The wheels of the gurney clacked against the tile floor as they made their way down the long hallway to where the Box waited.
“Why are you guys so quiet?” Chuck asked. Every few seconds he had to trot for a couple of steps to keep up with everyone else.
“Because it’s the butt-crack of dawn,” Teresa replied. “Before the usual wake-up, and we haven’t had breakfast.”
“Or coffee,” Dr. Paige added, showing a rare spark of personality. “I’d kill a Griever with my bare hands for a cup of coffee.”
Thomas and Teresa exchanged looks of surprise, then amusement. The woman had just made a joke. Maybe the world was ending.
It scares me, Teresa said out of nowhere.
What scares you? he asked.
The idea of the maze. Insertion. But it also kinda excites me, too. Sometimes I envy the boys in the Glade. Yeah, they rough it pretty hard, but they have fun.
Thomas shrugged, acting like he’d never given it any thought. The truth was, lately he’d been thinking about it a lot. I don’t know, Thomas said. You know the Psychs aren’t going to let the fun and games last for very long in there.
Teresa didn’t respond at first. They walked on down the hall in silence.
The crap’ll hit the fan soon enough, she finally agreed.
Finally they reached the wide double doors that led to the chamber holding the Box. With all the sophistication surrounding WICKED and their trials and experiments and technological wonders, there wasn’t much fanfare to the Box itself. It sat in a wide, dusty room at the bottom of a shaft that led up to the Glade, connected to enormous gears on the surface by chains and pulleys. A magical lift to a brand-new world.
Thomas shuddered to think what it must be like to wake up in that dark box of metal, memories gone. It had to be terrifying.
“Here we are,” Dr. Paige said as the nurses wheeled the gurney toward the looming wall of silvery steel. “I know we’ve spent the last few weeks getting more subjects into the maze as the Psychs make adjustments to the program, but after Zart we’re going to become a little more regimented. We’ll be sending one boy a month into the Glade, same day, same time. Like clockwork. Unless something changes.”
They always keep their options open, don’t they? Thomas said to Teresa.
They sure do. Somehow she projected the image of her sticking her tongue out and crossing her eyes. Made no sense, and yet seemed the perfect response.
The nurses stopped right next to the Box, which was about ten feet high. One of them went around the corner and came back dragging a large, sturdy stepladder on wheels.
“Where’s the door to the thing?” Chuck asked, examining the seamless wall closest to them, then venturing around to the other sides. No one answered until he rounded the entire container and ended up back where he started.
“Just watch,” Teresa said, not hiding her disdain for the process.
“It’s not what you’d call glamorous,” Thomas added.
“Can’t wait!” Chuck said, a little too cheerfully. Sometimes Thomas thought the boy had a drier sense of humor than anyone knew.
“Okay,” Dr. Paige said. “Let’s get him up the stairs. Everything should be set. They’re all ready in the command room.”
The nurses grabbed Zart—one by his legs, the other lifting him by curling his arms underneath his chest—and lifted him off the gurney. Then they slowly and carefully walked up the rolling stepladder, which shifted under their weight precariously. They reached the top, and then it became an exercise in awkwardness as the nurse holding Zart around the chest hefted him to the top edge of the Box, struggling until he could flap the boy’s arms over the lip of the metal to keep him in place. He waited, made sure the boy wouldn’t fall, then leaned down to help the other nurse lift Zart by the legs.
So lame, Thomas said to Teresa. They really couldn’t come up with a better way to do this? They have implants in our brains, Flat Transes, little robot bugs with cameras on them. And this is how they—
He cut off when the nurses accidentally released Zart’s body too early and the boy toppled over and vanished from sight, crashing into the bottom of the Box with a rattling boom that echoed off the high ceiling. Chuck snickered, then looked ashamed when Dr. Paige gave him a nasty glare.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“Is he okay?” Dr. Paige asked, her voice filled with annoyance.
Both nurses were on their tiptoes, leaning over the edge as they examined Zart down below.
