“Did you kill them?” Minho asked.

  It took a moment for Jackie to answer. “Yes, Minho, we killed them.”

  “Good.”

  Engines hummed and growled; gears cranked and scraped; grinding echoes of machine parts rubbing against other machine parts made the entire vessel tremble and rumble. The controls were mechanical and straightforward, even labeled in most cases.

  “Minho!” Jackie shouted.

  He jerked his attention away for a moment and looked at her—she was pissed at him for no reason he could think of.

  “What?”

  “You look like you’re having a grand old time with this thing but I’m telling you there was something strange about those people who tried to drag us away.”

  He nodded, wishing she’d leave him alone. “The Flare has a lot of variants, Jackie. I don’t know as much as you think I do. We all have a lot to learn. We will. But for now, we have to crunch our way out of this Berg and get the hell out of here.”

  “You really think we can do it?” Isaac asked. “In time?” The sounds of dozens of Cranks—and worse, the sight of them at the viewports—trying to get inside the machine obviously had him and everyone else on edge.

  “Yep,” Minho replied. “It has to.”

  He turned back to the controls, certain he had it figured out. He smiled, thinking of how much Roxy had loved driving her truck, how terrible of a driver she was, and how she had refused to let him take a turn. This would be the ultimate revenge. He met her light-filled eyes and wondered if she was thinking the same silly thing.

  “Everyone grab on to something!” he yelled.

  They moved with a hard jolt, then another, then another. There were crunches and creaks and groans and the scream of engines, the crumpling of metal. Outside the hull, Cranks fell and Cranks were crushed. All around Minho, people held on to anything they could find as the machine’s giant spiked wheels and appendages of terror obliterated the Berg shell that encased them.

  The Grief Walker rose from the earth like a resurrected demon.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Future of the Future

  Safe.

  As much as anyone could be in such a scary part of the world, Isaac and his friends were safe. For now, anyway. And that was a much better situation than they’d had in a long time.

  After escaping the scene of the Berg crashes, the Grief Walker had spiked and rolled and steamed its way through forests, across a river, over giant boulders and all manner of terrain, finally settling down in a remote area nestled between two wooded mountains. They had food stores, a stream of fresh water nearby, weapons to hunt if needed. And, most importantly, Minho had no qualms threatening the man named Glane and the odd, headachy priestess, telling them that if the other Bergs showed up, they’d be shot. That was how the thing called a transmitter had been discovered, and promptly disabled.

  The sun had set, though the nights were shorter this far north. Isaac and the best friends of his life sat around a campfire, as if they had somehow been transported back to the island they called home. The wood of the fire crackled and spit out sparks, warming them in the cool, windless air, the smoke rising straight up, toward the crescent of the moon. Watching the flames, smelling the charred wood, Isaac thought of the Forge and ached with memories.

  “Hell of a week, eh?” Dominic said. After a pause, he repeated the phrase. “Hell of a week.”

  Isaac could tell he’d been on the cusp of making a joke but then faltered, remembering that lives had been lost. Carson. Lacey. Wilhelm. Alvarez. There’d been no sign of Letti or Timon so they were probably dead, too. Six friends, probably dead. But maybe not. Maybe not.

  With a little shame, Isaac was grateful for the ones who’d survived for certain, that they were the ones he’d cared about the most, those who sat there with him. Black-eyed Sadina and Trish. Miyoko and Dominic and Jackie the Crank-Slayer. Ms. Cowan and Old Man Frypan. Isaac had lost his family in a freak storm, lost them in the terrible waves. But all these crazy people sitting in a circle had made that loss a little more bearable. Even Minho, Roxy, and Orange were well on their way to worming themselves into the fold.

  “So what’s next for us?” Sadina asked, cozied up with Trish. “Kletter was the whole reason we came here and she’s not around to tell us what to do.”

  Miyoko was poking the logs with a stick. “I think we should go back to Los Angeles and find that Villa she kept harping about. We were almost there.”

