The Maze Hiker

1: The Redhead Strikes Back

1: The Redhead strikes back.

It’s dark, and it’s loud. When she stretches out she can’t reach the ceiling –if there is one. She can’t touch opposite walls at the same time.
 She isn’t scared, even though she doesn’t know why. The only thing in this room with her is something she identified as a sports bag the second she found it.
 The fact that she doesn’t remember anything about herself doesn’t scare her like it should. When she’s tired of standing, she sits down in one of the corners of the room. She presses her back to the cold wall, and her left arm touches another wall.
 It takes ten minutes after she woke for the lift to stop moving upwards. Silence rings in her ears and she’s about to scream just so she can hear something when she hears a loud clank above her.
 A straight line of light appears across the ceiling –that, apparently, is there- and she blinks to let her eyes adjust as it expands.
 Double sliding doors open with a heavy grating sound, and suddenly the room is bathing in light.
 Voices sound as she has her eyes shut, willing them to adjust to the light.
 “It’s a girl.”
“Well done, Thomas. We couldn’t have figured that out without you.”
 “Her shirt is all ripped. What happened to her?”
“She looks to be around seventeen or something.”
  “She’s a redhead.”
The last voice sounds offensive, and suddenly they find blazing green eyes looking at them fiercely.
 They are all boys. All of them. Some are young, some are older. The oldest would probably be nineteen, and the youngest around fifteen.
 She finds the face of the person that spoke last, insulted her with her hair colour, and a tiny grin appears on her lips as she looks at his face.
 “Well, you’re a shit-faced asshole, so I guess we’re even,” she replies, hearing her own strange voice in her ears.
 The boys laugh –except the shit-faced asshole- and someone lowers a rope from up there. The end is tied in a big loop. Getting the idea, she gets up, doesn’t forget to grab the bag she found –in the light she can see it’s big and white, with a blue logo she doesn’t recognise, and she puts one foot in the loop.
 When at ground level, hands grab her and her clothing and pull her up. As soon as her feet touch the ground, the hands leave her. She ignores the one that maybe accidentally touched her boob. Before she can look up the chorus of voices quiet down, but one person speaks.
 “Nice to meet ya, shank. Welcome to the Glade.”
She nods as a sign she heard him, then looks around to see where she is. The Glade, they call it, apparently. As she looks around, familiarising herself with the place, the boys snigger and stare.
 To their credit, though, most eyes are on her face and not on her ripped tank top.
Most eyes are on her flaming red hair that dances like fire. Her bright green eyes with long lashes that are taking everything in. The freckles around her small nose. Her thin but dark coloured lips.
 While they stare at her, she stares at them. There have to be at least fifty of them, clothes sweaty and covered in muck as if they’d been hard at work. All different shapes, sizes and races, their hair of varying lengths.
 She –and the boys- are standing in a vast courtyard, several times the size of a football field. It’s surrounded by four enormous walls, made of grey stone and covered in spots with thick ivy. The walls have to be at least a few hundred feet high, and form a perfect square around the courtyard, each side split in the exact middle by an opening as tall as the walls themselves. The openings lead, for as far as she can see, to passages and long corridors.
 “Look at the Greenbean. Gonna break her pretty little redhead neck checking out the digs,”  a scratchy voice speaks and she knows it’s the same guy that insulted her hair colour. The same guy she made out for shit-faced asshole.
 “Shut your hole, Gally,” a pale guy with dark hair and greyish blue eyes says.  She nods at the boy with a smile, showing her thanks. He smiles back. He is standing fairy close to her, two boys to his side and one kind of in front of him.
 To his right is a thick heavily-muscled Asian kid with his arms folded, studying her with his eyes as she looks at the biceps that his rolled-up sleeves are showing.
 To his left is a taller kid with blond hair and a square jaw, looking her over, what makes her feel like he’s putting her under a test of some sorts.
 The guy in front of him is tall, muscular and dark-skinned. He had welcomed her.
 “So, I’m in the Glade now. Nice place for a vacation, really. When am I going back? No offence to you guys –y’all look hot and nice, except for monkey face over there,” she nods her head towards the boy named Gally, who scowls and glares at her, “ But, y’know, not knowing anything ‘bout myself is kind of freaking me out and I wanna go back to home and knowing stuff.”
 Although, it’s not freaking her out. She’s completely stable and fine, though she has a feeling that she actually shouldn’t be. But something tells her it’s ok, she’s ok.
 A few guys laugh. The one with the dark hair that told monkey face to shut up steps forward, extending his arm. “I’m Thomas. Welcome to your new home,” he says, telling her more than just his name.
 She isn’t going anywhere.
She grabs his hand and shakes it. “Hi, Thomas. Nice ‘t meet ya. I’ll tell ya my name, soon as I remember it,” she tells him, and he frowns.
 “Ya don’t remember yar bloody name?” a voice with a thick, odd accent asks.
 When she looks up it’s the tall blonde kid that stood next to Thomas.
 “No, I don’t. ‘M sure I will, though. Don’t you worry ‘bout it. I’ll probably be able to tell you first thing in the morning,” she says, but her confession sends everybody chatting and yapping away, so she takes another good look at the place.
 The floor of the courtyard looks like it’s made of huge stone blocks, cracked and filled with long grasses and weeds. An odd dilapidated wooden building near one of the corners of the square contrasts greatly with the grey stone. A few trees surround it, their roots like gnarled hands digging into the rock for food and water.
 Another corner of the Glade holds gardens –from where she’s standing she recognises corn, tomato plants and some fruit trees.
 Across the courtyard from there stand wooden pens holding sheep and pigs and cows.
A large grove of trees fills the final corner. The closest ones look crippled and close to dying. The sky above her head is cloudless and blue, and even though it’s probably only late afternoon and very bright, there is no sun to be seen.
 The creeping shadows of the walls don’t reveal time or direction. It’s only her guts that tell her it’s late afternoon –almost time for dinner. As she breathes in deeply, a mixture of smells beg for recognition. Freshly turned dirt, manure, pine, rotten things, sweet things.
The smells of a farm.

