Into the Maze (English Version)

16

Teresa eventually fell asleep, but J just couldn't. It hadn't even been twenty-four hours since she'd been in the glade. So much has happened since then, so many have died. What had happened to the gladers that had stayed in the glade?

J moaned, she just couldn't silence her thoughts, couldn't find peace. And the nightly silence around her didn't help at all. It was maddening. Were the others feeling the same way? Not Teresa and Thomas, they hadn't been part of the gladers long enough. But her brother, Minho, Pan,...

J kicked off her blanket and swung her legs out of bed. She looked at Teresa >who continued to sleep peacefully< again, then opened the door of their room. When she closed it again from the outside and took a few steps through the dark room behind it, she nearly had a heart attack. There was someone standing there, in the room where they had just eaten dinner, a dark figure.

"Who's there?", J tried to sound normal, not letting her fear show. But when she heard Minho laughing, she knew she hadn't really succeeded.

"It's me. What are you doing here?", Minho asks, as if they had met by accident. But she suspected that he felt no different than her. It was quite funny sometimes, as if they were holding a mirror up to each other and they didn't always like what they saw.

"What do you think, the same as you," J was sure he heard her smile.

"And that would be?", Minho played dumb. She laughed. Of course, he didn't admit that the whole thing was bothering him. But she didn't want to talk about it either. Not about the glade, the dead, Gally and Chuck. She just wanted some peace from her own thoughts.

"Silly idiot," she murmured into the darkness anyway. Now he was laughing, suddenly very close. She was so used to him, that she could even recognize him in the darkness somewhat. Actually she knew exactly what he looked like. After all, she had seen Minho every day, basically since she could remember.

In the dark she suddenly felt his hands reaching for her. Instinctively she reached for him too and laced her fingers with his. But immediately afterwards she was surprised about it. She had never done that before. Maybe hold them, but not in that way. But why not? It felt quite nice. His hands were strong but not rough, it was soothing to hold them like that. After a few seconds, she felt his thumbs stroking her skin. Did he like holding her hands like that too? She knew, that she was Minhos best friend. But this was not how best friends would hold hands.

Suddenly she jumped. And it wasn't just because of the strange thoughts she had about Minho's hands and the strangely warm feeling that arose within her when she held them. There was something else, a third hand touching her back.

Startled, she ripped her hands out of Minho's and spun around. "Tell me, have you suddenly grown a third arm? Or is there someone else?"

"What?", Minho didn't seem to understand, he sounded irritated and somehow... offended. Did he not believe her?

"Minho, there's someone!" J said again, emphatically. She heard the boy groan a little annoyed. "Sure..."

But then he reached forward into the darkness, about level with J's shoulder, and he, too, recoiled. "Holy Klunk! It's not human, it feels dead."

"Dead?" J repeated a little louder now, because she was really starting to get a bad feeling. When Minho didn't answer anymore, she grabbed his arm and shook it. "Where is a light switch?"

"How am I supposed to know?" A frustrated sound left J's throat. Then she let go of Minho and walked to the next wall. She felt along it until she found a bump. She had no luck with the first buttons and switches. Only on the fourth attempt, the light turned on. But that wasn't much better. Minho also screamed and pushed the corpse's leg away, because he had been right, what she had touched was dead. And it hung from the ceiling. More precisely, there were several corpses hanging from the ceiling. The corpses of the people, that had saved them from the W.I.C.K.E.D. laboratory.