TWENTY-FOUR

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[ ELECTRA ]

A few of the Gladers brought out some of the flashlights they'd taken before leaving the Glade. Neither Minho nor Electra had one with them, so they wandered down the tight hallway in almost darkness.

Her fingertips burned, and the cut on her face stung. She winced and tried to focus on Minho. Electra could only see Minho's silhouette in front of her as she slowly stumbled forward. A few of the Gladers murmured, others sounded as if they were hyperventilating, but overall the group was cast into a dreadful silence.

A Glader behind her stepped on the back of her shoe. Electra cursed under her breath, then reached out and placed a hand on Minho's back, using him to guide her forward. She kept shuffling, the hallway seemingly going on forever.

Then, Minho let out a sharp yelp and his silhouette dropped to the floor. At first, she thought he fell, but then when she took another step forward Electra dropped down, falling onto her back as she kept sliding downward.

After the initial shock, the slide was fun. Electra put her hands over her face as if to block out the slide, although in the darkness, with more Gladers falling down the slide behind her and their flashlights zooming back and forth wildly, she couldn't see anything regardless.

Then, the slide began turning, then kept turning. Electra felt nausea build in her throat as she kept spinning round and round. She tried to close her eyes and take deep breaths, but nothing seemed to help. At last, she prayed that the spinning would end soon.

Finally, the slide gave out underneath her, and she fell onto a rigid floor. She felt Minho underneath her, and soon enough she was covered by the rest of the Gladers dogpiling onto her. Electra groaned, blinking through the dizziness and the weight of the dogpile.

The Gladers all scrambled to a stand. The room was pitch-black. Electra heard a Glader puking in one of the corners. She put her hands on her knees to try to calm her nausea. Teresa brought out her flashlight and began inspecting the walls of the room. She stopped when she found a door with a large wheel in the middle.

Teresa paused and Electra wondered why the girl hesitated to open the door. Maybe she was speaking to Thomas telepathically, or maybe she was simply nervous about what lay behind the door. But then, Teresa twisted the large wheel and the door cracked open. The hallway behind it was bright, and all the Gladers squinted.

Electra looked over the Gladers and found Minho on the other side of the room away from the open door, with Thomas beside him. She squeezed her way over to them as Teresa pushed the door open even more. Slowly, the Gladers left the darkened room behind them, until they found themselves in another seemingly endless hallway.

Pipes stretched across both walls, and most of the overhead lights were turned off. Electra looked down one side of the hallway before turning to the other. Which way were they supposed to go? She looked up at Minho, and he looked back and forth as well.

Then, there was a click. Electra jumped the tiniest bit and the clicks continued. She noticed a light out of the corner of her eye and turned to see the overhead lights turning on, starting at one side of the hall and making their way over to the other as if they were an arrow pointing them in the right direction.

The Gladers looked at Minho, waiting for his orders. Minho furrowed his eyebrows, speaking with a surprisingly calm tone, "Well, let's go that way, I guess."

He pushed his way to the front of the group, and Electra followed him. She noticed Thomas to her left, and they gave each other a quick nod. Minho slowly led the Gladers down the hallway and, just like the pitch-black hallway from before, nobody spoke a word. In fact, the silence seemed even more dreadful if that was even possible, as if their ability to see what was in front of them raised their feelings of trepidation.

They marched on for about ten minutes until Electra saw a green light in the distance. She looked up at Minho, and he noticed it too. Their pace quickened a bit until they reached the green light. To the right of the light was a door, and above the door was a green exit sign. Electra scrunched up her face in its ridiculousness.

"Seriously?" Frypan asked, having the same feelings she had.

After their life-risking escape, after so many Gladers died trying to get to this moment, a bold exit sign above a door was the final thing they had to do? It felt mocking, in a way. It seemed too obvious, and for a moment Electra wanted to keep walking, but Thomas went up to the door and slowly started opening it.

One of the Gladers gasped at what was beyond the door. Electra took a couple of steps forward, taking her knife out of its sheath. The scene beyond the door reminded her of the state of the Cliff once the Grievers had been shut off.

Bodies in lab coats lay on the floor, and Electra could see their blood spilled all across it, as well as staining their pristine white jackets. Smoke hung through the air and there were broken shards of glass everywhere. Lights dangled from the ceiling by a thread, slowly swinging back and forth. The lights themselves flickered and sizzled. An orange alarm spun in all the corners, but their alarms had been silenced.

Thomas entered through the door first, and Electra followed him. As they passed the first body she looked down, studying the face of the deceased stranger as if she could have possibly known him. The stranger's blood stained the green wall behind him and he was slumped over, eyes closed.

