**BOOK #2 of The Promise Series**
❝ We finally escaped the maze, but with what costs? I miss Ben. I miss Clint. I miss Zart. I miss Jeff. I miss Alby. I miss Chuck. And I miss Gally so much- maybe if I just had kept my promises, Gally could still...
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Finley's POV:
My eyes flutter open. A throbbing in my head and a sharp pain in the side of my stomach. The room is bright and almost blurry from my sleepy eyes. A distant beeping sound causes my head to throb more. I looked to my side to see a machine. A red line went across the screen, tracking my heartbeat.
I see a clear bag of some liquid attached to a tube. My gaze follows the tube that leads to my arm. That is when I realize myself. My own body. And the bed that I lay in. White, clean blankets wrap the warmth around my sore body as fresh clothes grasp my figure. A light blue t-shirt and navy blue jogging pants and a navy zip-up sweater. All the dirt and grime that once coated my body was cleaned off. I notice a fresh bandage wrapped around my arm- the one that is covered in scars. I then move my attention to the sharp pain in my stomach.
My hands slowly reaches down to the hem of my shirt and gently lift it to expose a huge bandaid patch covering my side and a small blotch of dry blood that can be seen through the pad.
Holy Shit.
I look around to continue to examine the room I am currently in. I rip off the wires and tubes that were attached to me and walk over to the door that I assume would exit out, but when I try to open it, it is locked.
"What the hell?" I hear voices then speaking. I quickly duck away from the small window of the door before the people that the voices belong to come any closer. Once they do, I slowly peek my head up to see who it is. It is a woman in a lab coat and an elder man who looks oddly familiar for some reason.
I cannot remember why I find him to be familiar, however, I feel an unsettling feeling in the pit of my stomach that tells me to get the hell out of here. I walk across the room to my first source of a way to escape- the vent. I ignore the pain in my side and my arm and pry the vent door open. Once it is open, I climb in and start crawling through the dark narrow tunnels of the vents.
I needed to find the other gladers, that was on the top of my priorities.
When I took a left turn, my head bumped into a hard object. It was not a wall of any sort. It was another person. We both fell back while groaning out in pain from the impact of our heads colliding.
"Ow..." The voice whimpers.
"Shit." I groan. Then the sudden realization of the fact that another person was in front of me hit me- what if the person reports me!- I quickly sit back up and grip the collar of the guy's shirt, getting ready to throw a punch that will knock him out into outer space.
"Wait! Wait! Don't hurt me, please." He begs. His voice sounds just like a kid's.
"Who are you," I demand an answer.
"I-I'm Aris. Please don't hurt me." He stutters with his eyes squinted close in fear of impact from my fist.
"Why are you in the vents?" He opens his squinted eyes and looks at me. He is just a kid. Probably my age if not younger. He looks me up and down, analyzing my New York Fashion Week-worthy outfit.
