I do not own TMR - The world/characters/ plot of Maze Runner belongs to James Dashner! – No copyright infringement is intended!
Chapter 12 – Pandas, Pop Tarts and Sand-Filled Pits
Beep!
"The time is 6:00, subjects!"
Beep!
"Please report to the dining room in thirty minutes. I repeat, thirty minutes. Your attendance is imperative: Sub-Station One opens today."
Beep!
What? Where am I?
Suddenly, a brilliant white light filled my vision and slashed viciously through both my dream and my eyelids, forcing me to open my eyes. Through the sudden blindness and the lingering cobwebs of sleep that were still strung across my sight, I could make out two sets of bunk beds and blurry figures rushing around the room, pulling clothes out of cupboards and screeching: "WHERE IS MY EYELINER?! I SWEAR I LEFT IT HERE!" I was back in the dorm room. Weird.
Just as I was about to pull the blankets back over my head and hope that the fact that it was 6:00 and I'd got two hours sleep maximum would go away if I didn't think about it, Harriet appeared about an inch from my face and yanked the blankets off me (something she became outstandingly good at over the two years we lived there).
"Come on, everybody! UP, UP, UP! BREAKFAST IN HALF AN HOUR! UP, UP, UP GIRLS!"
A horrified moan sounded from Mariella's bunk near the door. "Ugh! Nooooo- I am going to have the worst bags under my eyes!" Her horror intensified as she stamped over to the mirror and squealed: "I LOOK LIKE A PANDA, HARRI! A BLIND PANDA!"
Even more noises of general irritation echoed around the room, everyone realising the extent of yesterday's injuries. Nobody could even try to sneak back to bed because Sonya had opened the curtains and every human on earth knows that there is no getting any sleep after that monstrosity has occurred.
With a long-suffering sigh, I got dressed and scrabbled around in my backpack for my mismatched earrings, slipped them in and retrieved Karly's eyeliner from under Erin's bed. She grabbed it with a shriek of pure joy as I started to drag her out of the door, before Harriet left us to starve in the endless maze of coral corridors.
6:30
Despite Harriet's best efforts, by the time we got down to the canteen, about two hundred other subjects were scattered across the huge hall, eating, talking, reading and generally trying not to think about whatever Sub-Station One was. Today's breakfast offering seemed to be a limited assortment of pastries, in an array of lurid, artificial colours. Yippee.
With the same amount of enthusiasm we'd summoned to get out of bed, Karly and I had just grabbed some radioactive pastries from the table and settled into beanbags in the corner of the room to people-watch, when a body launched itself into the gap between us with a yell:
"GOOD MORNING PEOPLE! How are my favourite ladies on this fine morning?"
"Oh, hey, Minho."
I glanced up from my breakfast of E-numbers and smiled at him. Karly just raised an eyebrow and asked:
"And how many girls have you tried that on today, Mr Smooth?"
Sleep-deprivation looked a whole lot better on Minho than it did on me. Whilst I was certain I bore a startling resemblance to the Corpse Bride that morning, he still managed to look like a male model. Minho frowned at Karly's question and, to our amusement, actually began to count on his fingers.
"Um… Sarah, Michelle… Amy…three…six – er - less than ten!" He held up his hands in defence. "It was definitely less than ten!"
Karly shook her head in despair as he grinned. "You're disgusting."
"But handsome, so I balance it out."
Minho tried to put a hand on Karly's shoulder and bat his eyelashes at her, but she rolled her eyes and slapped him so that he started to slide off the satin bag and had to grab onto Newt, who had just appeared behind him with Clint and Alby, a look of slight confusion on his face. He dragged Minho up onto the beanbag again with a laugh, catching my eye as he straightened up. If it hadn't been for the smug expression that Minho had been wearing ever since he'd entered the room, the slightly sheepish look in Newt's brown eyes and the heavy limp he was sporting, I would have been convinced that last night was just a really strange dream. After the last few days, I honestly wouldn't have put it past my brain. Meanwhile, Minho was buzzing with energy, his gaze repeatedly flashing towards Dorm 4's still empty table, silently willing one of us to ask him the question. I gave in first.
"Okay, I'll bite. How did it go last night?"
Minho cackled with laughter (if I could use another verb, I honestly would, but there is not another word in the English language that resembles that noise), his eyes gleaming with mirth and even Clint laughed softly and said:
"Gordon Bennet, it was brilliant! I reckon someone needs to rethink the phrase: 'screaming like a girl'!"
