Archive of Our Own

1.

Minho had never laid on something so comfortable.

Objectively, he knew that the mattress was nothing special. It was kinda hard, kinda lumpy, had definitely seen more than a few users before he and his friends had been shown into the dormitory and he’d rushed up the ladder to claim the top bunk before Frypan could get the chance to do so himself. But Minho had spent as long as he could remember with a choice between a hammock or grass or the dusty floor, and in comparison lying on this mattress was like floating on a cloud.

Not that he had any real memories of clouds. The sky in the Glade had turned out to be fake, and running too and from a helicopter didn’t allow for much of a chance to look up. With what the world’s climate was apparently like now, who knew what sort of clouds there were? Certainly not Minho. Maybe there was no such thing as clouds anymore. He had no way of knowing.

He stared at the ceiling.

All of his friends were asleep.

Even Thomas, a perpetual motion machine who seemed to vibrate out of his skin whenever he tried to sit still, was dead to the world. He lay across the room from Minho in the top bunk closest to the door, his feet dangling off the edge. His shoes were still on. For all the misgivings Thomas had already shared about this place and the people who ran it in the few short hours they’d been here, a proper bed had been to much even for him to resist.

Newt lay in the bunk beneath Thomas.

He’d managed to stay up longer than most of them. He hadn’t said anything about what he was doing, but Minho had seen him watching the door. It had been locked behind them. They couldn’t leave the dormitory, and they had no real knowledge of who held the key on the other side. Newt had stayed up late watching the door to make sure that if anybody unlocked it and entered, he’d know about it.

Newt had been their second in command, under Alby. A week ago Minho would’ve said that, if anything were to happen to Alby, then Newt would be the one to lead them.

Something had happened to Alby. Newt wasn’t the one who’d taken charge of the Glade in the aftermath. And, out of everybody here, the closest thing they had to a leader now was Thomas.

But Newt hadn’t abdicated responsibility entirely. He’d watched the door until he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer.

Maybe that was why Minho couldn’t sleep now. Newt could only do so much, and now it was Minho’s turn. Somebody had to watch over the others. Somebody had to keep everybody safe.

Or maybe he just needed to pee.

Minho crept down the ladder, careful not to disturb Frypan in the bunk below him.

There was a small bathroom at the end of the room. Whoever had been in there last had left the door ajar, making it easier for Minho to silently ease it open wide enough to slip through. Minho didn’t want to disturb any of the others; it had been a long and eventful day, and the snatches of unconsciousness that some of them had managed to get in the helicopter wouldn’t have been anywhere near enough.

There was a mirror above the sink.

Reflective surfaces were few and far between in the Glade. They’d been fighting each day to stay alive and find a way out, and one’s own appearance mattered a whole lot less than any of that. Minho had been one of the first people to wake up in the Box and he’d spent the following three years running and mapping and memorising the Maze and never lingering too long on his own reflection.

Minho remembered nothing of his life before the Glade. Not a single thing. Nothing more than his name and the occasional vague hint of sense-memory that some of the older Gladers sometimes got about each other or themselves. Minho had never tried a proper burger with all the trimmings and fixings but he thought he probably liked them. Minho had never faced a Griever before that fateful day with Alby in the Maze but he’d been terrified of it in a way that suggested that maybe wasn’t entirely true. Minho had never had a chance to look at himself in a proper mirror but when he looked at himself in the dim light now he thought that what he saw looking back at him had used to matter to him.

He averted his eyes. Washed his hands.

Behind him, among the beds holding his sleeping, surviving friends, something moved.

Minho startled and spun around.

There was nothing there. Everyone was still asleep. The only movement Minho could see was his friends’ chests moving in slow, steady patterns as they breathed. The door to the dormitory was still closed, still locked. Everything was exactly as it should’ve been.

Minho was seeing things. His mind was playing tricks on him. He’d been awake for too long.

How many people had died in front of him since the last time he’d slept?

They’d had deaths in the Glade before the madness of the past few days, sure, but no Glader had ever outright killed another Glader before. Disputes had never been allowed to get that far. The desperate need for them all to work together if they wanted to survive, and the credible threat of banishment for those who still needed a deterrent, had discouraged all but the stung and those seeking death themselves from attempting it. What had happened today with Chuck and Gally had been unprecedented in all Minho’s three years.

Minho had killed another Glader.

There would be no repercussions for him. No time spent in the Pit, no banishment. Even if they hadn’t been on the cusp of escape at the time, even if they were all still trapped in the confines of the Glade, Minho still probably wouldn’t be facing any consequences for this. Harming one Glader in defense of another wasn’t a punishable crime, and Minho hadn’t thrown that spear for funsies. He’d thrown it because Gally had been about to shoot somebody. Minho had been trying to stop it from happening.

He’d failed. Now two people were dead instead of just one, and Minho was seeing things in the mirror that weren’t really there.

He poked his head out the door, getting a better view into the dormitory, just to make absolutely sure that he hadn’t missed anything. If someone or something that meant his friends harm had snuck in and Minho didn’t notice because he’d dismissed it as his own traumatised brain playing tricks on him, he’d never forgive himself.

