As we drove, and I wrote in my tattered leather covered journal, I tried my best to not look out of the window at the world flying by.

My heart was heavy, but the only thing that I could do was shove all of those feelings deep inside the jar so that the only way they could come out was in word vomit form. My journal has seen more of me, and of this long, uninvited journey than anyone else. Even Mae. Some of the things that I haven't told her, only two people know. And one of them is dead. Killed by a Griever trying to save the love of my life so that I possibly wouldn't have to face any more pain than I have already in my short two and a half years of life.

Truth is, I think about the one's that we've lost all the time. The little twelve year old boy who sacrificed himself for the good of the people who had no idea where they were going. I still remember thinking that I was going to lose Mae. When Minho pulled her back and threw the spear right at Gally's chest, he not only saved her life, but he saved mine again as well. I still don't think she knows it was him—her head hit the ground pretty hard. I don't think she really cared who saved her either. The girl was only focused on the draining life of one of her best friends. After all, the last thing that boy did was give her and Tommy something to remember him by. He smiled as he faced his death.

I think that was finally when we realized that this was all real. When a twelve year old got murdered in front of us. Although we had seen a few deaths before then—Ben, Alby, Clint, Jeff—the realization that we were finally out, and we were going to face the world for the first time we can remember really set in.

I remembered that video. Ava Paige faking her own suicide. I remember how I didn't look away.

The reality of all of it seemed like one giant, fat, bloody joke to me.

Trapping kids in a Maze, then waiting for them to find a way to escape day after day. Maybe that's the reason Thomas was sent to us in the Box. Because we were taking too long and not making any progress. The things that changed in those three or four days made me question my sanity. Not just the fact that Ben had gotten stung during the day, or that three people survived a night in the Maze, bringing back another unconscious one, and the fact that another girl showed up. But it was also my buggin' feelings.

My whole life, we had been doing things by a routine. Including when Mae got here. After we got used to the fact that she was the only girl in the Maze, we continued to go about our days like normal. Sometimes it felt like she'd always been there.

But when things started to change, things between us did as well.

The moment I realized I had feelings for her was when the stone doors closed, separating us from each other for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime. We did everything together. Work, eat, our rooms were right next to each other... She had become the part of me I never knew I had been missing.

When I thought I lost her, I lost a part of myself that night as well.

Even though things ended up working out—she came back alive and unharmed, and we eventually got together, I still slap myself in the face for not growing a pair and telling her that I liked her in a friend way sooner. We could've had so much more time to just be with each other rather then running away from something different every five minutes and hoping that one of us didn't die.

I guess that was what we were doing now. I left her in guaranteed safety. The problem is, I was basically signing my own death warrant.

And as we drove through the night, I found myself unwillingly lifting my head to look at the world that continued to turn outside the window, showing absolutely no mercy for the people living on it.

The sun had begun to rise over the horizon, making me think of the person I wanted to rid from my mind right now. I didn't want to forget Mae, I couldn't even if I tried really hard. I just wanted to give the remorse and sorrow I felt for her and myself a break. Ever since I closed the door, leaving her to a clueless sleep, the hole that had been sealed shut inside me opened up once more. I've had to fight off tears a few times, none of which I let my friends see. When he had a pee break at about midnight, Tommy took my spot, and I sat in the back, leaning against the window and shutting my eyes.

I had prayed to all known gods for sleep, but it never came. I didn't expect it to. So after about an hour and a half of dwelling on the blackness that was behind my eyelids, I opened them and took out my journal, turning on the overhead light and writing down everything that sat in the pit of despair.

It was for myself, maybe one day for others, but right now, my journal was meant to stay a secret from everyone else. Mae knows I have one, but she would probably be a little freaked out if she knew about what lurked behind the worn leather covers. She would ask me if I was okay, and she would probably ask why I didn't tell her any of this sooner. I would say that it was because I didn't want her to worry.

But I would be lying.

"How much further?" I asked the two guys who were in front as they held a muffled discussion, looking at the map.

Tommy turned his head towards me, probably surprised that I wasn't sleeping. "Uh...not much farther."

Rolling my eyes, I placed my pen inside of my journal, closing it and gently putting it back into my backpack which sat at my feet. I leaned forward with a sigh, taking it upon myself to glance at the map in the center console.

"According to the map, we've only gone about an inch." I stated, looking back up at the boys, who had began to chuckle. Frypan lifted his head up to the ceiling, letting out another breathless laugh before he switched hands on the wheel. It felt good making people laugh. Especially my friends.

"Was that funny?" I asked them, causing more light laughter. Thomas turned back around, a smirk playing at his lips as he nodded.

"Yeah, kinda."

Nodding once, I relaxed back into my chair, proud of myself.

We drove for another half hour before Thomas finally pointed outside his window, "There. Look."

I crawled over the seat, careful of my leg to see a giant billboard that we had passed. It was dirty and worn, stained form the natural disasters this part of the country must've faced. But the words let me know that we were close to where we needed, and we had moved more than an inch.

