Day Seven Hundred and Thirty Five

"Where is everybody?" Thomas' voice floated down to her.

Ada blinked against Newt's shirt, her brain struggling to take in the words, to turn them over in her mind. The world seemed sluggish, moving in fractured increments she couldn't understand. All she could focus on was the feeling of the grass beneath her knees, cold and damp, the pressure of Newt's trembling fingers running through her hair, and the raw feeling that had cracked open inside her, splintering through her veins.

When she lifted her face away from his chest, squinting through tear filled eyes around the glade, she could just make out the smoke and the debris, the shape of someone moving quickly through the smog. She couldn't recognise him, not immediately, but Gally's furious frame took shape as he strode towards Thomas, hatred twisted in every line of his face.

Thomas seemed to recognise him too, his entire body tensing. "Gally-"

Gally's fist connected with Thomas's jaw with a resounding smack, one that Ada felt all the way to her bones.

"Woah!" Frypan yelled, immediately rushing to restrain Gally. Minho and Winston immediately joined him, wrestling Gally away from where Thomas lay on the ground, cradling his jaw.

"This is all you, Thomas!" Gally yelled, surging forward, a mad look in his eyes Ada had never seen on him before. "This is all you! Look around!"

"Back off, Gally, it's not Thomas' fault!" Minho snapped, shoving Gally backwards.

Newt slowly stood up, keeping one arm wrapped securely around Ada's waist, not trusting her to stand on her own. Between the blood loss and the emotional toll, she felt like her body was on the brink of collapsing, black spots dancing in front of her vision. She let herself sink against his side, her entire body aching, each breath stabbing in her chest.

"You heard what Alby said!" Gally spat, eyes blazing. "He's one of them!"

"One of who?"

"He's one of them, and they sent him here to destroy everything, and now he has!" He struggled against their grip, feet skidding in the grass, desperate to get to Thomas. By the look in his eyes, Ada didn't trust that Gally wouldn't add him to the innumerable bodies littered around the glade. "Look around, Thomas, look around!" He flung his arm out, gesturing furiously at the glade.

Ada followed his movement, tracking the place that used to be their home with her eyes. The homestead was completely gone, reduced to nothing more than ashes and rubble, their hammocks with it. The kitchen was destroyed, the med hut too. The watchtower was a rubble heap on the ground. Not one structure remained standing, not one shred of life remained untouched. This would take years to come back from, if they even could at all.

"Back off, Gally!" Minho shoved him away again.

The arm wrapped around her waist shifted lower, Newt's thumb rubbing soothing circles on her hip as he ran an exhausted hand down his face. "Gally, you need to calm down."

"They sent him here," Gally seethed, shaking his head. "And now he's destroyed it all. He's killed them all."

Thomas moved so slowly she barely noticed it, reaching forward to take something out of Chuck's hand. It was the metal cylinder, the one that had come off the Griever, and she recognised it instantly when it hit the light. The needle was long and thick, dangerous even when not attached to the monster it came from.

"What are you doing?" Ada asked, but her voice was nothing more than a quiet croak, barely audible. "Thomas?"

Gally, Minho, and the others continued to argue, harsh voices throwing out accusations and false placations, but Ada ignored them as she stared at Thomas, trying to figure out what he was doing. He looked down at the needle, pensieve frown on his face, and shook his head. "Maybe he's right."

He was.

It didn't take a genius to figure out that Thomas had been sent up by the creators, Alby's words had confirmed that. He was here for a reason, but Ada wasn't quite sure what it was yet. The glade was gone, half of its population massacred. Either Thomas had been sent up to finish them all off, or he had been sent up to drive them into the maze to escape. Perhaps they had grown tired of watching them behind screens.

"Thomas?" Teresa asked, but he ignored her too.

"I need to remember."

His fingers closing tight around the stinger were the only warning they got before Thomas plunged the needle deep into his stomach. Ada jolted forwards, her and Newt struggling to catch him as he fell, the movement catching the attention of the others.

"Thomas!"

"No!"

Gally stood off to the side, staring at him gobsmacked.

"Chuck, get the other syringe!" Teresa yelled.

Thomas's eyes slipped shut, his breathing laboured and harsh. Sweat broke out across his forehead, his arms and legs twitching violently. "Hold him still," Ada ordered, pushing through the pain to keep one of Thomas's arms clamped at his side.

Newt grabbed the syringe out of Chuck's hand, thrusting it into Thomas' side violently. He stopped thrashing, going completely limp, eyes rolling up into the back of his head. Ada released him, head swimming, and watched as Minho and Frypan leant beside him.

