Day Thirty

"Where the hell are we?"

"And why are we here?"

"And who are you guys?"

"Are those walls?"

"Why don't I know who I am, oh my god-"

"Did nobody hear me when I asked about those giant ass walls?!"

"Can one of you guys please just answer me?!"

"Walls!"

Ada groaned and shoved her head further into her hands, fingers clamped in her ears. Alby, who was sat beside her on the wooden log in front of the fire, let out a heaving sigh before tilting his head back to stare up at the dark sky, as if begging a God that wasn't there for mercy. "If these shanks don't shut the hell up," Ada muttered, "I'm going to trap them in the maze overnight."

Alby barked out a grudging laugh. "I know they're curious, but good lord they just don't shut up."

"They've been asking questions for three goddamn hours now."

Ada cast her eyes over to the other side of the campfire, where a wide-eyed George was holding his hands up in surrender as one of the newbies paced in front of him, mouth moving a mile a minute and hands gesturing at the walls frantically. Her eyes fell on Avin, sat beside George, staring down at the grass in front of him and looking traumatised as the remaining three boys surrounded him.

"Look at Avin." Ada chuckled, jerking her head towards where the poor boy was being hounded with questions. "Poor sod looks like he's having war flashbacks."

"Yikes." Alby winced. "Wouldn't want to be in his place right now."

Avin, as if sensing them talking about him, lifted his eyes from the ground and shot them a pleading look. Help me, he mouthed, and Ada made quick work of pretending as if she hadn't seen.

This grass is a nice shade of green.

Alby elbowed her in the ribs, jerking his head rapidly at something. "Oh no oh no oh no." One of the newbies was walking towards them, grey eyes fixed determinedly on her.

"Shit," Ada tensed up, "Abort mission, abort mission-"

Before they could scrabble to their feet and make a hasty getaway, the newbie stopped in front of them. Cropped brown hair was buzzed close to his scalp, and his stormy eyes were cold and unfeeling. His jaw, too sharp and angular for his face, was clenched.

"You." He demanded, stopping in front of Ada. She blinked thrice up at him. "Why are you the only girl here?"

Alby tensed beside her, frowning, before Ada let out a laugh. "Well aren't you a real charmer. You got your name back yet, newbie?"

"Nick." He said shortly.

"Right, Nick." Ada shuffled her boot in the grass and rose an eyebrow at him. "I'd say it was a pleasure to meet you but considering the greeting I just got that would be a lie."

"You don't need to be a bitch just because I'm actually demanding answers out of you. It's a bit suspicious, don't you think? Group full of boys and one girl? How the hell do I know that you weren't one of the people who wiped our memories and put us here? Maybe you're here as a spy?"

"Mainly because if that was the case I'd be safely on the other end of those cameras, decidedly less traumatised, and not here having this delightful conversation with you."

Nick's face reddened with anger, but before he could say anything else Alby was on his feet, crossing his massive arms over his chest. "Listen here, shank, we can't answer questions we don't know the answers to ourselves. I'm pretty sure George gave you the rundown earlier, that's it. No more questions."

"Like hell there's no more questions!" Nick's yelling had drew the attention of the other boys, who had now fallen silent and were watching with tense attention. A beetle blade that was scuttling across the grass paused, red eyes fixed on them. "You will answer me, goddamnit, and you will do it now!"

Ada's lips quirked up into a dry half smile as she glanced at Alby, who looked far more amused than he did frightened. Tired of sitting, she got to her feet, staring Nick right in the eyes despite the height difference as he puffed out his heaving chest, a vein bulging in his neck. "I don't know who the hell you think you are, but you don't demand answers like that around here." She explained calmly, eyes frosted with blatant dislike. "We have explained everything we know. We have told you what you can and cannot do. It's actually very simple really, I don't get why it's so hard to grasp." Ada pointed suddenly at one of the newbies and clicked her fingers. "You, what are the only two rules we have given you?"

"Uh-" The boy, blonde and chubby, looked startled at being called out so suddenly. "Don't go into the maze, and do your part."

"See? He gets it."

"Well I don't." Nick spat. "Who the hell are you to give us orders?"

Alby rolled his eyes. "We're the shanks who've been here long enough to know that going into the maze unless you're told is a bad idea, and that this system we have going on here won't work unless everyone is fighting to keep it stable."

