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

45. Fighting spirit

It had taken a few days to get things back into some sort of routine at the glade. Alby had taken over as leader after we had voted unanimously. Apart from Newt, no one else would have been considered anyway and he had not even put himself forward for election.
The very next day after the 'incident', as we had started to call it, we had gone back into the maze all hands and picked up where we had left off two days before - which meant we had just kept walking the corridors and searching the open section.
The other gladers had also carried on as normally as possible, but you had noticed from the overall mood that it was different from before the incident. Conversations were shorter, laughter was quieter and in everyone's faces you could see what had happened.
Even Gally was different than usual, even though I knew he was secretly glad Nick hadn't found an exit. But he definitely hadn't wanted something that bad to happen, even he wasn't tough enough for that.
A week after the incident, the box had come up as usual, bringing materials and food. As the builders were putting their stuff out, one of them had suddenly cried out in horror, jumped out of the box and thrown up - at least that's what Chuck told me later. In the box, among the things for the builders, there had been a surprise for us - the boy had grabbed the middle of Nick's lower half when he tried to lift a wooden beam.
When we had come out of the maze that evening, Alby had announced that we would meet in the meeting room in ten minutes. Before Minho and I had set off there, Chuck had intercepted us and excitedly told us what had happened in the morning. Therefore, we were prepared when we now entered the meeting hut and found the lower half of our former leader laid out there.
Nevertheless, I had to pull myself together so that I didn't gasp loudly or even throw up. We were the last to enter the room, so we sat in the back row, which I was absolutely fine with, because I didn't really want to get closer to the body.
Alby was standing in the middle, next to Nick's legs, looking strong and not like he was just standing next to his dead best friend. I could imagine how hard he was pulling himself together right now.
I tried to look as rarely as possible, but just the idea of it made me gag. Newt, who was standing next to Alby, had his arms folded in front of his chest and looked pretty composed too, even though I could tell he was feeling the same inside as I was.
"As you have all noticed, we have been sent up today with some sort of gift from the creators. I don't think I need to embellish or explain it much, but there is one thing I wanted you to know, so I called you together. When Newt and I were examining the body, we found a note in his pocket that wasn't his. They must have put it in there." He pulled a note out of his pocket and I was curious to see what the creators had to tell us.
"This is what happens to those who break the rules of the game."
There was dead silence and everyone waited for Alby to continue reading, but that seemed to have been it already.
"Are they serious? After almost four years that you and Nick have been here, they send us a message and that's all it says?" Winston had stood up and looked indignantly at Alby.
"First they kill our friend and then comes a klunk lecture like this?" Minho next to me had also stood up.
There was no stopping them now and the keepers were shouting in confusion and you could hardly understand what they were shouting. Everyone had risen to their feet, only I was still sitting, staring thoughtfully at the floor as I tried to block out the shouting.
"Now shut up!" I had stood up and shouted louder than all the others put together. Immediately the boys around me fell silent and they all looked at me.
"Don't you understand? This is not meant to be a stupid lecture, this is a threat. If we start fighting them, then we are the ones who will die. They want to show us that they are the ones who have us in their hands. And there is nothing we can do about it, after all we know nothing about them. An enemy without a face is more dangerous than a hundred with a face."
At first no one said anything, then Winston said, "We know their name. WICKED."
"We don't know if that's their name. And even if it is, what good does it do us? We still don't know what's behind it." Newt's voice was calm and he was still standing there just as he had been at the beginning.
"It must definitely be something big or we wouldn't be here now," Fry Pan muttered, but everyone heard it because it was dead silent again.
"Exactly. I mean, look around here, they built all this." Zart was the first to sit back down, arms folded in front of his chest.
"But that's why we can't just give up now. We can't let them win, shanks." Winston, too, sat down again.
Slowly silence returned and everyone sat down except Alby and Newt.
"And what do you think we should do, Winston?" Minho asked.
The slicer shrugged his shoulders and looked down at the floor.
"I mean, honestly guys, it's easy for you to say. We run into the maze every day looking for an exit, always with the risk of a Griever catching us. You guys hang out here and you're safe."
"What are you saying, Minho? Do you think we're just going to sit around twiddling our thumbs all day?"
I had never known Clint to be angry before, but this time he had every reason to be. I could understand how Minho felt, but it wasn't right to act like we were the only ones doing anything either.
"Hey, stop it. There's no point in arguing. Yes, it's dangerous what we're doing, but everyone's doing their part here and if it wasn't for the others we'd be pretty much screwed too, like the other way round. We need each other."
I tried to calm the situation down, which apparently succeeded to some extent, because Minho's posture relaxed a little beside me again.
"Anna is right. We should all pull together and figure out how to outsmart these strands of WICKED or whatever they're called," Fry Pan said and I nodded at him gratefully.
"There is nothing we can do differently. We have to keep going and hope that one day we will find an exit. We have great runners who will spot it if it's out there and at the same time we must not stop being vigilant and keeping our eyes peeled. Until then, I expect you to do your best, whatever you do, and above all, to be fair and good to each other." That seemed to end the discussion for Alby, as he turned to Gally, who had not said a word the whole time.
"Gally, please get your builders and carry the coffin over here again so we can give Nick his second part. The rest of you are welcome to go out for dinner or whatever else you have planned. See you tomorrow and good night."
Silently we got up and left the hut. All evening I thought about Alby's words and the fact that there were people who had sent us here. Since the news, that fact was much clearer than before and somehow I felt watched.
That evening, as I lay next to Newt and dreamily stroked through his hair, I still thought about it. Even when he then kissed me and pulled me closer to him, I couldn't shake the feeling that we were being watched, which was completely crazy because we were in a hut built by Gally and no one could have installed a camera or anything like that here. Still, I felt like I was being watched the whole time, even when we broke away from each other again and Newt dropped down next to me, a little out of breath.
I put on one of his tops, sucked in his smell and then snuggled up to him. When he had already fallen asleep, I was still lying there looking up at the ceiling, still thinking about those who were sitting somewhere and knew about us, had locked us in here for some reason and were now watching us die one by one.
Eventually I did fall asleep, only to dream of a large monitor watching Gally and Newt locked at the glade.
With me were a girl and a boy whose names I didn't know and whose faces I could only see in a blur. I didn't know if they were my friends or my enemies, but one thing was clear, we were doing the same thing, watching the gladers at the glade. I could see Gally building a hut that looked like our meeting hut, Newt recording something with Alby and Nick and Fry Pan standing in the kitchen cooking.
The whole time I didn't know if it was a dream or a memory, but I had that strange feeling again that I had had the last few times I had a dream like that.
36 months and 14 days.