#cranks

CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 3

The map room was a mess. The kind of mess that meant someone’s brain had been chewing through problems so hard it forgot stupid human needs like food, water, and not turning a workspace into a war room. Sheets of scavenged paper covered the desk in overlapping layers, some pinned under stones so they wouldn’t curl, some half sliding to the floor, all of them scarred by charcoal lines, arrows, numbers, corrections and furious slashes. Charcoal smudges stained the wood. A candle burned low, wax puddled and uneven. It looked less like a place to map corridors and more like a bunker where someone planned how to kill God. Cass was bent over another page, one hand braced on the table, the other moving in quick clean strokes, drawing the curve of a Griever’s tail. Not just a doodle somebody might scratch into a margin without realizing. This was an anatomical diagram. She’d broken the thing down into structure and angle and likely points of failure like she was grading the monsters' structural flaws. Joint rotation limited under stress. Tail arc widest before strike. Stinger anchor vulnerable from underside. On another page beside it, a rough side-view of a Griever’s body had its glowing stomach core marked and circled three times over in dark hard lines. They’re machines, but they also bleed. Stomach glows - shoot here. She flipped the page, sketching the outline of a bow. Distance is safety. Strike core with an arrow, fight’s half done. Below that, a list of drills. Timed dodges. Target practice. Knife throws. Restraint points for legs. The angle to shove a Griever’s mass so it toppled instead of pinned you. It was “if I prepare enough, if I sharpen them enough, if I think hard enough for all of us, they won’t end up like Ben” coded. She didn’t hear the door creak. Didn’t hear the shift of weight at the threshold, or the way the little draft from outside changed direction, carrying in cooler air. Didn’t see Minho in the frame, arms crossed, leaning like he’d been there for hours, watching her work. Outside, dusk had begun creeping in. The color in the room shifted first, little by little, the walls taking on that blue-gray bruise of evening. Somebody shouted a name. A little later, clearer, Ben’s screaming rose again. Broken now. Begging. Words fraying halfway through themselves. Something human still trying to claw through poison long enough to call for help and getting dragged under before the sentence could finish. Cass’s head snapped up, charcoal slipping from her fingers and hitting the paper like it had turned suddenly too heavy. That's when she saw Minho. Probably here on “make sure Cass doesn't do anything stupid” duty. She didn’t blink. “If I ever get stung,” she said quietly, “I’ll deal with it myself.”

Minho’s chest felt like someone speared him through it. She said it the same way somebody might say if the roof leaks, I’ll patch it. It was a contingency plan to her. A necessary mercy. She would make herself quick and easy to lose before asking them to drag themselves through another Ben, another Adam, another ritual they all hated. Minho pushed off the doorway and crossed the room in three strides before he could think too carefully about what he was doing. If he thought too much, he’d stop. If he stopped, he’d have to keep listening to Ben through the walls and looking at the pages on the desk and imagining her writing her own death into one of those neat little lists just to save them trouble. So he didn’t think. He just came up behind her and slipped his arms around her middle, careful of bruises, careful of ribs, chin brushing her shoulder. Cass didn’t react at first. Her eyes stood fixed on the page. Minho’s arms tightened just enough to be felt. He was wrecked and tired, and apparently the only idea his body had come up with for surviving the next five minutes was to hold onto something warm and alive and stubborn enough to feel like a counterargument to the whole place.

Only when Minho’s hand threaded into her hair did she finally tense, shoulders jumping, a sharp little involuntary spike in her body that said unexpected. “It’s soft,” Minho murmured into her hair. “Feels good.”

A man’s dying, and this idiot’s petting my hair. Still, Cass understood what he was doing. Minho was grieving and scared and too tightly wound, and this, holding someone, touching something soft, saying something stupidly honest because grief had burned through the extra layers, helped him cope. She could feel it in the way his breathing started too fast and then slowly evened where his chest touched her back. In the way his forehead eventually lowered and hovered near the curve of her shoulder. He was not making Ben an afterthought. He was just too wrecked and too tired and too dissociated to keep standing upright inside all of it, so he gravitated toward warmth because cold was winning everywhere else. So she let him do his thing. She had been doing that since she got here, in one form or another, trying to soften their panic, to steady them, ease them, to give them something besides fear to hold. Eventually, his hand stilled in her hair and he nodded toward the papers. “You should show these to everyone.”

“I’m planning on training everyone, not just showing them, because they’re all gonna be in there soon enough,” she said, eyes flicking to the notes again. “And I can’t afford to lose someone else to those things.”

Of course. Stupid of him to think otherwise. Minho let his forehead rest lightly against her back and exhaled like he’d been holding his breath all day. He didn’t say thank you. Didn’t tell her she was taking too much onto herself because that would’ve been useless. True, but useless. He just sat there with his arms around her as if he could borrow some of her steel by contact alone.

Then the Maze walls groaned and shut for the day. The sound rolled through the Glade like a coffin lid slamming down. Cass’s jaw tightened instantly. Ben was gone.

“Come on,” Minho said. “You gotta eat something. You've been here all day and you didn't eat anything last night either.”

“Ain’t hungry.”

“Don’t care.”

“I said I ain't hungry.”

Minho exhaled, leaning back to look at her. “You can’t survive on pure spite.”

Cass turned her head and gave him a look that said, with withering clarity: watch me. Still, after a few seconds of that look and his refusing to back down, she sighed through her nose, pushed the paper aside, and followed him to the Pit. Chuck sat curled into himself with his face blotchy and swollen from crying, hands buried in his sleeves like he didn’t know what to do with them. Jeff and Clint sat close together with their heads bent, speaking in low tones that kept breaking off. Winston looked empty. Zart was staring through the fire. Cass took the bowl Frypan shoved into her hands and ate a little, because Minho was staring at her with the sort of focused stubbornness that made clear he would physically walk over and spoon-feed her if she pushed him far enough. Then she set the bowl down and stood up again. Back to the Map Room. When she was gone, Alby’s eyes tracked the little square of candlelight spilling through the slats of the Map Room window, then settled on Minho. “What’s she doing in there?” Minho glanced back toward the room too. The light inside moved once, her shadow crossing it. “She's working on getting us all out of here in one piece.”

By nightfall, the map room was no longer hers alone. Grief in the Glade did strange things to people. It made some pace, made some go silent, made some drink themselves numb or hover too close to the fire because the dark beyond it felt full of teeth, but it also made some circle whatever looked most like purpose and warmth and the possibility of fighting back, and right now, purpose lived in the Map Room with Cass and her pages. Newt slipped in with a handful of berries, ready to coax her into resting for a bit, but stopped short in the doorway, because of course he wasn’t the only one who’d been pulled in by Miss gravity. Thomas was sitting cross-legged near her with his chin propped in one hand, watching her draw with that same helpless awe he seemed incapable of hiding around her. Every now and then his eyes would move from her hand to the page to her face and back again, as if he still couldn’t quite believe she was real. Chuck was leaned halfway over the desk, squinting so hard at her pages it looked like he thought he could absorb information by proximity alone. He asked a question every five seconds, mostly because Chuck always asked questions every five seconds, but also because talking was how he held himself together. Newt knew that. Knew the kid had been trying all evening to distract himself from Ben by focusing on anything that pointed away from helplessness and toward hope. If Cass turned monsters into instructions, then maybe the monsters were not gods. If the monsters were not gods, then maybe Ben and the others haven't been lost to some cosmic rule but to something breakable and mean and made by hands that could one day be broken back. “So the glowy bit is like their tummy brain?” Chuck asked, peering at one of her pages so closely he was in real danger of planting his nose in the ink.

“It’s more like a heart, I guess,” Cass said without looking up.

“Tummy brain sounds better though.”

Cass nodded like she was genuinely considering calling it that from now on. “Tummy brain it is, then.”

Chuck looked deeply vindicated by this contribution to the Griever anatomy language. Minho was in the corner with his back half against the shelves, fiddling with scavenged tools and lengths of twine and bits of wood, pretending not to stare at her. He wasn’t fooling anyone. Every few seconds his gaze flicked over anyway, pulled toward Cass despite all his efforts to act casual and deeply occupied by practical materials. There were already a few rough attempts at arrows on the floor by his boots, one split shaft he’d snapped in half without seeming to notice because he’d been staring while doing it. And Gally—God help them all—was hunched over a pile of scraps, trying to carve them into the shape of a bow. That sight alone almost made Newt laugh out loud, despite the day they'd all had. Gally looked so entirely himself even in cooperation. Jaw clenched. Broad shoulders folded in. Hands rough and competent and annoyed with the delicacy of the work. As if helping were fine so long as no one accused him of enjoying it. Every now and then he’d glance up, not at Cass directly, more at the pages on the desk or the little growing pile of notes around her, and the expression on his face would do that all too familiar and complicated thing—softened. Newt came farther in and dropped down on the floor beside Thomas, close enough to see what she was doing properly.

His breath cought.

