Smoke, fire, screams. 

The little girl stumbled through rubble and piles of ash, coughing up gray saliva. Her dark, unevenly cut hair tangled in the hot and dirty city air. 

Spiderwebs of smog hung low beneath the clouds, oil glistening in drying puddles like the northern lights in faraway skies. 

Faceless silhouettes hurried by, leaving the small figure unnoticed. A doll, forgotten by her owner.

Wind carried the noise of distant disaster-warning sirens and painful cries over to her innocent ears. This new symphony of calloused voices and melodies was something she'd never heard before. 

Destructive heat made the air flicker like the quality in an old movie. Firefighters were carrying thick hoses over their shoulders that resembled snakes more than anything. 

Others carried corpses.

Small flames were slowly dying out, having already consumed everything that could've fed them. There was nothing they could destroy any more.

A warm breeze made ash fly through the air. Black, poisonous snow.

Everything had been burned down to ruins. The angry white eye that once had once been the sun now shone mercilessly, her blazing glare staring down at the people that were scattered like ants.

The young girl had to squint her eyes and turn away from the breeze. Through blurry vision, she recognized the weak remains of her childhood, her little body not fitting into the brutal scenery around her. 

Slipping over a puddle of red liquid, she stumbled over the rubble, piles of wooden planks in her line of sight.

"Mommy?", Her soft voice called out, "Papa?"

Grey confetti of ashes found their way into her lungs and she let out a quiet cough. Getting rid of the harsh sand that stung her face, she rubbed her eyes. 

"It's okay. It's over now... you don't have to hide anymore", She crouched down and tilted her head to look beneath a rock. 

Nobody answered her quiet calls. Groaning, she tried to push away something that looked like the remains of a splintered door.

Her eyes widened.

A young woman was lay beneath the wood, her burnt body motionless, covered in ugly blue bruises. 

The girl's broken lips started trembling. No tears fell. She simply stared at the once pretty woman who never even made it to her thirties. 

"Mommy, come on. It's over."
Her voice didn't break.

She talked calmly enough to convince outsiders that this was nothing new to her. As if she had been prepared for this to happen, but was too young to actually process it. 

One arm of the woman was stretched out, as if she was reaching out for something. One last touch she never felt.
The kid's eyes followed her gesture and landed on a shredded limb.

A hand. Burned to the bones.

A body. Painted black from dust and ashes, nothing more than a pile of raw flesh and blood.

A dreadful smell like burnt hair and skin cut through the air, making acidic tears sting in her eyes. 

The stench of death. 

Her throat was stitched closed by an invisible threat, trapping every noise in her lungs as the girl stared with empty eyes.

Her gaze settled on a little object that seemed to have caught her interest, its sparkling surface blinking through the picture of destruction.

Gingerly picking it up, her hands made sure not to burn themselves on the hot metal of a silver pocket watch. 

She crouched down, carefully brushing off the dirt to reveal the delicate engraving of a sunflower. 

Slowly twisting the little key that stuck out at the top, she let the cover snap open. 
A soft melody danced through the twirling dust, warm and reassuring.

With a quiet voice, the girl started to follow the melody, harmonizing with the familiar tunes. She gently started moving with the song, swaying back and forth out of reflex. 

Way too fast, the music died out like a candlelight that had burned out. 

All the core-shaking sounds from before seemed to have disappeared, wrapping her in a numb vacuum. 

A pale hand placed itself onto her shoulder, making her head snap around, the first expression of fear written across her face like a manuscript. Still unsure. Still a draft. 

Her eyes were met with those of an older woman, blonde hair slicked back into a strict bun. Her sterile white lab coat angrily clashed with the scene around her.
She didn't belong there.

Not where bombs fell from the sky. 

Her red painted lips pulled into a tender smile.
"Come on, little one. I have a special place where you can go. Where you will be safe." 

She didn't seem to question what had happened for this little girl to be standing wordlessly in front of her parents' corpses.

Slowly, the girl glanced down at her little music box, then back at the woman, silently tilting her head.

The lady carelessly waved it away.
"Leave it. You won't be needing it in your new life anymore"
She flicked the watch out of the girl's hand, letting it splinter on the rubble, its last song being nothing but pained squeaks.

"You'll have much better toys where we will be going", she promised, holding out her well-manicured hand. 

