From The WICKED Start | A Maze Runner Story (English Version)

3. A new friend

The next day, even before breakfast, I learned from a staff member that I was no longer allowed to continue my service with the children. Gally and I had just come into the dining room when he came up to me.
"What's so special about this Newt that he wants you to quit your job for him?" Gally asked me with a wrinkled forehead as we sat down to eat with Minho and Gally's mates.
I shrugged my shoulders, fully catapulted back into the present situation after having repressed it a bit. Then my counterpart caught my eye and I swallowed my bread.
"Heath! Oh God, what do you look like?!" I pushed out between two coughing fits.
Minho patted me on the back with his fist. Heath had a black eye, a blue chin and a big bandage around his nose in the middle of his face. I was horrified and looked reproachfully at Gally. He just shrugged his shoulders and laughed. Heath laughed too and winked at me.
"It would be boring without Gally, wouldn't it, Anna?"
I swallowed. It wouldn't just be boring. But I pushed that thought out of my head and finished my breakfast quickly instead. I had to talk to Thomas. And that's when I finally saw him, at a table a little away, with Teresa - and Newt. I winked a few times to make sure my eyes weren't wrong, but it was like that. Newt was sitting there with them, eating and looking pretty confused.
Abruptly I got up, took my tray and took it away. Gally came after me, but went out with a "Don't let that nutcase talk you to death" with the other boys after he saw me making my way to Thomas. He didn't like him, it was no secret, but I was more than happy to do so at that moment. He was not allowed to hear what I had to talk about with Thomas.
When I got to the three of them, Teresa looked up, took her tray, almost knocked over her chair and left without saying a word with her breakfast, which had hardly been touched. I raised one eyebrow and looked at her. I didn't understand what she had until today. I had never done anything to her, but since the day she was brought here and immediately transported to the surveillance labs with Thomas thanks to her superior intelligence, she had not spoken a sane word to any of us test subjects.
Thomas gave me an apologetic look and then smiled broadly at me.
"Anna! It's good to see you! How are you?"
"Hey Tommy, hey Newt."
I gave the other one a big smile and sat down in Teresa's seat, who had already left the hall.
"I thought I'd pick up Newt, then show him everything there is to see," I explained and saw Newt smiling gratefully at me. "But first I have to talk to you, Tommy. I... I need your help. Urgently."
"What is it?" Thomas asked and looked at me seriously. "Is it about Gally? Do you know that...?"
I interrupted him. "Yes, I know. Janson told me. Please, Tommy, you've got to help me. I just can't tell him, but I must be able to say goodbye to him. Otherwise, I'll never forgive myself..."
Thomas nodded knowingly. "Yes, I understand. We'll work it out. Gally will be fetched tomorrow evening. He will then spend the night alone and be taken to the memory chamber the next morning. That night we will go in. Then you can say goodbye."
I jumped up and hugged Thomas stormy over the table. "Thank you! I'm deeply in your debt, Tommy!"
Thomas waved goodbye. "Now get out of here before anyone else gets suspicious."
I got up and waited for Newt to move his tray.
"Tomorrow night, 2:00, outside your room. I'll be on time," whispered Thomas. I nodded and then left the room with Newt.

"And finally, let's go to the rooms. That should be enough for today, tomorrow we'll continue. I'll show you where you'll be sleeping soon. We'll share a room."
Newt had been following me on his foot all day, listening to me and nodding again and again. In between he asked a question and listened to the answer with interest.
He is very nice.
Yes, he was. I really liked him.
In the meantime I had even forgotten that he would replace Gally's place in our room as early as tomorrow evening. But now, as we walked down the long white corridor to the rooms, everything came back to me. I stopped at the door with the number 104 and opened it with my card. Then I entered and held the door open for Newt. He looked around, I showed him the small bathroom and then Gally's bed. His bed.
"It's not big, but it'll do. Anyway, it's better than your room down there," I said and Newt nodded.
"He lives here, right?"
I looked at him uncomprehendingly.
"Gally. That's his name, isn't it? Thomas gave his name. Is he your boyfriend?" Newt looked at me curiously with his dark brown eyes.
Teddy-eyes, it went right through my head.
"What's happening to him? Why does his place become free? What happens to the boys when they disappear? I couldn't follow you at dinner. But Thomas and Teresa were also talking about such strange things. What's going on here, Anna?"
I swallowed. How much should I tell him on his first real day here? Could I dare tell him the truth?
"Gally is my best friend as long as I've been here. And that's pretty much forever, because I can't remember the time before WICKED. I came here when I was 4. Just like Gally, Thomas and most of the others here. He's like my brother, we've shared this room since we were 10 and spent every spare minute together. I don't know how much I should tell you, Newt. I don't know if you even wanna hear it yet."
He was not saying anything. He just sat on Gally's bed and looked at me curiously. And then I knew I could tell him - everything.
"Gally will be picked up tomorrow evening and taken to the memorial chamber the next day. There his entire memory will be erased. Then they will take him to the maze, at least that's what they call it. Everyone of us will be, at some point, except those lucky enough to be particularly intelligent, like Thomas and Teresa. WICKED keeps these to use them for other work.
They want to fight the flare, they want to find a cure and for that they need us. Because we are immune. At least most of us are. They put us in one of these mazes and watch us live or die. Just to save the world, or what's left of it."
I took a deep breath after I finished and watched Newt's reaction closely. He looked at me with a clear look, not at all scared or intimidated.
"They're taking him away from here? Just tear you apart?"
I nodded, amazed that he didn't seem to think about himself at all and how all this could work out for him.
"What kind of sick people are these? I'm so sorry, Anna. I feel so sorry for Gally, I feel sorry for all the others, I feel sorry for you. So I come here and am supposed to replace him in this room just like that. I know how hard this must be for you. But please believe that I'm here for you if you need someone. We'll obviously be spending more time together now."
I stared at him in indignation at this reaction.
Who are you, Newt?
That was all I thought as I stared into his clear, dark eyes.
"Hey, it's okay. You're not alone."
He had gotten up and sat down next to me. I hadn't even noticed how tears were running down my cheeks. Gently he put one hand on my shoulder and rubbed it.
And like last night I sat here again, sobbing, but this time not in Gally's embrace, but in the arms of this stranger who had only come into my life a few hours ago and who inexplicably made me feel as secure as I had not felt in all the time I had been here.