Even after everything he’d already heard from Minho and his own knowledge of what kind of mind she carried, the pages were something else. Detailed sketches. Clear handwriting. Griever anatomy broken down with the meticulousness of someone who had gotten close enough to hate the details properly. Notes on weak points. Little arrows showing attack angles. Timing marks. Ways to disable legs, ways to flip the body, ways to use a second person to draw attention while the first drove toward the core. Her brain had taken terror and turned it into a manual. It was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen. Not because the subject was beautiful. Because the act of doing it was. A mind refusing helplessness with this much force...God, was she extraordinary. He set the berries down within her reach like an offering and said softly, “They're really sweet, thought you might like them.” Cass muttered a small, distracted “thanks,” and started eating them one by one without looking up from the paper.

Hours passed. The candle burned lower and got replaced by another. More pages filled. Chuck dozed off first. One moment he was asking if arrows could be named after people and if she'd name one Miriam because it's a funny name, the next his cheek was on the desk. Asleep. Thomas’s head dipped, jerked, dipped again, fought sleep like it was a personal betrayal, and then finally gave in, chin hitting his chest before he slumped sideways against a crate. Gally’s knife slowed, his shoulders rolled forward, and he ended up on the floor right next to his arts and crafts space. Out. At some point Minho left and came back with blankets. He draped one over Chuck. One over Thomas after adjusting his neck so he didn’t wake up hating his spine. One over Gally, with a muttered “don’t say I never do anything for you” under his breath. Then he came to Cass and laid one over her shoulders. She didn’t say anything, didn’t look up, just reached one hand back and pulled it tighter around herself without breaking the line of the note she was writing. Newt watched her for a long time. He could see how tired she was, way past the ordinary sleepy drag anybody else would have given in to. This was compulsion with purpose. Her jaw stayed set in that same line. Her eyes kept going bright and distant in turns, the way eyes do when the body is begging for sleep and the mind has decided sleep is luxury. She was not going to stop. Not until she finished or broke. So when she shifted to sit more comfortably on the floor, Newt reached out and guided her head until it came to rest in his lap. Cass stiffened with instinctive resistance, the body’s automatic what is this? before the mind could identify the source and decide whether to strike or melt, but Newt’s fingers slid through her hair, gentle, slow, like he was smoothing static out of her nervous system. It was almost absurd how quickly her body understood what her mind was too wired to think about. The tension left her neck. Her cheek settled fully against his thigh. What is it with these idiots and my hair? she thought vaguely, and then...fell asleep. Just like that. Gone under in one clean drop, as if somebody had been holding her above the surface by force and Newt’s hand had given permission to let go. Her breathing steadied against his leg. The line between her brows eased at last. Newt smiled and brushed a golden strand back from her face. Minho watched the scene from the corner, jaw clenched so tight it hurt. He told himself it was nothing. Told himself she needed sleep and Newt’s lap was an efficient pillow and this was not, under any circumstances, something to build stories around, but the feeling in his chest didn't give two fucks. It hated the sight and kept feeding Minho ways to get the two of them out of that position. Eventually, Newt slid one arm behind Cass’s back and the other beneath her knees and gathered her up from the floor with a care so natural it made Minho’s stomach twist again. Cass barely stirred. Just made a soft sleepy sound and tucked closer by reflex, hand bunching once briefly in the fabric of Newt’s shirt before going loose again. Minho couldn’t help himself. “Smitten,” he muttered under his breath, echoing yesterday’s jab with more bitterness than he intended. He expected Newt to do what deny it. Play it off. Get annoyed and defensive. Instead, Newt just looked over with Cass asleep in his arms and gave one short nod, like yeah, what of it?

The next day, early in the morning, Cass gathered everyone at the Pit. The Glade had never been that quiet. Not even when Alby made announcements. These boys were used to noise the way other people were used to breathing. Shouting across the Gardens. Running commentary during chores. Scuffles over food, over tools, over bragging rights, over absolutely nothing at all except the fact that too many teenage boys with too much trapped energy in too little space would always invent conflict if none presented itself naturally. The Glade’s normal state was loud, messy, alive. But that morning, with Ben gone and the memory of his screams still hanging somewhere in the grain of the Homestead and the backs of their throats, you could’ve heard a pin drop into the dirt. They came anyway. Every single one of them. Some with bowls still in hand because Frypan had bullied breakfast into them and they hadn’t had the heart to argue. Some with eyes red from bad sleep or crying or both. Chuck stood next to Newt, one hand hooked absently into the back of Newt’s shirt like he didn’t quite trust the world not to pull something else out from under him if he let go. Cass stood in front of them with her notes in one hand, cleared her throat and held the pages up like she was about to teach a class. “These things are way easier to kill than you think, so we're gonna learn how to DIY it,” she said, casual, as if she was talking about baking cupcakes, not killing Grievers. The Gladers had built entire years around fear of those things. Around outrunning them, hiding from them, losing boys to them. Grievers were the background noise of dread here. Monsters. The kind of problem you survived, not solved. And now Cass stood there in the morning light like she was about to walk them through monster murder as a practical life skill. She started with the blue core.“This,” she said, tapping a sketch she’d drawn, “is the heart, core, tummy brain, whatever you wanna call it.” Chuck did a fast thumbs up at that. Cass went on, the lines of the sketch flashing under the sun. “Smash this and everything else shuts down. You can stab the thing in its head all day long, but unless you take the blue glow out of the picture, it’ll just keep crawling.” Jeff leaned forward. Winston muttered, “No way,” under his breath, because his mind still hadn’t caught up to the sheer insult of Grievers having a known off-switch. She showed how multiple people could trap legs. “They’re fast, they’re strong, but they use momentum and balance on these scraps of metal. Take them away and they're fucking lost.” She demonstrated on her sketch with quick strokes: restraint points, angles to push that would leverage the Griever’s mass against itself. Then she insisted on drills. “We'll practice precision and timing. Don’t try to stab something when it’s moving without a pattern or when you haven't clocked it yet. You’ll lose a hand. Maybe your head too. And then you’ll be dead, which is a huge inconvenience for my schedule.” That got a real laugh. A startled one, but a laugh nonetheless. Newt watched the boys’ faces, the way fear got punched into utility, turned into purpose. She took the raw, violent unknown and dried it into a plan. The nightmare that haunted them all broken down into pieces they could actually hold. Turned into a mere headache.

Alby nodded once. “Thank you, Cassandra.”

She scoffed and waved him off like gratitude was a bug she didn’t want landing on her clothes. “You’re gonna take that back soon,” she said. “I’m about to make your lives hell.”

Every day, Cass would drag them into what quickly became known as the yard for drills. She ran them through stances first. Not just “stand like this” nonsense. Weight placement. Center of gravity. Where the hips needed to sit if you wanted to move without telegraphing it. How to keep your knees bent enough that panic wouldn’t lock them at the wrong second. Half the boys looked personally insulted by the suggestion that standing was a skill they had not yet mastered. She corrected them mercilessly. “Clint, if you stand any taller you’re gonna tip over a damn breeze.” “Come on, man, what the hell is that, we can do better than that.” They bitched. Constantly. Winston whined the whole time, especially when drills involved getting knocked into the dirt repeatedly, which was often. Frypan tried to weasel out of push-ups by claiming the cook’s work was already physical enough and if she wanted him to keep feeding them she should really consider the strategic value of preserving his arms. She informed him very sweetly that if his arms were so important, he should probably train them harder. Jackson complained about his knees. Clint complained about everyone else’s knees. Thomas didn’t complain but had a worrying habit of throwing himself too hard into any drill involving reaction speed, which made Newt start making a separate mental note titled ways Thomas is going to accidentally die if left unsupervised. Gally, infuriatingly, picked up body mechanics fast and got even more unbearable for approximately two afternoons until Cass swept his legs out from under him in front of everyone and told him competence and humility could, in fact, coexist if he gave them a chance. She had them practicing in pairs. How to shift so no one was exposed. How to pull a person off-line when a tail strike came in. How to read the other body in your periphery so you weren’t both taking the same side of a threat like a pair of doomed idiots. How to drop low and sweep legs. Where to hook under metal joints. How to put your shoulder into a shove so you leveraged mass instead of bouncing off it like an insect. The first time Frypan landed a clean restraint move on Winston, the whole yard actually applauded and Winston acted like he’d been assaulted by disloyalty from every available direction. Minho did every drill with the intensity of someone who had decided being bested at anything Cass invented was a direct attack on his honor. She responded by pairing him with Gally every chance she got, which did wonders for both their tempers and absolutely nothing for the noise level. She had every Glader take turns with the bow. “If you can put an arrow through it's core from ten feet, the fight’s half over.” Zart nearly clipped his own ear off on the first try and then stood there blinking in offended surprise as though the bow had behaved irrationally. Cass smiled, walked over, straightened his shoulders, fixed his grip with quick efficient taps to elbow and wrist, then stepped back. “Alright, farmer boy,” she said. “Aim low. Think waist height. That’s where the core is. Again.” He did. Missed again. Did it again. By the end of the week, Zart could hit the target painted on the tree trunk nine times out of ten, and the pride on his face afterward was so pure it made half the Glade happy in spite of themselves. She stopped running the Maze and started making maps of it, one for each Glader, in case they got lost, in case they got separated, in case she wasn't there to drag them back by the collar. That was the thing she did not say out loud but Minho saw written between every line: she was building contingencies against her own absence. Because she refused to let their survival depend on one body, even if that body happened to be hers and happened to be unreasonably good at killing things.

