Till The WICKED End | A Maze Runner Story (English Version)

11. Back in the past

Someone shook my shoulder and I jumped up. Just a moment ago I had been dreaming about how we had come across all those dead Gladers at the Glade, but now I looked into Francesca's worried gray eyes.
"We're here," she said tonelessly. "We're landing right now."
I sat up straight and nodded. Then I looked over at Thomas, who must have had the same dream I had. He rubbed through his face and straightened up as well. The others were awake now, too.
The ground beneath my feet vibrated as I just rolled up my sleeping bag while Jorge landed the Berg. The rotor sounds quieted and he emerged from the cockpit.
"All right. Let's get it on!"
The man's voice was full of enthusiasm and a little bit of it rubbed off on me. While I was afraid of what awaited us, what we would find out, and the memories it would bring, now I wanted to know, too. I wanted to find out if there was anything left out there from WICKED that I needed to destroy and I wanted to see my old home again. While no one had talked about it, it was clear that we were going to the Glade. There was no way around revisiting our past, even though I knew it would hurt.
We took the things we thought we needed - for me, that was my backpack and weapons - and descended the ramp.
It was a hot day, and the sand of the desert blew around our legs in gentle gusts. It smelled of sun and heated ground, reminding me of our journey through the Scorch.
I followed Thomas around the Berg. When the view of the huge building in front of us became clear, engulfed by the sand even a few meters further than when we had escaped from the Maze, my breath caught for a moment. I looked up at the roof and thought of the nights I had spent there secretly with Newt, almost five years ago, before we had been sent to the Glade.
"Are you okay?" I heard Gally ask then, and felt his hand on my right shoulder.
I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat and nodded. Only now did I realize that I had stopped and my friends were looking at me anxiously.
"Come on, let's try over there. That's where they took us out," I said, pointing to the large gate through which the WICKED soldiers had taken us out after we reached the labs and watched Ava Paige's feigned death; after Chuck had died, after Gally had almost been killed.
We went up to it to find that it was sealed.
"Well, at least that means there are no Cranks inside, right?" Minho noted.
"Just a few days after we were evacuated, a team removed all the bodies and sealed the building so that no one not capable of reasoning should be able to get in. I was hoping they actually succeeded, and it looks like we're lucky, although I don't know about the other sides." Francesca looked left and right along the building.
"Should we go around the outside and check it out?" Brenda asked.
"No way, it's too big. It would take us a lot of time," I countered. "We should just try to get in here and be on guard inside. - Gally, Pan, can you get this open?"
"Of course," Gally muttered, pushing his way between Francesca and Thomas and making a beeline for the gate with his best friend.
It wasn't long before they were able to pry it up with the help of Jorge and Thomas, allowing Minho and I to duck under it first and hold it so the others could join us. When Gally was the last to join us, we dropped it and for a moment it was completely dark in the corridor. Quickly Francesca had pulled out a flashlight and seemed to be looking for something.
"Alright, I need a power box, then I can start the emergency generator."
Quite purposefully, she walked toward what quickly turned out to be a power box.
"Gally, will you give me a hand?"
Again, Gally pushed his way between us, who were still standing there as we had come in. The two of them were tampering with the box and seemed to know what they were doing. Francesca fiddled with some cables until a beep sounded and all around us the lights first flickered and then came on. In the room at the end of the hallway, screens began to light up and we could hear the hum of computers.
"Well, who says it - well done!" Gally noted, half-surprised.
I was the first to move. Slowly, I walked down the hall, past the two of them and into the room that had once been my workplace. I stopped in front of the screen I had sat in front of every day. Thomas stepped next to me and put his hand on my left shoulder. The two seats next to us were empty because their owners were no longer there.
Francesca joined us and stood on my other side. She nodded slowly.
"Three years," she said, "three years we've sat here, Tommy. We've seen them suffer, we've seen them die. When we left, I swore I'd never come back here again."
I turned to her and saw a tear running down her cheek. Carefully, I patted her shoulder as my gaze fell on Gally, who was staring at the ground in front of his feet. He was standing right where he had been hit by Minho's spear, but his gaze was on the spot where Chuck had died.
Slowly I stepped up to him and felt the lump in my throat grow again. I put my arm around his waist and he put his around my shoulders. Silently, we looked at the almost embarrassingly clean linoleum, where there was no trace of the shards or blood we had all left there. The scars on my legs and arms and those on Gally's chest were our only reminders of the terrible thing that had happened here.