Karly broke in then with another sideways glare at Minho: "Well, brilliant until somebody fell off the ladder on the way back and brought Ava Paige down on us!"
I caught Newt's eye again; You see? If it hadn't been you… He smirked as Minho desperately tried to defend himself.
"Hey! I totally saved us though!"
"Ach, yeah, if you consider stuffing the rest of us under the table in the nearest office and smarming your way out of it, saving us. 'Oh, sorry Ma'am, I couldn't sleep – I thought I'd dropped my identity card here last night and, since you're so observant and vigilant (which by the by, mean the same thing), you might have seen it?'"
"Bloody Hell – ya' know I'm actually glad I left when I did!" Newt scoffed, "And she bought that? How are ya' even alive?"
Minho pulled a face, "Eh – yeah, she was too tired herself to do anything else! She sent me back to the dorm and told me I'd probably left it there."
I'd forgotten, amid all of the drama with Newt, that Alby actually had spent last night asleep, like a normal person, and was now standing (having had it rapidly explained to him) with a creased brow and an amused expression.
"For the love," he sighed, "I know you're a bunch of babies, but do I actually need to have you on reins behind a freaking child gate?"
Minho just copied his sigh and whined: "You're so boring, Al – it was hilarious!" as Karly wrapped an arm around Clint, finally cracking a smile as she remembered something.
"Yeah, and our baby Leprechaun here was having a heart attack, 'cause he could see Min's ID in his chest pocket! You were just like: 'Ach, my God, Gordon Bennett, oh my God.'"
Everyone shrieked with laughter as the aforementioned Leprechaun buried his head in his hands, before pulling it out to retort:
"Oh-kay, well first of all, I do not speak like that…"
Eventually, just as Ava Paige was looking increasingly impatient, Dorm 4 trudged in. Chris, the oldest, quietly apologised to Ava Paige and sat down on a beanbag – the image of calm. Some of Minho's other victims, however, had not been so lucky. James was whinging shrilly and picking dried custard out of his coiffed hair, Bruno was scanning the room with a murderous expression and tiny Alvin was venting his adrenaline through aggressively thumping inanimate objects. I snuck a glance at Minho, checking for any signs of repentance, but he was grinning like a lunatic in a padded cell, so I rolled my eyes at Clint instead. He leaned across a purple beanbag and whispered:
"I think we broke Frankie…"
He was right. The short blond boy was rocking backwards and forwards on his heels, muttering 'goawaygoawaygoaway' under his breath and twisting his fingers, his blue eyes darting around the room like a cornered animal. Wow.
"Yeesh. Remind me to never get on Minho's bad side…"
Clint laughed softly, about to answer, but Newt tapped my arm suddenly and I turned to face him. Uh-oh. The sheepish look was back.
"Hey, Lil... I'm, er, sorry about last night. I mean-" He gave an uncomfortable laugh, "Ya' asked me one question and I basically projectile vomited my whole bloody life story at ya'. That wasn't fair - I probably shouldn't have – it's not ya' typical bedtime story – I mean, I should probably be in a mental hospital or therapy or somethin' – um… yeah, I'm sorry about that."
I started; more than a little surprised that he'd actually thought I'd be upset about it. Of course, it had bothered me - it still makes me deliriously angry now, eight years later, and that's putting it mildly. Nobody should have to go through all of the crap that my N did - god, any of the crap that my N did - and I'm not sure there was a right way of reacting to it. But I think, that next morning, the only emotion he appeared to be feeling towards it was extreme embarrassment for some reason, and I was trying desperately to string together some words that would both reassure him and dissolve the sheep that had taken up residence on his face.
"Oh no, honestly N, I didn't mind... um, beautiful metaphor by the way."
He snorted and looked relieved. "Thanks - I try."
And with a flash of his typical crooked grin, we resumed our usual routine, sitting next to each other, watching the mishmash of individuals painting their hundreds of personalities across W.I.C.K.E.D's uniform space – not talking, not worrying, not really even sitting in silence. Just being.
"…Hey, Newton?"
"Mmmm?"
"D'you need help with that Pop-Tart or...?"
Silence. Then a smile.
"Push off, Pasteur."
7:30
When the last of the neon pastries had been demolished and the level of noise in the Canteen was rising without the distraction of food, Ava Paige stepped into the centre of the room and screamed her usual greeting:
"EVERYONE! KIDS! Thank you. Now, I hope you've all eaten up 'cause today's task is a big one. As I think you all heard on the alarm system this morning, Sub-Station One opens today."
