I do not own TMR - The world/characters/ plot of Maze Runner belongs to James Dashner! – No copyright infringement is intended!

Chapter 10 – Injuries, Insults and Mysterious Pasts

The Canteen had been strangely empty that night – at least a third of the subjects were in the Infirmary thanks to the second task, and most of the other groups had got back long before us and had gone to bed. Normally the silence would have been unnerving but there was a friendliness about the quiet that relaxed me – besides, nobody could keep their eyes open long enough to ask for the salt let alone have an actual conversation.

I vaguely remember Karly trying to talk to me about the boys as Harriet wandered around the dorm, flicking off lights but I don't think I actually answered her before my eyes slid shut and the world went dark.

2:00 AM

The next thing I remember is being shaken awake by a pink dressing-gowned figure that was bouncing up and down with excitement, whispering my name impatiently. Ugh… My eyes flicked across to the alarm clock on the dresser: 2:00 AM. Yippee.

"Mmm…Karl? What are you-" The figure reached out and pressed a manicured finger to my lips.

"Shhh, Lily! Get up!"

It was almost pitch dark inside the dorm – the only light was coming in from under the door – and up until then, the only sound had been the steady shallow breathing of the ten other girls in the room. Now, I could hear the low hum of voices and shuffling feet outside. Frowning in confusion, I pushed myself up onto my elbows.

"Why? What's going on?"

Instead of answering me, Karly just snorted and dragged me out of the warmth of the bed, tossing my dressing gown and shoes at me as she ran towards the door. I hissed as the freezing wave of cold air hit me and hurriedly pulled on the gown while Karly beckoned wildly from the doorway.

"Hurry up! Quickly!"

I don't know why I went with her – probably something to do with the fact that only half of my brain was actually awake – but, yanking on my shoes, I hopped to the door and gave her my best 'this-better-be-good' face. Karly just rolled her eyes and laughed again, throwing a last cautious look at the others in the dorm, all fast asleep under the blankets, and pushed the wooden door open wide. I tilted my head back in frustration and sighed, but - not wanting to leave her to be arrested alone by the W.I.C.K.E.D workers that wandered the halls- I didn't exactly have any choice but to follow her.

"Oooh…" It was even colder in the corridor than it was in the room and blindingly bright – it took a couple of seconds for the burning light behind my eyes to dim enough for me to actually see. When I eventually did stop blinking like a sleepy rabbit in the headlights, the blurry figures of Minho, Clint and Newt flickered into shape, leaning back on the cream wall of the corridor. Well, I should have guessed. All three were in the regulation white pyjamas – Clint and Newt looked as tired as I felt - but Minho was wearing a dangerous smirk that the whole camp came to fear deeply and carrying a suspicious looking plastic bag. I raised my eyebrows at them, grumpy and unimpressed.

"Seriously, guys? What is this?" I marched over and examined the contents of the bag, "And where did you get three rolls of plastic wrap?!"

Clint snorted and shrugged his shoulders, whispering irritably: "Honestly, he's had me up for half an hour and I still want to know the answer to that…"

Minho just grinned round at us and said, "Patience, children. I am showing you boring townies how to live a little!"

"Maybe I don't want to live," Newt grumbled, rubbing his eyes. "I want to buggin' sleep."

"You can't sleep if you're not freaking alive, Newton. Come on."

Karly walked over to Minho and shoved him, hands on her hips. "Okay then, Superman. I wanna live. How exactly are you planning on doing this?"

"Aha!" The glint was back in the Korean boy's eyes. "That, Barbie, is what you are about to find out…"

He let that hang there ominously for a second, before running to the back and herding the four of us up the empty corridor like cattle, the creepy grin never leaving his face. Everyone groaned but we didn't exactly have the energy to protest, so let ourselves be herded past four silent dorm rooms, empty offices and common rooms until finally screeching to a stop at a darkened dead end. This corridor was different to the others, dim with metal strips across the walls and what looked like a manhole on the navy blue ceiling. Minho immediately strode forwards, twisting the dial under the manhole with one hand and holding onto the metal ladder he'd climbed with the other. I exchanged glances with Karly, confused. What the heck is he doing? With a loud creak that made me wince, Min threw open the hatch and swung himself up through the opening, before turning back and beckoning to us.

