuck, and she rubbed her cheek across his curls and closed her eyes. The smell of her dinner lingered around him, and under that, she could smell the pungent hint of his Slopper duties, but it was oddly comforting. He hesitated at first, but finally, he folded his hands around her waist and squeezed with surprising strength.
"I think this is my first hug," Chuck mumbled into her shirt. "It's really great."
"Mine, too," Rose laughed. "You're a really smart guy, Chuck, you know that? Thanks for making me feel so much better."
"Su-sure. Just don't let go yet, okay?"
"Okay," she said and nuzzled his head once more.
They hugged for another moment, drawing strength from one another in a perfect symbiosis. It was as pure a moment as Rose suspected she might get in the Glade, and she wasn't in a hurry to give it up, especially after her chilling brush with death that morning.
"Hurry it up, kid, Alby wants his key back before-"
Rose opened her eyes to find the Keeper of the Runners struck dumb at the sight of the two of them hugging in her jail cell. Minho's eyes widened and then, after a moment of studying her face in the boy's hair and Chuck's arms wrapped tightly around her waist, they narrowed.
"Oh, come on!" Minho exclaimed. "You bring her food and get a shucking hug. I save her life and get a knee to the stomach. How is this fair?"
Rose gave Chuck one final squeeze before she soothed his hair and let him go. She smoothed down her tank top and raised one brow. "Did you want a hug, Minho?"
"I-no! I'm just saying-"
"What are you saying?" Chuck asked with crossed arms.
Rose mimicked the kid's stance. "Yeah, what are you saying?"
"Forget it!" Minho shouted. "I should lock both of you shuck-faces in here."
"Hm," she added with a mischievous grin to her new partner in crime, "I wonder what we could get up to in here if we were both locked up."
Minho growled and stormed off.
After a moment, they uncrossed their arms, and though Rose was smiling at her little victory, Chuck sighed. "I better get back. I gotta finish the Kitchen before I get an earful from Fry. At least it's not as bad as breakfast."
Rose hung her head. "Yeah, I'm still sorry about that."
"Eh, that hug made it all worth it," Chuck said. He headed toward the door, his hand pausing on the handle. "I feel bad I have to leave you in here. Maybe once the guys get out of the Gathering, Alby will stop by."
"Gathering?"
"Yeah, the Keepers are meeting tonight. Probably talking about what happened at the Wall today. They don't let the rest of us in, so I don't know for sure, but they also don't call a Gathering unless something big is going on."
"Chuck?" Rose said, catching him with her words before he could close the door. "Do you think everything will be okay?"
"Hey, I got my first hug today. Sure feels like it." He gave her toothy grin and bid her goodnight.
The lock jangled and Chuck's footsteps receded, leaving Rose to her dinner and her thoughts. As she shoved inelegant handfuls of spaghetti into her mouth, she imagined the Gathering. She pictured a room crowded with bodies but more so with egos and loudmouths all asserting their opinions about what had happened this morning. They didn't know what she now understood.
The Maze wasn't trying to kill her. It was trying to draw her in.
Rose swallowed a bite of carrot and it went down hard, scratching her throat. She reached for the pail of water and froze. In a perfect spear of evening sun, she found herself in the still water.
She had hair like a wild blackberry bush, with bunches of curls piled on top of her head in a war for dominance, the losers satisfying themselves with poking out at the sides and bouncing at the top of her neck. While she had already learned that her hair was red, no one had mentioned the single tendril of brilliant white tumbling along the left side of her face like a waterfall over clay cliffs. She fingered it gently as she noticed a handful of other white hairs intermixed sporadically with the red.
Beyond her untamed mass of hair, Rose's body was a playground for recessive genes. Even though the incoming light wasn't strong enough to clarify her reflection as well as a mirror could, she could tell that she had blue eyes, and they were round and big-she thought maybe too big, bordering on nocturnal animal. They were framed by eyebrows of the same warm red with a high natural arch that gave her a perpetual look of wonder.
She stroked her left cheek, her thumb starting just below her eye and taking a long perusal of the pronounced bone underneath. She felt the occasional bump often followed by a shallow pit, most hidden by a heavy spray of gingerbread freckles. Her thumb halted its journey at her lips. They had what she thought was a pleasant flower to them, not as large as her eyes and much pinker than her fair skin.
Rose couldn't tell if she was beautiful because she had no frame of reference. She wanted to believe she was, but it was hard to say since she couldn't even decide if she liked the person she was becoming.
