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.