  “No way,” Dominic said. “We should go back home. Forget the old world. This place sucks.”

  “It definitely sucks,” Jackie agreed. “I’d love to go home. Maybe we can find us a nice Berg and avoid that whole boat thing.” Isaac remembered her throwing up on the voyage. A lot.

  “What do you think, Ms. Cowan?” Trish asked.

  The woman who’d once been the leader of the island’s Congress just shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know, you guys. I can’t pretend to have the slightest idea. But I’m glad we’re together.”

  Isaac didn’t have much of an opinion—at least not yet—but he knew someone who did.

  “Unless we want to walk back to the ocean,” he said, “we’ll do whatever Minho says. He’s pretty much the captain of our big machine over there. And he says we’re going to the Godhead city. At least that’s where he’s going.”

  Old Man Frypan spoke up for the first time that evening. “Isn’t that where all the other Bergs from his damn country went? To set up for an attack or some such nonsense?”

  “I think so, yeah,” Isaac replied.

  The man sighed, looking wistfully at the fire. “You’ve all heard my stories a million times. I won’t bore you with any, now. But let’s just say I’ve had my fill of battles in Alaska. I think I’ll just stay right here and eat plants and rabbits until my heart calls it quits.”

  “Yeah, right,” Jackie said. “You’re gonna outlive us all, old man.”

  As he often did, Frypan gave that a hoot and a holler. “Don’t I wish. First thing I do every morning is check my pulse and see if I’m dead yet.”

  Jackie gave him a hoot and a holler right back, as did most of the others. Isaac smiled, but he wasn’t quite ready for laughs, yet. He couldn’t get his mind off the Forge and its fires and its red-hot metals and its steam and its smells of sweat, leather, and things burnt. It was ironic, in a way. He’d worked his tail off at the Forge in the year after he’d lost his family to help him forget about the tragedy of it all, at least for pockets of time. But now, remembering that place, his favorite place, made him think of his mom, his dad, his sister. And that horrible day.

  Frypan cleared his throat and leaned closer to the fire. “Ah, to hell with it. Ya’ll want a story? We don’t have to make any decisions tonight.”

  His question was met with a resounding yes and he was happy to oblige, using names that all of them knew very well. “Sweet little Chuck was always up to no good, and there was this one night when he got Thomas in on the act. Well, Gally was doing his thing on the toilet, you see . . .”

  As Old Man Frypan told his story, Isaac listened and watched the campfire and all the memories that came with it. The smoke rose in a ghostly pillar, the flames flickered and danced with bright heat, and the night didn’t seem all that dark.

  EPILOGUE

  Two Boxes

  She sat in the library of her residence, her prized possessions resting on the table before her. Mannus and her pilgrims had delivered in every way she had hoped. Initially, she thought it unwise to be here, where she’d lived for years, having what she now owned. But then she remembered that there was nothing to fear. Nothing at all. Not even Mikhail would dare move against her, now.

  She slid the first box closer to her, lifted its lid. To get a better view, she stood up, looked down into the open container from directly above. The eyes of Nicholas stared back at her, his eyelids removed so that they could never close again. She smiled at him, half-expecting what was left of the dead man to return the kind gesture. He did not.

  After closing the lid, she slid the box away from her and replaced it with the other one, pulling it close as she sat down again. Although called the Coffin, it looked more like a briefcase, small enough that she could easily hide the thing wherever she wished. It was made of hard red leather with white stitching, six metal latches keeping it closed and secure. Each latch had a mechanical dial of numbers with its own code, six codes in all. Only three people in the world knew those codes. Well, two did, now.

  With an emotion approaching the hysteria she’d seen in her pilgrims when she’d taken them to the Maze ruins, she meticulously, almost reverently, turned the dials one by one until all the codes were set. Then she flipped the latches open, relishing the six successive clicks of metal on leather.

