Betrayed | the maze runner, Newt

chapter 1

Hi, I haven't really written in ages so this is a bit strange to me. I'm Zara, Zara Janson actually, but we don't use my last name. Partly because we don't use last names here and partly because of something you'll figure out while reading this book. I'm currently 16 years old and I've been through a lot in the past year. Things that children or teens normally shouldn't experience. But we did. And it wrecked us. Some of us more than others. What and how, you will figure out yourself. But I've learned and realized some things from it all. The first and most simple thing is that if you want something you never had, you gotta do something you never did. Take risks, like I did. I took the biggest risk in my life and it turned out to be the best thing I've ever done. The second lesson is more difficult, but once you understand it, it will change your entire look on the world. The more you want to find happiness, the more likely you will fail. Happiness is not a treasure to be found, but can be built within ourselves. Now read that again and let it sink in. All the time we couldn't find happiness and started to think such a thing didn't exist, until we built it together. We built happiness, and you can do too.

Greetings from me from the Safe Haven, and welcome to my story.

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Zara let out a sigh as she remained her focus on the television in front of her bed. A movie was playing. What movie it was? Yeah, next question. It was something about a jungle and three people with a love-hate relationship. Zara stared bored at the television and sighed again. After a few more seconds, she turned it off and sat up on her bed. The sun shone through the window on her right side. Pretty nice you'd think. Well, not really. Every time Zara looked outside, the only thing she saw was sand. Sand, blue sky and a bright sun. And a part of a really big building, but that was it. And it hadn't changed since the girl could remember. This was her room, on the side of a big building that was owned by her father. What was in the building, Zara didn't know. Her father didn't speak much about his job. Sometimes it seemed to be something like a hospital, but the next day there would land a black helicopter on the roof which doesn't really belong in a hospital.

She didn't even have a home.

Well, practically she did. But that home was also inside the building. Either the whole left or the whole right side of the first floor was her and her father's home. Including two bedrooms, a way to big and modern living room, a huge ass kitchen, a suspiciously long corridor, two bathrooms and a balcony to the little garden inside the building. The little garden was at Zara's request. It had some trees, plants, a pond and speakers of animal sounds. It wasn't much but it reminded her enough of the outside world which she wasn't allowed to enter.

Her father always told her that when Zara was younger, she and him used to play in the sand of the Scorch together, in front of this building. But Zara didn't believe him and still doesn't. No matter how hard she'd try, she couldn't remember anything from her youth. She didn't remember a mom, while being pretty sure she had or has one. She didn't remember being young at all. The amount of memories most people get when they recognize something, Zara never got. The weird thing is, she did recognize things, but not from what. She remembered having a mom, but not who and what happened to her. She remembered how to do certain simple things like talking, walking or handling a laptop or phone, but not who taught her. Though it was most likely to be her father of course. Nothing was ever for sure, and it wasn't easy.

And if you're wondering, no, she didn't have friends. She knew what friends were and she remembered having them, but not their faces or what it was like. She knew what a school was but couldn't remember going to one. She got home-schooled from an online teacher seven days a week, four hours a day. Mostly from 7:00 am until 11:00 am.