TST: Searching In The Scorch :Sequel to The Maze In Her Heart: ✔ (UNDER EDITING)

*Chapter Thirteen* Metal Ball Heads.

        Murmured yeses. The motion of nodding, making the air thick with motion. I can feel sweat beading just under my headline and on my neck above the collar of my shirt. "Who's saying that? it's not funny. Was it you, Lamar?" Minho says, his voice filled with the presence of annoyance. I bite my tongue to keep from saying he would never do such a thing.

        Lamar's voice fills my ears. Reads my mind. "Now why would I do such a shucking thing?" His Australian accent is more pronounced now that I can't see the matching body to fit it with. It sounds out of place, not like Newt's slight British slur, or Chuck's husky voice cracks. My heart hurts again. Don't think of him. I scold myself, gripping my water bag, to the point where it feels like it might burst.

        "Whoever this shank is, it's giving me the heebie jeebies." Minnie says. I place my hand against the wall again for support, afraid my hand might land on the face of the voice's owner, who might be waiting to pounce on whoever is stupid enough to hope for support in a place like this. Who IS saying that? Nobody hear sounds like a child. Except.. STOP.

        "Let's keep moving." Thomas suggests. The Glader's start to slug ahead, and I find myself struggling to keep up. I've just then started getting used to the darkness when it happens again. But now the voice is crisp and clear, causing my spine to fold in origami and drop to my feet. My lower back looses support in my mind, causing me to fling backwards, smacking my head into the marble floor.

        Back in reality, the voice bounces off the walls and back into my ears, cutting a straight slash through my brain.

        "Turn back now, or you'll get sliced." Once more, sliced trails off into a demonic giggle, making my eardrums rattle.

        "Should we listen to it?" Aris suggests, and then silence.

        "No." I say, "You heard Rat Man. You can't turn back, or you will get killed. I'd rather listen to this shank from WICKED than put my life on the line by listening to this crazy voice in the dark."

        There's the sounds of rustling, and the air is seeming to condense with thinking. "What is this guy's working for WICKED too?" George says.

        "We can;t trust WICKED any way, but I think we should keep moving forward." Liam says, and there are hushed waves of agreement. As if in a silent trance, we all start running again, trying to escape this hellhole as fast as we can. I wonder if this is bringing memories of the Maze to runners.

        Then it happens. As fast as it came, it leaves. The air in the room suddenly flattens, as if we've been blasted into a wave of fresh air, and I can sense everybody else around me tensing as suddenly, there's a slicing sound. There's a gurgling shout of discomfort then it turns into searing screams of pain. The Glader making that noise seems to be in the most pain, and I act before thinking. I launch myself towards the noise, knocking the Glader back.

        As soon as I land on him, it's like a bucking bull ride. The boy is having spasms of great measures, trying to buck me off his body. I grab onto the shirt fabric around his collar, bringing his face upwards and trying to find somewhere to stop the screaming. My hands reach for his neck, but there's nothing there. it's metal and sticky, and my hands run over the surface of a big, metal ball, slick with the blood. It's hot where my hands touch, and I fling up and try to wipe the blood on the wall but I find nothing.

        At this point, I'm screaming too, pointing at his body, though nobody can see me. The boy remains shaking on the ground, but he's not screaming anymore, he's been cut off, in a final gurgle. I reach down and my hands find his metal head again, searching for any human features but finding none. Instead. I'm greeted with the sound of the ball rolling off the spot between his shoulders, rolling into the wall.

        I jump off once more, flinging into another Glader. By the sense of his surprise, I can tell it's either Lamar or George, who sound alike in a weird weird, even though accents set the barrier. "What happened?" Minho says, and George, I can tell by the way he grabs with more insecurity than Lamar, seizes my arms to steady me.

        The hallway bursts into questions, shouts, and shaky breathing. I can hear a faint childish laugh and then it's gone, just like the boy. "Marie? Earth to Marie!" George's voice brings me back to earth, and I seem to slam into the ground.

        "What the shuck happened?!" "Who was it?" "Did he get sliced?" "What was the sound?" "Is he okay?"

        Is he okay? That's what I would like to know, random Glader.

        "Shut up!" I shout, and everyone dies down. "He started screaming, and I jumped onto him,a nd he was spazzing out, so I went to see what was wrong, but his face was gone, replaced with a .. large..metal..ball.. and he stopped screaming and it fell off."

        There's a faint stifled giggle, but that's all. "Where is it now?" Thomas says.

        George releases my arms. "Well, I'm pretty sure we would know if we just looked around for a large, metal ball about nay high." I say sarcastically. Then we start searching. People start yelling across the hallway at others, asking of they found it. There's a certain shakiness to everything.

        "Oh!" I hear Newt's voice ring out, and another choir of questions is directed towards him. "Shut your bloody yaps!" he says, and everyone is quiet. "It's right here." Newt says rather flatly, as if he hasn't just discovered the head of a boy enveloped in metal laying there at his feet.

        There's a scraping and a few grunts and it starts to roll, from the sounds of it. Judging by the sound it makes, it's hit the other wall, rolling back to the other side. "She wasn't kidding."

        Silence. "Come on, we have to get out of here!" Minho says now, with a greater urgency than I've heard before.

        *

        The slicing claims a few other boys. I found out that the boy that was sliced was Zart the Fart, as told to us by a scared straight Winston. We kept moving every time we heard a scream, letting it fade back into the back of our memories, feeling bad that we left them behind, but at the same time, utterly grateful that the child hasn't picked us.

        By the time that we reach the stairs, we have lost a total of four boys.