Maze Runner. In the maze In the maze short

Alain Robbe Grillet p. 1922

In the labyrinth (Dans le labyrinthe) NOVEL (1959)

The scene is a small town on the eve of the arrival of enemy troops in it. According to the author, the events described in the novel are strictly real, that is, they do not pretend to any allegorical significance, however, the reality depicted in it is not the one that is familiar to the reader from personal experience, but fictional.

The story begins with the fact that a certain soldier, emaciated and stiff from the cold, stands in the winter cold under the continuously falling snow near the lantern and waits for someone. In his hands he holds a tin box wrapped in brown paper, similar to a shoe box, in which there are some things that he must give to someone. He does not remember the name of the street where the meeting is to take place, nor the time; does not know what military unit he is from, nor whose overcoat he is wearing. From time to time he crosses to another street, exactly the same, covered with snow, drowned in a haze, stands near exactly the same lantern, as if through a labyrinth, wanders along the intersection of deserted and straight alleys, not knowing either why he is here, or what time he already spent here, not how much more will endure.

The scenery of the novel is strictly outlined: this is a cafe where a soldier goes to drink a glass of wine, a room where a black-haired woman and her disabled husband give him a break, and a former military warehouse turned into a shelter for the wounded and sick lone soldiers. These scenery imperceptibly flow into one another, and each time something changes in them, something new is added. The events of the novel are depicted as static scenes that have no past, ....

Robbe-Grillet A

in the maze

A.ROBE-GRILLET

IN THE LABYRINTH

To the reader

This story is fiction, not eyewitness testimony. It depicts by no means the reality that is familiar to the reader from personal experience: for example, French infantrymen do not wear the number of a military unit on the collar of their overcoat, just as the recent history of Western Europe does not know a major battle near Reichenfels or in its vicinity. And yet, the reality described here is strictly real, that is, it does not pretend to any allegorical significance. The author invites the reader to see only those objects, deeds, words, events that he reports, without trying to give them any more or less than the significance that they have in relation to his own life or his own death.

