Whirlwind | The Maze Runner- Newt

When Our Names Are Not Our Names

I pinch the bridge of my nose. "I've met bread smarter than you, Thomas."

Minho snorts and Thomas shoots a weak glare at us.

"Anyway, I've had these...flashes of memories... like-like a slideshow in fast forward. It was all haphazard...and I only remember some... Rest are like, fading away." Thomas looks like he is about to throw up. He was sickly pale and sweating. I saw all the boys look at him with burning curiosity and it wasn't making things easier for Thomas.

"But I-I remember this; I remember things that will make you want to kill me. Right here, right now, but y'all gotta understand- that manipulated me and brainwashed me- the earlier me.

"This- all this is just a test. The Creators are testing us and there are supposed to be winners or survivors, as they called. This is an experiment on us. I don't know why, but it is."

"You're not making much sense, Tommy." Newt sighs. Thomas looks at him nervously and wipes his hands on his pants.

"All I know that when we were kids, the Creators, they took us from our parents. I don't know why or how,- just I had this feeling that something happened to the world- something bad and we were taken. But not all the kids- just a selected few. The Creators thought that we must have above average intelligence and vigilance maybe-"

"I can literally make a list of the people who do not fall in that category." I mutter. This receives a few snickers. Alby smiles as well but asks me to shut up.

"So," Thomas silently thanks me for making the atmosphere less awkward for him, "They took us. And I don't really remember my parents or what happened to them, but we were then taken to special schools and made to do training and a lot of health check-ups and operations, letting us live a semi-normal lives until they got all the finance to build the Maze.

" And our names- they aren't actually ours. Not our birth names. Just some stupid nicknames of the scientists that the Creators have us."

This creates an uproar. I have to act shocked like the others. I know my name. Florencia. Adelaide is not my name. And all this time, I wondered why isn't my name Florencia like mommy claimed; why do I always come up with 'Adelaide' when anyone asks my name and not Florencia. And now I know why.

"Alby for Albert Einstein. Newt for Isaac Newton. Chuck for Charles Darwin and Adelaide as in Ada Lovelace. And me- as in Edison."

I meet Newt's gaze. His face floods with sheer disappointment and frustration. His chocolate brown eyes, with its usual bright golden specks, now lost, fills up with tears. I can see him struggling not to let them fall. I know what he's thinking.

He can't let anyone show that he is about to break.

I know how he feels.

Like his whole life is a lie.

When you come up to this wretched place, with nothing in your memory and are forced to live in a place where deaths are common and are forced to grow up faster than any normal child; the only thing that provides you solace, is that you remember your name.

Your name is the only thing that you hold onto desperately, knowing that it is the only thing that you have of your past. Without your name, you are nothing.

And now, after everything, you learn that the single piece of your life that you own; that you are proud to remember; is all a lie. That your name isn't yours. That it is not the name that your parents called you by.

Your whole existence seems to be just a lie.

My heart breaks seeing the broken boy in front of me. I want to do nothing but get him out of here to a secluded place and hold him in my arms, forever.