CHAPTER 35

"That settles it," Zita said.

Dib stood next to her on the edge of the Cliff, staring at the gray nothingness beyond. There was no sign of anything, to the left, right, down, up, or ahead, for as far as he could see. Nothing but a wall of blankness.

"Settles what?" Dib asked. "We've seen it three times now. Something's up." "Yeah." Dib knew what she meant, but waited for Zita's explanation anyway. "That dead Griever I found—it ran this way, and we never saw it come back or go deeper into the Maze. Then those suckers we tricked into jumping past us."

"Tricked?" Dib said. "Maybe not such a trick." Zita looked over at him, contemplative. "Hmm. Anyway, then this." She pointed out at the abyss. "Not much doubt anymore—somehow the Grievers can leave the Maze this way. Looks like magic, but so does the sun disappearing."

"If they can leave this way," Dib added, continuing Zita's line of reasoning, "so could we." A thrill of excitement shot through him.

Zita laughed. "There's your death wish again. Wanna hang out with the Grievers, have a sandwich, maybe?"

Dib felt his hopes drop. "Got any better ideas?" "One thing at a time, Greenie. Let's get some rocks and test this place out. There has to be some kind of hidden exit."

Dib helped Zita as they scrabbled around the corners and crannies of the Maze, picking up as many loose stones as possible. They got more by thumbing cracks in the wall, spilling broken chunks onto the ground. When they finally had a sizable pile, they hauled it over right next to the edge and took a seat, feet dangling over the side. Dib looked down and saw nothing but a gray descent.

Zita pulled out her pad and pencil, placed them on the ground next to her. "All right, we gotta take good notes. And memorize it in that shuck head of yours, too. If there's some kind of optical illusion hiding an exit from this place, I don't wanna be the one who screws up when the first shank tries to jump into it."

"That shank oughtta be the Keeper of the Runners," Dib said, trying to make a joke to hide his fear. Being this close to a place where Grievers might come out at any second was making him sweat. "You'd wanna hold on to one beauty of a rope."

Zita picked up a rock from their pile. "Yeah. Okay, let's take turns tossing them, zigzagging back and forth out there. If there's some kind of magical exit, hopefully it'll work with rocks, too—make them disappear."

Dib took a rock and carefully threw it to their left, just in front of where the left wall of the corridor leading to the Cliff met the edge. The jagged piece of stone fell. And fell. Then disappeared into the gray emptiness.

Zita went next. She tossed her rock just a foot or so farther out than Dib had. It also fell far below.

Dib threw another one, another foot out. Then Zita. Each rock fell to the depths. Dib kept following Zita's orders—they continued until they'd marked a line reaching at least a dozen feet from the Cliff, then moved their target pattern a foot to the right and started coming back toward the Maze.

All the rocks fell. Another line out, another line back. All the rocks fell. They threw enough rocks to cover the entire left half of the area in front of them, covering the distance anyone—or anything—could possibly jump. Dib's discouragement grew with every toss, until it turned into a heavy mass of blah.

He couldn't help chiding himself—it'd been a stupid idea. Then Zita's next rock disappeared. It was the strangest, most hard-to-believe thing Dib had ever seen. Zita had thrown a large chunk, a piece that had fallen from one of the cracks in the wall. Dib had watched, deeply concentrating on each and every rock. This one left Zita's hand, sailed forward, almost in the exact center of the Cliff line, started its descent to the unseen ground far below. Then it vanished, as if it had fallen through a plane of water or mist.

One second there, falling. Next second gone. Dib couldn't speak. "We've thrown stuff off the Cliff before," Zita said. "How could we have ever missed that? I never saw anything disappear. Never."

Dib coughed; his throat felt raw. "Do it again—maybe we blinked weird or something." Zita did, throwing it at the same spot. And once again, it winked out of existence. "Maybe you weren't looking carefully other times you threw stuff over," Dib said. "I mean, it should be impossible—sometimes you don't look very hard for things you don't believe will or can happen."

They threw the rest of the rocks, aiming at the original spot and every inch around it. To Dib's surprise, the spot in which the rocks disappeared proved only to be a few feet square.

"No wonder we missed it," Zita said, furiously writing down notes and dimensions, her best attempt at a diagram. "It's kind of small."

"The Grievers must barely fit through that thing." Dib kept his eyes riveted to the area of the invisible floating square, trying to burn the distance and location in his mind, remember exactly where it was. "And when they come out, they must balance on the rim of the hole and jump over the empty space to the Cliff edge—it's not that far. If I could jump it, I'm sure it's easy for them."

Zita finished drawing, then looked up at the special spot. "How's this possible, dude? What're we looking at?"

"Like you said, it's not magic. Must be something like our sky turning gray. Some kind of optical illusion or hologram, hiding a doorway. This place is all jacked up." And, Dib admitted to himself, kind of cool. His mind craved to know what kind of technology could be behind it all.

"Yeah, jacked up is right. Come on." Zita got up with a grunt and put on her backpack. "Better get as much of the Maze run as we can. With our new decorated sky, maybe other weird things have happened out there. We'll tell Gaz and Letter M about this tonight. Don't know how it helps, but at least we know now where the shuck Grievers go."

"And probably where they come from," Dib said as he took one last look at the hidden doorway. "The Griever Hole."

"Yeah, good a name as any. Let's go."

Dib sat and stared, waiting for Zita to make a move. Several minutes passed in silence and Dib realized his friend must be as fascinated as he was. Finally, without saying a word, Zita turned to leave. Dib reluctantly followed and they ran into the gray-dark Maze.

* * *

Dib and Zita found nothing but stone walls and ivy.

