Run With Me ➵ Newt [2]

PROLOGUE

Welcome to Book 2, Run With Me.

• • •

▬The Berg started to descend.

My eyes flitted open groggily and I woke up from my sleep. I blinked around me in a daze: for a moment, I panicked, wondering where I was.

And then it hit me.

I wasn't in the Glade anymore. I had escaped the Maze. And most of my friends were dead.

I rubbed my face, trying to ignore the sudden pain that struck me. My friends' deaths had burned a hole through my heart and I didn't know if it could ever be filled again. Their absence was like... it was as if I had lost a limb. Maybe a vital organ. Their absence took away an important part of me.

I glanced around me in the flying machine, my weary eyes flitting from face to face; I counted around ten or twenty of us had survived the Maze. Though it seemed a great number on its own, it was around half the number of Gladers there were before the Grievers attacked our Glade. Half.

"What's happenin'?" Newt had to shout over the roar of the engines.

"We've arrived!" One of the men who rescued us from the maze yelled back.

"Arrived where?"

The man didn't respond. He stared out the window, gun in hand. I looked out along with him and realized that it was nighttime. The sky was a murky inky black, so dark that I could barely make out the sandy dunes of the desert. As the Berg continued descending, a huge building loomed out of the gloom, its lights piercing through the night sky. There were dots surrounding the building on ground, and as we got closer, I realized the dots were humans. They seemed to be patrolling the perimeter of the compound.

The engine noises rose up a crescendo as we descended onto a landing pad. After several minutes or so, the Berg engines finally died down, the propeller slowly spinning to a stop.

"Come on!" The man said, opening the door. "Before they get us!"

"Before what gets us?" Thomas asked, but once again, the man provided us no answers.

"Hey, shuck-face! We're not leaving till you give us answers!" Minho shouted.

The man merely rolled his eyes. "Trust me," he said, "you'd want to leave this ship right now. See that building over there? That's the safe haven, right there. So if you wanna live to see another day I suggest you kids follow me."

"Quit talking and get on with it!" One of the other soldiers yelled.

"Come on!" The man said again, and he jumped off.

I exchanged skeptical glances with my friends. They all seemed hesitant, though I knew we had no other option.

Minho was the first to act - he hopped off, sending up a plume of dust into the air, and ran behind the man, who was heading directly towards the building. One by one, we jumped off - and then I was next.