Night Three

The only thing that Ada knew was roiling, screaming darkness.

It choked her, surrounding her, pressing hard against her eyes as she fought her way through relentless sand and dust. Heat stabbed at her, pricking at her wounds, sharp and violent.

She grabbed blindly at her shirt, pulling it up so that the collar covered her nose and mouth, the white fabric no doubt already stained as the storm buffeted around them. She had no idea where they were, how far away from the doors they had found themselves — all she could do was put one foot in front of the other and stumble through the shadows.

"Go!" She heard someone yell — Thomas, perhaps — "we can lose them in the storm!"

The sound of engines split the air, closer and closer, and panic splintered across Ada's body.

She could hear the voices of her friends around her, frantic and loud against the buffeting wind, and a hand clamped down on her arm. She was tugged to the left, and coughed as she was pulled down against a sand dune. Sharp prickles stabbed at her eyes as sand slammed into her face.

She landed hard against the ground, sand swirling up around her, and squinted through the darkness to see lights breaking out over the horizon. Pinpricks of white, moving rapidly — flashlights, she realised, watching with her heart pounding as guards swarmed the desert in search of them.

An arm banded tight around her waist, shaking and purposeful, and she could see the vague outline of Newt beside her, eyes squinted against the harsh weather. She raised her free hand to try to shield her eyes.

"What the hell do we do?!" She heard Minho ask, voice distant as if he were underwater even though she could see him lying on his stomach beside her.

"We can't stay here!" She yelled, hoping her voice made it across to someone.

She heard Thomas curse from somewhere to her right. "Alright everybody go, go, go. Stay low, stay low!"

Ada squeezed Newt's arm before pulling out of his hold, staying as close to the ground as possible despite the sand that threatened to scratch at her eyes if she kept them open for too long. She squeezed his hand, pulling him behind her, moving in a low crouch away from the facility so that the mountainous shape of the dune could shield them from view.

She couldn't see the others, couldn't see much of anything as she stumbled blindly through the black, one hand raised to cover her eyes and the other clutching Newt's fingers tightly. His grip was frantic, desperate, and she could hear him staggering on the uneven flooring. Sand caved away under their feet, sending them sprawling multiple times.

"Teresa, hang on, stay together!" She heard Thomas yell from ahead of her, and if she squinted she could just about make out his silhouette. The tiny black dot in front of him must have been Teresa.

She prayed beyond measure that the others were somewhere around her, that they hadn't lost Frypan or Jack or Winston — she could just about hear Frypan swearing frantically under his breath, but Winston and Jack were silent.

"I think we lost them!" Minho yelled, but Ada wasn't willing to look over her shoulder to find out. The lights that arced over the sand were gone now, submerging them in complete darkness.

"Keep going, guys, let's go!"

"Watch out!"

"Where are we even going?" Minho asked, his voice drifting back to her. Ada scanned the horizon, trying to find somewhere they could take shelter, anywhere that they could hide.

A hulking black mass worked its way out of the ground ahead of them, nothing more than a shadowy abyss that Teresa ambled her way towards. Ada followed, sand in her eyes and throat, trying to fight down the coughs that threatened to wrack her body.

She tugged on Newt's hand, a silent plea for him to follow her, and he squeezed her fingers reassuringly. His hands were shaking.

"Come on, Aris!" Thomas yelled, and where was Aris? He'd been awfully silent this entire time, and she couldn't see him. Please dear god, don't be lost. She couldn't imagine how catastrophic it would be if one of them got lost in this mess.

The sand beneath her feet gave way, and Ada shrieked as she fell forwards. She could hear Newt's panicked yell echoing behind her, but she barely had time to process the feeling of flying before she was slamming against something solid. Glass, she realised, feeling the remnants of sharp shards stabbing at her palms.

"Jesus fuck, ow." She hissed, pushing herself upright on shaky arms. A figure ambled down the sand towards her, and she could barely make out Teresa's frightened expression in the darkness.

"Come on!" Teresa grabbed her hand, tugging her sideways instead of back up the dune.

