MAZES | cake ✓ | warning:shitty!

f i v e

this chapter is very incredibly random but enjoy
but sweaterpaw luke in the above pic... pay for my funeral you fucker @ luke hemmings

also this chapter is not edited so sorry for any weird typos
~gia :)

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Calum knew this darkness.

It was the same darkness he experienced in The Box. The rumbling, loud crashing of the metal 'cage' rumbling up through the ground into the blaring sunlight. Before that, he felt like death itself was upon him. He felt so hollow, so sick, so alone. He knew what it felt like to be truly helpless but... Never, had he ever experienced anything like this.

Calum hardly recollected what happened. He and Luke had been walking through the swamp-like lands of The Glade, the treetops low and the branches occasionally dipping down to eye level to where they'd need to duck. But after that, he totally blacked out. And there was such a huge pain in the side of his neck, it felt like a thousand bee stings.

It felt like watching the love of your life walk out on you. It was like that shatter of your heart you felt as soon as they disappeared, first cracking slowly and then all at once, crumbling down and down to a hollow nothingness. It was a pain like that - But somehow it was more. It just was so numb that he felt nothing, but then again, there was something.

Calum was on a swaying hammock in The Infirmary, babbling, slurred voices meeting his ears. He couldn't move, couldn't speak or do anything in general - Except breathe, except listen. He was alive, he wanted to shout. At least he thought he was.

"He has a pulse, he's still with us," He heard a blurred voice that sounded like Tally's from around him. A voice he never heard before replied.

"It's been many years since the Goldenhood has struck," The unfamiliar voice murmured. "I wonder why now it chooses to do so."

A voice Calum longed to hear suddenly cut in, oozing with worry and... Was that sadness in his tone? Dread? Confusion?

It was Luke who spoke. "I knew things would be different as soon as he came," Luke mumbled. "He's special. In ways even I can't fathom. Tally, inject that painkiller again. I don't want him to be in pain when he wakes up."

"If," Tally added sorrowfully. There was a clank of metals and Calum knew what was coming.

But I am alive! Goddammit, wake up! His mind screamed at him but he didn't move a muscle. His chest rose and fell shakily and there was a pinch in his bare shoulder and everything was silent again as the painkilling drug kicked in.

----

Calum had lost track of how many days he was unconscious. It had to have been weeks and after the first week or so, the med-jacks had said 'only he can wake himself up now.' And god, how Calum was trying.
The only thing that motivated him to wake up, though, was Luke. Luke Hemmings. The Glade leader, the big head-honcho.

Calum would've let his life slip away if that boy didn't exist. The Glade clearly was a living hell even if he'd only been there about a month so far, including his unconscious days.

And every day he wasn't awake, Luke came in, alone most of the time, and talked to him. As if he'd reply. As if he actually cared.