Slowly, the girl turned away from her past, leaving metal splinters and blood behind as she placed her small, with grime-covered hand into the cold palm of her newfound lighthouse, feeling the wrinkles that ran their marks over the woman's skin.

"Don't worry. You will make great things happen...", her quiet voice slowly rose towards the sky when the scenery smudged like colorful raindrops falling from a car window as they moved into the dawn of the apocalypse.

Grace's POV

Shooting up after being unconscious started to become an unhealthy habit of mine.
Only thing new this time, was that I was met with Minho's forehead who had been hovering over me, almost knocking me out again when we collided from my unexpected movement, which caused the two of us to yell out a synced groan. 

Instantly, my hand shot up to where a splitting headache was boring at my brain, my entire body feeling like a chewed-up dog toy.

"Dammit, Grace-"
The black haired boy gently grabbed my shoulder with one hand and pushed me back down into a sitting position.
"Why do you always do that??"

He groaned, gingerly tapping at his head where I'd accidentally hit him. 
"Don't snap up like that all the time...", he muttered while scooting back a little to sit across of me.

My head was spinning like a Ferris wheel out of control, too fast for me to come up with a snarky comeback, only able to circle around one question.
"Where-"

My blurry vision finally cleared enough for me to make out  the tall stone walls I remembered all too well, covered in ivy just as much as they had been several hours before.

The Maze.

Minho was crouching in front of me, still examining his forehead, and I could see Thomas getting up from where he was sitting and jogging over to us, a small skip in his step. 

The poor guy probably hadn't slept a single minute last night, which explained how he was buzzing with unnerving energy now. 
My hypothesis was that the synapses in his brain had short-circuited and he was now beyond the concept of exhaustion, able to turn oxygen into pure, raw energy or something. 

He was tapping his feet against each other as he sat down next to Minho. 

"What the hell happened? You make an impossible jump and then just...faint?!", the younger boy started, but Minho quickly shut him up with a smack on the back of his head.

Great, now we had matching spots of pain.

Blinking rapidly to adjust my eyes to the soft sunlight that managed to reach the floor through the thick roof of walls and vines, I ran a hand over my face to recall what had happened.

Last night's events were a blur, like somebody had thrown a rock into the pond of my memories, making waves ripple through them.

Grievers, pain, fear...No, not fear; terror. 

The cliff and my seemingly inhuman stunt over the creature that had immediately fallen to its death afterwards. 

And my eerie dream. 

That utterly confusing lucid dream of bombs and destruction. 

I squinted my eyes to remember more than those two words, but the more I tried to grasp a decent picture, it faded away even quicker, leaving nothing but washed-out colors behind.

Whoever was throwing stuff in my pond should fucking stop. 

Who were those people? I couldn't remember who those burnt remains of faces belonged to. All that I could recall was the stench of horrible, horrible things.

Why I was able to access my sense of smell in a dream, I don't know. 
But maybe that was the reason why I hated smelling things? 

"Hey, Grace?" Minho's voice snapped me back into reality.
He had a questioning look on his face.
"You done brooding, or should we give you a minute?"

His face gave away that he wouldn't give me another minute anyway. 

I rubbed the bridge of my nose, asking the classic questions.
"How long have I been gone?"

The boy frowned, shrugging his shoulders.
"An hour maybe? We thought you died after that sick move you did there.", he nodded over to the edge of the cliff. 

"Why didn't you try to wake me up?", I raised my eyebrows at him, "You know that even a minute of unconsciousness is a sign for severe brain damage"

"Well, you already have that, so what's the worst that can happen-"

Minho got cut off by my foot being shoved in his direction.
This boy; we should've thrown him and that shit eating grin of his down the cliff instead of the Grievers.

The Grievers.

My brain only now seemed to process that thought. 

We defeated them!
We managed to make them throw themselves over the edge of the very cliff the three of us were now casually resting on. 

That message arrived a bit too late, in my opinion.
Why was I so bad at acknowledging things- 

Minho seemed to have read my thoughts because he nodded and a wild smile started to grow on his face. I let out a short laugh.

We actually made it. We spent a night in the Maze and lived to tell the tale. I looked at Thomas, who had started grinning too.

"Oh man, I can't believe it..."
I leaned my back against the wall with a sigh, tilting my head to look at the sky.
Its dark-grey colors were slowly disappearing, making way for the sunlight that was slowly crawling over the ivy, making their shadows dance in the soft breeze. 