Nothing.

With a sigh he turned back around in search something he could use to dry his hands.

Gally stood next to his reflection.

Minho slammed his hands to his mouth to stifle a yelp. He looked frantically around himself, trying to find Gally, but he wasn’t there. Minho was entirely alone.

Gally in the mirror smiled.

Slowly, Minho brought his hands away from his mouth and wiped what remained of their dampness away on his shirt. His heart pounded, and his body was tense and ready to run, but he forced himself to take slow and deep breaths.

Gally wasn’t here. Not really. They’d left him behind in the lab, him and Chuck, dead along with the Creators who’d watched them in the Maze.

“Hey,” said Gally. He sounded just like he used to, before everything went wrong. “Can’t sleep?”

Minho shook his head.

A small circle of red formed on Gally’s chest. “I wish I could say the same.”

Minho watched in horror as the circle grew bigger. Liquid seeped outwards, trailed down Gally’s torso. Endless blood ran from the hole that Minho had put in him.

“It was a good shot,” Gally continued, and he sounded almost proud of Minho for it. “You’d been practicing.” He tilted his head and stared Minho in the eyes as he said, “It paid off.”

Minho had been practicing his aim with the spear, but not out of any intention of aiming it at a person. Not out of any intention to aim it at Gally. Never at Gally.

His stomach rolled and his mouth filled with saliva and he knew what was coming next. He flung himself sideways and reached the toilet just in time for every bit of food their rescuers had given him to come back up again.

Hands came to a rest on Minho’s shoulders. A weight leaned against against him. Rubbed his back in soothing, circular motions.

“Shhh,” came Gally’s voice. “It’s okay. Let it all out.”

Once, when they’d been in the Glade for barely a year, Minho had drunk a little too much of Gally’s brew, and his body had let him know exactly how it felt about it. Gally had stayed by Minho’s side. He’d rubbed Minho’s back while Minho’s guts forced their way back up, and he’d reassured Minho that once the poison had been expelled it would all be over, and that he’d be right there with him until it did. He’d told Minho that everything was going to be okay. He’d kissed Minho’s shoulder. His neck. Had joked that his mouth would have to wait until after the vomiting was done.

Minho choked on a sob. He didn’t look around.

“I’m going to stay right here with you,” came Gally’s voice. “I’ll be with you for as long as I can.” Minho felt the weight against him lean in close, and Gally’s voice dropped to a whisper. “That’s what we do for the people we love. We stick by them, no matter what happens. No matter what they do to us. We love them anyway. Don’t we?”

“Minho?”

The phantom weight against Minho’s body vanished.

“Min, you alright in here?”

It was Newt’s voice, and Newt’s footsteps, and Newt who was entering the bathroom. Newt who was solid and alive and real where Gally had been none of those things, not really. Newt who was awake despite having been fast asleep not five minutes ago.

Minho spat the remnants of vomit that lingered in his mouth into the toilet.

“Sorry,” he said as he pushed himself to his feet. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

Newt had been the literal furthest away from the bathroom, being the boy sleeping closest to the locked main door, so if the sound of Minho vomiting had reached him then it had to have filled the entire room. Then again, Newt had always been a light sleeper. Chances were that nobody else had been disturbed.

A glance into the dormitory confirmed it. Newt’s bed was empty, but nobody else had moved.

Minho crossed to the sink and rinsed out his mouth.

“Bad dream?” asked Newt.

Neither of them were any stranger to those. Letting Newt believe that’s what it was would’ve been easy, but Minho didn’t want to lie to Newt.

He couldn’t tell Newt about Gally’s visit. He didn’t have the words, didn’t know if what he’d experienced had even been real or if he was just going crazy. Either way it wasn’t good. And what could Newt possibly do about it? Nothing, that’s what. Nothing but worry, and Minho didn’t want Newt to worry about him any more than he already was. If Minho was seeing ghosts, real or imagined, he would deal with it himself.

But even if he wasn’t going to tell Newt everything, he wasn’t going to lie to him either. They’d never lied to each other before. Minho certainly wasn’t going to start now.

“I would’ve needed to be asleep for that,” he replied.

“You haven’t slept at all?”

Minho shook his head.

If they’d been back in the Glade when everything was normal then Newt would’ve met this admission with a smirk and a roll of the eyes and a reminder that Minho had to be up early and so really shouldn’t be messing his sleep schedule around like this. But they weren’t back in the Glade, and nothing would ever be normal again. The look Newt gave Minho now was one of pure understanding. Minho didn’t want to explain exactly what had happened, but he didn’t need to say anything for Newt to know the general gist of why sleep had stayed out of his reach.

“Come on,” Newt said, as he took hold of Minho’s hand and gave it a gentle tug.

Minho let himself be led over to Newt’s bunk. Newt nudged Minho towards it, and so Minho crawled in, putting his back against the wall and letting Newt block his view of the rest of the room. They slotted themselves together, a familiar shape in each others’ arms.