“Looks fine,” one of them said. “He pulled himself up into a ball—he’s sleeping like a baby.”
“Why not put a door in the side of the Box?” Chuck asked it in a voice so sweet that it was obviously meant to be the opposite. As in, How could you guys be so stupid?
“Everything we do is for a reason,” Paige answered, but she didn’t try very hard to make it sound convincing. Had it maybe even been another joke? “Come on, let’s go watch his insertion.”
“What happens now?” Chuck asked as they walked back the way they came, down the impossibly long hallway. “When will he wake up?”
Surprisingly, Dr. Paige answered, for once humoring the boy’s wild curiosity. “In about an hour,” she said. “As soon as he does we’ll start the simulated ride up and begin our observations. We should see some new—and very interesting—patterns over the next day or two.”
Her mood had changed quickly, her tone and light step exuding excitement.
“Cool,” Chuck replied.
They kept walking.
—
Thomas watched, Teresa beside him. They’d made Chuck go back to his room, not wanting him to see the pure anguish the boys felt upon first waking up in the Box. No need to push it with preparing the boy for his future.
Together, Thomas and Teresa watched, and imagined what it must be like.
—
Zart awoke in darkness, the cameras in the Box barely able to catch his movements. He said nothing at first, stumbling around the metal compartment like a drunkard. But then he became aware of everything all at once. The loss of memory, the strange place, the movement, the sounds. He panicked, pounding on the walls, screaming, “Help me! Help me!”
The hysteria went on; a cut on his fist burst open, slicking his hand with blood. Finally he collapsed to the floor, then crawled into a corner. There, he pulled his legs in close to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. At first, the tears were only a trickle, but soon the sobs came, his shoulders shaking as he cried.
The Box came to a stop and a bubble of silence filled the air, like something that might pop and explode at the slightest touch. Zart almost jumped out of his clothes when the ceiling suddenly popped and squealed, two doors grinding as they slid open. The light of ten burning suns blinded him from above. He pressed both hands against his eyes, rolling back and forth on the floor as he groaned.
He heard rustling, whispers, light laughter coming from the sky. Finally he peeked through his fingers, actually able to see. He saw a square of light, silhouettes of thirty boys wrapped around it, all of their heads bent, looking down at him. Some of them elbowed their neighbor, pointed, snickered.
A rope dropped, the loop tied at its end landing right in front of him. He stood, put his foot in the loop, held on to the rope with both hands. They pulled him up, dragged him over the edge of the Box, lifted him to his feet. Three or four boys dusted him off, hitting him harder than they needed to, but their whoops and laughs made it all seem okay. Like old friends welcoming home a lost soul.
A tall kid with brown hair stepped up to him, held out a hand. Zart took it, shook.
“My name’s George,” the greeter said. “Welcome to the Glade.”
230.03.15 | 3:15 p.m.
The day had gone much like the ones before it. Breakfast, a couple of classes, more time in the observation room. Lunch. Observation room. All the while, Teresa by his side. Chuck was allowed to join them once his afternoon classes were done.
Chuck on t
he left.
Teresa on the right.
Thomas didn’t know exactly what his role with WICKED was developing into. They seemed to let him do whatever he wanted, go wherever he wanted. He usually ate his meals in the cafeteria with the subjects who hadn’t yet been sent into the maze. He didn’t click with them like he had with Newt, Alby, and Minho, but they were mostly cool. Two guys named Jeff and Leo were especially nice, although they were obviously preoccupied with what lay in store for them—they’d heard rumors about what the maze was like and what it might become. Mostly, though, they kept to themselves.
As Thomas watched the monitors, he decided he was okay. Satisfied with the status quo until something better presented itself.
“What’s going on over there?” Teresa asked, snapping Thomas out of his thoughts. She pointed at one of the monitors on the right. Thomas threw it onto the large central display to get a better look.
