Disclaimer:

I do not own The Maze Runner, but if I did, my other OC's would be in it.

-✼-

I was one of the last to step through the Flat Trans. When I did, only Newt, Aris, and Thomas were left in the common area.

"I'll go next," I offered, my voice slicing through the thick tension in the room. I squared my shoulders and adjusted my grip on my pack. My eyes stared right at the shimmering grey before me, my heart was pounding, my head swimming, and fear coursed through my veins.

I sucked in a breath and stepped in without looking back.

Cold. It was the first thing I felt. As if I had stepped into a pool of iced water, shivers ran down my arms and caused goosebumps to prickle my skin. I could see nothing- it was pitch black, and my eyes weren't adjusting. Muffled voices sounded from around me, but I couldn't decipher what they were saying. A sudden grip of fear streaked through me.

And, just like that, I was free.

I gasped in stale air as my last step caused me to pop out of the other end and sprawl onto the ground. It was cold and made of rough concrete, scraping my palms. Someone yanked me up roughly by my collar.

"Hey!" I protested as soon as I was standing upright. My hands swatted theirs away.

"Oops, sorry, Dylan." It was Minho. "Thought you were Aris."

"Wonderful misconception," I murmured beneath my breath just before Minho yanked sharply me to the side. My feet were barely able to keep under me as I stumbled along after him. "Would you cut that out?"

"I didn't want you to get run over by the next person who walked in," he explained, releasing his grip on my wrist and turning me so I faced where we entered. Two shouts from separate voices rose up above the otherwise silent blackness. I couldn't see who came in, but judging by their voices, I could tell it was Aris and Newt.

Minho clapped his hands. "Alrighty. That's almost everyone. Listen up! Dylan, start the countoff. Each person will take turns saying their number so we can make sure everyone's here. Do not say a number twice, got it? Go."

"One," I said, loud enough for the rest of the people to hear.

"Two."

"Three."

"Four."

"Five."

"Six."

"Siete."

"Eigh—"

The person was suddenly cut off by someone else popping through the Flat Trans, with the sound of people falling following that. Someone yelled, "Ow!"

"Everyone be still and shut up!" Minho yelled. "Thomas, was that you? Are you in here?"

"Yes!" The sound of shuffling feet followed my brother's voice. "I was the last one to come through. Did everyone make it?"

"We were counting off nice and easy until you came stumbling through like a doped-up bull," Minho replied somewhat grudgingly. "Let's do it again."

"One!" I shouted, exasperation clear in my tone. The countoff went smoothly the second time around, with Aris as the last person to call out his number.

"Good that," Minho praised. "We're all here, wherever here is. Can't see a shuck thing."

"Too bad we don't have a flashlight," Thomas commented from across wherever we were. All I knew was that he wasn't near me- only Minho seemed to be, because I could hear his breaths but not others.

"Thanks for stating the obvious, Mr. Thomas," our leader responded. "All right, listen up. We are in some kind of hallway – I can feel the walls on both sides, and as far as I can tell, most of you are to my right, save Dylan, who's by me. Thomas, where you're standing is where we came in. We better not take any chances of accidentally going back through the Flat Trans thingamajiggy, so everyone follow my voice and come toward me. Not much choice but to head down this way and see what we find."

As his sentence started to end, Minho gripped hard onto my elbow as a signal for me to start following him. I felt others beginning to follow, occasionally bumping into my shoulder or stepping on the backs of my shoes. The darkness was silent aside from indistinct shuffling from our shoes against the unknown surface of the ground and the rustling of packs. My hand found the wall; I dragged my fingers across the rough surface in order to gain some sense of stability, no matter how small.

We kept going further and further. The long stretch of corridor never went in any other direction than straight, and my fingers were starting to sting and my arm ached from holding onto the wall for so long. I moved so I was almost up against it, my shoulder nicking the side and creating a quiet scraping noise.

A sudden burst of whispering from above caused me to jump and instinctively grab onto the strap of my pack. My head tilted upward, though it was just as dark as it had always been, and I could see nothing but inky black. Minho was still only a little way in front of me. He called for us to halt just as the whispering stopped.

"Did you guys hear that?" he asked loud enough for the entire group to hear. Murmured yeses were replied. A float of questions began filling the corridor; Minho shushed them as a signal for us to listen.

