"Hey Greenie."
Florence grinned at the boy, squatting down beside the bars of the Slammer. He had served his sentence, and it was time to release him back into the wild of the Glade. Thomas' eyes screamed tiredness and lack of energy, but he couldn't stop himself chuckling as he muttered back in annoyance.
"Don't call me Greenie. I'm not the Greenie, remember?"
She took the key she had stolen from the Bagger nearby and put it into the lock, unlocking the door for him. Shaking her head fondly, she slung her arm around him as he stepped back out into the Glade.
"I only do it to see how annoyed you'll get."
Grumbling about how 'unfair' it was, Thomas let Florence lead him to a picnic table not too far from the Homestead, where Newt and Minho were sat, both looking deeply troubled. She was told by Newt to release Thomas and bring him to the pair to have a 'chat'.
Ruffling Thomas' hair, she took her arm back from his shoulder and joined Minho's side, trying her hardest to not expect the worst of the situation.
However, it was bad.
"Quit? What do you mean they've all quit?"
This is not what you want to hear first thing in the morning.
"It's exactly like it sounds Florence, all the Runners have quit. They're just done. I don't know what the bloody hell we're supposed to do."
Newt sounded exhausted. He ran a hand through his hair, causing it to stick up in all different directions, but he was too preoccupied to fix it. How were they going to map the Maze now?
"Well I'll have to go full time. We need to see if anyone else will step up too. We need people, it doesn't matter who."
Minho frowned, worries nagging at the back of his mind thinking about the girl running every single day. However he knew there was no stopping her, and he also knew she could hold her own quite well.
"No one is going to want to go out there Flo." Newt argued, and the girl scoffed at his pessimism.
"Okay, fine. We have three Runners. Myself, Minho and Thomas. Where does that leave us?"
Nowhere, that's where.
She answered her own question internally, and kicked a stone lying on the ground. The other boys were silent; there was nothing they could think of to say. Florence was always the one to lighten up the dark negativity but for once, she was struck by hopelessness too.
What were they going to do without Runners?
She rested her head onto Minho's shoulder, staring at a spot that hadn't been cleaned on the table. Thomas got up from where he was sat just listening, stalking away without sparing another glance to any of them. Newt sighed exasperated, also getting up but moving in the opposite direction, presumably to check on Alby.
"Where are you going?" Minho called to Thomas' retreating figure.
"Back into the Maze."
Florence lifted her head from Minho's shoulder and shared a glance with the equally as startled boy. After a beat of doing nothing, they got up and jogged over to Thomas, moving so they were either side of the determined boy.
"Thomas- What's your plan?" The girl asked him, already on board for whatever he was thinking of doing.
For some reason, he had been getting a lot of luck in this place. If I'm going to follow anyone, it's him.
"When Minho and I were stuck out there, we were running from a Griever and it got crushed in a wall. We have a dead Griever - for real this time. We need to look at it."
Of course, when Minho said he saw a dead Griever the first time, it wasn't really dead. But if the boys saw this one get crushed, then it really was dead.
"Okay. But we can't go alone."
Understanding her concern, Minho nodded. He pressed a fleeting kiss to her forehead before turning on his heel and beginning to march across the Glade. He was about halfway to the Homestead when Florence called after him with flushed cheeks.
"Minho-"
"-I'll meet you in the Map room!"
Rolling her eyes at the lack of explanation, Florence beckoned for Thomas to follow her to the Map room. He obliged, a smirk pulling at his lips as he asked,
"What's up with you and Minho?"
She frowned at the question, her cheeks flushing red in embarrassment as she realised why he was asking.
He kissed me in front of Thomas.
"Nothing's up with me and Minho. We're normal." She answered, a little too quickly for Thomas' liking.
"Yeah I get it's normal but what is your normal?"
Now she was confused. Ushering the boy inside the Map room, she let her attention fully focus on him.
"What do you mean?"
"Well you're obviously not just friends, are you?"
She blushed even deeper this time, hitting Thomas' arm.
He has no shame, does he?