She never rushed anything. That drove the Glade mad in the beginning. Especially after the training sessions started making Grievers look breakable and the Maze look more like a system than a curse. Hope, once fed, gets demanding. You could see it in some of the boys’ faces, that hungry impatience for the finish line. But Cass didn’t care. Whatever way out she had in her head, and by then all of them had stopped pretending she didn’t have one, could wait until they were all ready for it. She was not going to lose anyone else. Not to panic. Not to bad timing. Not to some idiot deciding bravery and preparedness were interchangeable. The entire structure of her work said it. Every drill. Every repeated correction. The Glade was slowly turning into a boot camp run by a war goddess with a temper problem, but that didn't mean they were suddenly disciplined soldiers. Oh, no, far from it, actually. Boys, as the saying goes, will be boys, their bodies wound tight with things they didn’t want to admit out loud. A laugh from her, a bend forward when she tied her boots, muscle and scar and curve moving like she didn’t know she was doing violence to every heartbeat in a ten-foot radius, and they'd have to excuse themselves for “trackhoe duty” or “checking on the animals” and would come back flushed and guilty as hell. At first it was almost funny, this awkward, collective malfunction of boys who’d never been around a girl and were trying desperately to behave like civilized humans instead of a pack of starving wolves. They’d trip over tools, forget what they were carrying, walk straight into posts, volunteer for chores they hated if the chore happened to put them in her orbit for more than thirty seconds. Somebody would start talking to her and suddenly three more would appear, all pretending they’d just so happened to have urgent business near the exact same patch of dirt. It might’ve stayed funny if it had only been that, just boys being idiots around the first girl they’d ever seen, all elbows and hormones and social collapse, but time passed and their respect, fascination and attraction gradually turned into more.

Cass never had time to herself. One, two, sometimes more of them were always there, circling, hovering, finding reasons. Minho would lean against the Map Room wall with his arms folded and claim he was there “to help,” which usually meant he offered one useful observation for every seven attempts to make her look up from the page. He had developed an art form out of being a nuisance just charming enough to avoid getting thrown out. He’d tap the corner of her papers and tell her she was drawing his good side wrong when she sketched routes he’d run. He’d steal her charcoal and then hold it above her head until she threatened to break his fingers. He’d invent stupid names for sections of the Maze just to see that annoyed little look he’d become addicted to. And every single time he got what he wanted, one laugh, one eye-roll, one half-smile cracked out of concentration, he looked like he’d won a medal. Thomas would follow her into the gardens claiming he “needed air,” which was hilarious because the entire Glade was outside and he could’ve had air literally anywhere, but apparently Cass’s air was the premium kind. He’d stand too close when she explained things, not close enough to suffocate, just enough that his shoulder nearly brushed hers every few minutes. He had this habit of asking her questions he already knew the answer to, just to hear her talk longer. And then there were the looks. God, the looks. Thomas looked at her like she was everything he'd ever wanted. Not lust, though that was there too in all the usual ways and troubled him accordingly. This was deeper than that. Way deeper. Gally too, had started craving her attention more openly. He’d hand her a knife he had sharpened for her and then act insulted when she thanked him like gratitude had somehow ruined the exchange. He got meaner when he wanted her focus and softer the exact second he got it. More than once Newt caught him standing near, listening to her talk to somebody else with that particular expression of a man who hated one, that she was talking to somebody else at all, and two, that now that Newt had seen him, he’d have to leave and not hear the rest of the conversation.

And Newt...Newt belonged to a completely different category. He adjusted himself around every little habit of hers. He spent so much of his time gathering details about her that by the time she realized he’d been doing it, he’d already built a whole system around what made her ease and what made her go rigid. He learned that she hated being grabbed without warning so he never came at her from behind if he could help it, never reached first and spoke second. It was always her name, always his voice before his hands, always enough time for her to register him and choose, and because of that, because he kept making the choice hers, she almost always accepted. Not just tolerated. Accepted. There was a difference, and Newt noticed that too. The way she’d let him guide her around or shift her by the waist out without a single spike of tension ever making it to the surface. He also learned that when she had decided to do something reckless, she needed not to be argued with, but to be anchored to an actual practical step before she ran straight through a wall. “Talk me through it,” he’d say, instead of don’t do that, and because that question met her where she was instead of blocking the road entirely, it slowed her just enough to keep her from setting herself on fire out of principle. He learned she wasn’t really soothed by words, not when she was too far gone into her own head. Cass was soothed by rhythm, by someone nearby doing something slow and repetitive and solid. The low murmur of him reading one of her notes back to her while she corrected it. The steady pressure of his hand moving circles over the back of her neck when she’d sat still for too long. And because he'd cracked the code and learned Cass handling 101, she started reciprocating without even realizing she was doing it. Standing hip-to-hip with him at the pit while Frypan yelled at Winston for stealing bread like the proximity itself had gone from tolerated to assumed. Her hand on his forearm when she wanted his attention. Her fingers catching briefly in the fabric of his sleeve when she wanted to make sure he stayed in step with her. The time she nodded off with her head in his lap and when she woke, foggy and slow and not yet fully remembering where she was, her first instinct was to turn her face into his stomach and hold there one second more before lifting her head. How during those quieter nights in the Map Room, if he sat beside her on the floor, she’d gradually angle in his direction until her upper arm rested against his and her whole body seemed to settle on the recognition of him. It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t declared. It was just there, over and over, this wordless choosing. She also began protecting his quiet. When she noticed the exact expression he got when too many people were pulling on him at once, that tiny flatness around the eyes, the way his patience didn’t fray outward so much as sink, she started intercepting. She’d cut Winston off with a sharper joke before he could badger Newt into a second pointless argument. She’d toss Minho a question complicated enough to drag him away when Newt looked one interruption from biting through his own temper. She’d tell Chuck, “Go bother Thomas, he looks too serious,” in that offhand tone of hers and the kid would scamper away from Newt entirely, convinced he was on a mission.

And then there were those sweet little moments that Newt tried not to think about too often because they made it damn near impossible not to kiss her. One evening, he caught her staring at him while he was sorting tools by the shed. It wasn’t a quick accidental glance, not the kind of thing people could laugh off as distraction or proximity. It was a proper stare. Focused. Weirdly intent. Newt had a half-bent nail in one hand and a little pile of useful versus useless metal by his boot, and he felt it before he fully looked up, that strange prickling sense of being watched, so he raised his head and found Cass standing there, eyes fixed on him with such quiet concentration it made his stomach flip. He lifted a brow. “Twenty-six,” she said. Newt blinked once. “Twenty-six what?” She tipped her head a little. “Twenty-six freckles. On your face.” His lungs had simply opted out the second the words left her mouth. Cass turned to leave before he had the chance to reboot, throwing a small, “I like ’em” over her shoulder. Newt pinched himself because he genuinely thought he'd hallucinated the whole exchange.

Another time he was standing by the water trying and failing to bully his hair into behaving because the wind had got at it and he hated the feeling of it falling in his eyes when he worked. It was one of those little private battles with himself, his hand combing back through the blond mess with increasing irritation while he squinted at his reflection in the lake like maybe the image would eventually show some decency and cooperate. Cass was sitting on the bank nearby lacing her boots after training, wrists still dusted with dirt. She watched him for a moment, enough to make some instinct in him aware of her attention before she spoke. “You’re pretty.” No lead-in. No joke. Just that. Newt went still with one hand still half-buried in his own hair, every thought in his head evaporating at once. “What?” She didn’t repeat herself. She just looked at him for one beat and then finished tying the second boot, rose, dusted off her palms, and walked away. Newt stayed there by the lake another full minute looking at nothing, hand still in his hair and his pulse behaving as if she had just kissed him senseless.

And then there was that one night it was just her and Newt by the lake. The firepit still smoked in the distance, and the rest of the Glade had gone quiet in that rare way it only did when everyone was either asleep or too exhausted to keep being boys at full volume. They sat in the grass shoulder to shoulder, looking up at the stars. Newt had been making up constellations for her for at least an hour, pointing out absolute nonsense in the sky just to make her laugh. “That one there?” he said, pointing at three clustered stars. “That’s the Chicken’s Foot. Look at it. Three toes, plain as day.” Cass laughed quietly, eyes tracing where he pointed. It was small, barely a sound, but Newt felt it like someone had warmed his blood. “Once we’re out of here…” he said, “I want to take you to a museum so we can learn their real names and all the other stuff we've missed out on.” He slipped his hand into hers then, warm fingers folding around her own as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if he’d been doing it forever and she’d merely forgotten. Cass looked down at their hands and stared for a beat. It would’ve been easy to pull away. Easy to make a joke, cut the moment apart, put the wall back up, but she didn't. Her head dropped to his shoulder instead. “I'd like that.” She didn’t tell him that she didn’t believe they’d get to see a museum, didn’t tell him she thought survival outside the Maze would be crueler. Didn’t tell him she’d already decided that if it came to it, she’d die in a heartbeat to keep them alive and that she had a feeling it will happen sooner than they'd think or were prepared for. She just let him have it.

