Night Fifty Six

All she could feel was cold.

It pressed in on her from all sides, lodging itself in her throat, choking her until she could hardly breathe. Without the light from the glade, the corridors of the maze were submerged in total darkness, and it was only when her eyes had adjusted that she could make out the ivy on the walls and George's slumped form knelt on the ground in front of her.

He was silent, but she could see the glistening of tears on his cheeks. The fact that he wasn't saying anything was what alarmed her. Loud George was expected, his laughter and ringing voice often a source of what limited happiness there was in the glade.

But a silent George? It scared her. Silent George was unpredictable. Silent George was shut away completely from what made him himself. Silent George was lonely, scared, helpless.

"We're dead." He said quietly, his voice thick with tears. Ada's breath hitched at his resigned tone, as if he had simply accepted death as an inevitable, inescapable. "We're dead."

Ada's fingers fluttered anxiously at her side, and she reached up to her throat to tug at the golden chain that had taken its place there ever since Luke's death. She fought down the panic clawing at her chest, and inhaled deeply.

They could survive this. They could. They just had to be smart.

"Okay... okay, no we can do this. We can do this, we just need to think it through." Ada began to pace in front of the closed doors, her body a live wire of energy that completely contrasted George's motionless figure. "We need to stay close to the doors, don't go into the outer circle, make it easier on ourselves to make it back."

Ada's eyes tracked the corridor, peering into the shadows and gulping. She couldn't see anything. "George, c'mon, get up." She kicked his leg. "I need you to get up. We gotta find somewhere to hide."

"Hide?" George finally lifted his head, and stared at her with incredulous eyes. "Hide?! Take a look around, Ada! There's nowhere to hide."

"We just need to keep moving then. If we stay in one spot for too long we're doomed." She grabbed George by the back of his hoodie, making sure to avoid touching his skin, and yanked him to his feet. "We saw one of those weird creature things," a shudder splintered through her at the memory of it, "we know we need to avoid section one. That's where it was last."

"And who's to say it's still there, huh?" George crossed his arms. "How the hell do we know that it isn't on its way to us right now?"

"I don't plan on waiting around to find out, you jackass, so would you just move?"

Adrenaline was beginning to spark in her veins, smoothing out the aching in her muscles and the tiredness threatening to creep in. It wrapped itself around her, warming her from the inside out. Not waiting to see if George was following her, she took off down the main corridor at a jog.

"Fucking hell, Ada." George sighed before following her, a steady presence at her side.

The sound of stone grinding on stone was a constant echo as the maze shifted around them, corridors closing and opening in front of them as they weaved their way through the labyrinth. The walls above them were a constant shadowy menace, their impossible height blocking out any shred of light that would have come from the stars. The moon wasn't visible, not yet, but she knew there were stars, thousands of glowing pinpricks splattered across the sky.

She couldn't see them now.

"Ada, where are we going?" George asked wearily, his voice barely more than a whisper. They were careful to keep their footfalls light so as to not draw attention from one of those monsters. Barely the glimpse of its silhouette was enough to leave Ada's knees shaking — she couldn't imagine what coming face to face with one would be like.

"Keep your eyes out for any walls that have lots of ivy on them."

"O-Kay... why?"

"Because it's very hard to hide when the walls are just plain stone, that's why." Finally, her eyes landed on the wall at the far end of the corridor they were in; the entire thing was covered in ivy, the long vines pooled at the ground beneath it in clumps. It smothered the entire surface of the wall, thick and ropey, until barely any grey could be seen.

"I don't even wanna think about what creepy crawleys could be in there." George winced.

Before she could so much as open her mouth to answer, she heard something that had her stomach dropping down to her feet. That steady click whirr, click whirr, followed by an unholy screech and the chitter of a low grumbling growl catching in something's throat.

George started shaking beside her, his entire body vibrating with sheer terror as his eyes cut to the fork to their left, where the sound was undeniably coming from.

It was getting closer.

