The Maze Runner Files ( The Maze Runner Series) by Dashner James

Author:Dashner, James [Dashner, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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Excerpt copyright © 2013 by James Dashner. Published by Delacorte Press, an imprint

of Random House Children’s books, a division of Random House LLC, New York.

CHAPTER 1

THE COFFIN

Michael spoke against the wind, to a girl named Tanya.

“I know it’s water down there, but it might as well be concrete. You’ll be at as a

pancake the second you hit.”

Not the most comforting choice of words when talking to someone who wanted to end

her life, but it was certainly the truth. Tanya had just climbed over the railing of the

Golden Gate Bridge, cars zooming by on the road, and was leaning back toward the

open air, her twitchy hands holding on to a pole wet with mist. Even if somehow

Michael could talk her out of jumping, those slippery ngers might get the job done

anyway. And then it’d be lights-out. He pictured some poor sap of a sherman thinking

he’d finally caught the big one, only to reel in a nasty surprise.

“Stop joking,” the trembling girl responded. “It’s not a game—not anymore.”

Michael was inside the VirtNet—the Sleep, to people who went in as often as he did.

He was used to seeing scared people there. A lot of them. Yet underneath the fear was

usually the knowing. Knowing deep down that no matter what was happening in the

Sleep, it wasn’t real.

Not with Tanya. Tanya was di erent. At least, her Aura, her computer-simulated

counterpart, was. Her Aura had this bat-crazy look of pure terror on her face, and it

suddenly gave Michael chills—made him feel like he was the one hovering over that

long drop to death. And Michael wasn’t a big fan of death, fake or not.

“It is a game, and you know it,” he said louder than he’d wanted to—he didn’t want to

startle her. But a cold wind had sprung up, and it seemed to grab his words and whisk

them down to the bay. “Get back over here and let’s talk. We’ll both get our Experience

Points, and we can go explore the city, get to know each other. Find some crazies to spy

on. Maybe even hack some free food from the shops. It’ll be good times. And when we’re

done, we’ll nd you a Portal, and you can Lift back home. Take a break from the game

for a while.”

“This has nothing to do with Lifeblood!” Tanya screamed at him. The wind pulled at

her clothes, and her dark hair fanned out behind her like laundry on a line. “Just go

away and leave me alone. I don’t want your pretty-boy face to be the last thing I see.”

Michael thought of Lifeblood Deep, the next level, the goal of all goals. Where

everything was a thousand times more real, more advanced, more intense. He was three

years away from earning his way inside. Maybe two. But right then he needed to talk

this dopey girl out of jumping to her date with the shes or he’d be sent back to the

Suburbs for a week, making Lifeblood Deep that much further away.

“Okay, look …” He was trying to choose his words carefully, but he’d already made a

pretty big mistake and knew it.

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