It was so silent that a pin could be dropped and I'd be able to hear every metallic clatter of it hitting the floor. My breaths came silently out of my nose; I didn't dare move. It was almost as if I was alone in the complete darkness. I felt an almost irresistible urge to reach out toward Minho, who was only a foot away, in order to clear the insane thoughts that everyone else had vanished.

It was like when I had laid alone in mine and Newt's room. I had been terrified, and lying in his bed was the only thing that could calm my racing heart. The blanket had been a reasonable substitute for his arms. The same feeling dwelled in me again as I stood in pitch black nothingness and waited for a sound that wasn't going to come.

Until it did.

"Did anybody get what it said?" Newt asked once the voices stopped again. I was so relieved by the sound of his voice that I almost gasped out the breath I hadn't realized I was holding.

"Couple of words," Winston replied, which was incredibly helpful because we didn't know that already. "Sounded like 'go back' right in the middle."

"Yeah, that's what I heard," Harvey agreed from somewhere to my left.

"Everybody slim it and listen real hard this time," Minho ordered, though not sternly. He just sounded curious.

I strained my ears, and when the voice came back, I could hear it clear as day.

"One-chance deal. Go back now, you won't be sliced."

Our group instantly lapsed into terror.

"Won't be sliced?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"He said we can go back!"

"We can't trust some random shank whispering in the dark."

"That's right," I said after that one person's statement. "What did that guy say? That W.I.C.K.E.D can make us hear and see things that aren't there. They're probably just trying to scare us, test our will."

That effectively shut everyone up.

"Just keep going!" Thomas shouted from the very back of the group. His voice held an undertone of fright in it. "I can't take this much longer. Just go!"

"Wait a minute," Frypan said. "The voice said this was a one-chance deal. We have to at least think about it."

"Yeah," Xan's voice agreed. "Maybe we should go back."

"No," I protested. "The representative said we can't go back or we'll suffer a terrible fate. I don't know about you guys, but I'd rather take my chances here than go back with no chance of surviving at all."

"True that," Minho praised matter-of-factly. "Come on."

Feeling a lift of satisfaction inside of me, I continued on. That sliver of hope extinguished as quickly as someone could blow out a candle when the voice sounded again.

"You're all dead. You're all going to be sliced. Dead and sliced."

I felt as if I had just swallowed an entire gallon of ice water. It settled in my heart, my stomach, my lungs until I could scarcely breathe. My limbs felt heavy with tremorous fear. Even so, I forced myself to walk on.

The air grew warmer the farther we went. It thickened with invisible clouds of dust, tickling my nose and causing me to rub at it with my sleeve every so often. The sleeve of my jacket that Newt had convinced me to bring.

Even though it had been a while since the voice spoke, the tense sensation of fear continued to swallow me whole. My heart thudded dangerously in time with every step.

Suddenly, my instincts started screaming at me. Hurry. Duck. There's something coming at you.

I quickly slammed myself to the ground, tucking my arms over my head just as something whizzed over me. I felt the wind from it grazing my hands. And then there was a scream.

It didn't come from me. Rather, it originated from the person directly behind me. The shout was merely one of surprise, then morphed into complete and utter terror.

The person fell right on top of me. Something cold and metal hit my back, something that wasn't supposed to be connected to the human body but was, and I let out a shriek this time. The thing grazed my ears, slippery and smooth, as the boy continued his fit of yelling and squirming on top of me.

"Dylan?" Newt's anxious voice rose above the boy's shouts. He almost sounded like he was afraid I wouldn't answer. "Dylan!"

"I can't move!" I shouted in reply. The boy was still thrashing on top of me, his body crushing my own as no leverage was preventing him from pushing the air from my lungs. I laid sprawled out beneath him with my cheek turned against the concrete floor. His body convulsed, screams scaring me half to death as the metal slid down against my neck.

And then his voice cut off.

He was still moving, still thrashing on top of me, but there was no sound from his mouth. My chest was pushed so tightly against the ground that my lungs were starting to burn.

"Hey, what's wrong with you?" Thomas. He sounded a lot closer now than he had before. "Get off of her!"

I could feel a warm liquid dripping onto my neck, causing me to squeeze my eyes shut in disgust and intense fear that twisted my gut. The coppery scent of blood invaded my nose as it scrunched up. My stomach churned and lurched as some of it splattered onto my cheek.

"Get him off!" I screamed, using the last breath of air I could get into my lungs. "Just get him off!"

The boy went suddenly still as a board. His full weight was still crushing me, blood still dripping onto my face and neck until I was gagging. The pressure in my chest caused heat to blaze to my face- there was no oxygen entering my lungs anymore.

