WHEN EVIE OPENED HER EYES, SHE
expected to see light, perhaps a bed, or something of the sort, to lie on.
Instead, she saw nothing but full black in front of her. She gasped, barely getting any air into her lungs.
She felt like wet cement was lying on her chest, when she felt her heart racing, hammering against her ribs.
The thoughts in her head were racing. Something tangible was moving further and further away from her thoughts. Instead, a fog appeared in her memories that refused to clear.
She rummaged in the farthest cells of her head, her farthest thoughts, trying to hold on to something.

Panic overcame the girl. The attempt to calm herself down went horribly wrong. Her brain was working at full speed, when all she could see were loose images without meaning.
People with blurred faces, streets, cars, lights. She couldn't place any of them.

What had happened?!

She tried to recognize something, maybe something that looked familiar. Under her hands, she felt a kind of grid biting sharply into her skin. Evie's first clear thought was that she was in some kind of cage.
But this thought was not less absurd than being in an absolute nightmare, that she would wake up from any minute. She also noticed objects next to her. She saw wooden boxes and bags, yet none of it looked familiar to her in any way.

Was she in a storage room? Perhaps on a ship?

Confused that she knew what a ship or a storeroom was but she couldn't remember of anything else, she tried to remember how she had gotten to this place.

She winced violently and jumped up as the room suddenly began to move. She felt her body being pressed against the floor and concluded that she was going upwards. She tried to hold on to something around her and noticed due to the red and green lights that flashed past her eyes that she was indeed in a cage. It was like an elevator that was now accelerating in full speed towards the ceiling.

"HEY! HEELP!" she screamed.

"HEELP!!"

A sudden jolt caused her to stagger back. She stumbled and banged her head on something hard, probably one of the crates.
From that point, her sight went black.

—

The next thing she perceived was a web of excited voices. The air was no longer stuffy, but fresh and humid. However, she could still feel the grid biting into her skin.

"What is it Newt?" a deep, loud voice called over the other excited voices.
It slowly became quiet. They seemed to be waiting for an answer from this 'Newt'.

Evie felt the need to open her eyes and look around. To see who those voices were coming from. She tried to remember what had happened, but all she knew was the cage she had been in and maybe still was now.

"It's a girl!" She heard a voice so close to her that she almost flinched. Immediately there was excited whispering again.

"A girl?!"

A girl?
She was a girl. He was talking about her.

"Why are they sending a girl?"
"What's that about?"
"A girl?!"
"What she look like?"
"Is she pretty?"
"Yeah, is she?!"

"Alright SHUT UP!" The loud voice she had heard first boosted the atmosphere again. Immediately the other voices went quiet.

"Newt, whassup with her?" Asked the person again. It had to be something similar to a leader, Evie thought. In the next moment, she felt cold fingers against her neck. The girl almost jumped up in fright, but managed to remain still.

"She's alive." Was his simple reply.

Why shouldn't she be alive?

Evie managed to open her eyes and was startled when she looked directly into a pair of brown ones.
She gasped, quickly and got herself into a sitting position, before turning to the side and lashing out. Doing so, she hit the guy leaned over her in the face with her elbow.

"OW!"
The blond boy fell back and held his nose, groaning.

"Damn.. klonk!" he cursed, while the other voices cried out in shock. Evie took advantage of this moment to scramble to her feet.
She looked up. A dozen faces were staring at the girl. She wasn't able to count them, because of the sun, that was too blinding and stinging into her eyes.

She saw someone jump down out of the corner of her eye and the cage shook as the person landed.
It was a broadly built boy, his hair blond and shaved short and his look intimidating, though it was his eyebrows that caught Evie's eye first.
She threw an object at him, that was lying next to her, he dodged it and came towards her with his hands up.

"WOW WOW Hey, stop! we're not going to hurt you Shuck! Slim it!" Now she heard mocking laughter from above. Evie didn't understand a word, the guy said.

Slim it?

"Are you okay Newt?" he then asked the boy, whom she hit.

"I'm fine." The boy grumbled and Evie thought she heard him mumble 'Bloody hell'. He pulled himself up with a groan, his hand on his nose. His hair was also blond, only longer, and he was rather slender than the other guy.

"Get her out!" Evie looked up at the person leaning down towards her. He was the owner of the loud voice. A muscular older boy with shaved hair, but she didn't recognize his face, because of the sun that blended her.
As she got used to the bright light, however, she recognized the almost black eyes that seemed to pierce her.

Evie was offered many hands from above, often with the person stupid grinning. She grabbed one of them and let herself be pulled up.
The girl looked around and recognized boys everywhere. All different ages, different skin tones, hair colors and body shapes. They stared at her as if they had never seen anything like her before. Dead silence filled the air around the girl.

