[ ELECTRA ]

❧

When Electra saw Thomas and Minho stopped in front of a thick mesh of ivy, their talking incoherent from her position on top of the walls, she reluctantly climbed down to greet them. She didn't want to talk to Thomas ever again, as his constant denials of her suspicions angered her to the utmost degree, but Minho wanted her to help train him. She'd convinced herself that maybe if she kept questioning him, then perhaps she'd pick up on some flaws within his answers. He couldn't be that smart as to perfectly conceal his real purpose.

"How was your day in the Slammer, Greenie?" Electra asked, looking down at the knife in his hand and grimacing at how dull it was.

"Painfully boring, actually." Thomas tried chopping at the ivy, but when his knife didn't slice all the way through the vines he frowned.

"Maybe don't use such a dull knife." Electra snatched the knife out of his hand, tracing her finger along the blade. She had a flat stone in her pack that she used to sharpen knives, but wouldn't tell Thomas about it just yet.

"I told him to pick sharp weapons," Minho groaned, placing his hands on his hips.

Thomas pulled out a second knife, holding up the blade right in front of his eyes to try and see the sharpness. "This one look better to you?"

Electra peered over. The knife was still duller than she'd like, and she definitely wouldn't use it to go head on against a Griever, but it looked sharp enough to cut through ivy.

"Eh, it's okay. But go ahead, try again." She motioned with her hand to the ivy wall in front of them.

Thomas nodded at her before slowly turning back to the ivy wall. He bounced on his feet a couple times, taking in a deep breath, before swinging and chopping at the ivy. A large vine fell to the floor, and Thomas turned towards Electra, his head tilting towards the fallen vine.

Electra handed Thomas' dull knife back to him. "Now you just need to do that while running and you might not die out here."

Thomas made a face at her before Minho adjusted the straps on his pack. "C'mon, we're wasting too much time. Greenie, I want you to practice chopping as we run. Electra, maybe you should chop as well just in case Junior here can't do it well enough."

The group set off. Thomas tried cutting the ivy as they ran and, to Electra's surprise, he wasn't terrible at it, but his technique could be improved upon. His first couple of attempts he needed to sprint to catch back up with them, and on his fourth attempt he nicked his finger.

Thomas cursed under his breath, shaking his hand that he'd nicked as they ran along. Electra rolled her eyes at him before looking ahead and seeing Minho jotting down some scribbles on his notepad.

"Watch your fingers," Minho said absentmindedly, not taking his eyes off of his notepad.

Thomas frowned at the cut on his finger for a few moments before grabbing his knife in the same hand. Electra noticed after a couple of his attempts that the Greenie was holding his knife with the blade facing down, making his swing angle significantly more awkward. She watched as he stabbed at the wall, with only a few measly vines falling to the floor.

Electra huffed out a breath of frustration before cutting a piece of ivy in the wall beside her. "Here, hold your knife with the blade facing up. It's much easier to chop outward than whatever weird move you're trying to do."

Thomas flipped the knife in his hand with a tiny throw. "Thanks."

They continued running for around half an hour and Thomas' chopping soon became close to perfect. He began to successfully match Electra's pace and she was surprised at his quick progress. When noticing her surprise she quickly buried it deep down. It was cutting ivy not fighting a Griever. How hard was it really?

"Break time." Minho stopped and flung his bag around himself as he sat down. He pulled out his water bottle and took a quick swig.

Electra sat down beside him while Thomas took his place on the opposing wall. Minho pulled out an apple and they relaxed in silence for a few moments. Electra gazed at Thomas and remembered him running out into the Maze a couple days ago, anxiously admitting to hearing the girl in his mind. She didn't doubt that telepathy could be possible considering how technologically advanced the Maze was, but Thomas being granted the gift of telepathy? The fact only furthered her ideas about him working with those who put them in the Maze. Why else would he have been given a gift like that?

Was it even telepathy in the first place? Electra heard a voice on her first day of the Maze, warning her to stay away from the boys. She didn't have telepathy even after hearing the voice. Thomas didn't mention talking back to her telepathically, so maybe Thomas hearing the girl's voice was a one time thing.