"Oh shit." Ada hissed, grabbing George by the sleeve. When he looked down at her with fear-blown eyes, she lifted one finger to her lips, signalling for them to be quiet. Walking on the pads of her feet so her footsteps were barely more than a whisper, she dragged George over to the ivy, frantically studying the bottom of the wall where the ivy was clumped.

"Ada..." George hissed, head twisted to look back at the corridor where yet another click whirr, click whirr was starting to echo, his face bleached of any colour and his eyes impossibly wide. "Ada please..."

Her own hands were shaking when she pointed at the base of the wall. "There." As the ivy fell and clumped at their feet, there was an undeniable gap left between the greenery and the wall. It would be a tight fit, a very tight fit, but if they squeezed themselves against the wall and made sure that they were covered...

"Get under the ivy." She demanded, lunging for the greenery and lifting up the ropes.

"What?"

"Fucking hell, George, hide!"

Ada scrambled under the trails, pressing her back against the wall and making herself as small as physically possible before draping the ivy over herself. It was pitch black now, she couldn't see a thing, but if she moved her head just right she could just see through a small gap to see George still standing there, feet glued to the ground.

Click, whirr. Click whirr.

"George I swear to fucking God-"

Snapping out of it, George scrambled in beside her, until both were laying as flat as possible with their heads beside each other and their feet in opposite directions. The curls on his head pressed against her forehead, and she could hear his trembling breath rattling in her right ear. "You're shucking crazy, Ada."

She opened her mouth to respond, but then it appeared.

At first all she could see was its legs. Six of them, long, curving, and metal — mechanical appendages that stuck out of its body and clashed against the ground with every thundering step it took. Their edges glinted wickedly in the limited light, sharp and deadly, flashing with the promise of murder. When its body came into view, Ada found herself sinking as far back into the wall as humanly possible, her breath lodging itself in her throat.

Bulbous and misshapen, it's body seemed to belong like something out of a nightmare. Something that couldn't possibly be here in front of her, real, stalking towards them. Its flesh — if it could be called that — was a rotten looking green, chunks torn out of it exposing black muscle and sludge. Its skin seemed to ripple as it moved, thin ropes of slime dripping away and splashing onto the floor below them. Thin wisps of hair protruded from its back, some longer and sharper than others, almost like spikes.

Its head, barely a boulder on its apparent shoulders, consisted of little more than a pair of flashing beady eyes, hardly slits on the sides of its skull. They were blank, milky almost, entirely hard and emotionless. Whatever these creatures were, they weren't built for compassion. They were monsters, half beast half machine, programmed to slaughter anything it's in path. Its mouth was gaping and lined with rows upon rows of dagger-like teeth, each a horrible greyish yellow that leaked drool and mucus onto the stone at its feet.

When it's tail came into view, Ada found herself feeling faint. Whatever this monster was, it looked like it was half scorpion, for its tail was easily twice the length of its body and made up of the same slimy muscle and rotted flesh, but with chunks of it replaced by machinery. Long, dagger like spikes protruded from it at uneven intervals, each deadly sharp and glinting. But it was what was at the end of the tail that had Ada's heart hammering in her chest. It looked like a claw, like one you would find in the claw machines at arcades, a huge metal grabber easily twice the side of her head. The strength in the metal was prominent even from there; it could crush her bones to dust in a heartbeat.

It was easily thrice the size of Ada when she was standing, but when she was lying on the floor like she was, the beast seemed to be the size of the walls that surrounded them.

She knew it then without a doubt. This creature had killed Luke.

George's breathing picked up beside her, and Ada moved her hand slightly to nudge his arm, quickly retracting it. "Shhh," she whispered.

Click, whirr. Click, whirr.

The creature came closer and closer, mechanical legs precise as they stabbed at the stone with each step. Ada found herself holding her breath, convinced that even the slightest sound would catch the attention of this monstrosity. With the creature that close, the sounds it was making were so loud they rattled through her bones, and when it let out another earth-shattering shriek she felt the stone beneath her vibrating with the force of it.

It got so goddamn close all she could see were its legs, slamming down one terrifying step at a time. This close to the ivy, she could make out the slime dotting the metal, and the rusted shape of letters engraved on the creature's leg.