I'm here now alone, in safe hiding. Behind the wall it's raining, behind the wall someone is walking in the rain, head down, shielding his eyes with his palm and yet looking straight ahead, looking at the wet asphalt - several meters of wet asphalt; behind the wall - a cold, in the black bare branches the wind whistles; the wind whistles through the foliage, sways the heavy branches, sways and sways, casting shadows on the white limestone walls... Behind the wall is the sun, there is neither a shady tree nor a bush, people walk, scorched by the sun, shielding their eyes with their palms and yet looking straight ahead , by yourself, - looking at the dusty asphalt, several meters of dusty asphalt, on which the wind draws parallels, forks, spirals. Neither the sun, nor the wind, nor the rain, nor the dust penetrates here. A light dust that clouded the radiance of horizontal surfaces - a polished table, a rubbed floor, a marble fireplace and chest of drawers - a cracked marble chest of drawers - this dust is formed in the room itself, perhaps from cracks in the floor, or from a bed, from curtains, from ash in the fireplace. On the polished wood of the table, dust marks the places where for some time - several hours, days, minutes, weeks - there were things rearranged somewhere; for some time their contours are clearly drawn on the surface of the table - a circle, a square, a rectangle or other, more complex shapes, sometimes merging with each other, partially already faded or half-erased, as if they had been walked over with a rag. If the contours are distinct enough to accurately determine the outline of an object, it is easy to detect it somewhere nearby. So, a round mark was left, apparently, by a glass ashtray standing nearby. In the same way, the square in the far left corner of the table, a little away from the ashtray, corresponds to the outline of the copper riser from the lamp, now rearranged to the right corner: a square base, two centimeters thick, on it is a disk of the same thickness, in the center of which - corrugated column. The lampshade casts a circle of light on the ceiling. But the circle is chipped: one edge of it is chopped off at the edge of the ceiling by a vertical wall located behind the table. Instead of the wallpaper that covered the other three walls, this one, from top to bottom and almost entirely across the entire width, is covered with thick red curtains made of heavy velvety fabric. It's snowing behind the wall. The wind drives small dry crystals onto the dark asphalt of the pavement, and with each gust they settle in white stripes parallel, slanting, spiral, - picked up by the spinning snow, they immediately rearrange, freeze, again form some kind of curls, wavy forks, arabesques and then are being rebuilt. Someone is walking, bending his head even lower, more diligently shielding his eyes with his palm and therefore seeing only a few centimeters of asphalt in front of him, a few centimeters of a gray canvas, on which one after another, alternating, someone's feet appear and one after another, alternating, disappear . But the fractional clatter of iron-studded heels, which sound measured as they approach along the completely deserted street and are heard more and more clearly in the silence of the night, numb from the cold, this measured clatter of heels does not reach here, like any other sound that is heard outside the walls of the room. The street is too long, the curtains are too thick, the house is too high. No noise, however muffled, no breeze, no breeze of air ever penetrates here, and in silence the smallest particles of dust settle slowly and measuredly, hardly distinguishable in the dim light of a lamp with a shade, settle silently, vertically, and the fine gray dust lies evenly. layer on the floor, on the bedspread, on the furniture. Glossy paths laid with cloth slippers stretch along the rubbed floor - from the bed to the chest of drawers, from the chest of drawers - to the fireplace, from the fireplace - to the table. Things on the table, obviously, were rearranged, and this violated the integrity of the gray veil covering it: more or less plump, depending on the age of formation, in some places it is completely damaged: for example, the left, far end of the table, not in the very corner, but centimeters ten steps away from the edge and parallel to it, it occupies a clear, as if drawn by a drawing pen, square of polished wood. The side of the square is equal to fifteen centimeters. The brownish-red wood shines, almost untouched by a gray bloom. On the right, although more dimly, some very simple contours still shine through, covered with many days of dust; from a certain point of view, they become quite distinct, and their outlines can be determined with sufficient certainty. This is something like a cross: An oblong object, the size of a table knife, but wider than it, pointed at one end and slightly thickened at the other, cut by a much shorter crossbar; this crossbar consists of two appendages, similar to flames and located symmetrically on one side and the other of the main axis, just where the thickening begins - in other words, at a distance equal to about one third of the total length of the object. This object resembles a flower: a thickening at the end forms, as it were, an oblong closed corolla at the top of the stem with two leaves on the sides, slightly below the corolla. Or maybe he vaguely resembles a human figure: an oval head, two short arms and a body pointed downwards. It can also be a dagger, the hilt of which is separated by a guard from a powerful but dull blade with two blades. Even more to the right, where the tip of the flower stem or the point of the dagger points, the barely tarnished circle is slightly cut along the edge by another circle of the same size, in contrast to its projection on the table, maintaining constant dimensions: this is a glass ashtray. Further on, there are vague, criss-cross marks, undoubtedly left by some papers, which were shifted from place to place, confusing the outlines of the drawing on the table, now very clear, now, on the contrary, shaded with a gray coating, now half-erased, as if it had been brushed off with a rag. Above all this, in the right corner of the table, rises a lamp: a