The Girl

Chapter Sixty Seven

  We gather in the meeting room for what feels like the first time in forever. I take my seat between Newt and Minho, and Alby goes to the center to begin.

"Shut your holes. I know you all want to hear what Beth has to say, but you won't be able to if you don't," He shouts. "Beth, come on," He gestures for me to go to the center of the room, and I do. "Go ahead."

I take a deep breath and begin. "I got trapped in a room down underneath the maze. I don't actually know how long I was down there-"

"Four days," Newt and Minho say simultaneously. I can't help but smile.

"Four days, thank you Newt and Minho. Anyways, it was kind of brutal, but-"

"Yeah, for a girl, like you," Gally remarks.

"Are you bloody serious?" Newt says, angrily.

"It's okay," I turn around and look at him. "He's just being an asshole. But in the four days I was down there, I was unconscious for about two of them. The maze pretty much collapsed on me twice. When I first got stuck, obviously, and then I was trying to clear a path to get out but rocks ended up toppling over me and I was knocked out cold. Again. However, while I was not unconscious, I actually found something. Newt, can you toss me my backpack?" I ask and he does.

I swiftly pull the zipper open and carefully unfold the parchment. "Minho, you might want to take a look at this."

The keeper gets up and stumbles over to me, before taking the paper with his shaking hands to see what I found. "Shuck..." He whispers as he stares at the drawing of the map. I nod.

"And there was a metal carving of it down there too, but I wasn't able to bring it back with me," I look down, disappointed. Minho notices and puts his arm around my shoulder.

"This is more than enough. I can't believe you scouted this out while you were down there instead of freaking out."

"Oh trust me, I did my share of freaking out, I-"

"Then why should we believe you?" I hear Gally's arrogant voice from across the room.

"Excuse me?" I cross my arms. He rolls his eyes.

"Well if the princess-" Minho cuts him off.

"Don't call her that," He glares at Gally.

"Well if she freaked out, how do we even know she found the metal carving? She was probably hallucinating. How do we even know what she's telling us is true?"

"Oh I'm sorry, Gally, were you just in a dark, old room for four days fighting for your life?" I ask him.

"I don't know, were you?" He snaps back at me.

"Okay, that's enough," Alby attempts to shut Gally up.

"No, it's not. She's delusional-"

"Shank," Newt gets up from his seat but I place a hand on his chest to hold him back.

"Regardless of what you think, at least I found something," I tell him. "Something that could actually help us leave." Gally rolls his eyes. I can tell he doesn't have anything left to say, and I smirk to myself. I win. Minho steps in.

"I'm calling an emergency meeting of the Runners. Beth, Newt, Alby, you too."