CHAPTER 40

Lights blazed throughout the Homestead. Gladers ran about, everyone talking at once. A couple of kids cried in a corner. Chaos ruled. Dib ignored all of it. He ran into the hallway, then leaped down the stairs three at a time. He pushed his way through a crowd in the foyer, tore out of the Homestead and toward the West Door, sprinting. He pulled up just short of the threshold of the Maze, his instincts forcing him to think twice about entering. Gaz called to him from behind, delaying the decision.

"Zita followed it out there!" Dib yelled when Gaz caught up to him, a small towel pressed against the wound on her head. A patchy spot of blood had already seeped through the white material.

"I saw," Gaz said, pulling the towel away to look at it; she grimaced and put it back. "Shuck it, that hurts like a motherfucker. Zita must've finally fried her last bit of brain cells—not to mention Torque. Always knew he was crazy."

Dib could only worry about Zita. "I'm going after her." "Time to be a bloody hero again?" Dib looked at Gaz sharply, hurt by the rebuke. "You think I do things to impress you shanks? Please. All I care about is getting out of here."

"Yeah, well, you're a regular toughie. But right now we've got worse problems." "What?" Dib knew if he wanted to catch up with Zita he had no time for this. "Somebody—" Gaz began. "There she is!" Dib shouted. Zita had just turned a corner up ahead and was coming straight for them. Dib cupped his hands. "What were you doing, idiot!"

Zita waited until she made it back through the Door, then bent over, hands on her knees, and sucked in a few breaths before answering. "I just ... wanted to ... make sure."

"Make sure of what?" Gaz asked. "Lotta good you'd be, taken with Torque." Zita straightened and put her hands on her hips, still breathing heavily. "Slim it, guys! I just wanted to see if they went toward the Cliff. Toward the Griever Hole."

"And?" Dib said. "Bingo." Zita wiped sweat from her forehead. "I just can't believe it," Gaz said, almost whispering. "What a night." Dib's thoughts tried to drift toward the Hole and what it all meant, but he couldn't shake the thought of what Gaz had been about to say before they saw Zita return. "What were you about to tell me?" he asked. "You said we had worse—"

"Yeah." Gaz pointed her thumb over her shoulder. "You can still see the buggin' smoke." Dib looked in that direction. The heavy metal door of the Map Room was slightly ajar, a wispy trail of black smoke drifting out and into the gray sky.

"Somebody burned the Map trunks," Gaz said. "Every last one of 'em."

For some reason, Dib didn't care about the Maps that much—they seemed pointless anyway. He stood outside the window of the Slammer, having left Gaz and Zita when they went to investigate the sabotage of the Map Room. Dib had noticed them exchange an odd look before they split up, almost as if communicating some secret with their eyes. But Dib could think of only one thing.

"Zim?" he asked. His face appeared, hands rubbing his eyes. "Was anybody killed?" he asked, somewhat groggy. "Were you sleeping?" Dib asked. He was relieved to see that he appeared okay, felt himself relax.

"I was," he responded. "Until I heard something shred the Homestead to bits. What happened?" Dib shook his head in disbelief. "I don't know how you could've slept through the sound of all those Grievers out here."

"You try coming out of a coma sometime. See how you do." Now answer my question, he said inside his head.

Dib blinked, momentarily surprised by the voice since he hadn't done it in a while. "Cut that junk out."

"Just tell me what happened." Dib sighed; it was such a long story, and he didn't feel like telling the whole thing. "You don't know Torque, but he's a psycho kid who ran away. He showed up, jumped on a Griever, and they all took off into the Maze. It was really weird." He still couldn't believe it had actually happened.

"Which is saying a lot," Zim said. "Yeah." He looked behind him, hoping to see Letter M somewhere. Surely he'd let Zim out now. Gladers were scattered all over the complex, but there was no sign of their leader. He turned back to Zim. "I just don't get it. Why would the Grievers have left after getting Torque? He said something about them killing us one a night until we were all dead—he said it at least twice."

Zim put his hands through the bars, rested his forearms against the concrete sill. "Just one a night? Why?"

"I don't know. He also said it had to do with ... trials. Or variables. Something like that." Dib had the same strange urge he'd had the night before—to reach out and take one of his hands. He stopped himself, though.

"Dib, I was thinking about what you told me I said. That the Maze is a code. Being holed up in here does wonders for making the brain do what it was made for."

"What do you think it means?" Intensely interested, he tried to block out the shouts and chatter rumbling through the Glade as others found out about the Map Room being burned.

"Well, the walls move every day, right?" "Yeah." He could tell he was really on to something. "And Zita said they think there's a pattern, right?" "Right." Gears were starting to shift into place inside Dib's head as well, almost as if a prior memory was beginning to break loose.

"Well, I can't remember why I said that to you about the code. I know when I was coming out of the coma all sorts of thoughts and memories swirled through my head like crazy, almost as if I could feel someone emptying my mind, sucking them out. And I felt like I needed to say that thing about the code before I lost it. So there must be an important reason."

Dib almost didn't hear him—he was thinking harder than he had in a while. "They always compare each section's Map to the one from the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that, day by day, each Runner just analyzing their own Section. What if they're supposed to compare the Maps to other sections ..." He trailed off, feeling like he was on the cusp of something.

Zim seemed to ignore him, doing his own theorizing. "The first thing the word code makes me think of is letters. Letters in the alphabet. Maybe the Maze is trying to spell something."

Everything came together so quickly in Dib's mind, he almost heard an audible click, as if the pieces all snapped into place at once. "You're right—you're right! But the Runners have been looking at it wrong this whole time. They've been analyzing it the wrong way!"

Zim gripped the bars now, his knuckles against the latex of his gloves, his face pressed against the iron rods. "What? What're you talking about?"

Dib grabbed the two bars outside of where he held on, moved close enough to smell him—a surprisingly pleasant scent of sweat and flowers. "Zita said the patterns repeat themselves, only they can't figure out what it means. But they've always studied them section by section, comparing one day to the next. What if each day is a separate piece of the code, and they're supposed to use all eight sections together somehow?"

"You think maybe each day is trying to reveal a word?" Zim asked. "With the wall movements?" Dib nodded. "Or maybe a letter a day, I don't know. But they've always thought the movements would reveal how to escape, not spell something. They've been studying it like a map, not like a picture of something. We've gotta—" Then he stopped, remembering what he'd just been told by Gaz. "Oh, no."

Zim's eyes flared with worry. "What's wrong?" "Oh no oh no oh no ..." Dib let go of the bars and stumbled back a step as the realization hit him. He turned to look at the Map Room. The smoke had lessened, but it still wafted out the door, a dark, hazy cloud covering the entire area.

"What's wrong?" Zim repeated. He couldn't see the Map Room from his angle. Dib faced him again. "I didn't think it mattered..." "What!" Zim demanded. "Someone burned all the Maps. If there was a code, it's gone."