⁰⁰     ▇ ¨. ༢ ͎۪۫ 𝒇𝒐𝒖𝒓 ... ❜

━━  ❛  𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒉𝒒𝒖𝒂𝒌𝒆. ❜  ‧˖˚. ☄︎ ͎۪۫ ◞⁺.
❪ part 03. location: unknown.
©kiiizones, all rights reserved ❫.

𝑬𝑴𝑰𝑺 𝑺𝑻𝑶𝑶𝑫 𝑨𝑻 the centre point of a huge, rolling grassland. The air was thick and warm with the scent of freshly cut grass and sunlight and woodsmoke. She drew in a deep breath, fresh air and oxygen sweeping into her lungs.

The breath was cut off sharply as she looked up. The meadow she was stood in swept away from her over levelled earth, and stopped abruptly at the high, towering rise of concrete wall that rose into the sky.

She felt all the sweet, fresh oxygen leave her in a rush, and, as if someone had struck a blow to her stomach, fell to her knees.

The wall was impossible to look away from; it ascended upwards in pillars of uninterrupted cement, covered in trellises of dark ivy, so huge that it cut the sun in half and replaced the heavy light with a far-reaching, bitter shade across the grass. It surrounded the meadow in a huge, hard-cut square. The wall directly in front of her was separated with a cold, sharp-edged split down the middle, revealing behind it a twisting, shadowy corridor that spun into darkness.

It was the Glade.

All the memories seemed to rush in like the sweeping flood of a tide plummeting against the shore; Emis could only sit there, helplessly, as the strong, pulling current of memory tossed her along.

She saw Alby, his dark skin cut through with tears like cracking pottery. She saw Jeff, with his limbs flying up, all around him, his torso spinning into muscle and bones and blood as a Griever sank its teeth into him. She saw Chuck, small and lifeless on the cold stone floor, the sharp glance of light against the bullet wound in the centre of his chest. She saw Ryan, broken and bloodied and with his head unnaturally twisted up to the side.

Emis let out a ragged sob, crawling back on her elbows, as if it were possible to tear herself away from the stream of images as they bore her further through the darkness. But it was all inside her head. There was nothing she could do but let them unfold.

More images came flying past, faster now, as if someone had pressed a fast-forward button on her memory. She caught glimpses of Zart, of Gally, and then of Frypan, and Ed, and Minho, and Thomas, and Teresa, and finally Newt.

Newt. An awful, razor-sharp pain gripped her heart, suddenly, and she could no longer breathe.

Images of him soared past her. She could see the half-twitch of his mouth as he fought a smile, his hands running through his hair as his brow furrowed in concentration, the lilt of his body, his movements, something that had become so familiar to her though she could hardly believe she'd only known him for a short while. His light, dirty blond hair falling into his eyes. His eyes. Dark and warm and a thousand inexplicable colours and lights. Scrutinising and detailed, artist's eyes, with the ability to peel back ugliness and horror until nothing but its simple beauty was left. The ability to see her, for who she was, and not who they had made her to be.

And now she would never see him again. She would never see any of them ever again.

She collapsed against the ground, curling her knees into her chest, and laid there with her face against the packed earth until the sky had overturned into a hollow, deep-blue sunset.

When she finally sat up, her face was sore and damp from the excessive crying. She brushed the grass and dirt from her clothes, and froze.

She was dressed simply; a pair of slim-fitted cargo trousers and a soft button-up the colour of burnt terracotta. The shirt she recognised, though it felt a lifetime away, as the one she had worn back in the Glade. Before she had escaped.

She heard Newt's voice, echoing and distant in her head. "This way, no one'll see the blood." That's what he'd said as he'd handed it to her. She felt another wave of sharp, hard pain shoot through her heart, and winced. It hurt to think of Newt.

As she brushed her hair out of her face, she realised distantly that there was something not quite right about her surroundings. The whole world seemed faint and faded, like the surface of an expired photograph. The grass underneath her was not as bright as she had first thought, and the sky, though it appeared hollow-blue, was beginning to turn greyish, like paint-water.

A  thrill of nervous excitement shot through her. The onset shock of being thrown back into the Maze was beginning to wear off, replaced by a slow, gradual realisation that this, whatever was happening, was not as bad as she had thought. That this, perhaps, wasn't real.

"Need a hand?" Emis jumped, and then felt her heart-rate swell into a fast pattern of slams against the walls of her ribcage. A shadow had fallen over her, and there was a figure standing to the side, directly above her, with her hand outstretched in invitation.

