Time froze in front of fear, ceasing any ticking clock, chatter, or movement.
The Griever on top of William fell to the side as the bullet traversed their wobbly body. Its insides fell on the green grass like spilt gelatine, though with the addition of cables and unknown small devices.
William scrambled to his feet in a desperate attempt to get away from the creature, but his swollen ankle didn't let him go far. He had taken a total amount of two steps when he fell down, being reminded for the second time that day alone that the grass was in no way a good cushion. The gun fell out of his grasp, but he made no attempt to retrieve it. Without bullets, it was useless.
As if somebody was shouting directly next to him, William flinched and covered his ears with a trembling grasp. His bottom lips quivered as mumbled to himself, but nothing changed. It was impossible to tell what had him so scared, or why it seemed that, with each second that passed, his mind was losing a fight against his body.
"Shut it!" William yelled. "I didn't do it! Shut up!"
His hands pressed against his skull harder as he curled over his stomach, placing his weight on his knees and elbows. Contrary to a minute ago, William's grunts and mutters weren't the only sound audible in the Glade. Out in the maze, metallic sounds, like sharp metal hitting the concrete, were increasingly getting closer. Another Griever was coming his way, and not only was he defenceless, but he was also injured.
"I refuse," he said rather loudly, almost as if his words weren't directed at himself. "I won't be killed by those bloody things."
Disregarding the stinging pain his ankle had to be in, William got up in a worrying paused manner, almost like a robot. He continued to limp in the same way to the name wall, where he stopped. His fingers caressed the knife he had left lying around a couple of days ago; the same day that he had added Teresa's name to the list of deaths.
Like many others, her name was engraved and crossed out with the same knife William was taking. He needn't carve his name at the moment. It was already there, right next to Teresa's. What William aimed for was nothing more than crossing his own name, adding it simultaneously to the list of dead.
Despite the metallic noises growing louder, he appeared to be totally isolated from the external world while humming a short song that had been wallowing in his head for days. It all enclosed him in his own little world: the humming, whatever unknown sounds that constantly made him flinch, and a dot of light on his and Teresa's names.
The light didn't move, it just stayed on the tiny wash that united William's and Teresa's names. Not far behind, there was the reason for the light's existence. A half-empty tin from the previous day's supper, which had also been his dinner, cast the light as the sunlight shone directly on its metallic exterior.
William's unhealthy habits had gone down a spiral of madness over the last month. He had never been strict about food, however, his self-care regarding that aspect had plumped down incoherently in a matter of days. He usually ate two times a day, though, whenever he didn't, he would make it up by sleeping too much. Even when he shouldn't. If the door to the maze was open, he trapped himself in the Slammers and stayed there, hoping for the Grievers not to attack, until his nightmares woke him up for the tenth time, or the door closed, whichever came first.
As if he had regained one last trembling grasp of sanity, William's eyes shone bright blue after months of a lifeless paleness, and his voice softened. "I'm sorry, Tessa. I'm so sorry."
The Griever was just about to get into the Glade, but William had undoubtedly made up his mind not to hide in the Slammer anymore. His ankle surely had to be throbbing in pain, yet he kept climbing up the ivy wall. Sooner than expected, he reached as far as the ivy went, which was no more than halfway up the wall.
A long sigh left his lips as he turned around, getting his bad ankle tangled in the process. Despite his attempts at disregarding the pain, he could hardly keep himself up with the strength of his arms alone, forcing him to lean most of his weight on his good ankle, while the other danced around, trying to get the vines to let go.
The Griever announced its presence with a roar, prompting William to close his eyes and breathe in and out to prepare himself. Between mumbles, he counted from one to five. No matter how close the Griever got, or if his lack of alternative plans had shoved him into a corner, where his last wish of not being killed by a Griever completely depended on his ability to let go. He simply mumbled the numbers and let tears fall.
Number five left his lips like a pain-filled whisper, and, as if his body had decided for him, his hands let go of the vines.
They were watching William fall to his death when the screen turned black, reflecting their astonished faces back at them, as if in mockery. An unsettling silence spread around The Right Arm's compound. Out of the few that were around when the person infiltrated in WICKED sent them the latest Maze's backup — Vince, Mary, Thomas, Mae, and Harriet — none dared to say a word as they tried to process what they had just seen. And, in Thomas's case, if or how he would ever explain it to his friends.
"They need to see it," said Mae before anyone could even consider hiding the tape from the rest.
Despite the harsh look in her eyes, she had given up on holding back tears. She waited for a reply with her hand clasped over her mouth, muffling any sounds it could create in her moment of weakness. Later, she would cry all her emotions out properly, but not for now. She was among the 'leaders' of the Right Arm, and that, for her, meant staying strong only for the sake of being taken seriously. Nobody would trust the judgement of a desperate, crying mess; she wouldn't.
