Archive of Our Own

Thomas startles awake before the sun has really risen. He lays there, the hard ground pressing into his shoulder blades and making them ache, and narrows his eyes on the woven roof of branches above him, stretching out his muzzy senses to work out what disturbed him.

A pair of boots crunch in the morning dew just outside the door, and Thomas bolts up, skittering around to face off against the entrance of the pit.

It’s just Minho though. The sky behind him is still a pre-dawn wash of slate blues and the shadows are still long and thin, still a dampness in the air that will burn off within the hour. Minho crouches in the doorway, his fingers curl around the bars of the door, and his teeth start to show behind a slow smirk as Thomas shakes off sleep and breathes out in relief.

“Sleep well, Shank?” he asks, and something that has always sounded like an insult before, sounds oddly like it’s letting Thomas in on a joke when Minho says it like that. “You going to slack off all day or are you going to pull your weight?”

Thomas exhales, half laughing as it sinks in now that he’s done with this place. He served his night, and today he’s a Runner.

“Jesus, yes, get me out of here, man.”

Minho grins at him as he pulls back the bolt and reaches in to lend him a hand up.

“Wait but-” Thomas starts, when he realises Minho isn’t leading them straight for the doors set in the East wall, but striding right towards the Deadheads instead. He gestures helplessly across the wide field, a little unsure how to make his point.

“Yeah, this first,” Minho says, which isn’t elaborating much, but Thomas doesn’t have a lot of choice but to follow him anyway.

So they turn their backs on the Glade, and the tall, dark wall looming from the far side, and Thomas ducks under the canopy of trees, following Minho’s footsteps. The little woodland is all dense foliage and thick undergrowth which makes it feel bigger than it can possibly be inside the four walls. As the sun slowly climbs outside of their prison, gold light starts to dapple the ferns and bark ahead, softening the bluish-violet shadows under the leaves. Thomas can smell petrichor, even though he doesn’t have any memory of rain, and the soil is soft under their feet; well fed despite the searing heat of the long days that seem to be normal for the boys trapped here.

Minho weaves them deep, until Thomas thinks he can maybe see the rough texture of the South wall just off ahead, and there, built into a tiny grove of trees, is a little branch hut.

Minho ducks in without pausing and Thomas figures - what the hell - before following him inside.

He’s promptly thumped in the chest with something and reaches out on instinct to catch himself in the doorway.

Newt raises an eyebrow at him, something of amusement playing in the corner of his mouth even though it’s not quite a smile. His arm is still stretched out, hand in the centre of Thomas’s chest where he’s shoved some kind of leather brace at him. He’s waiting, calm and intractable, for Thomas to react.

So Thomas lets go of the doorframe and takes it.

Soft straps and tarnished buckles unfold in his hands around a stiff centre panel of treated leather and Thomas recognises it. Ben had been wearing it on Thomas’s first day here - how long ago was that now? Two? Three? Days - when he and Minho had returned to the Glade. A pair of climbing carabiners at the back secure a small pouch.

Minho is wearing his own, already fitted high across his chest, and Thomas realises then that Newt is also wearing one he hasn’t seen before; his own criss-cross of straps around his shoulders.

It seems a little obvious what Thomas has been handed this for, and Newt is still standing there, quietly observing him for a reaction, so Thomas nods and pulls it over his head.

Newt’s expression does something a little interesting and a lot unfathomable.

“Hm,” he says slowly. “Suits you.”

Thomas gapes as he finally moves away, unsure if it was a compliment or not. Though, given the rush of something quick and hot that curves through his bloodstream, Thomas thinks he’s taking it as one. Minho calls out from the back of the hut.

“Over here, Thomas. You need to know some things before we head out.”

The thrill coursing his veins burns into adrenaline as Thomas crosses to the far side of the hut.

He realises he’s standing next to a table of some kind only when Minho pulls a huge sheet off of it. Dust motes scatter in the air, glowing in the thin beams of light breaking through the roof, and for a moment the worn out sheet fills the hut with a billow of air that smells like chlorophyll and stale sunlight. Then Minho bundles it away to the side and underneath - hand-made from tiny twigs, mosses, rocks and sand…is a map. Its a three dimensional sprawling circle, broken up by dozens and dozens of narrow channels between wooden posts that trace back on themselves. They open into long hallways or cut off abruptly, and others devolve into strangely shaped sections littered with debris, ever spreading outwards. In the centre sits a perfect square, a diagonal half taken over by balls of moss.