A figure with dark hair cascading in tangles over her shoulders. A figure with a stubborn set to her jaw, with eyes blue and turquoise and green and sparkling like clear-cut panes of sea glass.

Teresa.

She was smirking, as if somehow she knew a secret that Emis did not. "You've been sat there for an awfully long time." She added.

Emis could barely speak. Teresa was dead. They were all dead. Whoever this was, standing in front of her, was only a memory of someone that she knew. Her eyes narrowed. There was something off about her, she realised. An odd, shimmery outline. Like a hologram.

"What's that look for?" Teresa's projection gave a laugh.

"Who are you?" Emis realised it was the first time she had spoken. Her voice was its familiar scrape against her throat, and that was somehow beginning to become oddly comforting. It was the one part of herself that she could recognise for what it actually was. "You're not her. You're not Teresa."

The hologram shrugged. "Maybe I'm not." She held out her hand again. "But I look like her. I look like someone you can trust." She tilted her head to the side. "So, maybe you should trust me."

Her eyes were still dancing with that gleam of private amusement. "Or, you could just sit here all day." She added with a shrug. "But that's not really you're style, is it Emis?"

Emis swallowed. Night had almost fallen now, the sky a swirl of iron and dark cobalt. Teresa was right. There wasn't really much else she could do, except sit and wait for this, what was beginning to feel like nothing but a bad dream, to capsize. Maybe you should trust me.

With her heart in her throat, she gripped onto Teresa's hand, and let her pull her up.

𝑴𝑰𝑵𝑯𝑶 set his cutlery down with a long exhale. "I need to take it slow." He said, "I'm not used to food that isn't Frypan's cooking."

The cafeteria had turned out to  be a wide, open-spaced area, held up with the same cement and concrete pillars as the ones in the hospital-wing room and back in that odd, storage-cupboard room too. There were rows on rows of white resin-wood-topped tables, and everything was a little startlingly bright.

A women's voice, cool and pleasant, rippled up from invisible speakers. "Just remember, you are always being monitored. Breaking the rules will result in severe consequences. Please do not..." Her voice was swallowed up as Frypan cut in.

"You know what?" He replied miserably, "I wish I'd let you starve, you ungrateful shank."

Minho shook his head, toying with a stray piece of lettuce at the edge of his plate. "'S not what I meant." He said, "This stuff tastes too ..." He trailed off, unsure of what to say. 

"It tastes like someone's cooked it up in a 3D-printer." Ed suggested dryly.

Minho nodded in affirmation. "Yeah." He said. There was a pause. "Wait, what's a 3D-printer, again?"

"So they wiped everyone's memories, I guess." David, the boy sitting across from them wearing a high-collared sweater, had been mostly silent. As far as Newt could tell, it was only he and his friend, Riley, who'd managed to escape their Maze. He caught Newt's eye. "WICKED." He added, as if he needed to remind him.

Newt swallowed the rising lump in his throat. He had wedged himself onto the end of the bench, and the initial shock of seeing the sheer number of children who had escaped their own Mazes was beginning to wear off. He picked at his food absentmindedly, his appetite lost. There was absolutely no way he could eat anything now. Not when his stomach was being corroded away by burning guilt.

"What was your Maze, anyway?" Winston's question broke him out of his thoughts. "How'd you guys escape?"

David exchanged a look with Riley, the boy sitting next to him. Newt recognised that look. It was the look you gave someone when they had asked you a question you'd really rather not answer. He couldn't blame him. It wasn't as if he was prepared to launch into the story of how they themselves had escaped.

The other boy━Riley━shifted in his seat with a shrug. "Our Maze was mostly concrete and tarmac." He said finally. "The stuff that roads are built out of, but everywhere."

"Wait, what?" Ed's forehead creased. "You mean you had no way to grow or build anything?"

"No, we just got a butt-load of supplies every month." David said resentfully. "Bricks, cement, plaster, tools. Food and water, that kind of thing."

"How many were you?" Ed asked.

Riley shook his head. "It's hard to say. We weren't really in charge."

"If I had to guess I'd say ninety━maybe even a hundred?" David turned to glance at Riley as if confirming it. He shrugged. "Could be more. It was sort of an every-man-for-themselves kind of thing."

Newt felt his heart contract inside his chest, a sudden pang of sentiment at the fraying, but structured, family he had left behind in the Glade. "How did you escape, then?" He repeated Winston's earlier question. "How many of you made it out?"

