Almost at once the Grievers had shut down completely, their instruments sucked back through
their blubbery skin, their lights turned off, their inside machines dead quiet. And that door …
Thomas fell to the floor after being released by his captor’s claws, and despite the pain of
several lacerations across his back and shoulders, elation surged through him so strongly he
didn’t know how to react. He gasped, then laughed, then choked on a sob before laughing again.
Chuck had scooted away from the Grievers, bumping into Teresa—she held him tightly,
squeezing him in a fierce hug.
“You did it, Chuck,” Teresa said. “We were so worried about the stupid code words, we didn’t
think to look around for something to push—the last word, the last piece of the puzzle.”
Thomas laughed again, in disbelief that such a thing could be possible so soon after what
they’d gone through. “She’s right, Chuck—you saved us, man! I told you we needed you!”
Thomas scrambled to his feet and joined the other two in a group hug, almost delirious. “Chuck’s
a shucking hero!”
“What about the others?” Teresa said with a nod toward the Griever Hole. Thomas felt his
elation wither, and he stepped back and turned toward the Hole.
As if in answer to her question, someone fell through the black square—it was Minho, looking
as if he’d been scratched or stabbed on ninety percent of his body.
“Minho!” Thomas shouted, filled with relief. “Are you okay? What about everybody else?”
Minho stumbled toward the curved wall of the tunnel, then leaned there, gulping big breaths.
“We lost a ton of people…. It’s a mess of blood up there … then they all just shut down.” He
paused, taking in a really deep breath and letting it go in a rush of air. “You did it. I can’t believe
it actually worked.”
Newt came through then, followed by Frypan. Then Winston and others. Before long eighteen
boys had joined Thomas and his friends in the tunnel, making a total of twenty-one Gladers in
all. Every last one of those who’d stayed behind and fought was covered in Griever sludge and
human blood, their clothes ripped to shreds.
“The rest?” Thomas asked, terrified of the answer.
“Half of us,” Newt said, his voice weak. “Dead.”
No one said a word then. No one said a word for a very long time.
“You know what?” Minho said, standing up a little taller. “Half might’ve died, but half of us
shucking lived. And nobody got stung—just like Thomas thought. We’ve gotta get out of here.”
Too many, Thomas thought. Too many by far. His joy dribbled away, turned into a deep
mourning for the twenty people who’d lost their lives. Despite the alternative, despite knowing
that if they hadn’t tried to escape, all of them might’ve died, it still hurt, even though he hadn’t
known them very well. Such a display of death—how could it be considered a victory?
“Let’s get out of here,” Newt said. “Right now.”
“Where do we go?” Minho asked.
Thomas pointed down the long tunnel. “I heard the door open down that way.” He tried to
push away the ache of it all—the horrors of the battle they’d just won. The losses. He pushed it
away, knowing they were nowhere near safe yet.
“Well—let’s go,” Minho answered. And the older boy turned and started walking up the
tunnel without waiting for a response.
Newt nodded, ushering the other Gladers past him to follow. One by one they went until only
he remained with Thomas and Teresa.
“I’ll go last,” Thomas said.
No one argued. Newt went, then Chuck, then Teresa, into the black tunnel. Even the
flashlights seemed to get swallowed by the darkness. Thomas followed, not even bothering to
look back at the dead Grievers.
After a minute or so of walking, he heard a shriek from ahead, followed by another, then
another. Their cries faded, as if they were falling….
Murmurs made their way down the line, and finally Teresa turned to Thomas. “Looks like it
ends in a slide up there, shooting downward.”
Thomas’s stomach turned at the thought. It seemed like it was a game—for whoever had built
the place, at least.
One by one he heard the Gladers’ dwindling shouts and hoots up ahead. Then it was Newt’s
turn, then Chuck’s. Teresa shone her light down on a steeply descending, slick black chute of
metal.
Guess we have no choice, she said to his mind.
Guess not. Thomas had a strong feeling it wasn’t a way out of their nightmare; he just hoped it
didn’t lead to another pack of Grievers.
Teresa slipped down the slide with an almost cheerful shriek, and Thomas followed her before
he could talk himself out of it—anything was better than the Maze.
His body shot down a steep decline, slick with an oily goo that smelled awful—like burnt
plastic and overused machinery. He twisted his body until he got his feet in front of him, then
tried to hold his hands out to slow himself down. It was useless—the greasy stuff covered every
inch of the stone; he couldn’t grip anything.
The screams of the other Gladers echoed off the tunnel walls as they slid down the oily chute.
Panic gripped Thomas’s heart. He couldn’t fight off the image that they’d been swallowed by
some gigantic beast and were sliding down its long esophagus, about to land in its stomach at
any second. And as if his thoughts had materialized, the smells changed—to something more like
mildew and rot. He started gagging; it took all his effort not to throw up on himself.
The tunnel began to twist, turning in a rough spiral, just enough to slow them down, and
Thomas’s feet smacked right into Teresa, hitting her in the head; he recoiled and a feeling of
complete misery sank over him. They were still falling. Time seemed to stretch out, endless.
Around and around they went down the tube. Nausea burned in his stomach—the squishing of
the goo against his body, the smell, the circling motion. He was just about to turn his head to the
side to throw up when Teresa let out a sharp cry—this time there was no echo. A second later,
Thomas flew out of the tunnel and landed on her.
Bodies scrambled everywhere, people on top of people, groaning and squirming in confusion
as they tried to push away from each other. Thomas wiggled his arms and legs to scoot away
from Teresa, then crawled a few more feet to throw up, emptying his stomach.
Still shuddering from the experience, he wiped at his mouth with his hand, only to realize it
was covered in slimy filth. He sat up, rubbing both hands on the ground, and he finally got a
good look at where they’d arrived. As he gaped, he saw, also, that everyone else had pulled
themselves together into a group, taking in the new surroundings. Thomas had seen glimpses of
it during the Changing, but didn’t truly remember it until that very moment.
They were in a huge underground chamber big enough to hold nine or ten Homesteads. From
top to bottom, side to side, the place was covered in all kinds of machinery and wires and ducts
and computers. On one side of the room—to his right—there was a row of forty or so large white
pods that looked like enormous coffins. Across from that on the other side stood large glass
doors, although the lighting made it impossible to see what was on the other side.
“Look!” someone shouted, but he’d already seen it, his breath catching in his throat. Goose
bumps broke out all over him, a creepy fear trickling down his spine like a wet spider.
Directly in front of them, a row of twenty or so darkly tinged windows stretched across the
compound horizontally, one after the other. Behind each one, a person—some men, some
women, all of them pale and thin—sat observing the Gladers, staring through the glass with
squinted eyes. Thomas shuddered, terrified—they all looked like ghosts. Angry, starving, sinister
apparitions of people who’d never been happy when alive, much less dead.
But Thomas knew they were not, of course, ghosts. They were the people who’d sent them all
to the Glade. The people who’d taken their lives away from them.
The Creators.
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