Chapter 3: Behind the Maze

Peter, Asuna, and Chuck by the eighteen surviving Gladers, including Ben and Minho, and they go down a winding slide, landing in an enormous lab. Ghostly scientists observe them. A woman enters the room with a boy who reveals himself to be Gally. Gally throws a knife at Peter, but Chuck steps in to protect him and is killed. As Peter grieves Chuck, an armed group arrives. They shoot the woman and scientists and lead the Gladers to a bus.

One of the rescuers explains to Peter that the world was burned up by a series of solar flares and then consumed by a disease they call the Flare. It's rumored that there's a cure in the Andes, and WICKED, the Creators' organization, was testing orphaned children to see if they were tenacious enough to try and recover the cure. The Gladers are taken to a bright dormitory and given pizza, after which they fall asleep.

A memo reveals that the woman in the lab, Ava Paige, was not actually killed, and that the "rescuers" are actually a part of the WICKED plan. WICKED will give the survivors, called Group A, one night's sleep before sending them on the next part of the experiment. Another group, Group B, is reported to also have performed well.