Thomas suddenly jolted up, making both me and Minho jump.
My hypothesis was proven right; the boy was shaking with uneasy energy as he paced back and forth on the spot for a few seconds.

"We have to get back. Gotta get Alby off the wall."
To underline his point, he demonstratively pointed at the wall behind us, looking like a kid that had spotted an interesting cloud formation and was determined for everyone to see it. 

With a cold sting in my chest, I remembered the boy we had left behind last night. I was afraid of what we'd see when we retrieved him. He'd been hanging there all night, a rag doll completely exposed to any monster that would pass by.

With our luck, the Grievers had ignored him and he died of strangulation instead because me and Thomas accidentally wrapped a vine around his neck or something. 

Seeing the look of confusion on Minho's face, I turned to face Thomas.
"And you didn't bother to tell him yet?"

The boy threw up his hands in resignation, sputtering inaudible words along the lines "Sorry for trying to survive the night first"

Minho didn't look any smarter from this short exchange, so Thomas and I took turns, quickly explaining how we had tied Alby to the ropes of ivy yesterday.

After our little story, he shook his head in disbelief.
"No way in hell he's still alive. No one ever made it..."

I threw him a look and he trailed off.

That worked a surprisingly high amount of times, maybe I should trademark it. 

We did try to run back to where Alby was hanging, but we got humbled shortly after the first steps, when our bodies protested with their aches and quirks, which quickly let us return to a slower pace.

To distract myself from the gravel beneath my feet, I took another attempt at remembering my dream. Memory? Didn't matter.
All I was sure of, was that it felt all too familiar.

Just like my nightmare with the twisted mirror versions of myself.
Too real.

My ribs still hurt like needles were digging into my skin every time I moved. 

Shaking it off, I managed to recall a single sentence from the blur of memories.
"You will make great things happen..."

Was that a real memory? If it was, then that meant that I had seen the outside world.
Like so many other things, that thought didn't want to make sense in my head.

You couldn't remember the outside world unless you got-

No.

I nearly stumbled and fell after that realization.

No, no, no

"Grace, you okay?"
Minho glanced over to me, his eyebrows raised.

I quietly shook my head. 
"Just...lacking hand-eye coordination"

Don't think about it, you're good at not thinking, just do that...

I tried to focus on where I was walking, but an evil, terrible thought kept coming back to me like a black wave of fog rolling down the hill of my mind.

The next corner we passed opened up to a short corridor flooded by an almost golden glow, revealing the shadows of silhouettes up ahead.

Never in my life was I that glad to be blinded by sunlight.

Squinting my eyes, I recognized the familiar head of curls that belonged to Chuck, who had been anxiously pacing at the border of rock and grass that separated the Glade from the Maze.

With a sudden rush of energy, all the strength that I'd been lacking before came back with dramatic theatrics as I sprinted over to the kid, ignoring the pain in my ribs.

Before he could react properly, I tackled him in a tight hug, nearly scratching open my knees when I crouched down to match his height. 

Chuck's hands clutched at my sleeves when he excitedly bounced up and down, laughing with relief.
"I knew it! I knew you'd be back!", he almost yelled, his voice cracking at the high pitch.

I noticed how dark the circles under his big brown eyes had gotten, which let me assume that he hadn't moved from the spot in front of the gates since we had been locked behind them yesterday. 

Chuck on the other hand, didn't seem to mind that he looked close to passing out; instead, he tugged me away from the now open gates, as if afraid that they might swallow me again.

The rest of the Gladers had crowded around us, a busy mingle of loud chattering and questions being wildly thrown from one person to the other. 
Suddenly, Minho, Thomas and me were the living proof of supernatural miracles happening.

Next to me, I managed to pick out Theo's voice, which got my attention to snap up.
"Newt was ready to stab Gally with a spear when he tried to cross off your names on the wall"

As if those words had summoned him, the familiar pair of hazel eyes appeared between the heads of boys and quickly dragged me into a hug.

"Grace, you heathen-"

Newt's arms wrapped around my shoulders, instantly flooding me with warmth and a feeling of safety that only errupted whenever I heard his heartbeat. 

I buried my face in his chest, realizing how much I had managed to miss him in only such a short amount of time. 