  She lifted the lid with care, settling it as far back as it could go on its hinges.

  Most of the interior was taken up by a gray spongy substance, its purpose to cushion the precious, priceless contents. Five small, round holes had been evenly spaced in the protective material, where five metallic vials—sealed with a technology that Alexandra didn’t yet understand—had been placed. Five vials that could Evolve the Evolution itself, change the world forever, as trite as that sounded.

  She pulled one of the vials—about the length of her hand—from its slot and examined its smooth, unbroken surface, perfectly rounded on both ends. There were no seams, no cracks, no labels. Only shiny, unblemished, silvery metal. What filled its cylindrical interior would shape the future of the Flare and its many variants. A course that would be set by her, Alexandra Romanov, Goddess to her people. No, no, that title wouldn’t do anymore. God, period. She carefully placed the item back in its slot.

  She looked upon her possession with indescribable joy.

  The vials contained blood samples of a person who’d lived long ago, a name that was known in every corner of the surviving world, spoken often in the seven decades since his tragic death. A name that conjured dread in some, hope in most. For Alexandra, it conjured the sum total of her every reason to exist. For she knew a secret that most did not.

  The boy known as Newt had not been immune to the Flare.

  No, he hadn’t been immune in the slightest, unlike most of his friends in the Maze.

  But he was the cure.

  Yes. That boy. The one named Newt, Subject A4, the Glue, brother to Sonya . . .

  The Cure.

  * * *

  THE END OF BOOK ONE

  Excerpt copyright © 2020 by James Dashner

  Published by Quest, an imprint of Riverdale Avenue Books.

  ISBN ‎ 978-1626015678

  Published November 22, 2020

  Part One

  Welcome to the Neighborhood

  Chapter One

  There they go.

  Newt looked through the grimy glass of the Berg’s porthole, watching as his friends walked toward the massive, imposing gate that barred one of the few passages into Denver. A formidable wall of cement and steel surrounded the city’s battered-but-not-broken skyscrapers, with only a few checkpoints such as the one Newt’s friends were about to use. Attempt to use. Looking up at the gray walls and the iron-colored bolts and seams and hinges of the reinforcements on the doors, it would be impossible not to think of the Maze, where the madness had all begun. Quite literally.

  His friends.

  Thomas.

  Minho.

  Brenda.

  Jorge.

  Newt had felt a lot of pain in his life, both inside and out, but he believed that very moment, watching Tommy and the others leave him for the last time, was his new rock bottom. He closed his eyes, the sorrow bearing on his heart like the weight of ten Grievers. Tears leaked out of his squeezed eyelids, ran down his face. His breath came in short, stuttered gasps. His chest hurt with the pain of it. A part of him desperately wanted to change his mind, accept the reckless whims of love and friendship and open the Berg’s slanting hatch door, sprint down its rickety frame, join his friends in their quest to find Hans, get their implants removed, and accept whatever came next.

  But he’d made up his mind, as fragile as it might be. If ever in his life he could do one thing right, the thing that was unselfish and full of good, this was it. He’d spare the people of Denver his disease, and he’d spare his friends the agony of watching him succumb to it.

  His disease.

  The Flare.

  He hated it. He hated the people trying to find a cure. He hated that he wasn’t immune and he hated that his best friends were. All of it conflicted, battled, raged inside him. He knew that he was slowly going insane, a fate rarely escaped when it came to the virus. It had come to a point where he didn’t know if he could trust himself, both his thoughts and his feelings. Such an awful circumstance could drive a person mad if they weren’t already well on their way to that lonely destination. But while he knew that he still had an ounce of sense, he needed to act. He needed to move, before all those heavy thoughts ended him even sooner than the Flare.

  He opened his eyes, wiped his tears.

  Tommy and the others had already made it through the checkpoint—they’d entered the testing area, anyway. What happened after that was cut from Newt’s view with the closing of a gate, the final puncture in his withering heart. He turned his back to the window, pulled in several deep breaths, trying to dampen the anxiety that threatened him like a 30-meter wave.