"What system, exactly?" Another newbie asked.

Avin perked up, pointing to the Homestead in the corner. "Well, Carson and I fixed up that building real good when we first got here, and George and I are working on a farming system so we'll have a sustainable food source."

"Whose Carson?" Asked the chubby blonde, right as Nick turned back to Ada and Alby with a judgemental brow raised.

"And what exactly is your job?" He asked.

"We run the maze." Ada shrugged, as if she hadn't just told him never to go into that blasted place.

"I'm sorry, didn't you just tell us to not go in there?"

"Yes." She nodded simply. "I told you not to go in there. Me and Alby? We're strong runners, we know the schedule to keep to avoid getting trapped overnight, and we're starting to get familiar with aspects of the layout. Hence the fact that we go into the maze. You don't."

Upon seeing Nick's angered expression, George moved around the fire to Ada's other side, knowing better than to place a hand on her shoulder but still offering his support. "Listen, dude, me and Avin don't go into that shucking place for a reason. That shit's dangerous. You should have seen what it did to our friend when we first got here." Upon remembering Luke's mangled corpse strung up in the ivy, George winced. "Actually, forget that, be glad you didn't see it. Traumatising."

Ada rolled her eyes, but couldn't argue. "The point is, the maze isn't a game. You don't go in unless your sure you can get back out." She fixed her eyes on Nick. "Do you think you'd be able to get back out?"

Nick kicked the ground like a chastised child before he reluctantly grumbled a "no."

"Didn't think so."

Alby huffed out a laugh before staring up at the sky. "Alright, it's getting pretty dark. Before we go to bed, there's one last thing you shanks need to do." Ada reached to her belt and withdrew her dagger, handing it to him. "Everyone got their names back? Alrighty then, let's go add you shanks to the roster."

—

"So, this your pet lizard?"

"Mhm. His name is Micheal. He's a beetle blade." Ada nodded as she shovelled a spoonful of porridge into her mouth. She hummed happily as the hunger that had been churning in her stomach all morning finally dissipated.

Avin let out a laugh. "You named it Micheal?"

"He was following me around, what was I gonna do, not name him? He's pretty cute when he's not flashing his fangs at me and staring into my soul." She shrugged.

"Wait, hang on, these things are called beetle blades?" James, the chubby blonde boy who looked to be around fifteen, squinted suspiciously at the mechanical lizard that was sitting next to them on the table. It was sat there, basically motionless, only occasionally flicking its tail as it sat on the table beside their bowls of porridge.

"Yep. They are named aptly, so do not touch-" she swatted at James' outstretched hand with her wooden spoon, "because those little buggers have teeth that are sharp."

"Speaking from experience?" A darker haired boy, sat next to James, asked. Charles or something, if she remembered correctly. Ada blinked, and the image of Carson screaming in pain as blades tore into his skin etched itself behind her eyeballs once more.

"Something like that, yeah."

Alby plonked down on the bench beside her, a slice of bacon stuffed into his mouth. "Hey, what's up with that new guy?" He asked, the question garbled through the food. Making a face at him, Ada swiped for a piece of bacon off his plate, sending him a cheeky grin when he lunged to get it back. Alby had mellowed out a lot when it came to her, George, and Avin. After a month together, any animosity or tension between them had all but evaporated, and he was all smiles and teasing. It was hilarious, though, to see him revert back to that initial state of anger and bad attitude when addressing the new gladers.

"Nick?" James asked, and the four turned to stare at the table across from them, where Nick was sat by himself with his back turned to them, shoulders visibly tense and bowl of porridge shoved away from him. "Lord knows. Dodgy bugger. Wouldn't stop yapping about how it ain't fair to be taking orders from a little girl."

Ada let out a noise of indignation, dropping her spoon back into her porridge in outrage. "Little girl? Little?! I'm of average height! What the hell, dude?"

George, who had snuck up behind her without her noticing, let out a loud laugh and shook his head. "Right, and we're all giants."

"Avin's shorter than me!"

Avin, sat on the table at the edge with his legs swinging beneath him, shot her an unimpressed look. "I'm twelve... I think."