square base, the length of its sides is fifteen centimeters, - a disk of the same diameter, a corrugated column with a dark, slightly conical shade. A fly crawls slowly, non-stop on the outside of the lampshade. It casts a distorted shadow on the ceiling, in which one cannot recognize the slightest sign of the insect itself: no wings, no torso, no paws: all this has turned into some kind of filamentous, broken, open line, reminiscent of a hexagon, devoid of one of the sides: a display of a thread incandescent light bulb. This small open polygon has one of its corners touching the inner side of the large light circle cast by the lamp. The polygon moves slowly but unceasingly along the circumference of the light spot. Reaching the wall, he disappears into the heavy folds of the red curtain. It's snowing behind the wall. It was snowing behind the wall, it was snowing and it was snowing, it was snowing behind the wall. Thick flakes descend slowly, measuredly, incessantly; in front of the high gray facades, the snow falls sheer - for there is not the slightest breeze - the snow makes it difficult to distinguish the location of houses, the height of roofs, the location of windows and doors. These, one must think, are absolutely identical, monotonous rows of windows, repeating on each floor - from one end to the other of an absolutely straight street. At the intersection on the right, exactly the same street opens up: the same deserted pavement, the same high gray facades, the same locked windows, the same deserted sidewalks. And although it is still quite light, there is a gas lantern on the corner. The day is so dim that everything around seems colorless and flat. And instead of the deep perspective that these rows of buildings should have created, one sees only a meaningless intersection of straight lines, and the snow, continuing to fall, deprives this appearance of the slightest relief, as if this chaotic spectacle is just a bad daub, decoration painted on a bare wall. The fly shadow - an enlarged shot of the filament in an electric light bulb - reappears at the verge of wall and ceiling and, having arisen, continues to crawl around the circle, along the edge of the white circle cast by the harsh light of the lamp. It moves with constant speed - slowly and incessantly. On the left, on the darkened plane of the ceiling, a luminous dot stands out; it corresponds to a small round hole in the dark parchment of the lampshade; it is, strictly speaking, not a point, but a thin open broken line, a regular hexagon, one side of which is missing: again an enlarged photograph - this time motionless - of the same light source, the same filament. And yet the same thread in the same or slightly larger lamp shines in vain at the crossroads, enclosed in a glass cage suspended at the top of a cast-iron pole - a former gas lamp with old-fashioned decorations, now turned into an electric lantern. The conical base of its cast-iron support, with a bell at the bottom, is surrounded by several more or less convex rings and wrapped around skinny whips of metal ivy; curved stems, palmate leaves with five pointed lobes and five very distinct veins; where the black paint has peeled off, rusty metal peeps through, and a little higher than the conical support, someone's thigh, someone's arm, shoulder leaned against the lamppost. The man is dressed in an old military overcoat of an indeterminate color, either greenish or khaki. There are traces of extreme fatigue on his gray, haggard face, but perhaps his unshaven stubble has contributed to this impression for several days. Or perhaps a long wait, a long standing in the cold is the reason that his cheeks, lips, forehead are so bloodless. The drooping eyelids are gray, as gray is his whole face. He tilted his head. His gaze was fixed on the ground, more precisely, on the side of the snow-covered sidewalk, at the foot of the lantern, where one could see two rough hiking boots, blunt-toed and thick-skinned, scratched and broken, but relatively well polished with black wax. The snow is not very deep, it barely settles underfoot, and the soles of the boots remain at the level - or almost at the level - of the white veil that stretches around. There are no footprints on the roadside, and the snow cover retains a virgin whiteness, dull, but even and untouched, in small dots of primeval grain. A little snow had accumulated on the upper convex ring that wound around the socket at the base of the lantern and formed a white circle over the black circle that ran level with the ground. Snow flakes stuck to other convexities of the cone, located above, highlighting one by one cast-iron rings, leaf reliefs, horizontal or slightly inclined segments of stems and veins of ivy with a white line. But these small accumulations of snow are partially swept away by the hem of the overcoat, and the white veil around has turned brown in places; before that it was trampled by shoes, which, shifting in place, left imprints of nails arranged in a checkerboard pattern on it. Cloth slippers outlined in the dust, in front of the chest of drawers, a vast shining circle, and they outlined another similar circle in front of the table, in the place where there must have been an armchair, or a chair, or a stool, or something else intended for sitting. A narrow strip of glossy parquet ran from the chest of drawers to the table; the second such path leads from the table to the bed. Parallel to the facades of the houses, a little closer to them than to the gutter, on the snow-covered sidewalk ran the same straight path - yellowish-gray, trodden by some pedestrians who had already disappeared; it stretches from the lighted lantern to the doors of the last building, then turns at a right angle and goes into a transverse street, but all the time it keeps at the foot of the facades, along the entire length of the sidewalk, occupying about a third of its width. Another path leads from the bed to the chest of drawers. From here, a narrow strip of shiny parquet stretched from the chest of drawers to the table, connected two large, dust-free circles, and, deviating slightly, approached the fireplace, where there was no stand for firewood and only a pile of ashes was visible through the open shutter. The black marble