James Dashner - The Maze runner

“Yeah.” Thomas knew what he meant, but waited for Minho’s explanation anyway.

“That dead Griever I found-it ran this way, and we never saw it come back or go deeper into the Maze. Then those suckers we tricked into jumping past us.”

“Tricked?” Thomas said. “Maybe not such a trick.”

Minho looked over at him, contemplative. “Hmm. Anyway, then this.” He pointed out at the abyss. “Not much doubt anymore-somehow the Grievers can leave the Maze this way. Looks like magic, but so does the sun disappearing.”

“ If they can leave this way,” Thomas added, continuing Minho’s line of reasoning, “so could we.” A thrill of excitement shot through him.

Minho laughed. “There’s your death wish again. Wanna hang out with the Grievers, have a sandwich, maybe?”

Thomas felt his hopes drop. “Got any better ideas?”

“One thing at a time, Greenie. Let’s get some rocks and test this place out. There has to be some kind of hidden exit.”

Thomas helped Minho as they scrabbled around the corners and crannies of the Maze, picking up as many loose stones as possible. They got more by thumbing cracks in the wall, spilling broken chunks onto the ground. When they finally had a sizable pile, they hauled it over right next to the edge and took a seat, feet dangling over the side. Thomas looked down and saw nothing but a gray descent.

Minho pulled out his pad and pencil, placed them on the ground next to him. “All right, we gotta take good notes. And memorize it in that shuck head of yours, too. If there’s some kind of optical illusion hiding an exit from this place, I don’t wanna be the one who screws up when the first shank tries to jump into it.”

“That shank oughtta be the Keeper of the Runners,” Thomas said, trying to make a joke to hide his fear. Being this close to a place where Grievers might come out at any second was making him sweat. “You’d wanna hold on to one beauty of a rope.”

Minho picked up a rock from their pile. “Yeah. Okay, let’s take turns tossing them, zigzagging back and forth out there. If there’s some kind of magical exit, hopefully it’ll work with rocks, too-make them disappear.”

Thomas took a rock and carefully threw it to their left, just in front of where the left wall of the corridor leading to the Cliff met the edge. The jagged piece of stone fell. And fell. Then disappeared into the gray emptiness.

Minho went next. He tossed his rock just a foot or so farther out than Thomas had. It also fell far below. Thomas threw another one, another foot out. Then Minho. Each rock fell to the depths. Thomas kept following Minho’s orders-they continued until they’d marked a line reaching at least a dozen feet from the Cliff, then moved their target pattern a foot to the right and started coming back toward the Maze.

All the rocks fell. Another line out, another line back. All the rocks fell. They threw enough rocks to cover the entire left half of the area in front of them, covering the distance anyone-or anything -could possibly jump. Thomas’s discouragement grew with every toss, until it turned into a heavy mass of blah.

He couldn’t help chiding himself-it’d been a stupid idea.

Then Minho’s next rock disappeared.

It was the strangest, most hard-to-believe thing Thomas had ever seen.

Minho had thrown a large chunk, a piece that had fallen from one of the cracks in the wall. Thomas had watched, deeply concentrating on each and every rock. This one left Minho’s hand, sailed forward, almost in the exact center of the Cliff line, started its descent to the unseen ground far below. Then it vanished, as if it had fallen through a plane of water or mist.

One second there, falling. Next second gone.

Thomas couldn’t speak.

“We’ve thrown stuff off the Cliff before,” Minho said. “How could we have ever missed that? I never saw anything disappear. Never.”

Thomas coughed; his throat felt raw. “Do it again-maybe we blinked weird or something.”

Minho did, throwing it at the same spot. And once again, it winked out of existence.

“Maybe you weren’t looking carefully other times you threw stuff over,” Thomas said. “I mean, it should be impossible-sometimes you don’t look very hard for things you don’t believe will or can happen.”

They threw the rest of the rocks, aiming at the original spot and every inch around it. To Thomas’s surprise, the spot in which the rocks disappeared proved only to be a few feet square.

“No wonder we missed it,” Minho said, furiously writing down notes and dimensions, his best attempt at a diagram. “It’s kind of small.”

“The Grievers must barely fit through that thing.” Thomas kept his eyes riveted to the area of the invisible floating square, trying to burn the distance and location in his mind, remember exactly where it was. “And when they come out, they must balance on the rim of the hole and jump over the empty space to the Cliff edge-it’s not that far. If I could jump it, I’m sure it’s easy for them.”

Minho finished drawing, then looked up at the special spot. “How’s this possible, dude? What’re we looking at?”

“Like you said, it’s not magic. Must be something like our sky turning gray. Some kind of optical illusion or hologram, hiding a doorway. This place is all jacked up.” And, Thomas admitted to himself, kind of cool. His mind craved to know what kind of technology could be behind it all.

“Yeah, jacked up is right. Come on.” Minho got up with a grunt and put on his backpack. “Better get as much of the Maze run as we can. With our new decorated sky, maybe other weird things have happened out there. We’ll tell Newt and Alby about this tonight. Don’t know how it helps, but at least we know now where the shuck Grievers go.”

“And probably where they come from,” Thomas said as he took one last look at the hidden doorway. “The Griever Hole.”

“Yeah, good a name as any. Let’s go.”

Thomas sat and stared, waiting for Minho to make a move. Several minutes passed in silence and Thomas realized his friend must be as fascinated as he was. Finally, without saying a word, Minho turned to leave. Thomas reluctantly followed and they ran into the gray-dark Maze.

Thomas and Minho found nothing but stone walls and ivy.

Thomas did the vine cutting and all the note-taking. It was hard for him to notice any changes from the day before, but Minho pointed out without thinking about it where the walls had moved. When they reached the final dead end and it was time to head back home, Thomas felt an almost uncontrollable urge to bag everything and stay there overnight, see what happened.

Minho seemed to sense it and grabbed his shoulder. “Not yet, dude. Not yet.”

And so they’d gone back.

A somber mood rested over the Glade, an easy thing to happen when all is gray. The dim light hadn’t changed a bit since they’d woken up that morning, and Thomas wondered if anything would change at “sunset” either.

Minho headed straight for the Map Room as they came through the West Door.

Thomas was surprised. He thought it was the last thing they should do. “Aren’t you dying to tell Newt and Alby about the Griever Hole?”

“Hey, we’re still Runners,” Minho said, “and we still have a job.” Thomas followed him to the steel door of the big concrete block and Minho turned to give him a wan smile. “But yeah, we’ll do it quick so we can talk to them.”

There were already other Runners milling about the room, drawing up their Maps when they entered. No one said a word, as if all speculation on the new sky had been exhausted. The hopelessness in the room made Thomas feel as if he were walking through mud-thick water. He knew he should also be exhausted, but he was too excited to feel it-he couldn’t wait to see Newt’s and Alby’s reactions to the news about the Cliff.