Something flashed behind David's eyes, but it was gone before Newt could properly register it. "It was only us two who managed to make it here." He said, almost bitterly. Newt felt his heart drop. Two left, out of one hundred. He couldn't imagine how they must have felt. "You all are lucky. You're the biggest group we've seen come in so far."

"Hey," Minho broke in suddenly. "Look who finally decided to show up."

Newt turned over his shoulder to see Thomas, standing in the doorway, his expression one of frozen amazement, and let out an inward sigh of relief.

When they had entered the cafeteria to find that Thomas hadn't left with the others after all, he had felt a thrill of panic strike his chest. That familiar worry had risen up, the worry that something was wrong, that those people had taken him like they had taken Emis. But he was here. He was alright. One less person to worry about.

The thought brought a spasm of something painful, but relieving, through his chest. If Thomas was alright, and he had come back, then perhaps he wouldn't have to wait much longer before he could see Emis. Perhaps Minho had been right. Perhaps there really was nothing to worry about.

But very distantly, like an inhibition, Newt knew that he didn't really believe that.

"Hey, Thomas!" Minho had already gotten to his feet to meet him. Thomas moved towards him with distant bewilderment. Newt turned back to realise that David had continued speaking.

" ... There was this big, loud explosion." He was explaining. "And these guys came out of nowhere. Started shooting up the place."

Riley nodded as he swallowed a mouthful of food. "It was intense." He added.

"They pulled us out of the Maze and brought us here." David finished.

Newt shifted in his seat as Thomas came to sit next to him. "What about the rest?" He asked, unable to help himself. "The other people left behind in the Maze, what happened to them?"

David shrugged. "I don't know." He said, and Newt felt his heart sink. "I guess, WICKED still has them."

There was a pause as Newt turned to exchange a glance with Thomas. He could see underneath the surface of his dark eyes the back-and-forth dart of an uninterrupted stream of thoughts. He turned back to face David, and cleared his throat. "How long you guys been here?" He asked.

"Not long." David replied, "Just a day, or two." He turned to point over his shoulder. "That kid over there has been here the longest."

Sitting alone, at the end of the table closest to the far wall, was a small, scrawny looking boy with his hood pulled over his eyes. He sat hunched over, his shoulders curved inwards, as if he were trying to make his existence as unknown as possible. Newt realised with a faint pang to his chest that he was shivering.

"Almost a week." David added pitifully.

Riley broke into a smile, suddenly, as if he found something privately amusing. "His Maze was nothing but girls."

"Really?" Minho sounded distantly impressed.

David shrugged. He gave the same, faintly guileful smirk as Riley as he said, "Some guys have all the luck."

"Good evening gentlemen, ladies ..." There was an abrupt cut-off from the low murmur of chatter as Janson pushed his way into the centre of the cafeteria. The sight of him brought a distant thrill of bitter dislike to Newt, automatically, as if he couldn't help but be wary of him.

"You all know how this works." Janson continued, "If you hear your name called, please rise in an orderly fashion, join my colleagues behind me where they will escort you to the eastern wing." His lips pulled upwards into an allusive smile. "Your new lives are about to begin!" He said it with a shot of flourish as a few claps sounded in response.

Newt realised, distantly, that everything Janson said was with an element of dramatisation. As if he were performing carefully crafted words from a carefully crafted script.

He shook himself roughly. He couldn't understand where all this doubt and uneasiness had come from; he had been the one, at the beginning of all this, to insist that there be no doubt at all. Deciding, silently, that all this was a result of what Emis had been banging on about before they had taken her away, Newt cleared his throat quietly and let his attention shift back onto Janson, who was still speaking.

"Connor," He said, and there came a ripple of movement from behind them as a boy rose to his feet. He made his way forwards, squeezing between the tables, to take his place behind Janson. He was grinning.

The names came from a clipboard Janson was balancing in his hands. One by one, people rose from their seats to go and form a haphazard line at the back. Newt felt a small twist of panic inside his chest. The thought of being taken away from his friends, from Emis, was almost painful.

Eventually, Janson let the cover of his clipboard fall shut. There was a round of consecutive groans, and he put his hands up in mock surrender. "Now, now," He said sympathetically, "don't get discouraged. If I could take more, I would." He stashed the clipboard under his arm. "There's always tomorrow," he added, "Your time will come. Go on. Eat up."

There was a low scatter of halfhearted applause as he turned to leave, the line of kids following behind him.

"Where are they going?" Minho asked.

David released a sigh. "Far from here," he said wistfully. He turned back to face them. "Lucky bastards."