She passed a broken window and looked through into the room. Two bodies lay on tables, with a white sheet stained in red over their entire forms. The rest of the equipment in the room lay in disarray, and Electra saw blue, broken-down tubes at the back of the room. She wondered what the tubes could be used for.

Another body lay on the floor where they were walking. This one was laying on their stomach, with a gun in their hand and bullets littering the floor around them as if they hadn't had time to load it before whatever killed them had killed them. Electra was surprised that she could somehow remember the weapon when she saw it. Why hadn't she had one in the Maze? It would've made it so much easier to kill the Grievers.

That's probably exactly why she didn't have one. The Creators wanted her to suffer.

Minho used his foot to kick the gun away from the body just as Winston spoke up, wondering aloud what everyone was thinking, "What happened here?"

Nobody knew, so nobody answered. The group kept moving forward until they reached a larger room at the end of the tunnel. Electra moved first into the room, slipping past the broken glass which used to be a door and looked around at the shambles before her.

Screens circled the entire room. Some of them were cracked, and their blue glows were twitching. Others were broken completely and did not shine at all. A platform rose in the middle of the room, with more screens surrounding it. Chairs surrounded the platform, but some of them had been turned on their sides, and one of them had its legs chipped off. More lights sizzled, and smoke drafted in from the broken lights.

More people in lab coats lay on the floor and, like before, they all had blood stains on them and surrounding them. Were they the Creators? Electra tried to ignore them as she slowly ventured deeper into the room.

To her left, she saw a familiar photo. Her Cove. Tilting her head, Electra walked up to the photo, discovering that it was, in fact, a video. Her heart was hollow as she looked at the place she'd called home for the last three years. Her Cove was messy, like always. But the messiness was comforting, in a way. The video moved and she saw her name on the wall and beside it Minho and Thomas' names. She remembered when she'd inscribed it, and the hollowest of smiles crossed her face.

Then, she realized. The video was moving around? Electra was reminded of the beetle blades that constantly crawled throughout the Maze. One just happened to be in her Cove at the moment, what were the odds?

"So they were watching us." Newt came up beside her and started investigating a video of the Glade. "This whole time..."

Electra already knew the Creators had been watching them, but before she could give a snarky reply she saw Thomas press his finger on one of the screens, and a video surfaced on the biggest screen in the room.

A lady dressed in white, with slicked back blonde hair stared back at them. The video glitched as she began to speak.

"Hello. My name is Dr. Ava Paige."

Everyone turned towards the video before slowly approaching the television. Electra noticed the workers behind Ava, and she focused on one specifically. It was a girl with dark brown hair and glasses, and she was laughing with a male colleague. Electra looked down at her feet and saw the worker with the glasses, lying on her stomach with a patch of blood staining her back.

Ava kept speaking as the Gladers crowded at the screen, "I'm the director of operations at the World in Catastrophe: Killzone Experiment Department. If you're watching this, that means that you've successfully completed the Maze Trials."

Trials? Electra furrowed her eyebrows at the words. Trials, plural, suggested there was supposed to be more than one trial, but the Maze was the end, wasn't it? They'd escaped, and now they were free, weren't they? Maybe she'd said Trials to suggest the multiple smaller tests within the entire Maze Trial.

"I wish I could be there in person to congratulate you..." Ava said and paused as an alarm blared in the background and the workers behind her frantically got out of their chairs. "But circumstances seemed to have prevented it."

As the workers moved behind her, their movements anxious and quick as they scrambled to pick up papers and other supplies, Ava's voice continued calmly, "I'm sure by now you must all be confused, angry, frightened. I can only assure you that everything that's happened to you, everything we've done to you, it was all done for a reason. You may not realize it, but you're very important."

There was a blast behind Ava, and the workers tried to run away. Still, Ava continued speaking, "Unfortunately, your Trials have only just begun. As you'll soon discover, not everyone agrees with our methods."

People in black suits raided the room. Electra watched the girl with glasses get shot and fall to the floor.

"Progress is slow. People are scared."

The black suit people continued their fire, shooting at the screens and the rest of the workers in the room. Glass shattered.

"We had one more Variable designed for you in the Maze Trials. In our failure, we've attempted to halt the procedure. However, it appears it may have been too late, depending on how quickly you can escape to the outside world. In fact, it may be too late for all of us, for me," Ava continued. "But not for you."