Before she could question him on it, Thomas spoke to Minho, "You never told me what exactly happened that day the Griever attacked you and Alby."

"Well, shuck thing wasn't dead," Minho said bitterly. "Jumped back to life right as Alby began poking at it and chased the poor guy around the corner away from me. By the time I got there the thing was gone and Alby was out cold."

"So it ran away from you guys?"

"I don't know for sure. As I said, the Griever was already gone by the time I turned the corner. But one did run away from me during our night in the Maze." Minho finished his apple and lazily tossed the core beside him.

Electra remembered the Griever that ran away from her that same night. Minho looked at her, as if expecting her to add on to his point and admit to Thomas what she'd seen, but she stayed silent. She'd rather have the Greenie believe she killed the Griever that night.

"Did you see anything wrong with it? Did you see an injury or anything?" Thomas asked, before awkwardly continuing. "The one that attacked Alby, I mean."

"The Griever was covered in stab wounds from Electra and I. We had no reason to believe the thing could've survived that many injuries but somehow it did." Minho shrugged, and Thomas furrowed his brows, looking from Minho to Electra.

"And where were you? Did you just watch since you didn't want Alby to see you?" Thomas' tone was the slightest bit accusatory, and Electra could feel annoyance bubbling up in her chest.

"No, I didn't just watch. Another Griever chased me away from them right as theirs sprung back awake. How do you think I got this?" Electra rudely replied, before holding out her arm and showing Thomas the angry scab on her forearm.

Thomas scrunched his nose when he saw her wound. "I just wonder where they always go, don't you?" he paused for a second, looking up. "Haven't you ever tried following them?"

"Of course I have. If you think you can do it, go right ahead. But I won't be there to help you when they sting you," Electra snapped, remembering how whenever she would try, a pack of Grievers would chase her away before she could figure out where they would go.

Thomas looked hurt for a split second. "Have you ever gotten stung?"

"Nope, and you better pray you don't either. That fancy little serum the Creators give us definitely has some bugs in it. Made Ben go crazy, didn't it? That's the reason he attacked you, yeah?"

"Yeah..." Thomas trailed off, before changing the subject. "Have you ever tried-"

"Anything you can think of, believe me, I've tried," Electra huffed, standing up and grabbing her pack from the ground.

"Come on, we gotta go." Minho also stood up, and the trio began running again, with Minho in front and Electra taking up the rear.

Thomas continued to chop the ivy vines and after a while Electra stopped cutting hers. As much as she didn't want to accept the fact, the Greenie was doing a good enough job on his own.

As they ran, Thomas brought his hand to his chin, taking a moment to think, before asking, "You can run on top of the walls, right? Well, haven't you seen the ends of it from up there?"

"Tried that too, Greenie. The Maze looks endless from the top and everytime I get close to where I think the end is, I get pushed back," Electra said, feeling the annoyance from earlier build even more. Thomas must think they were complete idiots if he was asking about seeing the ends of the Maze from the top.

"We know where the ends are," Minho added in a lighter tone. "We can run through them from ground level just fine, but as soon as she tries running on top of the walls in those areas, we almost die. So, you know, we tend to avoid doing that."

Electra replayed memories of their attempts to see past the Maze from on top of the walls. She remembered the vicious winds that threatened to push her off the tops of the walls, and the Grievers that chased her until she got back down to ground level. Most importantly, she remembered how Minho almost died the first time she tried to climb the walls in the outer regions. He'd gotten caught between two Grievers and if it wasn't for Electra distracting them by climbing up the walls yet again to make them chase her, he would've died.

Thomas stopped asking questions for the next couple hours and the group trudged on in silence. She wondered if he believed what she said about the Maze looking endless from the top. He must've, because he couldn't even get on top of the walls. The same type of illusion that made the walls look impossibly tall was used to make the Maze look impossibly vast. Plus, the Greenie might have telepathy, so really anything was possible.