And yet, Newt never pushed for more. He could see the whole shape of her too clearly for that. She had too much on her shoulders. The Maze. The drills. The lives she had decided were her responsibility. She had taken it all on like she’d been born to hold the weight, like she didn’t know how to exist any other way. She did not know how to portion herself. She simply spent. And Newt, for all his own growing hunger for more of her, more closeness, more of those quiet little pieces she seemed to hand him without thinking, understood that pressing would feel too much like another demand. Another burden. Another thing she had to manage. So he took what she gave. A head on his shoulder. Her hand in his under the stars. Her trusting him enough to fall asleep when his fingers moved through her hair.

The others noticed this... unexpected development between them with the miserable clarity of boys who had spent too long trapped together to miss a shift in orbit. The first few times Cass drifted toward Newt when she was tired, when she leaned into his shoulder without thinking or let him settle a hand at the back of her neck while she read over notes, most of them told themselves it was nothing. Comfort. Safe, familiar, no different than the way people in the Glade all bumped into each other and stole blankets and shared heat when the nights bit too hard. But the problem with lying to yourself in a place like that was that there was nowhere for the lie to go. You saw the same people every day. You watched patterns repeat until they couldn’t be dismissed anymore. Cass looked for Newt first, no matter what. Newt always seemed to know when she was reaching the end of herself before she did. She let him touch her in those quiet, grounding little ways she tolerated from no one else with that same ease. But it wasn't like she was Newt’s now or like closeness guaranteed anything. Newt having a head start did not mean the race was over. It meant just that he had a head start. Good for him. No big. It wasn't like she was gonna marry the bastard and spend the rest of her life counting his freckles under softer skies. Right?

Cass had been watching the bow drill with satisfied smile. The target she’d rigged from layered scraps of cloth and packed straw took arrow after arrow with thick, satisfying thunks that echoed through the yard. Not perfect bullseyes. This wasn’t some heroic montage where all of them suddenly turned into mythic marksmen with the help of a very determined instructor. But they were solid hits. Good hits. Hits that would count when the thing on the other end had metal legs and a stinger that wanted to fuck you up. A week ago most of them didn’t even know which end of the bow to hold. Winston had nearly blinded himself. Zart had almost lost an ear. Now every single one of them could hit the target. She was proud of them.

Newt, standing a few feet away from her with his arms loosely folded, clocked the exact second her mind drifted. The way her gaze would stop tracking what was in front of her and start looking through it instead. The way her shoulders rose half an inch as if some internal string had tightened. The way her jaw locked just enough to sharpen the whole line of her face. The shift of her weight to the balls of her feet when part of her started preparing to move, to fix, to run toward whatever disaster she’d sensed next. He saw it happen right behind the little satisfied smile. One moment she was watching arrows sink into cloth and straw. The next she wasn’t in the yard anymore. She was somewhere farther ahead. The thing after the thing after the thing. He stepped close enough to brush her shoulder with his own. “You worry too much,” he murmured. Cass didn’t look at him. Her eyes stayed on the target where Alby had just loosed an arrow and sunk it clean into the lower center. “You got a little psychic antenna or somethin’?” Newt’s mouth twitched. “I guess you could call it that.” His hand found the small of her back the way it so often did now, warm and steady through the fabric of her shirt. Cass exhaled and looked down at her boots. She never meant to talk in moments like these. Never planned to. But around Newt, things kept slipping out in a way that startled her every single time, like her guard got tired and sat down for a second. “Was thinking about…” she admitted quietly. “The desert stuff. If—” Newt squeezed lightly, thumb pressing a small slow circle into the center of her back. “One step at a time,” he said, refusing to let her sprint so far ahead she tore herself open on the future before it arrived. “We’ll figure that one out when we get there.” Another little circle. “We’re here now.”

And that was exactly when Minho came striding over with an apple in his hand and an infuriating smirk plastered across his face like he had sensed, from fifty feet away, the precise second Newt said just the right thing. He walked straight into their space and shoved the apple against Cass’s mouth, and Cass, operating on muscle memory, bit into it without thinking. Juice ran down her lip in a thin shining line as Minho took the apple back and bit from the exact same spot, slow and pointed as hell, eyes fixed on Newt as he chewed. The message was so obvious it might as well have come with a banner unfurling behind him: Mine. Cass didn’t notice the exchange. Not the point of it, anyway. Her attention had already slid back to the line because Alby had just loosed three arrows in quick succession, each one sinking into the target. Her face lit in immediate approval. “You’re getting real good, Albs,” she called. Alby glanced over, surprised by the praise, and flashed her a smile. “Thanks to—”

“Your hard work and effort. Keep goin’,” she cut in smoothly before he could throw the credit her way. Alby chuckled under his breath and went back to shooting.

Minho leaned close to her ear. “I wanna show you something.” He didn’t wait for an answer, just took her hand and tugged her away like he’d decided her schedule was a suggestion. Newt watched them go, annoyed to no end, because Minho had been pulling this shit for a while now. Actually, all of them had. Every time he and Cass found a moment, somebody materialized. Thomas with an urgent need for her opinion on something. Gally with a complaint that definitely could not wait. Minho with some invented emergency that just happened to require Cass specifically and immediately. And Newt, caught between the constant awareness of three different sets of eyes occasionally trying to set him on fire, learned to answer with nothing more than a raised brow, a dry comment, or that infuriatingly calm little look of his. He was not actually calm.

Minho led her straight to the Map Room and closed the door behind them. He reached for a small box that was tucked behind stacked route sketches and a bent tin cup, lifted the lid and pulled out a necklace made from the Griever shard Thomas had picked up that day in the Maze. Minho had polished it until it glistened like a cut gem and then tied it with braids on a cream string. He held it out to her. Cass blinked, caught off guard in that rare open way she had when the world hit her with something she hadn’t prepared a reaction for. She took it from him slowly and let it settle into her palm. Her fingers trailed over the polished surface. It was beautiful. Her throat tightened. She handed it back and lifted her hair off the back of her neck for him to put it on. Minho’s breath caught, but his hands didn’t shake as much as he thought they would. He looped the string around her throat and tied it carefully. The blue shard settled against her collarbone, catching the dim light from the window. She turned back to him and said, “Thank you.” It was so genuine and moved by his gesture that Minho’s entire nervous system immediately committed treason. He was so going to kiss her. The idea hit in one bright, terrible flash. He leaned in before he’d fully decided to, then stopped himself at the last second because he didn’t want her to think a necklace meant she owed him something. The necklace was a thank you for all she’d been doing for them, for giving up her mind, her body, her sleep, every spare inch of herself to make sure they had a chance. So instead he stepped back, grinned a little too quickly to hide what he’d almost done, and said, “You should go back there, Winston was saying something about practicing on moving targets.” Cass’s eyes widened, “If he touches the chickens, he's dead.” She touched the shard at her throat, “Thanks, Minho. Really,” and then turned to leave. Minho was going to live off that “really” until death took him personally.

Back outside, Gally was leaning on a tree, watching the drills. He saw Cass step out of the Map Room and straightened without meaning to, then he squinted. What the hell was that on her neck? When he got close enough to see the blue glint against her skin, he didn’t bother with subtlety. His hand came out, rough fingers curling around the shard where it sat on her collarbone. He tugged it just enough to make her stop and look at him. “Loverboy proposed?” he drawled. Cass tilted her head. “Mhm. Wedding’s in the Maze. You’re invited only if you get so good with that bow that you hit the target with your eyes closed.” He scoffed. “Pretentious.” But his eyes had dropped lower by then, catching the tremble in her hands. “I’ll have to take measurements for your grave with how little you’ve been sleeping lately.” It came out rough, not tender, because Gally never did tender, but it was care nonetheless. Cass started walking again, tossing the words back over her shoulder. “Why, miss watching me sleep?” He snorted, watching her go, “As if,” but his jaw was clenched.

When Cass reached the training grounds, Thomas and Newt both clocked the necklace instantly. The blue at her throat caught the light, and Thomas’s whole face changed for one quick honest second, surprise, recognition, then something quieter and tighter he did not manage to hide before he looked away. Newt clocked it a heartbeat later and did not look away at all. His gaze landed on the shard, took in the polished blue, the cream braid, and how beautiful it looked against her skin. Neither of them said a word, but the looks on their faces were enough. Minho was fucking dead. Cass moved through the line like nothing had happened. She adjusted Frypan’s stance by two inches, tapped his elbow into place, and said, “C’mon, people, look alive. I’ve got a hot date with the outside world by the end of this week.” They broke into laughter, the kind that cracked tension just enough to make the drills feel less like doom. Cass smiled at the sound, then, under her breath, she added, “And those bitches who put us here have a hot date with my knife, gun, flamethrower… whatever the hell I get my hands on,” She gave a pleased little nod, like she was planning a grocery list. “Gonna switch this prison to a real, honest-to-God, ball-and-chain one after I’m done with them.”

