The other moved out of our way without a word, seemingly happy enough to let out check out the new digs. I squinted, attempting to shield my eyes from the horrible brightness. I was starting to wonder if we'd step foot outside and simply burn to death.

Minho stopped on the last step, standing just short of a direct line of the light. Staring at the line of bright light, he slowly extended a hand towards the square of white light. Despite Minho's olive complexion his skin shone like white fire in the brilliance of the light.

And after only a few seconds he pulled back his hand, shaking it at his side like he'd just hit his thumb with hammer. "That's definitely hot. Definitely hot." He turned to face us then. "If we're gonna do this, we better have something wrapped around us or we'll have second-degree sunburns within minutes."

Great.

Did I mention how much I hate heat?

I'd rather freeze. Seriously.

"Let's empty our packs," Newt began, already pulling his off his shoulder. "Wear these like buggin robes as we check things out. If it works well enough, we can stuff the food and water into half out sheets and use the other half for protection."

"We'll look like ghosts," Tommy said. "Scare away any bad guys out there."

I pulled mine off my shoulder and dumped it with the same amount of care as Minho, which was little. Newt on the other hand had been careful about it, not letting anything roll down the steps where the Gladers behind us scrambled to catch the food. "Funny boy, that Thomas," Minho said. "Let's just hope we don't have some nice Cranks to greet us." He started untying the knots he'd made in the sheet. "I don't see how anyone could just be hanging out in that heat. Hopefully there'll be trees or some kind of shelter."

"I don't know," Newt added in his two-cents. "Then they might be hiding, bloody waiting to get us."

"Way to be positive," I told him, untying the last few knots in my own sheet.

"We won't know until we investigate. Let's go." Tommy whipped out his sheet and pulled it over himself, wrapping it tightly around his face like he was some sort of nun. "How do I look?"

"Like the ugliest shanky girl I've ever seen," Minho replied. "You better thank the gods above you were born a dude."

With a snort, I followed suit, wrapping the sheet around my head and making sure I was completely covered. The others did the same, holding it out a bit to make sure their faces were covered. I did the same.

"You shanks ready?" Minho questioned, looking at the three of us.

"Kind of excited actually," Newt said.

"Not sure if 'excited' is quite the word I'm looking for, but yeah, let's go," I said, feeling that same urge to move on.

"Me too," Thomas agreed. "Let's go."

The remaining steps climbed all the way to the top, glowing in the brilliance of the sunlight. Minho hesitated for a split second before running up them, not stopping until he'd disappeared into the light above us.

"Go!" Newt yelled, smacking Thomas on the back.

The boy blew out a breath, rushing after Minho, Newt and I on his tail.

Once in the light, I realized the sheet was useless, we might as well have been covered with see-through plastic. It did absolutely nothing to block the light and burning heating beating down on us. Oh, god it was hot. Searing heat. This was going to get old fast. Very fast.

Thomas slammed into Minho's back, almost falling down as he stepped back. He squatted, bending his knees and pulling the sheet to cover his entire body as he fought for breath.

It was strange, the simple act of breathing almost impossible. Every time you opened your mouth dry air was shoved down your throat, obliterating any air and evaporating any moisture in its way. Trying to pull in oxygen was an impossible task.

Minho and Newt were also breathing heavily.

"You guys alright?" Minho asked finally.

I nodded and Thomas grunted a yes. "Pretty sure we just arrived in bloody hell," Newt said. "Always thought you'd end up here, Minho, but not me."

I snorted a laugh.

"Good that," Minho said in reply. "My eyeballs hurt, but I think I'm finally starting to get used to the light."

I kicked at the ground a bit, dust flying up where my foot scraped the surface. It was hard dirt, dried and dusty. A few gray-brown rocks were scattered around as well. It was a wasteland. The earth was a flat plane of hot dry nothing stretching as far as the eye could see. Not a bush. Not a tree. No hills or valleys or any sort of land form. A sea of dust and rocks burning in the heat of the sun.

"Who you hidin' from?" Minho questioned, looking down at Tommy. "Get up, ya shank –I don't see anybody."

He stood up, very slowly lifting the sheet until he could see out at his surroundings. As I turned to look back at him I saw behind us was a line of mountains, jagged looking and barren rising up in the distance. In front of them, maybe half way between us and them, was a group of buildings clustered together like abandoned boxes left lying in the dirt. It had to be some sort of town, but it was impossible to tell how big, or how busy from here.

Steam floated up from the ground blurring everything close to the ground.

The white-hot blaring sun lay far to our left, sinking into that horizon which meant that was west. Which meant that town with the red-rocked mountains behind it would be due north. Right? That was where we were supposed to be headed. Huh… the sudden sense of direction surprised me… like a part of my past which I'd been so used to not knowing had suddenly risen.

"How far away do you think those mountains are?" Newt asked, his voice seeming quiet, like a whisper after the dull hollow echoing sounds our voices had made in that long dark tunnel.

"Could that be one-hundred miles?" Tommy asked. "That's definitely north. Is that where we have to go?"

I shook my head.

Minho did the same. "No way, dude. I mean we're supposed to go that way but it's not even close to a hundred miles. Thirty at most."