They’d started doing this after Newt’s attempt. Minho would dream of being too late to save him, would gasp awake with the image of his best friend’s body behind his eyes, and nothing would reassure him except to feel Newt’s heartbeat for himself.

Whatever had happened in the bathroom, whatever Minho had seen, it couldn't be allowed to matter. Gally was gone. Newt was still here, and that wasn’t nothing.

“Go to sleep, Min,” said Newt.

Minho did his best to listen.

2.

Minho looked out at Thomas and Teresa.

They’d wandered a few paces away, into the sunlight and just out of earshot. Whatever they were talking about as they looked at the mountains they would all hopefully reach, they hadn’t wanted the rest of the group to hear them. Whatever. The rest of the group waited in the shade for Thomas and Teresa to rejoin them.

Newt caught Minho’s eye and they both sighed. They’d thrown their lot in behind Thomas, had followed him without hesitation when he’d frantically insisted that their rescuers hadn’t been rescuers at all, and now they could only hope that his tendency to charge forwards on little more than impulse bore as much fruit as it had in the Maze. Trusting Thomas back then had kept Minho alive through the night, and had led more of them out of the Maze than could have ever managed it without him, and had allowed them to get away from the WCKD facility before they could all be put into comas and drained. But now they were crossing a desert, aiming for mountains because maybe there were people there who could help.

It wouldn’t be Thomas’s fault if there was nobody waiting for them. Slim hope was better than no hope at all. Staying with WCKD hadn’t been an option for any of them, and neither Newt nor Minho had had any better ideas, so they’d both agreed to acquiesce to Thomas’s inadvertent seizure of control.

Inadvertent, because Minho was pretty sure that Thomas hadn’t even realised what he was doing. When Gally had assumed command of the Glade in the wake of Alby and so many others being ripped apart, it had been with the full understanding that it was a coup, and Newt had been told in no uncertain terms that he could either accept his demotion or suffer the same fate as the people who Gally blamed for the disaster. Thomas hadn’t spent long enough in the Glade to truly understand its established power structures, and Minho didn’t think he’d care about them even if he had. Gally had seized control in a desperate attempt to restore order. Thomas had been granted control because it came as naturally to him as breathing, and because he’d been the first to accept that nothing about their lives could be orderly again.

They needed to keep moving, needed to stay out of WCKD’s grasp, but they’d never make it anywhere if they didn’t rest. So, Thomas and Teresa had their little secret meeting while the rest of them stayed out of the Sun, and before too long they’d get going again.

Minho wasn’t expecting the gunshot.

It crashed through the air and dragged Minho back in time. Back to broken glass, cracked screens, corpses dressed in red-soaked white, and a little boy destined to never see the sky. To a spear thrown too late to do any good.

Then he came back to himself and watched as Frypan snatched the gun away from where Winston had tried to grab it and Winston fell to the ground. Newt shouted for Thomas and Teresa. Aris was poised ready to bolt.

Nobody was hurt. Nobody had been in the way when the gun had gone off.

Minho breathed a sigh of relief.

He’d seen firsthand how useful guns could be in the right circumstances. They never would’ve made it from the helicopter to the way-station if not for the soldiers and guards who’d shot the nearby cranks before they had a chance to get close. Though, in retrospect, that way-station had been a WCKD facility, and the crank attack outside it could have been staged, so who was really to say what had happened there.

If Gally hadn’t been able to pick up one of WCKD’s many dropped guns then Chuck might have lived. Winston messing around with a gun just now hadn’t hurt anyone, but it so easily could have. One wrong move around those things was all it took to snuff out a life.

Newt knelt beside Winston. Talked to him.

“You’re turning this into a habit.”

For the second time in two minutes, Minho jumped.

Nobody noticed. Nobody was looking at him. Everyone’s attention was fixed on Winston and Newt, so when Minho saw Gally standing beside him there wasn’t anybody looking his way to take note of his reaction.

There was no blood on Gally’s shirt this time around. He looked exactly how Minho had last seen him in the Glade.

“He’s going to die,” said Gally. He gestured towards the scene playing out in front of them. At Newt, kneeling beside Winston. “That wasn’t a misfire just now. He meant to do it, because he knows what he’ll become if he doesn’t. Too bad Fry didn’t get the memo.”

Minho tried not to stare at what the others would see as empty space beside him.

When Newt had been woken up by Minho vomiting and come to investigate, he hadn’t seen or heard anything in that bathroom other than Minho. Aris was standing close enough to Minho and Gally now that he should’ve seen Gally appear, but he hadn’t reacted to it. Nobody else had shown any kind of sign that they could see Gally’s ghost beside Minho, and Minho couldn’t let them know he was losing it.

Whatever was wrong with him couldn’t be the Flare, so it didn’t matter. He didn’t need to draw attention to himself.

He had no way of asking Gally what the fuck he was talking about.

