AUTHOR'S NOTE.

Skip if you'd like. Story starts when bold/italics end.

Okay, guys. It's been... How many years? I don't even know. I came back to re-read this and fell in love all over again, but there were plenty of parts that bothered me in it. So I'm working on a massive overhaul and I'm going to repost it as a whole new story. Please, let me know your thoughts!

Also, previously the main OC of this story was named Jill, so that the twins could be Jack and Jill, and when I was re-reading I just COULD NOT I really could not stand it, LOL, so with my author's authority, I have renamed her Elsie, inspired by scientist Rosalind Elsie Franklin. I have also renamed Jack (because I didn't name him after a scientist either and I want to keep with the naming scheme of the books) to Alex, which is inspired by Alexander Graham Bell. And let's all just pretend that never happened okay LMAO *hides face*

Disclaimer: I do not own The Maze Runner triology, the plot, or any characters within it. I only claim my OCs and their story, and anything else that seems new to the story.

The air was hot and metallic. It was so dense it felt like the shadows surrounding her had a third dimension, closing in, compressing her at every point. She must have been trapped there for some time because her skin felt slick with sweat and her clothes clung uncomfortably to her skin. She had the urge to peel them off and strip down, but because she had no idea where she was that seemed like a bad idea in case she wasn't as alone as she felt. The air was so sweltering, it burned her eyes, and dried her throat. Her tongue felt dense and heavy in her mouth, and she opened it as she gulped in breath after breath, searching for fresh air and only swallowing stale, thick stuff that made her feel like she was drowning.

And it was dark. So dark that she was gripped with the irrational fear that she had gone blind. She tentatively felt around the floor she sat on.

Hot and metal, it seared the pads of her fingers, and she couldn't touch it for too long. Anywhere she made contact with it burned. No wonder she was so hot… What was this? Some sort of oven?

No, that's ridiculous, it couldn't be an actual oven. It was obviously just…

Well, she didn't know what it was. The metal felt strangely like caging, and she fumbled to make sense of her surroundings. Panic prickled the hairs on the back of her neck and a whimper clawed its way up her throat.

She gasped when moist breath blew across her outstretched wrist. She yanked her hand back like she was bitten, clutching her hand tightly to her chest and straining to see.

That wasn't her breath.

It wasn't.

Was it?

Confused, she began to doubt herself, and she scrambled to a kneeling position. Then she heard it.

A cough.

Wherever she was trapped, she wasn't alone. This revelation sent a rocking wave of panic through her.

Another cough, ended with a long intake of breath and someone clearing their throat.

That voice—it was familiar. Strange, how you could identify someone by sound alone.

"A-Alex?" Her voice was higher than she remembered, so strained from panic that it squeaked.

The figure that she could more sense than see—almost like a presence—froze in front of her. He held his breath, and a heartbeat passed before he reacted.

"…Elsie?" Rasped a deep voice. "Is that—" he coughed again. "Where are you? I can't see!"

"I'm here!" She scrambled forward without another thought, reaching blindly for her brother. "I'm coming!" Not that there seemed to be far to go. Wherever they were, it felt compact.

A distant part of her mind clicked with recognition, some tension uncoiled in relief, because she had a name: Elsie. And a brother, who was right there! She wasn't alone!

Elsie's fingers fumbled across his forearm, sliding down until their hands locked. They latched onto each other like life preservers; a piece of home to soothe them. He had always been her security blanket. Her twin, but he treated her more like the younger sibling. He was not afraid to admit that it was because she's a girl, either.

Her foot pressed uncomfortably against his ankle, and his knee dug sharply into her thigh, and she was twisted at an awkward angle so they could cling to each other, but a little overcrowding hardly felt relevant at the moment.

"Where are we?" She whispered, not daring to raise her voice.

"I can't tell," Alex whispered back, because it just felt appropriate to whisper while in the dark for some reason. "I think—I think we're in a cage of some kind."

"What? Why?" She barely breathed between questions. "How did we get here? Why's it so hot? Why's it so dark? Does it smell like—barn animals to you? Oh my god, is that you? Alex! You stink!"

"I'm sorry!" He defensively snapped. "Its not like I can go shower! Like you said, it's hot! I'm sweaty!" She curled her nose in distaste, and he lightly shoved her against the wall. "Besides, you don't exactly smell like peaches."

She opened her mouth to retort, but before she got the chance, the entire floor shifted beneath them.