W.I.C.K.E.D

With another ground shaking roar of rage, the creature rounded the corner, vanishing from sight. Eventually, the click, whirr, click, whirr of its steps faded away, until only the vague sound of the walls changing and shifting around them was the only thing to be heard.

A single tear fell down Ada's cheek.

"Oh my god. Oh my god." George shifted to bury his face in his hands, shoulders shaking violently. "I'm going to throw up."

Ada grimaced. "Please don't."

There was a heavy moment of silence as Ada pressed her shaking hand to her chest, feeling the hammering of her heart beneath her fingers, just to remind herself that she was alive and breathing and oh holy shit they lived through that. They made it.

George lifted his hand and moved the ivy aside, his body shuffling as if to leave. Ada's hand clamped down on his hood, keeping him in place. "What are you doing?" She hissed, casting her eyes back to the gap in the ivy and scanning the corridors on either side of them.

"It's gone." George shrugged. "And if you think I'm staying here for another second waiting for it to come back-"

"We don't know that it's gone." Ada argued, shaking her head. Her copper hair had mostly come undone from its knot on the back of her, and the sweat-soaked strands tickled her cheek and the back of her neck. "What if there's more of them? We're at least hidden here."

"So we should, what, wait it out?" George scoffed. "No thank you. I ain't willing to go through that heart attack again any time soon." With that, he crawled out of his hiding place, standing upright and dusting off his hands on his thighs. "Besides, it's probably better if we keep running and-"

The monster slammed down on top of George, knocking him to the ground.

Ada screamed, but the sound was lost over the frantic shrieks of the creature and the clicking of its metallic appendages. It had been above them the entire time. It knew they were there, and it was waiting for them, she realised with a sickening feeling.

It was hunting them.

George let out a cry of alarm and screamed in pain as the creature brought a metal limb down, the end sharp as a blade and piercing straight through George's shoulder, pinning him to the ground.

"George!"

Ada scrambled out from the ivy, hands darting to her belt where the kitchen knife and dagger were stored, but the small blades were minuscule compared to the sheer might that was the creature in front of them. George was barely visible where he was pinned beneath its bulk, his screaming form thrashing in agony as the creature let out a bellow of hunger and gnashed its needle-like teeth, lunging straight for George's throat.

Ada grabbed the hilt of her dagger and hurled it at the creature, the blade sinking into the side of its neck with a sickening squelch, distracting the creature long enough for Ada to reach for some of the ropes of ivy, using her kitchen knife to slice through them until eventually she was left with three thick ropes. The creature's beady eyes, blazing with animalistic fury, locked onto her.

"Oh holy shit." She whimpered, and the creature let out a hiss of pure rage that skittered across her skin before lifting its front legs, allowing George to drag his way free, leaving a bloody trail behind him on the stone. The monster raised a metal appendage, as if aiming to stab her with the pointed end of it, and Ada lifted the rope and flung one end as hard as she could. The end of it wrapped around the metal leg, tangling itself in the wires and gaps available, and when she pulled with all her might the creature misbalanced enough to send it crashing into the wall, where it let out a furious shriek of anger.

Ada, not wasting a second, lunged towards where her blood and slime soaked dagger lay on the floor and grasped the blade before grabbing George under his arm, ignoring the nausea and panic rising in her when she touched him. Trivial things like her own discomfort didn't matter now, not when the monster was righting itself and was turning to them with the promise of murder in every line of its massive body.

"Run!"

They took off running at breakneck speed, Ada's chest heaving with exertion and cold sweat sticking to her back. She could hear the furious bellows and clicking of the man-made monster, heard the responding cries from other monsters elsewhere in the maze, and all she could do was run and not look back; it disentangled itself from the ivy and began hurtling after them. She could hear its metallic legs slamming into the stone, closer and closer and closer.

George was grey, his entire face ashy, one hand clamped tightly on his shoulder to slow the steady flow of the blood that was gushing through his fingers. Ada knew with startling clarity that if they didn't stop soon and wrap it, he was going to bleed out.