"Point is, your height ain't that impressive, sunshine." George grinned, squeezing himself between her and Alby and grinning when the latter huffed and dramatically moved over. "It's fine though, that attitude of yours more than makes up for it."

"Attitude?" Ada spluttered. "I'll show you an attitude, you little piece of-" Wielding her spoon like a weapon, Ada thwacked the hard edge of it against George's arm, grinning when he let out a dramatic yowl of pain. She did it again, laughing as he screwed his eyes shut with pretend agony.

"She's killing me, she's killing me!" He sank off the bench and to his knees, falling over in the dirt whilst groaning loudly, clutching his arm. "I'll never recover! Oh the spoon of death-"

"Don't be so dramat-Eek!" Ada shrieked as something hard slapped her arm, and she turned to see Avin holding up his own spoon with a mischievous smile. "Oh, I see how it is." She got to her feet, a smile stretching over her lips, before widening her stance and raising her wooden spoon in front of her. "You wanna go, pipsqueak?"

Avin blinked, looked at her spoon, then looked back down at his own, before throwing it at her and scrambling away. Before she could make the move to chase him, something tugged the back of her shirt away from her body, and she let out a started shriek as something slimy and cold dribbled down the back of her shirt.

She whirled around only to see George, leaning against the table and spinning his spoon in his hand, holding up a now half empty bowl of porridge with a cocky grin that made his eyes shine.

"Oh you did not!" Ada grabbed a handful of her own porridge, the sludge dripping down between her fingers, before hurling it at him, catching him on the side of his face. Startled brown eyes blinked at her, and Ada snickered when a glob of porridge dripped down from his hair onto his shoulder.

"You want war? I'll give you war!" He lunged round the table, bowl of porridge aloft, a gleeful smile on his face as Ada shrieked and ducked behind a laughing James, who was quick to receive a spoonful to the face. Ada laughed out a half-hearted 'sorry!' before she herself was subjected to yet more food thrown on her.

The beetle blade on the table, half covered in porridge itself, made a mechanical noise that almost sounded like a huff of laughter as if scuttled from one end of the table to the other, beady eyes flickering between the teenagers.

"Hey Ada, catch this!" Charles exclaimed before he grabbed a large fistful of porridge before hurling it at the girl. Eyes wide, she ducked at the last second, and a hushed silence fell across the group when a furious yell came from the table behind them.

Ada froze and slowly rose to her feet, cheeks flushed. "... Nick got hit, didn't he?"

"Oh yeah." Alby nodded.

"He's pissed, isn't he?"

"Positively furious." George chimed in.

"That was my fault, wasn't it?"

"Mostly, yes." Avin confirmed.

Turning around, Ada tried her best to bite back the grin that threatened to emerge when she saw Nick, still facing away from them, porridge dripping from his hair and down the back of his shirt. There was silence for a moment as Nick slowly turned his face to glare at her, eyes flashing with pure hatred.

A glob of porridge dripped off his nose, and Ada had to bite down on her first to stop the snicker threatening to burst loose.

"... oops?"

Nick opened his mouth to respond, took a deep breath, and then closed it again. Before any one could so much as move, he was storming his way over to the shower cubicles, slamming the door behind him.

There was a moment of silence, before Ada finally snickered, a snicker which turned into a full blown belly laugh. George was soon to follow, and then Alby, then James, then six teenagers were slumped against the tables and chairs, clutching their stomachs through peals of laughter.

The door to the kitchen swung open, and Connor, one of the newbies who was whistling under his breath, froze in his tracks.

"What the hell did I miss?"

"Oh, nothing much. Just a casual civil war over breakfast, the great forging of enemies in this foreign landscape." Ada grinned, plonking herself down onto the bench again and kicking at George's leg when he leant against the table beside her.

Connor paused, bowl of porridge in one hand, before simply shaking his head. "As you do. But I hope you realise someone has to clean all this up right?"

When they glanced around, porridge was dripping off the tables and benches, and was splattered over the grass in clumps. There was a heavy pause before Ada quickly got to her feet. "Ya know what? I just remembered, I got a thing-"

"We're trapped in a maze, Ada."

"Exactly!" She clicked her finger and began backing away towards the homestead. "I gotta go run the maze, focus on that whole escaping thing we got going on, so... toodles!"