 “Everybody shut up,” the dark-skinned guy orders. It draws to her that he’s the leader of the boys.
 “Well, you’ll figure out your name or we’ll pick one for you in the morning. I’m Alby, you’d be able to call me the leader of these shanks. It’s almost time for dinner and for the Doors to close. Someone, maybe me, maybe Newt or Thomas will take you on your Tour tomorrow. It’s too late to do it today,” he tells her, and he, too, holds out his hand for her to shake.
She shakes it and smiles. “So, now I know you’re Alby, I know Thomas’ name and I know monkey face’s name, though I probably won’t use it,” at that Gally –monkey face- turns around and walks away. She doesn’t watch him long enough to see where he’s going. “I hear you mentioning a Newt. What might that be for kind of weird creature?” she asks, and Alby laughs.
 The blonde guy with the accent smiles and steps forward. “That’d be me,’ he says, and she smiles as she shakes his hand, too. He’s taller than Alby, but looks to be a year or so younger.
 “ ‘Kay, anything else I need to know before you’d hopefully explain me everything you know during the Tour?” she asks Alby.
 Newt answers. “Yeah. Yar the one who’s reacted the best out of all of us. We all panicked, didn’t say a shuck word or even cry for our mama’s. Or, like Tommy here,” he stomps Thomas in the arm, who laughs, “demanding answers before anything could be explained. Ya being so cool about this kind ‘o freaks me out,” he admits, and she only shrugs. What’s she supposed to say to that? Thank you? Don’t be freaked out?
 “Dinner’s in half an hour in that building,” Alby points to the building he means, “and after that we’ll find you a room to sleep. ‘Till then, don’t get yourself killed.”

I really hope I got the characters right. I'm not used to writing fanfiction and am having a hard time describing the characters as James Dashner did. Some of the descriptions I litteraly took from the Maze Runner, so the place is also not thought of by me and shit.