"What the hell is this?" Ada asked, running her hand along the glass, trying to make sense of the shape. It looked like some sort of roof, caved upwards and inwards, with chunks of it missing from the years it had been abandoned. And it was years, if the world around them was any indication.

The sun had scorched the world, according to Ava Paige, and left nothing behind but derelict rubble and a planet that was barely inhabitable.

"Let's find a way in!" Teresa yelled, and Ada found herself wholeheartedly agreeing as the wind picked up around them. They moved for what seemed like hours before they came across a hole in the glass large enough for them to fit through.

Sand streamed downwards into it, creating a hill that they could climb down. Ada followed Teresa, squeezing herself into the gap, too relieved at the escape from the storm to consider what might be waiting for them inside.

"Teresa, wait, don't go in there!" Thomas yelled.

"Ada!"

"Get down here!" Teresa stuck her upper body out of the hole, waving them over.

Ada turned away from the glass, marvelling at the now silence of the world. The wind slammed against the glass from the outside, rattling the structure of their shelter, and thin slithers of moonlight glinted on the smooth surface.

She took a step forward, letting gravity lead her downwards, sand sliding and falling loose under her feet until she reached what looked to be a tiled floor. She couldn't see much of it under the grains and rubble, but it was steady under her feet, and that was good enough for her.

Complete darkness surrounded her.

There was a cry of shock, then a thud, and Ada turned to see Jack face down on the floor behind her. "Ow." He mumbled.

She snickered, extending a hand to help him up, watching as the others tried and failed to make their way down the dune with some semblance of grace. They reached the bottom, the glow from a lone flashlight illuminating Minho's sand-streaked face.

"Where the hell did you get that?" She asked, frowning.

Minho held up his backpack triumphantly. "Backpack, baby! Where would you guys be without me, huh?"

"In the darkness, evidently." Frypan clapped him on the back. "You couldn't have whipped that thing out when we were stumbling around back there?"

"And let those shanks know where we were? No thank you." He shone the flashlight around, the light-hearted expression slipping from his face as he took in the colossal space. "Where the hell are we?"

Now that it was better illuminated, Ada could see that they had found themselves in what looked like an old shopping mall. There were the outlines of shops on either side, derelict and looted, glass shards gleaming on the floor. Mannequins had been strewn about, torn open, wicked scratch marks tearing gashes in their pale stomachs.

"That's concerning," Ada said simply, using her sleeve to wipe as much sand out of her eyes and mouth as possible.

Thomas saw it too, his pale face shining in the glow of the torch. "We gotta go," he said quickly, his entire body thrumming with energy. "We gotta go, now."

"No." Teresa shook her head. "Thomas, stop."

"No, we gotta go, now, we gotta keep moving-"

"Thomas, stop!" Teresa snapped, and something in her tone must have gotten through to him, because Thomas froze in place. "Tell me what's going on."

"It's WICKED." Thomas said quietly. "It's WICKED. They lied to us, we never escaped. Me, Aris, and Ada, we found bodies. Too many to count."

"Wait, what?" Minho asked, dropping the backpack. "Dead bodies?"

"Define dead," Ada said blandly. "They were breathing, but it wasn't them that was breathing, it was like the machines were doing it for them. They were shoved full of wires and it looked like they were being drained or something."

"Drained of blood?" Frypan asked.

"Great, because WICKED are vampires now." Winston scoffed.

"It wasn't blood, I don't think." Ada shook her head. "It was... blue?"

"Oh no," Minho said sadly, "they're draining our blue?"

"Shut up." Thomas rolled his eyes. "It was horrible, okay? They looked dead. They were dead. Like shells of who they used to be."

"Why would they do that?" Newt asked, voice tight. "Why are they doing any of this? What's the end goal for them?"

"There's something inside of us that WICKED wants." Thomas said. "Something in our blood. So we have to get as far away from them as possible."

Newt ran a hand down his face, and Ada tried to think of the last time she had seen him so exhausted, so empty looking. Her mind flashed back to his prone form in a hospital bed, blinking up at her blearily, leg shattered in three places.

