Deleted Memories (The Maze Runner, Newt)

Chapter 5

Newt's arm wrapped around my waist as he helped me down the stairs. The sun was blaring down, I had to shield my eyes momentarily for them to adjust to the sudden brightness. Newt looked at me, his eyebrows slightly furrowing together, "how are you feeling?"

"Fine," I reassured him. The heat from the sun was beginning to warm my bones and it felt amazing.

"Hey! The girl is awake!" A boy passing by yelled. Newt glared at him and the boy cowered away.

I stared at Newt, eyebrows raised, "how did you just scare that guy?" Newt shrugged and grabbed my hand. I thought back to the first few days I had been here. Jeff had called Newt second-in-command. That must be it. He was powerful.

Newt led me around what was called the Glade. He told me about eight jobs that they had to keep everything working: Slicer, Cook, Track-hoe, Builder, Med-jack, Bagger, Slopper, and Bricknick. Everyone in the Glade had a job and I will also be assigned a job.

Every single person we passed by stared at me as if I was some foreign object. That's when I began to notice the lack of girls here. There weren't any other girls in this place, at least none that I had seen.

As we walked, I noticed that Newt had a heavy limp in one of his legs. I wondered how he had gotten it, but decided it was best not to ask.

"You know, you never ended up answering me when I asked you what your name is," Newt said. We had finished the tour and were sitting against a tree near the homestead.

I had to slightly crane my neck in order to look up at Newt. He had a good foot on me and man, it made me feel short. Was I short? I had no idea what I even looked like. "It's Raven. I don't remember my last name. It's weird, I barely remember anything from my past." I answered, feeling upset and pathetic that I could only remember my first name.

"Don't worry, none of us does. Whoever put us in here made a damn good job to make sure we couldn't remember anything from our past lives." Newt explained. Flashes of sadness and anger came across his face.

"Who put us here?" I whispered.

"We don't know for sure. WICKED, we assume. It's printed on all of our supplies we received and is on the beetle blades, which are small metal bugs that they watch us through," Newt said.

"They watch us? What are we part of a fucked up experiment that uses people over rats?" I questioned.

"You'd better believe it. Outside those walls, is a maze that our Runners run every single day, searching for a way out of this God-forsaken place we call the Glade."

"A maze? So exactly like rats." I was suddenly pissed at whoever put us in here. How could they do such a thing? Why would they do this? "What is a Runner?"

"A very athletic person," Newt joked, trying to avoid answering. I let out a sigh. There was no point in pressuring Newt into telling me the real definition.

~

"This must be a lot to take in. Huh, Greenie?" A boy with brown shoulder length hair and a square jaw asked.

Lunch had been called not long after Newt and my conversation about our captors. We had grabbed food and I had nervously followed Newt through the thirty boys that had gotten to lunch as soon as it was ready. He had sat down at a table with a couple of other boys already at it. And it had been one of those boys that had spoken.

"What's a greenie?" I asked, nervously poking my food with my fork. I averted from any of their gazes and stared straight down at my food. It was intimidating know I was the only girl around and just a bunch of fit guys were here.

"That's what the newbie around here is called. See someone new comes in the box every month. I was the greenie last month and you are this month. So greenie is your name. I know it can get annoying, but you better get used to it. Because for a whole month you will be called that," The boy explained. "I'm Leo by the way, and this is Clint."

I nodded at Leo and turned to look at Clint who was giving me a good grin. "You're one of the doctors, right?"

"You betcha, Jeff and I run that field of the Glade." He replied, before shoving a huge fork full of salad into his mouth.

I grinned at him, "thank you for keeping me alive."

"Do you know how long you were in the coma for?" He asked after he had swallowed his food.

I wasn't sure if I was ready to tell them that I could hear everything when I was incapacitated like I had been. What if they thought I was a spy or that I was a liability to them? "No," I lied.

"A good two weeks," Clint said, "we were beginning to lose hope that you'd ever wake."

Well, we had that in common. "I can see why," I mumbled, looking back down at my food as I pushed it around my plate. I had eaten so much at breakfast that I wasn't very hungry for lunch.

A boy named Zart that I had met on my tour of the Glade had come to our table after we were finished eating and asked for Newt's help with something quick in the fields. Newt excused himself from the table, reassuring me that he would be back shortly.

Leo quickly volunteered to keep me company and began telling me stories about when he first arrived in the box. How he had cried for a whole day and how he was surprised that I hadn't even shed a tear since I've been here. But I wasn't really listening, my eyes were fixed on one dirty blond haired boy, who was speaking to a dark-skinned boy near a bomb-shelter looking shack in the middle of the Glade. Every now and again, he would look up toward me, and I would look away, blushing. It wasn't long until Leo noticed how distracted I was and followed my gaze. "Do you have a thing for Newt?" He said, teasingly.

I glared at him and shook my head, "no, I just met the guy!"

"Are you sure, because your actions say different, you have been staring at him for the past half an hour and been blushing like crazy," Leo teased on, "greenie's got a crush."

"Okay, then tell me about him," I replied in a hiss.

"Well, Mr Newt is second in command, was one of the first people brought up to the glade. He helps Alby keep the Glade running smoothly, but helps in the fields in his spare time," Leo said, still grinning at me in a playful way.

I nodded and remembered the question that Newt had avoided earlier. Maybe Leo could give me a straight answer, "What's a runner?"

"Well, do you see those four openings in the wall. The Runners run the Maze every day." Leo explained.

I knew that. Newt had already told me. "But what do they do, besides exercise excessively?"

Newt showed up behind me, giving Leo no time to answer. I turned towards him and crossed my arms, "why didn't you tell me that being a runner is a job as well?"

"I didn't?" He was a horrible liar.

"Come on Newt, just tell her," Leo sighed.

"I think she needs to rest first. Let's head back to the homestead, I'll show you your room that Alby cleared out," Newt began leading me away from Leo. I turned to him and smiled as if to say thanks for trying. We entered the homestead headed up the stairs. Newt pushed open the first door on the left open, "this is your new room." It was empty besides a twin sized bed and a rotting nightstand. "I know it's not the greatest, but it was the best we could do," Newt rubbed his forehead with his hand.

"Thank you, Newt," I smiled.

"My room is right across the hall. You should rest," he suggested, "I'll probably be out in the fields if you need anything." With that, he left, leaving me alone in my new room.