Her breath sucked out of her as they were hoisted violently up, the entire metal box shooting upward like a rock launched out of a slingshot. A red light flickered on, allowing her to see Alex's blonde tousled hair and her own sweaty freckled hand that twisted his sleeve. He opened his mouth and he might've said something, but it was too loud now to catch his words. There were sounds of chains and grinding metal gears whirring and clicking as the contraption worked to catapult them higher, higher, higher.

Her grip tightened when he tried to shake free, and a noise erupted beside them, barely loud enough to hear over the roar of the machine. It took a moment to figure out what the sound was, but when the word popped into her mind, she was only further confused. It sounded like—like a bleat?

Was that a goat?

Alex gave her a facial expression that said he had reached the same conclusion.

She shook her head with a frown, her way of saying she didn't know what was going on either.

Another bleat, this time from directly beside her, and she scrambled to the side to lean away, pushing harder against Alex's side. The bleat was drowned out by a deafening screech from the structure enclosing them, and the entire cage accelerated so fast that her hair whipped all around her face. Loose tendrils smacked her mouth, her eyes, Alex's face. Her stomach plummeted to the floor and she had never moved so fast that it felt like the skin on her cheeks shook from the force of it.

Alex, his protective instinct taking over, threw himself overtop her and pinned her to the ground. "Stay down!" He hollered, shielding her from whatever they rocketed towards.

At first she thought she was hallucinating. But then the silhouette of his arm became more defined, and she knew she wasn't seeing things. It was gradually getting brighter. Elsie tried to sit up and she could've sworn she also heard distant voices on the wind, but Alexroughly shoved her shoulder back to the ground. "Listen to me! Stay down!"

Before she had the chance to explain, they shuddered to an abrupt halt. It was so jarring that they were flung from the force of it. Alexsomehow ended up socking her right in the stomach, and pain blossomed in her gut. The wind was knocked out of her. She sucked in a stuttering, groaning breath, her eyes watering as blinding light seared down upon them. The voices from before had grown steadily louder and louder, but now they suddenly cut out like someone switched a television off.

She could hear the hum of day as it filled their cage, and she shielded her eyes against it.

"What's wrong with him?"

"Move over, I can't see!"

"Why's he laying like that?"

"Is he dead?"

"Slim it, Gally!"

"He's not dead!... Is he?"

"Wait—look at that! He's got three legs!"

"What?"

"Shut up, man! Stop making stuff up!"

"No, really! Look! One, two—three!"

"There's another one."

"Another leg?"

"No. Another greenie, shuck head, look! There's two of them!"

A chorus of gasps.

Alex, apparently having decided there was no immediate danger, rolled off of her. She squinted through the blazing sun, and up at a crowd of teenagers staring down at them. She didn't know what she expected, but this was definitely not it, and apparently the teenage boys shared her sentiment. Some of them even recoiled once seeing them. Or, more specifically, her.

"It's a girl!" One of them exclaimed.

"Klunk! He's right! Look at her!"

"Wait—why are there two?"

"Are they together?"

"Obviously!"

"No, like—together, together."

"How am I supposed to know?"

Then, quietly, "Go get 'em, Gally."

A hush fell over the crowd as they peered down at them. Elsie looked over at her brother with wide eyes to see if he understood this any better than she did. He was looking up at one of the boys standing over them, so he didn't catch her questioning gaze.

Said boy jumped down, the metal echoing harshly in her ears as his feet shook the cage dangerously, gripping her with an irrational fear that he'd make them all fall back down if he wasn't careful. It was then that she noticed several things at once.

First: they were not, in fact, alone in the cage. There was a smattering of supplies, including a live goat and some barrels with the letters WCKD on them. So that explained the bleating…

Second: all the faces above them were—boys. And only boys. Her mind assured her that there had to be girls nearby, they just… weren't currently around. She assumed.

The boy who jumped down with them wore a brown shirt, strangely stitched with a patch of tan fabric over the chest, and what could only be described as capris. His shoes were black, with thick soles, and he had grey socks that sagged around his meaty ankles.

But his most notable features were his eyebrows. Well, he might've had some other distinguishing characteristic—like, he might've had a face, but she couldn't see it around his eyebrows. They were thin, but they had a life of their own. And they apparently liked to wiggle.

Currently, they were arched at the ends like question marks that had been laid above his eyes. He paused, looking between them. His eyebrows twitched. He focused on Alex. Just as he seemed ready to say something, Elsie spoke up.

"Are you Gally?" She boldly demanded.