The Maze Runner|| Newt

Chapter 1

Cold
Metal
It shakes, moving up faster than my body can handle. My head aches worse than it ever has before and it feels like there are thousands of tiny needles poking and prodding at my body. I force myself to open my eyes and quickly shut them again due to the bright lights. Slowly I open my eyes again and try to sit up despite every part of my body aching in protest.

I look around, scanning my surroundings. There are wooden boxes and barrels with W.I.C.K.E.D stamped on them in bold letters. I grab the closest one to me and frantically start trying to rip it open. My hands ache from the effort but I refuse to stop, using all of my strength to rip the top off.

A huge wave of relief washes over me as the top comes off and my nearly bleeding hands finally get to rest. I sigh, looking into the box, it has some tools, nails, and knives in it. I fish out a few of the knives, placing one through a flap in my right combat boot.

2 more go in each of my pockets of my olive green cargo pants. Beneath my right sleeve I find a hair tie on my wrist and quickly comb my fingers through my hair before putting it in a high ponytail.

The metal contraption I'm in starts to slow down so I move to one of the corners, stumbling a bit, and get behind some tall barrels, crouching down and gripping a knife in my sweaty hand.

My heart rate quickens as the box stops moving entirely and I force myself to even my breathing. Slowly sunlight fills the box and I cautiously peek around a barrel to see a teenage boy with a blonde buzzcut opening the top. All around the outside is surrounded by teenage boys, not one other girl.

"What the hell?!" The blonde shouts confused. None of them have noticed me and I let out a small sigh of relief. "What is it?" Another kid who I can't see shouts. "There's no one here." He murmured, just loud enough for me to hear, his weird looking eyebrows furrowed. "What do you mean there's no one there?" someone else questions.

"The hell do you think it means?! No greenie slinthead. There's no one here."

The blonde closes the top again but there's a bunch of holes in it so I can still clearly see through the top. Slowly all the kids disperse, moving away from the box. I move my knife to my left hand, wiping my sweaty right hand on my pants.

A few kids linger near the box. The blonde with the weird eyebrows, a tall black guy who looks absolutely livid, and a guy with wavy, sandy blonde hair. They're talking but I can only pick up on a few words every so often.

Creators
Maze
Greenbean
Shuckface

It seemed mostly like gibberish to me, I started to worry if I was losing my mind. Then I heard one sentence from the sandy blonde haired guy clearly and it sent a chill down my spine as I gripped my knife tighter.

"Are you sure he's not there. Maybe the greenie is hiding or something."

First off, how dare he assume I'm a guy.
Second off, fuck.

"The greenies usually can barely stand up without puking or klunking their pants and you seriously think he's hiding?" The weird eyebrow guy says. The sandy blonde kid shrugs.

The pissed off looking black guy finally talks, "I don't care what you two slintheads do but we better have that damn greenie by tonight." and he stalks off in the other direction. The two blondes look at each other before they each open a side of the top of the box.

I panic, holding the knife tightly and trying to quiet my breathing. The buzzcut blonde starts getting too close to me for comfort. Without thinking about the consequences, I act. I kick the barrel infront of me out of the way and knee him where the sun don't shine before punching him in the face as hard as I can with the hand not holding a knife.

Before he can recover I jump out of the box and land on my knees on the soft ground. Pushing myself up and start running towards the woods. One of the blondes behind me shout "Someone catch that shucking greenie!"

The head of every kid in the clearing turns to look at me. I push myself to run even faster. An Asian guy in a blue button up shirt manages to get infront of me. He wear this cocky expression like he just beat me in a race and now his team is going to nationals or some shit.

I scoff and knee him in the gut before slashing his arm with the knife and kicking him in the chest. He falls back on the ground. Hard.

A feeling of pride swells in my chest as I continue my way towards the woods. I can hear the shouts of kids running behind me as well as some laughter.

I ignore them and run deep into the woods. Once I feel like I'm far enough and don't hear anyone's feet crunching against the dry leaves and sticks on the ground I pick a tall tree and start climbing it, holding my knife between my teeth. There's a thin layer of sweat coating my entire body by the time I reach the top. The tree is sturdy and there's more than enough branches and leaves around me that I won't be noticed.

I grab the knife from my mouth and relax against the tree, letting out a breath. I wipe sweat from my forehead with my free hand. There's a pretty good view from up here so I decide to take this time to look around and evaluate where the hell I am. Around the huge clearing in the center is the woods and on the other side of that are four absolutely ginormous stone walls with one opening on each side. Beyond that are a bunch of more stone walls and pathways and-
Oh shit it's a goddamn maze.

I let out a small groan, lightly hitting my head against the tree. After I few minutes I hear branches breaking under someone's feet and I try to stay as still as possible while looking around, scanning the area for whoever is here. It's getting pretty late and a low grinding noise is coming from- well, everywhere.

I look around, confused, before my eyes settle on one of the openings in the wall to see it slowly closing. I look at another one to see it doing the same thing. And the other two, also closing. I furrow my brows, that absolutely should not be possible.

What the hell is the place?

I almost forget that someone is in the woods with me, too close for comfort. Until I hear a voice say "She's not here." With a heavy British accent. "Well she's gotta be somewhere around here, she ran in this direction."

"Yeah after beating the shuck outta you." The British voice said back, chuckling. Which was followed by a smacking sound. I almost smiled at the bickering before realizing the reality of my situation. 2 guys are very close to where I am. I'm at a huge fucking farm surrounded by a damn maze. And on top of that everyone else here is a teenage boy. Well if that doesn't sound all safe and cozy I don't know what does.

"Yeah yeah. She was shucking fast though. Like runner type fast."

"Ya think she's got the chops to be a runner?"
The British guy asks.

"Well either that or I'd vote for her to be Keeper of the fighters. Ay Newt?"

Newt?
Like the lizard?
Who the hell would name their kid that?
That's one way to show your parents didn't love you.

"I mean- shuck. If that were a job I'd definitely elect her Keeper." Newt answers. I calm as I hear their footsteps get quieter and quieter until I can't hear them at all.

I stayed there in the tree all night, too scared to move and too scared to sleep, running off of nothing but pure adrenaline. Then early in the morning, probably around 5am I decide I need to move hiding places. Slowly I climb down from my tree and walk further through the woods for probably around 20 minutes before I hear voices and quickly scramble up the closest, tallest tree.

One voice says something alone the lines of "Hey, did you hear that?" But thankfully the other person shut him down, saying he heard nothing. I stayed in that tree all day until it was the late afternoon again, probably around the time I'd originally arrived in this hell hole. I was hungry, absolutely starving actually. I knew I wouldn't be able to last too much longer without food or sleep so I decided to wait until dark before sneaking into one of the huts and looking for food.

1530 Words
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