Into The WICKED Maze | A Maze Runner Story (English Version)

41. In the Slammer

It wasn't long before Minho reappeared. I was still holding the bread and standing by the grate, freezing and shivering.
At first I didn't know who he had with him, but then to my horror I recognised Newt, Chuck in tow and someone else - Alby.
I couldn't see Nick and was glad of that, because I didn't fancy another argument.
The four boys squatted in front of the bars and Newt immediately reached out his hands to me. When I put mine in his, he flinched and looked at me in horror.
"You really are freezing! Damn it, I'm going to kill that slinthead, I don't care if he's our leader or not!"
Alby put a hand on his shoulder but didn't turn his gaze from me, his brow furrowed in worry. "Newt, stop it, you're smart enough not to do that. You'd only end up third in the brig." Newt looked down at the ground in resignation.
"And what are we supposed to do then? Alby, you have to do something!" Now Newt looked at him piercingly. "We can't leave her freezing all night, can we? It's hours till morning!" He squeezed my cold hands and rubbed them, trying to warm them.
"I've already tried to warm them. But if I can only warm her arms, it won't help." I could picture Gally standing straight on the other side of the wall, arms folded, looking at Alby promptly.
"Alby, we have to do something. Can't I do the punishment instead of her?" Little Chuck had risen to his feet and stood boldly in front of the black boy.
"Chuck, don't talk nonsense. You stay right where you are. Besides, Nick wouldn't allow it." I tried as hard as I could to talk reasonably, even though I was shaking. I didn't want to show how cold I really was.
"What if we let her go over to Gally? He could keep her warm..." Only now did Minho speak up again. I could see Newt's face contort into a grimace as he imagined it, but just as quickly as his distaste for it had been visible, he had hidden it again.
"Yes... Yes, Alby, that should be all right. What's Nick going to object to?" He too had now stood up. I'm sure the others didn't notice, but I could literally hear him wrestling with himself to speak up in favour of it.
Alby scratched his head and thought. He looked from me to Gally in turn. "All right. I'll say it was my idea after I did a walk-around and saw Anna was half-frozen. None of you were here, all right?" He rose as well and looked from one to the other.
Without waiting for a reply from the others, Minho, who was still crouching in front of my cell, made a move on my bars. When it swung open, Newt was immediately there to help me out of the hole, only for Alby to push me straight over to Gally's cell, whose gate Chuck was trying to open.
"Get on with it, newbie," Gally grumbled and Chuck grew more nervous, fiddling with the latch until Newt gently pushed him aside and opened the gate. Alby pushed me further and I jumped down into the hole where Gally caught me. Immediately Newt closed the gate again and locked it before looking down at us with a contorted face.
"Don't you touch her, Gally." He tried to sound funny, but only half succeeded.
"There's no way around that, mate. Unless you want her to freeze to death after all." He demonstratively put an arm around my shoulders and I immediately felt his warmth envelop me. Nevertheless, I detached myself from him once more and stepped up to the bars to Newt.
"Don't worry about it. I'll see you in the morning." I took his hand and gave him a kiss on the back of it.
"Right, now go to sleep, Newty."
I gave Gally a punishing look.
"I love you," I whispered.
"And I love you." With those words, he let go of my hand, turned, giving Gally another warning look, and disappeared into the darkness with Alby, Minho and Chuck.
"I think we should try to sleep too, what do you think?" asked Gally now, ducking deeper into our cell. I followed him, bending down more and more. It was so dark that I could hardly see anything and bumped my head. Slowly I felt my way until I found him and lay down beside him.
"Now don't be such a baby, come here." Gally pulled me towards him so that I was half lying on top of him. At first I wanted to resist, but then his warmth enveloped me so comfortably that I couldn't help but lie there.
I closed my eyes and whispered, "Thank you."
"No problem, lil' one."
