How It All Goes Down
- The Grievers shut down almost at once and the kids are elated. Chuck has totally saved the day.
- Minho falls through the Hole looking pretty beat up. He admits that they've lost a bunch of boys, but at least the plan worked.
- Newt—followed by Frypan, Winston, and seventeen other boys—comes through the Hole, giving us a total of twenty-one kids who've survived the ordeal. Only half have made it.
- Newt leads the way towards the door and Thomas takes up the rear (what a horrible phrase).
- Oddly, when kids go through the door they start to shriek, as if they are falling down a slide.
- The kids do, in fact, slide down a chute covered with more of the grimy oil that stinks to high heaven.
- Thomas is about to puke when the tunnel ends and he shoots out onto a pile of kids. Then he pukes.
- They have found themselves in a huge underground chamber covered in a variety of machinery, wires, ducts, and computers. On one side of the room are forty or so large white pods that look like enormous coffins, and on the other side are large glass doors that the lighting makes impossible to see through.
- Directly in front of them are twenty darkly tinted windows through which thin, evil-looking men and women can be seen, still observing what the kids are going to do. They are the Creators.