Chapter 9: Behind the Door

Fin went down a corridor I hadn't seen, past the lust room, past a turn.

I followed him the whole way.

He walked fast. I walked faster.

"Fin."

He didn't stop.

"Fin. Stop."

He stopped.

We were in a hallway with no doors on it, just black stone on both sides.

He didn't turn around.

"How long," I said.

"How long what."

"How long have you been watching me."

He stood there with his back to me for a moment.

Then he turned around and leaned against the wall.

"Four years," he said.

I didn't say anything.

"Three years and eleven months," Fin said. "Since the first time you compiled the maze runner."

"That was never released."

"It was on a server. The server is a machine. Machines are doors."

"To you."

"To me."

I leaned on the wall across from him.

"Explain it."

"I don't explain things."

"Explain it anyway."

Fin looked at me for a moment like he was deciding something.

Then he did.

"There's a gate under every machine that thinks," he said. "Not all of them. The ones that dream. The ones with a world inside them."

"Games."

"Games. The good ones. The ones somebody built because he wanted to build it."

He looked down at his hand. The black had reached his wrist.

"So I watch," he said. "I appraise."

"You appraise games."

"I appraise the people who make them."

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