She heard it before she felt it. The steady swoosh of metal cutting through air, heard the wind around her shift. The metal claw attached to the end of the grievers tail grabbed at her, its four ends wrapping tightly around her torso. The sharp edges cut into her skin, and she let out a scream of pain as they tightened before her feet left the ground.

Her dagger clattered to the floor, and she could vaguely hear George screaming her name as she was flung backwards, and then there was nothingness, no metal claws tethering her to the earth and she was falling, crashing through the air, the oxygen trapped in her throat. She didn't even have the chance to scream.

Her body collided with the left hand wall with a sickening crack, and she felt something wet and warm dribble down her temple as the world went white for a second. She could hear clicking and whirring thundering towards her, hear the furious screech of a creature aiming to kill, and for a moment there that was it.

She was going to die.

She knew it, she could feel it. So she closed her eyes, and waited for the killing blow.

It never came.

Instead, a cry of determination and pure rage joined the fray, and when Ada peeled open her eyes she saw George, her fallen dagger in hand, sprinting towards the beast. Before it could so much as touch her, George was leaping onto its back, dagger slashing and stabbing at anything it could reach. The monster screeched and clicked furiously, the loudness of its anger echoing across the walls and magnifying the sound until it was all she could hear.

It thrashed and bucked, its tail writhing and spinning, and Ada could do nothing but scramble to her feet as George was flung off by one of the metal limbs. Something jabbed into his side, and he let out a grunt of pain as he went skidding across the stone.

The creature, whatever it was, was so blinded by pain and fury that it could do nothing but thrash and buck, as if trying to dislodge the dagger in its side.

"What the fuck do we do?!" George yelled over the racket, and Ada's hands fluttered with panic as she cast her eyes around the corridors on either side of them, looking for any sign of movement, and kind of salvation, and-

"There!" She pointed to the left of them, where one of the walls was sliding shut. "We can lose it in there!"

Without waiting another second, George grabbed her sleeve and took off running, towards the gap that was growing smaller and smaller. The monster, seeming to catch on that its prey was escaping, let out a high pitched bellow of fury before following, its spider-like legs scuttling across the walls and propelling it forwards.

They reached the wall, and George squeezed through first, his breath coming in pained grunts. Ada scrambled to follow him, pressing herself through the narrow gap, turning on her side to fit through. A huff of hot, stale air blasted across the back of her neck as the creature tried to follow, and then they were through, tumbling onto the floor of the deserted corridor as the wall sealed shut behind them, locking the creature on the other side.

There was a moment of silence as Ada leant against the wall, panting, one hand clutching at the stitch in her side. "We did it." She let out a breathless laugh. "Holy shit, George, we did it." Raising her head to smile at him, she froze.

George was slumped against the wall opposite her, eyes slitted and face ashen. He let out what she was sure was meant to be a relieved smile, but a pained grimace twisted his lips instead. "Heh... yeah..."

"George-" Ada scrambled over to him, eyes wide. "George — oh shit."

"I'm sure it's not argh —" he hissed out a cry of pain as Ada clamped her hand over the wound on his shoulder. "— that bad."

Ada winced at the sheer amount of blood he was losing. His shirt was wet with it, plastered to his body, once white and now a deep crimson that splashed across his torso. She couldn't actually see the wound itself, not with his shirt on, so she grabbed at the bottom of it with her hands and tugged it up. "Take it off."

"What?"

"Your shirt, I need you to take it off." Ada demanded, sitting back on her haunches as George let out a pained chuckle and began to pull up the ruined shirt.

"Oh, Ada." He laughed. "If you wanted to see me shirtless you should have just asked. Didn't need to trap me in a deadly maze to do it."

Ada rolled her eyes, but couldn't fight the smile tugging at her lips. "Only you could make light of this." She helped him lift the shirt over his shoulders and then tossed it to the side, hissing out air through her teeth as the jagged slash in his shoulder became visible. It was massive, stretching from the base of his neck down to just above his right pectoral, easily three inches wide, the skin red and inflamed, blood pulsing from the wound in a steady gush.

Ada gagged, hands fluttering above his skin. Even the warmth of it from there was enough to make her queasy. George smiled at her reassuringly. "It's okay, ya know?"