A group of boys, led by Alby and Newt, were standing suspiciously around a lean-to of lumber scraps against the stone wall near the northwest corner of the Glade. WICKED had started the boys off with a small, simple structure for them to take shelter, with hopes that the subjects would add to it as supplies were sent in, take some initiative and better their living conditions. They’d already started messing around with the idea the last couple of weeks, and they’d collected all the spare wood they had and leaned it against the wall. Some boys had even slept under there the last few nights.
But now the group standing at its opening nearest the corner of the walls looked…troubled. They stood oddly, for one thing, too close together, as if they didn’t want the beetle blades to catch a view of what was inside the lean-to. Their heads twisted this way and that, scanning the area around them like criminals waiting for a getaway car. Alby and Newt whispered furiously to each other, either arguing or mutually worried about something.
“What’re they up to?” Thomas said quietly, leaning forward to see if he could make out anything in the shadows. Nothing from that angle.
Teresa beat him to the punch by pushing a communications button that linked them to the command room—where the important people worked.
“Any way we can get a beetle blade in there?” Teresa asked whoever was listening.
“Nope,” replied a man. One of the Psychs, probably. They didn’t interact with the subjects much, if ever, even with Thomas and Teresa. “We want to see this play out before we let them know we’re watching closely.”
That made Thomas even more intrigued. “Can’t we at least zoom in from where it’s at right now?”
“We’ll do our best,” the man replied curtly. “Command room out.” There was a loud click that he obviously made audible on purpose. In other words, Leave us alone. They got that way sometimes.
Movement on the display stole Thomas’s attention. Alby had leaned into the triangular shelter and was struggling with something, his body tense with exertion. Newt joined the effort, and then they were dragging something out of the darkness and into the gray light—the false sun had already been eclipsed by the huge wall on the west side and thrown that area of the Glade into shadow.
“What…,” Teresa said. “What is that?”
“It’s a person!” Chuck yelled, making Thomas jump a full inch above his seat.
But the kid was right. Alby and Newt both held on to one leg each, dragging a person to the junction of the north and west walls. When they got there, Alby knelt next to the boy and punched him in the face. Teresa yelped in shock and Thomas scooted a couple of feet backward without thinking. Alby reared back and punched the boy again, then again. Newt grabbed him by the arm and pulled him away.
“Can you tell who it is?” Teresa asked.
Chuck had walked around the control deck so that his eyes were only a few inches from the screen. “I know him,” he said. “That’s George.”
“The one who welcomed Zart into the Glade?” Thomas asked. “That was barely over twenty-four hours ago. How could everything have gone wrong since then?”
“What went wrong?” Teresa added. “I mean, what in the world’s going on? Why is Alby trying to beat the hell out of George?”
Thomas noticed one of the camera views on the left side of the main display blur into motion, the beetle blade scuttling as fast as it could through the growth of vines.
“Chuck, get back over here,” Thomas snapped. “I can’t see all the views.”
Chuck obeyed, the look on his face somewhere between fear and glee. Thomas quickly grabbed the screen he wanted and swiped it onto the main display in the center. Just as it settled there, the camera angle popped out of the vines and showed a bird’s-eye view of Alby, Newt, and George. Despite the noise the beetle blade must’ve made in its hurry, none of the boys seemed to notice.
Now Thomas could see everything in perfect detail, and could hear their every breath and movement.
George was a mess. He squirmed on the ground, his muscles clenched as if they’d been permanently locked that way, cramped and tight. His eyes bulged; his lips pressed together into a pale line; the skin of his face looked as if it had been ripped off, boiled, then stapled back on. Thomas blinked, rubbed his eyes. George appeared almost animated, a product of studio special effects. As he writhed as if going through the worst pain imaginable, he let out sharp moans through his closed mouth that sounded rabid.
“What the bloody hell is wrong with him?” Newt shouted.
Another kid stood by him now, someone Thomas didn’t know. That boy said, “I told you guys. We were out exploring the maze. He was always ahead of me. I heard all these mechanical sounds, and then Georgie screamed. I could barely get him back here.” He looked angry, seething as he spoke.
