The Deadliest Generation: The Maze Of Monsters

The Changing

"Do you think more of them will come?"

Minho raised his head to look at Thomas, who'd just asked the question. Minho winced. Thomas looked awful, to be honest. His eyes were red and sore and slightly swollen from the crying, and his hair was dusted in dirt and grit; sweat stains were still evident on his shirt, and dust was on his trousers, which were rubbed horrifically thin on one knee. When Thomas gingerly touched it and winced, he confirmed Minho's suspicions - Thomas had some sort of bruise or kinetic burn there.

"Dunno." He said, "We made it till sunrise, otherwise we would've had ten more on our butts before long."

Thomas crawled to the edge of the Cliff, looking down. When staring straight down, he saw that it was simply the stone wall of the Maze went towards the ground in a sheer drop until it disappeared into nothingness far far below Thomas, even further out of his eye sights range. He knew even if the sun was in it's full powerful beam above him, he still wouldn't be able to glimpse the bottom. 

It seemed that the Maze was just being held up.

But that's impossible, Thomas thought.

Has to be an illusion, a hallucination. 

"Be happy Greenie - we made it through the whole night."

Thomas wearily nodded his head, "What do you think we did differently to all the people before us who spent a night in the Maze?"

"I dunno, it's a little bit hard to ask a dead guy what he did wrong." Minho said sarcastically but not cruelly. He smirked and stretched his neck until Thomas heard a click, then shut his eyes and dropped the smirk. "Ow." 

Thomas had remembered, since his thoughts cleared and made sense of the event from when they'd lured the Grievers to the edge of the Cliff, that their enraged cries once they'd fallen had been cut off, and how, when staring over the edge of the Cliff, neither he nor Minho had seen any of them die. 

"It was freaky you know?" Thomas said, "When those Grievers vanished over the edge of the cliff, and they seemed to vanish."

"Yeah." said Minho, "Yeah, that was messed up."

Thomas seemed to be staring at the ground, thinking.

"Before you spout out a theory weirder than one of Chucks, we've proved some Gladers probably equally as strange theories. Look." Minho felt around on the ground a picked up a large rock, probably the size of Thomas's fist, and hurled it over the Cliff. Thomas watched as it grew smaller and smaller until he couldn't see it. He turned to Minho, "This proves them wrong how?"

"Well, rock didn't disappear, right?" 

Thomas knew something significant had happened, and he asked, "So, what d'you think happened?"

"Dunno, my head hurts thinking about it. Maybe shucking magic"

With a quick jolt, Thomas remembered Alby, and all thoughts of the Cliff vanished. He turned back, and realised his right leg had begun to hurt, so he put all his weight on his left leg.  

"Where are you going?" Minho asked wearily.

"Gotta go get Alby off of the wall." At Minho's disbelieving look, he told him what happened, and Minho shook his head, "No- no way he's shucking alive."

"Why not? We have." Thomas began to limp down the corridor.

"Because no one's ever made it this far..." Minho trailed off. 

Thomas knew what he was thinking. That Alby was dead. No one had gone this long without getting the Serum, whatever it was. "That's because everyone else was killed by the Grievers, and you found them dead. Alby was only pricked, right?"