The Transfer | Gally TMR

Chapter Twenty-Four

Something wasn't right. Nothing blatantly obvious, but something was up. I could feel it. Something bad...this way comes. I had only been on Gally's back for what felt to be around 20-30 minutes, when I knew. Something. Was. Wrong. For the most part we jogged/ walked in silence, so distant exterior noise was easy to hear. I couldn't quite place the sound, almost like cement blocks being dragged against the ground. The occasional smash, or the sound of a creaking door. I was less than familiar with the Maze as a whole, I'd never dared to step foot inside during my entire residency within Group B.

"Are you doin' ok, Lil?" Gally asked. He never sounded out of breath, no matter how much work he'd done, or people he carried. I smiled a bit."I should be asking you that question." I responded. He chuckled, shaking his head.

"I'm doing fine. Don't worry about me." He said, and I could tell by his voice that he meant it. I nodded.

"You still didn't answer my question, Lilli." Gally added. I nodded halfheartedly.

"I'm fine." Rule #1 from the Book of Life. We were near the back of the group, Thomas and a few others still behind us. Everything was still. Everything was quiet, and serene. But it was false serenity, and the stillness of the air resembled that of tornado weather. The quiet...before the storm. Something was most definitely wrong.

"Ummm, guys? Guys I think something's off, here! I think we need to stop, get our bearings, or something!" I yelled, trying to get my message to reach Minho at the front of the pack. Minho just waved his hand without turning around, as though dismissing the comment.

"Nothing's wrong, Lil. You're just over-thinking it, that's all." Minho reassured, but I wasn't convinced. Suddenly, I started piecing the noises together. Cement sliding, closing doors, and the awful stench of stillness that hung in the air. The strange, distant noises. I heard them in Group B as well, but I never knew what they were.

"Minho?"

"Yeahhh Lilli?"

"Do the walls ever...do anything strange?" I asked cautiously. Minho glanced back at me, before turning back to face forward.

"They move sometimes, yeah. But I think I would've noticed the path change if the walls had moved. I've been running this Maze for years. I know it like the back my-" And that's when I heard it. The creaking, cement grinding noise that I heard before, only much, much closer this time. And this time, Minho heard it too.

"It's the walls!" He shouted to the rest of the group. Somehow, it had always seemed to good to be true, the idea that we could actually make it out of here, completely unscathed. Everyone stopped in that moment, looking around in confusion. I stared up towards the sky, watching the tops of the Maze walls for any slight movement they might make. And that's when I saw it, walls opening up on a side of us, disappearing beneath the ground as the retracted, leaving us in a slowly by slowly more open field of pavement.

"What's going on?" I yelled up towards Minho, hard to hear over the noise of the cement walls retracting into the ground. But Minho looked just as confused as I was.

"Something's not right, Minho! We need to keep going on the path!" I shouted, but Minho just shook his head.

"What path?! There's no bloody path anymore! Just open space!" I looked forward to where the walls started again a few hundred feet in front of us probably. There would be know way to tell which way was correct. Any of the paths we were on could have connected to any of those maze openings. We stood there, confusion written across every Glader's face. The calm before the storm. And just like that, gone. The maze opening directly in front of us was closing- fast.