Electra instinctively grabbed Minho's hand, and he gave hers a gentle squeeze. Another Variable? She looked around the room, trying to spot the variable as if it could've been hanging on one of the walls. When Ava continued speaking, she was drawn back into the video.

"Regardless, the outside world awaits. But, remember..."

A person in a black suit started shooting at the room Ava was in, and the glass began to shatter. Ava pulled out a gun, pushing it into her temple.

"WICKED is good."

Ava pulled the trigger and shot herself in the head. Most of the Gladers turned away from the sight, but Electra kept her eyes on the screen, watching the person in the black suit. Once Ava fell to the floor, the person paused, looking down at the body, before leaving the scene.

Then, the video glitched and cut out. Electra glanced over to see Thomas approaching a body. She followed him only to see Ava on the floor with a bullet wound on the side of her head. The other Gladers looked away from Ava's body, but Electra knelt and tilted her head.

The bullet wound on the woman's head was clean, simply a bleeding hole on the side of her head. Electra didn't know much about guns, but the video she'd just seen would suggest that a gun would've produced a heftier wound than a simple round bullet hole.

Before Electra could study Ava's body further an alarm blared throughout the room, causing multiple Gladers to jump. To their left, a door slid open, revealing another long hallway. Electra got up and stood beside Minho, casting a few fleeting glances back down at Ava on the floor.

"Is it over?" Chuck asked, looking up at Minho.

"She said we were important," Newt said, also turning towards Minho. "Well, what are we supposed to do now?"

Minho looked around at the Gladers and his face fell into a frown. Electra gave his hand a gentle squeeze and he looked down at her, his frown dissipating the smallest bit.

"I don't know," Minho said, confident as ever. "But let's get out of here."

"No," a voice spoke firmly behind them.

Electra turned around and heard one of the Gladers gasp.

It was Gally.

Electra remembered when the boy had burst into her room on her first day in the Glade, only to force her into the Slammer. She remembered being told about his death the morning after it had happened. Gally had been carried off by a Griever.

Gally was dead.

Apparently, he wasn't. In front of the Gladers, Gally's entire body trembled. His body was sweaty, his eyes filled with tears, and his face was contorted in a way where he seemed as though he was physically in pain.

"Gally," Newt was the first to speak. "What's going on? How are you alive?"

"We can't leave," Gally said, shaking his head profusely. His voice was surprisingly strong in comparison to his trembling form. The difference was intriguing, and Electra tried to place where she'd seen it before.

Was Gally going through the Changing? Electra didn't know much about the painful process, but looking back up at Gally, the boy didn't have any of those grotesque purple veins. So what else could it be?

Electra noticed a gun in his hand. The same gun they'd seen in the hallway.

"We did, Gally. We're out." Thomas raised his arms, slowly motioning towards Gally. "We're free."

Gally struggled against his own body, before raising the gun and pointing it at the Gladers. His hands shook and his breath faltered. It all seemed familiar to her, but it couldn't be the Changing. Then, Electra realized it.

He was being controlled, just like she had all those months ago. Electra thought back to what Ava had said, about them failing to take down the last test in the Maze trials.

One last Variable. That Variable was standing right in front of them.

"Free? No. There's no escape from this place," Gally whimpered, shaking his head even harder.

"Gally, listen to me. You're not thinking straight," Thomas said. "Now, we can help you. Just put down the gun."

Minho let go of Electra's hand, and she slowly turned to look at him out of the corner of her eye. His grip tightened on the spear he was holding in his other hand.

Then, Gally's voice changed. It became more desperate as he continued. "They... can control me... I don't." His hand went up to his throat and he started choking himself, but he forced more words out. "I... have... to..."

"Gally, fight through it," Thomas continued coaxing, but Gally was writhing in his spot. "Put down the gun."

Electra looked up at Minho and they nodded toward each other. He slowly moved in front of her, using an arm to keep her behind him.

"I... can't," Gally choked the words out before his hand retracted from his throat and he let out a deep breath. His voice grew cold and rigid. "I belong to the Maze."

Minho pushed her backwards and Electra heard a shot fire. Tripping backwards, Electra watched Minho throw his spear through the air. She saw it stab Gally in the shoulder, and the boy crumbled to the floor, sobs escaping through his lips.

Minho and Electra held onto each other, and she quickly checked for any bullet wounds. Minho was perfectly fine. Gally's shot had missed.

"Thomas..." Chuck said, and Electra turned only to see the boy fall to the floor and Thomas screamed out, encircling the boy in his arms.

A/N: chuck my guy :((( on a brighter note, only two chapters left this is soooo weird lol can't believe the first book is almost done


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