Without A Choice // The Maze Runner [Book 1]

TWENTY - FLASHBACK

"Yes!" I cheered as I reached the top of the hill. I pumped my fists in the air as the tops of the tall skyscrapers reached my view. I made it. I found the Last City. I saw the town surrounding the high walls of the city and I already heard the chatter of the people walking the streets. 

It was going to be hard, but I would not give up until I got in. With a bit of luck, I wasn't infected by the virus yet and they'd let me in.

I pulled the straps of my backpack tighter around my shoulders and stepped toward the city. 

I looked around in awe as I strolled through the narrow alleyways of the town around the city. People were hushedly talking to each other as if they were afraid someone else would hear.

I reached the entrance, ignoring the calls of others that it was dangerous and stupid. A guard looked at me without expression. "Name," he barked.

"Leah," I said softly, yet confidently.

"Not on the list." He moved to turn away.  

"How do I get on it?" I asked quickly, stopping him from moving.

"You'd have to be non-infected and undergo a long procedure of several tests, exams and a whole lot of injections." 

"Okay, do it." I folded my arms over one another and challenged him to say anything else. 

"Honey, why don't you go back to your mommy and play outside with the other kids?" He leaned over to meet my eyes. 

"My mother is dead. I want revenge on the virus that killed her," I said, narrowing my eyes at him and cocking my head to the side. 

He sighed deeply before grabbing his walkie-talkie. "This is E-4, I have a twelve-year-old girl who thinks she can get in and she's not backing down, over," he said.

"Test her and we'll see what comes out of it, over," the person on the other side responded and I smirked slightly. 

The guard sighed and grabbed my arm, dragging me to a test station near the entrance. A small, young woman was sitting on a stool, cleaning a few metal instruments laying on a table. 

"Test her," the guard told the woman and sat me down on the stool. Without a word, the woman rolled up my sleeve and cleaned my arm with an alcohol wipe. Then she grabbed a syringe looking tube and stabbed it in my arm. I let out a hiss is the process. 

"By the way, I'm fourteen, not twelve," I wittingly told the guard who was standing with his back facing me. 

The woman waited several seconds until the syringe beeped. She removed the needle from my arm and looked at the tiny screen. "That's impossible," she mumbled.

"What?" I asked, trying to look at the screen, but she put it away before I had the chance. 

She grabbed her own walkie-talkie. "This is D-27, we have a code blue," she said. The guard's eyebrows rose and he ripped me from the stool. 

Outside, a van came speeding toward the station and I was thrown in the back without another word. 

***

"She is still very young so I need you to be careful, she is worth more than you and me together," a woman's voice spoke outside the van. I had been sitting in the back of the cramped van and I couldn't see anything. 

The doors swung open and my eyes scrunched at the bright light. A new guard grabbed my arm and pulled me with him. I saw I was standing in front of a large tower with the letters WCKD plastered on the side. 

I was brought inside where a man was waiting for me. "A new immune?" he asked the guard next to me. 

"Yes, sir. She showed up at the entrance earlier today and when we tested her, she turned out to be immune," he responded. The man nodded and examined me. 

"Very well, you can leave her be." The guard nodded and let me go. I rubbed my arm as his iron grip disappeared. "Come with me." The man turned around and walked away. I looked around in awe. I saw technology I had never seen before and almost anyone was dressed in long, white coats. 

A woman was seated behind the counter and she was ticking away on a keyboard in front of a computer screen. She greeted the man who took me with him to the elevator behind it. 

I followed closely behind the man and took the elevator to the 31st floor, where I was put in a room and told to sit at the table. The man entered shortly after me and sat down opposite of me. He was holding a file and a pen.

"What's your name?" 

"Leah." He scribbled my name at the top of one of the papers inside the file.

"Nice to meet you, Leah. My name is Janson, I'm assistant-director of WCKD," he smiled kindly. His grey eyes drilled into my soul.

"You've got guts showing up at our doorstep. Did you know you were immune?" he asked, folding his hands in front of him. 

"Immune to what?

"The Flare." 

"How can I be immune? My mother died of the Flare." I frowned. He also wrote that down.

"We don't know. Less than one per cent of the world's population is immune and turns out you're one of them." 

"The guard told me you wanted to avenge your mother by going after the disease that killed her," he spoke up several seconds later. I only nodded. "Are you interested in a job that may lead to finding a cure for this sickness?" 

"Absolutely," I said firmly. 

"Very well, I will show you your new place." He got up, shook my hand before showing me the way to my room. It consisted of a bed, a nightstand, a desk with a chair and a small table with two chairs. 

A closet was built inside of the wall and I unpacked my few belongings. I placed the framed photo of me and my mom when I was just six years old on the nightstand and smiled sadly as my mother's eyes glistened with happiness. 

I did it, Mom, I made it to WCKD. I'm going to avenge you.