Her hands framed the bucket and she lifted it to her lips. Rose drank in the sight of herself, recommitting it to memory that hopefully this time she wouldn't be made to forget. The water was cool and more filling than the food. When she had had her fill, she put the bucket down, watching the ripples steady in their wooden confines. But as she stared, she noticed one ripple would not disappear until she realized it wasn't a ripple at all. It was a scar.
It started just below one ear and traversed the width of her neck to the other side. It was ragged and wide, like a tear in a stuffed animal that had only been stitched with a single scrap of leftover thread. In garish contrast to her ivory complexion, the skin that had refilled the chasm was opalescent pink. Rose brought her fingers to it and followed its track. It was deeper than she expected but just as rough. She stroked it with clinical precision, bidding the memories to return or maybe she was willing them away.
Rose had no idea how long she sat like that, cross-legged in front of her bucket, not staring anymore as the night had settled in but still stroking her scar.
With a high-pitched whine, the door skidded open at last. Alby stood there, rimmed by sallow waxing moonlight. He peered down at her.
"So, you ain't cracked up yet, huh?" His tone was teasing until he took note of the way her hand lightly strangled her throat. "Or did ya?"
"You didn't tell me about this," Rose said, wringing her scar one more time.
Alby didn't blink. "What'd you want me to say about it? 'You got this horribly disfiguring scar that you got no memory of, so you should definitely worry about it'?"
"Horribly disfiguring?" she repeated.
"Oh yeah," he continued. "It's so bad no once even noticed your face or your lips or your rack or your ass or, shuck it, even your personality."
It took Rose a moment to realize what Alby was doing, but as soon as she did, she playfully chucked her empty tray at him. He ducked and it glanced with a bang against the wall. It was dark, but she could still see the flash of his teeth.
"Do me a favor?" she growled. "Save the sarcasm for Minho."
Alby walked out the door and waited. "Well, get a move on, she-bean. Stop feelin' sorry for lookin' beautiful and follow me. We got klunk to talk about."
"I thought I had to stay the night?" Rose said as she dusted off the seat of her pants.
"Don't get me wrong. Soon as we all have our little discussion, I'm bringing yo' ass right back here. You ain't done your time yet, but for now, we need ya."
"Why?"
"Enough talk. You coming or not?"
Rose followed Alby down the short walk from the Slammer, treading carefully over the dozen boys sleeping pell-mell in the grass. Much of the Homestead was quiet as most of the boys passed out from their busy days, and Alby directed her along the back side past a corridor as long as a giraffe's neck. At the end of it swelled a rounded hall which emanated light.
Inside, eleven men already dotted the space, many of whom Rose recognized including Newt, Frypan, Gally, and Minho. Thomas was there, too, sitting beside Newt on an earthen bench, though she was pretty sure he was just a Runner and not a Keeper like the others. Yet somehow Rose sensed from her initial impression of him, or more specifically her connection with him, that he would have insisted on being there.
Gally leaned against a post, arms crossed and one foot propped up behind him, across from the pockmarked boy from the bonfire and the sleepy-eyed one from that morning. She caught sight of another young guy with gray hair already peppering his black, and she felt a sort of fondness for him now that she knew about her own white hair.
And then there was Minho. He stood not far from Newt, but this time, instead of ignoring her as he had tried to do at breakfast, he stared at her fervently. Rose felt the urge to hide her scar from such intense scrutiny, and she stood closer to Alby as they walked inside.
Grumbles accompanied her entry, and the boy with the sleepy eyes said through a yawn, "I feel like we just had one of these."
"Cuz we just did, ya bloody shank," Newt answered. "And wake up, would ya?"
Without another word, Newt rose from his seat and stepped to the center of the room. "Now that we're all here, maybe we can be more productive instead of continuing to argue like the moronic slintheads that we are."
"Perhaps it is best not to involve this one," said a boy with skin the color of mace and an accent just as spicy. "I can tell just by looking at her that she will be the reason more than half of you will end up in my Deadheads."
Rose scowled at her newest dissenter as she took the open seat beside Thomas. She shook out her shoulders and tried to make herself look as though she belonged there, but she didn't feel very convincing, especially when her hand kept betraying her to rub her scar.
"It's simple, Anil," answered Newt. "The buggin' Maze said her name. Why shouldn't she be involved?"
A few of the boys bantered about her presence at the Gathering, which gave Rose a couple minutes to reorient herself. She leaned toward Thomas and whispered, "What's going on?"
Were her eyes playing tricks on her or was he grinning? "We're talking about someone other than me for a change."