"If Newt or Aris see this," Thomas began, unsure of how to end the sentence, "it'll break them. You think they can handle it?"
"No." Mae shook her head and took a deep breath in. "They can't, and it'll only get worse the more they're kept in the dark about it. What do you plan to do? Go out and tell them to forget saving William? Which excuse are you gonna use? 'Oh, he's bound to become a Crank anyway, no big deal'. Is that what you'll say? Thomas, it's not a matter of being able to process it or not, it's about their right to know."
The silence continued to reign among the group regardless of Mae's words, though they seemed to be thinking it over properly, which was good enough for now.
"Do whatever you want, but I won't take responsibility when Newt and Aris jump at your throats once they figure it out by themselves." Mae turned around, trying to keep her reddish face from being seen while focusing on her voice, which broke by the end of the sentence. "Now, if you excuse me, I'll go do the dirty work that none of us wants to do, and tell my group."
Thomas and Harriet watched her leave, wanting nothing more than to go after her, but the words were stuck in their heads like glue, which had been recklessly spilt to their limbs. They stood motionless in the middle of the room, knowing that Mae was right, yet still finding themselves wishing for the Maze's backup to be a lie.
It was never easy to accept a friend's death. Much less be the one to give the news to others.
Reason told Thomas it wasn't his fault, but a much smaller, yet somehow louder, part of his brain wouldn't stop blaming him. If only he hadn't let William out of his sight when WICKED attacked — If only he had forced him and Minho to go along instead of standing by — maybe William would still be alive.
Night fell on the shore sooner than expected. The days were shortening again, and with them, everyone's hopes fled. It had been a month since William had died; a month since all their plans had been forcefully simplified.
To his own surprise, Thomas had pulled himself together shortly after watching the Maze's backup for the third time with Newt, Frypan, and Chuck. His old self didn't surface for a couple of weeks, but that didn't stop him from asking any questions that came to mind. They were mostly about whether the person infiltrated in WICKED was trustworthy, who they were, and why they were helping at all. Although he barely got any replies. Vince had deposited his full trust in the person infiltrated, but he wouldn't tell them why. Not even Mary seemed to know, and she was the closest person to Vince in the compound.
Despite the wariness, the group decided to trust Vince's judgement and follow the informer's data to elaborate a new plan; one in which they would only rescue Minho. Some in Group S expressed their displeasure at that, saying they at least wanted to retrieve William's body to bury him properly, but after a private chat with Mae, nobody spoke about the matter again.
Thomas had never talked to the informer personally, but he had read some of Vince's notes about WICKED, and, to his surprise, Teresa's name was in some of them. Apparently, the informer knew her for her side job in the Mind Control Malfunction Experiment, which had led to William's Probation after his capture. They didn't really explain why Teresa was working in that field when she was focused on creating a cure, or why William was in the Glade in the first place, but they noted down that the day of William's death, she had been seen leaving the room, tears streaming down her face.
Part of Thomas's mind wanted to believe that Teresa regretted her decision; that she had tried everything to save William, but it had been in vain. He desperately wanted to believe that. After all, the only alternative that came to his mind was infinitely worse. The thought that Teresa had used the mental control to push William off the wall sickened him to the point of feeling as if his meal would make a reappearance in a rather bothersome way.
He could never forgive that. Never in a million years.
"Hey, Birdie," said Mae while sitting down next to him on a rock. "Tomorrow's the big day. What are you doing out of bed so late?"
"Just thinking," replied Thomas, staring at the horizon as if the sun would appear at any given moment, though dawn was still hours away.
"That's dangerous." Mae patted his back reassuringly. "Everything will turn out alright: we'll save Minho, you birdies will have a touching moment, and off to the Safe Haven like a bunch of happy shanks."
Glader slang from a Soldier made Thomas snigger without fail, more so when it was Mae who used it. Chuck and Frypan had tried to coax Group S into using words like 'shank' or 'slinthead', but they rarely prevailed. During the first months in the Right Arm, Henry or Rowan had used them, though only to joke around. However, since a month ago, the group had turned rather hostile at using the slang, and more focused on their own, with the addition of 'sure thing', which nobody had ever heard any of the seven of them say before, as their alternative for 'good that'.
"I wish we could have saved Liam, too," Thomas murmured, caressing the little statue that Chuck had gifted him not long ago.