Gally seemed to understand Minho’s confusion anyway. The smile he gave him now was pitying, false. Nothing like the smiles Minho had been able to coax out of him in life. “He got bitten,” he said, slowly, as if explaining a simple concept to a dimwitted child. “He’s infected, and he knows it. He’s got all the signs. So he wants to blow his brains out before he turns.” He nodded towards Minho with a raised eyebrow. “Your fault,” he said. “You turned on the lights. The cranks in that mall were all asleep until you disturbed them. You just had to turn on the lights and send them running. You got Jack killed, too, but at least he got to go quick. They’d both be here and healthy if it wasn’t for you.”

Gally leaned in close, put his head on Minho’s shoulder, wrapped his arms around him. Minho had missed Gally’s hugs so much, but this wasn’t anything like he remembered. His embrace was cold. Minho didn’t return it.

“They’re not the only ones.”

Minho was looking out into the desert.

Gally wasn’t embracing him, wasn’t beside him, wasn’t anywhere. Gally had never been there. Gally was dead and decaying and nowhere at all.

Minho blinked hard and gave his head a shake. He didn’t have time for this.

He looked back towards his friends.

Newt took the gun from Frypan and pressed it into Winston’s hands.

3.

The Scorch was aptly named in daylight, when the Sun was high in the sky, beating down on them without respite or mercy.

The night was a different story.

The moon was bright enough that they could still see for miles around, could still see the mountains in the distance that they hoped and prayed would be the solution they needed them to be, but its light was reflected and it didn’t give off any heat of its own, so the nights were bitterly cold. So cold that they’d needed to abandon the plan to travel by night almost as soon as the idea had occurred to them. Yes, walking out in full view of the Sun was exhausting and hot and dehydrating and slow, but if they didn’t spend their nights huddled close to one another to share their warmth then they ran the risk of never making it to their destination at all.

They weren’t used to such extreme temperatures. The Glade had been a controlled environment, even more so than any of them had realised until the very end. The only one of them who’d ever faced anything like this before was Aris, who said his Maze and its centre had been made of ice, though he’d ultimately spent even less time in there than Teresa had spent in the Glade. None of them had been prepared for this.

At least Minho could see the stars. They were beautiful. And, unlike the replica of a night sky that WCKD had fed them in the Glade, these stars were real, each of them millions of miles away, twinkling in the sky as their light traveled years across the universe before passing through Earth’s atmosphere to reach their final destination.

He couldn’t help but wonder as he looked at them. The Sun had flared, warmed Earth’s atmosphere past the point that humanity could manage for themselves despite their best efforts, triggered disasters and death and facilitated the release of a disease which threatened to kill off everybody who remained. The Sun, which was a star. Their star. Earth’s star. Minho’s star. Had any of the stars in the sky gone through the same? Were there other worlds out there, suffering and dying in the same way that theirs was? Were there other WCKDs? Other Mazes? Other Minhos?

Other Gallys?

There was no way of knowing. Minho would spend the rest of his life, however long or short that may turn out to be, with no hope of an answer to any of these questions.

They weren’t the only questions he’d never get an answer to. Out of all the unknowns in his life, speculation about stars was probably the last thing he needed to be worrying about.

He put it from his mind, curled further into Newt’s side, and tried to go to sleep.

He didn’t quite manage it.

A flash of too-bright light startled him awake. A crashing sound came less than a second later, and Minho jumped to his feet while his friends blinked themselves awake in confusion.

Minho didn’t know where or when he’d learned about thunderstorms. There had never been a thunderstorm in the Glade — WCKD had only rarely bothered to simulate ordinary rain — so his knowledge of them wasn’t from any personal experience he could remember.

The amnesia they’d all experienced when being put into the Glade was a strange one, letting them keep all knowledge of the world as it had been before the solar flares and the Flare, and none whatsoever of the world that had come afterwards.

The speed of light and the speed of sound hadn’t changed with the solar flares, and Minho must’ve learned about them at some point before WCKD wiped his memory, so he knew. He knew that light traveled about a million times faster than sound. He knew that it took the sound of thunder about five seconds to travel a mile, and that storms could move very fast in all sorts of directions before they tired themselves out.

Five seconds for one mile.

The thunder had come in less than one.

He locked eyes with Thomas, caught sight of Teresa’s panicked expression. They’d done the math as well.

Another flash. Another crash.

Together, the three of them dragged the rest of their friends to their feet. The first droplets of rain were hitting Minho’s skin. They had less than a minute before the downpour would hit them in earnest. They’d be soaked, freezing, prime targets for lightning to strike.

Water conducted electricity. That was another science fact that helpfully made itself known in the back of Minho’s mind.

There was a building ahead, maybe a mile away. They’d decided against sheltering there for the night out of an abundance of caution. Yes, sleeping out in the open desert left them vulnerable and exposed, but the area around them was flat and clear meaning their own visibility was good. There was nowhere for anybody to hide, no way for anyone to sneak up on them. Not people, not cranks. For once, everyone had felt secure enough to try and get a full night’s sleep.

More fool them.

Whatever could be waiting for them in that building, they had to chance it now. People could be bargained with and cranks could be fought. Nature didn’t give a shit and would kill them all if given the chance.

They ran.

Rain pummeled Minho with a force that was sure to bruise.