As sore as my arms felt, I returned the embrace just as quickly before Newt eventually moved back and cupped my cheeks, leaning his forehead against mine, his observing gaze scanning my face for injuries. 

At least that's what I always thought he was doing whenever he looked at me like that. 

"...I can't believe it", he laughed quietly, pulling me into his arms again and pressing a quick kiss into my hair, "You're mad. Absolutely mad"

My fingers had returned to their habit of tapping small rhythms to his back as I held onto the feeling of comfort for as long as possible.
"Is this what people mean when they say they let their intrusive thoughts win?"

Bad jokes to cope with the moment and ruin any tension. How smart of me. 

Newt looked like he wanted to return the comment with a worse one, but got cut off before he could speak.

"No time. We have to get Alby.", Thomas interrupted, his eyes still flickering from face to face between the group of boys with that hint of animalistic anxiety from before.

At those words, Newt's face went pale, and his hands slid from my arms when he faced the younger boy.
"What do you mean? He's alive-?"

Out of reflex, I grabbed his wrist.
"That's what we hope..."

Together with Minho, Thomas and a small group of Gladers, we led him through the first few corridors, to the wall where a distant figure was unconsciously dangling on the ropes of ivy vines. 

"See for yourself..."
Craning my neck, I pointed at our leader which was hanging up there like the gory remains of a public execution.

Excited chattering from the other Gladers erupted. "Is he... alive?" Newt seemed absolutely in disbelief. 

"We don't know...I mean, he was, when we left him up there.", Thomas answered, his voice uncertain, but his face showed both hope and determination, stubbornly believing that Alby still was with us until he'd be proven wrong.

"When you left him-", Newt shook his head in disbelief and looked at me, his brows furrowed in a stern frown.
"You left him up there all night?"

I flashed him a weak grin of uncertainty, tilting my head from side to side, which caused him to let out a distressed sigh. 

 "You can scold us about this later, we need to get him out of there first"
I didn't wait for an answer, already starting to climb up the wall in order to untie the knots that held Alby in place, Newt's voice ringing up from below.

"Oh, we're gonna talk about this later, we're so gonna talk about this later-"

When Alby was safely with us again, now resting away from the crowd and in the care of Clint and Jeff, I finally allowed myself to relax a little again.

Chuck buzzed around us, successfully keeping my thoughts away from the ever looming threat of spiraling into dangerous territory.

Don't think about it. You're overreacting. You didn't get-

"...Right, Gracie? You're okay, aren't you?"
Chuck's nickname that he'd developed during his first day here pulled me back to the conversation.

My lips curled into a gentle smile as I ran my hand through his dark curls.
"I will be, I promise"

Thinking of what might have happened to the little boy if we hadn't returned made me shiver with cold anxiety.

His chubby cheeks were red from excitement and probably severe lack of sleep when he looked up at us with wide eyes.
"Did you see one? Did you see a Griever?"

Minho answered with a dramatic pause.
"We didn't just see them... We killed 'em. You should've seen Thomas over here!"

He slapped the Greenie's shoulder, causing him to almost slump with a cough at the unexpected force.

"And Grace..."
He then looked at me, unsure of what to say as he formed a silent question with his expression.

Now, I knew my brain never worked well under pressure, but I never thought I was that bad at it.

Chuck and Newt also turned to look at me, both matching Minho's face, expect that they didn't know how I blacked out back in the Maze.
It fell silent among the group of Gladers.

I clenched my jaw and crossed my arms in front of my chest.
What were you supposed to do in such a situation? 

You had a dreading assumption of what might've happened to you, but you weren't sure what that information would do to others.

And now you had to choose whether to tell them or not, within a matter of seconds.

My eyes darted from Chuck, to Minho, to Thomas until they landed on Newt. 

The people in my head were fighting a goddamn war.

You don't know whether that's true. You mustn't worry them-
How else would you explain how you managed to see your past? And what about that inhuman jump, huh? Can't keep that from them.

Fuck, how I hated situations like this-

"I..." 

Deep breaths.

"I think I got stung by a Griever-"

A/N: Aw, sweet reunition after barely two chapters of not seeing each other, how very generous of me. I know, nothing really happened in this chapter, but I always want to end them with a "cliffhanger sentence" and also, I'm lazy, so I can do what I want