"What do we do with him?" Frypan asked.

Ada opened her mouth to tell him to take him to the med hut, but then realised that the building was nothing more than charred rubble and memories. Gally took a step forward, looking down at Thomas impassively. "Put him in the slammers."

Ada looked over her shoulder at them, impressed to see them still standing. One of them had been torn down, the roof ripped off, but the other three looked in relatively stable condition. Newt shook his head. "He's injured, Gally."

"There's nowhere else to put him, and I'm not having him wandering around free when he wakes up. Not after this."

Ada looked up at him helplessly. "What more can he do?"

"Her too." Gally said, glaring at Theresa.

"She's innocent, Gally." Minho protested.

"I don't believe that for one second. Ever since her and Thomas have come up, everything's gone wrong."

Teresa shook her head, staring down at Thomas with a strange expression on her face. "It's okay, I'll stay with him. He shouldn't be alone anyway."

Minho leant down, scooping Thomas up into his arms, and Ada would have laughed at the almost comical image if the world wasn't spinning in front of her. "Fucking idiot," he rolled his eyes, jaw clenched against the strain. "I've got him."

Gally ran a hand over his face, watching them leave with blank eyes. His face was emotionless in a way that alarmed Ada, his entire body rigid. "Newt, Chuck, I want you to go round everyone up... see who's still alive."

"I'm staying here." Newt said stubbornly, still crouched at her side.

Ada lifted a hand to his shoulder, shaking her head. "You're second in command. They need you."

"So do you."

"People need to see a familiar face of leadership." Gally said, his voice softer than before now that Teresa and Thomas were gone. "After what just happened, people are gonna be injured, tired, and scared. It was a massacre, Newt. They need you more than ever."

"He's right." Ada nodded, gingerly getting to her feet. The glade was in ruins, and for the life of her she didn't even know where to start in fixing things. If they could even be fixed at all. The doors were still wide open, even though the Grievers seemed to have departed for now. Part of her was terrified that they would come back and finish the job, but the other part, the part that had died along with Alby, didn't care if they did.

"I'll fix her up." Gally put a hand on Ada's uninjured shoulder, squeezing it comfortingly. "I'm sure there's some medical supplies that survived this." He eyed the remains of the med hut sadly. "Or not."

"Here," Newt reached into his pocket, pulling out a roll of squashed bandages. Ada looked at him curiously as she took them, watching his cheeks turn pink with embarrassment. "I've had them on me ever since you got out of the maze two days ago. Just in case you needed them."

"Well, that's sickeningly adorable." Gally scoffed. "Now go on, scram. I can see people moving."

He was right. Figures were emerging from the treeline, some from the box, all limping heavily or clutching wounds of some form or another. She couldn't see their faces, couldn't tell who was alive and who wasn't, but there were so few of them that her stomach dropped with dread.

Newt reached forward and squeezed Ada's hand before he left, steering Chuck with him with a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"Sit down before you pass out." Gally said gently, guiding her towards one of the logs by the remnants of the fire pit.

Sand had been kicked up everywhere, splattered with blood, and the logs in the centre were strewn haphazardly along the grass. The air was thick with smoke from the fire still blazing steadily to their right. They didn't have anything to put it out with, she realised. They'd simply have to leave it to its path of destruction.

"Are you hurt?" Ada asked as she sat down, scanning him for injuries. He was limping slightly, and there was blood streaked across his side, but he wasn't wincing and he didn't look like he was in pain. The haunted look in his eyes told Ada that it wasn't his blood.

"No, but you clearly are. Jesus, Ada, what the hell happened?" His fingers probed her shoulder, and she let out a hiss of pain as he carefully lowered the straps of her sports bra and tank top, revealing the bloody wound in all its gory.

"Got stabbed by a Griever."

"Yes, I can see that. It sneak up on you or something?"

Ada grimaced as he cut off a small square of fabric to wipe away the excess blood. There wasn't any water to make the process easier, and the dry scrape of the fabric had her head swimming with pain. "Not exactly."

Gally shot her a dry look, lips pursed, and he looked so much like a disapproving father in that moment she wanted to laugh. "You did something stupid, didn't you?"

"It was to save Alby." She said immediately, and then words left her. She had forgotten, for just a moment in the haze of pain and delirium, but the realisation of what had happened crushed into her so hard she lost her breath.

Gally must have seen it on her face, his own eyes filling with tears as he pulled her into a fierce hug. "He's dead, isn't he?" He croaked.

Ada's only reply was a shuttered sob, muffled into his shirt. It felt different, somehow, to when George and Avin had died. Alby had held her hand through both of them, and all the friends they lost in between, and whatever had happened they had dealt with it together. It felt, at times, like he was all she had left, the last shred of life that kept her tethered to the ground.

