Author stuff: Sorry for not posting this at my normal time today. It's been busy.

Puppy update! My pooch had the surgery to remove the cancerous toe last week (which I completely blanked on what day it would be). She stayed at the animal hospital overnight, and I was lonely af. She has this giant bandage on the paw that was changed earlier today. She's hobbling around a lot, but she pretty much has the same amount of energy, even with the medication they gave her to help keep her calm.

She's a little mad at me for not taking her on walks longer than from the house to the corner and back, but the bandage is too heavy. And the boot that they gave us to help protect the bandage doesn't make it easier.

She's doing good, though. We were told she'll get the stitches out next Monday when we have to take her back in. Thank you guys for sending good vibes her way. I really appreciate it.

Trigger warning for this chapter. So, the inevitable had to finally happen with Newt. I know all of you already know what it is. And while I want to apologise, it had to happen. I figured now was better than later.


Chapter 24

In Which There Are a Great Deal of Many Terrors

Before any of them knew it, another Greenie had come. He was older and a bit rough around the edges. Always growling at anyone who talked to him. He didn't listen much to anyone that first day and had to be knocked out before he ran into the Maze. It had Archie wondering if drastic measures were always taken in cases like that.

He woke up in time for the bonfire, shortly after the Doors had closed for the night, and he spent most of his time moping on a log near the fire. Flossy and Newt had tried to talk to him, but they were only able to wheedle out a few words from him – one being his name, Oscar.

He was promptly dubbed Oscar the Grouch, which had a nice ring to it. The Greenie didn't like it very much.

So, Archie ignored the Greenie and enjoyed his time. He talked with his fellow Gladers and wrestled Gally and Ben – both matches were close and he lost, but it was all good natured.

As things began to wind down for the night, he found himself sitting next to a somber Newt. Archie wasn't sure how much he'd had to drink, but by the state of his eyes and slur of his voice it had been quite a bit.

Archie tapped his leg with the toe of his boot.

"Hey," he said. Newt simply waved at him with the hand holding his mostly empty jar. "Do you need help getting back to your room or are you going to stay out here all night?"

"What's the point?" Newt said.

"Well, a neck cramp isn't that fun to wake up to. And you're already going to have a bit of a hangover so –"

"No, running the Maze. What's the point?"

"The point? I think you guys are running it to find a way out. At least, that's what everybody tells me. I could be wrong though. You guys could be playing the most intense game of tag."

"We've run it all. So many times. We have maps and maps and maps of the shucking thing. There is no way out."

Archie frowned at this information. Had it come from someone like Gally, he wouldn't have believed him. He'd call them a shuck-faced shank and go on his merry way. But Newt? Newt was a Runner. He was the Keeper of the Runners. He knew the Maze, knew how it worked and what to be afraid of. If Newt was despairing, well… he wasn't sure what to think.

He hoped it was just the special brew talking.

So, he did what he could. He took away the jar – dumping the rest of the contents in the grass, much to Newt's displeasure – and hauled the skinny shank to his feet. He practically had to carry him since no one around was going to be much help. Most had had too much to drink, were too out of it, or already in bed.

He deposited Newt in his hammock, making sure to take off his shoes – did he ever wash his feet? – and set them to the side. The shank was going to regret drinking so much in the morning.

When he closed the door, he saw Gally escorting Flossy to her room – where the sounds of Adne's snoring could be heard. He quickly ducked away, wanting to give them their privacy.

He wasn't entirely sure what was going on with them – no one in the Glade was – but when they were together, they generally left the pair alone. No one seemed interested in intruding on those moments. It felt… wrong.

So, he let them be and saw himself out of the Homestead. The Glade was quiet of any human voice. The cricket songs, the croaking of frogs, and the wind whispering through the trees were a balm to the creaks and groans and thumps of the Maze moving about and the clicking and whirring of the Grievers.

He stopped and thought about the Grievers for a moment. In all the months he'd been there – four whole months – he had yet to see them. He knew there was a window near the West Door that would enable him to view the monsters that creep about, but he never felt the need to go there until that moment.

He slowly trekked through the Deadheads, keeping to the path lined with glowing fungi – their luminescence too bright to be natural – and found himself at the West Wall. It was just as over taken with ivy as any other Wall, but one patch seemed particularly thick.

That was where the window was, something in the back of his mind told him. It made every bit of sense for it to be hidden.

He moved towards it and brushed the ivy aside. It took him a moment, but his eyes adjusted and he could see shadows moving on the other side. The way they took form and altered was too mechanical to be organic, and then he understood what Gally had said about them, the Grievers.

They weren't natural. They were created by somebody to… to keep them in the Glade? To keep order? To keep them prisoner? To keep them from doing… something? He wasn't sure.

But he knew one thing, he had definitely seen them somewhere before. If only he could place the memory.


He was in a sterile white room, dressed in starchy clothes and the smell of bleach and some other cleaning chemicals. His hair was gelled back, hard and almost like a helmet. He knew where he was but, in his sleeping mind, he wasn't able to place it.

He'd been here before – in fact, he'd seen it before. In one of his few and far in between dreams. Trying to place it, however, was another matter.

