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“Who are we going to have them chase today?” Marv asks.
“I always lose the bets when I pick, you’re picking.” TJ insists.
“I picked yesterday.”
“And I want to win, so you’re picking.”
“I think the Grievers have already decided for you.” Maya calls over from where she’s watching her section of the Maze, which currently houses all of the Grievers.
“No, we can still direct them. TJ's good at that.”
“Pick one of them, then!”
“The new kid. Always fun how they think they're prepared.”
“And what are the stakes?”
“The usual.”
Thomas isn't foolish enough to believe that this is anything other than some type of game for whoever is watching them. He vaguely remembers a story like that, an old one, but he doesn’t bother mentioning it.
The boys here don't like questions. He was assigned a sleeping bag and told not to make any trouble, and one of the boys near him explained what he needs to know.
The Grievers are known to hunt at all hours, though they're more active when most of the boys are awake. They sleep in shifts, when they can, but they don’t have a way to block out the sun effectively.
Or maybe that's just when more people are controlling them. Guiding them, whatever. When he'd asked if they were fully mechanical, he'd gotten a blank stare.
They stay in “safe” sections at night. No one goes much further than the designated areas, even in the day. The outer walls shift around, and even some of the inner walls at the center of the Maze.
Thomas doesn’t ask how far they've gone in either direction.
It's a Maze, so it has to have an exit. If they can get past all the Grievers, that is.
Maybe it’s in the center. Maybe it’s at the edges. Thomas is going to find it either way.
The kid doesn't scream at first–most of them don't, too in shock to make any sort of noise or movement.
Instead of running away, though, he fucking charges the thing.
“That's not on the bet board!”
“Who the fuck runs at a Griever?”
“He’s insane!”
They're screaming more than he is. He rolls to the side, climbs up the wall using the ivy–that one is on the bet board–and jumps off.
Or, rather, jumps so that he’s standing on top of the Griever.
“Does he have a death wish? What the fuck, man!”
“They’re not supposed to do this!”
“That’s why new blood is fun!” Maya abandons her screen to come and join them. “This kid… hey, isn’t that Paige’s, like, trainee? What’s he doing in there?”
“Think she’ll be mad at us for going after him?”
“We target everyone, dude, she can’t be mad at us for doing our jobs.”
The Griever bucks and turns, but the kid is well and truly stuck to it. Its body is supposed to help with easy clean up and bringing the kids back in, not whatever rodeo shit he thinks he’s doing.
He reaches inside it. “TJ, sting him. Before this gets any worse. We don’t need the subjects realizing they can disable them.”
“On it.” There’s another Griever nearby–they’re programmed to come to each other’s aid based on electrical signals or something like that–so it’s not too hard to have it abandon its prey and send it over to sting the new kid.
Once that’s done, the Griever shakes him off with ease. If he hadn’t nearly fucked up their whole operation, maybe they’d wince when his body hits the wall.
“That should teach him.”
Thomas startles awake when someone screams–not him, probably.
“How were your dreams?” A boy, not the one he’d been told to sleep next to, is sitting next to him. “Learn anything good?”
“I don’t–” He remembers white walls. Being alone in a room–a girl, no, two girls, and another boy. But he doesn’t know their names. “I don’t think so?”
“That was stupid, Greenie. Didn’t think we had to tell you not to charge the Grievers. If one locks onto you, you run. Get out of here. Try not to die.”
“It seemed surprised when I jumped on it.”
“It also threw you into a wall and broke your ribs, so you’re not allowed to try that again. I don’t know if you have a death wish or if you’re just dumb, but we don’t do that klunk in here. We need to stick together so we can survive. You’re down for the next few days. There are few boys in here who want your head for that stupid stunt.”
Thomas is going to figure out how to shut the Grievers off if it kills him.
The subjects keep the new kid hidden for a few days–not so well that they can't find him, because they can find anyone–but well enough that none of the Grievers can get to him naturally. They have his scent now, but that doesn’t help when it's mingled with a dozen others.
“Think he’s dead?”
“We’d know by now if he were dead. They don’t keep their bodies.”
They don’t have anywhere to bury them, and they’re sent enough food that survival cannibalism isn’t necessary.
They might have a different attitude toward the Grievers if it was, but that’s Psych work, not Griever-watcher work.
They’ve made a new bet board specifically for the kid, dubbed ‘Death Wish’.
“If he figures out how to disable them, we’re going to have to kill him.” No matter what Paige says. He’s important, apparently, but not important enough to keep back in the facility where Grievers wouldn’t be attacking him every other minute.
“He won’t. Chances are he doesn’t even want to get close to them after this. He’ll run away like the others do.”
“We can always sting him again, too. Or have multiple gang up on him.”
He probably hasn’t made many friends with that stunt. Makes him seem reckless, like he doesn’t care that he’s putting the others in danger.
“There he is! He’s on his feet!”
“Death Wish is coming true today.”
“Not unless you want Paige throwing you in with them.”
“She can’t do that, can she?”
“She’s the director, man, she can do whatever.”
There’s no way he’s fully recovered, but they let one of the Grievers creep after him anyway. Just enough to make him, and the subjects around him, nervous.