"Come on, townies! Up the ladder."

Newt was biting his nails again with a reluctant expression on his face.

"We're gonna be in so much trouble."

"Is he even for real?" Karly dragged her fingers through her tangled blonde hair, raising a sceptical eyebrow at the hole in the ceiling. Clint snorted.

"He's a sure nutter is what he is…"

"Hey!" Minho's upside-down face appeared in the gap again, "He can hear you and we're only gonna get caught if you lot carry on standing there wimping around! Come on!"

That was it for Karl; no one calls her a Barbie and a wimp and gets away with it – and particularly not Minho. She had climbed the ladder and jumped through the manhole before Minho had even finished his sentence. Clint groaned in disbelief but, with a final look back to check we were still alone, followed her. Newt glanced at me, still unsure:

"You going?"

I nodded, grabbing his arm to drag him with me. "And I'll live to regret it…"

The roof. We were on the roof.

I was just about to start screaming and ask Minho 'WAS HE ACTUALLY TRYING TO GET US ALL KILLED BEFORE WE COULD GET CUT?' when I caught sight of the skyline. The night was pitch dark, so the town about thirty miles away stood out like a beacon against the black of the night. Hundreds of lights in white, gold and blue shone out like tiny pinpricks in the gloom, the tall silhouettes of five skyscrapers that had somehow remained standing and the quiet hum of a highway somewhere in the distance. The W.I.C.K.E.D roofs seemed to go on for miles, the silver sheets of metal stretching out across the whole campus. It was beautiful.

I heard Newt exhale as he saw it too, but watching him trying to push himself up out of the manhole flashed me back to the current situation. Minho, Karly and Clint were all standing at the edge of the roof crowded around the plastic bag and waiting for us to catch up. I couldn't even see their faces in the shadows.

"Where's Alby?" I asked, pulling Newt up out of the hole and closing the cover behind him. The blond boy snorted as we joined the others at the edge.

"Where d'ya think? He's the only one not bloody stupid enough to be on a roof at 2 AM."

Minho sighed when we reached him, unimpressed with our enthusiasm levels.

"Honestly, you'd think I asked you to watch freaking paint dry! This is gonna be the best experience of your sorry lives!" He spread his hands wide, looking around at each of our faces to make sure we were listening. "Now, here's the thing. Okay, you know that kid in Group 4? Franklin or whatever his name is? Basically he really ticked me off yesterday, but –"

"Why?" Clint interrupted.

Minho suddenly looked embarrassed by whatever the memory was. "Uhh, not important… Anyway, I heard him say at lunch that he'd noticed the Crank Alarms we've all got in our rooms and how freaking creepy it was, like how 'scary' it would be if they ever went off…"

"We are not setting off a buggin' Crank Alarm on our second day!" Newt protested but Minho threw out a hand to shut him up.

"No we are not, Mr Newton, I'm glad you were paying attention. What we are actually going to do is so much better than that. That's where you guys and all this stuff-" He pointed down at the plastic bag. "comes in."

Minho sat down on the floor and began to spread out the contents of the bag. A buzzer, two orange walkie-talkies, string, three rolls of plastic wrap, something that looked suspiciously like pink Canteen gloop, a paintbrush, two mega-rolls of dissolvable duct-tape and the nail scissors from someone's bathroom set. What? I wrinkled my nose in confusion but Clint obviously felt the same way.

"Where did you even get all this stuff, mate?"