When Minho rejoined them at last, trying very hard to look like a man who had simply stepped away on practical business, Newt’s eyes sharpened. He leaned just close enough and kept his tone low. “Really thoughtful of you,” he said. Minho’s smirk returned. He leaned in too, voice smug enough to land. “She must’ve thought the same,” Minho whispered, “because she kissed me.” She hadn’t. Not even close. But watching Newt’s face after he said it was priceless. Newt’s eyes widened, and then he absolutely fucking boiled for the next few hours. He wasn’t loud about it, but he’d always been too calm for his own good, so when his jaw stayed tight, when his words came shorter, when he barked at Thomas for dropping an arrow, it was obvious to everyone. Even Alby gave him a long side-eye at some point, like, You alright there, second-in-command? You need to go scream into a pillow or punch a tree? Cass herself caught Newt snapping at Clint over a target setup he wouldn’t usually have cared about, and asked him if he was okay. Newt just said, “Fine,” in that clipped infuriating way people used when they wanted very badly not to talk and expected the rest of the world to respect that. Cass filed it away under boys and their weird moods and moved on. Her mind was already miles ahead. The Griever tail. That was the thing chewing at her now under everything else. They needed one to get out. Not maybe. Not eventually. Needed. If she could get her hands on one beforehand, she could mark the exact route they were going to take to the respective section, be certain no one would be confused in the heat of escape. No hesitation. No wrong turn at the one second that mattered. No chance of running in blind. Maybe, if everything went smoothly, if some shred of decency had somehow snuck into the design despite all evidence to the contrary, they wouldn’t even encounter any Grievers when the real run happened. But either way, getting that tail beforehand was a good strategy to lower chance of anything going wrong. She chewed on the thought as she corrected Zart’s grip. She could slip out just before the walls closed. Walked into the Maze as the Doors sealed for the night. The Glade would lose its mind. They would be pissed as hell. They’d tear their hair out and pace and maybe chain her to a tree afterward for the stress. But she’d come back with what they needed, and once they had it, they could get out whenever she decided everyone was ready. Yeah, she'd rather have them angry with her than fucking dead. Boohoo. They’d get over it over cocktails and barbecue once they were out...assuming the outside world had cocktails and barbecue and wasn’t, you know, fucking desert and a sign that said WELCOME TO HELL: FUCK YOU EDITION like she still suspected. She tightened Zart’s grip on the bowstring again. “Don’t get sloppy now,” she said. “If you’re sloppy, you’re dead. Focus.”

A loud noise cut her off. Deep. Metallic. A long grinding groan that came up from under the Glade itself. Heads jerked toward the center of the square almost in unison, the drill line breaking apart before anyone consciously decided to stop. Bows lowered. Conversations died mid-word. The Box. “What the hell?” Minho muttered. His bow dipped automatically, one hand still curled around it while his eyes narrowed at the sound. There was a strange, immediate wrongness to it that hit the body before it reached the brain. The Box was supposed to be a monthly thing. Predictable. Reliable. Something that at least had the decency to keep a schedule. It had not been a month since Cassandra came up, so what in the actual hell was the Box doing moving now? “That ain’t—” Minho started, then didn’t finish because there was nothing useful to finish with. They all moved toward it. Tension spiked in the air so hard it felt like static under the skin. Alby was already striding from the far side of the yard. Frypan came out from the Pit wiping his hands on a rag he forgot to let go of. Winston and Zart abandoned the target line entirely. Newt was ahead before most of them realized it, eyes fixed on the center of the Glade like if he stared hard enough the Box might explain itself. The grinding stopped. A final shudder went through the ground, then came the click of locks releasing, and the hatch groaned open. By then they’d all crowded around it. Bodies pressing in close, shoulders knocking, boots digging into dirt, everyone leaning over the edge to peer down into the dark mouth of the thing. There was no Greenie inside. No wide-eyed new boy crumpled in confusion. No supplies. No crates of food, no medicine, no fresh clothes, no practical things keeping them alive one month longer. Just one thing sitting in the center of the metal floor.

A folded piece of paper.

“Alright—” Newt muttered, then he dropped into the Box. He landed light, boots ringing once on metal, and bent to pick up the note. He unfolded it and his brow furrowed almost immediately. “The end…?” he read. Alby’s eyes narrowed. His arms crossed over his chest so tightly the muscles in his forearms stood out. “The end of what?”

“That’s all it says.” Newt lifted the paper a little higher, shook it once as if more words might appear. “The end.”

A ripple of unease moved through the group. It wasn’t loud. Didn’t need to be. The phrase went through them like cold water. All eyes, even Alby’s shifted in unison toward Cass. She stood at the edge of the crowd, face holding the same kind of confusion as everyone else, or at least appearing to. If there was anything moving underneath it, she kept it buried. “Maybe it’s about the Boxes,” she said finally, voice even. Her gaze stayed fixed on the empty metal cage while her mind ran down twelve ugly possibilities at once. “But it’s kind of impractical,” she added after a beat, tilting her head slightly, eyes narrowing the way they always did when her brain was turning over a problem. “Could’ve slipped that into the Box I came up with if they wanted to tell us there were no more supplies or Greenies coming up. Would’ve made more sense.” Silence stretched. The Box had never come up empty before. Alright, no Greenie, though that alone was enough to make the skin crawl, but it also usually brought food. Medicine. Clothes. Tools. Something. This time, just an ominous as fuck piece of paper sitting in the belly of a metal coffin like the people who put them here had gotten lazy. Minho looked from the note to the dark shaft beneath it and back again. “That’s not a good… is it?” Nobody answered him. Cass’s thoughts were already reeling away from the group and into the machinery of the thing. Her stomach twisted as she stared at the empty Box. What the hell was that supposed to mean? Why send her down and then slam the door on everything else? Why now? What game were those bastards playing up there? Frypan, in a heroic act of emotional triage, let out a small, “Who’s hungry?” A weak laugh slipped from somewhere near Winston, more reflex than humor, and just like that the crowd began to fracture. There was nothing else to do with that kind of fear except break it into smaller pieces and carry them elsewhere for a while. Some drifted toward the Pit. Some muttered to each other in tight little clusters. Newt climbed back out of the Box with the paper folded in his fist so hard it looked ready to tear. The whole Glade felt as though a clock had just started ticking somewhere out of sight.

At the Pit, Frypan busied himself over the fire, chopping, stirring, throwing together something good enough to give the boys’ hands and mouths a task so their fear didn’t have the whole house to itself. The smell of spice drifted up in the evening air. It should have felt comforting. Instead it just made the scene around it look all the more fragile. Boys clustered in loose groups near the flames, shadows long against the dirt, voices low and unsteady. Newt rubbed a hand over his face, paper still in hand. “Could mean anything…”

“They’re messin’ with us,” Gally said. He stood half in shadow, arms folded, face set into that familiar hardness he wore whenever uncertainty started chewing at his insides. “Keeping us jumpy.”

Cass's mind had already narrowed down to one thing. She needed that tail and she needed it tonight. Needed every path clear, every risk accounted for. Because if the Box really was done, if supplies were cut, if whatever “the end” meant was now moving toward them, then the window to act was closing fast. Now they’d probably be more understanding of her choice to go solo and spend another night in there. Right?

Wrong. Definitely wrong.

She slipped off toward the Map Room under cover of general tension and movement, and because everyone’s nerves were tied up in the Box and the note and the unsettling shape of the evening, nobody stopped her. She packed light. A waterskin. A strip of bandages. A knife. That was all. The bag stayed mostly empty because she needed the space to carry what she was going in there for. She then crossed the yard toward the Maze. Dusk had sunk deeper by then. The walls loomed blacker. She almost made it to the ivy-covered stone when—

“What’s Cass doing there?”

Chuck.

Her heart stopped. The sound of boys shouting filled the Glade like a swarm of hornets. Heads snapped up from the Pit. Feet pounded the dirt. She turned just enough to see them barreling toward her, alarm all over their faces—

And then froze for a different reason. The walls should’ve been closing right about...now. Every muscle in her body was attuned to the timing of those massive slabs of stone, the subtle shift in air pressure, the tremor underfoot, the way the sound of the Maze itself changed in the moments before the doors moved. By now, they should have been grinding shut. But they weren’t moving a damn inch. Her stomach plummeted. She glanced back at the boys racing toward her, then at the open stone throat of the Maze, “Anytime soon—” she muttered under her breath.

The stone didn’t budge.

Minho reached her first, grabbing both her shoulders and spinning her around hard enough to rattle the half-packed bag against her side. His face was twisted in fear so hot it had boiled clean through into anger and left him shaking with it. “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU—”

Cass’s voice came out low. “I think we got a bigger problem than that right now—”

Newt hit them a second later. He was livid. “Don’t even start with me,” he snapped, and there was something in his voice that said if she had taken one more step toward the Maze he might actually tie her up himself. “You don’t get to—”

“Guys,” Cass tried again, eyes flicking to the doors—

“—don’t even—”

“Guys!” she barked, louder now. “It ain’t closing!”

That shut them up.

Minho whipped his head toward the doors. Newt’s face drained of color so fast it looked like someone had pulled the blood straight out of him. A screech split the air. High. Metallic. It reverberated through the Glade like a blade dragged down stone. “No,” Cass whispered, every vein in her body icing over. Her head snapped toward the dark gaps of the Maze. “No, no, no—fuck.” Then louder, voice ripping itself raw all at once: “RUN! GO, GO, GO!”

