They met in the usual spot, an abandoned basement beneath a fallen warehouse, left to decay by its owners before any of them had been born. How it hadn’t collapsed into that basement was a wonder, as was the very maze-like route through the rubble to get to its entrance. Maze-like. She’d had the thought without any irony.

  Her friend with the horns, who’d refused to reveal his name until a week ago—Mannus, which he must’ve thought sounded very masculine, indeed—sat to her right around the makeshift table they’d scrounged from the ruins. Six others were there; three women, three men, all dressed in the yellow robes of the Maze. Besides Mannus the heretic, they were all devout followers of the faith, devout to a fault. For them, anyway. They were exactly what she needed. And after what they were about to hear—and see—they’d be groveling at her feet. Quite literally.

  “Let’s begin,” she said.

  Mannus folded his arms and placed them on the table, leering at the others one by one. His horns rose comically from his head, and Alexandra knew the night wouldn’t end before he reminded her once again of her promise—to have those stupid things removed by a professional, someone who wouldn’t crack his skull in the process.

  “We’ve got it all set up for Sunday,” Mannus pronounced. “Right at noon, when most of our friends in the faith will be gathering at the doors to the Maze for mass.”

  One of the women—no horns on this lady—spoke up. “I would just like to reiterate what I’ve said from the beginning. We shouldn’t play this out at such a holy time. It’s not right.”

  The man next to her—this guy also was hornless, but every known name of the Gladers of old had been tattooed on various spots of his face—he agreed, apparently. “Yes, I second the motion.”

  Mannus slammed his hand on the tabletop then refolded his arms. Then he was shouting. “We’re planning to kill a member of our own Godhead and then steal the most holy relic in the history of holy relics and you’re worried about doing it during the Maze Mass? Did I choose the wrong pilgrims?”

  “Calm yourself, Mannus,” Alexandra chided. “Or I’ll do it for you.”

  “You’ve promised us proof that he’s fallen from the faith,” another woman piped up. Alexandra had decided weeks ago not to bother learning their names. “We see this mission as a manifestation of our devotion, not a blasphemy of it.”

  “Okay, fine,” Mannus grumbled. “Your objections are noted in the record. Notice there isn’t any damn record. But I’ll remember it. Anyway, Sunday. Noon. We’ll meet where the pilgrims are gathered, then sneak away as they really get into their stuff. The House of God is maybe half a mile from there. And we all know the plan once we arrive.”

  The man with the tattoos spoke next. “If we know the plan so well, why did we meet tonight? Where’s the proof you promised?”

  Mannus didn’t respond, just looked over at Alexandra. It was time.

  She stood up. To the gasps of almost everyone in the room, she slipped out of her robe, letting it fall to the floor. Underneath, she wore the finest of clothes, dyed the finest and brightest of colors, interlaced with threads of gold and silver. Then she reached up and pulled the grimy wig off her head, tossed it on top of the discarded robe. Next, she pulled out the pins holding her hair in a bun, letting it fall to her shoulders as she brushed it out with dirty fingers, the thickest, darkest, richest hair they’d ever seen, cascading in waves upon her upper body.

  That was all it took.

  These people knew who she was. These people had absolutely no doubt who she was. How many times had they lined the streets to watch her pass? How many times had they fallen to their knees and beaten themselves in her holy presence to show their devotion? They knew a member of the Godhead when they saw one. Well, when a member of the Godhead didn’t wear a disguise, anyway.

  There was shock at first. No one moved, no one spoke, no one breathed. Then the six of them did all three things at once. The next few minutes proved as predictable as gravity, and she allowed it to happen.

  The pilgrims tumbled out of their chairs, fell to the floor, bowed their heads to avert their eyes in humility, all of them shouting words and phrases, most of them indecipherable. But Alexandra heard various renditions of, “Praise the Maze,” and “Glory to the Gladers,” and “Damn the Grievers to hell,” and “Touch me, God, please touch me.” But mostly she heard wailing and moaning mixed with hysterical cries of joy. Mannus had remained in his seat, but he stared at her in disbelief.

  The others crawled toward her—not on hands and knees like a toddler, but flat on their stomachs, in deference to their God, pulling themselves forward with their arms, looking like nothing so much as worms or lizards or some other slithering creature.

  Soon they surrounded her, prostrate, but having shown enough humility to now look at her with pleading eyes. They’d stopped making their noises, now only hoping to be shown some grace by one of the Three to whom they’d devoted their lives.

  It sickened her.

  It did. But she’d committed to a path from which she could not turn. When all of this was over, when she alone stood as their God, Goddess, whatever, then things would change. With the Coffin in her possession, things could finally begin to change. But first, she had to be rid of Nicholas. Mikhail, too, perhaps. But Nicholas first because he was the toughest.

  “Do you know who I am?” she asked quietly.

  This set off another burst of excitement and she had to let that go on for a minute or so. Then she raised her hands to silence them.

  “I am your Goddess, and you see me for who I am. You have been in my presence and as you search your hearts, you know what you have felt. I am the Evolution. You are my children and one day soon you will Evolve as I have Evolved. Do you believe my words?”