A bolt of lightning hit the ground just a few paces to the left of the group and Frypan wobbled, almost fell, but Minho caught him and hoisted him back up. Once he was sure that Frypan was safely on his feet he fell back, positioned himself so that he was bringing up the rear. If anybody else fell he’d be there to pick them up again. Nobody was going to be left behind in the storm.

And everything went white.

The desert was gone. The stars were gone. The building up ahead, their sanctuary or their tomb, was gone. No sand beneath his feet, no sky above his head. No rain. No thunder. No lightning.

Minho stumbled to a stop.

The ground was solid enough. He wasn’t floating, but as he looked around himself he couldn’t see what he was standing on. He couldn’t see where the ground ended and where the rest of the world began.

“If you wanted to see me, surely there were better ways.”

Minho whipped around in the direction of the voice.

Gally stood alone in the white.

Oh.

“Am I dead?”

Minho blinked and Gally was up close. They’d be sharing the same air if they were both breathing, but there was something off about Gally. Minho didn’t think Gally was breathing at all.

Gally brought his fingertips to Minho’s face. Brushed them just beneath his eyes as if to wipe away a tear that wasn’t there, before cupping Minho’s cheek in his palm. “No, baby,” he said, and he closed what little gap there was between them.

Minho’s eyes fell shut as he kissed Gally back. He brought up a hand to form a loose circle around Gally’s wrist. He didn’t hold him hard enough to keep him there, because there wasn’t any point. He couldn’t keep Gally no matter how badly he wanted to. He’d made sure of that much himself.

It played out again behind Minho’s eyes. Gally, announcing himself to the group with a dropped Griever stinger and a declaration that nobody could leave. His tear-stained face as he pointed the gun at Thomas. The gunshot spurring Minho into action, too late to save anyone.

The speed of sound was faster than most things, but not faster than a bullet.

When was the last time he’d kissed Gally? The real Gally, the alive Gally? It had to have been before Thomas had come up in the Box. Everything had gotten so hectic after that.

If he’d known their last kiss would be their last when it happened, maybe he’d have appreciated it more. Maybe he’d have done something differently. Maybe he’d have tried harder, have gotten through to him somehow, have convinced him to come with them in the first place. Maybe he would’ve been able to save him. Maybe he wouldn’t have to live with having killed the man he loved.

He couldn’t make Gally stay, but he could hold him because he wanted to, and because if this was all that was left of Gally then he wanted him to know how sorry he was.

He was so fucking sorry.

Gally’s grip on Minho’s face tightened enough to to hurt and he pulled back slightly, just enough to break the kiss. His lips brushed against Minho’s as he spoke.

“See you soon.”

He shoved Minho away.

Minho wasn’t braced for it, hadn’t expected Gally’s touch to be anything but gentle, and he fell backwards, hit the ground hard, and—

Everything was dark, dusty, grey. His whole body ached. His friends’ worried faces crowded above him.

Newt had his head cradled in his lap. He looked the closest to tears that Minho had seen him in a long, long time.

4.

Minho slipped away from the main camp.

He wasn’t going far. He just needed a moment. If anyone questioned him on where he was going he’d say that he needed a piss, which wasn’t even entirely untrue, but mostly he needed to get away from everybody for a minute or so.

Part of him hadn’t quite let himself believe there would be anybody in the mountains.

Most of him, if he was completely honest about it. He’d thought they’d been running away from WCKD, with the mountains being as good a place to aim for as any, but that there wouldn’t be any haven to be found. The people they’d met along the way had only served to reinforce the idea that immunes were valuable commodities before they were people in their own right. In a world where everyone had to fight for scraps in order to survive, nobody could be willing to help Minho and his friends. Not when the alternative was so appealing.

Jorge had only thrown his lot in with them because of Brenda. Because maybe the Right Arm could help keep Brenda safe too. If he hadn’t had Brenda to worry about then Jorge would’ve sold them all right back to WCKD.

The idea that there were people in the mountains who were opposed to WCKD, and opposed enough to want to help the people WCKD were trying to hurt, was based off overheard grumbling from Janson of all people. There had been no real reason to trust it. But Thomas had believed, and Minho had been willing to follow Thomas’s lead out of a lack of any other options, but Minho’s ability to think that things would turn out okay hadn’t made it out of the Glade. Something about confirming that there was no clear path out of the Maze after all, with his best friend proceeding to throw himself off the highest part of the Wall he could climb to less than a month later, had killed it. Even Thomas coming along and proving them all wrong about the Maze not having an exit hadn’t been enough to properly resurrect Minho’s hope.

But Minho had been wrong again. There were people in the mountains after all. The Right Arm were real, and they were working against WCKD, and a pre-Maze Thomas had helped them liberate as many of the other Mazes as they could. Their goal was to rescue and preserve the survivors of the ongoing apocalypses, immunes included, rather than bow to WCKD’s plan to wager what humanity had left against the faint chance of restoring the world as it had used to be. The Right Arm looked forwards while WCKD looked back.