Like his eyes were being dragged by an invisible force, he ended up staring at the dormitories, as dark and quiet as he had left them minutes before. It was surprising how long everyone had gone without nightmares that night. Usually, his pre-dawn company consisted of Mae, Rowan, Newt, Aris, and sometimes Brenda and Sonya, who only joined them out of worry. Compared to the prior day, the beach was almost empty.
"Maybe it's better like this." Mae's pained voice made his heart shatter into a million pieces.
In all the months he had known Mae, with all the trouble they had gone through together, he had never heard her say something like that. Not after William died, and surely not when he was alive. She was the first to push everyone into creating Minho's rescue plan, and the one who kept everyone focused, even when it seemed impossible. The fact that she would be the one to suggest that William was better off dead puzzled his mind and created a pouring rain of questions he had to hold himself back from asking.
"He is…was not Immune, and, to top that, infected." She took a deep breath in, smoothing William's letter for Group S as if it had ever crumpled further than a few folds to fit it in her coat's pockets. "If only I knew if he's got a proper grave, I think I could accept it better. WICKED has his body, and they're not that generous, so I don't think so."
He clasped his hands together, holding Chuck's gift statue between his palms, and turned his head to meet Mae's eyes, while she forced herself to keep her ground and stare back at him. "Is that why you'll stay here? You'll go looking for Liam's body?"
"Thomas." Mae fell silent for a moment, her eyes detaching themselves to look at the letter. "Who figured it out? No offence, but you're pretty oblivious about many things."
"Brenda," he replied. "She said you were putting a wall between us again."
"I haven't 'put a wall again'. I never got rid of it," she said. "William is… was infected, Thomas. And it was so obvious that he was preparing to leave with Brenda that night … I was going to discuss it with him, you know? Tell him that nobody in our group would leave him behind, even if we could turn into cranks, too." She paused, caressing the letter with her thumb as a melancholic smile played across her face with the company of a tear sliding down her cheek. "Then he explained all that about our families… And I actually considered letting him and Brenda go by themselves."
"Mae…"
"That's why I envy you, Thomas." Mae let out a bitter chuckle, which only increased his worry. "You're a 'nobody left behind' type of person. If you had known about it, I bet you would have never let William and Brenda out of your sight… I'm just good at making up plans and strategies. Doesn't matter how you think about it, you're a better leader than I've ever been."
"Without you, we would have never figured out a plan to rescue Minho so soon," said Thomas in a desperate attempt at cheering her up.
"Without you, we would have never stopped working for WICKED."
"You were the ones to decide not to sell us off, not me."
"It wasn't for any noble purpose." A melancholic smile played across Mae's face as she talked. "We just wanted to get away from WICKED, and you birdies were our best chance."
"Then you didn't have to save Brenda from that Crank, and you still did it."
"Save," Mae scoffed. "I was pretty useless. She still got bit."
Thomas forced his lips to remain silent. It was no place, time, or person to say 'better than dead'. Mae would know that he wouldn't be saying it to hurt her, but the harm would have already been inflicted, and the mending would take longer than if he simply decided to divert the subject to something else.
"Not that many having nightmares tonight, huh?" he asked.
Mae raised her head and sniggered, nodding at someone behind him as a greeting. "You might want to rethink that."
"Mornin', shanks," said Newt while taking a seat in front of the pair.
"Nightmares again?" asked Mae.
"You could say that." Newt nodded. "They are a buggin' pain. I think I've seen the maze more times this last month than in the two years I was there, and I was a Runner for almost a year."
"Do you want to read William's letter? I promise it's not what you may be thinking. It's more like a love letter than anything. Right, Thomas?"
Without another word said, Mae got Thomas to nod his head by instinct. He did remember the contents of all three letters, yet he had never thought of them as nothing more than William's last words written on paper. To compare them to a love letter was strange. Although he understood what Mae was thinking. She didn't want to push Newt to do something that he didn't want to do, but the last phrases of his letter, which were overall the same for Group S's and Aris's, were perhaps more important than any other bit of information he had heard from the others. He hadn't a personal letter only for him for no reason. Although Thomas and Mae wished that part of its contents could have been said when William was still with them.
It's OK. We always knew we wouldn't have much time together, anyway. Death never scared me as much as the thought that I might cause yours. It's like I freeze in place. I can't think, I can't move. Sometimes, I wish you would come over and hug the fear out of me like you've always done, even when you couldn't remember who I was. But I won't let your life get any messier. I'm sorry that I'll break our promise, but I can't bring myself to even wonder how becoming a Crank could affect you. Doesn't matter if we'll never be 'the first Cranks to ever get married'. I need you to be safe. Although I may not have much time left, you still have a long life ahead of you. Enjoy it, Newt, for the both of us.
Love you, Blondie.
— Li