It’s not just any map, Thomas realises very fast, aware of both Minho and Newt watching him. It’s their map. It’s the maze that Chuck let slip to him that existed beyond the walls.

Thomas traces a finger around the edge closest to him, bringing it to a stop at the base of a flat pebble that has a 7 etched into its surface.

“There’s eight sections,” Minho says. Something in his voice is a little hollow.

Something in the back of Thomas’s brain ticks.

“You know that?” He asks.

Newt and Minho share a look. Newt clears his throat. His arms are folded across his body and the fingers of his right hand dig into his left arm, rubbing tightly just above the elbow joint. He doesn’t even seem to realise he’s doing it.

“We know that,” Newt says. “We finished mapping it a year ago. There’s no more left. And there’s no way out.”

The doors stand open just as the sun floods over the full height of the walls. The Glade is waking up around them - the sound of the pipes groaning as the showers start, and the crack of logs on the fire are a backing track to the general low-level buzz of voices and activity as the boys organise themselves for the day. 

No one pays attention to the three of them standing on the hard ground in front of the East doors.

They’ve receded into the stone on either side. Thomas remembers the blast of air, the huge grind of the gears and the tightness that had gripped his chest when he watched it happen that first day - it’s a memory that isn’t going anywhere fast. Despite the almost seamless way they’ve drawn back, there’s something just as foreboding about the gap they’ve left; the open maw into a wide channel where the light doesn’t reach, and vines of ivy trail down the rough walls, swaying over old gouges carved in the stone.

“You still want to do this?” Minho says, somewhere between confused and wondering. “Even though you know there’s no point?”

“You two still do,” Thomas shoots back. There’s no heat in it though.

Minho shrugs in a way that seems to clearly say ‘point taken’. There’s lots of reasons why they might still do this. The most immediately obvious is that whatever the toll on Minho, Newt, Ben and the other Runners, they’re trying to keep this truth from the rest of the boys, trying to avoid a panic and hope they can at least learn more.

Thomas isn’t really focused on Minho though. He’s looking at the ivy, at the long scrape underneath it, and he remembers the griever from two nights ago. He can picture its long metal limb fitting into that mark almost perfectly. He thinks of grappling his way through the creepers in a panic, legs flailing over his head, hot, putrid breath at the back of his neck and pushes away the thought of how some of those other boys might have died.

“Besides,” Thomas says, drawing his eyes from the wall and pulling in a breath as he focuses on the path instead. “Just because you two haven’t found a way out doesn’t mean there isn’t one.” Then he thinks about how that might have sounded and adds, “No offence.”

Newt snorts. “Thanks, Tommy. Real vote of confidence right there.”

There’s no rebuke in his tone either, but Thomas drags his eyes away from the maze and looks at Newt. The nickname doesn’t go unnoticed - in fact it lodges itself somewhere between Thomas’s ribs, sharp like a knife but with something more like deja vu and longing than pain. He makes an executive decision to think about that later.

“You’ve been running these same paths for how long?” Thomas asks instead. “Two years? Three? Sounds like you lost people doing it too. I don’t think that either of you are stupid - or that you missed something. More like…” He thinks - thinks of the griever crushed between two walls and the little canister that they pulled from its remains, the one that’s secured in Minho’s pack as they speak. “More like maybe there wasn’t always something there to miss.”

Minho gives him a look like he might be momentarily worried for his sanity, but Newt tips his head. The sun catches in his hair but his eyes are dark and considering under the straight line of his brow.

“We’ve already run all the changes,” he says. Thomas remembers his first night suddenly - Newt sitting close by with the firelight cutting his features out of the shadows, their backs to a warm log and the night pressing close and vast all around as Newt told him the maze changes. “We’ve been out there for all eight formations - there’s still no exit.”

Thomas gets the strangest feeling that Newt is waiting for Thomas to prove him wrong - like he wants him to, despite these absolutes.

Minho’s expression has shifted though. “Wait. Someone put us here,” he says. “We know that, Newt. What if they’re waiting for something. What if-” he shrugs a shoulder up and his pack sways a little. The torn cables in the piece of griever they’re packing stick up pointedly out of the drawstring. There’s still some griever-goo entrails on them, hardening slowly, like sap too long from the heart of a tree. “What if this was it?”

Newt shoots the pack a slightly disturbed look and then wrinkles his nose. Thomas almost smiles. “Killing a griever?” Newt sounds dubious, and then swings a look between Thomas and Minho with a sort of dawning dismay. “No. No way. I’m not killing a griever. Thomas almost got crushed for that one, and one near miss is more than enough for me.”