  Yes, yes, they did. They made that perfectly clear before she had to silence them again.

  “Your Goddess is pleased. What Mannus has directed is what I have directed. The God named Nicholas has broken the seal before its time, a blasphemy. It has been revealed that he must be punished and that I must rise in his place. Behold your new God.”

  Back in her apartments, she’d spent hours writing this stuff up. Now she found it hard to believe they’d yet to laugh in her face, roll on the floor, holding their bellies while they shook with uncontrollable mirth. But this was the way of the Godhead, wasn’t it? Still, faith and devotion could only be relied on to a point. Now, a step up.

  “You asked for proof,” she said. “I don’t blame you. It pleases me that you wouldn’t rise up against the Godhead without absolute knowledge that it was the right thing to do. I’ve decided to give you that proof.” She paused for a very long time, trying even her own patience. Finally, one of them couldn’t stand it, anymore. One of the men.

  “What is it, Goddess?”

  No pilgrim in Alexandra’s lifetime had been allowed what she was about to grant.

  “I’m going to take you inside the Maze. I’m going to let you see for yourselves.”

  Hysteria.

  People.

  He saw people.

  He looked over at Roxy, lying next to him on the crest of a hill. “Tell me I haven’t lost my mind. Those are people over there, right? Humans?”

  “Yes, Minho. I believe those are humans.”

  They’d been driving for only a few hours that day when they’d come upon the wide river, its current gushing along at a pretty good clip. A bridge arced across the water, but it was in terrible shape, warped and broken. The skeleton of it, however, seemed intact. They could walk across if they wanted, but they couldn’t risk the truck.

  They’d taken a break, eaten some food—the supplies were dwindling faster than he dared admit to himself—and then heard what they thought was a laugh. Thinking it had to be a bird, but, just in case, the two of them had crawled up this small hill and peeked over the edge.

  People.

  He saw people.

  Four of them.

  They were on the other side of the river, which was why the laugh had been so faint. It must’ve caught just the right spit of wind for them to hear it at all. The strangers hadn’t been there when he and Roxy had first arrived, and now he was glad they’d parked the truck in a secluded spot for just this purpose. No matter how long you went without seeing another soul, you always had to act like maybe, just maybe, you might see another soul.

  “What do we do?” Roxy asked. “Invite them for tea?”

  The Orphan smiled, but he didn’t feel it. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t suppress the dark, dark feeling that rose up in him. His entire life, he’d been trained what to do in exactly this situation. He needed to kill them. He needed to kill them before they got close enough to spread whatever disease might rack their bodies. But telling Roxy that seemed like a bad idea. So he stayed quiet and she returned her attention to the other side of the river.

  There were two men and two women from what he could tell. One of the men was huge in both height and strength. The others all seemed rather similar to each other. Each had an overstuffed pack on their shoulders, and the way they were walking, slumped and haggard, showed they’d been at it a long time. They stopped, dropping those heavy packs carelessly to the ground, near the foot of the bridge, perhaps seeing it much like the Orphan and Roxy had seen it—an excuse to stop and rest. In fact, daylight was melting into twilight; they were probably going to camp over there.

  “Do they seem like murderers?” Roxy asked.

  The Orphan eased backward down the slope until confident of being unseen, then stood up and walked back to the truck. Roxy followed right on his heels.

  “Well?” she pushed. “Do they look like bad guys or good guys? I think they seem perfectly harmless.”

  But he couldn’t give her an answer, yet—he wished she’d stayed on the hill. Placing both hands on the hood of the vehicle, his back to her, he closed his eyes and forced himself to take five long, deep breaths.

  Minho, he thought. My name is Minho. He held on to that, tried to push away the instinct that had come over him. The instinct to kill and ask questions later. But no sooner had he gone that mental route before he doubted himself. Those people could be infected. Those people might have the same instincts as me.

  “We need to leave,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if they hear us—we’ll be long gone by the time they do. We can just drive farther north, follow the river until we find another bridge—this one is too frail to hold us, anyway.”

  She didn’t respond, not even a grunt of disagreement or an “Mm-hm” of acknowledgment. He sighed, wishing that he could be alone to deal with this. He wasn’t in the mood to argue. Releasing another sigh, exaggerated with frustration, he turned around and leaned backward against the truck.

  She was gone. Vanished.

  He sprinted back up the hill, hoping she’d kept her senses. He reached the top.

  No . . . she hadn’t vanished at all.

  Down below, she’d just stepped onto the rickety frame of the bridge.

  Her days went through cycles, and after so many days of going through those cycles—usually in the same order as the day before and then again the day after—it all became a routine. A routine dug deep, all the way to bedrock. Jackie gave up on breaking it, even if she had wanted to.

  First came the morning wake-up, usually to the brightly beaming face of Dominic, the human rooster who apparently didn’t need sleep anymore. Next came the groggy blah of “getting up and at ’em,” as her dad used to say. The stretching, the yawning, the meager breakfast, the chit-chat, the breaking of camp, the dread of following Isaac and Sadina’s trail for yet another day lost within yet another week. Always close, never far, never there. It was like watching one snail chase another—the first scoots an inch, the second guy follows. No progress whatsoever.