They took a few short breaks within the couple of hours they ran but Minho stopped the group for lunch in the early afternoon. The three of them all sat down in the same position as earlier and took out their food. Minho handed over an extra sandwich to Electra and she began eating it slowly. Thomas ate even slower than she did and she wanted to laugh at his procrastination tactic.

When she finished her sandwich, she took a quick sip of water before reaching into her pack and grabbing the flat sharpening stone. "Pass your knives to me, Greenie. They're kind of pathetic at the moment."

Thomas slid the knives across the stone, and they slowed to a stop right in front of Electra's lap. She caught an appreciative glance from Minho before he took another sip of his water. Electra looked back down and took the dullest knife and began slowly sliding it across the cool stone on an angle, pinching her finger down the blade after every couple swipes to test how sharp it'd become. In case they ran into a Griever at least Thomas wouldn't be completely helpless.

"Anything different today?" Thomas asked, and Electra looked up confused before realizing he was talking about Maze patterns.

Minho patted his backpack. "Just the usual wall movements. Nothing to get your skinny butt excited about."

Electra focused on her knife sharpening. After several swipes, she felt satisfied about the edge of the blade. Setting it down on the ground, she picked up the second one and began doing the same thing. The second one wasn't nearly as bad as the first, so she only needed to swipe it a couple of times.

Again, Thomas asked a question to break the silence, "What's the deal with those beetle blades?"

Since Electra didn't quite listen to his question, still focused on her knife sharpening, Minho answered, "We're not entirely sure, but they have to be spies of some sort for the Creators. That's the only thing we can reckon."

"Have you ever caught one?"

Thomas' question made Electra perk up. She immediately went to feel the scar right above her ear.

"Yeah I caught one." Electra lifted her hair to show Thomas her scar and he curiously inspected it. "They self-destruct when you get your hands on 'em. Almost lost my head when it exploded, and I haven't tried since."

When Thomas didn't say anything in response, Electra began asking the questions this time.

"Do you want to talk about how a couple days ago you ran into the Maze claiming you spoke telepathically with the girl?"

Thomas' eyes opened wide, before his head tilted down. "I didn't say we spoke to each other."

"She spoke to you at least, didn't she?" Electra stuffed her sharpening stone back into her pack.

"He couldn't have actually heard her. C'mon telepathy? I think Thomas was just freaked out after having to see Alby go through the Changing," Minho said, finishing his lunch and putting his water bottle back into his bag.

"Yeah, that's definitely what must've happened," Thomas said, nodding his head quickly. "Alby was in such bad shape, it was kind of traumatizing honestly. I think I just got overwhelmed and tricked myself into hearing what I wanted to hear."

Electra narrowed her eyes at him. "What did you want to hear then? What did she say to you?"

"Nothing really. She just told me her name and how her memory was fading. She seemed really scared."

"And you wanted to hear her sound all scared like that? You're kind of a weirdo, man," Minho laughed, and Thomas forcibly smiled back at him.

"Well no I didn't want to hear her like that. I guess what I meant is that I wanted to be able to talk to her... so I imagined her talking to me."

Electra wasn't buying it. In fact, she didn't believe anything that Thomas told her. But his insistence that the voice he'd heard in his mind a couple days prior was fake? She remembered how shaken up he was, and remembered how she'd reacted when she first heard the voice in her head telling her not to reveal herself to the Gladers. The voice Thomas heard had to be real.

"You keep lying to me. Every single time I ask you something you lie and it's really getting on my nerves. You know, for all your talk of wanting to escape this place you sure make it harder for me to find possible solutions," Electra said. "Is it because you work with—"

"I don't work with the Creators!" Thomas' voice rang out, and Electra held eye contact with him, feeling a bit surprised at his sudden outrage. Electra wondered what the girl must've told him, to let Electra strike a nerve like she'd done. "What's your deal? Why are you so rude all the time?"

"Rude? You're the one avoiding the questions here. That's pretty rude."

"I answered your stupid questions. I didn't hear the girl and I don't work with the Creators. You just don't believe me."

"You're right, I don't believe you. Everything changed when you showed up. A couple days ago you ran into the Maze a panicked mess over hearing the girl in your head and now you're telling me it was all fake? It's too suspicious!" Electra counted the reasons on her fingers and Thomas huffed in response.