With the Right Arm, safe passage to somewhere WCKD couldn’t reach them anymore was theirs if they wanted it, and oh boy did they want it. Minho was never doubting Thomas again, not even in the privacy of his own mind.

He turned a corner to duck behind a large rock.

Gally was already there, sitting with his back leaned against it.

“Hey,” he said, casual as anything, and waved Minho over.

Minho stopped still.

He didn’t begrudge Gally for haunting him. It was what he deserved, really. Gally had been acting out of fear and Griever-sting induced panic. Griever venom gave people flashes of memory, didn’t it? Ben had said something about remembering Thomas, and so had Alby. Thomas had remembered part of his own role in running the Maze after stinging himself. Gally would’ve seen something about the outside world too. Maybe he’d seen the Cranks, or how far WCKD’s reach truly went. Maybe he’d understood what WCKD would try to do to them while pretending they were taking them somewhere safe. Minho couldn’t be surprised that these memories had made Gally think that he’d been right all along. That staying put in the Glade was the better option, and that letting anybody leave had been a mistake. Gally had cared about his home and the people in it so much. No wonder he’d followed them out. No wonder he’d grasped at the only thing available to him to try and make them all take him seriously.

Gally would never have hurt Chuck on purpose. Not ever. If Gally had known what picking up that gun would lead to then he would’ve turned it on himself before pointing it at anyone else. If killing Gally had meant Chuck got to live then Gally would’ve been first in line to throw the damn spear.

It hadn’t saved Chuck. Gally had died for nothing.

Minho sat beside him.

“I hear Brenda’s gonna join me soon.”

“Thomas said that Mary made up some serum for her.”

“Yeah,” said Gally, “but it won’t last. She’ll need more. And this safe place the Right Arm are talking about? She can’t go.” Gally tilted his head to the side in thought. “I wonder how Jorge will react when he figures it out?” He smirk crossed his face. “I wonder who he’ll blame.”

Minho tilted his head to look up at the sky. The heat of the Sun wasn’t as oppressive up here as it had been out in the desert. There were wisps of cloud scattered across the blue. The light was dimmer than it had been an hour ago, but Minho had to concentrate to notice that. They had plenty of time left before sunset.

“You can’t blame me for Brenda,” said Minho. “You can blame me for Jack and Winston, and you can blame me for you, but not for Brenda. I was nowhere near her. She made her own choices.”

Gally took Minho’s chin and tilted his head down and to the side, forcing Minho to look at him. “Careful, my friend. Didn’t she get hurt protecting Thomas?” He slid his hand from Minho’s chin round to the back of his head, pulling him close and pressing their foreheads together. “And aren’t the Runners supposed to be your responsibility? You already let the rest of them quit and die. Thomas is the only one you’ve got left. Looking out for one measly person should be easy enough to manage.” Cold amusement laced through Gally’s voice. “But maybe that’s still too much for you to handle.”

Minho wanted to defend himself. To say that he’d done the best he could, that nobody could’ve protected his Runners any better than he’d tried to, and that anyone who thought they could make Thomas do or stop doing anything was a fool, even if it was for the purpose of keeping him safe. All of his arguments died in his throat. For once he didn’t want to fight, not with Gally, and it wasn’t like Gally was wrong.

“I miss you, Gal,” he said instead. “It’s not the same without you. I wish you were here.”

Gally rested his head on Minho’s shoulder. “But I am here.”

The truth of that statement was debatable, but it wasn’t a debate Minho was all that interested in having. Whether he was truly being haunted by the spirit of the man he’d killed or if the weight of what he’d done was making him lose his mind, the end result was that he got to see Gally again. Even if these visions of Gally never had anything nice to say, they were still Gally. Maybe, in time, he could learn to live with them. If they were all he had left of him then Minho could get used to this.

Gally’s arm snaked around Minho’s middle. Minho made no move to push him away.

Someone back at the main camp shouted something, sudden enough to make Minho jump, and the pressure against Minho’s side disappeared.

Gally was gone.

5.

The cell was dark. Small. Empty. The concrete wall was hard and rough against Minho’s back.

He should sleep. He knew he needed to sleep. Whatever WCKD had planned for him next, it would be so much worse if he had to face it while any more tired than he absolutely had to be.

He wrapped his arms around himself. Goosebumps prickled along his arms.

“What landed you in solitary?”

Minho looked up.

The cell was dark, and so the image of Gally stood in front of him didn’t fit. None of the shadows touched him. Gally was bright, as if lit by the Sun. Not the harsh Sun of the Scorch that hadn’t cared if they lived or died, but the gentle Sun of the Glade. The Sun that had guided them, cared for him, helped their crops to grow. A fake Sun, but the only Sun that Minho had been allowed to know. The Sun of when Minho had felt safest. The Sun under which he and Gally had grown to know each other.

“We tried to revolt,” said Minho, more to his knees than to the bright spectre in front of him. “It didn’t work.”

Gally stepped forwards and sat himself in front of Minho. “Bummer,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Minho. “Bummer.”