She swallowed down the lump in her throat and looked away.

"Alright," Newt said after a moment. "Okay, so what's the plan?"

The silence that followed was harsh and unrelenting.

"You do have a plan, right?" He looked to Ada, who could do nothing but stare blankly back, and that tiredness faded away within a second, replaced with sheer frustration. "We followed you two out here and now you're saying that you have no idea where we're going or what we're doing?"

He took a step towards them, brow furrowed and shoulders tense, and Ada felt her own body stiffen in response. "Back off, Newt, we needed to get out."

"You don't know what you're doing!" He snapped. "Neither of you do! You've just waltzed us out into the middle of the desert with no plan and no provisions!"

"As opposed to just staying where we were and letting them harvest us instead?" She bit back. It felt uncomfortable to be arguing with him like this, but the frustration and anger building up inside her worsened as he turned his angry gaze on her.

"You might have just killed us all!"

"We would have died anyway!"

"Alright," Minho said loudly, shoving his way between them. His eyes were wide with shock, and he was looking between them like he wasn't sure what to make of the situation. "Stop it, both of you. You're both right. We needed to get the fuck out, and this is dangerous as shit, but we're here now and we're doing it anyway, alright? We just need a plan."

"Wait," Aris said after a loaded moment of silence. "Janson said something, about people hiding in the mountains. Remember? Some kind of resistance or army."

"The Right Arm." Thomas nodded. "Yeah... if they're really against WICKED, maybe they can help us."

"People." Newt frowned. "In the mountains. Mountain people. That's your plan?"

"It's the only chance we have."

"It's better than nothing." Ada said, scowling when Newt looked at her with that same sceptical frustration that refused to leave his face. The adrenaline that had coursed through her fizzled away slightly, leaving nothing but annoyance and irritation behind. It prickled under her skin like a live wire.

"It's not exactly a solid plan," Newt continued. He ran a hand through his hair, exasperated, and Ada was too pissed to admire the way the fluffy strands ruffled. "How exactly are you planning on getting there? With what supplies? We have no weapons, we have no food, we have nothing but half an idea of something that you don't even know the location of. The mountains aren't exactly a small area to search."

Ada threw her hands up. "Well I don't see you coming up with any better suggestions!"

"This is weird." Minho frowned as he looked between them. "I don't like it. Go back to sucking face."

Ada opened her mouth furiously to respond, but Winston's voice cut them off, distant and echoey. "Hey guys, check this out." He was kneeling on the sand a few feet away from them, facing towards the dark. "Minho, give me a light."

They wandered over, Minho lifting the flashlight, and several sets of footsteps were revealed in the sand. They were erratic, scuffed, panicked, as if whoever had left them had been running.

"Oh." Ada said simply.

"Someone's been down here."

"We need to get supplies." Thomas said after a moment, tapping his thigh impatiently. "How many flashlights do we have?"

"One." Minho held it up, the light dancing off the walls and roof.

"Don't aim that at the roof," Ada said, reaching out to lower his arm. "They'll see."

"Through the roof?"

"It's made of glass, Minho."

"Oh. Right."

"Okay, so we stick together," Thomas said, peering into the darkness. "There are shops. I say we look around, grab what we can. But not too much, we don't wanna be weighed down."

"Look for food," Ada said immediately. She slipped into that role of leader, the one that she had half abandoned when they had left the maze, the familiar weight of it settling over her like a blanket. They worked as a team, the small ragtag group of survivors, but for so long they had looked to her for advice, and then to Thomas. "Things that aren't too heavy. Non-perishables."

Jack raised his hand. "I'm allergic to nuts."

She pointed at him. "No nuts for Jack. Non perishables without nuts. We don't have an epipen this time. Look for bottled water. Minho, do you have a canteen?"

"Uh..." He rummaged around in his backpack for a second before emerging victoriously. "I do indeed."

"Fill it." She instructed. Everyone else needs at least two bottles."

"And backpacks." Thomas said. "Something to put things in, so we can distribute the weight."

