Aphonic {TMR;Newt}

[28%]

Minho had led us back into the far clutches of the Deadheads. It was much farther than the day Thomas and I traveled the day we were attacked by Ben; because no light reached here. Along the way, I even saw a few signs that said 'Runners Only' and 'Go Back, Slinthead'.

"Hey, where are we going?" Thomas asked, swatting his hands in the air as a few twigs snapped back into his face.

"You'll see." I noticed the farther we walked, the more the terrain shifted of the forest. I was amazed by the overgrown fern leaves the size of tables, and trees with trunks the size of boulders. The air congealed dewy in the atmosphere which my shirt clung tighter to my arms and shoulders.

We came upon a hut I've never seen before. It wasn't exactly hidden, it was fairly large to be seen from the few meters we hiked up. Minho lead us in, pushing open the door to the roundhouse. It was even larger from the inside. A circle occupied most of the floor room. It was being shielded by a tablecloth of some sort hiding its secrets underneath. Numbers etched on wooden planks that bordered the walls, small sketches of sections of the Maze.

Minho ripped off the sheet from the table, revealing what it hid. I froze at the project, not fully understanding it at first. It was the Maze. Every turn, every column, every complicated puzzle of passageways. Even a prototype of the Glade rested in the center, created from moss and twigs.

"It's the Maze. All of it." Thomas and I stared at him, befuddled.

"What do you mean all of it? I thought you were still mapping it?"

"There's nothing left to map." My heart dropped, only being pulled together by a string as it dangled over my stomach. "I've run every inch of it myself. Every cycle, every pattern. If there was a way out we would have found it by now."

False hope. That's what these boys have been surviving on? All these three years of being trapped here, all for it to black lies.

"Why haven't you told anyone this," Thomas asked, his eyes analyzing over the outer ring of the model.

"It was Alby's call. People needed to believe we had a chance of getting out." So Minho carried that burden on his back? Waking up early before the sun itself just to keep up this fabricated idea that they had a chance? "But maybe now, we have a real chance." He glanced between the two of us, his eyes passive. He handed over the Griever tool over to Thomas, allowing him to look at it.

"Take a look at this," Minho hunched over the prototype. "About a year ago we started exploring these outer sections. We found these numbers printed on the walls. Sections one through eight. See the way it works, every night when the Maze changes, it opens up a new section. So today, section six was open. Tomorrow, it'll be four, then eight, then three. The pattern always stays the same."

My eyes lingered on the rocks they used to paint each number and label each section. I looked back over the allotment of the creature, seeing how the digital red number '7' was lit up on a small cube screen.

"What's so special about seven?" Thomas asked.

"I don't know. But last night when you killed that Griever, section seven was open." Minho said, rounding around me to get to that portion of the section. His eyes landed down on me. "It's also the section that was open when I found you."

Minho lent over, circling the length of a snippet of a column. That was the same hall where he found me.

"It's where that word is too."

"What word?" Thomas asked, his eyes narrowing on the location as if the word itself was written right there.

"Prim found a word chipped up in the wall. 'Here'. "