She crinkled her nose at Thomas' useless answer and wished Chuck were by her side to offer support. Instead, Newt joined the pair on the bench, skootching Rose over so that their hips touched.
"If you think after a month dealing with the likes of bloody Tommy that I'm going to let another troublemaker sit with him unchaperoned, you got another thing coming." Newt's words were rough but his tone was surprisingly affectionate.
"Slim it," Alby finally interjected into the circular debates, and Rose snapped to full attention. "It's clear now that whether we're ready or not for these changes, they are coming, and they're gonna keep coming, which means we gotta come up with an answer to 'em."
Another boy Rose hadn't seen before, stouter than Chuck and maybe only a year or two older, barked from the other side of the room with a voice as rotund as he was. "I say stick the she-bean and Thomas into the Maze overnight and let the Grievers solve the problem for us."
"Dummy," Gally said, clocking the kid on the head with his knuckles, "Thomas already spent a night in there and came back out. Much as I like the idea, that slinthead's a cockroach that keeps comin' back. Why would this time be any different?"
The boy rubbed his scalp with a meaty hand and glowered. "No one can live in there forever. And we already know that thing wants to kill her. It shucking said as much today."
"Excuse me, but you don't know what the hell you're talking about."
Every pair of eyes shifted to the redhead sitting rigid, her hands now balled into fists on her thighs.
"That right, she-bean?" the rotund boy challenged, but Rose wasn't backing down.
"That's right. That thing out there, that Maze," she said, "it wants me in there."
"How do you figure that when it nearly made a pancake out of ya?" replied Frypan.
Rose stood, not realizing her feet were carrying her to the center of the room. "What would be the point? I just got here. None of you like me, you don't even trust me. If the Maze wanted to squash someone like that, it wouldn't have started with the person nobody cares about. I don't know why we're here, but I know whoever put us here did it for a very specific purpose. That Maze is trying to get my attention."
"Well, it sure has a funny way of doing it," Minho mumbled.
"We could say the same for you, lover boy," whistled Gally as he mimicked pulling up his shirt over his stomach. Minho scooped up a handful of dirt from the floor and lobbed it at him. It scattered with a soft puff across Gally's chest.
The guy with the graying hair stared at her. "If it's true that the Maze wants you in there like you say, Greenie, then why'd the Doors stay shut all day? No one could get in."
Rose's mouth shrugged. "I don't know, not for sure, but maybe it knows I'm not ready."
"Better shut all day than open," Newt volunteered. "If that's the case, maybe they'll stay shut until they know you're ready."
Minho stuffed his hands in his pockets. "You're not ever going to be ready because I'm not letting you back in the Maze, and that's final."
"I've never even been in it!" Rose argued.
"Says you! Maybe you're right. Maybe it does want you back in there for some reason, but I'm not one for givin' the shuckin' shuck-faced Creators jack. I know what you can do in there even if 'new Greenie you' doesn't. I'm not endangering my Runners any more than I have to just to make that thing deadlier with you in it."
"Are we looking at the same girl?" joked the rotund kid. "What's a scrawny chick gonna do in the Maze, 'specially with them Grievers eager to munch on her chicken wings?"
Rose opened her mouth to defend herself, but Minho beat her to the punch. "A Slopper like you has no idea, Ender. If you haven't learned anything else by now, you should know that what you see in the Glade and what you get are two shuckin' totally different things."
"Good that," Alby said, stepping behind Rose. "Maybe it's better if we keep the Greenie as far from it as possible. If it wants you, then you best believe the Creators are up to no shucking good."
Rose was an albatross now, she could see that, the emblem of everything bad that had ever happened in the Glade. She stood there shaking. So far, her past had been taken from her along with her freedom, and now she couldn't even take control of her future.
"This is garbage," Rose snarled. "Why did you even pull me out of my cell if you were just going to make all these decisions without me?"
"That's why we're a Council," Alby said. "We make the decisions that will protect all of us as long as we can."
"I thought you wanted to get out of here? That anything was better than this place?" Her eyes bored into Newt and Thomas as she spoke. "Doesn't it feel like you're going backwards? And do you honestly believe that things won't keep changing even if you take me out of the equation? I don't know how many of you are already in here or how many there have been, but I've got to believe there are more, will be more, until you give these Creators what they want."
Sweat gathered at her hairline and at the back of her neck. Her scar chafed as her throat tightened. Rose spun in a circle, searching out the support she desperately needed so she didn't feel so unhinged, but she found only uneasy faces. Even Newt refused to look at her.