The body was pushed off of me, causing me to suck in a large breath of air. Someone reached down blindly and patted their hands around my arms until they reached under them and hauled me to my feet. I could feel my face cooling down as oxygen returned to my body. I reached up and wiped the blood from my cheek and around my neck. A shiver ran down my spine when the substance stuck to my hands.

"Are you okay?" It was Thomas again. His voice sounded slightly shaky as he released me.

"I think so," I replied. "What happened?"

I could hear Thomas's ragged breaths coming out of his mouth as he struggled to find words that had escaped his grasp.

"What happened!" Minho demanded much more harshly than I had.

Thomas groaned. "His head wasn't a head. It was like a...a big...metal ball. I don't know, man, but that's what I felt. Like his shuck head had been swallowed by... by a big metal ball."

I shivered at the memory of the cool, sleek metal grazing my ear. It had swallowed the boy's head whole.

"What're you talking about?" Minho questioned.

"Didn't you hear it rolling away after he stopped screaming? I know it—"

"It's right here!" Newt shouted, followed by a heavy grating sound and him grunting. "I heard it roll over here. And it's all wet and sticky- feels like blood."

Blood. I could feel some of it still sticking to my neck. My sleeve rubbed at it again, but only water could get it off now, and I couldn't risk wasting it. I felt sick to my stomach upon the realization that a corpse had been pinning me down for at least two minutes until Thomas got it off of me. The blood that had sprinkled my face was coming from the gaping wound of a head that had been ripped clean off.

I felt tears sting the corners of my eyes. The boy had died because I ducked. It was aiming for me. The question prodded at the back of my mind, though I already knew the answer. What would have happened if I had ignored those instincts?

"What the klunk," Minho said quietly, which pretty much summed up my thoughts at the moment. "How big is it?"

Really? He was going to ask how big it was when a boy had just been decapitated?

I was about to voice this, but others chimed in questions of their own. I retreated back into silence, deciding that the buzzing of my stomach would only turn out worse if I spoke.

"Everybody slim it!" Newt yelled over the noise. It ceased immediately. "I don't know. Bigger than a buggin' head for sure. It's perfectly round— a perfect sphere."

"We need to run," Thomas urged. "We need to go. Now."

"Maybe we should go back," Harvey suggested meekly. "That thing just sliced off Frankie's head, just like the voice told us."

"I don't know about you, amigo, but I'm not going back," Theo shot back in reply. "My hip's hurting from all this walking, and I am not letting this all be for nothing."

Of course- Theo's hip. A sudden realization pricked at my heart and deflated it like a balloon. How was Theo going to travel the entire hundred miles to the cure?

"Theo's right," Minho said, which was the first time I'd ever heard him speak Theo's name. "And so is Thomas. No way we're going back. Spread out a couple of feet from each other, then run. Hunch down, and if something comes near your head, hit the living crap out of it."

No one dared to argue. We spread out just as he told us, and ran.

I tried not to think too much about the blood of a dead boy that was still on my skin.

-/-

I had forgotten how much I hated running. I hated it even more so when I had no idea where I was going and if I was going to be attacked by a metal ball that would slice off my head or not.

Only one more person was a victim. It was Xan, but I could only tell because of the sharp sound of his screams that echoed in my skull.

We kept running, having no choice but to ignore him. It made the nausea in my stomach worsen, my mouth tasting coppery as I breathed in the dusty air. My lungs hurt from the long distance we were covering, my short legs having to move twice as fast as anyone else's. My sore muscles ached already.

I slammed into Minho's back, feeling as if I had run straight into a wall. He spun around and blindly grabbed my arm before I toppled backward. I could hear his pants coming rapidly from his mouth as he yelled, "Stop!"

"Why?" Frypan questioned, trying to cover up his wheezing.

"'Cause I almost broke my shins on something up there!" Minho released my arm. "I think it's a staircase."

"Well, let's go up 'em!" Frypan suggested way too cheerfully.

"Ya think?" Minho replied with the usual spark of sarcasm. "What would we do without you, Frypan? Seriously." I could almost hear him rolling his eyes. Much more quietly, he muttered to me, "Dylan, follow behind me up the stairs."

I nodded, forgetting he couldn't see me. When an awkward lapse of silence caused me to realize my mistake, I croaked out, "Okay."

I could feel the air shift as Minho turned around. The slight metallic sound of his feet pounding up the stairs rung in the air as if the steps were made of thin metal. I followed directly behind, feeling slightly weary that I couldn't see where I was going. More pounds of feet chorused behind me.