But he was gone.

No, not gone, dead.

And she felt the loss as if someone had reached into her chest and ripped out her heart, her soul, and crushed it right in front of her.

"I'm so sorry, Ada." Gally whispered into her hair. She couldn't say that she was sorry too, that she knew how much this would ruin Gally, how after Nick and Avin Alby was one of the closest people in his life. Now he had lost all of them, and she knew he felt just as alone as she did in that moment. "I'm gonna kill him," Gally said grimly, pulling away from her. "I'm gonna kill him for what he's done."

It took Ada a second to process exactly what Gally was talking about. "It isn't his fault."

"Isn't it? You heard what Alby said. Thomas did this, they sent him here and now look."

"I know, but-"

"This is our home, Ada! And look at it!" Gally shook his head, eyes shining with tears he refused to let fall. "It's gone."

"And you blame Thomas?"

"Who else is there?"

"This is the fault of the people who put us here, Gally." Ada closed her hand around one of his, squeezing his fingers imploringly. "It's their fault."

"He's one of them. And I won't have him wandering around freely. He needs to go."

"You want to banish him?" Ada laughed in disbelief. "Seriously? Gally, the doors are open, he can just walk right back in."

"They'll close again."

"Oh yeah?" She asked. "When? When the sun sets tomorrow and we climb into our hammocks? When Frypan cooks us dinner in the kitchen and we go on with our lives? Gally, what happened tonight changes everything. Those doors aren't closing, and the Grievers are just gonna keep coming back until everyone here is dead."

Gally flung the bandages to the ground, leaning away from her, eyes sharp. "So what do you suggest we do? We just curl up and accept that we're going to die?"

Ada tried to tamp down the part of her that wanted to say yes, the part that was just so tired of running, the part that had lost too much. He didn't need that right now, not when she saw straight through the mask of harsh indifference he wore so proudly to see the absolute terror lurking underneath. "We can escape. We can leave."

"We can't make it past them." Gally shook his head. "Look at you, Ada, you're practically falling apart. Half of us have never even been in the maze, we'd never even seen a Griever before tonight. We go in there, we don't make it out the other side. If we stay here, we can rebuild. We can have a life here. Just like before."

"Except it won't be like before, will it?" Ada finished off bandaging her wounds, watching the blood seep through the white easily. The sight made her nauseous. "We can't go back, Gally. We can't just go back to the way things used to be."

"We can try."

Ada shook her head, knowing exactly what that stubborn expression on his face meant. He wasn't changing his mind, and he wasn't going to listen to reason. Because he wasn't wrong, but he wasn't right either. They couldn't go back, but going forward was a long and weary road she wasn't even sure she was ready to travel.

She watched him stand, looking every bit the stubborn and frightened boy he had been the first time she had ever met him, and let him leave.

—

There was more light coming in through the canopy of trees surrounding the deadheads than usual. The fire had spread to the trees, burning the leaves and the wood until it had eventually dwindled and died as the sun rose, leaving billowing plumes of black smoke trailing into the air.

Charred leaves crunched underfoot as Ada made her way deeper into the forest, into the shelter of the trees the Grievers and flames had left untouched. It was so quiet now, no noise other than her own breathing and the twigs snapping beneath her feet. She was thankful for it, in a way. For the quiet, the solitude.

Newt and Chuck had returned barely ten minutes after Gally had left, their faces tight and grim. Chuck was shaking, face wet with tears, and Ada had drawn him into her arms without question. "How many?" She asked Newt, and he shook his head sadly.

"Thirty one."

Ada's heart had damn near stopped in her chest.

Thirty one people had been killed, massacred. There had been nearly sixty of them to begin with, which meant that their number had decreased by half.

It didn't feel real. It felt like a cruel joke, like a nightmare she would wake up from at any moment. As the canopy of trees thickened above her, and her feet carried her down that well trodden path, Ada let the numbness take over. The trees around her were just smoke, the bodies in the ground were flowers, the blood staining the bark was wine. It wasn't real. It wasn't.

She reached the graves, desperate to sit on that one patch of soil between George and Avin, to let some fickle semblance of normality wash over her, but she stopped just at the entrance to the deadheads. Something inside her chest cracked and withered.

The graves she had taken such care in making were destroyed.

The crosses had been torn to shreds, George's name split right down the middle, wooden splinters strewn haphazardly on the upturned dirt. Blood splattered the soil, chunks were missing from the trees, and where before she could see the individual outlines of each grave now they were all blurred into one scene of chaos and destruction.