Min shook his head. "Again, not important – ask a useful question, Clint. What isimportant is what we do with it. Just across these two roofs is the Group 4 boy's dorm, second window down on the left. There's a kid in there that's asthmatic, so they have to leave the window open two inches. Lil, Karly – you two are going to push one of the walkie talkies and the buzzer through the gap, using the string and the nail scissors. Then Clint is gonna plastic wrap the window – properly though, no messing around – spread the goo on it then plastic wrap it again."

"Meanwhile, me and N are gonna go through the manhole on that roof and duct tape their door closed – and this ALL has to happen in under twenty five minutes, 'cause that's how long it is between the security camera checks. I, being the master of all things evil, have programmed the flashing buzzer to go off at precisely 6:00 AM, and naturally the idiots will think it's the alarm. Then, I'll use the walkie-talkie to make general zombie noises at them and when they try to get out, the duct tape'll jam the door – it'll be hilarious! And don't worry, townies, they'll all be fine – the tape dissolves five hours after you use it, so it'll disappear by 7:00 and I'll turn the speaker off – just in time for breakfast!"

He stopped, out of breath, a huge grin on his face, obviously pleased with his 'hilarious plan'. I had to admit it was pretty clever – maybe a bit wicked, but clever all the same. Karly had already picked up the nail scissors and the string – even Clint looked mildly impressed.

"Ach, my brother did that to me back home before the Flares – It was legendary! Sure, I hated him for a couple of days, but he filmed it and played it back the next week and I died laughing with the rest of 'em. All right, Park – as long as that tape is dissolvable, I'm in."

Minho's grin got wider as he looked at me and Newt for confirmation. We nodded and he tossed the equipment at us, standing up.

"We're heading there – two roofs down!" He pointed across; checking we all knew where he meant. "Okay, team – move out!"

We took off, running across the roof, trying not to make too much noise above the offices – by this time all of the 'townies' were spluttering with laughter at the sheer wildness of what we were doing. If you had told me a month before, that one day I'd be running across a steel roof in the middle of nowhere with a 'popular girl', the son of a martial arts medallist, a mysterious Brit and an Irish medic to play a trick on a bunch of 'highly-intelligent' boys, I would have had a laughing fit. Little did I know that wasn't anything like the weirdest thing I would end up doing with those people…

"This is nuts!" Newt yelled from behind me, trying to blow his hair out of his eyes as he ran. "There is no lovin' way this is ever going to work!"

I leapt across a series of manholes and ridges before yelling back. "Pessimist! We're supposed to be 'living', remember? 'S more than I ever have!"

I looked over my shoulder and saw his eyes flick around him, at me, at the skyline, at the others running on ahead, vaulting fences and dodging windows and his easy grin appeared on his face.

"Not being a show off or anything, but I've done this whole Roof-Runner thing before – it's overrated!"

"Oh yeah, Indiana Jones?!" The wind ripped the words from my mouth so quickly, I wasn't sure he'd even heard them.

"Yeah, I actually did it on New – Ah!"

A sudden crash sounded and he broke off with a yell of pain. I skidded to a halt, spinning around. He was bent double, one hand clutching his ankle, the other resting on his forehead, his brown eyes screwed up in agony as I sprinted back to him, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"Min! We've got a problem!" I whisper-yelled up to the Korean boy at the front of the line, before turning back to Newt. "What is it? What have you done?"

Newt groaned and immediately tried to straighten up, shrugging off my hand. He hissed through gritted teeth.

"I'm fine. I've – ah! - I-I've done this before – I'm okay! Look!"

He swung his right foot forward, but the second he tried to put weight on it, his whole face contorted in pain and he swayed sideways, grabbing my shoulder for support. I slipped my arm around his waist (I couldn't exactly reach his shoulders) and raised an eyebrow.

"Um, sure you are. Seriously, what have you done?"

Newt growled in annoyance, but managed: "Ahh - There's a bloody metal grille back there – caught my ankle in it. I don't think I broke it, but…"

The others came up then, looking worried. Before Newt could stop him, Clint had thrown himself down onto the floor and was examining Newt's foot.