Minho’s expression flickers oddly, and Thomas abruptly gets the idea that Newt isn’t talking about Thomas’s recent near miss, but a very different one. Newt doesn’t offer anything else - even though his fingers are rubbing again at his elbow. Instead he huffs, unwinds his arms to rake a hand through his hair which leaves it more tousled still than it was before, and then looks directly at Thomas. His expression is strangely open and frank. Thomas tries to meet it.

“You think this changed something?” Newt asks.

“I don’t know,” Thomas says truthfully. “I think Gally’s worried it could have. I think it’s something you didn’t have before. I think the grievers go somewhere when they’re not here, and I think there has to be a purpose to all this.”

“Yeah,” Minho says bitterly, “The people who made this place are sadistic fuckers.”

Thomas blinks at him. “What happened to Shank?”

Minho seems to forget his ire for a moment, and a sharp smile cuts Thomas’s way. “Alby came up with that stuff around the younger ones.”

Newt looks skyward, head tipping back and a groan rolling from his throat like this is an old debate. “You’re like…eighteen. Tops.”

“You don’t know that,” Minho sniffs as Newt drops his head. “I feel about thirty. Besides, I mean Chuck.”

Newt’s eyebrows rise and his mouth clicks shut like he can’t find an argument for either of those things. He shrugs in acquiescence.

A voice behind him suddenly shouts out, “You three still here?”

Newt turns, sidestepping, and Thomas sees Frypan striding up towards them. 

“Waiting on you,” Newt says.

Frypan looks more awake than the three of them do. There’s already a smear of flour on his forearm and a wooden spoon jutting from the chest pocket of his leather apron. He stops next to Minho, manhandling him around so he can shove a little packet into the pouch on his back. His hand brushes the gooey cables and Frypan pulls a face, wiping it off on Minho’s shoulder.

“Hey-” Minho wheels around but Frypan has already darted out of range, over to Newt who holds still obediently as Frypan produces a second wrapped parcel.

Thomas lets Frypan stuff his lunch into his pack as well without bothering to argue, and then the cook is clapping his hands together, a bright smile on his face.

“Better get going then. Before Gally sees Thomas and throws him back in the pit.”

Thomas opens his mouth but isn’t even sure where he’s going with that. Before he can decide on it, Newt claps Frypan on the shoulder, then steps over to Thomas, taking his elbow and turning him towards the doors.

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, still talking to Frypan apparently. “Keep an eye out for him, Fry? He’ll be okay as things settle down.”

“You got it,” Frypan says. “I’ll have Jeff keep me updated on Alby too. Good luck.”

Frypan heads back off across the field and Minho moves up to Thomas’s other side.

“Ready?”

Thomas looks back into the maze. The sun is higher, the heat setting in, and the light has started to slant down between the narrow walls, leaving sharp angles between the paths. There’s something about it that’s calling to him, deadly as he knows it is.

“Yeah, I am,” Thomas says.

Newt lets go of his arm and squeezes his shoulder instead, then reaches around him to do the same to Minho. “Let’s move then. Keep up, Tommy.”

Minho is fast, Thomas knew that. He’s an efficient runner, a skill that’s been honed, and there’s an air of discipline to it; precise footfalls and measured breathing. Newt is different. Newt is quick in a way that feels intrinsic. His movements are looser and his breathing isn’t a carefully timed thing but seems to ebb and flow with everything he asks of his body. Thomas isn’t entirely sure how he isn’t battling lightheadedness in all honesty. Still, he’s nimble where Minho is a powerhouse.

Thomas has no memory of running other than the night he spent sprinting for his life. Something about it feels exhilarating now that there isn’t a gruesome monster snapping at his heels; it feels good to open his lungs, to push past the point of that warm ache deep in muscle tissue through to a zone where he feels like he could just keep going indefinitely. He thinks perhaps the person he was before used to run a lot.

At any rate, he’s good enough to keep up with the other two. His chest is tight after the long stretches, but he’s breathing sharply with them during the breaks to ease the burn, and keeping pace around the tight turns. He feels like he actually fits here, like the three of them click into place like they’ve always been.

The tall, boxed-in, tangled narrows that make up the first part of the Maze finally open out into long, curving channels, and they seem to run back on themselves several times before this section starts to open out into huge open spaces that look like derelict industrial estates. The sun bleached and broken concrete stretches for miles, edged by smooth walls with no footholds. Crossroads sit between the sections, old painted numbers high on the walls, half corroded by weathering.

