Me vs My Mind

New People

The helping hands didn't stop swarming around them until Thomas stood up straight and had the dust brushed from his shirt and pants. 

When they tried to touch Grace after she got out she punched the first guy in the face, and started yelling at them, causing them all to back up from her. 

"Don't touch me you pervs!" She yelled at them. 

Everyone snickered in amusement, except for Newt, who was the one to get punched. 

"Sorry Newt." Grace told him with a shrug. 

Still dazzled by the light, Tomas staggered a bit, but Grace reached out to steady him. They were consumed with curiosity but Tomas still felt too ill, and Grace was too worried about how unsteady Thomas looked, to look closely at his surroundings. Their new companions said nothing as they swiveled their heads around, trying to take it all in.

As they rotated in slow circles, the other kids snickered and stared; some reached out and poked Thomas with a finger, everyone else was too scared to touch Grace, afraid of also being punch by the clearly strong girl. There had to be at least fifty of them, their clothes smudged and sweaty as if they'd been hard at work, all shapes and sizes and races, their hair of varying lengths. Thomas suddenly felt dizzy, his eyes flickering between the boys and the bizarre place in which he and Grace had found themselves.

They stood in a vast courtyard several times the size of a football field, surrounded by four enormous walls made of gray stone and covered in spots with thick ivy. The walls had to be hundreds of feet high and formed a perfect square around them, each side split in the exact middle by an opening as tall as the walls themselves that, from what they could see, led to passages and long corridors beyond. 

"A maze?" Hayley guessed from the look of the corridors. 

"Yeah..." Grace said, surprised Hayley got it on the first guess without needing to hear or see anything more. 

"Look at the Greenbean's," a scratchy voice said; neither could see who it came from. "Gonna break their shucking necks checkin' out the new digs." Several boys laughed. 

"You got something to say, say it to my face!" Grace yelled out into the crowd. 

"Huh, even Grace with no memories has a short fuse with new people. Interesting." Hope said, amused, as Grace laughed and many other people nodded. 

"Shut your hole, Gally," a deeper voice responded. 

Thomas focused back in on the dozens of strangers around him and Grace. They knew they must look out of it— they felt like they'd been drugged. A tall kid with blond hair and a square jaw sniffed at them, his face devoid of expression. A short, pudgy boy fidgeted back and forth on his feet, looking up at Thomas and Grace with wide eyes. A thick, heavily muscled Asian kid folded his arms as he studied Grace and Thomas, his tight shirtsleeves rolled up to show off his biceps. A dark-skinned boy frowned—the same one who'd welcomed them. Countless others stared. Mostly at Grace, seeing as she looked to be the only girl here. 

"I was." Grace said with a frown. 

"Really? In my Maze it was mostly girls with one guy." Hope said, surprised. 

"Huh. Weird." Grace said, amused. 

"Lucky Shank whoever he is." One of the guys behind them muttered as the others grumbled some form of agreement. 

"Where are we?" Thomas asked, surprised at hearing his voice for the first time in his salvageable memory. It didn't sound quite right—higher than he would've imagined.