The walls weren’t closing. Which meant the Maze was open. Which meant the Grievers weren’t trapped anymore. They could come in. From every direction. And come in they did. The first one crawled over the East entrance, its legs clattering against stone, its body silhouetted for one sickening second against the dark opening before it touched Glade grass. Another screech answered from the West, then another from the North, the sound ricocheting between the walls like they were calling to each other, confirming the route. By the time the South gate vomited out its own, the Glade was surrounded. Panic detonated. Boys screamed, scrambled, knocked into each other, dropped everything and ran. Frypan shouted for Chuck. Winston actually lost hold of his own feet and hit the dirt before Clint yanked him back up. Cass’s voice ripped through the air like a gunshot. “THE BOX!” she screamed so loud her throat burned. “EVERYONE GET INSIDE THE BOX! YOU DON’T SHOOT IF YOU DON’T HAVE TO! WE’LL WAIT IT OUT—” It was a good plan. It was the right plan. The Box was the only thing in the Glade built like a bunker—thick metal walls, reinforced seams, a hatch heavy enough to shut the world out. If the doors had glitched, if whatever mechanism ran the Maze had hiccuped and left them open when they should’ve sealed, then the Box was their best shot at surviving until the system corrected itself. Hide. Count heads. Wait. Think. Apparently not. The boys already started shooting. Arrows sliced through the air in frantic arcs. Some flew straight and true, exactly like she’d trained them, punching into glowing blue cores with bright sick little bursts that sent sparks and black fluid spraying across the grass. Those Grievers dropped hard, limbs spasming, metal legs thrashing against dirt before going still. Other shafts clanged uselessly off armored plating. One arrow skidded off a carapace and vanished beneath the Homestead. Another struck a leg and stuck there at a useless angle like a splinter in a titan’s shin. Screeches layered over each other until Cass couldn’t tell if she was hearing Grievers or hearing her own skull splitting. The pounding of those mechanical legs shook the earth in ugly pulses that ran up through Cass’s boots and straight into her teeth. Minho and Thomas were fighting like she’d drilled into them. They stayed low. Stayed moving. Minho darted in sharp and fast, drawing attention with one swing of a blade, then ducking out at the last second while Thomas came in from the side and hacked at a leg joint where the plating thinned. They moved as a pair, not perfectly, not in chaos like this, not with death skittering at knee height and above, but well enough to keep each other alive another five seconds at a time. Gally had grabbed a spear from somewhere, its tip still roughly reworked into something meaner after her drills, and darted wide. He roared curses at the Grievers like he was trying to offend them into leaving. One of them swung toward him and he stabbed low at a joint, hit hard enough to make it stumble, then yanked back and dragged it farther from Winston, who had gone paper-white and was backpedaling so fast he nearly tripped over his own feet. Newt caught Winston by the back of the shirt and hauled him upright like a kitten while still barking at Clint to move. Cass’s heart thundered too loud. You can’t lose anyone. Not to these things. Not like this. Not after all the drills and the maps and the promises she had made. You can’t. You can’t. You’re better off dead than living with knowing you weren’t fast enough. A Griever surged toward the Homestead and Cass’s body moved before her mind finished screaming. She sprinted, knife in hand, eyes scanning for the blue glow, but Newt’s hand shot out and caught her. “Cass!” he shouted, fingers crushing around hers, yanking her backward.

“They’re still there!” she snarled, thrashing against him. Clint. Jeff. Zart. Billy. Jack. Tim. Boys who trusted her drills and her maps and her stupid promise that she’d get them out. But Newt didn't let go. He hauled her toward the Box, shoving her inside hard enough that she stumbled and hit the wall. He came tumbling in right after, slamming his shoulder against the metal as more bodies crammed in behind them. Boots. Elbows. Panic. Someone sobbing. Someone praying under his breath so fast the words were tripping over themselves. Her eyes scanned the space. One, two, three...Chuck. Alby. Newt. Gally. Thomas. Frypan. Minho. Winston. Only eight. She was genuinely going to throw up. “Where’s Zart? Billy? Jack? Tim?” With every name her voice cracked sharper, higher, her chest constricting. “Where the fuck are they?”

No answer.

“No. No, no, no—” Her breath tore ragged. Everything in her chest seized around the count. She was supposed to be ready. She was supposed to get them all out safely. She promised herself she would. She trained them, gave them hope and now— “I HAVE TO GO GET THEM, I CAN'T—”

“They’re dead!” Gally’s voice ripped through the Box louder than the pounding outside. It hit every metal wall and bounced back uglier. “THEY’RE FUCKING DEAD.” His voice was raw, frayed by fear. They were all in the Homestead. The Homestead got hit first. He saw them go down. “You think I’d let you run out there?” The Box shook with the battering outside, Grievers slamming against metal, claws scraping, tails hitting the walls with loud brutal clangs that made everyone jump. Chuck was crying into Alby’s chest, face buried there. Frypan was in shock, unmoving and crouched with both hands over his mouth. Winston had folded in on himself against the wall, head in his hands, muttering what sounded like no, no, no over and over again. Thomas was standing, knife still in one hand, black blood drying on his sleeve, chest heaving so hard it seemed painful. Minho had one hand braced against the wall, the other still clutching the hilt of his blade like he might stab through the metal and into the entire concept of helplessness if given a chance. Newt had already locked his arms around Cass, pinning her against him before she could bolt. She beat her fists against his chest. “I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! HOW COULD YOU DO THIS—I HATE YOU—” Her voice broke entirely. “They—” She choked. “I should’ve—”

“Should’ve what?” Gally roared, voice cracking. “Should’ve died with them? Open your fucking eyes! You’re the only reason this many of us made it here in the first place. You’ve been losing sleep and trembling like a damn leaf every night, and you dare—” Alby’s hand snapped onto his shoulder. “Enough.” Gally bit his tongue.

Newt lowered Cass to the floor and kept his arms around her. His hand slid through her hair automatically. “We’re okay,” he whispered, over and over. “We’re okay. We’ll be okay.” Nothing was okay. Nobody was okay. Boys were dead or dying beyond the metal. He knew their voices, their laughs, the stupid little details grief would use later as knives. The way Zart always muttered at the pigs like they were disappointing coworkers, the way Clint cracked his knuckles when he was nervous, Jack’s habit of scratching behind one ear when he lied, knew that Tim only swore when genuinely frightened. They were gone. The Glade had been breached. The note said the end and now the phrase felt less like a taunt and more like a schedule. But the eight of them were breathing, so he kept saying it like proof. “We're okay.” Cass’s hands shook where they gripped his shirt. Her whole body trembled with the kind of rage that made her want to tear her own skin off. Newt swallowed hard and pressed his mouth to the top of her head. “You couldn’t have prepared for that,” he said into her hair. “None of us could have.” Cass dragged in a breath to speak but he cut in fast because he knew exactly what was coming if he gave it room. Guilt. The whole ugly avalanche of it. She would make herself responsible for the walls, the dead, not figuring the note out fast enough. “Tell me how we get out,” he said. A rope. A task. A path. Something to do besides drown. “Walk me through it.” For a moment she just stared at him, eyes red-rimmed and wild and furious, then her mind caught up. You could see it happen. The switch. The rage didn’t vanish, but some of it got forced sideways to make room for strategy. “When they retreat for the day,” she said, breath still jagged, “we pack everything we’ll need out there. Only necessary stuff. Nothing that’ll weigh us down.” Her voice trembled once and then steadied by force. “I made maps for each of you. If we somehow get separated in there, you’ll know how to reach the section we’re supposed to go to.” Newt nodded like each word mattered and needed landing somewhere real, even though his own hands were shaking where he held her face now, thumbs at her jaw, eyes trying their best to stay steady for her.

Frypan stared at the floor, fists clenched so hard the knuckles had gone white under the dirt and soot. Tears tracked through grime on his cheeks and dripped off his jaw without him seeming to notice. He had fed those boys. Yelled at them for stealing scraps. Snuck them extra when they were still growing into themselves too fast for the rations. Now he sat in a metal box while the world outside ate them. Winston was hunched so low he looked folded in half, forehead pressed to his own fists. Every so often his shoulders jolted with a breath he couldn’t seem to finish properly. Thomas kept glancing at the hatch as if some part of him still couldn’t stop expecting one of the missing boys to bang on it from outside and demand to be let in. Minho’s jaw was clenched so hard it looked like it might shatter. He kept replaying it. The half second he’d wasted yelling instead of already moving. Gally had his back pressed to the wall, his eyes fixed anywhere but Cass, because if he looked at her too long he might say something he couldn’t drag back. Might admit that seeing her shake like that was making something in his chest come apart. It wasn’t her fault. She only ever made things better. She came into this rotten place and improved everything she touched by sheer force of effort. She trained them. Gave them hope. Put some semblance of future in their ribs again. It was all about protecting them for her. Carrying their safety like it was her only purpose. She was too fucking precious for the hell they’d been trapped in.