  I can do this, he thought. For them.

  He got to his feet, ran to the bunk he’d used on the flight from Alaska. He had almost no possessions in this world, but what little he owned he threw into a backpack, including some water and food and a knife he’d stolen from Thomas to remember him by. Then he grabbed the most important item—a journal and pen he’d found in one of the random cabinets on the Berg. It had been blank when he’d discovered the compact book, though a little tattered and worn, its endless white pages flipping by like the rattled wings of a bird when he thumbed through it. Some former lost soul, flying to who knows where on this bucket of metal, had once thought to write down the story of their life but chickened out. Or died. Newt had decided on the spot to write his own story, keep it a secret from everyone else. For himself. Maybe someday for others.

  The long blast of a horn sounded from outside the walls of the ship, making Newt flinch and throw himself onto the bed. His heart sputtered out a few rapid beats while he tried to reorient. The Flare made him jumpy, made him quick to anger, made him a sodden mess in every way. And it was only going to get worse—in fact, it seemed like the bloody thing was working overtime on his poor little brain. Stupid virus. He wished it was a person so he could kick its arse.

  The noise stopped after a few seconds, followed by a silence still as darkness. Only in that silence did Newt realize that before the horn there’d been the ambient noise of people outside, erratic and... off. Cranks. They must be everywhere outside the walls of the city, those past the Gone, trying to get inside for no other reason than the madness that told them to do it. Desperate for food, like the primal animals they’d become.

  What he would become.

  But he had a plan, didn’t he? Several plans, depending on the contingencies. But each plan had the same ending—it was just a matter of how he got there. He would last for as long as he needed to write what he needed in that journal. Something about that simple, empty little book, waiting to be filled. It had given him a purpose, a spark, a winding course to ensure the last days of his life had reason and meaning. A mark, left on the world. He would write all the sanity he could muster out of his head before it was taken over by its opposite.

  He didn’t know what the horn had been or who had blown it or why it was suddenly quiet outside. He didn’t want to know. But perhaps a path had been cleared for him. The only item left to settle was how to leave it with Thomas and the others. Maybe give them a little closure. He’d already written one depressing note to Tommy; might as well write another.

  Newt decided that his journal would survive if it weighed less by one page. He tore it out and sat down to write a message. Pen was almost to paper when he stalled, as if he’d had the perfect thing to say but it floated out of his mind like vanished smoke. Sighing, he itched with irritation. Anxious to get out of that Berg, walk away—limp or no limp—before something changed, he scribbled down a few lines, the first things that popped in his head.

  They got inside somehow. They’re taking me to live with the other Cranks.

  It’s for the best. Thanks for being my friends.

  Goodbye.

  It wasn’t totally true, but he thought about those horns and all that commotion he’d heard outside the Berg and figured it was close. Was it short and curt enough to prevent them from coming after him? To get it through their thick skulls that there was no hope for him and that he’d only get in the way? That he didn’t want them to watch him turn into a mad, raving, cannibalistic former human?

  Didn’t matter. Didn’t matter at all. He was going one way or another.

  To give his friends the best shot they had at succeeding, with one less obstacle.

  One less Newt.

  Chapter Two

  The streets were chaos, a mass of disorder shaken up like dice and spilled across the land.

  But that wasn’t the scary part. The scary part was how normal everything felt—as if the world had been arcing toward this moment since the day its rocky surface first cooled and the oceans ceased to boil. Remnants of suburbs lay in scattered, trashy ruin; buildings and homes with broken windows and peeled paint; garbage everywhere, strewn about like the tattered pieces of a shattered sky; crumpled, filthy, fire-scorched vehicles of all sorts; vegetation and trees growing in places never meant for them. And worst of all, Cranks ambling about the streets and yards and driveways as if merchants were about to begin a massive winter market: All items half-price!