The Tributes from the Maze (Newt/OC)

Flee

Ariadne was roused from her sleep by the sound of a repetitive beeping noise. She grumbled about it shutting up and wiped her eyes. The device that was making the infernal racket was her wristwatch. It was flashing a sequence of glowing white numbers but Ariadne was still groggy and couldn't be bothered to decipher what they were, slipping back into darkness.

"Ariadne? What is that noise?" Newt's voice filled her ears but she just wanted to go back to sleep. Then she heard him curse and her protective instincts kicked in. Her eyes shot wide open to see that her entire workshop had been trashed. Newt was standing next to her with his hands over his ears.

"What the hell happened here!" Ariadne exclaimed and took in her shaken surroundings.

"Are you telling me you didn't hear that huge explosion! The entire floor just shook." Newt yelled at her. "I've been trying to wake you up for ages!"

She cursed and stumbled out of the bed, rummaged through the cupboards and picked up two backpacks, slinging one over her shoulder and thrusting the other into Newt's hands. Then she grabbed a syringe that Newt guessed had pain relief because it looked identical to the one he had been given earlier, and she jabbed it into her back.

"Change of plans. That was the first explosion! And we're twenty-three levels up! My watch was beeping to tell us it was six-thirty. We have to get out of here and to the basement or we'll get blown up!" Ariadne explained and the response was another loud bang from right behind them, and the back wall of Ariadne's office sank through the floor into a gaping hole in the building.

The lights flickered before they died out completely. Ariadne inched forward towards the gaping hole and peered down. It was about twenty meters in depth and fifteen meters wide. She was almost entranced by the sight until Newt grabbed her hand and hauled with him out the door.

They bolted down the stairs but the building gave another tremor as the next explosion went off. Ariadne felt herself falling behind but pushed forward, knowing her back would most likely hurt like hell when the medication wore off. But it wasn't time to think about that now, she needed to run.

The staircase started to collapse with Ariadne and Newt tumbled down a few flights before gripping the lower banister rails and hauling themselves back up onto the crumbling structure. There was another explosion in the building next to them and peering out the windows they watched as it fell sideways, leading towards where they were struggling to escape. Newt dragged Ariadne down the corridor of the level and away from the stairs just as they were destroyed.

"Those stairs were too dangerous. We have to find another way down. We can't use an elevator. The secret passageways! The kitchen is in the basement, right? We just have to find another entrance to the passageway!" Newt shouted to Ariadne over the rumble of the collapsing building. Ariadne nodded fiercely, she was trying to ignore the pain in her back.

"Yeah, the passageways would keep us from running into those things, too!" Ariadne screamed and pointed to a bunch of cranks who were crawling up the buildings and in through the smashed glass. Newt grabbed her hand and pulled her back around the corner and they ran in the other direction.

"Bloody hell! Where's the nearest entrance?" Newt cursed as two cranks had started following them through the building, slowly being joined by several other cranks at each turn.

"There! The mirror! I'm too short to reach the lever, you have to open it! I'll hold off the cranks when they get close! Hurry!" Ariadne instructed and took her gun from the backpack.

She held it out at the oncoming cranks as Newt fiddled with the lock. Ariadne began shooting the nearest cranks in the head and they were falling down and tripping the other cranks. After six shots her gun was empty and she cursed and tucked it away into her waistband.

"Newt, I'm gonna need you to hurry up!" She yelled as she got out another, larger gun from her backpack. "I'm running out of lethal weapons to hit them with!"

"I'm trying but it's stuck!" Newt protested. Ariadne started shooting all of the cranks and the oncoming group collapsed. All but one determined crank, who had managed to dodge all of the bullets and lunged at her snarling and spraying her with its blood and spit. She lifted her gun and aimed but when she squeezed the trigger there was only a small clicking noise.

"Shoot! I'm all out! Hurry up, Newt!" She shouted desperately and threw her gun at the crank in a last-ditch attempt. Then she remembered the knives in her pack and grabbed at her bag for them. But as she twisted, a spike of pain shot up her spine and she stumbled, allowing the crank to get a tight grip on her leg and start to drag her away.

She screeched, her eyes wide open in terror as she heard the click of the door opening and caught sight of a pack of cranks rushing onto the scene, presumably to join their fellow monster in a feast. And she was the main course. The crank had dragged her right into the feeding frenzy and the others started grabbing at her in an attempt to tear off her limbs. She wriggled away while the cranks started fighting among each other for dibs on the best parts.

The blonde boy came up behind her, swinging a broken table leg in a wide arc and taking off several rotting heads in the process. One particularly gruesome head landed in Ariadne's lap and she shrieked, flinging it away from herself. Another rotted hand reached for Newt's arm and when the creature had gotten a good grip he went to bite down. Ariadne stuck out her leg and tripped the crank over but it fell on top of her instead, roaring in her face. Newt hauled the crank away and tossed him into the remaining cranks who went down like bowling pins. The blond dragged Ariadne up and she hurried with him to the passageway. Another group of cranks had started staggering for them from the opposite side of the corridor and they reached Ariadne and Newt just as they were climbing through the secret door.

Several decomposing arms slipped their way through the crack and grasped for the teenagers. The duo pressed their backs up against the door and shut it closed, chopping through decaying flesh. The detached arms twitched on the ground and Ariadne had to stop herself from throwing up.

"That's disgusting." She gulped and Newt drew her into a tight hug.

"Bloody hell! That was intense. I thought I'd lost you." He mumbled not her hair.

"Why did you do that! You could have died! You should have just left me there!" Ariadne shouted and pushed him away from her.

"Hey, Ari, you saved my life, I'll save yours. That's just how we Gladers work. I know I've just met you but if what you said is true we were friends before this and I don't know if I could handle losing another friend. Especially not you." He stated, clearly embarrassed. The walls and floor shook again.

"That's our queue to keep moving." She sighed and dropped the subject. "We have to hurry and get down before the final explosion. We're lucky the siege on this building will stop for about ten minutes to blow up the unimportant buildings on the sides. We'd better run."

"Can you run?" Newt asked her, frowning, the concern could be clearly seen in his eyes and heard in his voice. He had noticed how she'd fallen behind earlier. Ariadne winced as she readjusted the backpack on her shoulders and continued down the tunnel at a faster pace.

"I'm fine, Newt. I injected the pain relief so it's not as bad as it would have been. When it wears off it'll be sore, but we don't really have any other choice." She grumbled and they bean to sprint down the sloped tunnels.

"How will we know which tunnel to get out from?" Newt asked her. Ariadne shrugged and thought about it for a good few minutes.

"We have to meet in the exit to the maze at the Griever hole and there are only two ways there. The path through the building is collapsing as we speak, so we have to go into the glade itself and hope that they haven't left without us. But even if they have I've memorised the maze and you know it like the back of your hand. There won't be any Grievers so don't worry." Ariadne explained. "Come on, faster. We're on a time crunch here."