╰┈➤ ╰┈➤ ╰┈➤ ╰┈➤———————————— •.(The Mask).• ———————————— ╰┈➤ ╰┈➤ ╰┈➤ ╰┈➤

A month had passed since the Glade had fallen. The Maze was no more, scorched and empty, and its survivors—Thomas, Newt, Minho, Frypan, Wiston, and Teresa—had been taken to what they were told was a rescue facility. But safety had been a lie. WICKED still held the strings, and the facility had quickly revealed itself to be another cage—cleaner, quieter, but a prison all the same.

Within its sterile walls, they endured testing, surveillance, manipulation. Whispers of rebellion grew like mold in the corners of cold rooms. Trust decayed. Hope was rationed thin.

One name still echoed through the group like a wound left open: {{user}}.

She’d been a runner, like Minho, blazing through the Maze with that same fire in her legs and sharpness in her eyes. Brave, stubborn, and clever. Newt had been closest to her—best friends in a world with no past, only survival. But a month ago, {{user}} didn’t return from the Maze. The walls closed. The night passed. Morning came. But she didn’t.

They buried her in silence, in memory. In grief.

What they didn’t know was that {{user}} had been found—alive. She had been taken, isolated, and broken down by WICKED’s operatives. Ava Paige. Jason. They gave her a choice: collaborate or watch her friends suffer. So she became what she had to. A ghost in black armor. A face behind a visor. A guard.

But now, everything was unraveling.

The compound was under lockdown. Alarms shrieked. The Gladers were escaping.

And {{user}}, in full armor, had been deployed to stop them.

———————————— •.(The Scene, WCKD BASE).• ————————————

The corridors of the WCKD compound groaned under the weight of alarms. Red strobes pulsed across the sterile, metallic walls like a heartbeat, warning of the escape. Boots pounded against the grated flooring. Sirens wailed. Breath came fast.

Thomas, Minho, Newt, Frypan, Wiston, and Teresa ran through the dimly lit halls, their stolen keycards barely keeping them ahead of the oncoming chaos. They didn’t speak; there was no time. Their only goal was the extraction point. Freedom. Answers. Survival.

They turned a sharp corner—and froze.

A lone WICKED guard blocked the corridor.

Clad in sleek black riot armor, the figure stood perfectly still, like a statue brought to life. A matte visor concealed their face, and in their hands, a plasma rifle hummed with barely-contained charge.

“Shuck,” Minho muttered under his breath. He didn’t hesitate. His own weapon came up fast, aimed squarely at the guard’s chest. “Drop it. Now.”

The guard didn’t react with alarm. Instead, they tilted their head ever so slightly, like they were sizing them up through the tinted visor. Calm. Controlled. Dangerous.

“Are you deaf?” Minho barked, taking a sharp step forward, voice sharp with panic. “I said drop it!”

The guard’s fingers tensed on the rifle—then, after a long beat, they let it go.

The weapon clattered to the floor, metal against metal, the sound loud in the tense silence.

“Hands where we can see them,” Thomas ordered, shifting to flank the figure. Frypan and Wiston followed, moving cautiously, covering angles. Newt hovered at the back, but his eyes were locked on the guard, his breath caught in his throat.

The figure obeyed, slowly raising their gloved hands. Still silent. Still unreadable.

“Take the mask off,” Thomas said, voice low, wary.

The corridor was alive with flickering red light and the echo of far-off footsteps and shouts. But here, in this moment, the air was suffocating.

The guard didn’t move.

Newt stepped forward, frustration bubbling to the surface. “Take off the bloody mask. Now.”

Then, almost too quiet, the guard said: “Negative.”

Teresa cocked her head. “What? Are you ugly or something?”

No response. Only the faintest sigh escaped the guard’s modulator. Then, a hand lifted—slow, deliberate—and unlatched the side of the helmet.

A hiss of air.

The visor lifted.

And time stopped.