"Some kind of farm," Riley sounded bitterly disappointed. "A safe place. But they can only take in a couple of people at a time."

Suddenly, there came a huge lurch, as if someone had picked the room up and jostled it to the side. Newt felt his stomach turn over as the ground underneath them seemed to shift a fraction. A groaning, grinding sound had picked up, and there came a sudden tremor so strong that he was forced to grip onto the edge of the table.

Dust came out in puffs between the walls and the ceiling. The cafeteria had begun to fill with the sounds of rattling cutlery and trays, water spilling from the cup at his elbow as if someone was shaking it violently. The lights had begun to pulse and flicker.

Newt began to get to his feet, the tremors sending rippling waves of shock up through his legs, but all of a sudden, it stopped.

"What the bloody hell was that?" Tentatively, he sunk into his seat. His legs were crawling with shaky nerves, his hands still shaking, as if the earth's tremor had set his body into a light tremor of its own. He gripped the fabric of his trousers underneath the table to try and quell the shaking.

Minho shrugged from beside him. "Was it an earthquake?" He was speaking to David. "Has this happened before?"

David shook his head. He, too, was gripping the underside of the table for support. "No." He said tersely, "It hasn't."

"𝑰 thought you said you were going to give me a hand." Emis threw over her shoulder.

The sky had emptied out into a deep, prismatic blue. The colour was so thick and so dark that the light of the stars had waned dramatically, and the way was lit only by separated pools of silvery moonlight.

The last time she had been trapped inside the Maze at night had been an entirely different world. Everything had been unknown, and there had been the carrying pressure of making sure that they━she, Thomas, and Minho━could keep Alby alive. She remembered a constant wrench of terror inside her as it coiled and uncoiled itself up her throat.

The terror was still there, but it was only distant, now. A feeling lithe and weightless and slipping away from her as if she were clutching at water instead. Occasionally the fear would spill a bolt of coldness through her chest, but immediately it would fade away, and she would only faintly remember the discomfort.

There was something distantly calming, too, about being in this Maze. The world had not lost its odd, greyish tint, and somewhere in the corner of her mind Emis was beginning to understand that none of it was real.

Unfortunately, a quiet voice reminded her, it meant that Teresa wasn't real either.

Teresa's projection shrugged from behind her. "I'm a figment of your imagination━I'm a projection your mind has created because it recognises that I'm someone you trust."

Emis released a huff of annoyance. "Couldn't you have turned into someone else?" It sounded childish as she said it. Like Newt. The words hung unspoken between them.

Teresa answered anyway. "Me taking the form of Newt wouldn't do anything to help you, Emis." Her voice was frigid but soft with sympathy. "He would be far too much of a distraction."

"I never said anything about━" Emis cut herself off with another sharp exhale. Even saying his name felt somehow impossible. She changed the subject hurriedly. "What are you here for, then? If you can't do a single thing to help."

Teresa's projection released a laugh. "I never said I couldn't help."

"You're doing a fat job of helping, then." Emis said, dryly. "You've been about as useful as━"

She was interrupted by a huge, echoing wail. The sound was so sharp, and so piercing, that she was forced to stop dead in her tracks. A wave of sharp coldness had washed over her, as if she had stepped through a mist of icy cloud. She knew that sound.

"You'd better hurry." Teresa offered. Emis grit her teeth.

"Yeah, no shit." She snapped, trying to ignore the involuntary shudder that had rolled the length of her spine. The Griever's shriek seemed to have released a trigger within this odd, dreamlike reality, and suddenly there were dapples of colour that had spilled across the walls, against the ground, into the sky. The greyish tint was fading, which was discomforting.

Emis sighed. "I don't even know why I'm talking to you," she added. "You're not even real."

Teresa's expression cooled over. "Would you rather I leave?" She asked, in a clipped voice.

"No!" Emis cut in hastily. "No. Even though you're ... a 'figment of my imagination' ..." She trailed off. "I have to admit it's better than being alone. Plus, like you said, you look like her."

The projection tilted her head to the side. "You cared about her." It wasn't a question.

Emis shook her head. "It's not that simple." She said, with a wince. Talking about Teresa was painful as well. "I only remember being alone. Until her."

Teresa's eyes had lost their focus, glassing over like a doll's. Emis released a strangled sound of annoyance from the back of her throat, and threw her hands up in exasperation. "You know what? I must be going crazy. I might as well be talking to myself." With another flush of anger, she leaned in to kick the surface of the wall next to her.

But instead of her foot hitting hard against solid concrete, as she had expected, it crashed through the under-structure of the wall in an explosion of solidified cement and plaster, like a sledgehammer.