“Who’s that?” Thomas asked. He almost felt like he was there in the Glade with his old friends.
“His name’s Nick,” Chuck replied. “Picks his nose.”
Thomas tore his eyes away from the display to look at the kid. “Seriously? Now?”
“That’s all I know about him!”
“I didn’t want the others to see him,” Alby said, bringing Thomas’s attention back to the large screen. “Get everybody spooked. Fat chance of avoiding that now.”
“Well, why were you just hitting him in the face?” the boy named Nick asked, still hopping mad. “He’s my friend, you know. He needs medical help, not some hothead beating on him.”
“He was trying to freaking bite me!” Alby yelled in Nick’s face. “Back off!”
“Boys, slim it,” Newt said, stepping in between them. “Let’s figure this out. What do we do?”
They stood over George, who’d gotten worse. His head actually looked like it might explode from the swelling. He was beet-red and puffy. Veins bulged along his forehead and temples. And his eyes…they were enormous. Thomas had never seen anything like it.
“Did you see what attacked him?” Alby asked Nick, seeming to have forgotten that a few seconds ago they were on the verge of a fight.
Nick shook his head. “Saw nothing.”
“Did George say anything?” Newt asked.
Nick nodded. “Well, yeah, I think so. Not sure, but…I think he kept whispering, ‘It stung me, it stung me, it stung me….’ It was weird, man. He sounded like he was possessed or something. What’re we gonna do!”
Thomas slumped back in his chair. For some reason, those words really chilled him.
It stung me.
230.03.15 | 5:01 p.m.
“Come on,” Alby said, leaning down to grab George’s legs. “No use trying to hide this anymore. Let’s get him out to the middle of the Glade and gather everybody. See if anyone knows what to do.”
At that exact moment, Newt looked up, straight into the camera. Thomas leaned back, for a second thinking his friend had somehow spotted him.
Newt cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. “Hey! Whoever sent us here! Send us some medicine. How ’bout a bloody doctor? Better yet, why don’t you take us out of this hellhole!”
<
br /> Thomas went cold. It was crazy that Newt and the others really didn’t know who’d sent them there. Or even that something called WICKED existed. All they knew was this strange life they now lived at the center of a maze—and that there were cameras on the tips of robot insects running around the place. Only now, it looked like they were going to know all too well about the Grievers also.
It stung me. No one had mentioned anything to Thomas about being stung. It had to have something to do with one of those metal appendages that extended from the creatures’ bodies.
The boys had picked George up—it took four of them because he was thrashing so hard. And the sounds he was making. Moans so haunting Thomas wanted to cover his ears.
The group rounded the small structure they’d started calling the Homestead and headed for the center area of the Glade near the opening to the Box. Other boys—some working in the gardens, some in the farm animal area, others just milling about—noticed the situation immediately, and soon the other Gladers were gathered around George, who was half placed, half dropped on the ground by his very frustrated bearers.
Because they’d been noticed anyway, WICKED had dropped any pretense of not observing and swarmed in with the beetle blades. Various angles of the scene flashed up on the monitors in the room, and Thomas chose the best one—wishing he still had an overhead view—and put the display front and center.
“Listen up!” Nick yelled. Thomas was a little surprised that Alby hadn’t taken charge. “Georgie and I were out in the maze, running the corridors, and he got up ahead of me. Something attacked him. He keeps saying he got stung. Anybody know anything about this?”
“Minho’s seen some kind of creature out there,” Alby said. “Where’s Minho?”
“Still running,” someone answered. “Probably taking a nap in one of the Deadends.”
“It was one of those creatures he talked about, though,” Alby said. “Had to be.”
“It doesn’t really matter what it was.” Nick pointed down at George, who was curled into a tight ball, rocking back and forth on his side. “What are we going to do with him? All we have is a bunch of aspirin and bandages.”