of the fireplace is covered with gray dust, just like everything else. Dust lies on it in an even layer, but not as puffy as on a table or on the floor; the mantelpiece is empty, and only one object left a distinct black mark on it, just in the middle of the rectangle. This is still the same four-pointed cross: one branch is oblong and pointed, the other, its continuation, is shortened, with an oval at the end, and two branches are perpendicular, on both sides, very small, similar to flames. A similar motif decorates the wallpaper on the walls, pale gray with slightly darker vertical stripes; between them, in the middle of each light strip, stretches a chain of completely identical, dark gray small images: a rosette is something like a carnation or a tiny torch, the hilt of which has just been represented as a dagger blade, and the dagger hilt now depicts a flame tongue, while two lateral processes, in the form of tongues of flame, which previously seemed like a guard guarding the dagger blade, now form a small bowl that prevents fuel from flowing along the hilt. But most likely it is an electric torch, because the end of the object, which, presumably, should emit light, is not pointed like a flame, but is clearly rounded like an oblong ampoule of an electric light bulb. The drawing, repeated a thousand times on the walls of the room, is simply a one-color silhouette the size of a large insect: it is difficult to recognize what it depicts - it is completely flat and does not even resemble an incandescent filament inside an electric light bulb. However, the light bulb is hidden under the lampshade. On the ceiling, only a reflection of the thread is visible: against a dark background, a small hexagon, devoid of one of its sides, stands out as a luminous line, and farther, to the right, on a round light glare cast by a lamp, a Chinese shadow looms the same, but a moving hexagon, which slowly, measuredly creeps, describing curve inside the circle until, having reached the perpendicular wall, it disappears. The soldier has a bundle under his arm on the left. With his right shoulder and forearm, he leans against a lamppost. He turned towards the street so that his unshaven cheek and the number of the military unit on the collar of his overcoat were visible: five or six black numbers against the background of a red rhombus. The door of the corner house, located behind him, is not closed tightly, it is not wide open, but its movable leaf is leaning against a narrower, motionless one, so that a gap remains between them - a longitudinal dark gap of several centimeters. To the right, a string of windows on the ground floor stretched out, with the doors of buildings alternating with them; identical windows, identical doors, similar in appearance and size to windows. On the street - from end to end - not a single shop is visible. To the left of the door with loosely closed shutters there are only two windows, behind them is the corner of the house, then, perpendicular to them, again a string of identical windows and doors, similar to the reflection of the first, as if visible in a mirror set at an obtuse angle to the facades (right angle - plus another half of the right angle); and the same thing is repeated again: two windows, a door, four windows, a door, etc. The first door is ajar into a dark corridor, a black gap remains between its unequal wings, wide enough for a person, at least a child, to enter it . It is still light outside, but in front of the door, on the edge of the sidewalk, a lantern is burning. In the uncertain, dim, scattered light of a snowy landscape, this electric lantern attracts attention: its light is somewhat brighter, yellower, thicker than daylight. A soldier leaned against a lamppost: he bent his bare head, his hands hidden in the pockets of his overcoat. Under his arm, on the right, he holds a package wrapped in brown paper, what looks like a shoe box, tied with white cord crosswise; but only part of the cord is visible, with which the box is tied longitudinally, its other part, if it exists, is hidden by the sleeve of the overcoat. On the sleeve, at the fold in the elbow, dark streaks are visible - perhaps fresh dirt, or paint, or gun oil. The box, wrapped in brown paper, is now on the chest of drawers. The white cord is no longer there, and the wrapping paper, carefully folded along the width of the parallelepiped, slightly opens a clearly outlined beak, aimed obliquely downwards. A long, slightly wavy crack has formed on the marble of the chest of drawers in this place, which stretches obliquely, passes at the corner of the box and rests against the wall in the middle of the chest of drawers. Just above this end of the crack, the painting hangs. A picture in a lacquered frame, striped wallpaper on the walls, a fireplace with a pile of ashes, a bureau with a lamp under a frosted shade and a glass ashtray, heavy red curtains, a large sofa bed covered with the same red velvety fabric, finally, a chest of drawers with three drawers and cracked marble board, a brown bundle lying on it, a picture above it, and strings of tiny gray insects stretching vertically to the ceiling. The sky outside the window is still the same whitish and dull. Still light. The street is deserted: no cars on the pavement, no pedestrians on the sidewalks. It was snowing and it hasn't melted yet. It lies quite thin - a few centimeters in a completely even layer, painting all horizontal surfaces with a dull, discreet whiteness. Only the footprints left by passers-by are visible, straight paths running along a string of buildings and ditches, still easily distinguishable (visible even better, because their vertical walls remain black), paths dividing the sidewalk along its entire length into two uneven strips. The circle of trampled snow around the lamppost at the crossroads turned yellow, as did the narrow paths along the houses. The doors are closed. There is no one in the windows, no one is clinging to the glass, no one, even vaguely, can be seen in the depths of the rooms. Everything around seems to be some kind of flat decoration, and it seems that there is nothing behind these glasses, nor behind these doors, nor behind these facades. The stage remains empty: no man, no woman, not even a child.