"Ach – nasty. Nope you're right, you haven't broken it, you muppet, but it's pulled at best and sprained at worst. You need to go back, mate."

"I'll take him." I looked round at them. "You guys need to stay here, finish what you started – we can't all go in now or we'll look like something out of 'The Famous Five'!"

Newt tried to protest, "Really, Lil, I'm-" I met his gaze, trying to make mine as determined as possible.

"If you say you're fine, I will push you off the roof and then you really won't be fine. You have absolutely no say in this." I threw my walkie-talkie and the string at Karly.

Minho nodded, looking almost guilty as he slapped his friend on the shoulder as gently as possible.

"Okay. You take him to the Infirmary and I'll keep the ball rolling up here. I'll come find you in the morning – try not to kill yourself on the way down, you idiot."

Half an hour, a lot of wincing, stumbling and almost falling down the manhole-ing later, we made it back down the corridor and slowly started making our way towards the Infirmary. Newt was still bright red and kicking himself every three seconds:

"Oh, for the love –I can't believe I just did that!" He laughed, screwing his eyes up again. "Ah! I'm sorry, Lil. I'm so clumsy – there is no way I'm making it to the Trials. I'll just fall off something or get eaten by something or forget something or knock over something really dangerous; it's gonna be a bloody car crash!"

I shook my head as we staggered past the final row of dorms, "Come on, Newton – if it wasn't you, it would've been me and if it hadn't been me, it would have been Clint– so I think lasting a whole fifteen minutes was pretty impressive. Plus, you saved me from doing something massively stupid, like falling through a window or something."

Newt smiled before falling silent, his forehead creased as we approached the Infirmary doors.

"Lil?"

"Yeah?"

"Remind me - what exactly did I do?"

Ugh. I forgot we needed a cover story.

"Umm…" I had absolutely no idea. "You… went to get a drink and you tripped on Alby's bedpost and fell on your ankle."

"Okay. Where's Alby? And where did you buggin' come from?"

"You didn't want to wake him. I was in the bathroom and heard the crash."

He looked at me, his brown eyes managing to shine with amusement. "That's pathetic."

"You got a better idea, genius?"

"…Ask me tomorrow and I will have."

"Didn't think so!" I sang, "Some use you are…"

"Says the girl who runs like a chicken."

"Hey!" I reached up with my free arm and cuffed him round the ear, "I could just drop you and run, you know…"

"Like you'd ever do that, Princess." He was laughing now.

"Oh, wouldn't I?" I went to fake drop him, when the double doors swung open and a pretty young W.I.C.K.E.D worker stepped out. She had dark red hair pulled back into a ponytail and the badge on her uniform read: Nurse Alcott. She looked us up and down with a smile as we frantically tried to re-arrange our faces convincingly.

"Hello, Isaac, Lilianne. What on Earth has happened to you pair?" She pulled out her electronic clipboard while Newt rattled off the lie, his brown eyes widening in pain as I pulled him towards the door again. It was not a good story. In fact, it was a ridiculously bad story but Nurse Alcott just nodded at him when he finished and directed us to a couch opposite the window.

"Okay, well you sit right there, Isaac and I'll just fill in some forms for you – it shouldn't take long." She handed him a glass of water and turned away– but as she walked to the desk, she smiled back at us and winked.

3:00 AM

Nurse Alcott came back a couple of minutes later and bandaged Newt's foot. The room was eerily silent, nobody else there but the three of us and what felt like a hundred bleeping machines.

"It's only a sprain, sweetie, you'll feel just fine in a few days! Just you watch out for those bedposts – vicious they are… Now, looking at your little faces, I would love to send you back to your rooms right now, but I need you to stay here for about an hour, Isaac – just in case you hit your head falling. Lilianne can stay here and keep you awake, all right?"

As she walked back to her station, I suddenly realising how exhausted I was and a massive yawn overtook my body. Newt immediately copied me, rubbing his eyes and muttering drily:

"Bloody Minho…"

I laughed and pulled his hands away from his eyes. "Stay awake."