The Box quieted eventually. It happened in layers. First the battering slowed, the metal slams against the walls and hatch stretching farther apart, each one leaving the silence behind it feeling bigger, then the screeches lost that immediate, frenzied edge and turned distant, wandering, as if the things were moving away only to circle back and test the hatch again. Every time the sound faded, someone inside the Box would hold their breath, waiting for the next hit. Even when the silence outside became complete, nobody leapt for the hatch. It took light to convince them. Pale gray first, thin as dust through the seams of the Box. Then more of it. Enough to turn faces from shadow into exhausted human wreckage. Enough to let them see each other clearly again. Dawn. Alby and Gally pressed their palms to the metal and shoved slowly, inch by inch, like they were lifting a coffin lid or peeling a bandage off a wound they already knew would be catastrophic. The hinges screeched. Rust and strain protested. Daylight widened from a crack to a slit to a jagged opening. Blood stained the grass outside in broad slick arcs and dark pools, black in some places, red in others, both colors mixed where Grievers and boys had gone down together. Torn limbs. Broken shafts of arrows. A snapped spear. Cloth shredded into ribbons. Dead Grievers lay in pieces here and there, metal legs twisted at impossible angles, blue cores cracked open and dead, but it was the boys that broke the eye. Twisted, broken, half-torn. Boys they’d called family. Boys who had eaten breakfast yesterday and trained and joked and thought they had a shot out of here. Winston gagged instantly, stumbled back into the wall of the Box, and vomited hard enough his whole body shook with it. He kept one hand braced on the metal like otherwise he’d fold to the floor and never stand up again. Thomas dropped to his knees, knife falling from slack fingers into blood-wet grass he didn’t seem to feel. Frypan made a noise in the back of his throat that didn’t become words. Gally stood in the grass with one hand over his mouth. Chuck turned his face into Alby’s side and stopped making sound entirely, which scared Newt more than the crying had. Minho stood like a struck thing, eyes fixed on the bodies and not blinking. Cass went still so completely it looked as though she had stripped the emotion clean out of herself and set it aside to collect later if there happened to be time. Her eyes moved once across the grass, taking the count and the blood. No time to think of what was lost. Protect what’s left. She stepped over the bodies and went straight to a dead Griever. Its legs still twitched in little afterspasms, sparks hissing from the carcass in useless bursts. Black fluid pooled under it and ran into the grass. Cass knelt beside it, planted one boot against the body for leverage, and ripped its tail off with both hands. Metal screamed once where it tore free. Stamped on the casing near the base was the marking she needed. 3A. The others were paralyzed. “We gotta move,” Cass said.

Nobody did.

She went to Thomas first. He was still on his knees, shoulders shaking once every few breaths. Cass crouched in front of him and took his face in both hands, forcing his eyes up from the blood. “Thomas.” Nothing. “Thomas.” Sharper now. He blinked. “We gotta go or we die here too.” Something moved in his face then. Cass pulled him upright by the forearms. He swayed once. She held him there until his knees remembered they were attached to a living body, then she turned and started snapping all of them out of it. “Minho. Water and food, only what we can run with. Winston, grab rope and packs and free the animals in the Bloodhouse so they don't starve in there. Fry, you take dried anything and flint. Gally, weapons, whatever’s worth carrying. Alby—keep them moving.” Minho ran first because movement was easier than feeling. He and Frypan made for the stores, grabbed waterskins, wrapped strips of dried meat, hard bread and pouches of seeds Frypan insisted will matter. Winston took three tries to stop his hands from shaking enough to open the small gate of the Bloodhouse. Gally stripped the weapon racks, knives shoved into belts, bows and arrow bundles slung over shoulders, two shorter spears dragged along. Cass went straight for the Map Room. The Griever tail clanged against the desk when she set it down, and her hand reached for the stack of pages. She marked the new route over every map. 3A. Hard enough in charcoal to survive being folded into a fist while running for your life. They eventually met back in front of the Doors. Packs slung. Canteens tied off. Cass shoved the maps into their hands one by one. “If we get separated,” she said, voice tight, “you follow the map. You get to 3A. If your route’s blocked, use the alternate marks in the margin. If you see a Griever and you can avoid it, you avoid it. If you can’t, you go for the core and you keep moving.” Minho tied one of the spare knives into the back of Cass’s belt without a word. Alby stood there facing this home they had built inside a death machine, the Gardens, the Homestead, the Blood House, the Pit, the Box— No. The Glade wasn’t home anymore. It was a grave. Time to go.

Nobody said goodbye out loud. There wasn’t room in any of them for speeches. The dead were still too fresh, the shock too close under the skin, so they moved instead. Cass stood at the front with Minho beside her. She didn’t look back, because if she looked, she might start counting who wasn’t there to follow. Newt kept one hand on Chuck’s shoulder and the other curled tight around his map. Thomas rolled his shoulders once like he was trying to settle them into his body again. Gally twitched his spear higher and muttered, “Move,” like if he made the order ugly enough it wouldn’t sound like fear. They crossed the threshold and let the Maze swallow them.

Their feet hit the ground in pounding rhythm, boots slamming against old stone paths and packed sand, breath tearing in and out too fast. Cass and Minho took the lead. “Left! Keep close!” Cass barked over her shoulder. “Don’t drift!” Minho echoed the directions, half turning at intersections just long enough to throw his hand out and point. Alby kept Winston from lagging by physically shoving him when he slowed. The first screech hit them when they reached a section where the walls didn’t merely shift but closed and moved against each other in broad grinding passes, stone dragging on stone with a sound like the Maze had found teeth. It was a narrowing cut in the route where timing mattered more than courage and one wrong second made you into paste. Huge slabs were sliding past one another, opening, narrowing, sealing, opening again, the rhythm mean and quick. Sand jittered under their boots. Bits of old stone dust sifted down in pale streams. “Pairs!” Cass barked instantly. She and Minho cut for the opening together, one after the other, and slipped through as one wall kissed shut behind their backs hard enough to shave sparks from the stone. There was barely an inch to spare. Then the route was open again and they were spinning, shouting people through. “GO!” Minho roared. Alby all but threw Winston at the opening and followed so close the stone scraped his sleeve as it shut behind him. Frypan stumbled on the loose grit and Gally swore loud enough to wake the dead, grabbed the back of his shirt, and hauled him through by brute force just as the opening narrowed to almost nothing. Thomas made it in a low sprint, one palm slapping the stone to launch himself sideways. Then Chuck tripped. Of fucking course. His boot caught on the lip where the floor shifted by half an inch, enough to turn momentum traitor. He pitched forward with a startled little cry, arms flailing, and the wall began to move. Stone screamed. The gap shrank. Newt swore, lunging, but Gally got there first. He caught Chuck by the back of the shirt and yanked so hard the kid nearly left his own skin behind. Chuck flew backward with all the dignity of laundry in a storm and hit Alby full force. The wall slammed shut where his chest had been a fraction earlier. Dust burst up. The sound of it hit everyone in the teeth. Newt hauled him upright again and shoved him forward. They ran harder after that. By the time they reached 3A, sweat had soaked every shirt, their breaths came in ragged strips, no one fully in control of them anymore. The section marker glared up from the wall, and there ahead was the thing Cass had been carrying in her skull since the first night she’d survived: the round, dark tunnel punched into the stone. It looked unnatural in the worst possible way, too smooth, like a throat cut into the Maze itself. At the far end of it blinked a red light. Behind them came another sound. Closer now. Not distant hunting calls. Not scattered movement somewhere through walls and turns. On them. “No the fuck it won’t,” Cass hissed, and then she was moving faster, some last reserve opening under sheer force of necessity. “THERE!” she shouted, pointing at the red light.

They sprinted down the tunnel, boots hammering the hollow floor hard enough for the sound to come back at them twice, and when Cass reached the slot beneath the blinking light she didn’t even break stride properly. She jammed the tail forward. The fit was perfect. Not close. Not maybe. Perfect. The metal seated with a thick clean click that made every nerve in her body spike. She turned to Minho and without a word both of them grabbed it and twisted. It turned like a key in a lock built by sadists. Movement. Gears catching somewhere deep in the wall. The red light changed tone, from blind blinking to a steady pulsing glow. Outside the mouth of the tunnel, the Griever hit the corridor mouth at speed. Arrows flew before anyone shouted for them. Thomas’s first one struck plating and glanced off with a spray of sparks. His second hit lower, near the seam Cass had drilled into all of them. Gally's spear stabbed forward to bat the tail away from Chuck, who had gone wide-eyed and frozen. The Griever shrieked, tail snapping back with enough force to tear a groove in the wall instead of his face. Alby grabbed Chuck’s collar and dragged him backward while Winston shot and missed. Frypan, of all people, drove a knife into one of the side joints and jumped back before the thing could crush his hand. “ANYTIME TODAY!” Gally bellowed, spear braced with both hands, boots skidding as he shoved the creature’s snapping front away from the tunnel. “WE’RE WORKING ON IT!” Minho shot back through gritted teeth, both hands still torquing the tail in the slot. A screen flickered to life above the mechanism. Green letters buzzed into existence. W.C.K.D. “The hell—” Frypan started. “Try 3A!” Winston yelled, because panic had convinced him every puzzle in the universe should respond to the nearest obvious label. Cass punched it in. Nothing. “Number of sections!” Alby shouted, half dragging Chuck out of range of the Griever’s pincer while Thomas fired again. Nothing. Then a scream split the tunnel. Chuck. Not hurt, but close enough to the stinger that the sound of his fear cut through every other noise and drove all the scattered pieces in Cass’s head into one line. Letters. Numbers. The old keypad systems buried somewhere in her muscle memory. The kind of knowledge this place had failed to wipe because they’d only scooped out her past, not the tools she used to survive it. “W… C… K… D…” she muttered, brain firing so fast the words almost outran each other. “Nine once for W. Two three times for C. Five two times for K. Three once for D—” Her fingers flew. 9—222—55—3. The keypad chirped. For one vicious second nothing happened.

