“Shh,” Minho whispered. “There’s a freaking Griever up there.”
Thomas widened his eyes in question, felt his heart pick up the pace, even though it had already been pumping hard and steady.
Minho simply nodded, then put his finger to his lips. He let go of Thomas’s shirt and took a step back, then crept up to the corner around which he’d seen the Griever. Very slowly, he leaned forward to take a peek. Thomas wanted to scream at him to be careful.
Minho’s head jerked back and he turned to face Thomas. His voice was still a whisper. “It’s just sitting up there—almost like that dead one we saw.”
“What do we do?” Thomas asked, as quietly as possible. He tried to ignore the panic flaring inside him. “Is it coming toward us?”
“No, idiot—I just told you it was sitting there.”
“Well?” Thomas raised his hands to his sides in frustration. “What do we do?” Standing so close to a Griever seemed like a really bad idea.
Minho paused a few seconds, thinking before he spoke. “We have to go that way to get to our section. Let’s just watch it awhile—if it comes after us, we’ll run back to the Glade.” He took another peek, then quickly looked over his shoulder. “Crap—it’s gone! Come on!”
Minho didn’t wait for a response, didn’t see the look of horror Thomas had just felt widen his own eyes. Minho took off running in the direction where he’d seen the Griever. Though his instincts told him not to, Thomas followed.
He sprinted down the long corridor after Minho, turned left, then right. At every turn, they slowed so the Keeper could look around the corner first. Each time he whispered back to Thomas that he’d seen the tail end of the Griever disappearing around the next turn. This went on for ten minutes, until they came to the long hallway that ended at the Cliff, where beyond lay nothing but the lifeless sky. The Griever was charging toward that sky.
Minho stopped so abruptly Thomas almost ran him over. Then Thomas stared in shock as up ahead the Griever dug in with its spikes and spun forward right up to the Cliff’s edge, then off, into the gray abyss. The creature disappeared from sight, a shadow swallowed by more shadow.
CHAPTER 35
“That settles it,” Minho said.
Thomas stood next to him on the edge of the Cliff, staring at the gray nothingness beyond. There was no sign of anything, to the left, right, down, up, or ahead, for as far as he could see. Nothing but a wall of blankness.
“Settles what?” Thomas asked.
“We’ve seen it three times now. Something’s up.”
“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.