George nodded and gestured to her.  "Yeah, and I, uh, I have to go and fix that thing on the farm, so..."

"Thing on the farm?" Alby rose an eyebrow sceptically.

"Yeah, ya know... the issue with the plants and the soil and the... farm."

"Very convincing." Ada snorted.

"Hush, you." George pointed at Avin and grinned. "But hey, I'm sure our young Avin here would be happy to help out."

Alby looked at Avin, and the young boy raised his hands in surrender. "Not it."

Charles, Connor, and James echoed the statement, and Alby cursed loudly and threw his spoon onto the table. "Seriously? I cooked this morning! You really gonna make me clean up too?"

"Gotta go!" Ada shot him one last grin before she and George sprinted away back to the Homestead, their laughter echoing through the glade.

Charles turned to Alby and sighed. "I'll cook tomorrow morning."

"Well," Alby sighed, "here's hoping you're a better cook than Ada is. Nearly a month later and I'm still barely recovered."

—

The weeks passed, day by day crawling by in much the same fashion, inch after inch until it had been three weeks and four days since the newbies had come up. Three weeks and four days of sleeping, eating, running, and running again - never stopping, never resting, every thunder of her feet against stone a step closer to mapping the maze, to getting out.

Night had fallen, the Glade descended into blackness, only the glow from the flickering torches and the ever present stars keeping the dark from swallowing them whole. Ada thumbed at the material of her jeans, fingers drumming a steady two beat rhythm against her thigh, following the constant thudding of her heart. The wood from the platform on top of the watch tower dug uncomfortably into her shoulder blades where she lay at the top, legs dangling over the edge.

Avin and James had built it on a whim a week back, a towering structure of wood and vine that stood proud over the glade, providing an expansive view of the forest and the homestead. But she couldn't see over the walls. Neither of them had wanted to chance what happened to Carson happening to any of them either, and building that high was all but impossible. Ada settled herself further against the wood, flat on her back, copper hair fanning out beneath her, and fixed her eyes above her to the stars.

"Hey there gorgeous." A familiar voice came from somewhere to her right, and when she turned her head she saw George's face poking over the edge of the hatch, dimpled cheeks stretched wide with a grin. "Mind if I join you?"

"I hope you know you're intruding on my nightly brooding session." Ada said, returning her eyes to the stars. They winked at her enticingly, just out of reach. "You owe me for this."

"I promise I'll give you my ration of bacon tomorrow morning." George snorted, awkwardly lying down beside her and stretching out his gangly limbs. His legs hung off the edge just like hers, swinging a pattern that had his heels thudding against the oak every few seconds.

"You drive a hard bargain, I'm intrigued."

"What has you up at this hour?" George asked, swinging his head over to look at her. A curl of brown hair fell into his eyes, and he brushed it away with impatient fingers. "Everyone went to sleep hours ago. Pretty sure I can still hear Avin snoring from all the way up here."

"Not everyone, apparently." Ada rose her eyebrow but didn't turn her head. "Penny for your thoughts?"

"Please, my thoughts are worth far more than that." George huffed. "But I suppose could divulge, since it's you asking."

"I'm honoured, truly."

"Hmm." There was a beat of silence before George sighed and began to speak. "Guess I wanted to get you alone. Have done for weeks now."

Ada ignored the slight skip of her heart to furrow her brow. "Oh?"

"I wanted to talk to you about these new guys." George said seriously.

"Can't exactly call them new. They've been here for nearly a month now."

"Still. Why did the people who put us here send new people up?"

Ada frowned for a moment, running his question over in her mind. "I've been wondering the same thing actually."

"Right on the thirty day mark too." He noted. "Think that means something?"

"What, that they're sending new groups of people up per month? As a sort of replacement for us or something?"

George hesitated. "Well, we have lost two people. There's only four of us left. It does make sense." He waited a beat before he cursed, running a hand through his matted brown curls. They clung to his forehead, a single strand obscuring the brownish hue of his eyes. "Those bastards. Who the hell do they think they are?"

"Surely they wouldn't just replace us though. I mean, we were put here for a reason, surely we're needed... right?"

"You'd think." George said glumly. "I just don't understand why."

Silence descended upon them again, before a thought struck her. "If they're sending up new guys, does that mean we get new people in three days?"

