| chapter 18: becoming a runner |

DAWN

It was the knock on the door that woke me up. With a groan I rubbed my eyes. 'Yes?' I mumbled, my voice heavy from the sleep.

'It's Minho, wake up lazy shank and meet me downstairs in five minutes.' Then I heard footsteps leaving. 

Suddenly all the sleepiness was gone and I jumped out of bed. Today my training as Runner would start and I was determined to learn as much about this place as possible.

Exactly five minutes later, if I had counted right, I stood downstairs. The door opened, Minho and Thomas came walking towards me. Minho carried a flashlight with him. They reached me and Thomas gave me a little smile before Minho almost dragged us with him.

We stopped in a dusty back corner of the Homestead. Minho pulled out a key and opened up a shabby door leading to a small storage closet. 

I caught glimpses of ropes, chains and other useful stuff.

Minho shone his flashlight on a box. He bent down and opened it with a shriek. It was filled with running shoes. A little smile appeared on my face, I had never thought of that.

'That right there's the number one supply we get,' Minho announced. 'At least for us. They send new ones in the Box every so often. If we had bad shoes, we'd have feet that look like freaking Mars.' He bent down and rummaged through the pile. 'What size you shanks wear?'

I frowned, that was actually a very good question. It was something so small, but it frustraded me so much that I didn't knew.

'Size?' Thomas asked. 'I...don't know.'

We looked at each other and bent down at the same time. I took my feet and looked under my shoes. '5,5.' I said and Minho handed me a pair of black sneakers. They were boy sneakers, guess they didn't have girl shoes. As long as they fitted me it'd be fine. Quickly I sat down and put them on, and till my surprise they fit really well.

'Eleven.' Thomas said. 

'Geez, shank, you got big feet.' Minho gave Thomas sleek silver ones. 'But looks like I've got some. Man, we could go canoeing in these things.'

'Those are fancy.' Thomas said, totally ignoring Minho's comment and sat down on the ground to put them on. 

Then Minho handed me a watch. 'Only Keepers and Runners get these. Put it on and never take it off. Your life might depend on it.'

It was a simple black watch that showed a digital display of the time.I was very happy with this, it was yet another little piece of knowing something, even if it was as little as time. 

Minho continued talking. 'Here's a backpack, water bottles, lunch pack, some shorts and T-shirts, other stuff.'

He nudged Thomas, made him look up and showed us a couple of pairs of tightly cut underwear, made from a shiny white material. I raised my eyebrows, were we suppose to wear those?

'These bad boys're what we call Runnie-undies. Keeps you, um, nice and comfy.'

I snorted but covered my mouth quickly. This was unbelievable.

'Nice and comfy?' Thomas asked.

'Yeah, ya know. Your-'

'Yeah, got it.' Thomas interrupted.

A chuckle escaped my lips making both Thomas and Minho raise an eyebrow at me. 'You guys really have it all sorted out, haven't ya?' I mumbled, my laughing slowly dying down. With the girl stuff that came up in the Box, there had been a sport bra. And now I was really happy with it.

'Couple of years runnin' your butt off every day, you figure out what you need and ask for it.'

Finally I stood up with raised eyebrows. 'Ask for it?' 

'Of course. Just drop a note in the Box, and there it goes. Doesn't mean we always get what we want from the Creators. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't.' 

'Ever asked for a map?' Thomas suggested. And I rolled my eyes.

Minho laughed. 'Yeah tried that one. Asked for a TV, too, but no luck. I guess those shuck-faces don't want us seeing how wonderful life is when you don't live in a freaking maze.'

Thomas shook head and jumped up. Then he started to run around in circles, jumping up and down to test them. 'They feel pretty good. I guess I'm ready.' 

Minho, who was still crouched over his backpack on the ground, looked up at Thomas with a look of disgust. 'You look like an idiot, prancin' around like a shuck ballerina. Good luck out there with no breakfast, no packed lunch, no weapons.'

I froze. Weapons? I thought those Grievers were only out there at night.

'Weapons?' Thomas asked.  

'Weapons,' Minho answered, then he stood up and walked back to the closet. 'Come here, I'll show ya.' 

Thomas and I followed him into the small closet and watched him pull a few boxes away from the back wall. Underneath lay a small trapdoor.

I felt a jolt of excitement going through me. 

Minho lifted it to reveal a set of wooden stairs leading into blackness. 'Keep 'em down in the basement so shanks like Gally can't get to them. Come on.' Minho went first, then Thomas and I followed them. By each step we took the stairs creaked. The cool air was refreshing, despite the dust scent of mildew. We hit a dirt floor and Minho pulled turned on a single lightbulb by pulling a string.

The room was pretty large. Shelves lined the walls, and there were several blocky wooden tables. There were so many weapons that it made me dizzy. Wooden poles, metal spikes, large pieces of mesh, rolls of barbed wire, saws, knives, swords and last a wall with a few bows and arrows.

Slowly I walked towards all the bows that covered the wall. I reached out and let my hand slide over the wood. It was like an eletric shock was send through me. This weapon, the shape, even the wooden smell of it. It all was so strangely familiar to me.

