in another life; the maze runner

☆ thirty-four☆

little trigger warning! mentions of death ig? i just decided to put one in case.

The sound of eery screeches and shrieks echoed throughout the abandoned shopping center, filling Mae's ears and raising the hairs on the back of her neck. Each of the creatures woeful sounds created such a stir of emotions in her head- fear, curiosity and sympathy. She resorted to tuning them out to the best of her abilities, instead focusing on the safety of Thomas and Minho, and trying to make it back to the rest of the group.

Each of their flashlights could only cover so much of the area, giving the trio only bits and pieces of light that made it near impossible to figure out which directions were safe to escape too. Nevertheless, just standing there wasn't the solution either.

And just like that, Mae, Minho and Thomas were running again. The familiarity of her heartbeat thumping in her ears and her chest burning as she took in minimal amounts of oxygen sprung the melancholy feeling of deja-vu into her mind, the sight of Minho and Thomas sprinting a few feet ahead of her causing the Maze to appear in her mind.

Using the beam of light from the tool in her hand, Mae tried her best to keep up with the former Runners, dodging the stray boxes and debris that were in her path as she ran. They reached the start of the broken metallic staircase they'd used to get down into the lower level, what Mae remembered as an escalator, and Minho and Thomas started climbing up them first.

She felt ashamed to not have been able to match their pace and to slow them down, but she know she didn't have the same training that Minho had, or that Thomas had to summon while he was in the Maze. Minho reached the top, glancing back at his friends with a hurried anxiety, where as Thomas was perched half way to the end of the escalator, holding his hand out firmly for Mae to take.

With her left hand on her backpack strap to keep it from falling, and her right on the railing on the escalator, the girl hurriedly went up the steps, trying her best to ignore the certain disaster that would occur if she moved any slower. Thomas's eyes were pleading with her to go faster, but he didn't say anything as he looked up to Minho, who was waiting restlessly for the pair to reach him.

After what felt like hours of dragging herself up the escalator, Mae finally got close enough to grasp Thomas's hand with hers. The warmth of the girl's hand finally in the safety of his gave him enough strength to help haul her up the rest of the way, knowing how she was still in weak condition from whatever the doctors at WICKED did to her.

They reached the top of the staircase and Mae felt a rush of relief flood throughout her system.

"Thank you," She muttered softly to Thomas, who barely heard her. And if he did, he thought nothing of it and was already starting to move forward in the direction the trio had come from when they first separated from the larger group.

Despite the momentary victory, they still weren't safe, and neither were their friends.

Minho gave Mae a look so full of fear and conflicted emotion that convinced her to push away the exhaustion weighing on her shoulders. This time, both of the boys let Mae get a head start so that she wouldn't fall far behind, and they resumed their sprints, on a mission to find the rest of the group.

With each pounding step forward, Mae could feel the brittle bones in her feet on the edge of shattering from the impact of the speed she was running at. The sound of snarls and malicious growls from the decaying human like figures that had caught up with trio powered up her ambition to keep bolting forward.

They rounded a corner that they had previously turned earlier that night, and as Mae's flashlight darted the beam of light in every direction as it swung with her hands, it landed on the figures of some familiar teenagers.