A MAZE RUNNER TRILOGY
"And one day someone walks into your life,
a total stranger, and they become so important
to you. And while you're only known them such a short time,
you feel you're loved them for a lifetime."
#1 Ranking for #TheMazeRunner
#1...
MADYLIN SAT AT THE CENTER of the concrete room, hunched over a folding table that wobbled under the weight of her elbows. The surface was completely covered in a chaotic spread of blueprints, hand-drawn schematics, and stolen transit maps of the Last City. A single lit lantern hung above her head, casting a harsh, yellow circle of light that left the corners of the room submerged in shadow. She dragged a dirt-stained finger across a red line indicating a subterranean maintenance route, her eyes straining against the dimness to read the tiny, faded text beside it.
The quiet of the hideout grated against her nerves. It wasn't a peaceful quiet; it was a heavy, stagnant stillness that felt like waiting for a bomb to detonate. She couldn't handle the stillness. Stillness meant she was doing nothing, and doing nothing meant Minho was sitting in a sterile white laboratory, strapped to a metal table, enduring whatever fresh horror Ava Paige had devised for him.
She pushed back from the table. The metal legs of her chair scraped violently against the concrete floor. Madylin began to pace. Four steps from the table to the far wall. A sharp turn on the heel of her boot. Four steps back to the door. Her hands shoved deep into the pockets of her jacket, her fingers curled into rigid fists. Her knuckles ached with tension, but she refused to relax her grip. She needed the sting of her nails biting into her palms to stay anchored to the present. If she relaxed, her mind would drift.
She stopped at the single, broken window. The shards of glass were caked with years of grime, dirt, and mold. Madylin stared through the broken bits.
In the distance, the Last City dominated the horizon. She thought of how perfect it looked. Untouched by the Flare, untouched by the Scorch, untouched by the suffering that rotted the rest of the world. The contrast made a bitter taste rise in the back of her throat. After almost a week of being in the slums outside the wall, she'd been reminded of how humanity was a diseased afterthought to WICKED, fighting over scraps and sleeping in trash. Up there, WICKED sat behind glass desks, sacrificing teenagers to maintain their clean air. She would always be reminded of how good WICKED had it.
Her reflection ghosted over the glass. Madylin stared at the dark circles under her own eyes, a hollow cut of her cheekbones, and the dirt smeared across her forehead. She looked like a ghost; a remnant of a girl who had once thought a maze was the worst thing the world had to offer.
