To The Shucking End

Chapter 13

They stepped through the door to find themselves in a grey corridor with walls lined with pipes as the overhead lights illuminated the passage.

Deciding to walk in the direction the lights had turned on, they found themselves in front of a door with a green light next to it signalling it was open. But the real reason they stopped was because of the green sign above the door.

The sign that read, 'Exit'.

"Seriously?" Frypan asked Winston.

"That's too easy, right?" Tanya asked Minho who just shrugged.

Thomas went first, his hand gripping the handle as he pushed it down and pushed the door open to reveal the anarchy behind it.

An alarm sounded as yellow lights flashed and they walked down another corridor that had dead bodies and broken glass littered across it. They walked past a window that peered into a room where two dead bodies were covered in bloodstained sheets on a table.

Tanya stuck close to Minho and Newt as she watched Minho move a handgun away from the fingers of a fallen man.

"What happened here?" Newt asked and no one had an answer as they walked into what appeared to be the main control room.

Broken lights were sparking, bullet holes were everywhere and more dead bodies and broken glass were on the floor.

That wasn't what caught Tanya's eye though.

"Newt," she said softly as she tapped his arm before gesturing over to some of the computer screens that were still working. Screens that were alive with images of their Glade on them.

"So they were watching us. This whole time," he said as Frypan stood next to them.

She saw a few familiar faces of the people they'd left behind and Tanya couldn't see Gally as she silently willed him to appear on the screen.

"I can't look at this anymore," she blurted eventually, as she walked away from the computers, trying to contain herself, a task she wouldn't be able to do if she saw Gally appear on those screens.

Gally broke her heart when he chose the Glade and his hatred of Thomas over her.

But she still loved him.

She'd loved him for three years and it wasn't about to go away anytime soon.

"You alright?" Newt asked with a hand on her back, and she could only huff a laugh.

"No. Not even close."

But before either one could say anything else, a new screen came to life as Thomas pushed a glowing red button at his old workstation.

"Hello," the blonde woman on the screen said. "My name is Dr Ava Paige. I'm the director of operations of the World Catastrophe Killzone Department. If you're watching this, that means you've successfully completed the Maze Trials," she revealed as they all moved closer to the screen, listening to her words in intrigue and confusion. "I wish I could be there in person to congratulate you, but circumstances seem to have prevented it. I'm sure by now you must all be very confused, angry, frightened."

That was putting it lightly.

"I can only assure you that everything that's happened to you, everything we've done to you, it was all done for a reason. You won't remember, but the sun has scorched our world."

The screen changed as truly horrific images of the world burning, buildings crumbling, and bodies lying burned on the streets appeared.

"Billions of lives lost to fire, famine. Suffering on a global scale. The fallout was unimaginable. What came after was worse. We called it the Flare," Ava explained and if the images before were bad, these were worse.