"What is?"

"I know you don't like touching people. Or people touching you. Why is that, by the way?"

Ada was silent for a moment before she shrugged. "I don't know. If there's a reason behind it, I can't remember it. I just know the feeling of someone touching me, of their skin against mine, makes me want to be sick. It makes me want to claw out of my own skin and disappear from everything. I've never felt anything worse, and I don't know why."

George let out a pained groan as he shuffled into a more upright position, hands clenched into fists. The muscles in his stomach shifted as he moved, and his hair clung to his forehead with sweat and dirt. "You don't have to... do this..."

His eyes fluttered, and Ada shoved down the nausea threatening to claw its way out of her stomach and clamped her hands down on the wound, putting as much pressure as she was capable of. She gagged, eyes flashing, and George smiled at her sadly.

"You're a good friend, Ada."

She shook her head. "No I'm not. A good friend wouldn't have gotten you trapped here like this."

"You saved my life." He shrugged, and then immediately regretted it. "Shit that hurts."

"Just be glad Avin isn't here to hear the swearing."

There was a heavy beat of silence as Ada shrugged off her jacket, wadding the fabric into a ball and pressing it tight against his shoulder. A single tear slid down George's cheek. "Do you think we'll see them again?"

"Who?" She asked.

"Avin, and Alby. And the new shanks, I suppose, but I don't know them well enough to miss them." He smiled at her affectionately, reaching up a shaking, blood soaked hand to tug at a strand of hair that had fallen in front of her face. "You three are the only family I can remember having. Haven't really told you that before. Probably should have."

Ada felt a lump growing in her throat as tears burned her eyes. She fought them back. Seeing her cry would make George think he wasn't going to make it, and damnit he was. He had to. Because he was her family too. "You're gonna be just fine, George. And you're gonna be able to tell them yourself. I promise you."

George's eyes fluttered. "Don't make promises you can't keep, Ada. It never ends well for anyone."

Ada hesitated a moment before reaching up and smoothing the hair out of his eyes. "Sleep, George. I'll be right here when you wake up."

George's eyes fluttered closed, his head slumping back against the wall, and Ada took the time to study his face properly for the first time since they had gotten there. There was a light dusting of freckles splattered across his nose. They reminded her of the stars she could see from the glade. Barely there pinpricks, only noticeable if you were close. There was a tiny scar on his left cheekbone, a small slash of white against his otherwise tanned skin. She wondered how he got it. If he even knew how he got it.

The maze was almost silent now, eerily so. There was the occasional rumble of stone sliding across stone, the occasional screech somewhere off in the distance of a monster prowling for human flesh, but silence was her main companion. They seemed to have found themselves in a more isolated section of the maze. She couldn't pretend to know where they were or where they were going, but she knew roughly in which direction they had come from. If they followed that back when the sky got a little lighter then surely they'd find their way back to the glade.

Her jacket was ruined now, blood drenched and sopping in her hands, but it was doing its job and stopping the bleeding. She rearranged it so that it was wrapped around his shoulder, covering both the gash on his front and the exit wound on his upper back. Taking his discarded shirt, Ada used her dagger to slice it into strips, gritting her teeth and using them to secure the jacket to his shoulder to apply constant pressure and stop the bleeding.

It was only when she was done and she had wiped away most of the blood on his chest that she finally allowed herself to give in to the nausea, turning to the side and throwing up the contents of her stomach, her body trembling violently. She pressed a fist against her stomach and heaved, black dots appearing in her vision. That was the longest she had stomached skin on skin contact since she had arrived in the glade.

The sky was fully dark now, pitch black, and tiredness weighed down her muscles, but she didn't dare to sleep. Didn't dare to so much as breathe too loudly through fear of alerting one of those monsters. They may have escaped one once, but she knew damn well she didn't have it in her to do it again. And George? It was a miracle he was still breathing as it was. She knew damn well if they were to come across another creature he wasn't going to walk away breathing.