Alain Robbe-Grillet

in the maze

Neither the sun, nor the wind, nor the rain, nor the dust penetrates here. A light dust that clouded the radiance of horizontal surfaces - a polished table, a polished floor, a marble fireplace and chest of drawers - a cracked marble chest of drawers - this dust is formed in the room itself, perhaps from cracks in the floor, or from a bed, from curtains, from ash in the fireplace.

On the polished wood of the table, dust marks the places where for some time - several hours, days, minutes, weeks - there were things rearranged somewhere; for some time their contours are clearly drawn on the surface of the table - a circle, a square, a rectangle or other, more complex shapes, sometimes merging with each other, partially already faded or half-erased, as if they had been walked over with a rag.

If the contours are distinct enough to accurately determine the outline of an object, it is easy to detect it somewhere nearby. So, a round mark was left, apparently, by a glass ashtray standing nearby. Similarly, the square in the far, left, corner of the table, a little away from the ashtray, corresponds to the outline of the copper riser from the lamp, now rearranged to the right corner: a square base, two centimeters thick, on it is a disk of the same thickness, in the center of which - corrugated column.

The lampshade casts a circle of light on the ceiling. But the circle is chipped: one edge of it is chopped off at the edge of the ceiling by a vertical wall located behind the table. Instead of the wallpaper that covered the other three walls, this one, from top to bottom and almost entirely along its entire width, is covered with thick red curtains made of heavy velvety fabric.

It's snowing behind the wall. The wind drives small dry crystals onto the dark asphalt of the pavement, and with each gust they settle in white stripes - parallel, slanting, spiral - picked up by the spinning snow, they immediately rebuild, freeze, again form some kind of curls, wavy forks, arabesques and then are being rebuilt. Someone is walking, bending his head even lower, more diligently shielding his eyes with his palm and therefore seeing only a few centimeters of asphalt in front of him, a few centimeters of a gray canvas, on which one after another, alternating, someone's feet appear and one after another, alternating, disappear .

But the fractional clatter of iron-studded heels, which sound measured as they approach along the completely deserted street and are heard more and more clearly in the silence of the night, numb from the cold, this measured clatter of heels does not reach here, like any other sound that is heard outside the walls of the room. The street is too long, the curtains are too thick, the house is too high. No noise, however muffled, no breeze, no breeze of air ever penetrates here, and in silence the smallest particles of dust settle slowly and measuredly, hardly distinguishable in the dim light of a lamp with a shade, settle silently, vertically, and the fine gray dust lies evenly. layer on the floor, on the bedspread, on the furniture.

Glossy paths laid with cloth slippers stretch along the rubbed floor - from the bed to the chest of drawers, from the chest of drawers - to the fireplace, from the fireplace - to the table. Things on the table, obviously, were rearranged, and this violated the integrity of the gray veil covering it: more or less plump, depending on the age of formation, in some places it is completely damaged: for example, the left, far end of the table, not in the very corner, but centimeters ten steps away from the edge and parallel to it, it occupies a clear, as if drawn by a drawing pen, square of polished wood. The side of the square is equal to fifteen centimeters. The brownish-red wood shines, almost untouched by a gray bloom.