"Who knows. Glade's gonna start getting pretty crowded huh?"

"I think we have the room." She responded dryly.

Silence again. It was comfortable, peaceful, and Ada found herself getting lost in the stars, connecting them in her mind in a myriad of beautiful shapes and colours.

Two of them caught her eye, twinkling brighter than the rest.

"This is a weird place to perch, you know that right?" George asked.

Ada shrugged, as well as she could while lying down. "I like being up here. Great view of the stars."

"You remember any constellations?"

Ada's eyes dimmed, and George hated himself for a second for snuffing out that light. "I feel like I used to. But I don't anymore. Guess that's another thing those bastards took from me. It's okay though. I'll relearn them all when we get out of here."

"Maybe I'll learn them with you." George smiled.

Ada was silent, her eyes fixed on the two brightest stars. "I don't remember anything about my past, obviously. But I think I remember thoughts I had. Things I used to believe in."

"Like what?"

"That when someone died you could find them in the stars." She huffed out a small laugh of disbelief. "It sounds so stupid, but every time I think of it I feel like it means something to me."

"Maybe it was something you used to think about to comfort you. Maybe you lost someone and this was your way of dealing with it." George said thoughtfully.

"I suppose that makes sense. Glad I don't remember anything now, if that's the case."

George frowned, turning to look at her. "You don't mean that, Ada."

She didn't.

"So, who were you thinking about?"

"Carson," Ada said softly, "and Luke. Thinking about if they're up there. If they're looking down on us or something."

"Wish they'd give us some help if they are. They've got a pretty good vantage point of the maze from up there."

Ada let out a laugh that surprised her, and George felt a bubble of pride grow in his chest that he was the reason for her joy. But then her smile dimmed, and that bubble popped. "Do you think it hurts? Dying?"

George hummed. "A bit like falling asleep, I reckon."

"That doesn't sound so bad."

"I'm not eager to find out."

"You're scared of dying?" Ada asked, sounding almost surprised.

"Aren't you?"

"Terrified."

George studied her face, mapping out the freckles on the gentle slope of her nose. They almost matched the stars above them. "Guess there's no point in fighting it."

"What do you mean?" Ada asked.

"Don't get me wrong, the idea of death scares me shitless. More than I care to admit. The idea of not knowing what happens, that everything just stops . . ." He cut himself off with a shudder. "But it's not like I have anything up here to live for."

Ada was silent for a moment before she whispered, "Neither do I."

"Then we live for each other." He said it as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

Perhaps it was.

"It's as good a reason as any." Ada nodded. "And when we get out of here, it will have all been worth it."

"Speaking of getting out of here, mind if I tag along on your trip into the maze tomorrow?"

Her head swivelled towards him only to find him already watching her, intense gaze fixed on her face. "Oh? And here I thought you didn't like running. What's with the change of heart?"

"Just... tired of being cooped up here I guess. There's only so many carrots I can pull up before I start to go insane."

"They're good carrots though."

"They're carrots, Ada, lets not kid ourselves."

Ada huffed out a soft laugh. "Sure, George, you can tag long, give Alby a day off. Just don't slow me down, okay?"

"I will try my very best."

—

"I knew you'd slow me down."

"In my defence, I didn't realise just how much running was actually involved here." George puffed, hands on his knees.

"It's literally in the job title."

True to his word, George had joined her in the maze the very next day. They had gone in the opposite direction than she and Alby had the day before, and the walls here seemed taller somehow, the ivy more sparse but no less terrifying. She swiped at the bead of sweat slipping down her collarbone.

George, slowing to a stop beside her, wheezed as he placed a hand against the wall to steady himself.  "I am seriously regretting my decision right about now." Righting himself once more, he took a long drag from the water bottle.

Ada hummed in acknowledgement, louring as she stared back behind her in the direction of the glare. They couldn't see it now, so far lost in the labyrinth of stone and ivy that any sound but their own laboured breathing and the staccato of their hearts hammering in their ears was blocked out entirely.

"Maybe pulling up carrots all day every day isn't such a bad way to live after all, I mean-"

Something shiny and wet caught her eye on the floor. Turning her head fully to look at study, she blocked out George and his loud complaints, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear as the shape on the ground began to form. There, stretching across the length of the corridor, was a glistening trail of slime, thready and strung thin in some places and clumpy in others. It was a pale, almost translucent colour with a somewhat greenish hue, easy to miss if you were running and your eyes were fixed ahead of you rather than on your feet, and Ada felt a shudder roll down her body.