"The mountains might be sixty or seventy," I added. "Whatever we're headed for is past that."

"Didn't know you two could measure distance so well with nothing but your bloody eyeballs," Newt said.

"I'm a Runner, shuck-face," Minho retorted. "You get a feel for that in the Maze, even if its scale was a lot smaller."

"Rat Man wasn't kidding about those sun flares," Thomas said suddenly. "Looks like a nuclear holocaust out here. I wonder if the whole world is like this."

"Let's hope not," Minho responded. "I'd be happy to see one tree right about now. Maybe a creek."

"Water'd be nice, yeah," I agreed.

"I'd settle for a patch of grass," Newt said with a sigh, the sheet still pulled over his head.

"Could this be any more difficult than what they put us through the Maze?" Tommy said, his eye locked on the town. "There, we were trapped inside walls, with everything we needed to survive. Now we have nothing holding us in, but no way to survive unless we go where they told us to. Isn't that called irony or something like that?"

"Yeah," I sighed, looking out onto the barren wasteland we'd be running through soon enough.

"Something like that," Minho said in agreement. "You're a philosophizing wonder." He nodded back towards the exit from the stairwell. "Come on. Let's get those shanks out her and start walking. No time to waste letting the sun suck all the water out of us."

"Maybe we should wait until it goes down," Newt suggested.

"And hang out with those shuck balls of metal? No way."

"Sunset's a few hours away at most," I said. "I think we'll be okay. We can tough it out for a while, take a break, and then go as far as we can while the suns down."

Thomas nodded in agreement. "I cant stand another minute down there."

Minho nodded firmly.

"Sounds like a plan," Newt said. "For now, let's just make it to the dusty old town and hope it's not full of our Crank buddies."

Yeah… let's hope….

"Hey, you bunch of sissy, no-good shanks!" Minho yelled leaning over the hole. "Grab all the food and get up here!"

Not one Glader said a word against the plan.

I watched for a moment as they each did what I had just done. Struggling for breath, gasping, squinting their eyes against the light. The looks of hopelessness. I bet they had each been hoping that Ratty was lying. That the worst was behind us. But I supposed the head eating silver balls had significantly dampened that hope… and now, after seeing this wasteland… I was pretty sure no one would be having those thoughts ever again.

A few adjustments were made before we could journey on. The food and water bags were stuffed more tightly into half as many packs as we originally had. The free ones were used to cover two people as they walked. It actually worked surprisingly well –even for Jack and our poor Winston- and soon we were on our way, marching across the hard barren landscape.

I shared mine with Newt… and yeah, we worked it that way on purpose.

Newt had adamantly insisted on taking the now significantly heavier pack, though I was watching carefully to make sure he'd hand it over once he got tired of it. He'd get sick of it eventually, and then I'd take it for a while, but until then, I'd let him play the gentleman.

Step by step, we went on, kicking up dust as we made our way towards the town, the heat sucking away our lives as we trudged on… I hated heat.

Newt snorted, looking away from me.

"What?"

"Could you look any more annoyed?" he asked.

I rolled my eyes, shaking my head and ignoring him. He, of course just laughed. But then he stopped, looking towards the city and then back to me, his face suddenly solemn looking and serious. "Newt?" He didn't answer. "Newt?"

"Yeah?"

"You alright?" I questioned.

"Fine… just…" he paused, stopping suddenly, which made me stop as he looked me in the eye. "How many of us went into that Maze. Something like sixty, he said, wasn't it?"

"Newt-" I began, seeing where he was going with this.

"No, listen. There's twenty of us now, MaC. Twenty, out of all those guys…" he paused. "I just don't want to lose you."

I sighed, placing my hand on his arm and running it down until I could intertwine our hands. "You won't… I don't want to be losing you either."

He got this sort of unreadable look on his face, that worried me for a moment, before he wrapped his free arm around my shoulders and pulled me close to him, kissing the top of my head. I rolled my eyes but couldn't suppress a smile and looked up a him. He was smiling down at me with those gorgeous eyes of his and really it was all I wanted in the world right now to press my lips to his and have him kiss me back without the pressure of the Flare, or WICKED, or any of the others watching. I just wanted him. He'd be enough... he always was. I stood up on tip-toes quickly pressing my lips to his. He didn't have enough time to respond to the kiss as I was aleady pulling away and back down a few inches, just short enough I couldn't kiss him without being on my tip-toes.

He was smiling again. I loved that I could make him smile, loved that even with out skin burning and the danger looming over us and the possiblity of certain death, i could make him smile. That even with all of this going on, he found the time to love me. God, I loved that about him. Who was i kidding? I loved everything about that boy... from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet, every inch inside and out. I loved him.

Sometimes too much...

"I love you..." I whispered, realizing that was the first time I've said it first.

He beamed down at me, "I lov-"

Frypan began shouting, cutting off Newt mid-sentence. He was pointing at something, though it took me a minute to figure out what.

Far ahead of us, from the direction of the town were two people running towards us. Their bodies were small black forms of darkness against the heat, ghost-like, small clouds of dirt rising from their feet.