Thomas almost steps on a bloodied pile of rags, and it’s only when Minho catches his elbow and he looks back at it that they realise-

“Ben,” Minho says, grief tight in his throat.

Newt rests a hand on his back. The apology is silent, but so loud, and Minho squeezes his eyes shut over the shredded t-shirt.

That’s when his pack starts beeping.

“Is this new?” Thomas asks when they’re standing in front of it.

‘It’ is a glassy black screen, with tiny blue and green numbers and pieces of code spinning at the edges; vivid, advanced, and entirely out of place in the world Thomas woke up in. It’s set into the far wall of a small round hole running back into the rock, just tall enough for a person to stand straight in the centre. It was blocked behind giant slabs of three foot thick concrete, and they formed a seemingly dead-end at the far side of a stone catwalk that was in turn hidden into a recess of the outer maze wall. Concealment upon concealment.

The beeping got louder, more insistent and they’d followed it like a homing beacon to the hidden entrance, then watched in both awe and dread as the concrete lifted away to reveal - this.

Thomas isn’t entirely sure yet what this is, exactly, only that it wasn’t there before they arrived.

“Yeah, I’d say so,” Minho breathes out.

Thomas reaches out to the black glass screen. It’s some kind of technology, that’s easy enough to tell, and the code has to mean something but there’s no telling what. It’s cold to the touch, and the pads of his fingers leave blue ripples in the pressure-sensitive panel.

That’s when the ground trembles.

“What was that?” Thomas asks, wheeling around to the other two, standing in the low light at the entrance.

“Also new,” Newt says darkly. “Move, Tommy, let’s go.”

Thomas tumbles out of the hole in the wall just as the lights flare red, and as the concrete comes back down. Newt half catches him, Minho grabs his wrist, and the three of them race down the catwalk, hearing sirens blare out, rebounding off the stone walls. The sound shivers down the back of Thomas’s neck and his blood pounds as they lose their grasps on each other and sprint.

The blades start to move first. The tall, orderly rows of rusted metal plates begin to spin, their wings clashing into each other and cutting off exits with cruel screaming sounds as the steel bites closed. They barely make it out of there before the ground starts to break up under their feet. Long lines of shattered rubble fire into the sky like an overhead air strike and the walls start to fall in on them, raising clouds of chalky dust. Minho hauls Thomas backwards by the shoulders as a crack splinters up through the ground, racing straight for them in a way that’s entirely unnatural. It carries on, between Newt’s sneakers, and he stumbles against Thomas in his rush to get onto one side of it.

The crack widens, the ground parting to a fissure, to a chasm, and then the half they’re not standing on lifts up. There’s great panels embedded into the floor, and now they’re opening like trapdoors, shedding dust and sand and grit to reveal steel and hydraulic infrastructure.

The piece of wall above them marked with a weathered number 7, that looks like it was built long before they could have been born, and would still be there long after they were gone, makes a clicking sound, and starts to fall.

“Shit,” Newt says.

He shoves Thomas forwards, seems to grab hold of Minho, and then Thomas’s world narrows down to the roar of blood in his ears as he tries to outrun the shadow gaining on them.

The crash when it lands, just at their heels, shakes the foundations of the maze.

Thomas almost loses his footing, feels the shockwaves of it shudder up through his knees and his stomach twists with something that might be some kind of motion sickness. There’s dust in the air, and he’s breathing hard even though it stings. It takes him a second to register there are hands on him, either side of his neck, trying to steady him and turn his head at the same time. Thomas blinks, stops fighting against it, and finds himself looking right at Newt. The shocked, wild look in his eyes feels like a reflection and there’s something reassuring about seeing his lean frame wracked with the same, harsh breaths that are rattling through Thomas’s ribcage.

Thomas steels himself, pushes his next breath deep down and settles the roiling in his stomach. He nods once, firmly at Newt. Newt nods back and lets him go.

It’s just in time for Minho to swear colorfully and add, “Gally’s going to kill him.” before there’s another spray of rubble, and a long crack in the ground rushing for them.

Thomas thinks idly that Minho's right - Gally will be attempting to murder him.

“Go, go, go,” he says, and they all sort of reach for each other at the same time, hands crossing and fingers catching, and they’re already running.

The cracks follow them, huge percussive blasts shaking the ground they’ve left behind, but they’re gaining distance. And then.

Long sections of the maze ahead start to shift; gears crunching and stone grinding, sunlight hitting places it’s never touched and shadows falling over bleached-white pathways. Within minutes, nothing looks the same as it did when they came this way before.