The plan had mostly been hatched between Sonya and Alfie from Group C, but Minho had been prepared to throw everything he had behind it. WCKD had been keeping the immunes, the ‘subjects’, in large enough groups that shifted around enough that it hadn’t taken an awful lot of counting to figure out that the number of kids being kept prisoner by WCKD outnumbered the number of people who routinely showed up to guard them. If they could all work together then they had a real chance of achieving something. WCKD never put every single one of them in the same place at once so it took some time for information to make its way around to everyone, but they could be patient. Their lives depended on it. The guards’ shift changes were a weak point, and surely if everybody acted at once the guards wouldn’t be able to stop all of them.

Not all of them, but inevitably some of them. Some of the others had fooled themselves into thinking that surviving their respective Mazes made them stronger than WCKD, and that the plan was all it would take for all of them to break free and rejoin their friends and never suffer again for the rest of their days. Minho envied them for their optimism, but he’d never been under the illusion that every single one of them would make it out of there alive. He didn’t know the full story of how the other Mazes had come to an end, but Minho was subject A-7, and Maze A had ended with some of their number feeding themselves to the Grievers to buy the rest of them the time they needed to escape. They hadn’t all made it out.

But many of them had. Many of the boys who’d decided they wanted to try leaving the Glade had made it all the way to the other side, and in that truth lay the spark of hope. If, despite WCKD’s attempts to keep them unsettled and confused, they’d managed to coordinate a counterattack, then many of them stood a chance of making it. The guards couldn’t stop all of them.

WCKD had found out about their plans somehow.

Just hours before their plan had been due to be carried out, Alfie had been dragged out in front of them and executed. The next thing Minho remembered was a foul taste to the air before waking up alone.

Gally stroked a hand against Minho’s chest, then pressed his palm flat against him, and Minho let himself be pushed to the ground. Gally placed his knees either side of Minho’s hips and came to rest on top of him.

Minho’s breath caught in his throat.

“Why do you fight so hard to live?” Gally asked. “You were willing to let Thomas blow you all up if it meant not coming back to WCKD. Which failed, and now you’re here with WCKD anyway, so what changed?” He traced a finger down the side of Minho’s face, starting beside his eye and trailing all the way down to his chin. “Why not kill yourself and be done with it?”

In life, Gally would never have suggested such a thing. It would’ve been unthinkable. The most important thing to Gally had always been keeping the boys living in the Glade safe, and he would never have pointed to suicide as being a viable way out. As far as Gally had been concerned it didn’t matter if they stayed in the Glade forever as long as the people he cared about were healthy and alive,

But things were different now. Gally’s hope for everyone to stay put so they’d stay safe had been shattered, and most of the Gladers they’d known were dead.

Gally was dead.

No wonder he was suggesting that Minho join him. At least that way they wouldn’t have to be apart anymore.

“Someone has to look out for Aris and Sonya,” was Minho’s easy reply.

When that spear pierced Gally’s chest it had carved out a part of Minho’s heart too, but there was more point to life than just one man. Minho wanted Gally back. He also wanted his friends who were still alive to stay that way, and he would do anything he could to see to it himself that they did. If Gally didn’t have the shroud of death clouding his judgment then he’d understand that. It wouldn’t even need to be said.

Minho couldn’t give up. Not until he was truly the last one standing.

Gally gave a huff of mirthless laughter. “And you’re doing such a wonderful job at that. Tell me, Minho, where are they now? Are they safe?” He leaned in and kissed Minho’s neck, and whispered as he continued. “They killed that boy. Put a rifle to his head and pulled the trigger, just for planning an escape that nobody got the chance to attempt. Sonya was just as involved in planning it and convincing everyone to join in as he was, and she wasn’t in the room when they killed him.” He pressed his lips against Minho’s throat once more. “Who’s to say they didn’t do exactly the same thing to her?”

Minho closed his eyes and brought his hands to grip Gally’s shoulders, but he didn’t push him away.

Sonya was still alive. She had to be. Minho couldn’t let himself think about the alternative.

“For all you know she’s already here with me,” Gally continued, uncaring of Minho’s distress. “You could join us. It wouldn’t be hard to do.” A kiss pressed against Minho’s lips. Over too fast, Minho chased it as Gally pulled back. “I could help you, if you like. I could return the favour.”

Minho opened his eyes, and he wished he hadn’t.

It wasn’t his Gally sitting over him, bathed in a light of lies and comfort. It was no longer Gally as he remembered him in life, back in the Glade when the Maze was the only danger they knew.

What lay on top of Minho was a corpse.

There was a hole in its chest where its heart was meant to be, and splotches of rusted brown spread from that hole all across its body. Flesh rotted away in patches down to the bone. It smirked at Minho’s shudder, jawbones scraping against each other with an awful sound.

“It’s not too bad,” said the corpse. “Think about it. I’ll be waiting.”

It pressed its teeth to Minho’s cheek in an imitation of a kiss, and it was gone.

+1

Minho pulled himself from the water, then reached around to pull Newt out too.

