Shadow of the Maze | Maze Runner [1]

PROLOGUE

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She began her new life completely alone, surrounded by endless stone walls, pounding voices in her head, and a resounding feeling of hollowness inside her.

Looking down at her shaking hands, she contemplated whether or not they were familiar. Whether or not she was familiar to herself. Her mind was misty, as if someone had locked up parts of her brain and hid it in a fog, never to be seen again. She tried remembering details about herself. Anything at all.

Nothing. The nothingness made her hands feel numb.

She stared straight ahead, seeing a stone wall covered in ivy. Her eyes traced up the wall until it seemingly went on forever. With no ending in sight, her vision unfocused and the world spun around her as she stared up at the ancient stone. She quickly looked back down and blinked a few times to regain stability.

"Protect the boys inside the Glade. Don't reveal yourself," a man's voice whispered in her mind. She thought she had hallucinated it at first but when the voice kept repeating like a broken record she couldn't ignore it.

A broken record. How could she remember that? Did she even remember it at all? She conjured up a vision of a record player in her mind but the picture she saw was foreign to her. As if she knew what it was but couldn't remember ever using one or any memories associated with one. In fact, she couldn't remember any memories of her life at all, although she knew for sure she must have had one before waking up here, wherever she was. Where was she?

"Protect the boys inside the Glade. Don't reveal yourself," the voice repeated, this time even louder. She stood up, swaying a bit to the side from getting up so quickly. The voice kept repeating, over and over, sounding as if the person speaking was right beside her. She spun her head from left to right, trying to see if somebody was there. No one. With her right hand on the stone wall she slowly crept forward, the voice getting louder each time it spoke.

As the wall ended on her right side, she turned the corner only to be met with more stone walls. The voice, continuing to get even louder, followed her as she made her way down various stone corridors. Left turn, then right, another right, and a left. More stone walls. It felt endless. That couldn't be possible though, right?

"Protect the boys inside the Glade! Don't reveal yourself!" the voice now yelled in her head. She could feel the voice coming from somewhere deep inside her, indiscernible besides the sharp ache in her brain. The voice kept getting louder, cutting like a knife. The pain became unbearable. She fell to the ground, holding her head in her hands. Her skull felt like it was about to burst and the voice just continued on repeat at the same skull-crushing volume. She let out a tiny whimper as the screaming continued. The voice got even louder.

"Protect the boys inside the Glade! Don't reveal yourself!"

It was all she could focus on. She placed a shaking hand on her forehead, feeling as if the voice was going to push through her own skull. As the pain became overpowering she let out a scream, tears sliding down her cheeks and onto the stone floor beneath her. She could barely hear her own howls of pain over the voice's screaming in her head. She shrieked again, louder this time and she felt her voice cracking as her head threatened to explode.

The voice stopped.

She kept holding her head for a few more moments, the silence making her ears ring. Slowly raising her head, she looked around as the pain became a dull ache in the back of her mind. The voice stopped so quickly, as if someone had flicked an off-switch in her brain. The pure silence she was greeted with felt surreal and it made her feel weightless, if only momentarily.