The First Glader

4

Ada hadn't slept properly in two nights.

By dawn, her body was stiff from overuse and under-rest, her arm throbbing beneath its fresh bandage. Every breath pulled against bruised ribs. She moved carefully through the Glade, checking the chickens, filling the goat's small water basin, stoking the morning fire with trembling fingers.

The night in the Maze had carved a new silence around her.

The world felt... wrong.
Too open.
Too bright.

Every breeze across the grass made her flinch. Every distant sound from the forest made her chest tighten. Her ears strained constantly for a scrape that wasn't there.

She kept herself moving because stopping meant remembering, and remembering meant trembling, and she couldn't afford that.

She organized the crates again, lining tools neatly along the grass. She boiled more water than she needed. She reinforced her shelter walls with additional planks, wedging them in place with rocks. Anything that looked like a barrier—anything that felt like protection—she wanted it.

But the wound slowed her.

When she lifted her arm too high, pain shot from her bicep down to her wrist. When she bent her elbow wrong, the muscles twitched in protest. She gritted her teeth, ignoring it, pushing through the ache.

The Maze didn't care about her pain.

So she learned not to either.

By early afternoon she had begun drawing again—adding details to her map, scratching out the path where she'd run, marking where the creature had nearly grabbed her. Her fingers were black with charcoal dust when the ground beneath her trembled.

Ada froze.

A faint vibration rolled through the earth. For one breath she thought it was the Maze shifting again—and her heart stuttered hard.

Then the sound reached her.

Metal groaning.
Weight rising.
A mechanical system hauling something upward from the earth.

The Box.

Ada shot to her feet so fast her vision blurred. She stumbled, caught herself, and then ran.

Her feet hammered across the field, pain stabbing her arm, breath tearing from her chest. But she didn't slow. Her legs moved on instinct—toward the single thing she had dreamed of for three weeks and begun to doubt ever arriving.

Someone was coming.
Someone human.
Someone alive.

She reached the Box just as it locked into place.

Her chest rose and fell in frantic bursts as she gripped the edge with both hands, ignoring the flare of pain in her wounded arm. The top of the Box sat still for one breath. Two.

Then she heard a groan.

Ada's breath caught.

A boy lay inside.

Older than her.
Long limbs.
Dark hair matted to his forehead.
Eyes squeezed shut as if waking from a dream he didn't want to leave.

Alive.

For a moment she could only stare, her entire body going weightless. Weeks of isolation slammed into her at once—loneliness, fear, the Maze's cold breath, the absence of voices. The sight of him hit her like sunlight after drowning.

She swallowed hard and forced her voice steady.

"Hey," she whispered, gentler than she'd spoken in weeks. "It's okay. I'm here."