"What the hell is that?" She cut George off, missing the semi-annoyed look he sent her as she pointed to the trail of slime. Upon seeing where she was pointing, George looked down and immediately let out a noise of disgust, scrunching his face in displeasure.

"Oh, gross." He gagged into his sleeve. "Please tell me we haven't been walking in this stuff the whole time and oh yeah, there it is, just crusted into the bottom of my shoe. Lovely."

Ada huffed out half a laugh as she crouched down, running a finger through the sludge and resolutely ignoring George's disgusted protests as she rubbed her fingers together. The strange substance was flaky, but still slightly sticky. It clung to her fingers when she pulled them apart.

"Okay, disgusting." George murmured. "What the hell do you think it is?"

"It looks like a slime of some sort." Ada responded, climbing to her feet and tracking the trial to the end of the hallway, where it veered right sharply and vanished from sight. She hesitated for only a moment before nodding. "Come on."

"Wait, what? You want to follow that thing?"

She shrugged. "Yeah, why not? Most exciting thing to happen to us all day." She took off jogging down the corridor, and George let out an affronted stutter before following.

"Okay, first of all, I find it rude that you seem to think a trail of disgusting slime is more interesting than my company, but I'll let that slide and focus on that fact that, secondly, you literally just said the words 'why not' while we're exploring a deadly maze."

Ada rolled her eyes and rounded the corner, eyes zeroing in on where the trail disappeared around yet another bend. Huffing slightly, she followed it, knowing that George was behind her by the steady steam of complaints he was issuing.

"I mean, why risk saying such a thing in a lethal labyrinth such a this? It's not as if getting trapped here overnight means certain death for us or anything. Like, I don't know about you but I've been keeping a steady eye on the sky and whatnot-"

Ada rounded another corner, then another, eyes constantly glued to the trail, too out of it to notice the sky getting darker above her and the corridors of the inner maze widening as they reached what she presumed to be the outer sections.

"-and lemme tell you, I am not loving the colour of the sky right now, and did I mention that I think we should turn back? Because I really think that we should turn back-"

Finally, at long last, the trail came to a drastic halt, and Ada was only saved from walking headfirst into a dead end when George seized the back of her shirt and yanked her backwards.

"What the hell?"

The corridor ended abruptly, the towering wall above her bare completely of ivy and at least twice the width of the other corridors they had come across. Right there, in the centre of the wall, spray painted in a crusting red that reminded her eerily of blood, was the number 7.

"Seven?" George echoed, confusion written all over his face, and Ada paused as the dots began to connect in her mind.

"Wait, 7. . . yesterday when Alby and I were running the maze we saw the number 4 painted on one of the walls. Alby and I had the idea that different areas of the maze have different numbers allocated to them."

"Huh." George frowned. "Yeah, I guess that makes sense. So what, this is the seventh section? Out of how many?"

"No idea." She shrugged. "But look, the trail isn't fully dry yet."

"So?"

"So," Ada pointed to the slimy substance and then at the way the wall abruptly cut it off, as if whatever had left the trail had simply passed through it, "the trail doesn't continue up the wall. The slime or whatever it is can't be from any earlier than last night, which means that section seven was open then, and is closed now."

Understanding broke out on George's face. "So we were right. The maze operates in sections and, what, certain sections are open and closed each night?"

"Looks like it. The question is, though, what left this trail?"

George sucked in a sharp breath from behind her, and when Ada turned to look at him his face was sheet white and his grip on the strap of his rucksack was clenched tight. "You don't think it was... whatever killed Luke, do you?"

"I don't know, but I can't see what else it could be. Good news is, there's now a wall between us and it, so we should be-"

A horrible, crunching, grinding sound shattered through Ada's words and raised the hairs on her arms, and something in her mind clicked with panic.

She knew that sound.

"It's too early for the doors to be closing, isn't it?"