She stumbled back in shock, whipping her head towards Teresa. "What the hell was that?"

The projection was wearing a confused, almost pained expression. "This shouldn't be happening." She said in a voice cold as ice.

Emis raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?" She turned back to the wall, now with a gaping chunk carved out of it. There was a loose mist of settling dust and powder. She knelt down to run her fingers over the jagged edges, and found that the stone had turned warm. "They said they'd made me stronger, right?" Her heart had picked back up again, into its familiar race of hard-fast slams against her chest. The adrenaline was hot and strong as it spun to fill her bloodstream.

Teresa shook her head furiously. "I think you should stop," She said, "Let's just get out of here."

Emis narrowed her eyes. "Why?" She asked, in a voice that carried challenge. The adrenaline fizzed inside her veins like roiling, bubbling hot water. "Are you scared?"

Teresa tiled her chin up a fraction. "Scared for you." She replied. As if on cue, the air was split with the battling cry of a Griever again. "You should be running, Emis. You're wasting time."

Emis was only half-listening now as she rose to her feet, tracing the surface of the still-intact wall in front of her. Katherine's icy words rang through her like the sheath of a sharpened blade falling away. "We have made you better."

A sudden urge to tear the wall apart rose up inside her, and, drawing her arm back, she swung her elbow forwards into its surface.

"Emis, no━!" Teresa's voice ripped up in a strangled cry, but it was too late.

Her elbow cut forwards into the wall, and it was like a wrecking ball had hit. The wall released a groaning shudder, and then began to collapse into itself in a shower of scattering concrete and ivy. Emis flung herself backwards as more, heavier, larger chunks of the wall began to fall away.

"What have you done?!" Teresa sounded hysterical. "Emis! Stop this! Stop it, now!"

Emis wasn't listening to her. She was staring down at her hands. There was no pain, no rippling shock that should've hit from the impact her elbow had made against the wall. Instead, there was only a light, tingling sensation of burning, as if underneath the surface of her skin there were warm coals. But there was no pain. It was almost pleasant.

All of a sudden, the world's odd dapple between blue-light and grey washed away into a flood of deep, bright red. Emis turned to face Teresa, whose expression was one of frozen horror, and she could see in the reflection of her sea-glass eyes, the burning glow of her red ones.

Another guttural shriek broke up into the air, and Emis whirled to see that the Griever had finally rounded the corner, and was stood at the far end of the corridor they were stood in.

The sight of it brought a whirlwind of strength and fury coursing through her. It rose up on its back legs, and from where she stood Emis could smell the rusted metal on it, the watery, petroleum reek of its skin, and underneath that the burning, boiling turn of its pitch-like blood.

As it saw her, something inside it seemed to snap. It released another cry, clattering forwards onto its front, and began rolling towards them.

Faintly, from behind her Emis could hear Teresa yelling at her to, "Run! Run, Emis!" But it was ineffective. It was as if Teresa was standing behind a wall of glass, her words muffled and meaningless.

As she remembered it to be, the strength coursing through her veins had built itself into one that was blinding, hard and bright like a rod of pure sunlight. An easy calm had settled over her, and, in what felt like slow motion, she began to walk towards it.

Ahead of her, the Griever was a streak of metal and rubber-flesh. It was gaining speed, as if it couldn't quite control itself, and beneath its rolling body were streaks and skids of oil and tar.

Emis took another step forwards, and glanced down at her hands, still tingling and warm.

Breathing in the scent of burning and oil, she raised a hand high up over her head, as if she were wielding a great weapon. The Griever came skidding towards her, rearing into itself, and Emis realised, faintly, that it couldn't control itself. Releasing a battling cry, she closed her hand into a fist, and as the Griever was upon her, brought it down in a curving arc to shatter into the ground.

     ⁰⁰ ❛ 𝒂𝒖𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒓'𝒔 𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒆 . . .☄︎ ⋆࿐໋ ˖

          wp dark mode rly trashed my layout im : so angry rn.

          anyway, pls tell me what you thought! i totally went for it when writing the descriptions in this chap bc i feel as if i've been neglecting them a little in the past few chapters. thank u so much for all the continuous support, i'm ceo of overusing the word grateful but there is honestly no other way to describe how much u mean to me! please don't hold back from commenting/voting! every single one makes my entire day, so thank you! things are ab to start (finally) getting exciting now ... see u in CH5!

love, 𝒓𝒊𝒓𝒊. ‧₊˚.♡̷̷