The Inventor

Chapter Thirteen; "Not to you again"

The night was a long endless loop of grievers pounding on the wall outside, leaving for a few hours and coming again. But eventually both of you dozed off, you on your stomach with your head on his outstretched arm and his head laying on the small of your back. Tangle of limbs and hot bodies in the small space but you found some comfort in it knowing it was him right there.

Minho was the one that woke up first, he was the only one used to waking up on a schedule but he didn't move, just turned his head and waited for you to wake up. He didn't want to risk waking you up by moving his arm.

And maybe a little bit because it made him smile the way you slept.

What did wake you up however was the grinding sound of the wall retracting, disappearing the instant you startled awake and looked at it.

"What the heck," You mumbled, rubbing your eyes.

"Good morning," Minho said, "Looks like it's time for us to go."

You ran your hand through your hair to smooth it out the best you could before tying it back up in a ponytail, "Looks like it is."

You both exited the hiding place, wiping your sweaty faces off and took a breath of fresh air. As if this place couldn't get any odder when you looked down the corridor you would have to take you saw the little white rocks strewn every few feet.

"Did you put those there?" Minho asked.

You shook your head.

"Yeah that's what I thought," He looked up at the sky with his hands on his hips, "This place is wack man."

"Every aspect of this maze is controlled by people," You concluded, "Someone created this place and right now they don't want us dead, they want us to go back to the glade."

"Oh, yeah I totally thought that too," He said.

"Sure," You smiled, "Let's follow the trail home then and hope they still want us good and alive until we get there."

You both still held your bags, loosely now since you didn't want to run straight into another trap of moving walls but the whole maze was quiet again, only the distant sound of grievers to accompany you two. This made you think that they didn't want you two dead, not yet, they just wanted to show you exactly what the Maze could do so you could scurry home and tell the others. One big experiment and maybe that's all this place is, an experiment.

But after hours and hours of walking, passing ideas back and forth about ideas moving forward and marveling over the design of the Maze in general you were back to the firmilir long stretch that leads to the glade. Still, both of you stood around the corner, hesitating.

"So, uh, plan?" Minho asked, "What's the genius got this time?"

You ran your tongue across your lips and subconsciously picked at a scrape on your hand, "Just walk in and take it from there?"

He looked at you, somewhat with adoration and lightly hit your hand so you couldn't pick at them. Instead, without saying anything he took one, "Sounds fine to me."

Again your face heated up and you flexed your fingers around his, deciding you definitely liked it and you would not be letting go until you were too close to the glade. Both of you seemed to agree that you didn't want people to see.

Not that it meant anything, at all.

But it did.

Present Day
For being an ex-runner you should have liked the feeling of running again, you didn't, you missed the nicely lit, quiet little workshop where nobody annoyed you.