Anxious murmuring broke out amongst the groups.
"If you all stop talking, then I can tell you what it is, can't I? Sub-Station One is the first of our many SimPrep stations which you will all become exceedingly familiar with over the next year or so here at W.I.C.K.E.D. The substations will prepare you both for your assessments in the Simulation Stations and, for a select group of you, the Trials themselves."
Her speech continued as we were lead out of the canteen in our Groups and squashed into yet another mega-elevator.
"The Sub-Stations – of which there are roughly twenty – each specialise in a different threat that you may face in the Trials. Sub-Station One focuses on ground conditions, for example: mud and quicksand. Today, you will be taught how to deal with these two conditions, be given an opportunity to practice and then placed under test conditions in a Simulation Station. Now, do not panic; you will be in no danger – a group of teachers will be on hand should you require rescuing. You will, however, be expected to use your initiative and help will only be offered in extreme circumstances."
The gaggle of subjects exchanged apprehensive glances as each group was herded in silence through a different sliding door into chamber-like rooms, this cheerful assurance ringing in our ears. Just in case we still hadn't grasped where we were going (they never valued our intelligence that highly at W.I.C.K.E.D), a fluorescent sign flickered above the door:
"SS1: SURFACE TRAINING #1"
Our room was windowless, lit only by strips of glaring daylight bulbs that were slowly burning holes into our retinas, and set into the patterned-metal flooring was a pair of enormous trap doors that covered almost two thirds of the chamber, each marked with the numbers one or two followed by a complex code that might as well have been hieroglyphics for all we could understand. Two men were standing in front of them, one was young with a black floppy fringe, dressed in navy training gear, and the other looked about fifty-seven, with thick grey hair, a slim W-Tablet in his hand and in a pristine suit. But it was the threatening display covering the entirety of the far wall that caught everyone's attention. It was a weapons rack – but not just a wooden board with a couple of knives strapped on – oh no, I'm talking bows, swords, nets, daggers, rifles, clubs, katanas, javelins, spears, darts, slingshots; anything you can think of was up on that wall. I couldn't help but flash back to Black's pitch to me, something that seemed a lifetime ago, and think: What 'harmless test' could ever require so much weaponry? What the heck are we fighting?
"Is it just me, or does this look exactly like that totally badass scene in Star Wars?"
Jackson's voice drifted across from the boy's line, breaking the stunned silence and earning a few nervous giggles from the subjects around him. Ava Paige allowed herself a small smile at his comment and walked across to stand opposite us with the two men.
"Er - no, Jackson – And we sincerely hope that these rooms will gradually help you become warriors yourselves. In a few minutes I will leave you in the capable hands of your instructors, so without further ado, here is the man that can help you become a 'badass': Mr Colby Austin!"
The younger man stepped forwards with a glittering smile and a friendly wave – now that he was closer, I could see an old silver scar snaking its way from his temple to his left ear, cutting through one of his eyebrows: "Hi, guys!"
"Mr Austin will be your trainer for the majority of your Station Tasks – if you have any problems regarding your training, your general state of mind, or want any extra sessions, you report to him. His door – and mine – is always open. However, anyone found abusing their relationship with their trainer through disrespect or otherwise, will be severely punished. Now, remember what I told you – try your best today. Don't panic."
And with that, Ava Paige vanished out of the sliding doors and back up to her office. Karly leaned over and whispered with a smirk:
"That guy is seriously hot – I may have to report to him pretty often…"
"Karl!" I rolled my eyes at her, disapproving though not disagreeing as Colby watched Ava Paige leave before turning back to us and flashing another smile.
"Okay everyone, formalities first: I'm Colby Austin, I'm twenty-five and I'm gonna be your Trials Trainer for the foreseeable future, but –as long as nobody snitches to Ava – let's just drop Mr Austin right now 'cause frankly, it makes me feel older than I do looking at you lot. Colby'll do just fine."
He had a strong New York accent that reminded me, with a pang, of my Dad's. Colby pointed across to the suited man behind him.
"This is Andreas Maddox, our expert SimPrep technician, so if you see him pottering around, don't worry, he's just making sure that ya'll don't get electrocuted – we are gonna call him Mr Maddox though, because he really is old."
