The Maze Runner Rewrite

Part 3

My hair was up in a professional bun as my fingers clacked along the keyboard in front of me. My computer screen was see-through, but the data I had pulled up on it about the Gladers was clear enough. I felt a foot tap mine from under the table, and I looked up to see Thomas on the other side, his hair combed cleanly.

"Hey, Minx, guess what?" he said, his voice lilting with mischievousness.

I leaned forward onto my elbows, looking at him through our screens with a playful smile on my face. "What, Tommy?"

"I got a call from the-." Thomas stopped talking when another girl walked in. She sat down at her computer next to me, and I felt angry. She had wavy brown hair and puffy lips that I knew Thomas found kissable. His eyes landed on her, and he smiled, making her blush.

She didn't know what Thomas and I knew, yet still she'd captured his attentions. It seemed he was juggling the both of us, and while I knew we weren't exclusive, it still hurt that he could never tell me who he loved. He kept us both in the palm of his hands, but he didn't even know it.

A picture of A-07, a subject by the name of Minho, loaded on my screen, and I busied myself with pretending to be working. Minho was my person, the one I had to watch over in the Maze. We were all assigned people. Thomas had Chuck, A-29, and Teresa was responsible for Gally, A-09. Their numbers corresponded with the month they entered the Maze. We had numbers all the way to 36, since it had been just over three years since the Maze began. Sadly, some of those subjects were deceased.

Thomas kept trying to get my attention to get me to go have a private conversation with him about the Right Arm, but I pretended I was busy. Despite how much I hated it, WCKD was our job, and while we were here, we needed to do it.

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I jerked awake when I felt a hand cover my mouth. I would've been scared, but it was Alby standing above me, holding his finger to his lips as he shushed me. He told me to follow him, and I did, assuming this was more initiation crap.

Next to me, Thomas was still sleeping. He was on his back, his arms crossed over his chest, and his head was turned to the right, his eyes closed softly. The long lashes on his eyelids decorated his cheekbones, and I smiled at the sight, getting up carefully so I wouldn't wake him. No one else was awake, not even the sun. It was just barely getting ready to peak over the tall walls.

The walk Alby took me on was slow and casual (he had a knife in his hand which I kept a close eye on), and I soon realized we were headed for a section of the wall. "It's beautiful, isn't it?" I figured he meant the sunrise, so I hummed in agreement. "I know it's hard to believe, but it wasn't always this way. We had dark days. We lost a lot of boys to fear, to panic." He stopped at a tree, letting me look out at the scape uncharacteristically free from working bodies. "But we've come far since then. Established order, made peace."

"That's beautiful, Alby," I said sincerely. "But why are you telling me this?"

"Because you're not like the others. You're curious. You and Thomas both. But you're one of us now. You need to know what that means." Alby rose the knife, and I watched it cautiously. He took my hand and placed the handle of the knife in my palm. He curled my fingers around it, his hand staying wrapped around mine for a second.

Finally, he gestured to the wall behind me, so I turned to look at it, walking closer. Names were carved all over it, and I understood what I was supposed to do. Some of the names were crossed out with several lines.

"What happened to them?" I asked, running my fingertips over some of the crossed-out names.

"Like I said, dark days, Y/N." My throat closed up, understanding that meant they had all died in one way or another. The sun was just beginning to illuminate the wall, and my eyes stopped on Thomas' name. Reaching out, I grazed my fingers over the name, my fingers jumping with the engraved letters. "Hey, Alby. Can I ask you something?" I faced him without carving my name in. He nodded. "What do you know about Thomas?"