"Alright." Winston clapped his hands together eagerly. "Mom and Dad have spoken, let's do this thing." Upon seeing the stony expression on Newt's face, Winston backtracked immediately. "I mean, uh, Mom and weird uncle have spoken, let's go."

"Why am I the weird uncle?" Thomas grumbled, but didn't protest as they trudged further into the darkness, the only illumination Minho's flashlight as it bounced off broken glass and lit up the ruination of what used to be boutiques behind her.

They walked in silence, unwilling to let their voices further penetrate the black, not knowing of what could have been lurking in the shadows. Perhaps it was petty of her, but she made sure to keep at least one person between her and Newt at all times, that feeble irritation still sparking to life under her skin whenever she caught sight of him.

Maybe it was the exhaustion, or his hesitancy to believe her back in the facility, or that his first instinct was to turn against her when it counted, but right then she didn't trust herself not to snap at him again.

The last thing they needed was for the group to be divided so early in their journey.

They hesitated at one store, noting the way that the bars were pulled down over the entrance. The glass in between them was broken in some places, and Minho shoved his flashlight through the gap to tentatively peer inside.

Ada followed, stretching up on her tiptoes, and grinned when she spotted the several large coolers of water. One of them was cracked straight down the middle, and the floor was drenched around it, but the other three looked to be in relatively good condition.They all had several varying amounts of water in, and she knew immediately that the place had already been looted.

"Look," she nodded at the several blankets and duvets littered on the floor. "Looks like someone was sleeping here."

"It's dusty," Frypan said, nose scrunched up as if he were fighting off a sneeze. "I don't think anyone's been here for a while."

"Either way," Newt said warily, "be on the lookout for squatters. A place like this will be crawling with them."

"Let's crack this baby open," Minho said, handing the flashlight off to Thomas as he and Newt moved to lift the bars. They slid up easily, the awful and blood-curdling screech of rusted metal piercing her ears as it echoed far too loudly in the cavernous space. Goosebumps broke out on her arms as she spared a wary glance behind her.

Nothing but darkness met her.

The air inside was stale, wrought with dust that clogged her throat as she took tentative steps inside.

Thomas branched off immediately, reaching for something to their right, and a harsh light lit up the walls from a lamp sat on a broken table. It threw the room into stark reality, brightening the haphazard piles of junk in every corner of the room. It looked like it had been a clothing store, once upon a time, but was reduced now to a crumbling stockpile of rubbish and broken clutter.

"Oh, look," Teresa said eagerly as she reached down into a torn cardboard box, plucking out a flashlight. She tapped the end, and winced away from the beam of light that shone abruptly into her eyes. "Well," she grimaced, kicking the box, "at least we know they work."

"Looks like people lived here." Minho bent down to pluck a dust-ridden jacket off of what looked like a haphazard bed. It was little more than two blankets and a rat-eaten pillow, neither of which were useful to them, but he shook out the jacket and held it against his chest regardless.

He shrugged it on – it was too large on him, bunching around the waist, but he zipped it up and patted the pockets searchingly.

Newt hummed in agreement from the other side of the room. "Where are they now?"

Ada eyed the half-used supplies, the jackets and flashlights, the stockpile of equipment necessary for survival, and frowned. "Whoever they are, it looks like they left in a hurry." There were scratches on the floor, deep gouges in the stone. Dried blood crusted brown at their edges. "Maybe they were chased out."

"Janson mentioned cranks," Frypan said tentatively, his face drawn with anxiety as he stared down at the flashlights. "You think they did this?"

Ada shook her head. "I think I really don't want to find out."

Thomas grabbed another jacket, this one a deep navy, and shrugged it on. "Let's pack some of this stuff up. Anything you think you might need. We have flashlights now, enough for all of us. Let's split up, see what else we can find. Meet back here."

"I saw an escalator." Minho said. "There's a downstairs level. I wanna see what's down there."

"Alright." Ada nodded. "Minho, go with Thomas. Frypan, stick with Newt and Jack. Teresa and I will go through here with Winston and Aris."