Thomas barely feels the burn in his chest, or the reverberating shock of the hard, broken ground up through his shins. The gritty chalk from the walls stings his skin, embedded in his clothes, and he can taste it on the roof of his mouth. He keeps Minho in his sights ahead, and Newt in his peripheral to the right and just runs.

“This way!” Minho shouts up ahead, and he veers off to the left.

Thomas curves in his wake, only seeing what Minho had when he’s almost on top of it; a cut out in the wall where the shelf looks like it goes right back to another part of the maze, far away from this one that’s coming down around them.

Minho leaps off the ground, grabs hold of the ledge just above himself, and with an impressive show of upper body strength, hauls himself up onto the platform there.

“Come on!” He shouts again, rolling onto his stomach and reaching down a hand.

Thomas turns back, pushing Newt ahead of him and ignoring the look Newt shoots him in return even as he jumps up and catches Minho’s arm. They both know there’s no time for him to actually argue.

Newt is barely up, just scrambling onto the platform when there’s an awful shrieking sound, and the wall above them starts to descend, gears turning in dozens of little channels in the stone to lower it flush to the space where Minho and Newt now rest.

“MOVE!” Newt yells, and he pushes Minho ahead before stretching down on his stomach in the same way to reach for Thomas.

Thomas jumps, catches his arm and they lock. Thomas has a bare second to feel something like a tiny give, a spasm of weakness in Newt’s fingers that chases back up to his shoulder, before Newt grits his teeth, eyes flashing, and his grasp tightens almost hard enough to bruise. Thomas gets a foothold and pulls himself up, heaving a breath in the enclosing space. Newt’s other hand comes up to the back of his head and presses down just before Thomas would have cracked his skull on the rapidly lowering ceiling.

“Keep low,” Newt says needlessly, voice a little torn from the run and the dust, and then the two of them are crawling as fast as they can to the other end, watching the rectangle of sunlight get narrower, their bodies pressing closer to the damp rock.

“Jump!” Minho shouts from somewhere below when they reach the edge. Loose shards of stone crumble under their hands and fall to the ground.

Thomas can’t even really see down there - it’s a narrow corridor, the sun too far behind to reach to the bottom, so the slanting light falls into an indistinct shaded abyss. He almost rolls his eyes just at the insanity of it.

“Just trust him,” Newt says, perhaps reading just that in his expression. “We’ve been doing this for years.”

“Thought you said this was new,” Thomas points out, kind of dry and yet still incredulous.

A flash of what looks like it could be humor goes through Newt’s expression, and then it’s his turn to push Thomas ahead of him.

Thomas twists in the gap, lowering his legs first like going down a ladder. He feels ivy on the wall below, tangling around his boots and isn’t sure how far the ground is, only that Minho’s voice didn’t sound far. Then sparks snap from the gears holding their roof up and everything trembles.

Thomas has a split second to remember the odd spasm of Newt’s left arm and deliberately reaches for his right instead. He tugs hard, pulling Newt bodily through the gap after him right as the wall shudders and drops, closing flat right where they had been. In a flash of wild memory, Thomas thinks of the griever the night before last, crushed between rock, and something nauseated churns at the back of his throat.

The creepers give out under their combined weight in an instant, and Thomas falls back amid a tangle of ivy leaves and broken vines, pulling Newt with him.

He lands flat on his back barely a fraction of a second later, the air crushing out of him at the impact and the floor closer than he’d expected it to be. Then Newt collapses on top of him with the same pained sound as he loses his air too and Thomas’s world goes just a little fuzzy at the edges as he works out how to breathe again.

Newt keels to the side, rolling onto his back and Thomas feels a little like his body is just a bag of shattered bones. The world is taken up by the sound of him and Newt sucking in hard, rattling breaths and his head feels woozy, muscles tense and shaky. The heavy taste of dust has gone, and when he swallows past the tackiness in his throat, he can smell moss and foliage, something earthy and old. Distantly, as the sky swims back into focus above, Thomas can still hear the awful noises of section seven collapsing inward and rearranging itself.

A shadow passes over Thomas and he blinks against the retina burn until Minho’s smirking face comes into focus.

“Alright there? How’s this for a first day?”

Thomas almost laughs and finds himself coughing. Minho reaches down and gives him a hand up so that he can dry heave his airway clear. When he turns back, Newt is sitting against the wall, kicking away broken vines from his legs. The rapid rise and fall of his chest has already begun to steady and the echo of a smile crosses his face as he tips his head back against the stone. Minho, hands on hips, gives the wall that almost crushed them an appraising look.