"Shank! Well, I guess not, but neither are you and Newt."
She had got Thomas now. They began to argue playfully, speaking louder and louder over one another, not realising how noisy they were really being.
"FLORENCE AND MINHO SITTING IN A TREE, K-I-S-S-"
"I-n-g."
A calm voice interrupted Thomas from the doorway, and both of them froze, caught in the act. Minho looked more than amused, obviously having heard thanks to his ability to finish the lyric.
"You guys are children."
He mumbled, shaking his head disapprovingly before fully entering the room and bringing a handful of boys in with him; Frypan, Winston and Zart. Florence avoided his eye, incredibly embarrassed at what just happened, but looked instead at the small group they had to go into the Maze with.
"These guys enough?"
Thomas nodded, fully returned to his serious state.
"Okay, let's go."
The six of them headed out of the room, and immediately towards the Maze. For the three Minho had gathered, it would be their first time going inside.
Minho and Thomas led the group down a series of turns inside the Maze to track down the Griever. Florence felt her heart thumping with every step she took, knowing she would finally be seeing a Griever closeup for the first time without risk of danger - well, she doesn't expect any risk of danger at least.
She could see Frypan, Winston and Zart's intrigued looks around the walls, taking in every inch of the labyrinth they were forbidden from entering for so long.
"Come on!" Minho called impatiently from where he was leading the group, and Florence chuckled at Frypan's small shake of his head. As he sped up again, Florence hung back as she ran, to hold up the back of the group and make sure no one fell behind.
As Minho glanced down a corridor, he stopped abruptly, causing everyone to do the same. His eyes were fixated on one spot, and looking to it, Florence saw the Griever. It was almost completely crushed in between two walls, with only a foot of its crumpled gooey body showing. An arm jutted out into the corridor, the metallic shine catching in the sunlight.
The group walked down the corridor towards it, stopping in front of it to gaze as if it were an art piece. Zart's face screwed up in distaste as he stated,
"That's disgusting."
Florence nodded in agreement, wrinkling her nose to try and avoid the smell of the Griever. It was overwhelming and pungent. Squinting her eyes at the wall, she saw a red flashing light deep in the Griever's body and straightened up with a nod.
"There's something in there." She decided firmly.
The shadow the two walls the Griever was gapped between only made the red light brighter. She was certain something was inside.
"You mean, besides a Griever pancake?"
Ignoring Frypan's comment, she stepped towards the wall when Minho grabbed her arm, stopping her in her tracks.
"Whoa, what are you doing?"
"Don't worry."
She pulled her arm away gently, giving him a reassuring smile. He arched an unimpressed eyebrow, folding his arms over his chest, but didn't go to stop her again.
Moving so her body was parallel to the wall, she stuck her hand in the gap, her fingertips immediately making contact with the Griever's body. Grimacing, she stuck her hand into the goo and felt for where the red light was emitting from.
Suddenly, the Griever's arm seized up and Florence jumped away in fright, being pulled back by the group. The arm retreated almost into the gap completely, falling still again, only a few feet of it visible.
"I thought you said it was dead." Frypan asked Minho, confusion and worry evident in his shaking voice.
"Was it a reflex?" Zart asked the group, glancing between them all skittishly and Winston let out a laugh.
"You hope."
Florence realised then that her hand had immediately gone to Minho's arm as a reflex, and she took it off sheepishly as she cleared her throat.
"Okay, come on. Let's try and pull it out."
They all crowded around, looking for the best place to grip it and talking over one another as they figured out the best way to pull it from the wall. They finally found good positions, everyone putting both hands on different places of the Griever arm, and gripping tightly.
"All right, ready? On three." Thomas said firmly, before counting up to three. When the number was called, there was a brief silence for the group to concentrate on pulling the arm towards them and out of the wall.
When it came crashing out onto the floor, they all fell back on the ground at the sudden release, and Florence hopped up immediately to look closely at the red glow she had spotted. Reaching into the 'guts' of the creature, she pulled out a metal cannister with a red glowing circle.