They all nodded quiet assents of agreement, and it was a testament to how wrong things felt when Newt didn't put up even the slightest argument against splitting up. It was so unlike him, and she knew it must have been eating at him that the only place he thought they were safe turned out to be a prison worse than the one they had just escaped from.

It was eating at her too, though, and he had no right to take it out on her and Thomas like he had done just because they were the ones to get them out.

She knew the scorch was dangerous. She knew going out there without a plan was risky as hell and would more than likely get them killed, but staying where they had been in that facility would have been far worse for everyone involved.

She knew that, and she had expected him to know that too.

She swallowed down the bitterness rising in her throat, hating herself for how easy it was to be angry with him right now.

"Wait, Tommy." Newt tossed a flashlight at him, nodding his head, and Thomas clicked it on with a thankful smile.

"Let's go."

He filed out of the room, followed by Minho, and Frypan shot them an enthusiastic thumbs up before he, Newt, and Jack departed as well, heading in the opposite direction. Her and Teresa were left alone with Winston and Aris, the four of them standing in the wreckage not knowing what to do with themselves.

"Alright, boss man," Winston grimaced, "uh... lady. What do we do?"

Ada shrugged helplessly. "See if you can find any backpacks. Bottles of water. Empty canteens to fill up, that sort of thing. Teresa and I will gather clothes and food."

Teresa nodded, and the tenseness in her shoulders abated slightly as she moved to the back corner of the room to rummage through the large pile of abandoned clothes. Ada moved to follow her, setting her flashlight on an overturned chair.

She picked up a scarf, a deep red that reminded her of Newt's shoelace, and shoved it in her pocket to give it to him when she was less pissed.

"You look worried," Teresa said quietly. She peered over her shoulder to see if Winston or Aris could hear, but neither of them were paying attention. They had found a backpack, Ada noticed, and were shoving bottles of water into it. "Are you alright?"

"I think so." She nodded, turning back to the pile. She pulled out a few jackets, shaking dust and a stray spider out of them before folding them neatly and putting them in a stack to her left. "Just worried, I guess. We don't even know where the mountains are, I don't remember seeing them on the fly over."

"We were all asleep for a while, I think," Teresa said. "But I get you. From what we saw of this scorch place, it doesn't exactly look the safest."

Ada scoffed. "Understatement of the century. At least in the maze we knew what we were up against. We don't even know what these crank things are."

Teresa's eyes flashed, and she looked away quickly. "That argument with Newt," she said after a moment. "I've never seen you guys like that before."

"You weren't there when he first came up." Ada shook her head. "He was a raging dickhead. We're both stubborn, I guess, so we clashed a lot."

"How'd you two get past that?"

The body was crumpled at the foot of the wall, twisted and broken, blood splattered against stone. Sat beside the hospital bed, squeezing his hand, begging him to live. Side by side in front of George's grave, promising to find a reason to live in each other. Stolen touches, stolen kisses, desperate and terrified, blood and grief.

Ada shook her head to rid herself of the memories, something cold clawing at her insides.

"That's not my story to tell. All that matters is that we did. I just don't understand why he's so upset." She threw the pale green scarf in her hand down onto the ground, turning to face Teresa fully. "These guys were going to kill us. Worse than that, actually. They were going to bleed us dry, torture us. How could that be better than this?"

Teresa didn't look at her, her hands fidgeting uncomfortably with the scrap of torn cloth she held. "Well, at least they were doing it for a reason. Now that we've seen the outside world, I can kind of understand why they'd want to save it. Can't you?"

Ada stared at her, baffled. "Save it? Yes. But not like this. You didn't see them, Teresa. There were so many, just strung up and left for dead. It was horrible. And the maze? Knowing that they put us all there? I watched so many of my friends die, all of them in horrible ways, and they were just kids. We are just kids, we don't deserve that."

"But if it means saving people-"

"We don't deserve that. No one does."

Teresa nodded, lips pressed into a thin line, and returned her attention to the pile of clothes.