Dib did the vine cutting and all the note-taking. It was hard for him to notice any changes from the day before, but Zita pointed out without thinking about it where the walls had moved. When they reached the final dead end and it was time to head back home, Dib felt an almost uncontrollable urge to bag everything and stay there overnight, see what happened.

Zita seemed to sense it and grabbed his shoulder. "Not yet, dude. Not yet." And so they'd gone back. A somber mood rested over the Glade, an easy thing to happen when all is gray. The dim light hadn't changed a bit since they'd woken up that morning, and Dib wondered if anything would change at "sunset" either.

Zita headed straight for the Map Room as they came through the West Door. Dib was surprised. He thought it was the last thing they should do. "Aren't you dying to tell Gaz and Letter M about the Griever Hole?"

"Hey, we're still Runners," Zita said, "and we still have a job." Dib followed her to the steel door of the big concrete block and Zita turned to give him a wan smile. "But yeah, we'll do it quick so we can talk to them."

There were already other Runners milling about the room, drawing up their Maps when they entered. No one said a word, as if all speculation on the new sky had been exhausted. The hopelessness in the room made Dib feel as if he were walking through mud-thick water. He knew he should also be exhausted, but he was too excited to feel it—he couldn't wait to see Gaz's and Letter M's reactions to the news about the Cliff.

He sat down at the table and drew up the day's Map based on his memory and notes, Zita looking over his shoulder the whole time, giving pointers. "I think that hall was actually cut off here, not there," and "Watch your proportions," and "Draw straighter, you shank." She was annoying but helpful, and fifteen minutes after entering the room, Dib examined his finished product. Pride washed through him —it was just as good as any other Map he'd seen.

"Not bad," Zita said. "For a Greenie, anyway." Zita got up and walked over to the Section One trunk and opened it. Dib knelt down in front of it and took out the Map from the day before and held it up side by side with the one he'd just drawn.

"What am I looking for?" he asked. "Patterns. But looking at two days' worth isn't gonna tell you jack. You really need to study several weeks, look for patterns, anything. I know there's something there, something that'll help us. Just can't find it yet. Like I said, it sucks."

Dib had an itch in the back of his mind, the same one he'd felt the very first time in this room. The Maze walls, moving. Patterns. All those straight lines—were they suggesting an entirely different kind of map? Pointing to something? He had such a heavy feeling that he was missing an obvious hint or clue.

Zita tapped him on the shoulder. "You can always come back and study your butt off after dinner, after we talk to Gaz and Letter M. Come on."

Dib put the papers in the trunk and closed it, hating the twinge of unease he felt. It was like a prick in his side. Walls moving, straight lines, patterns ... There had to be an answer. "Okay, let's go."

They'd just stepped outside the Map Room, the heavy door clanging shut behind them, when Gaz and Letter M walked up, neither one of them looking very happy. Dib's excitement immediately turned to worry.

"Hey," Zita said. "We were just—" "Get on with it," Letter M interrupted. "Ain't got time to waste. Find anything? Anything?" Zita actually recoiled at the harsh rebuke, but her face seemed more confused to Dib than hurt or angry. "Nice to see you, too. Yeah, we did find something, actually."

Oddly, Letter M almost looked disappointed. "Cuz this whole shuck place is fallin' to pieces." He shot Dib a nasty glare as if it were all his fault.

What's wrong with him? Dib thought, feeling his own anger light up. They'd been working hard all day and this was their thanks?

"What do you mean?" Zita asked. "What else happened?" Gaz answered, nodding toward the Box as she did so. "Bloody supplies didn't come today. Come every week for two years, same time, same day. But not today."

All four of them looked over at the steel doors attached to the ground. To Dib, there seemed to be a shadow hovering over it darker than the gray air surrounding everything else.

"Oh, we're shucked for good now," Zita whispered, her reaction alerting Dib to how grave the situation really was.

"No sun for the plants," Gaz said, "no supplies from the bloody Box—yeah, I'd say we're shucked, all right."

Letter M had folded his arms, still glaring at the Box as if trying to open the doors with his mind. Dib hoped their leader didn't bring up what he'd seen in the Changing—or anything related to Dib, for that matter. Especially now.

"Yeah, anyway," Zita continued. "We found something weird." Dib waited, hoping that Gaz or Letter M would have a positive reaction to the news, maybe even have further information to shed light on the mystery.

Gaz raised her eyebrows, her eyes still squinted. "What?" Zita took a full three minutes to explain, starting with the Griever they followed and ending with the results of their rock-throwing experiment.

"Must lead to where the ... ya know ... Grievers live," she said when finished. "The Griever Hole," Dib added. All three of them looked at him, annoyed, as if he had no right to speak. But for the first time, being treated like the Greenie didn't bother him that much.

"Gotta bloody see that for myself," Gaz said. Then murmured, "Hard to believe." Dib couldn't have agreed more.

"I don't know what we can do," Zita said. "Maybe we could build something to block off that corridor."

"No way," Gaz said. "Shuck things can climb the bloody walls, remember? Nothing we could build would keep them out."

But a commotion outside the Homestead shifted their attention away from the conversation. A group of Gladers stood at the front door of the house, shouting to be heard over each other. Keef was in the group, and when he saw Dib and the others he ran over, a look of excitement spread across his face. Dib could only wonder what crazy thing had happened now.

"What's going on?" Gaz asked. "He's awake!" Keef yelled. "The Irken's awake!" Dib's insides twisted; he leaned against the concrete wall of the Map Room. The Irken. The Irken who spoke in his head. He wanted to run before it happened again, before he spoke to him in his mind.

But it was too late.

Dib, I don't know any of these people. Come get me! It's all fading... . I'm forgetting everything but you... I have to tell you things! But it's all fading...

He couldn't understand how he did it, how he was inside his head. Zim paused, then said something that made no sense. The Maze is a code, Dib. The Maze is a code.