"Ugh, I am." He'd grinned at first but it gradually faded and his face took on a serious – almost angry- expression as he watched the skyline – an expression I'd never seen him wear before. "This is pathetic. Look at me – this is exactly what I said I wasn't going to do when I came here – stupid, stupid, stupid."

There it was again: 'when I came here' – normally, I don't think I would ever have asked him, but I was too tired to even think about social boundaries right then.

"You keep saying that."

His head snapped round and I realised that he hadn't actually been talking to me – he hadn't really been talking to anyone.

"What?"

"'when I came here'. Like you had a choice."

"Of course I did."

I was surprised and sort of annoyed. Okay, these people weren't as bad as I'd imagined, but Black hadn't given me even the slightest hint of a choice. Why had Newt got to choose? And why the heck did he choose to come?

"They told me I didn't have one. That my Mom had signed me over."

"Yeah, well." Newt sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, "As I don't actually have parents, that's, uh, never really been an issue for me."

Oh gosh. Nice one, Lily. Sensitive. What do I say now? I couldn't pretend he hadn't said it, that would be a million times worse, but how could I ask him anything now? The silence stretched out and I decided to bite the bullet.

"Oh… you're an orphan?"

Again he frowned and kept his eyes on the skyline. "Yeah, I guess. I've got a Dad, but…"

I wanted to hug him then and slap myself. Not having Dad was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. It hurt more than anything I'd ever known. Why the heck was I asking him about it?

"Where is he?"

Newt snorted, "I don't know and I really don't care."

The pure venom in his voice surprised me – so far he'd seemed like the nice guy, the one that was sweet to everyone, friends with everyone, but maybe it was more than that. Maybe that was who he wanted me to see.

"Why aren't you with him?"

He didn't answer for a long time and the quiet was painful, choking me and I was just about to apologise when he turned his head to meet my eyes.

"Um, I was… for a long time, actually. But…" Newt tilted his head back and sighed. "My father wasn't a good man. He wasn't a bad man either, but… he just wasn't the person I want to be. I wasn't the person I want to be when I was with him."

He was twisting his fingers in his lap, his eyes fixed on the skyline again.

"He made me so angry… all the time. I couldn't get away from it, but I couldn't tell anyone, I couldn't get rid of it. It was always there, even when I thought I was happy – it was there, right under the surface... all the time. And I hated him for it… hated him for making me feel like that – this blind rage, it shadows everythingand I hated myself for feeling it. I was somebody else – I'm not like that, Lily, I'm not. I don't shout, I don't hurt people, I don't hate people, I don't lose it, it's not who I am… But it's who I was, when I was with him. And I couldn't do that. I couldn't be his bloody puppet."

Newt turned to me again, laughing softly when he saw my horrified face.

"I'm sorry… none of that made any buggin' sense did it?"

"Um… not – not really…"

He tried to move himself to the side, to see me better, but his foot caught and pain flashed across his features. Groaning in defeat, he looked across at me. "Look, do ya' mind if I..?"

"Sure. Come here."

I took his arm carefully and dragged him sideways until he was lying against me, his head against my right shoulder. "There you go. Better?"

"A lot. Thanks. No… I guess if I'm gonna tell you this, I should start from the bloody beginning."

"No, it's okay! You don't have to – I mean, I'm just really nosey- and exhausted… you don't have to tell me anything, Newt. I didn't mean it like -"

Newt smiled slightly, "Yeah, I do. I've started now – it'll keep me awake… And it was a long time ago. I'm over it. But I'm warning you, Tiger-Lily, it's not exactly a happy story…"

Hey everyone!

Sorry about the sort-of-cliffhanger... :)

Here comes the WHOLE story! :) Are you interested?

Thank you so much as always for all of your fabulous reviews and PM's (You all keep me going!) - I can't believe we're on Chapter 10 already!

Have a fantastic week guys!

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