On the right, although more dimly, some very simple contours still shine through, covered with many days of dust; from a certain point of view, they become quite distinct, and their outlines can be determined with sufficient certainty. This is something like a cross: An oblong object, the size of a table knife, but wider than it, pointed at one end and slightly thickened at the other, cut by a much shorter crossbar; this crossbar consists of two appendages, similar to tongues of flame and located symmetrically on one side and the other of the main axis, just where the thickening begins - in other words, at a distance equal to about one third of the total length of the object. This object resembles a flower: a thickening at the end forms, as it were, an oblong closed corolla at the top of the stem with two leaves on the sides, slightly below the corolla. Or maybe he vaguely resembles a human figure: an oval head, two short arms and a body pointed downwards. It can also be a dagger, the hilt of which is separated by a guard from a powerful but dull blade with two blades.

Even more to the right, where the tip of the flower stem or the point of the dagger points, the barely tarnished circle is slightly cut along the edge by another circle of the same size, in contrast to its projection on the table, maintaining constant dimensions: this is a glass ashtray. Further on, there are vague, criss-cross marks, undoubtedly left by some papers, which were shifted from place to place, confusing the outlines of the drawing on the table, now very clear, now, on the contrary, shaded with a gray coating, now half-erased, as if it had been brushed off with a rag.

Above all this, in the right corner of the table, rises a lamp: a square base, the length of its sides is fifteen centimeters, - a disk of the same diameter, a corrugated column with a dark, slightly conical shade. A fly crawls slowly, non-stop on the outside of the lampshade. It casts a distorted shadow on the ceiling, in which one cannot recognize the slightest sign of the insect itself: no wings, no torso, no paws: all this has turned into some kind of filamentous, broken, open line, reminiscent of a hexagon, devoid of one of the sides: a display of a thread incandescent light bulb. This small open polygon has one of its corners touching the inner side of the large light circle cast by the lamp. The polygon moves slowly but unceasingly along the circumference of the light spot. Reaching the wall, he disappears into the heavy folds of the red curtain.

The film begins in a very unusual way. A young boy is taken in an elevator into uncharted territory, surrounded on all sides by a huge wall. There is only one way out of it - to go through a huge labyrinth, which is rebuilt every night. Fortunately, he is not the only one. Unfortunately, they all do not remember anything that happened before the ascent to the entrance to the labyrinth.

Teenage Thomas takes a strange elevator up to the Glade, a square space surrounded by the Labyrinth. About 60 other teenagers who call themselves Gladers are locked up in the Glade with him. They are led by Alby, who was the first to arrive at this place. The youths have lost their memories. All they remember about themselves is their name. The Gladers have been trying to find a way out of the Labyrinth for about three years, but they cannot do it, as its design changes every night. In addition, the Labyrinth is inhabited by terrible monsters of the Griever, crawling out at night and killing anyone who did not have time to return from the Labyrinth to the Glade before the Doors closed.

Thomas has strange dreams in which a woman's voice says "P.O.R.O.K. - this is good". He also sees a girl who tells him that everything will change soon.

While collecting fertilizer in Glade Forest, Thomas is attacked by Ben, a runner who was stung by a griever in the Labyrinth (against his usual, during the day). After a bite, the infection spreads through the body, and the person goes crazy. Thomas manages to escape. Those who are stung are driven out of the Glade at the moment the gate closes: this is also the case with Ben, who was caught. The next morning, Alby and head runner Minho go to the Labyrinth to look for Ben's footprints, but Alby also gets stung by the Griever and Minho can't get him to the Glade in time. Thomas, breaking the rules forbidding non-runners from entering the Labyrinth, manages to enter there to help them. Together, they spend the night hiding from the Griever, who turns out to be a biomechanoid, and Thomas kills him by trapping him between the shifting walls of the Labyrinth.