  But on they went, and on they’d go.

  For Sadina. For Isaac.

  Walk all day, make camp, sleep, start again the next morning, Dominic’s face like the rising sun. She’d lost track of how many times the daily cycle had begun and ended, but the current one seemed much like the others.

  Except for the river. The river brought change, and the change brought hope, even though there wasn’t much of a reason for it. She happily accepted it all the same.

  They’d been hiking for hours along the west bank of the wide, swift river they’d come across the night before, keeping close to its edge. The water was deep and the current imposing, the roar of its constant cascade a pleasant chorus that brought her peace. Enough rocks jutted from the surface to break the flow with white splashes and spray and foam, eddies and ripples and sideways flumes—the whole riot of movement had the bewildering effect of seeming frozen to her. Nothing changed even as the river did nothing but, the immeasurable immensity of the water passing by in a blur, each drop of it never to be seen again.

  Such was her attention on this wonder of nature that she forgot the simple task of watching where she was going. A small depression in the ground caught her foot and two seconds later she had smacked her face on the ground. Spitting out dirt, she looked up and, to her mortification, every single person in the group had stopped to stare at her.

  “You okay?” Miyoko asked, trying to hold in a laugh.

  Jackie wiped her face and stood up, refusing to show any signs of the pain in her knees, skinned hands, and bruised face. “I’m glad my klutzy butt could entertain you all.”

  “You’re welcome,” Dominic said.

  This got everyone to take their eyes off of her and on to him—though they should’ve been used to his comments that almost, but didn’t, make sense. Oddly, as the others looked away, her own eyes focused on a spot far downriver, almost to the horizon. She didn’t know if the others had noticed it yet, but she sure hadn’t.

  “Is that a bridge?” she asked, pointing.

  Everyone turned to see what she was talking about. Almost like the shadow image of a crescent moon, a large structure definitely stretched across the expanse of the waterway. There was nothing else it could be.

  Old Man Frypan was the one to answer. “I’m damn near ninety years old and got the vision of a one-eyed bat. Am I really the only one who noticed that a half hour ago?”

  Nobody responded to that, probably feeling like Jackie—a little bit of awe mixed with a strange shifting of time, like the ground beneath them had suddenly turned into sand. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was just something foreboding about that bridge. And maybe a drifting of mist or cloud had dissipated, because it seemed a lot clearer now. Maybe a mile away.

  Dominic asked a very reasonable question. “Are we sure we want to walk near that thing? My mom used to tell me a story about trolls that live under a bridge. Scared the crap out of me.”

  “Are you saying you think a troll might live under that bridge?” Trish shot back, always loving an opportunity to rib one of her oldest friends. “I honestly don’t think trolls are real. In fact, I’m ninety-nine percent certain.”

  “But Cranks are,” he responded. “Bridges seem like places a Crank might live. Or hang themselves from. I bet there’s a few Cranks hanging from that bridge.”

  “Did you eat some wild mushrooms?” Miyoko asked. “Maybe don’t do that anymore.”

  The more they spoke, the more their words slowly faded to a weird, muffled buzz drowned out by the rushing waters of the river. Because she thought she saw something, despite the distance. She was almost sure of it.

  “Guys,” she said, but not loud enough to make them shut up. “Guys!” This time she damn near shouted it. When they finally gave her their full attention, she pointed exactly as she had done a couple of minutes earlier.

  “I doubt they’re Cranks,” she said, her voice shaky, either from excitement or fear, she truly did not know. “But something is moving on that bridge.”

  They all turned their heads at once. And her doubts dissolved.

  Almost in a whisper to herself, she said, “Maybe it’s them.”

  “There’s a woman over there.”

  Letti said it, standing at the entrance to the dilapidated bridge, a thing that had seemed a quaint relic of the past until she said those words. He and Sadina were sitting on a rock in the bridge’s shadow, enjoying the respite from the sun.

  It had been a simple statement. A simple observation. But an oily dread slicked the back of Isaac’s throat.

  Timon had been rummaging through their meager belongings, starting the process of setting up camp, but stiffened and dropped everything, ran to where Letti stood. After Isaac and Sadina exchanged a worried look, they did the same. Soon the four of them were lined up, facing the long length of the bridge, which looked like it had melted and twisted in the sun, rusted in the rain, half of its former parts long fallen into the rushing waters below. The structure seemed one stiff wind from completely collapsing.

  But it held. It held for now, enough of it still put together for someone to walk across.

  And someone was. A lady.

  Carefully picking her way along the treacherous steel skeleton, she was heading toward them, maybe a third of the way across. She waved an arm in greeting, and for a split second Isaac thought she’d lose her balance and tumble from the precarious perch. But far too cheerfully, she continued her approach.

  Timon then said something that Isaac truly hoped the lady didn’t hear.

  “Should we kill her?”

  Letti’s response was even worse.

  “Yes.”

  They’re just kidding, Isaac thought. No, they’d killed Kletter. Images of his family flashed across his mind, of Kletter, of water and blood and death. Waving his arms, he yelled at the lady to go back, to run away.

  Timon snorted a laugh.

  The lady kept coming.