But sure enough, the sound of stone grating over stone skittered across her skin, sending a shiver down her spine. But it was quieter than usual, and sounded far too close to be the doors that marked the entrance to the glade. In fact, this sounded as if it were coming from a few corridors over, a wall sliding open or closed where it wasn't before.

Ada moved before she could think, following the sound and ignoring George as he frantically called after her. Picking up speed, she rounded a corner, then another, then another, and then-

Right there.

She slammed to a halt, and George skidded into her back, only righting himself when his own eyes locked on what she was staring at.

The number 1 was what first caught her eye, a harsh splash of red against the grey that surrounded her, a jagged and almost brutal slash across the stone that set it apart from the two walls on either side of it. And it was moving, the entire wall sliding to the right and vanishing into a gap between two of the others, revealing nothing but blackness beyond it, an unknown swath of shadow that grew and grew until eventually the wall was entirely gone, and a new corridor was revealed.

"Uh- should it be doing that?" George asked, and Ada shook her head, bemused.

"Not until later, I've heard walls and stuff moving before the doors close but not until the sky is oh shit!" Ada cut herself off and stared up at the sky, eyes widening as she processed the blue that was a much darker shade than she had anticipated, and the sun well on its way across the sky. "Wait, how late is it?!"

"I don't know, Ada! You're the runner!" George exclaimed, frantically waving one hand at the sky. "Is it supposed to be that colour when we're this far out?!"

"No!"

George's face, tightly drawn with panic, lost all of its colour. "We need to run. Now."

Before she could so much as take a step, a horrible sound met her ears. A distant, almost mechanical crunching, a click, whirr, click whirr, followed by the echoing cry of a high pitched shriek, so deadly and sudden it had her blood curdling in her veins.

"What the hell was that?!" George hissed, his voice thready with panic, and Ada's hand twitched at her side as another screech echoed across the walls. The sheer violence behind it shook the ground and vibrated in her bones.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Ada turned to face the newly opened corridor.

Something heavy shifted in the shadows.

Bulbous and so impossibly large, a vague shape emerged from the darkness. It was easily twice the size of her in height, it's width stretching across the entire width of the corridor. The blur of several deadly appendages protruded from its body, each catching a glimmer of barely there daylight as it extended and retracted them, almost as if stretching. Each movement it made was accompanied by a sickening crunch, click, and whirr, and Ada felt faint as it let out an earth shattering shriek.

"Shit." George exhaled, every syllable taught with panic. "Run. Ada, run."

Ada felt as if her limbs were made of led, and black dots peppered her vision.

"Fucking hell, Ada, move!" George grabbed her hand, and it was the sickeningly warm contact of flesh on flesh that jerked her out of her panic.

Turning her back on whatever creature had been unleashed on the maze, she high tailed it back the way she came, George hot on her heels and her breath catching in her throat as a mechanical screech of rage reverberated on the walls around her.

George was swearing frantically under his breath, and they skidded into walls as they skirted round corners and ran as fast as physically possible back in the direction of the glade. The closer they got, the darker the sky got, and the more painfully aware she was of the burning in her lungs and the fierce pounding of her heart in her ears.

Death was chasing them, and as the seconds ticked down on the clock Ada was more than aware of how close it was getting.

Finally, at long last, the doors came into sight, but the corridor that separated them from freedom was long, and the doors were already closing.

Six figures paced in front of the doors, and in the dark Ada could make out the tightly drawn set of Alby's shoulders and the flexing of his hands as he finally caught sight of them. His mouth shaped words that she couldn't hear, his eyes white in the dark with panic, and Ada felt like she was drowning as the doors itched closer and closer together, stone grinding, gears crunching, the panicked screams of the Gladers lost to the hammering of her heart.

"No no no no no no no-"

George was crying. She could hear his sobs over his laboured breathing as their feet pounded against the floor, pushing and pushing and pushing.

But it was too late.

The doors slid closed over Alby's stricken face, Avin's teary eyes, and the green wonderland of the home they had reluctantly forged, trapping them on the other side.

Ada slammed into the stone, fingers clawing at the cracks, but darkness had descended over them, the lack of light suffocating as it swallowed them whole.

She heard George collapse onto the floor behind her, and she turned back to the maze, back pressed against the closed doors. Panic clawed at every inch of her being, her mind blind of everything but the three words that printed themselves across the backs of her eyes.

They were trapped.