Evie heard sounds of crowding and when everyone stared at her, she saw down at herself, feeling terribly uncomfortable in her skin. She realized she was wearing jeans and a black shirt. When she looked up again, the noise of the many voices started up again.

"Are you all right?"
"What's your name?"
"She doesn't know her name, Slinthead!"
"Why are you here?"
"Why are they sending her?"
"Move, shank!"
"What's she doing here?"

Evie felt hands on her shoulders, she saw faces that were all foreign to her. Voices she didn't recognize.
Her heart began to race so fast that she thought she would fall unconscious again, the next moment. Her head hurt and the only clear thought she could grasp was
Run.

She didn't know where to go, but she didn't care. The main thing was to get away from those people. She pushed the people around her out of her way, pushed her way through the crowd and ran out of it.
Behind her, she could hear jeering and laughter. Her breathing was hectic, her legs suddenly felt light and out of nowhere the laughter stopped. Evie briefly wondered if she had lost her hearing, but she had not.
Instead, she now heard warnings, yells and orders.

"Stop!"
"Ey!"
"Stop!"
"Ey stopp!"
"Stopp!"

But her body wouldn't stop as she thought about what they were warning her about. She saw something out of the corner of her eye, but before she could see who or what it was, she was tackled to the ground.

Evie's face hurt and she wanted to get up to continue running, but something, or rather someone heavy, stopped her from doing so.
The person who had knocked the girl down was sitting on her back and stopping her from getting up.
She could hear his frantic breathing.

"Are you.. mad?!" asked the voice between heavy breaths, which she definitely assigned to a boy.

She heard foot stomping and whispering, which was really getting annoying to her. She turned her face towards the renewed crowd of boys and suddenly found the situation she was in really embarrassing.

"Thanks Minho!"

"Shit, who's that?" the guy on her back asked.

"Our Newbie." Was the answer, the guy got. Evie was sure she had a concussion, with her head hurting that bad.

"Newbie, huh? Am I stupid or is that a girl?" The boy above her asked again.

"Put her in the pit." ordered the one she thought to be the leader. The boy got off of her and she turned on her back to see him. His hair was black and his dark eyes scrutinized her before he walked away.
Instead, the stocky blond-haired boy came into her view and pulled her roughly to her feet.

Evie stared at him, his eyes sparkled ice blue and his eyebrows still had that strange shape.
He held her arm so tightly that it almost hurt and pulled her away.

"You almost walked through the gates Greenie." the guy said and then muttered to himself something like 'a girl' which Evie wasn't able to hear correctly.

Gates?

Evie looked over her shoulder as she saw the gap between two walls. She followed the gray stone, but there was no end of the wall. The view made her feel dizzy.

They walked across a huge dry meadow with a few patches of yellow here and there. At one point she recognized a forest.
Her stomach turned as she continued to look around, recognizing houses or at least small huts everywhere. A few of them seemed unstable or even collapsed, which led her to believe that they were probably self-built by the people.

Most of her attention, however, was drawn to the large house in the middle, which looked rather dilapidated and old. Gray concrete with cracks and ivy adorned its old walls. It didn't seem to have been built by them, as if it had been in this place from the beginning.

From the beginning?

"What is this place?" Evie asked the blond boy, but got no answer. On the other side of the huge meadow, she saw goats, sheep, pigs. She was surprised that she knew exactly what the animals were called, what they ate and what they felt like when someone would ran their hand over their backs. She knew what they sounded like, as if she heard it every day. Of course, the girl again didn't know how she knew all of this information.
It was maddening.
Evie looked at the boy again and eyed him.

"What are you looking at?" he glared at her. She didn't like his whole attitude. He dragged her to a hole that was blocked by bamboo bars. He opened it and pushed her in roughly. Evie landed on her knees and cursed quietly. The blond boy again looked at her menacingly one last time, as if he wanted to intimidate her, so she wouldn't get any ideas and then walked away.

—

The girl didn't know how long she had been in that hole. But it was definitely too long for Evie. She sat close to the bamboo poles and watched the people working, as her leg tripped nervously on the ground.

Some of the people were working in gardens, others were repairing or improving the houses, which reinforced her suspicion that they had built them themselves. Still others were in a cottage, next to which the goats, sheep and pigs were kept in fences.
She couldn't see what they were doing until one of them came out covered in blood.
This sight sent shivers down her spine and she didn't want to imagine what was going on inside of the building.

What if they were murderers and cannibals?!

After all, she didn't know the people, maybe they were all mad and belonged in a mental hospital. Maybe she was mad herself and that was why she was here. Panic overcame the girl.

Why the fuck was she here?!

It was still the middle of the day, yet it felt like she had been sitting in the 'pit' for hours when a person finally appeared in front of the bars. They cast their shadow over Evie and the girl looked up to the person that got revealed as the guy with the loud voice. He opened the bars, held on to the top edge with one hand and let himself hang in like it was nothing.