Only Thomas seemed brave enough to face her. His rich eyes ran over Rose's face, questing as she had seen them do to other things in this place. Perhaps it was because, as a fellow newcomer, he had been in the same boat, or maybe he just saw sense where these other lifers could no longer, but she willed him to speak up. She begged over and over again with her eyes, "Please, say something!" But he didn't, and Rose's rage deepened. Thomas had demanded his seat at the table, and it had been granted. Rose would not be so lucky.
"Seriously, none of you think this is total insanity?" Silence permeated the room as wary eyes slid from one person to the next. With nothing left, Rose took the only thing she could back from them—herself. She huffed and threw up her hands. "I'd rather be staring at absolute blackness right now than looking at any of you! Take me back to the Slammer."
She marched toward the door but was barred by a long muscular arm. Alby stared down at her. "We're not finished here, Greenbean."
"Well I am. You have your little boys' night out and tell me tomorrow what life choices you've made for me then. I'm sure I'll give your opinions the same level of consideration you've given mine."
"Let her leave," said Newt. "There's nothing more that needs to be said tonight."
Rose didn't look back at any of the scoundrels who had tossed her overboard. She would have felt more betrayed if she had really considered any of them friends. But with a sudden pang, she realized she had.
From the warmth of Newt's kindness thus far, she had thought they were forming a bond, but now she could see that had all been part of her perfunctory Glader orientation. Alby was a weathervane, and though Rose had glimpsed flashes of consideration, he would always face the way the winds blew trouble into the Glade. And Minho was just Minho. They would likely never see eye-to-eye, but the way he talked about the other Rose, the Before Rose, unnerved her, like she was unsalvageable, like he couldn't stand the sight of her. It stung more than it should.
But she felt Thomas' abandonment most keenly. The moment their hands had touched, she felt secrets shift beneath the earth. Their connection ran deep, even if she didn't know what it was, and she knew he had felt it too. She hadn't imagined that stroke of her hand at breakfast. And yet he hadn't said a word at the Gathering, save for a joke. Come to think of it, most of them had made some kind of snarky comment. Was that what she was? Some punchline?
Rose stewed all the way back to the Slammer. She didn't say a word to Alby, and he returned the favor. She let herself into the cube and he locked the door behind her, plunging her into darkness as rich as manure and just as pungent.
She no longer cared about what unmentionables might have stained the dirt from prisoners past. She felt like she belonged to it now. Rose curled up on her side and stared, though it was so dark she couldn't tell if her eyes were open or if she just imagined they were. Somewhere beyond the Walls, monsters growled.
Eventually she dreamed.
It had taken her less time to cross the ocean this time. The hum and the whistle were back, same song, and this time Rose joined them eagerly. At the foot of her impossible wall again, she pulled her spoon from her waistband and prepared to excavate.
As her shoes leveled at the edge and the white waves crashed with curling foam, the hands reappeared. All three sets came at once this time, slicing the shallows like shark fins. They clawed for Rose, resolute in their hunger for her. Fear gripped her heart before the hands could grip her feet, and her own hand froze, the spoon trembling at the sight of them. She knew what to do, knew how to send them away, if only she could convince herself to do it. But she was so alone in this vast wasteland, so alone.
She thought of the song that had carried her here, melancholy and hopeful and defiant all at the same time, and she realized she was all of those things, too, but afraid wasn't one of them. Her elbow loosened, freshly greased with determination, and she dug straight into the wall. She chucked the gray wad into the seas, and, for now, it sent the fingers skittering across the surface like water bugs.
This time, Rose was more careful in her excavation. She could not touch the wall with anything but the spoon unless she wanted a teeth-jarring shock, so progress was agonizingly slow. She whittled and she scooped and she scraped. It felt like hours, but it could have been minutes.
Whereas her first pearl had been earned easily, all of her digging tonight had only unearthed two more from a cavity the size of a head of cabbage. She used the spoon to carefully roll them out into her waiting hand, where, after a careful examination, she deposited each in her pocket next to the third she had previously collected. Such little things, such priceless treasures.
The robust rust of daybreak sifted in past the canopy and through the window to warm the jail cell like oil in a pan. Somewhere outside a rooster crowed. Rose opened her eyes and stretched, savoring her renewed strength.
She should have been licking her wounds right now, should have been balking at the injustice of this new world, and she probably still would in due time. But right now, she was a stronger Rose, more powerful than before, and no one out there knew it yet. Her secrets gave her immunity and invigorated her veins. She would be untouchable today because, shuck it, she was Rose, lover of crisp apple cider and proud former owner to a pet mouse named Gus.