Feeling suddenly awkward, Ada cleared her throat, picking up the scarf again, and added it to the pile. Her thighs began to ache fiercely from the uncomfortable crouching, so she stood up with a grimace.

"I'm gonna go find some food. Has to be some around here somewhere."

Teresa nodded, eyes fixed on her task, so Ada left her alone and wandered to the other side of the room, scanning the scraps for anything they could use.

A horrible smell slammed into her, the sweet stench of something rotting, and she lifted her shirt to cover her nose and mouth, coughing. Her eyes watered from it, and she turned her face to the side, bile creeping up her throat. "Oh, God."

It must have been food, or the carcass of an animal. She wasn't sure where it was, and was about to turn around when a box of protein bars caught her eye.

"There you are," she said quietly, bracing herself against the smell before moving towards it, eyeing the swaths of fabric in her way. She moved carefully, sidestepping what looked like a nest of some sort with a grimace, and reached for the box.

It was on the top shelf, uncomfortably high – presumably to keep them out of the way of animals – and reached up onto her tiptoes.

Her hands clamped around the bottom shelf, using the leverage to lift herself, fingers stretching. "Come on, come on..."

The shelf gave way.

Ada shrieked as she fell backwards, wood collapsing around her, her heart jumping in her throat. She landed on the pile of fabric, but there was something underneath it, and her breath left her lungs in a violent whoosh. T

he crash was ungodly, deafening as it echoed, and she shoved her hands over her ears to block out the noise, grimacing.

Dust plumed in the air around her, making her eyes water, and that foul smell was back. She groaned, cupping her side, her broken rib throbbing furiously.

"Fuck, ouch."

She squinted through the dust, eyeing the splinters of wood that surrounded her, the protein bars scattered at random. Silence fell hard and heavy, and Ada let out a shuddering breath.

"Ada?!" Winston's voice came from the other side of the room. "You alright?!"

"Peachy," She called back, the words coming out in a wheeze as dust settled in her lungs. "Just great. Stupid shelves, who the fuck fastened that to the wall," she grumbled, hands scrambling in the swaths of fabric to find something solid for leverage. "I don't care if it's the apocalypse out here, that was-"

The fabric moved as she gripped it, falling away as she tugged herself up onto her elbows, that bulbous thing beneath it pressing uncomfortably into her side.

The stench worsened, her words choking off as bile slid up her throat, and she choked it down with a hand pressed against her stomach as she glanced down.

A dead body stared back.

The words cut off in a violent gasp, wrenching from somewhere deep inside her as she scrambled backwards, desperate to move, to get away, because unlike the bodies strung up in the facility, the person lying underneath her was dead.

Glassy eyes stared up at her, sunken into a skull whose cheeks were puffy and whose flesh was bloated and swollen in a way it shouldn't have been. Deep gouges were cut into the cheeks, the dried blood crusting the surface nothing more than crusted brown flakes.

Ada gagged, eyes watering furiously, her heart pounding against her ribs with a vengeance. It's mouth was still gaped open in a silent scream, teeth missing.

Bodies surrounded her, flesh pressing against flesh, bloated and swollen.

She cried out, breaths coming in short pants, scrambling away, but her legs were caught in the fabric. She couldn't move, and her hands shook violently as she pulled wildly at the blanket, trying to detangle herself.

They were everywhere, on top of her, rotted, her fingers sinking into clumps of skin, giving way beneath her touch, rough under still bleeding sores and gashes.

She couldn't breathe. Her lungs were frozen. She couldn't get the images out of her head.

She screamed, hand reaching for the sky, trying to fight her way out of the wooden cart, pinned below their weight.

The fabric shifted as she fell sideways, revealing bloated flesh seeping out of a shirt that was torn and now too tight, blue and purple and red and white.

She shouldered them away, sobbing, voice catching like knives in her throat, and his head fell to the side, glassy eyes staring right at her, bloodied red curls falling unkempt across the black veins on his forehead.

She couldn't move. She couldn't breathe. She was there again, trapped.

All she could do was scream.