"I'm Alby." He said, eyeing her. Evie remained silent, as she couldn't possibly tell him her name because she couldn't remember it like all the other things she couldn't remember.

"Can you remember anything? Who you are? Where you from? Anything?" He asked in a calm voice.

"No.. I don't know. I-I can't remember anything!" Saying it was a completely different feeling for Evie.

Was this place something like heaven? Had she died and this is her second life? Life after death?

It confused her so much that she was speaking the truth.
It felt like she was lying to Alby. She looked desperately at the man and hoped that he would believe her.
But Alby didn't seem to be surprised at all.

"It's okay, do you know your name?" he asked and the girl shook her head.

"Ey it's alright. That's what happens. We all been through that." He said, nodding assuringly but not really caring. His voice was cold and tensed.

"You'll soon remember your name again. But that's the only thing we're allowed to remember." His eyes were fixed on her.

Allowed to remember?!

"Why?" she asked now. Evie hadn't thought about whether the others knew or remembered anything.

"You can ask your questions later." Alby looked around as if he was checking something, then he looked back at Evie.

"Promise me you won't freak out again?" She nodded and he held his hand out to her.

"Well, get your ass out of here then!" She climbed out of the hole and stood in front of Alby, who was bigger than she thought.

"No questions! Until the end, understand? I can't stand it when the greenbeans talk."

Greenbeans?

He ran off and she followed him, first to the big house in the center of this place.

"That's the main building! The keepers sleep in it." He told her.

"What are the keepers?" She interrupted him, having long forgotten his request, which she immediately remembered when he looked at her venomously.

"Sorry." She mumbled and Alby exhaled loudly and aggressively.

"And there's a common room for emergencies. For emergencies only, understand? Otherwise, your butt has no place in there!" Again she nodded quickly to show him that she had understood. Then they walked on.

"There are 11 jobs here! You'll do a job every day until we assign you to one. We work here, newbie!" He snarled.

"That's the only thing here that won't blow your brains out." He said, again biting his eyes into her.
Evie had to restrain herself from asking the next question and trotted after him as he headed for the house with the bloodied people.

"That's the blood house, there are the builders, back there you'll find the track-hoes and the gardeners, there's the kitchen and back there is the forest. We call all this the glade and we call ourselves the gladers! Glade - gladers. Makes sense? There are keepers, the people who run the different jobs and will show you around, for example.. Gally!" he said raising his hand to the burly guy with the short blond hair, who had put Evie in the 'pit'. He came walking up to them.

Gally? That was his name?

"Gally is the keeper of the builders. They spend most of their time repairing old houses and when they get around to it, they build new ones." He discussed something with this Gally before the blonde left again.

"What do they do in the blood house?" Evie asked.

"Shut up, newbie and let me explain!"
Alby snapped at her and Evie flinched a bit because of his harsh tone.

No wonder, the others listened to him so quickly.

"What do you think shank? Slaughtering animals, the food has to come from somewhere, huh?"

So they were no cannibals after all.

The two of them walked on to the patch of forest in one corner.

"You won't find much in there, in the forest. There's our cemetery! If you're keen on bones and decomposed body parts, you're always welcome."
The idea of dead bodies gave the girl goose bumps and the question of why people needed a cemetery here sent shivers down her spine. As far as she had seen, the boys here were all young enough that none of them could have died of old age.

"The gardens are back there. We grow all our own vegetables."
Alby now had her full interest as they then headed for the large walls with the 'gates'.

The huge walls came closer to the girl and seemed the more threatening. Alby suddenly stopped a good 20 feet away from the Gates and turned to Evie.

"Listen, Greenbean." Alby again started talking.

"We have three rules here. First. Do your job. Every day, one job all right? Do your work well like everyone else, we can't afford slackers."

'That's the only thing that won't blow your brains out!'

"Secondly. Don't harm anyone. This doesn't work without trust. You go after one of the guys, kill one or just hurt them, you'll be punished." He seemed to be waiting for a reaction, so she nodded.

"And thirdly, and this is the most important rule," he said, looking deep into the girl's eyes.

"Never." he pointed to 'the gates'

"Never! Go out there." Evie immediately looked at him questioningly. His look was dead serious.

'Are you mad?!' the guy with the black hair had said when he stopped her from running.

It was clear that they had stopped Evie from walking through there. Was something scaring them?
'Gates' meant it was an entrance or exit to something, but what? What scared them?

"What's out there?" Evie asked. Alby looked at the gates, lost in thought.

"The maze." he answered quietly, then looked at her again.

"Eyo Alby!" it was a lanky boy with dark hair who now got his attention. He beckoned Alby to him, who then turned back to Evie.

"If you break one of the rules, you'll be punished, so spare us the time and exhaustion!"
With these words, he turned and left. Evie stood alone and looked at the gates.

