Blackness.

For a while, there was nothing but blackness. One, two, three, he tried to count the seconds. Four, five, six. Nothing seemed to change. Darkness still enclosed his very existence. Seven, eight, nine. Cold. It was freezing cold. The black nothingness tickled the hair on his skin and needled through into his veins.

Ten. And then the concept of time itself faded away.

He was falling. Endlessly. This—whatever it was he was plummeting through—had no bottom. A cliff? No, even a cliff had got to lead somewhere. This was something else entirely. Something he had never come across before. Although, it did remind him of something. A lifetime ago, off a stone wall. His greatest failure so far.

A great force suddenly slammed into him. Hard and cold and shapeless, just like everything else since…

Where had he come from?

Then everything stopped. He realised he was no longer falling when he saw a stagnant pillar of light appear a long distance away. White light. Blindingly bright in contrast with all the darkness.

Hazard. Light means danger, he thought, as more memories surfaced into his mind. An underground tunnel. Screaming. Sun. Fire. Lightning. The remains of an old city. A disease. He waited for the dread to fill him, to overpower him, to paralyse him. But it never came.

Instead, he was floating towards the light. It was calling to him. Like an insect, he found himself incapable of refusing the tantalizing warmth, even if it would end up burning him. He did not care. That light was where he was going to. That light was the only destination there was.

The light grew bigger and warmer and impossibly brighter. Before he knew it, the darkness had been completely ridden away, and he was now standing—or is it still floating?—in complete whiteness. The light did not burn him. If anything, it only rejuvenated him. He felt thoroughly clean and fed, and his thoughts had never been clearer.

So he started to remember.

Newt. That was his name. It had not always been, though. It was only his name in his second life.

Second life?

Two lives. He had lived two bloody lives. Before and after the Glade. The Glade. The Maze.

That was that. 'Maze' was the trigger word. After he remembered the Maze, he could remember everything else.

The Flare. His mother. His sister. WICKED. The Box. Grievers. Alby. Minho. Gally. Frypan. Nick. Zart. Winston. Ben. Chuck. Thomas. Teresa. The Griever Hole. The rescue. Rat Man. Aris. The Scorch. Cranks. Jorge. Brenda. Group B. Immunes. The note. The Berg. Denver. Crank Palace. The bowling alley. A van.

A gun shot.

The realisation hit him hard and raw, but with it came relief, surging through his whole being.

He was dead.

Before he could have the chance to turn into a full-blown Crank, he had died. He took endless moments to revel at his current ground, where he was completely liberated, having full control of his own actions. Relief turned into delight and delight into gratitude for Thomas. Tommy. He actually did it.

At that instant, all Newt wanted to do was to thank his friend. So he started running around, with his limp magically gone, searching the vast whiteness for a sign of the brown-haired boy.

Then another realisation hit him. He stopped dead on his feet, terrified of what he was beginning to discover. Tommy could not possibly be there. He certainly hoped Tommy was not there. He hoped none of his friends were. Minho. All the other immunes. They were still alive, weren't they? They had to be. They shucking had to be. He sure would love to see his friends, but he would rather them be alive and well then be with him so soon.

But there were those who had gone before him. There were his fellow Gladers who had fallen either in the Maze or the Scorch. He wondered where they were, wondered if he would meet them again, wondered if they had been waiting for him.

Just as he began pondering upon these things, a shuffle of footsteps sounded from behind him, broken only by the voice that followed.

"Newt."

That was it.

One word. But that was all it needed to take.

The one word was the first human voice he had heard since his Flare-induced last conversation with Tommy, but he had no trouble identifying its familiarity. One word. It was only one word, but it took him back to a time gone by. As if on cue, memories immediately flooded back into his mind.

There was no mistaking it. It was Alby.

Newt turned around, finding his supposedly dead best friend standing there with a blissful grin, happier than he had ever seen.

/ First chapter of first fic posted here... Hope you enjoy it. Reviews are welcome.