He worked for whoever owned this place, that much was obvious. He was too similarly dressed to everyone else to deny it.

They had him sitting in a room with holographic screens. The chair was unbearably uncomfortable, but that really didn't matter as much as the video playing across the screen in front of him. It was an older video – at least, he knew that he'd seen it before that particular viewing. So, why was he watching it again?

There was a boy in a room that was as white and sterile as the rest of this place. The boy, however, did not meet the standards. He was beaten and badly bruised, nose bleeding and left eye swollen shut.

The boy was staring straight at the screen, strapped to the chair, and panting. He knew this boy. He had seen him dozens of times, most recently in the Glade.

Minho.

What on earth had happened to him? Who would do this to him? Why?

The view of the camera shifted, slightly above the view that enabled him to see an oval container – something like a casket. Or a shell-like chrysalis. Something told him that he wasn't going to like what was inside. He was going to hate it very much.

After a moment, the casket opened and he felt his stomach plummet to his feet.

The creature was a plump slug-like creature with metal legs and spines shooting out from its body. One metal appendage slowly curled upwards, like a tail. Spots of hair grew in odd patches, and in the places there was no hair the skin glistened with a slime.

He would know that monster anywhere. He'd seen it so many times before – in the room he was sitting in, something he just knew. He had seen it in the Maze, just that evening through the unbreakable window.

A Griever.

A gasp drew his attention away from the screen, but he was drawn from the dream before he could see who it was.

Graham was shaking him awake.

"Hey," the fair haired Glader said, "time to wake up. You've almost missed breakfast. Come on."


Archie didn't spend a lot of time with Adne. She was a Slopper, and he was a Builder. Occasionally, she would talk to him or Graham or one of the others in their meal group – though never Gally, unless it was to tease him about one thing or another. She'd talk to Flossy quite a bit, dominating any conversation between the girl and anyone else. It was starting to get on everyone's nerves.

He didn't blame her, though. Flossy was the one person who'd tried to get to know her, save Graham – but Adne tended to avoid him at all costs. Archie wasn't sure why and Graham didn't either. Girls were baffling, he decided. And too much work.

She was a hard worker, however. Even Gally would admit that. He wasn't sure what she was working on that day, but it had kept her busy and out of the Builders' way.

He kept to his own little world in making a ladder. Zart needed a new one for the Gardens – though what he had done to brutally murder the last, he hadn't the faintest – and he'd been assigned that task for the day. It was easy enough.

He hadn't even noticed anything was wrong until the frantic cries for a Med-jack reached his ears. He and several other Builders in their shed jogged out to see what was going on.

Alby and Newt were back early – much earlier than Runners should have been. It would have been fine, considering most were hoping for a way out, but Alby was carrying Newt. A group of Gladers started to crowd around.

"Where's Nick?" he heard someone say.

"Went off into the Maze with Minho," said someone else. "They headed out to Section 7 this morning."

"Shuck."

"Clint, Jeff, over here."

"What happened?" Clint said, looking Newt over. Flossy quickly joined them in kneeling at Newt's side. She was talking quietly and quickly to either Newt or Clint or Jeff, he wasn't sure from this distance.

Archie couldn't see over everyone to tell what the problem was, but by the looks on the Med-jack's faces it was bad. Really bad.

"Don't know," Alby said, his voice wavering and the pitch starting to rise. "We split up for no more than fifteen minutes before we were supposed to meet back up. I found him on the ground, and… I brought him back as fast as I could. Shuck, it was bad."

As he'd spoken, Clint and Jeff had started to get to work, Flossy helping when and where she could — she'd barely had any time in the Med-hut in all their time there.

"I'm going to need more splints and bandages," Clint said. "We have to set his legs right before we can even think of moving him to the Med-hut."

"Splints and bandages are where?" Alby said, starting to get up. He collapsed back down, the strain of carrying Newt all the way back to the Glade having already overtaken him.

"I'll get them," Adne said, already moving out of the circle and sprinting away before anyone could speak otherwise.

Archie had always known she was made to be a Runner – that had been his first thought after he'd seen her bathed and relatively normal looking – but he didn't know how fast she was until that moment. She'd never been given the opportunity to prove herself.

This was it.

She was there and back before anyone else could even make it three-fourths of the way to the Med-hut. She delivered the supplies just in time for Newt to wake up with a groan.

He used this time to make his way up to the front. It was bad. It was really bad. He felt sick to his stomach seeing the blood and the shape of Newt's legs. He wasn't sure if Newt's legs would be able to hold his weight ever again.

Newt looked about with wild, fearful eyes. He scanned the faces around him, fear starting to take over and seize his very soul. He croaked out something that sounded like a "why", but he couldn't be sure.

Flossy forced him to look at her, trying to get him to listen. Even from where he stood, Archie could see the tears in her eyes.

In a matter of moments, Clint, Jeff, and Flossy had secured the splints and bandages, and Newt was being toted off on a makeshift litter.

What had happened?


Author stuff cont'd.: Well, this had to happen sooner or later. (jazz hands)

I completely forgot that Flossy helped Clint and Jeff whenever she could, but she really hasn't had much time to do that. So, go figure, the one time she does, it's pretty brutal.