I hummed through my lips quietly and sat back again, placing my fingernails in between my teeth. I didn't know what I was expecting, maybe to feel the slightest bit of comfort that Mae was back at the Right Arm, safe and sound. But I felt anything but that. I was jittery. Unable to sit still.

We drove for about ten more minutes before reaching a checkpoint that looked as though it had been through the bloody ringer. There wasn't a soul in sight—abandoned and rusty cars everywhere. Fry drove through all of the debris as Tommy and I stayed silent, taking it all in. Although we should be used to the dead earth already.

He finally stopped just as we reached a dark tunnel, and we all slowly pushed our doors open, eyes never leaving the blackness that sat in front of us, holding the unknown once more.

I placed my hands on my hips, looking skeptically at the only way to the city. Looking back at Thomas, he had his head down towards the crumpled map in his hands—I wondered if he had drawn the circle in the wrong place and led us five hours in the wrong direction.

"You want us to go in there?" I asked, raising my eyebrows as he lifted his head and stopped next to me. Frypan glanced in my direction, pursing his lips and crossing his arms over his chest, showing the same type of doubt that I was vocalizing. "I don't wanna come across as too negative, but—I mean if I was a crank, that's exactly where I would be."

Thomas pushed his toe into the dirt, almost as if he was a frustrated five year old. He dipped his head down once more and looked at our only sense of direction, shrugging. "I don't think we have much of a choice..."

My heart dropped as I looked back at the tunnel. Stupid WICKED. If they didn't exist then we wouldn't have to be here, and Minho would be completely fine. I wished I could just beat them all up at once.

Sighing, I sucked it up and swallowed my fear. "Alright, I get shotgun."

As I opened up the door to the passenger seat, I leaned over the center console, reaching into my backpack to grab my journal quickly and shove it into the waistband of my pants. I trusted Tommy with everything but being within arms reach of my most prized possession at the moment. Feeling it dig into my skin, I bit my nails as the other guys started to walk toward the truck. If Mae were here, she would tell me to take a deep breath. So that's exactly what I did. In through my nose, out through my mouth.

"Ready?" Fry asked as he slammed the drivers door shut. I impulsively nodded, my mind saying the exact opposite of what I was feeling. But if we got through this quickly, then we would be one step closer to saving Minho and possibly taking down WICKED.

He gently stepped on the gas pedal, causing the car to slowly move forward. I could tell he was nervous as well. I glanced toward Frypan as we entered the darkness of the tunnel, noticing how he immediately started to squint. Suddenly, the car dipped down into a puddle, causing me to let out a startled gasp. I felt a hand on my shoulder from behind, and I waved Thomas off, telling him I was fine without using my words.

"Hand me one of those lights back there, Tommy." I told him, and he did as I asked, turning his body around and pulling a bright lantern from the back of the car. He handed it to me, almost hitting the back of my head. He hissed through his teeth and muttered a quick apology before I grabbed the tool from him, rolling down my window.

Frypan turned on all the lights we had attached to the jeep, they were finally proving to be necessary. I flicked on the switch that turned on the bright white light, shining it along the walls to please my line of sight while Frypan focused on the road ahead of us.

"Well here we go." He spoke as we passed the first abandoned car. It was almost worse in here...the farther we went, the more rubble and rusted vehicles we passed, the harder it became to maneuver through them. I moved my light from the wall to in front of the car, providing him a little more light so it didn't seem so scary.

"Just take it nice and slow." I advised, hardly even listening to my words as I spoke them. I ducked my head down enough to see some of the parts that maybe Fry couldn't see, ready to warn him when something popped out at the three of us.

We drove through the maze of cars for about another minute in silence. My mind was swirling with all the nerves I was keeping in there, and the pain in my ribs where my journal was digging into. I ignored that though, if I made a hiss of pain the boys would probably want to know what it was. Tommy would at least.

As we passed another rusty truck, the feeling grew. The jitteriness that I had been holding in since the moment we had entered the place. I began to tap my foot on the floor or the jeep, and drum my fingers on my knee. I didn't know what it was, but as I took each deep breath, looking out the window at the menacing tunnel ahead, my eyes darted around, almost as if my body knew something that my brain didn't.

The sudden appearance of a creature in front of us made me break from my nervous state. "Woah, woah..." I muttered as Fry held his arm out in front of me as he pressed on the brake, hearing the squeak echo throughout the passage.

This crank was about fifty feet ahead of us, standing as if his top half was numb. Unmovable. I shined my light on him as he growled, showing all of his tattered clothes and the inhumanly looking skin he was wearing. Frypan and I looked back at Thomas, waiting for his signal.

"It's okay," He spoke, pointing his flashlight in front of us. "It's just one, so... Take it slow. Go around him. We'll be fine."

Fry sighed. "Take it slow..."

Famous last words, I thought as I let out a huff through my nose, clicking off my light and rolling the window up. We all kept our eyes on the crank in front of us as we took a minute to gather ourselves. This is exactly what we were afraid of. The unknown. And we were heading into a sea of it, if we already haven't. Cranks were probably crawling in this place. More than one. The only thing that was keeping me from telling Frypan to turn back, was the thought that I would have to face Mae if we ended up going back, and the fact that we left and didn't return with Minho. She and Vince would be furious. I would really rather not get into another fight with her.