"Suspicious? What's suspicious is you living out here all by yourself and making me promise not to tell anyone!" Thomas paused, as if connecting dots in his head. "The Banished boys... they all got killed and you just sat there and watched, didn't you?"

"They were a danger to myself. Plus I thought it best for my own safety to not get directly involved with the boys from the Glade." Electra didn't admit the voice she heard and wasn't sure if Minho had told him. The voice was none of his business, and if he wasn't going to be truthful with her then she didn't owe him anything.

Thomas let out an exasperated laugh. "You have such a big problem with me when you're the one letting all these innocent boys die."

"Innocent? Who put them there? You didn't Banish them with the intent of them living, did you?" Electra watched Thomas break eye contact with her for a split second. "I saw you watching Ben's Banishment. You did nothing to save him, why should I have had to?"

Thomas looked down at his hands, thinking for a few moments. "What about the ones who weren't Banished? The ones who get trapped out here?"

"Again, they're a danger to my own safety."

"So if Minho wasn't with us that night you would've let us die?" Thomas asked, and Electra didn't reply, unsure if her truthful answer would push him over the edge.

Truth was, she wouldn't have intervened if Minho hadn't been there. She was pretty sure Minho was someone she could see without negative repercussions, so why would she risk her own safety over a boy she didn't even know? It was their own fault for getting trapped outside; they knew the Doors closed for a reason. Plus, she survived each night in the Maze on her own. It was up to them to do the same and none of them ever lived up to the task.

"Dude, you're treating her like she's a murderer. She's stuck in this shitty situation just like we are." Minho intervened, after a long bout of silence.

Minho's words made Thomas even angrier. His head turned up to the sky as he groaned, "C'mon man, you're taking her side? It's her fault that all those boys died."

"No, it's the Creators' fault." Minho frowned. "Listen, she's just like us, okay? Scared, and just wanting to survive. Except she was alone these three years. Neither of us have any idea what that could've been like. So lay off a bit."

"And why is she alone? Seems like she enjoys the isolation."

Electra shook her head. "You don't know what you're talking about. You know nothing about what I've been through these three years, so you're in no position to question my actions."

Thomas stared at Electra and she felt insecure under his examining glance. She wouldn't let him know, however, so she glared back at him, her gaze not faltering for even a split second.

The first thing Thomas did when he found out about her was question her actions to stay alive. This was the exact thing she'd tried to avoid by staying anonymous. She didn't have to explain herself. She just needed to stay alive.

She assumed that if she ever revealed herself to the rest of the Gladers that their questioning would be even more cruel. An entire Glade full of teenage boys watching their friends die for three years, then suddenly a girl shows up claiming to have lived in the Maze the entire time? The questions and perhaps insults she would receive would be heinous.

"Okay, I get it. I don't know what you've been through but it's because you won't tell me anything." Thomas finished his lunch, zipping up his pack. "I mean, come on. What am I supposed to think of you when I don't know the full story?"

"I have the same feelings about you, Greenie. Why should I tell you my life story when you sit here and consistently lie to my face?" Electra could feel their petty argument going around in circles and frustration built up in her throat. Why couldn't he just admit that he was involved with the Maze changing? Or at least admit he heard the girl's voice in his head?

Thomas opened his mouth to reply, but his gaze traveled above Minho's head and he squinted. He slowly got up and traveled across the hallway, pulling back an ivy curtain and reading aloud what he saw.

"World in Catastrophe: Killzone Experiment Department. What is this?"

Electra followed his gaze, and noticed one of the many signs plastered around the Maze. She'd honestly forgotten they were there. She studied the Greenie's expression and noticed the wrinkles forming between his eyebrows as he frowned at the words. He stared at the sign as if it was written in another language. Were the words really so foreign to him? Had he really never seen them before? Either Thomas was a very good actor, or maybe he was actually a bit more clueless than she thought.

"I don't know, shank. They're all over the place, like freaking labels for this nice pretty Maze they built. I