She had to pull the cannister from the 'guts', resisting the urge to gag, before wiping one of her hands on the front of her pants as she held it up with her other.
"What the hell is that?" Thomas murmured, as the girl looked over the cannister in curiosity. Her eyes fell on the letters printed on the metal; WCKD. Upon seeing them she realised the letters were also imprinted on the supplies they would receive each week, so Florence knew the Grievers were made in someway by the Creators.
She couldn't help but think that,
When Ben was going through the Changing, he mumbled about WCKD...
Tilting it up, the cannister also read a number. Seven. On a small electronic square, the red number stared right at her, and she felt as though it may have a connection to the sections of the Maze; one through eight.
"Interesting." Minho mumbled, having moved to the girl's side so he could peer over her shoulder at the metal cylinder himself.
"Okay, whatever it is, can we take this up back at the Glade? Because I don't want to meet this guy's friends." Frypan shuddered at the thought of the live Grievers and Minho moved back from where he was looking over the girl's shoulder.
"He's right. It's getting late. Come on."
He began jogging again. Florence tightened her grip on the metal cannister before taking off after the group, making up the back of the pack.
When they reached the Glade again, Florence had decided it was necessary to gather the Keepers together in the Council room to give them an update on what they had found.
She handed the hand-cleaned cannister to Newt for him to inspect as she fell back in line beside Minho and Thomas explained to him,
"We found this. It was inside a Griever."
Newt tilted the cannister in his hands, and Florence had to bite the inside of her cheeks to stop herself from laughing as the boy froze at the words. Handing it back to Thomas, he wiped his hands on his pants as he said,
"These are the same letters we get in our supplies."
Thomas nodded. He had taken the leadership role in the group, surprisingly fitting it quite well, having natural authority despite having only been there for a few days.
"Whoever put us here obviously made the Grievers." He concluded, with the blonde giving him a thoughtful nod, seeming deep in thought.
"So the Creators are WCKD? It's like the 'company' they work for or something?" Florence used speech-marks when she said 'company'. Obviously she had no idea if it were a company, or an acronym, or just a bunch of letters they wanted to put on things to make it look cooler.
"This is the first real clue, the first anything, you've found in two years. Right, Minho?"
At the mention of his name, Minho found himself zoning back into the conversation, stiffening up to seem professional.
"Right."
"Newt, we gotta go back out there. Who knows where this might lead us."
Thomas can be pretty persuasive, I can't lie...
At this point, it was hard not to notice Gally's eyerolls and scoffs after every sentence he spoke. However, he had yet to say a thing himself.
It'd be less annoying if he just complained-
"You see what he's trying to do, right?"
Never mind, it's more annoying when he complains.
"First he breaks our rules, and then he tries to convince us to abandon them totally. The rules are the only thing that have ever held us together. Why now are we questioning that? If Alby was here, you know he'd agree with me."
There was a beat of silence in which Florence could feel her own anger building. Clenching her fists and then releasing them, a harsh chuckle fell from her lips.
Every single thing he just said was ridiculous.
"Are you kidding me Gally?" She asked.
Her question only got a response of Gally's glare, so she continued on.
"This whole time, the rules have been there to keep us safe, yes, but only for the time being. For whilst we've been trying to look for a way out. Now, we might actually have one. Your stupid argument of 'abandoning the rules' means nothing because they were always only ever meant to be temporary. We're gonna have to break them at some point to get out of here."
She took a pause to look at each and every one of the boys in the room, forcing them to think about what she was saying. Gally was slowly shrinking away in his seat.
"I don't wanna be stuck here forever."
She stated firmly, and Gally was glowing in embarrassment as everyone nodded or murmured in agreement. He got up from his chair and paused just in front of her. She lifted her chin up, staring back at him.
"You're gonna regret this."
"Gally-" Frypan reached to the boy to comfort him, but he only shoved the other's arm away.
"-Nah Fry."
He pushed past, shoving the girl's shoulder, and slammed the door behind him. His words sent a chill down her spine, but did Gally really know what he was saying?
She hoped not.