The Maze Runner

The crisis known as the Ending forces the Gladers' hand: food is gone, the sky has gone permanently gray, the Box has stopped delivering supplies, and the Maze doors no longer close at night, letting Grievers into the Glade itself. Alby, still scarred by his own Changing, tries to burn the maps in a moment of despair, but Newt and Minho have already secured them. Using the recovered maps, Thomas realizes the code isn't hidden across different days in the same section, but across the same day in different sections. Layering the maps reveals the message FLOAT CATCH BLEED DEATH STIFF PUSH, the key to a machine hidden beneath the Maze.

To retrieve memories that might help them survive, Thomas deliberately allows a Griever to sting him and undergoes the Changing. He wakes with fragmented memories of the world outside, including his own past involvement in designing the Maze for an organization called WICKED (World in Catastrophe: Killzone Experiment Department). Armed with this knowledge, he leads most of the remaining Gladers down into the Griever Hole beneath the maze walls, fighting through swarms of Grievers to reach the underground facility where the machine is located. Nearly half the group is killed in the fighting, including Alby, as the Gladers push through to reach the control room.

Thomas, Teresa, and Chuck use the code to unlock the way forward, with Chuck realizing at the last moment that PUSH refers to a physical button rather than the final word of a phrase. This gets the survivors into a chamber where WICKED scientists have been observing them the entire time. Gally, who had disappeared earlier and is now clearly being manipulated by WICKED, walks in with one of the scientists and, no longer in control of his own actions, hurls a knife at Thomas. Chuck throws himself in the way, taking the blade meant for Thomas and dying in his arms.

Moments later, an armed rescue team bursts into the facility, guns down the WICKED scientists, and gathers up the surviving Gladers. The team pulls Thomas, Teresa, Minho, Newt, and the other survivors out of the underground complex and evacuates them to a different, unfamiliar facility, where they are fed and put to bed, safe for the first time but with almost none of their questions about WICKED, the Maze, or their own pasts actually answered.

Thomas wakes with no memory beyond his first name inside a rising metal elevator (the Box) and arrives in the Glade, a walled enclosure surrounded by the ever-shifting Maze. The Glade is led by Alby, with Newt as his second, and Minho as Keeper of the Runners, the boys tasked with mapping the Maze each day before its stone doors seal at night. Every 30 days a new boy with no memory arrives via the Box — until, the day after Thomas, a girl named Teresa arrives instead, the first girl ever sent up, clutching a note reading "She's the last one. Ever." Teresa and Thomas seem to share some prior connection neither can fully remember, and she can communicate with him telepathically.

Over the following weeks, tensions rise: Ben is stung by a Griever, undergoes the disorienting "Changing," and attacks Thomas before being banished into the Maze. Alby and Minho are trapped outside the Glade overnight investigating a dead Griever; Thomas runs out to help, and the three of them survive the night by killing several Grievers and leading others off a cliff. This act earns Thomas grudging respect from most Gladers (though Gally remains hostile and suspicious of him) and leads to Thomas being put on track to become a Runner.

Alby is stung and changed, and afterward hints to Thomas that he saw something during his Changing connecting Thomas to the Maze's design, though he's interrupted before explaining further. Soon after, Teresa reveals she triggered something called "the Ending": supplies stop coming, the sky turns permanently gray, and the Maze doors stop closing at night, letting Grievers into the Glade. Working from the maze maps (which Alby tries to destroy but which Newt and Minho have safeguarded), Thomas figures out a hidden code spelling FLOAT CATCH BLEED DEATH STIFF PUSH.

To gain more answers, Thomas deliberately lets himself be stung and undergoes the Changing, recovering fragments of memory: he learns of an organization called WICKED (World in Catastrophe: Killzone Experiment Department) and that he himself helped design the Maze before his memory was wiped. Leading most of the surviving Gladers into the Griever Hole beneath the Maze, the group fights through Grievers to reach an underground facility; nearly half the Gladers die in the escape, including Alby. Thomas, Teresa, and Chuck use the code to access a control room, where WICKED scientists have been observing them all along. A newly reappeared Gally, clearly under WICKED's control, throws a knife meant for Thomas; Chuck jumps in the way and dies saving him. Immediately afterward, an armed rescue team storms in, kills the scientists, and evacuates the surviving Gladers — Thomas, Teresa, Newt, Minho, and others — to a new, unexplained facility, where the book ends with them fed and put to bed, alive but with almost none of the larger mysteries about WICKED, the Maze's purpose, or their own erased pasts resolved.