Mr Maddox chuckled, raising an eyebrow and mimed aiming his W-Tablet at the back of Colby's head, getting a laugh from the assembled subjects. Colby just looked behind him and shook his head wearily – it was obviously an ongoing joke – before stepping up to one of the trapdoors to continue his intro:
"Okay, that's pretty much formalities over – please don't try and tell me your names, 'cause I'm not gonna remember them until you're all at least twenty, and I don't want to offend any more of you than I will in your Report tomorrow. So, minimising that – this is the first part of your training." He grinned, "Surface testing: the boring but necessary lesson for everyone planning on going outside this century. Now, we're gonna start y'all off easy – this door I'm standing on is the mud door; nasty mixture of turf, slush and hard earth and the one after that is sand. There's a 99.9% chance that you're gonna have to run across these kinds of ground for at least half of your time in the Trials, so you better be good at it. But, talking to Mr Mathewson, yesterday though-"
Everyone groaned at the mention of the psycho Sports teacher with the lung capacity of a whale.
"-you're all completely useless at running on flat concrete, so I've got my work cut out, ain't I?"
Running a hand through his black hair with a joking sigh, Colby made a signal to Mr Maddox, whose fingers immediately started tapping at the W-Tablet. The trapdoors that Colby was standing on started to creak apart, and the instructor neatly jumped up into the air, landing lightly on the newly simulated surface underneath, his gleaming white trainers sinking a good five centimetres into the mud. He grimaced, gesturing to his feet:
"And Exhibit A: the primary issue with mud. You sink. Fast. In the Trials, none of you are going to have time to stop and extract your various limbs from the mud – those few seconds are the difference between passing and failing. So, the Number One Rule with mud is to look for the hard spots."
Colby skipped forward two steps to demonstrate, onto a spot that looked identical to the one he had just sunk in, but it held firm, supporting his weight.
"This can be kinda difficult – particularly for Newbies like you pack and particularly when you're running full pelt – but usually, once you've found a hard spot, that tends to be linked to another and another, and you can find your way pretty easy. Hard spots have a crunchier texture; like baked bread, but beware the spots with a scaly texture, that'll be a Crust Spot. They harden eventually, but like that, they're an ice-rink that's only just frozen over – can be lethal if you waste your time falling in a big one. Hard mud is more likely to have some wilting turf on it too: there's not enough water in the soil to support life for long."
Picking up a cane, he pointed at a clump of yellowing grass, bending slightly, like an old hairbrush, then towards a lizard-textured patch closer to us. He promptly raised the cane and smashed it into the dirt, shattering the fragile crust and letting the thick mud come oozing up out of the cracks.
"You step in one of those in the wrong way and you can be in it up to your knees, so make sure ya'll pay attention."
We nodded mutely as Mr Maddox entered another command into the system, sending the second set of doors sliding away and revealing what appeared to be a giant sandpit. I stared at the pile, waiting for a huge sinkhole to open up and suck all the sand in like water in a bath, so I was surprised and mildly disappointed when the sand remained stubbornly in pile formation. Somebody in the girls' line obviously thought the same thing:
"I don't get it – where's the quicksand?"
"Aha!" Colby stepped out of the mud pit, wiping his feet on the rubber mat between the two and striding over to the second one. "Elementary, my dear Watson! You see, that question, right there is what could get you kill - badly injured in the Trials-"
Newt tapped my shoulder and mouthed "Killed?!" I shook my head – I'd caught the chilling mistake too, but it had to have been a slip. "He's just dramatic." Well, I hoped so, anyway.
"-and I am going to teach you right now how to work it out. This part is the quicksand."
He waved his cane at a large sandy bit that looked completely identical to the sandy bits on all sides of it. There were murmurs of confusion rising from the crowd before Colby placed his finger on his lips.
"Shh. Thank you. As you have all worked out, quicksand is almost identical to any normal patches of sand and that is why it will be such a danger to you in the Trials. Quicksand is just normal sand, but with an underlying water source or some kind of a river deep under it, and then a couple of tiny streams leading up to the surface. The smaller area between those two streams is usually quicksand. So, as it's formed with water, quicksand almost always has ripples on the surface. Come closer guys, come and check it out."
Somewhat reluctantly, we shuffled closer. There were indeed tiny ripples on the surface of the sand, like the little wavy lines that children draw as grass, 'cause they never have the time or attention span to colour it in.
"So look out for those – now you know about them, they're pretty obvious. Second, if you're in a sandy area try to walk along with a stick and tap the ground hard every couple of metres, just to check you're on a safe track. For example, here-"
Colby stepped onto the sand closest to the edge of the pit and tapped it with his cane. It sank maybe two centimetres, but then hit the harder packed ground below.
