Chapter Twenty Six

Amelia and Minho ran in silence the whole way to the Cliff. She tried to spark a conversation when they took their first break, but she might as well have been talking to one of the walls, since he wouldn't even look in her direction. When they reached their destination they stood for a few minutes to catch their breath, and she tried again to communicate with her stubborn friend. "So have you ever actually thrown someone off of this?" she asked, semi-joking. He scoffed and gave her a condescending look, bringing Amelia to the end of her rope. She walked over the the edge and put her back to it, extending her arms and saying sarcastically, "Hey Brutus, now's your chance to push me over and save all of Rome." As the words escaped her mouth she couldn't help but wonder how she knew such a reference.

"Don't test me," he said in a threatening tone.

"Are you serious right now? After everything you can't bring yourself to give me even the slightest benefit of the doubt?" she said, dropping her arms and putting distance between herself and the edge.

"Oh don't give me that crap!" he shouted, taking a step toward her.

"What crap?! Did I miss something? Have we not been friends this whole time?"

"Man, this has nothing to do with whether we're 'friends' or not, okay? This is about getting out and going home and getting revenge on those shuck-head Creators, and here you are with one in your freakin' pocket!" he heaved in and out, anger fervently present in his eyes.

"You're wrong about all of this, and while you're entitled to your wrong opinion that doesn't change the fact that Thomas is the best chance we have of getting out of here," she said, frustrated that he couldn't understand that. He only shook his head, using his threatening voice once again,

"Well let's see if you're right about this whole thing."

"Okay, well, you kinda have to talk to me to do that, you can't just ignore me," she said.

"What does it look like I'm doing?!"

"Okay, okay" she said, throwing her hands up in surrender. They both took a breath and stared back at the Cliff.

"So what was even you're theory on this?" he asked.

"I'm not sure, there just has to be something we're missing. This is the only part of the Maze we haven't really checked out, right?" she asked as she stared down at the endless sea of stone below them. It had taken them about half of the day to get there, so the sun was in just the right position to illuminate a couple of feet down.

"Yeah. I mean, anytime we've thrown something off it just seems to keep going until you can't see it anymore." Amelia gave him a playful side-eye look, to which he unwillingly responded with a laugh, "Not people ya shank. Uh, anyway," he said, resuming his annoyed face, "It doesn't seem to lead anywhere but down, so I don't know how you expect to find an exit here."

Amelia could feel another bell ringing in the back of her mind, there was something there. There had to be. Mindlessly, she picked up a rock and threw it, watched it fall a few feet, and then watched it suddenly disappear. "Wait, did you see that?" she asked, pointing in the direction of the rock. Minho's face went white as a sheet.

"Holy . . . throw something again," he said, his whole body bracing in anticipation. She found another rock roughly the same size and threw it in the exact same spot, once again watching it fall a few feet and then disappear. "What. The. Hell."

"Have you ever seen that before?"

"No! Like I said, the rocks usually just fall until you can't see them, but never disappear!" he grabbed another rock and threw it a little ways toward the left of the spot where they vanished. They watched it fall, but this one did as he said; it kept going until they couldn't see it anymore. "That doesn't make any sense."

"But there's something here, I knew it!" she shouted.

"Okay, okay, let's grab some more rocks and see if they do the same," he said, seemingly less irritated than before.

They grabbed a handful of rocks each and spent about ten minutes throwing them, trying to keep track of where they disappeared and where they didn't. They didn't have enough time to figure out how large the area was, but they confirmed it, there was something out there. Something they couldn't see. "I can't believe this," Minho said, shaking his head.

"It must be a hole or something, maybe a ledge we can't see?" Amelia asked rhetorically, trying to think logically. Minho's face was alive with something she had never seen on him before: hope. In that moment, she didn't care what he thought of her, she was just glad to see him excited. She smiled, and he gave his normal, cocky smile back, and she knew that meant things were okay between them again. He slapped her on the back,

"I can't believe this is real! This is good. Tomorrow we'll come back out and do some more research, maybe get the other Runners-" Before he could finish his sentence, both of them heard an unfortunately familiar sound. They heard the sound of metal clanking together, then a whirr, followed by a click-click. They didn't even have time to turn their heads when a metal leg reached up from thin air, out from the Cliff. Out from where the rocks had been disappearing. Without wasting another second Amelia and Minho ran down the corridor and hid behind the closest wall. She didn't have to ask why they didn't keep running, she knew what he was thinking, and she also needed to see this. They peered their heads around from the safety of their hiding spot just in time to see a Griever pull itself up from the spot. It seemed to balance on nothing, and yet all the same it braced itself and effortlessly jumped onto the edge of the Cliff. They watched in horror as it shook its whole body like a dog and faced them. "RUN!" Minho shouted, and they booked it as fast as they could into the Maze.