The elevator, which previously brought a new teenager and supplies once a month, arrived out of schedule and without provisions, delivering the girl Teresa, in whose hand was a note "This is the last of all." Waking up for a few seconds, the girl calls the name of Thomas.

On the morning of the same day, Thomas, Minho and three other runners go to the Labyrinth to the corpse of the griever and extract from his remains some kind of electronic device with the inscription W.C.K.D. (P.O.R.O.K.) - the same one that is on the delivered supplies. The leader of the guys Newt (Alby's deputy) officially appoints Thomas as a runner. At the runners' hut, Minho shows Thomas a model of the Labyrinth and says that he personally ran through it all, but never found a way out. Minho also says that the sections of the Labyrinth are numbered and open in the same sequence. He also notes that the number 7 is on the device pulled out of the griver, and that the seventh section was opened just that night.

Thomas communicates with the awakened Teresa, who turns out to be the girl from his dreams. Teresa has the same memories as Thomas. She also gives the hero two ampoules engraved with W.C.K.D., which appear to contain some kind of vaccine. Teresa injects Alby with one of the ampoules and the medicine seems to be helping.

The next morning, Minho and Thomas go to the seventh sector, where the device from the griever begins to make sounds. Following the signal, the runners find a possible exit. But a certain laser device scans the guys, after which the entrance found by the teenagers (through which the grievers enter the Labyrinth) closes, and the Labyrinth begins to change. The teenagers manage to get out of the Labyrinth, and they tell others about their find.

In the evening, Alby wakes up and has memories. He says that "they" will not let anyone get out of the Glade, and also remembers Thomas, who was "their" pet. Meanwhile, the Glade begins to panic as the Labyrinth gate Minho and Thomas entered through didn't close for the night. Moreover, three other gates of the labyrinth open in the evening. Through them, the Grievers infiltrate the Glade and kill many teenagers, including Alby. At the same time, the Gladers manage to take possession of the syringe, which the Griver “stings”.

To gain memories, Thomas injects himself with poison from a syringe. Teresa injects him with a vaccine, and he gains some memories of himself, Teresa, other teenagers, and the P.O.R.O.K. organization that created the Labyrinth for testing. He tells a group of his friends that they were experimented on since childhood, and he was one of those who sent the guys into the Labyrinth and watched their lives. He also says that Teresa was also on the side of the explorers.

In the Glade, power passed to Galli, who from the first days did not like Thomas and managed to convince everyone that the troubles were connected with his appearance. Galli offers to sacrifice Thomas and Teresa to the Grievers as an offering, believing that he can restore the old order of things. Friends free Thomas and he offers to go to the Labyrinth to find a way out. Gally with part of the Gladers remains.

Thomas and his group fight the grievers and solve the code to the door, which turns out to be the activation sequence of the Labyrinth sectors. After escaping the Labyrinth, they discover a laboratory with the bodies of scientists and a video message from Ava Page, head of special projects at P.O.R.O.K. brain, called "Flash". The young men were placed in the Glade as part of experiments to find a cure for the virus. Page says that the hostile environment was necessary in order to understand how the brain functions and what makes teenagers special. At the end of the video, armed men can be seen breaking into the lab. Paige hints that not all people shared the principles of P.O.R.O.K., and then shoots himself with a revolver.

After the end of the video in the laboratory, the doors open to the outside. As the teenagers are about to leave, they see Gally "stung" by a griever, with a gun in his hand. He says that their place is in the Labyrinth and is about to kill Thomas, but Minho throws a spear and kills Gally. Gally still manages to shoot Thomas, but Chuck covers him with his chest. As Thomas mourns his friend Chuck, who has been shot, gunmen in masks run out of the hallway and lead the teenagers out of the lab. From the helicopter window, they see the Labyrinth, which is located in the middle of the desert.

Later, the viewer sees that the attack on the laboratory was staged, Paige is actually alive. To the people sitting at the table, she announces that the tests in the Labyrinth were successful, and now the second phase begins. In fact, it looks like the surviving guys are being taken for further tests.

A.ROBE-GRILLET

IN THE LABYRINTH

To the reader