It hadn’t been a soft landing. He’d tried his best to point his feet, to be as aerodynamic as possible so that hitting the water wouldn’t feel like slamming into concrete, but he’d only been mostly successful. He didn’t think anything was broken. He could stand and squat and he’d probably be able to run if he had to, but his landing hadn’t been painless. It was gonna take some time for the ache to go away.

And that was him, who’d never had any bad experiences with heights that could’ve clouded his judgment in the moment of free fall. Who didn’t have any pre-existing injuries that could’ve been aggravated by slamming them into water at top speed.

So Minho didn’t wait for his friend to ask him for help or make out that he was struggling. Minho just turned around, grabbed hold of Newt, and pulled him out.

Newt looked exhausted.

Minho was sure he wasn’t a pretty picture to look at either. He’d given up on counting the days stuck with WCKD long ago, but he’d spent a long, long time being shuttled around and poked and prodded and strapped into machines that put him in nightmarescapes depicting crueller things than his brain ever tried to torture him whenever he was given the chance to sleep for real. The moment he and his friends were safe on a vehicle out of here he was gonna crash, and crash hard. He could feel it deep inside of him. He hadn’t had a true moment of rest since WCKD had taken him.

But that was nothing compared to Newt.

Newt looked like, somehow, despite everything happening around them, there wasn’t a drop of adrenaline in his system. His eyes were heavy lidded, like they wanted nothing more than to close, and his breaths came hard and deliberate as if he were having to fight against his body urging him to stop. He was pale, paler than usual, and his face grimaced with pain as his bad leg buckled beneath him. He would’ve fallen to the ground if it weren’t for Minho holding him up.

Something was very badly wrong with Newt.

But, before Minho could say anything about it, Newt’s eyes filled with fear and Minho turned around to see what he was looking at.

A row of guards, guns trained on Minho and his friends.

Thomas and Newt had smaller handguns attached to their stolen guard uniforms, but they’d never get to them in time. If any of them so much as twitched the guards could pull their triggers and that would be that. Minho and Thomas were faster than most, but not faster than a bullet.

It was over.

Slowly, so as to make his actions perfectly clear, Minho went to put his hands in the air as best as he could while still supporting Newt’s weight against him.

One of the guards stepped forwards. Raised their weapon.

And turned it on their colleagues, shooting them before any of them had a chance to react. Then they turned back towards Minho and his friends, took off their helmet, and—

Gally.

The guard was Gally.

Gally, who’d had a material effect on the world around him. Gally, who wasn’t just speaking to Minho, but to Newt and Thomas too. Who Newt and Thomas were listening to and reacting to as if them being able to see and hear Gally was something that either of them were supposed to be able to do.

Their surprise at seeing Gally here wasn’t surprise at seeing Gally at all but surprise at seeing him in this particular spot. They’d seen Gally before this moment. Gally’s attention wasn’t solely focused on Minho. He was wearing something other than the faded shirt he’d died in. His hair was a little shorter than Minho remembered it being. He wasn’t covered in blood. He wasn’t smiling that mockery of a smile. He was still fucking breathing.

He wasn’t dead.

He’d never been dead.

Minho was staring. He knew he was staring, but he couldn’t stop.

Thomas and Gally made quick work of rifling through the downed guards’ uniforms for anything they could use, somehow working together like teamwork and collaboration with specifically each other wasn’t a brand new concept to them, before Thomas gently prised Newt from Minho’s arms and Gally made his way over to Minho.

Minho forced something out of his mouth when Gally was close enough to hear, but forgot what it was the moment it made it past his lips. Whatever it was, it wasn’t anything elegant or profound or deserving of this moment. He was way too stunned and overwhelmed for that.

What were people supposed to say to the love of their life whose death they were responsible for when said love of their life suddenly appeared in front of them, alive and seemingly uncaring about what had gone down between them before? If there was a correct answer to this question, then Minho didn’t know it.

Gally responded to whatever Minho had said with a shrug and a clap on Minho’s back and a comment that didn’t make it past the blood rushing past Minho’s ears. He tried to move on but Minho caught him by the wrist, holding him still for just a moment.

Gally didn’t try to pull himself away.

There was a sliver of skin poking out at Gally’s wrist. The WCKD guards’s uniforms were a complete set of armour, keeping every inch of their body hidden away, but Gally’s uniform was stolen and didn’t quite fit. Minho pressed his fingers against that gap.

There.

A faint, fast pulsing against Minho’s fingertips.

The ghosts that had kept appearing to Minho, that had touched him and taunted him and forced him to reckon with all the hurt he’d either caused or failed to prevent, had never had a heartbeat. The dead had no need for one, and Minho had destroyed Gally’s heart with his spear.

Except, perhaps, his shot hadn’t been as good as he’d thought it had been. He must’ve missed Gally’s heart after all. It was the only way it could be beating for him now.

Gally let Minho feel it for just a few seconds more before shrugging himself free with an apologetic look. Minho knew without asking that Gally had given him as long as they could spare.

Gally was alive. Really alive. And, unless they all wanted to be recaptured by WCKD, they didn’t have time for this right now. Minho could have a breakdown about all of this later.

First, they needed to get out of this city.