A night and a day had passed. I had tried as hard as I could to spend time with Gally without him suspecting anything, but still I was sure that he knew something was wrong. I had spent the day showing Newt around again, and I had to admit that I became more and more sympathetic to him. He had a very special, lovely manner that I was not used to.
On Wednesday evening, at dinner, the time had come. Gally was taken from the dining room by Janson and two of his men. He wasn't allowed to say goodbye and he wasn't even allowed to talk to us, as I had expected.
I noticed someone looking at me. As I let my gaze wander through the dining room, where all hell was breaking loose because Gally had been taken away from the food just like that, I recognised who it was.
Contrary to what I had expected, it wasn't Thomas, no, it was Newt. He stood, just like me, together with Thomas in the middle of the confused and shouting youngsters and just looked at me. Silently he stretched out a hand in my direction as if he wanted to reach out to me. I squeezed myself between Minho and Ben and walked towards him. The screams around me became quieter for my ears and when I arrived at his place and he took me in his arms, I forgot them.
I closed my eyes and held on to him.
"Thank you," I whispered.
I was sure he could not hear me because of the noise in the room around us. Gally had been popular with most and now all hell was breaking loose.
Contrary to expectations, I heard him whisper "I'm here for you" into my ear.
There was a loud roar that came from no teenager. Soldiers were there and fixed troublemakers. In the chaos I heard Thomas saying something like "Take her away. You know what to do" to Newt. And with these words Newt led me out of the dining room, towards the lifts.
We reached our room at a run, me with my eyes clouded with tears and half running, half supported by Newt. He took my card and opened the door. The sight that I saw made me finally collapse, and Newt could only catch me and bring me to my bed.
Gally's side of the room was completely swept clean. Everything he owned had disappeared, all that remained was a freshly made bed with a bag of things for Newt on it. It was as if Gally had never lived here, as if he had never existed.
We sat there in silence for a while until I calmed down a bit and could talk again.
"That... That's unbelievable. For them we are just objects, things they need for their purposes. They simply wiped him out, as if he had never lived here, as if he had never existed as he was. And tomorrow... tomorrow it will almost be the same. Then he will have forgotten who he was, will perhaps not even remember his name, will have forgotten me completely. He won't know he had a best friend. He won't even recognise me when he sees me. I will be a stranger to him." Those words made me sob again.
Newt held me firmly in his arms and I felt that feeling of security again, which was completely new to me. A feeling I didn't even know I could feel in this damned shitty world. I did not understand this feeling, but it felt good.
He felt good.

"Hey, Anna, you gotta wake up!"
A voice tore me away from my dream in which I was lying warm and safe in the arms of this boy with the beautiful brown eyes. But it was only a dream, now I had to face reality again.
Slowly I opened my eyes and... looked into exactly those brown eyes of which I had just dreamed. And I was still in his arms. A feeling like a thousand fluttering butterflies pervaded me. What was wrong with me?
But then reality caught up with me again.
Gally.
I straightened up and Newt let me go.
"It's time, Thomas is waiting." He ran his hand through his fuzzy hair. "I... I wish you much strength," he said as I was almost at the door.
But then I stopped and turned to him.
"Please come with me," I whispered.
Much too softly, but he had understood anyway. He got up from my bed and came towards me. Gently he took my hand in his and nodded at me encouragingly.
"I am with you."
And with that I opened the door quietly.