Dusk would come soon. The sky is already deepening in the west, holding steely blue clouds tight against the high seams of the walls. I start looking for markers - a crude circle I carved during my first week as a Runner into the wall of section 4, smeared remnants of burnt charcoal crosses in 2. I make sure to leave clear signs in the most dangerous sections, where I've run into the highest volumes of those creatures that inhabit the Maze. Newt calls them Grievers. I don't think I'll ever get his language.

I've had my share of dealings with 'Grievers'. They're the stuff of nightmares. Crimes against nature. The closest look I've got of them is the closest I ever want to get – and I couldn't see much. Blurred images that haunt what little memory I have left. Their legs were spindly, quick, and fashioned out of rusting metal. The rest of him – of it - looked alive. I honestly didn't see that much. Just the chaotic mass of spider legs being thrown toward me and a scorpion-like tail stabbing the concrete beside my head.

I'd been stupid then. Fresh out of the box. Now, I know better. If you hear them – run. Run for your life and hope it doesn't have friends waiting on the other side.

My legs are starting to get sore as I reach the first corner that marks the beginning of section 1. Heavy footfalls – Leah, the power sprinter – resonate faintly along the outer wall of 2. Anna must be making her way through the external zones of 3. In a matter of seconds, we'll be convening in the usual meeting spot, the one Leah chose when she and I made our first attempt to track the Maze. Anna joined in later, one of Leah's prized recruits.

The thought of seeing another human being again after hours of blank concrete and crushing, attentive silence makes the muscles in my legs pump a little harder despite their fatigue. The end of the corridor widens gradually until I reach the corner and make a hard right, where I come face to face with a pale, wheezing Leah. Her forehead glistens under a beam of mottled sunlight. She grasps weakly at ashy, knobby knees and holds up a finger, as if to tell me she needs a second.

Anna should be here by now.

I try to listen over the sound of Leah's labored breaths. But there's nothing. No hollow footsteps. No strained gasping. Just Leah, who's finally realized it's utterly still out there as she straightens her posture.

"It's dusk," she says, eyeing the Gate as if it'll snap shut at any second. "She's always here by dusk."

"Maybe she pulled something. Give her a chance."

We both strain our ears over the quiet. It seems so loud as we hold our breaths and search for signs of life out there in this shallow concrete grave. Leah starts shaking her head, confirming my suspicions…

Anna isn't going to make it.

"Should we call for her? Maybe she's lost…"

"Are you crazy?" I reply. "You don't go around shouting in here, not even this close to the Gate. This place will be crawling with Grievers…"

She peers over at me, her lips thinning into a downturned line . There's a look they all give me when I mention anything to do with Newt at all…his mannerisms, his strange words, even a color that they've somehow associated with him in their dull imaginations. I get the look – a perfect blend of pity and disbelief.

"I still don't know why you call those things Grievers…"

"Never mind that," I say quickly, hoping she'll forget the whole thing if we move on to other subjects. A sense of slow, crawling dread turns the blood in my veins to ice. "The point is she's missing. And she won't make it through the night in here. Not alone."

"Rachel always says one man for himself - "

A deep rumbling erupts from behind us.

Leah whips her head back around, her eyes wide and flashing with fear. The earth trembles under our feet, the walls that tower over us folding together like pieces of melting clay.

"You go back if you want, coward." I reply. "I'm staying."

For a moment, she's caught in a stalemate, the paralyzing battle of self-preservation and her own humanity filling her head with racing, panicked notions. She pauses, considering, and with an exaggerated sigh I roll my eyes and turn my back on her. My decision has been made. I wouldn't want to be left behind if it were me in her place, so I could never let anyone suffer such a fate – knowing how terrible it would be. In the back of my head, the sound of the gate closing causes my chest to constrict painfully…I glance back at the thin strip of light still pouring through the narrow opening, Leah slipping through just in time.

The word seeps like fire and venom through my head, stoking the fire of an old, nearly forgotten anger -

You are a coward.

I make a note to myself to enjoy the coming sunset, to watch what little sky you can see beyond the prison of the Maze.

It might just be the last I'll ever see.

.

.

.

I happen upon her in the worst way possible.

I trip over her mangled corpse.

For a long time, I sat there on the cold ground, paralyzed, barely able to see through the thickening haze of dusk. Her blank eyes stare back at me, glassy and black like a doll's. I wish I could move, to close her eyes, grant her some of the dignity she lost when she died alone, like an animal, in this wasteland. I failed her. The least I could do was say goodbye properly.

I'm desperately trying to suppress the growing realization that I could be joining her soon. It slithers through the back of my head, still just a wisp of a thought, but I can feel the reality setting in. It weighs on my shoulders like an anvil. Tears push violently at the back of my eyes; I feel their sting as they struggle against the last defenses of pride and denial.

No one has ever survived being trapped in the Maze overnight.

But that doesn't mean it can't be done.

The paralysis lifts and I clamor to my knees at Anna's side. It's painful to look at her. Like most of the other girls in the Glade, I knew little about her, only that she was known just as much for her warmth and selflessness amongst our group as she was for her impatience and stubbornness. We were all a little stubborn anyway. Especially Beth.

