IT STARTED WITH A MAZE - Newt x Reader (F)

- ARIS -

Our room isn't a room so much as a long, sterile box with bunks bolted to the floor. Metal ladders, thin mattresses, scratchy gray blankets. The lights overhead hum with a sterile buzz, casting everything in pale blue until nighttime comes. it's at that moment, without warning, they shut off.

We're plunged into darkness.

Minho, Newt, Thomas, Frypan, Winston, Jack, Mikey, and I all ended up assigned here. Together. A thread of relief still winds through me when I realize they didn't split us up. We're all from the same Maze. The system, apparently, recognizes that bond.

But Teresa doesn't join us.

We wait for her. There's this quiet hope she'll appear before lights-out, maybe straggling in with some excuse or apology. But the hope fades with each passing hour.

She doesn't come.

No one speaks when the lights go out. I think we're all just... tired. Or maybe scared to acknowledge the silence she left behind. I'm on the bottom bunk beneath Newt. Thomas is a few feet away on the lower bed across from mine. Minho's above him. The rest of the boys are scattered throughout the room. Breathing slows. Eventually, the room settles into sleep.

So do I.

At first.

Then I hear a tap.

It's soft. Almost nothing. But it pulls me from whatever shallow dream I was in. My eyes blink open in the dark. Another tap. This time, against the edge of my mattress.

I shift, turning. "Thomas?" I whisper. He's crouched beside my bed, barely visible. He presses a finger to his lips, urging quiet, then jerks his head toward his bed. Gesturing for me to follow. I blink blearily, but swing my legs off the side of the cot anyway. "Thomas, what are you doing?" I whisper again. He doesn't answer - just moves to the center of the room and drops to his knees. I hesitate. "Should we wake Newt?"

But then a voice comes from under the bed.

"Don't bring anyone else."

I freeze.

It's not Thomas.

I step back instinctively, heart jumping into my throat. "What-?"

"It's alright," Thomas says quickly. He leans closer to the floor and starts crawling. "Just follow me."

I drop onto my hands and knees reluctantly, following his lead. We crawl under Thomas's bed, toward the voice. And then I see him.

The boy from the cafeteria. The one in the striped hoodie. Only now, he looks sharper in the dim light, eyes wide and clear. Piercing green eyes that nearly glow in the dark. The hood's down, and without it, he looks younger than I expected. But alert. Focused.

"This is insane," I mutter.

Thomas glances back, sheepish. "I was scared to follow him alone."

But the boy doesn't waste time. "C'mon," he says. "We're gonna miss it."

Miss what, exactly?

No one clarifies.

Instead, he moves, and Thomas and I follow. The kid lifts a metal grate tucked behind the wall paneling, revealing a tight shaft of dark metal beyond. The vent system.

My past actions hit me hard. The same sound of knees scraping against aluminum. The same claustrophobic tunnel. The same sense of something forbidden - dangerous - but impossible not to chase.

I don't know why I follow. Maybe it's the way the boy doesn't hesitate. Maybe it's the flicker of something determined in Thomas's eyes. Maybe it's just that old instinct - go or be left behind.