Suddenly I saw a picture in my mind's eye of me and Gally lying together in a bed, in the room where I had seen myself with Newt before. A feeling of despair came over me and I felt terribly alone.
They would take him away from me, the person I needed most. They would just take him away.
I startled up, hitting my head. Gally must have dozed off, because he let out a horrified gasp and jumped up as well, chin punching me with his shoulder.
Dazed by the blow, I sat there confused for a moment until I remembered where I was.
"What happened?" asked Gally wearily.
"Nothing, nothing. I was just dreaming, sorry." Immediately I realised I was getting cold again and wrapped my arms around my torso.
"Well come on back here. Before you shiver again."
I could guess he was spreading his arms and let me slide in.
Head on his chest and snuggled tightly against him, I listened to his steady heartbeat and thought of my dream. Had it been a dream, then? It had felt more like a memory.
Suddenly I had a strong urge to tell Gally about it.
"I was dreaming about you."
"Hmm?" he went on.
"Exactly. I was dreaming about you."
Now he perked up again. "And what?" he asked curiously.
"It wasn't really like a dream at all, more like I remembered something from before. We were lying on a bed, and you were asleep and had me in your arms, but I was awake. And I was crying. I knew about something and all I could think was that you were going to be taken away from me. And that felt like the end of the world."
The last sentence was a statement and I said it matter-of-factly, even though inside I was feeling that horrible feeling from my dream again.
Gally's hug tightened a little more. "Maybe one day we'll find out if that was just a dream or a memory. But I do know this. I got here before you and you sent me a message. So you were out there somewhere when I was already in here. Maybe what you were dreaming isn't so far-fetched."
As he spoke of the message I got even more of a feeling that it had indeed not been a dream, but a memory. I slipped my still cold hand under his jumper and noticed that he flinched at the touch of my cold skin, but he didn't complain and the warmth did me a world of good, so I let my hand rest on his stomach and realised once again that Newt really wasn't the only one with abs. But what did I expect? Looking at Gally, you could immediately see that he was muscular.
Somehow the thought of it made me smile and I closed my eyes for good now to sleep.
"Good night, lil' one."
"Good night," I murmured, thinking again of the note I must have written him more than three years ago.
Then I remembered something else. Back when I had arrived here, I too had found a note in my trousers.
Remember.
That was all it had said. Before I fell asleep, I wondered who had written that note. Was it someone who was here with us now? I couldn't imagine. The writing hadn't looked like it was a boy's and I had never recognised it on anyone again.
With the thought of someone who was out there, maybe still thinking of me sometimes and wanting me to remember, I fell asleep.
And had no idea that Teresa, my friend, the girl who had slipped me that note when they had put Minho and me in the box, was lying in her bed only a few hundred metres away from me as the crow flies, also thinking of me, who had watched her try to find an exit every day for over three years.
I didn't know that she and a boy named Thomas, who had also once been my friend, along with another girl - whom I would meet in not so long, in circumstances unimaginable to me that night - feared for our lives every day and sat frozen in their chairs every time I was in danger, only stirring once Minho had saved me once more.
And just as little as all that, I suspected that this Thomas was currently sitting in a small room, a radio in front of him and a list with the coordinates of all the mazes, pulling his hair out and then muttering, "She would have done it too, come on Thomas, just do it."
At last he pressed a button and turned a few cogs as a voice rang out.
"Thomas, is that you?"
"Yes, Mary, it's me."
"Do you have the coordinates?"
The boy swallowed loudly once more before he began to tell the woman at the other end the data from his note.
When he had finished they quickly said goodbye again and the last thing the woman called Mary said to him was, "She would be proud of you - our Anna. Now let's get her and your other friends out of there. Believe me Thomas, you did the right thing. See you soon, I hope we finally meet in person."
With that, the conversation broke off and Thomas sat in silence for a bit longer, knowing that they would now send him into one of the mazes as well. He had to talk to Teresa and explain it to her before WICKED would.