A bang sounded from directly in front of me, causing me to slam into Minho again. The person behind me grunted as they hit me, and several more followed.

"Ow!" Minho exclaimed.

"You okay?" Newt asked from below.

"What'd...you hit?" Thomas questioned through labored breaths.

Minho huffed. "The shuck top, that's what. We hit the roof, and there's nowhere else..." He trailed off. I could hear him sliding his hands along the surface of the ceiling above us. "Wait! I think I found—"

A click cut him off, and I was blinded by searing brightness that caused my pupils to shrink to a minuscule size. My eyelids squeezed shut, but it was no use. Orange light danced behind my skin and a scorching hot heat drifted down on me.

Minho shut the door with another click. Spots of color blocked my vision.

"Shuck me," Minho commented. "Looks like we found a way out, but I think it's on the freaking sun! Man, that was bright. And hot."

"Let's just crack it open and let our eyes get used to it," Newt suggested. I heard the sound of his footsteps coming up the stairs, then felt his presence right beside me. His arm brushed my own. "Here's a shirt- wedge it in there. Everybody shut your eyes!"

Minho pushed the hatch open a grunt. Newt quickly stuffed the shirt into the right corner, having rolled it into a ball so it allowed light to enter. I felt as if a million flashlights were being shined into my eyes, but my vision was starting to clear up. A few tedious minutes passed until I was able to see clearly.

"Anybody blind now?" Minho asked. "I feel like my eyeballs are roasted marshmallows."

I nodded as I blinked away tears. The brightness of the outside world seared at my eyes, and the dust in the air didn't help at all. Newt rubbed his eyes from beside me.

"What's out there?" Harvey questioned.

Minho shrugged as he peered outside. I was a little bit too short to see much except the cloudless sky above, so he definitely had the upper hand. "Can't really tell. All I can see is a lot of bright light – maybe we are on the shuck sun. But I don't think there are any people out here." A pause. "Or Cranks."

"Let's get out of here, then," Winston urged from the very bottom of the steps. How he got below Thomas, I wasn't sure. "I'd rather get a sunburn on my head than be attacked by some ball of steel. Let's go!"

"All right, Winston," Minho replied. "Keep your undies on– I just wanted to let our eyes adjust first. I'll throw the door all the way open to make sure we're okay. Get ready." He took one step upward so his shoulder was pressed against the hatch. "One. Two. Three!"

His legs straightened as he heaved the door open. Light and a bone-dry heat burst into the stairwell, the door creating a grinding, squealing sound as it opened. At first, all I could see was white. Then my eyes adjusted even further, and I felt my skin beginning to bake already.

Newt grabbed my arm and pulled me toward him, back into the shadows and out of the box of direct light. I felt better instantly.

"Aw, man!" Minho exclaimed, wincing as he ran his wrist across his forehead. "Something's wrong, dude. It feels like it's already burning my skin!"

"He's right," Newt added as he rubbed the back of his neck. "I don't know if we can go out there. We might have to wait until the sun goes down."

Groans of complaint rose up from the Gladers. A sudden outburst from Winston broke through them, causing me to snap my head toward the bottom of the stairs as he yelled, "Woah! Watch out! Watch out!"

I felt time slow down as my gaze followed where Winston was pointing. Directly above Thomas, a silvery liquid was forming into a ball right from the metal ceiling. My stomach dropped. I couldn't figure out why Thomas was just watching it solidify above him and wasn't moving. Newt gripped onto my wrist, preventing me from darting down the stairs and pushing him out of the way like I so desperately wanted to.

Like I wasn't able to do with Chuck.

A scream burst from my lips as the ball dropped downward. But, at the last second, it zipped horizontally and attached itself to Winston's face like some sort of leech. His horrific screams blended in with mine as he tumbled down the stairs.

gif is the squad

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this is probably one of my favorite chapters i've ever written ngl

make sure to check out my relatively new minho fanfic, aegis, if you haven't already! some minor characters from this book may or may not make an appearance...

questions:

-do you miss winston?

-on a scale of 1 to absolutely-freakin-terrified, how scared would you be if you were dylan and the boy with the metal ball on his head was pinning you down?

-do you like thomas and dylan moments or minho and dylan moments more?

-who is your favorite minor character in this book?

+dedication: intergalactic because their comments are HILARIOUS and never fail to put a smile on my face

-kristyn