The loud yelp of Thomas brought me out of my thoughts, causing my head to fly in his direction. I lurched back in my seat, seeing a woman crank place two clammy hands on the window next to Thomas. She had a wildness behind her eyes that made me want to jump out of this car and start running myself. Her hair was stringy, and her flowery blue dress swayed at her feet. This woman looked like she could've been a mother once, a friend, wife. But the virus ate at her brain until she was nothing but a body with a crazy mind, slamming her hands on a car window, begging for help.

"Please." She murmured at us, banging her palms against the glass once more. She tried the handle—the car was locked. "Help me. Please."

As she finished her sentence, another hand slammed on the window opposite of the woman crank. This man looked like he had reached the gone long ago. He had patches of his hair that were ripped out, and his skin was not a pale color, but more like an orange. He had scratches right under his eyes, and over his nose. His nails dug into the window as I pushed myself as far away as possible, the sounds of his growls muffled through the barrier between him and us.

"Okay, Fry." Thomas spoke as more cranks started to come out from various places around us. My head swiveled in all directions as they started to slam themselves into the windows, jaws clamping shut as though we were their next meal. "We gotta go."

Fry let out a yelp as another creature lurched at the glass closest to him, slamming their forehead against the glass in an attempt to break it. Blood splattered in front of him, and one look at the boy's face told me that he was traumatized in the matter of seconds.

"Fry, go. Go!" I squeezed his shoulder, trying to tell him to hurry at the same time I tried to comfort him.

"Floor it, Fry!" Thomas shouted his name as well.

"GO!"

The driver looked back at us, ignoring our shouts as he screamed. "Hold on!"

He pressed his foot on the gas, making Thomas fly back into his seat while I slammed my head on the headrest behind me. I winced in pain, closing my eyes for a moment before opening them again to see another crank on the hood of the jeep. Obscuring our view, the creature let out a monstrous scream before it clenched its fist and slammed it into the glass, immediately cracking it.

"Shit!" I muttered underneath my breath as Frypan started to swerve, turning the wheel from one side to the other. I held onto the center console while trying to bring my leg up to give me some sense of security so I wouldn't be sliding across the seat like Thomas probably was.

"Fry, shake 'em!" He yelled form the back, sounding flustered.

Frypan clenched his teeth. "I'm trying!"

The crank rolled form one side of the hood to the other, keeping a firm grasp on the overhead lights that I now wanted to smash to bits. The creature moved its way to Frypans window, shoving its fist into the glass once more as he tried to shake it off of us.

"Hang on!" He screamed as he jerked the wheel to the left. The crank suddenly flew off of the window, the growl that was sounding from its mouth turning into nothing but a faint sound in the distance.

I let out a sharp breath through my mouth, turning around in my seat to see the piece of metal Frypan had barely dodged. Just as I felt the adrenaline within me start to subside, I turned around.

"Frypan, watch out!" Thomas screamed from behind me, causing the boy to snap out of his daze and lift his head up.

I didn't even have enough time to take a breath before I felt the car flip to my side. Letting a strong curse word slip through my teeth, I used my arm as leverage as we crashed.

Pinching my eyes shut, I felt myself slam against the door of the car, then the roof. The pain coursed through my body as a dull ache—I was thrown around and entangled with the seatbelt, my head hitting the glass windshield as I clenched my teeth and pulled the belt from around my left leg. Then as quickly as the whirring and the dizziness came, it stopped, and we were upside-down.

Dust clouded around the inside of the car, the foul smell from the inside of the tunnel seeping through the cracks that the cranks had so ruthlessly created. We coughed for a few seconds, the dirt getting into our lungs. If Mae were here, she would be having an awful time.

"Everyone okay?" Thomas groaned, and we all muttered a quiet 'yeah'. I leaned my head on the glass my body was laying on, taking a moment to sit with the ache in my leg and my forearm. At this point, I had felt so much pain—so many things and plans have gone wrong that I was just used to it. We were stuck in an overturned car, our only form of transportation, with about a hundred cranks right on our tails. And yet, when the headlights flickered off, Thomas was still in desperate need to be the one to get us out of the mess he had gotten us into.

"Alright." He muttered. "Cover your eyes."

I did as he told us to, hearing a few seconds of him rummaging about before the sound of glass shattering made me flinch in my seat. I lowered my arms from my face, waving the floating dust out of the way before watching him crawl out through the window he had broken. He laid on the floor, flashlight in hand and his face scrunched together. I coughed again, the need to get out of the confines of the overturned car became too much. The claustrophobia ate at my brain, desperation of freedom becoming like an itch.

As Thomas stood up and tried to open Frypan's side, I maneuvered my body so that I was now sideways to the door, my shoulder pressing firmly against the glass. I squinted my face up in pain as I slammed my body into the car, hoping that it would be enough to finally make the door give way. I grunted with each push, my shoulder throbbing with the pain I was causing myself. On the third try, the door finally flew open, and I rolled out of the car with a yelp.

A sharp pain exploded in my forearm as I fell, traveling all the way up to my shoulder.