She lost track of the hours she sat on that floor for, eyes staring at the wall in front of her, tensing at every sound, every shuffle. Every time she felt her eyes start to droop, she'd hear the mechanical screech of the monster in her mind and her eyes would snap open, all too aware that she and George were more vulnerable than had been in their entire lives, however long that was. At any moment something could come along and kill them.

There was a clump of vines hanging down from the wall, and when she arranged them just right they just about hid her and George from view if anything were to walk past. They were crouched in a dead end hallway, a small branch off what looked like a main corridor. Logically speaking there was no reason for one of those monsters to come down there. As the hours passed, the ever present click whirr, click whirr grew both fainter and louder, and three different creatures stalked its way down the main corridor beside them at different intervals. Each time one of them passed, her heart had stopped in her chest and she had pressed herself as far back against the wall as physically possible, turning George around, pressing his body against the wall as much as she could stomach.

Only one of them had paused, and Ada's heart had plummeted as it waited just at the mouth of the corridor they were in, peering at the ivy that cloaked them, but it moved on, and all was well.

Eventually, exhaustion started to weigh in, and she collapsed back against the wall and turned her face back towards George. He was still motionless, completely out of it, but the steady rise and fall of his naked chest reassured her that he was still alive. She let her eyes track the expanse of smooth skin for a moment, admiring the ridges of his stomach and the rich tone of his skin, before something on his side caught her eye.

There, inches above the waistband of his trousers, barely the size of the nail on her pinkie finger, was a small hole. It was as if something had injected him and taken a small chunk of skin with it, the perfectly round puncture an alarming shade of red. It wasn't bleeding, but it was clearly aggravated.

Frowning, she drew closer, lowering her head to stare at the pinprick of a wound, trying to figure out where it could have come from. Before she could get too close, however, a sleepy voice from above her made her jump. "Come now Ada, I know I'm gorgeous but there's no need to stare."

Blushing furiously, Ada drew back, lips pressed into a thin line. George was smirking at her, but his face was pale and his eyes were pained. "Hey, you." She dropped her stern look and smiled. "How you feeling?"

"Been better." He shuffled into a sitting position, pressing his head back against the stone and wincing. "Damned bastard really took a chunk out of me."

"Yeah." Ada glanced up at the sky, noting that it was slightly lighter than it had been half an hour ago. "Not long now, I don't think. Sky's getting lighter."

"How long have we been in here?"

"Long enough. I think it's nearly morning." She responded, settling against the wall beside him, confident that there was nothing more she could do than continue waiting. "Not to jinx it, but I think we might have actually done it."

"Don't celebrate yet." George muttered. "Those blasted things are still out there. And I still have another shoulder for them to maim."

Ada let out a dry chuckle. "That's true enough. C'mon, we should start heading back. Can you walk?"

George nodded his assent as grunted as he struggled to his feet, one hand immediately coming up to grasp at his shoulder to keep her jacket in place over his wound. He stumbled slightly, left leg buckling under his weight, and Ada hesitated only a moment before offering her his arm. George took one look at her slightly green face and snorted. "I'm fine, Ada. You can keep the contents of your lunch firmly in your stomach."

Ada grimaced. "Too late for that."

Slowly, oh so slowly, they made their way through the maze, wincing at every sound and every shuffle from the neighbouring corridors, not knowing which would bring death and which would bring freedom. The walls had completely stopped moving, and the sky had grown to be a dusky purple with promising hints of pink and pale blue that promised daylight within the hour.

With each step she took, her ribs protested angrily, and when she rolled up her shirt slightly to examine them the skin was a mottled purple and green from where the creature had grabbed her.

George stumbled again, hand slamming into the wall to keep himself upright, and Ada winced. She wished she could have been more use to him. Wished she could use her body to support his, sling his arm over her shoulder and support him back to the glade, but her entire body felt like one giant bruise and the thought of any more skin on skin contact had her flesh heating uncomfortably and bile stirring in her empty stomach.

The creatures, whatever they were, seemed to have retreated into their homes for the morning.

"Are we nearly there?" George asked for the third time; his skin was ashen and his lips pressed into a thin line.

"Closer than you think." Ada grinned. They rounded the corner, and there, right there, were the doors to the glade.

They were open.