"No," Ada whispered, dropping to her knees in front of them. "No, no." Her hands scrambled in the dirt to grab onto the nearest cross, wiping the excess soil and grime off of Carson's name.

Her hands were shaking, she couldn't stop them as she fitted the pieces back together, desperately trying to tie off the ends with the ivy and moss that had been ripped from the walls. She had been there enough to know exactly where each marker went, exactly which patch of soil belonged to who. She wasn't sure when she started crying, but she could feel the wet of tears on her cheeks, see the droplets of water splash down onto the ground.

She wasn't sure when Newt came to join her, wasn't sure how long she had been there when he did. All she knew was that she blinked and he was kneeling across from her, straightening out Avin's cross and smoothing out the dirt on Nick's grave. She blinked up at him, at a loss for words, but he didn't speak as they worked in silence. The sun climbed higher in the sky, a dazzling array of pinks and oranges, until the last remnants of the night were washed away in swaths of golden light.

The graves weren't quite what they used to be. There were splits in the wood where there weren't before, chunks missing. The grass was reduced to churned mud, but it was packed on tightly. It was hardly the tribute that it used to be, that they deserved, but as Ada sat there in the mood, hands shaking and body numb, she knew that it was good enough.

Newt slowly sat down beside her, and it was only when he held it out to her did she realise that he had something in his hands. Two thick slabs of wood, branches from the nearby tree that had fallen over, crossed over each other and held together with vine. Across the centre he had carved one word.

Alby

"Put him to rest with his friends." He said quietly.

A broken sob left her as she took the cross, slotting it into the ground beside Luke's. There wasn't a grave, there wasn't a body, she couldn't give him the burial he deserved, but this? This she could do. Ada pressed her lips to the tips of her fingers and ran them over the lettering of his name, letting herself feel all that grief and anger and sorrow for just a moment before she shoved it away again, shielding herself behind that careful numbness.

"I spoke to Minho." Newt said quietly when she returned to his side, her leg pressed against his, pinkie fingers tangling without thought. "The storage sheds were destroyed in the attack. Decimated, actually. We lost everything. All the food, the water. There's barely anything left."

Ada let the words sink in. "She's the last one, ever." She said quietly.

"What?"

"That's what they said. She's the last one ever. Teresa. She was the last greenie, the last shipment, the last everything. Our supplies aren't getting replenished. We're not getting anything else sent up. We're on our own."

Newt ran a hand over his face, long fingers catching on his lip. "Then let's leave. Let's escape."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. We'll take everyone in, we'll fight them off, we'll make it out."

"We'll die."

"We'll die anyway." It was the finality in his voice that really shook her. When she looked up at him, Ada was startled to see the grim determination written on his face. "I'd rather it be on my terms."

Now that she already knew about him. Ada looked back at the graves, at the space where thirty one bodies would be buried if they had the time, the ability. They had lost so much to this place already. She had lost so much. Losing herself seemed almost inevitable.

She knew this would be the last time she was at the graves. Knew that she wasn't coming back.

The Grievers would return upon nightfall, and she was smart enough to know she wasn't making it through another night. There were only twenty four of them left. They would last two days, at the most. And if the Grievers didn't kill them, the starvation would. So she wouldn't be coming here again. Either she'd be dead, or she'd be free.

Perhaps they were the same thing.

She wouldn't even be buried beside them. Her body would lay discarded on the grass somewhere, left to rot and become one with the earth, with no one left alive to bury her. Or her body would be lost to the maze, claimed by the place she had spent so long running, her friends helpless to do anything but watch. Her eyes caught on Alby's grave. He wasn't buried here either. Perhaps someone would put her name on a slab of wood somewhere, a small shred of memory that would be lost to time.

Memory. They were all dead. She didn't have any pictures of them, any records. The only proof of their existence were the graves in front of her and the names on the wall. If she left the glade, they would be gone. They would exist only in her memory, and memory was a fickle thing.

"Ada," Newt ran his thumb over her knuckle. "You know as well as I do that staying here is impossible. Not now."

"Okay," she nodded. "We wait for Thomas to wake up. Then we get out."

"Then we get out." Newt stood up slowly, wavering on his bad leg, and extended a hand out to her. "Come on, let's head back before Minho sends a search party."

Ada stared down at the graves for one last time, a sad smile on her face as she got to her feet. "Goodbye," she whispered, the words just for them and her. So final. So heavy. When Newt led her away from the graveyard with his hand still in hers, she didn't fight it, and followed him willingly.