'It takes a long time to learn how to use those,' Minho's voice took me out of my thoughts.

With a frown I let go of the bow and turned back to the boys. 'Sorry.' I mumbled and walked to them. 

Minho shrugged. 'All we usually take is a couple of sharp knives.' He opened one of the boxes that was filled with knives. Every one of them was different in shape, but all of them looked dangerous.

'Pick a couple. Make sure they are nice and sharp. Then we'll go get breakfast and pack our lunch. I wanna spend some time in the Map Room before we leave.' 

The Map Room. That should be interesting.

After Thomas and I had choosen a few knives we left for breakfast. Once we were done and packed our lunch Minho took us to the Map Room. He opened the door and we stepped inside.

It was dark, and there was a musty wet smell in the air. 

Minho hit a switch and several rows of fluorescent lights flickered on. The room was far more simple than I first expected it would be. It was about twenty feet across, and it had concrete walls without any decoration. A wooden table stood in the middle. There were eight chairs around it. And before each one lay a paper and a pencil. The only other items in the room were eight closed trunks. They were evenly spaced, two a wall.

'Welcome to the Map Room. As happy a place as you could ever visit.' Minho said. 

'Too bad it smells like an abandoned copper mine.' Thomas said.

'I kinda like the smell.,' I shrugged.

Minho pulled out three chairs and sat down in one of them. 'Have a seat. I want you two to get a couple of images in your heads before we go out there.'

Thomas and I sat down and stared at Minho. He grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil and started drawing. At first I didn't see it but then realised he had drawn a big box that filled almost the entire page. Then he filled it with smaller boxes, three rows of three squars, all the same size.
He wrote the word GLADE in the middle. Then numbered the outside squares from one to eight, starting in the upper left corner and going clockwise. Lastly he drew little notches here and there. 

'These are the doors,' Minho said. 'You know about the ones from the Glade, but there are four more out in the Maze that lead to Sections One, Three, Five and Seven. They all stay in the same spot but the route there changes every night. So, we have the Glade, surrounded by eight Sections, each one a completely self-contained square and unsolvable in the two years since we began this freaking game. The only thing even approaching an exit is the Cliff, and that ain't a good one unless you like falling to a horrible death.'

I frowned and stared at the paper that Minho had drawn on. So far I understood it all, except for one thing: Where was the shucking exit? How was it possible that in two years they hadn't found anything? There was more to this Maze. It was a real puzzle and we had to figure it out. We had to look to all the details.

Suddenly Thomas voice broke through my thoughts. 'I didn't see anything move that night we got stuck out there.' 

Good question, me neither.

'Those main corridors right outside the Doors don't ever change. It's just the ones a little deeper out,' Minho explained. 'We always have at least eight Runners, including the Keeper. One for each Section. It takes us a whole day to map out our area-hoping against hope there's an exit-then we come back and draw it up, a separate page for each day. That way those things are shuck full of Maps.'

'Are we...replacing someone? Did somebody get killed?' Thomas suddenly asked. 

I raised my eyebrows, feeling suddenly worried. 

'No, we're just training you two, someone'll probably want a break. Don't worry, it's been a while since a Runner was killed.' He said it so lightly, like it hardly even mattered. But people died, people looking for a way out, trying to safe their friends. 

I just couldn't help it but to hate myself for wanting to jump off the Cliff that night in the Maze. How could I've been so selfish, to think even for a second that nobody needed me? We all needed each other, girl or no girl. 

Thomas, who was clearly looking for some distraction pointed at section three, taking me out of my thoughts. 'So...it takes you the whole day to run through those sections?'

'Hilarious,' Minho responded. 'We figured out those walls were moving right at the beginning. That's when we started to map everything. And we found that the Maze changes in patterns. Which repeat themselves every month. But there has never been an exit.'

'It's been two years. Haven't you got desperate enough to stay out there at night, see if maybe something opens while the walls are moving?' 

Minho looked up at Thomas, anger flashing through his eyes. 'That's kinda insulting, dude, Seriously.'

'What?' Thomas asked, clearly shocked by this reaction.

'We've been bustin' our butts for two years, and all you can ask is why we're too sissy to stay out there all night? A few tried it but all of them showed up dead. You wanna spend another night out there? Like your changes of surviving again, do ya?'

Thomas's face reddened in shame.

And I felt sorry for him, but Minho was nothing more than right.

'No. Sorry.' Thomas mumbled.

'Yeah. Well.' Minho turned back to the trunk with Maps. 'Life in the Glade might not be sweet livin' but at least it's safe. Plenty of food, protection from the Grievers. There's no way we can ask the Runners to stay out there. Not yet. Not until something about those patterns gives a clue that the exit might open up.'

'But we can't give up,' I said. 

'Right on that gorgeous. We can't give up.' Minho placed everything back and stood up. 'Well we gotta bust it fast since we took time in here. You two'll be following me around the first days. Ready?' 

He looked at me and I nodded. 'Yes, I'm ready.'

Then he looked at Thomas. 'Um...yeah.'

'No 'ums' around here. Ready or not?'

Thomas looked at Minho a sudden determination burning in his eyes. 'I'm ready.'

'Then let's go runnin'.'