"It's solid – safe to run on. But here-"
He stretched the cane out further and plunged it into the rippled sand. It sank right up to the metal ball on its top, almost pulling Colby over with it.
"-just three metres away, it's not. D'ya see how quickly that happened? Best case scenario, it can take hours to get somebody out of quicksand safely, and in the Trials you're gonna be lucky if they give you minutes let alone hours. Worst case scenario, you try to drag 'em out wrong and they sink or you break their bones – and in the Trials you can't afford to leave a person behind. So ya'll might laugh at these classes – and you're gonna have a lot of 'em – but it is so important that ya'll get this, okay?"
"Okay!"
"Um..uh-huh"
"Yep…"
"Great!" Colby answered the chorus of patchy responses with a dazzling grin. "Now who wants to go first?"
We spent the next two hours being bombarded with three textbooksful of information through a mishmash of careful task analysis, Colby's Bear Grylls-esque manner of teaching and pure messed-up trial and error. As usual, the ability range across the group was impressive – Nick and Alby threw themselves into it in seconds, loving the reckless abandon of the task, whereas others like Gally and Sonya were far more wary, dipping their toes into the surfaces the way you would a scalding hot bath. Poor Newt with his sprained ankle had been relegated to a bench on the edge of the room with a W-Tablet to film the lesson (which he spent the entirety of zooming in on Clint as he toppled over every surface that Mr Maddox simulated like a slightly drunk Bambi on ice – "for the love Clint, it's a miracle you can bloody walk!" "Oh ho and you're the expert, Newton?"). Then again, I wasn't exactly doing much better – I played it safe and copied Colby as he repeatedly drowned then rescued a battered looking crash-test dummy from the quicksand, demonstrating what gets you plated in silicon dioxide and what saves you precious seconds (and fingers) in the Trials.
When 10 o'clock finally rolled around and Colby called:
"Good work, guys – Clean up, go have lunch! I'll meet you in the Simulation Station at 12:00 for your test! Move on out!"
It didn't matter how well you'd done; nobody was exactly thrilled about doing it all again, and as an exam this time. Ugh… by this point, I was covered in bruises, mud, there was a small desert-worth of sand matted into my ponytail and I was quickly realising that all of the tasks that W.I.C.K.E.D devised for us had the nasty side effect of extreme exhaustion, but I was no match for Clint. His dark hair was almost brown with mud and sand; there were small cuts all over his shirt and across his skin. He stumbled over to us, as we shed our uniforms in the changing-rooms, picking tiny grains of sand out of his mouth and eyes. I yanked up a wet wipe from the dispenser and gently dabbed at his face, catching the last smudges and making him laugh:
"Ach, thanks Ma!"
"You're welcome, Bambi."
"Hey!" He batted my hands away with a grin.
"Seriously though," Newt slung an arm around Clint's shoulders (an interesting balancing act with N's crutches), "Ya' sure can actually stay alive later, man?"
We all looked up at Clint and raised teasing eyebrows. He sighed impatiently, pulling his Lycra shirt over his head, his brogue muffled by the material:
"Ach, don't worry, you muppets, I got this!"
Honestly, even then I didn't believe him, but I definitely didn't realise just how wrong he was going to be…
Hi everyone!
I'm back! *hides behind the stack of terrible chapter drafts building up in my bedroom* Okay firstly, I am really really sorry about the delay between this chapter and the last one, I am aware that it's been over 8 months and that is a horrible thing to do to readers who are so lovely to me - it is 25% a result of my title as Queen of Procrastination and 75% to do with the INCREDIBLY important exams that I have to sit in a couple of months and I have been doing so much revision and coursework lately that 'stressed' and 'tired' have just become part of my personality. (Warning you now, I still have to revise for those, so updates are going to be a bit sporadic, just hopefully not as sporadic as Ch11 and Ch12!)
Those aren't good enough excuses though and I just want to say a HUGE thank you to every one of you that is still reading this story after my neglect and a special virtual hug for everyone that has PM'd me or reviewed Isaac Newton's Girl over the past few months :) This chapter is for you guys, because you are the reason that I actually got up earlier and stayed up later to carry on with this story and renewed my passion for it :) Thank you millions - I know I'm waffling, but those messages actually meant the world to me and some of the things that people have told me on here have probably been some of the nicest things I've ever been told in my life! :) I really love the TMR fandom so much :)
I know this chapter is by no means my best - for some reason it's been really difficult to write - but please let me know what you think! :)
See you soon! (12 days 'till Christmas!)
Star* x