A maze? Why were they at the gates of a maze?

A feeling of unease spread through her as she tried to imagine what it looked like.. the maze.
Thousands of questions rumbled in her head

Why were they here?
Why was SHE here?
What was going on here?

She turned around, her eyes searching for Alby.
He owed her far too many answers that he had promised.

—

Evie stared at the wall for a while, which circled her and made her feel cramped in a way. She walked slowly to the right until she stood right in front of the wide gap between the two ends of the wall.
She looked in, but didn't recognize much.
It was a wide corridor, covered in ivy. She followed the corridor with her eyes until it turned a corner and all she could see was a wall.

She flinched, when someone cleared their throat behind her. She turned to the person and recognized the boy she had punched in the face.
His nose had bled, you could tell. However, it didn't appear to be broken.

How was she supposed to know what a broken nose looked like?

He looked at her blankly.

"I'm Newt. Alby has things to do, so I'm supposed to show you where you sleep."
Evie recognized his cold tone. He must be a little angry with her because of his nose.
She opened her mouth to say something.

"Come on Greenie." He said unkindly. It bothered her, even though Alby had the same tone.
Newt just didn't seem like the kind of person who would normally be unfriendly.

He turned around and walked off. The girl closed her mouth again and followed him to some boxes.
As she stood in front of it, she noticed the grooved crack in the floor, only it wasn't a crack, it looked like a flap.
She realized from where she knew it. It was the crack at the very top of the ceiling, which was just as unopened when she hurtled towards it in a high speed. Below it was the elevator, which was probably why the boxes were on top of it. It fascinated and confused the girl at the same time, just the thought that she had come out of there.

"What's that?" Evie stomped on the crack as she examined the boxes next to it.

"The box. Every month a newbie comes up with resources." Newt explained briefly, pointing at the boxes.

Every month.

"Why?" The girl asked. Newt, who seemed to be looking for something, turned to her.

"Why what?" he then asked.

"Why is someone new coming up, how come- why does this thing open and close?" She hadn't seen any buttons to push anywhere.
Newt didn't answer, he picked up a sheet of some sort and ran past her to a shelter.

"Don't ask so many questions, you'll only get mad." He said in a bored tone.

"Why would someone send us here? Who does this?!" Her voice was hysterical now, the thought of what she had said making her feel sick to her stomach.
Someone waking up a person in a cage with boxes and no memories. That sounded completely absurd.
Newt still didn't answer her. He looked around and ran to an open space, under a roof. He then started tying the sheet there.

"Ask them yourself if we can make it out of here," he said simply, not looking at Evie. She stood next to him and watched him.

"Out of here?" She asked.

"Yes. Through the maze." he said disinterestedly, completely focused on his work.

"But no one is allowed to go in the maze. How are you going to find a way out when no one is allowed to go in?!"
Now, Newt did pay attention to the girl.
He stared at her for a moment as if she had said something completely stupid.
He then turned back to the sheet, which was probably supposed to be some kind of hammock.

"The rules don't say that no one is allowed in the maze. You're just not allowed." he answered.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked. He looked up.

"See those guys back there?" He pointed to a group of boys, who were getting something to eat from a boy behind a counter and then sat down at a table.

"Those are the runners. They go into the maze every day to find a way out. They're allowed in the maze, everyone else is not," he said with his thick british accent.

"Why doesn't just everyone go in?" Evie looked at each one of them.

"Too dangerous." Newt said.

"Why?" Evie looked at him again.

"You'll find out."

"And how do you become a runner?" She asked and Newt's eyes darted to her. He looked at the girl for a moment as if he had seen a ghost, then he turned back to the hammock.

"That's too bloody dangerous. The runners are the strongest and fastest among us, you.." He interrupted himself and tied the other end of the hammock.

"I what?" she asked.

"You have no idea you've been here for ten minutes."

"How long do you have to be here to become a runner?" Evie tilted her head.

"You wanna plunge to your death? Alright there you go Greenie."

"Why am I even called a Greenie? What does that mean?" she asked. Newt shrugged his shoulders.

"That's what we always call the new ones."

The new ones... there it was again.

"I don't like being called that," she said.

"So what? It doesn't matter, as long as you're here, you'll have to live with it." Evie didn't like his answer at all.

"Do I get a different name then?" she asked.

"What? Greenbean? Shank? Slinthead?"
He raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms in front of his chest.

"There you go." he said when she didn't give him an answer. She opened her mouth to say something. But then she closed it again, huffing in annoyance and the girl stomped off.

„Ey where are you going? Come back!" she ignored his yells.

Authors Note:
I'm so sorry the first chapters are gonna be really long but I promise it'll get better! I just wanted to keep this book short (not too many chapters) forgive meee.

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