The sound of steam releasing took over my senses as my eyes darted back and forth in the dark, trying to make out anything in the debilitating shadows. A creaking sound followed as a small sliver of light appeared from behind, catching our attention and causing us to spin around.
Cautiously, Teresa reached her arm out and placed her hand next to where the light was coming from. With a gentle push, a door swung open and light flooded into our field of view.
One by one we stepped out into a hallway that seemed to stretch on forever in each direction. The walls were lined with pipes and the sounds of machines running and steam escaping echoed from a distance. Then, a loud, jarring clank startled us as one by one, the lights overhead turned on; adding a faint buzzing sound to the mixture of noises.
We all looked to each other, not sure if we should be relieved or scared at that moment. Slowly, we made our way down the hall and tried to ignore the ominous sounds of liquid dripping and pipes shifting. The lights flickered slightly as we passed them, which gave me a weird feeling, to say the least.
Eventually, we started to slow as we came upon a door. A glowing, green sign above it read EXIT. "Seriously?" Fry glanced to his friend with a worried look.
Stepping forward, Thomas slid his fingers around the rusted doorknob and twisted. An alarm screeched as the door swung open and the first thing we were met with was the sight of bodies on the floor and smoke in the air. Without thinking, my hand grabbed onto Newt's and I squeezed tightly. For some reason Newt made me feel safer, but when he noticed I was holding his hand, he looked to me with a confused face. "Sorry," I mumbled as I let go and pushed past Thomas into the room.
Yellow lights flashed overhead to the rhythm of the alarm as one by one the group followed me in. Blood splatter painted the walls and the glass on the sides of the hall was cracked and shattered. Behind one of the windows were two metal tables, each with sheet-covered bodies on them.
"What happened here?" Winston was the first to speak.
No one answered as Thomas lead us into one of the rooms that the hallway branched off to. Sparks dropped from the ceiling and screens lines the walls; some glowing blue with diagrams and statistics on them, some flickering on and off, and some just black. I recognized the room almost immediately. It was the place I had been in my dream.
More bodies scattered the floor; most of them dressed in white lab coats. Moving over to a specific desk of monitors, Newt looked around at the screens that showed brain scans and different angles of the glade. "So they were watching us." he sighed. "This whole time."
Stepping over to a display with a red, glowing button, Thomas shared a look with Teresa and me before gently tapping the screen with his finger. Immediately, a video started playing on the largest screen in the whole room. In the video was a woman in a lab coat. "Hello. My name is Doctor Ava Paige." the woman spoke. "I'm Director of Operations of the World Catastrophe Killzone Department. If you're watching this, that means you have successfully completed the Maze Trials. I wish I could be there in person to congratulate you...but circumstances seem to have prevented it. I'm sure by now you must all be very confused, angry, frightened. I can only assure you that everything that's happened to you, everything we've done to you, it was all done for a reason. You won't remember, but the Sun has scorched our world. Billions of lives lost to fire, famine, suffering on a global scale. The fallout was unimaginable. What came after was worse. We called it the Flare. A deadly virus that attacks the brain. It is violent, unpredictable...incurable. Or so we thought. In time, a new generation emerged that could survive the virus. Suddenly, there was a reason to hope for a cure. But finding it would not be easy. The young would have to be tested, even sacrificed, inside harsh environments, where their brain activity could be studied. All in an effort to understand what makes them different...what makes you different. You may not realize it, but you're very important. Unfortunately, your trials have only just begun. As you will no doubt soon discover, not everyone agrees with our methods. Progress is slow, people are scared."
YOU ARE READING
A-Thousand-Words | The Maze Runner - Newt/Thomas
FanfictionAll she could remember was her name; Norah. There was no memory of who she was before she arrived in the glade; only the slight feeling that something deeper and darker was going on beyond the walls of the compound she found herself trapped in―beyon...
