Rose// Gally Maze Runner

The Cliff

A/N: If you've read the books just know that the cliff in this story is not..whatever the hell that was. It's too sci-fi for me to understand. This "Cliff" is literally just a point in the maze that drops off. So don't go imagining some black veil space thingy that makes ya float when you jump down.

The splintering wood of the shovel was rubbing your hands raw with all the nervous wringing you were doing. Gally was leading you at a rushed pace. It wasn't long before you ended up in the darkest part of the Glade. Mostly untouched from the gladers, the trees created a thick canopy that barely let in any light. Maybe the shade could have been a spot of relief from the grueling sun, but early days in the Glade were rumored to be chaotic with not much thought for the future. None of those boys had any foresight for where they might be in a month's time, let alone the three years that had gone by.

So the Deadheads the forest became. Gladers rarely went out here after being shown the area during their grand greenie tour. If a Greenie was particularly quizzical or insistent that there was some other way to escape the Glade, Nick would lead them to the graves and over the former gladers' attempts one by one until the newbie got the picture. Even if all the other horror stories weren't enough to scare a greenie, the last body would always get to them.

Or, the half-body, to be more precise.

But the kid didn't seem like he wanted to puke when he returned without Nick, so maybe that part of the tour hadn't happened yet.

"This is probably where Nick meant to take him," Gally said the obvious in an effort to ease the unsettling silence of the Deadheads. There wasn't anything else in the dense forest worth seeing.

His words fell on deaf ears because you were too distracted by a certain grave to pay any attention to the builder. The first grave ever dug in the Glade was for a boy named George. It happened early on, before your time. The story is always told in a concise, factual manner. People have learned not to dwell on it because the memories are too hard to bear for the oldest gladers. This was the first time you were reflecting on the story since Newt had admitted to you how broken Nick had been after the incident.

Still, you didn't know much except for the facts. George was stung. At the time, they didn't know about the Changing or how to save him. He was all jacked and tried to kill the others. Alby held out his spear and threatened George not to come any closer. George deliberately ran into the spear, impaling himself.

The gladers vowed to never let that weapon harm anyone ever again. That very spear was left as a marker in the ground on the side of his gravestone.

It was missing.

A sinking feeling in your stomach had you inching closer to Gally. You elbowed him and nodded at the grave. Words weren't needed to explain what was wrong. Gally quickly realized the missing weapon.

He took the shovel from you with surprisingly no resistance. You willingly handed over the worn piece of klunk in hopes of buttering him up to agree with your next statement, "We need to tell the others."

Creating a mass panic would likely throw the flow of their tiny community entirely off its tracks. The Keepers would never admit it, but they all knew how delicate the system of the Glade was. One glader deciding to go against the grain could collapse their little utopia like a breeze tearing down a paper house.

While you were fretting over the end of society as you knew it, Gally was just trying to figure out how to get through the day without losing anyone.

"Stay close. He could still be out here," Gally warned before you both took off running through the dry foliage. There wasn't time to worry about the loose branches hiding between the thick layer of leaves leaving cuts around your ankles. The adrenaline coursing through you didn't make time slow or stop but rather made it seem like the seconds were flying past you, outrunning you.