" WHITE BLOOD " T. MAZE RUNNER¹

thirty-seven.

[CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN]
finale

~

"Welcome back." She spoke in a tone of voice as if she was greating a bunch of tourists. She was dressed in casual attire, something that Eleanor had yet to see from any of the WICKED workers; she wore black pants and a button-down white shirt with a logo on the breast- WICKED printed in bold capital letters. Her brown hair was cut short, ending just as her shoulders and framing her thin face almost perfectly. er two years, and so few dead. Amazing."

Eleanor's jaw dropped at her words. So few dead? The group of Gladers standing behind her were missing over half the boys, and double that had died in the past two years they were trapped in the Maze. So many boys had died at the hands of this twisted woman and the organization that she worked for.

"Excuse me?" Newt spat towards the woman, speaking the mind of everyone there. Eleanor's heart clenched at the sound of his voice. He once blamed all of those deaths on him, she thought with a frown as she remembered the tape she was shown.

The woman's eyes scanned the crowd of kids in front of her before they fell on Newt. "Everything has gone according to plan, Mr. Newton. Although we expected a few more of you to give up along the way."

She glanced over at the boy standing beside her, whose face was shielded by the shadows given off by his hood. She reached out and pulled the hood off his head, revealing the red face of a young boy. He looked up, his eyes bloodshot and wet with tears. Eleanor's heart faltered in her chest as she realized who it was.

It was Gally.

"What's he doing here?" Minho shouted from behind her, his voice echoing off the metal walls of the lab.

"You're safe now," the woman responded. She acted as if she hadn't heard the Runner's question. "Please, be at ease."

"At ease?" Minho repeated with a scoff. "Who are you, telling us to be at ease? We wanna see the police, the mayor, the president- somebody!"

He doesn't know, Eleanor remembered with a sickening feeling in her gut. None of these boys knew of the condition the world was in. There was no police force, no mayor, no president- just an organization of sick scientists known as WICKED and a disease-filled world outside.

"You have no idea what you're talking about, boy," the woman said with a condescending tone, narrowing her eyes at Minho. "I'd expect more maturity from someone who's passed the Maze Trials."

Minho started to retort, though he was quickly cut off by someone elbowing him in the stomach.

"Gally." Newt's voice came from right behind her, and she knew that he hadn't moved from his spot. "What's going on?"

The dark-haired boy standing beside the woman only looked at him, his nostrils flaring for a moment before he simply shook his head. He looked down to the ground once more as he avoided the gazes of the kids who were once his friends.

"One day you'll all be grateful for what we've done for you. I can only promise this, and trust your minds to accept it. If you don't, then the whole thing was a mistake. Dark times, Mr. Newton. Dark times," the short-haired woman spoke instead, looking to Newt as she vaguely answered his question.