I reach forward and close her eyes, moving the bloodied hand beside her head to her chest.

"I'm sorry, Anna," I tell her, searching her pale face for some lingering sign of forgiveness. "I'm sorry I couldn't save you."

After a long moment of delay, I pull myself reluctantly to my feet and rise to meet my own fate. Suddenly, the determination to live falters. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to die. I'd finally escape the Glade. And we still don't know – if there's any way out of this place outside of death itself.

Night finally settles like a black veil over the sky. Stars emerge, their light as cold and distant as the empty vastness of the Maze. There's no comfort of a moon in the sky tonight, just a pale waxy sliver in its place. The passageways are completely dark. The walls are nothing more than black shapes, rising up before me with the fearsome authority of giants.

They've never felt so tall and impenetrable as they do now.

.

.

.

"Emma…"

I open my eyes to full, gleaming sunlight. The Glade, my version of it in dreams. Waves of long grasses and wispy remnants of weeds spread free and flowing out to the foothills of the Maze, a familiar setting that draws out the fear and anger of the night. They seem vague, almost frothy around their edges, like churning waves under a dark and dangerous sky. A kind of peace settles into the pit of my stomach, where thick, pulsating dread had been before, suffocating me from within. I feel safe now. I always feel safe here.

My head is balanced against Newt's deceptively strong arm. His expression is pinched tight with worry, dark eyes still scanning my face for signs of life. The last vestiges of his waning panic drift through me in waves, a gray sea calming beneath the abating storm. His sigh of relief, it echoes through my own lungs.

A shared peace settles in the air between us.

"I thought you were gone…" He smiles wryly, relaxing now that the panic had gone. "I thought we were having a nightmare."

Almost reluctantly, I untangle my limp body from his arms, crossing my own in discomfort as I remember that this is just a dream - the nightmare is waiting for me when I wake.

Without thinking, I blurt it out – the truth he won't want to hear. "I'm trapped in the Maze."

I can hear his mouth fall open slightly – a light pop of separating flesh, the exhale of hitched breath. Then the fear rekindles - not nearly as ferocious as it had been before, when I first woke in his grasp, but it's there. A rallying threat. "How - "

"I'm a Runner, you know that," I tell him, glancing over a bony peak of shoulder to find him. "A griever got one of us, I didn't know it at the time. I stayed behind to try and find her."

"It was a very brave thing you did."

Lies.

"No it wasn't." The words are biting. "It was stupid."

He appears behind me and grips my shoulder, his palm a warm, comfortable weight against my cool throbbing skin that feels so self-aware, knowing I could be dead at any moment and I won't wake up. "I don't think I could've done the same if I were in your place. You're braver than I am."

"That's not saying much, is it?"

Rolling his eyes, he replaces the comforting gesture with a light punch in the arm. "Smart ass."

For a long moment, we sink back into our own heads, thinking – enjoying the air and the summer heat and the color of green that blots out all the fear, stretching on for forever in our own safe imagination.

"I guess this is goodbye." I tell him, my eyes downcast. I don't want to see the fight in his eyes, not when it feels like a missing arm, a gaping hole, in my chest.

"Nonsense," he says, and I can hear it in his voice. The fight. The hope. All of it. "This self-pitying klunk? It's stupid. You're being stupid."

I snap my head toward him, glowering. "Thanks for breaking it to me so gently."

"There's no other way to break it to you, Emma. You're moping. Feeling sorry for yourself." He gets up noisily behind me, too disgusted to be in my presence. I can feel it resonate in me - that sick, twisting sensation that makes your stomach do flip flops, and the frustration touches it, makes it glow like hot coals.

Walking quickly toward the forest, the pads of his slippered feet grind heavily into the sun-warmed earth. He turns around, anger making the boyish lines of his face harden and age in just a matter of moments.

All of the sudden he looks so ancient; the weight of old age breaks the melting softness of his eyes, fracturing with the delicate grace of glass. It's only a pretense now. We've seen too much to hold onto the youth that slips through our fingers with the fleeting ease of sand. These bodies we wear like an old disguise, clothes we've outgrown. The skin doesn't fit anymore. It sags around the emptiness, the darkness. Our own voice, breath, whistles through the painful cracks in our heart. We feel it the most on the inside. The loss of lives we'll never know.

He looks himself now – an old man trapped in the body of a lost little boy. There's sadness lingering there, a cool whisper hiding behind the rage and fire of deceptive youth.

He can't stand it. To lose another friend.

We're one in the same.

"You're a part of me, you know. Every night, in the dark, I lie down and I can still feel you moving somewhere in here…a ghost I can't remember until I fall asleep." His chest his heaving, tears roaming before his eyes in bright, colorless fractures of light. "I can't lose that. I just – can't."

Newt shakes his head violently and continues on his way. He's murmuring angrily to himself as he goes, the vicious words rising and falling as they filter through the trees - now disappearing altogether as he departs from this place. I'm left alone.

I guess there's nothing left to do now but wait.

For death… or for the break of day.