Thomas tries to figure out if the Grievers have a pattern. If they’re programmed and only run on those instructions, then they’d react predictably in most situations.
“They don’t have a pattern,” He murmurs to Newt. He doesn’t like questions, or observations, either, but he handles them better than most.
“Yeah, don’t I bloody know it. Listen, Tommy, anything you figure out–we’ve known it. Some of us have been here a while. All you need to do is sit pretty and listen when we tell you to run. Anything you want to try, we’ve tried. All we can do out here is survive. Keep acting the way you do, and you’ll be gone before the month is out.”
Thomas doesn’t point out that there’s been a Griever following him from a distance all day, and it hasn’t done anything.
Maybe he scared them. Maybe whoever is running them can’t come after him directly anymore.
He must have been close to figuring out a way to shut the Grievers down, or they wouldn’t have stung him.
The next couple of weeks are boring–more of the same. The Death Wish board doesn’t get used at all, because the new kid has either been talked into behaving–unlikely, if he is who they think he is–or he’s biding his time.
“He’s moving again!” As soon as he leaves the general protection of the group, they dedicate an entire screen to him. He’s the most interesting subject they’ve had in a long time. The survivors, anyone in the first group who made it past the first week, they’re a lot more cautious in all things.
For good reason, but it makes the Griever-watching dull. Even their bets get tired after a while.
“What’s he going to try this time?” They’ve been added to the Death Wish board, here and there, as they think of more unhinged things he could do.
They set one on him immediately–they can control it remotely if they need to, but they all prefer to give them a target and back off.
(It feels less like it’s their faults if one of the subjects is killed, that way.)
“I kind of want to see what he does with two.” TJ says, and sets another one, further out, on his path.
The others are all yelling at him, but Thomas–who no longer has the excuse of it being his first day–takes off for one of the outer sections.
He’s fast, they have to give him that. But Grievers can last a lot longer than a human can.
“Got a third on him!” Maya says, a little too excited about it. “How far do you think he’s gonna try and make it before he realizes it’s hopeless?”
“Well, no one is stopping him.”
“He’s been warned. More than once.”
The first Griever catches up to him pretty quickly. From there, it’s just a waiting game to see what he does.
“He’s fast.” He doesn’t try to jump onto the Griever this time, not with two more following it.
“Learned something, too.”
He plays the Grievers off of each other, getting two of them to collide in front of the third.
“That’s new, too.”
“Does he think he’s going to find a way out?”
He keeps trying new things to get the Grievers off of his tail, to avoid being stung again. He crawls under one, too quickly for them to squash him underneath it. Then clings to a leg while the Griever rears to get up the wall quickly.
It doesn’t seem to dawn on him just how trouble he’s gotten himself into until dusk falls.
All of their shifts are long over, but there’s been no one like this kid in the Maze before. They’re not leaving until he’s either caught or back with the others.
They ease off on the Grievers, but not enough for him to have an easy path back–if he even remembers what turns he made.
It’s a long night–he keeps moving, clearly trying to find something, always with a Griever not far behind. He makes it to the shifting walls.
“How long has it been since someone’s been out here?”
“That Minho kid, last year. He was fun, too.”
“Isn’t he one of the captured ones? Might still be around somewhere.”
“Not our department. And we’re not meant to know names.”
“Who cares? Not like we’re talking to them.”
“That shouldn’t be possible!” Maya interjects, but they don’t stop talking.
“They’re subjects.”
“You’re gonna want to play that back, TJ.” Maya whispers. “Stop bickering, you’re missing the good shit!”
“What’d he do now?”
They watch it again on Maya’s screen, and then a second time, and then a third.
“He killed a Griever. Or disabled it, at least.”
“No one’s ever used the walls like that before.”
The intercom crackles in the ceiling, and dust falls over the room. No one ever talks to them–they’re the least ‘useful’ department in the facility.
(Never mind that there would be nothing to study if they weren’t making the Grievers go after the subjects.)
“Either capture him or end him. Before he can make it back to the others. They are not to know this is possible.” Paige’s voice says.
“Guess he’s not her favorite anymore.”
“Set them all on him.” Maya says. “I want to see what he does. He can’t outrun them much longer, and there’s nowhere to hide.”
They don’t even have to tell the Grievers to hone in on him–they’ve already started after their fallen brethren, and the other subjects’ reactions when they realize what’s going on are almost as entertaining as the kid’s.
He still doesn’t scream. He tries his ivy-jump trick again, but with so many Grievers he’s stung multiple times before he can even get his balance.
“That’s anticlimactic." The Griever he was standing on sucks him into its gel-like ‘flesh’. “Okay, who has the Death Wish board? Who won?”
“I’ve got it, but I’ve still got to total things up first.”
“Maybe the next kid will be interesting, too.”
“Doubt it. They’re never letting newbies go anywhere alone ever again.”
“Shame, too. He was fun to watch. Well, we’re all long overdue for bed. See you in a few hours!”
Thomas is suspended in goop. He thinks there are others here. He thinks he could move, once.
He doesn’t think he’ll be able to move again.