Thomas turns to take in their surroundings. Although the noises can be heard resonating across the tops of the walls, they’ve made their way to a part of the maze that hasn’t moved. They spilled out into a dead end. Weeds and mosses grow in the cracks here, and other than the destruction where Thomas and Newt fell through the ivy, the rest of the creepers are all strong and embedded.

“Think you can get us back from here?” Thomas asks, without answering Minho’s question. He figures it was mostly rhetorical anyway.

“Yeah,” Newt answers from the ground. “This is section five. Left at the end.”

He picks himself up off the floor, and Minho steadies him for just a second, something like a question going through his face. Newt nods and the moment passes.

“Come on,” Minho says, this time with something a bit like weariness. “I think we need to reconvene.”

They walk away from the dead end they tumbled into, and the walls don’t move. The maze doesn’t chase them. The sun slants in at an angle that doesn’t reach the floor, and the creepers and ivy flourish in the violet wash of shadows. The three of them walk, taking lefts and rights and winding their way back to the glade without a single mis-step.

Finally, they turn a corner, and there are the doors, wide open onto the sunlit glade, a gentle breeze catching in the wide corridor and the distant murmur of voices as all the boys bustle around with chores.

“You think that’s the way out?” Newt asks. There’s something heavy in his voice and in his eyes and he pauses inside the maze, stops before stepping into the sun.

Minho glances back and a muscle feathers in his jaw, something bitten back that ripples in the cord of his throat.

Thomas looks between them - what looks like protectiveness in Minho’s face, and the need in Newt’s - and he exhales.

“I don’t know,” he says, honestly. Newt’s eyes jump to him. Minho twitches in Thomas’s peripheral but Newt looks relieved. Thomas pushes on, “But yeah, I think there’s a good chance. I think…”

“We need to go back,” Minho finishes.

Thomas nods.

Something about Newt seems to change shape; it’s in his eyes and the width of his shoulders, the fingers drawing away from the point of his elbow again, and the way the tightness of his mouth softens. It’s like watching a sword reforged, something stronger born from what was once fractured. Thomas can’t help but wonder what Newt has been through in the maze in the last three years, what part of himself he might have broken in there, and if finding a way out really can heal it. Maybe, like a bone that isn’t set right will heal crooked, this is a solution too late, but maybe it’s not.

Thomas only met these boys days ago, but running with them feels like retracing memories he doesn’t have. It feels like echoes of a bond that runs far deeper and longer than the day he woke up in the box. Even if the maze has done something irreparable to Newt, to Minho, or any of the others, getting out is a chance for them, and Thomas will take it.

“Great,” Newt says into the quiet. “Right back to the bit that fell apart. If we can even find the way.” His voice is wry, and Thomas is strangely relieved to hear the humor colouring his tone again.

Thomas nods at him, “We’ll find it.” It’s not a promise, but, well, it kind of is. He takes a step backwards, out of the shadows, a quiet entreaty.

Newt breathes, nods and the three of them step into the glade.

As fate would have it, they never get a second day to find answers.

Something they did that day changed their world forever. That night the doors don’t close. The glade is sieged, Alby is lost to them, and the boys are divided, split down the middle by fear and loyalty as the cornfield is razed and the homestead burns.

Thomas wakes up in the pit again, this time with a girl he barely got a chance to know, and memories in his head that are all out of order and cast in strange colors. Newt and Minho sit outside, tense and worried. They’ve already packed bags.

For an instant the memories don’t sit right - Thomas could have sworn he had one of himself screaming, watching Newt hit the ground from a height, his leg snapping like broken vines - but Newt’s leg isn’t broken, never was. Thomas woke up here and Newt was a runner, had given three years of his life to the maze, and perhaps sacrificed more of his future to it than any of them yet knew, but at least that memory was wrong.

“Gally’s losing it,” Minho says quietly, when Thomas is done trying to explain the scramble in his head. Minho’s keeping his voice low, but something gutted and personal bleeds through like the wound underneath is mortal. “He took over. I don’t think I can get through to him. He’s afraid; they all are. And he’s out for you, Thomas. So if we’re going to go…we have to go now.”

It’s not ideal, but Thomas thinks of what they survived yesterday, remembers running shoulder to shoulder with these two boys like he belonged there and the way the maze had called out to him right from the start. There's something beyond it. He knows it.

“Yeah okay,” Thomas says, pulling himself up to the door of the pit. The three of them all share a look. “Let’s get out of here.”