—

They didn't speak a word until they reached the edge of the forest and the glade crept into view. It was a depressing sight. She could just make out Gally and two others by the far wall, crossing out names. They had gathered the dead into some semblance of rows, likely to check who was breathing and who wasn't, but she knew some people were missing. Some had been dragged into the maze and finished off there, and for others there simply wasn't enough left of them to be gathered.

"Anyone missing is presumed dead." Newt said quietly, breaking the silence. He stopped walking, just before the treeline, and Ada slowed to a halt beside him. "Their names are being crossed off the wall."

"It doesn't feel like home anymore." She said, surprising herself, but it was true. When she looked at the glade she didn't see the home she had built with her family. She saw a warzone. It was a stark reminder that the glade had always been a prison, regardless of how used to it she had gotten.

"I'm not sure it ever really did." Newt shook his head and turned to look at her. There was something so open and vulnerable in his eyes that it took her breath away. "It was never the glade that felt like home to me." Newt took a step towards her, reaching for her other hand. She let him take it, his slender fingers tangling with hers.

"What was it then?"

Newt lifted one hand, fingers running gently against her cheek, as if he were afraid he would break her if he touched her. "I think it's about time we had that talk."

Ada couldn't help but laugh in disbelief. "You wanna do that now?"

But Newt was serious, looking down at her with his lips parted slightly. He looked beautiful in the low light, the rising sun catching on his gold hair. His skin was streaked with dirt and blood, his hair tousled and sticking up in every direction, and his eyes were so soft and unguarded. Something warm settled in her chest.

"Ada, I haven't wanted to say this for, well, for a while now. I was terrified to ruin us, ruin this. Your friendship is everything to me, and the last thing I want to do is lose that."

"You won't." She said stubbornly. "Nothing you say could make me walk away from you. Not now."

"I can't not tell you." He shook his head. "Not now. I don't wanna die tomorrow without you knowing that I..." he trailed off, fingers drifting from her cheek to play with the strands of hair that had fallen loose around her face. "Without you knowing how I feel about you."

Ada's heart jumped to her throat. "You're not gonna die tomorrow. I won't let it happen."

"I can't run," Newt shook his head. "Not for long. My damn leg won't let me. I'll be slow, and that's a death sentence. Don't argue," he said softly when she opened her mouth to protest. "It's true, we both know it. But if I die tomorrow then you need to know." His voice cracked. "I can't have you not know."

"Know what?"

He took another step closer until she had to tilt her head back to look up at him, her chest brushing against his with every breath. "I have never felt about anyone the way I feel about you. You are everything to me, everything. You're the reason I get up in the morning, the reason that I smile, the reason I have hope to keep going. You gave me back something I hadn't even known I'd lost until it was too late, and there will never be enough words to tell you how much that means to me. How much you mean to me."

Ada lifted her hand, cupping his jaw, and ran her fingers over the smooth skin there.

Newt's voice was trembling as he looked down at her, his eyes glistening. "I don't want to fathom a life without you in it. If I lost you, I'd lose myself. And I wouldn't come back from it this time. The gladers may be my family, but you? You're my home. I go where you go. I don't want to spend another day without you by my side. I want you, and if we make it out of this then I want to be with you. In whatever way you'll have me."

All she could do was nod, words trapped in her throat.

"Ada, I'm falling in love with you. And I can't stop it. I don't want to stop it."

Ada's lips parted in shock, and she waited for the panic to set in, the dread that she expected. It never came. Instead, something similar to peace washed over her in a way that she hadn't experienced in a long time, and she felt light, as if she could float away and his hands on her skin were the only thing keeping her tethered.

"I think I'm falling in love with you too." She said simply. The words were out before she could stop them, but she didn't regret them. She knew the second they left her lips that they were the truest thing she would ever say.

Newt's shoulders sagged in relief, tears springing to his eyes. Both hands came up to cup her cheeks, cradling her face. His forehead pressed against hers, a whisper of a touch. "You have no idea just how much I care about you." His nose slid against hers, fingers pressing carefully into her skin. "My girl."

Ada couldn't stop herself from kissing him if she tried, and as she lifted herself onto her tiptoes to press her lips against his she didn't regret it one bit. His lips were chapped, rough, and the pressure was delicious as he exhaled against her mouth, hand drifting to the back of her head to fist in her hair. It was soft, slow, and everything their other kisses weren't. This wasn't a drunken mess, or born from jealousy and rage. This wasn't about tasting what they couldn't have before being forced to pull away again.

This was the start of something new, something happy, and as Ada tangled her fingers in his hair and pressed herself closer to him she knew that regardless of what happened when they tried to escape the maze, this moment, with him, was everything.