Then the hatch clicked.

The sound was tiny, almost polite. The relief it sparked was violent enough to make her knees weak. The door swung inward just as the Griever lunged at Alby. Minho and Gally got him from opposite sides, one hand each hooked under his arms, and yanked him through. Cass grabbed Winston by the collar and dragged him in. Frypan shoved Chuck ahead of him with both hands. Thomas came last. The Griever’s teeth snapped shut inches from his ankle. Close enough that the air off the strike hit the back of his heel, then the door slammed behind him with a final metallic boom that echoed up and down the corridor. A heartbeat later, the Griever smashed into it. The impact rang like a bell struck by God. They all stared at it for one second too long, panting, lungs burning, sweat dripping off brows and chins, hands trembling around weapons. The corridor ahead stretched long and sterile in a way that almost made the blood and dirt they’d come from feel imagined. White. Pristine. Clinical. The walls smooth and polished, lights buzzing overhead with that relentless fluorescence only laboratories and nightmares ever seemed to love. It smelled wrong, all chemicals and hidden vents and no room for earth. At the end of the corridor another door blinked with red lights. And it was fucking closing. “GO, GO, GO!”

They ran again. No chance to gape at the sick joke of white hallway after stone prison. Alby half carrying Chuck now because the kid’s legs had finally started remembering they were attached to terror. Newt behind them, one hand at Winston’s shoulder, driving him on. Gally tripped but Cass grabbed his arm and hauled with every ounce of force left in her body. The door was dropping faster now, red lights strobing, the gap narrowing in visible inches. Minho grabbed Gally’s other side and they hit the final stretch. The edge of the door kissed Cass’s heel hard enough to spark pain through her ankle. Gally’s boot got caught and tore free of his foot, left crushed half under the closing slab.

All of them were through.

The corridor spat them out into a room that made the now-bloody Glade look like paradise. The floor was slick in places, tacky pools of blood drying in broad dark patches that glued dirt and glass and scraps of paper into one revolting paste. Red had been smeared across the white like people had been dragged or had crawled or had been dragged while trying to crawl. The walls that had once been glass were shattered now. Jagged teeth of it still clung to the frames while the rest glittered across the floor in little stars, catching the flicker of the lights. Consoles were smashed or half-melted, screens split down the middle, keyboards ripped loose, wires hanging out of their guts like nerves. A few lights hung on overhead, flickering with a sick rhythm that turned the room into a strobe-lit nightmare. There were bodies everywhere. Scientists, judging by their white coats. Or what had once been white coats. Now they were soaked dark, torn, dragged through gore and glass until the fabric looked like butcher paper at the end of a shift. Some of them motionless in pools of their own blood, others flung across chairs and shattered monitors. One lay face-down, head split open, the back of his coat soaked dark, a smear of brain across tile like a cruel signature. Then there were the other bodies. They looked just like Ben had after he got stung. Skin veined black, branching under the flesh like poison roots or cracks running through porcelain, eyes clouded, teeth bared. Some still had strips of white coat caught between their teeth where they’d bitten and torn and chewed through the people in front of them. Some were tangled together, as if they’d torn each other apart before the end. One had bitten all the way through a forearm to the red shine of muscle and sinew. Chuck whimpered, pressing himself into Alby’s side. Alby’s arm came around him on instinct, but his own face had gone haunted, eyes sweeping the carnage with the stunned focus of somebody trying not to understand too much too fast or he’d never stand back up. Newt looked sick, the color draining out of his face, gaze darting from body to body, from the blackened veins to the torn flesh to the broken glass. He was connecting dots. That’s what happened to Ben. That’s what happened to Adam. That’s what the Changing does. He swallowed so hard it looked painful, as if he could force the memory of every stung boy they’d ever lost back down into whatever pit in him held grief and keep moving.

The room buzzed and flickered around them. Only the surviving consoles gave off any steady light, harsh blue and red and dead white, throwing their faces into sick angles and making every smear on the floor look fresh. They spread out without really meaning to. Not far, none of them wanted to be far from the others in a room like this, but enough that the need to understand drove them into different corners of the nightmare. Thomas bent over one of the scientists and then jerked back when he realized the man’s throat was ripped open in four parallel furrows, claw marks dug deep enough to expose cartilage. Gally prodded at a console with his spear, distrust in every line of him, like if the thing twitched wrong he’d happily kill that too. Cass moved straight to one of the consoles, one that was still glowing. Her mind didn’t care about the carnage the way theirs did, not because she was heartless, but because her brain had already made a choice: Either I understand this place, or we die in it. The dead in the room could not be helped. The living could. So while the others’ horror stuck in their throats and eyes, hers got shoved down hard and turned into function. She planted her hands on the console. The screen was smeared with blood, a handprint dragged diagonally down its surface. Cass wiped it with her sleeve and pressed the glass. The interface lagged, flickered, half woke and half died beneath her fingers. Somewhere deep in the room a hum changed pitch, rising. A giant monitor in the center, one none of them had fully clocked at first because it was half-shrouded in hanging wires and darkness, blinked once, twice, and then flared to life.

Blue light washed over them. They clustered together without even realizing, all of them pulled in by the glow like moths.

A woman’s face filled the screen. Blonde. Composed. Middle-aged. Eyes locked straight into the lens like she was staring into them. Her mouth was set in a calm line that screamed rehearsed. Not a survivor. Not someone terrified. Someone trained to deliver information while the world burned behind her. “Hello,” she said, voice smooth enough to make Cass’s skin crawl. “My name is Dr. Ava Paige. I’m Director of Operations at the World Catastrophe Killzone Department. If you’re watching this, that means you’ve successfully completed the Maze Trials.” Minho's eyes widened, and the words tumbled out of him before he could stop them. “What the fuck—” Cass’s jaw clenched so hard it hurt. The way Paige said it, World Catastrophe Killzone Department, like it was charity, like it was a school program, like they weren’t erasing children's memories and locking them up in these hellholes. “I wish I could be there in person to congratulate you,” Paige continued, still calm, “but circumstances seem to have prevented it.” Behind her, in the reflection of glass, there was movement. Shadows. Flickers. Shapes crossing too fast. A flash of white coat. Something slammed hard enough to shake a line through the reflection. Paige didn’t acknowledge it. Didn't turn her head. “I’m sure by now, you must all be very confused. Angry. Frightened. I can only assure you that everything that has happened to you, everything we’ve done to you was all done for a reason.” Cass and Gally scoffed in unison, disgust synced up. “You won’t remember, but the sun has scorched our world.” The screen shifted. Footage rolled. Shaking, panicked visuals clipped from different places and times, all of them carrying the same sick message. Cities crumbling under heat haze, buildings sagging and warping like they were made of wax left too close to a flame. Fields gone to dust as far as the eye could reach, cracked earth split into hard dead scales. Oceans pulled back into vast ugly emptiness, ships stranded at wrong angles in mud and ruin. Fires that weren’t “house fires” or “forest fires” but whole walls of flame eating skylines like the horizon itself had caught. People, starving, skeletal, skin pulled hard over cheekbones and elbows, clawing at scraps, collapsing in gutters, faces hollowed. Dust storms so thick they swallowed streets and towers whole, reducing the world to a brown-orange blind. Their blood ran cold. Chuck made a broken little sound. Frypan whispered, “Jesus,” though none of them even knew whether that meant anything anymore. Paige’s voice narrated over the apocalypse like a tour guide reading from a script. “Billions of lives lost to fire, famine, suffering on a global scale. The fallout was unimaginable.” A pause. “What came after was worse.”

New footage rolled. People strapped to beds, thrashing, veins blackening beneath their skin in real time. Mouths foaming. Eyes blown wide and wild with pain and something beyond pain. Some screaming until their throats tore. Some biting the straps. Some biting the people trying to hold them down. One clip held too long on a man being restrained by three others while he snapped at them, spit stringing between his teeth, face twisted up in a rage so pure it no longer belonged to a person. Another showed two patients in hospital gowns tearing into each other on a tiled floor while alarms screamed uselessly overhead. Another showed a woman clawing at her own eyes until someone darted in with restraints and the image cut. “We call it the Flare. A deadly virus that attacks the brain.” Alby made eye contact with Newt. Both of them thought the same thing. Every boy we sent back to the Maze. The Flare. A name now for the thing that had taken Adam and Ben and all the others from them. “It is violent, unpredictable, incurable. Or so we thought.” Her voice warmed by a fraction, like she was talking about a miracle she owned. “In time, a new generation emerged that could survive the virus. Suddenly, there was a reason to hope for a cure. The young would have to be tested inside harsh environments where their brain activity could be studied.” Cass muttered low enough that only Minho heard: “So you curated a nightmare and called it science.”

Behind Paige, chaos flared sharper, scientists screaming, infected slamming against reinforced glass, someone falling, something smashing. Paige didn’t turn her head. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t react like a human being hearing other humans die within arm’s reach. “All in an effort to discover what makes them different. What makes YOU different.” The screen showed a flicker of brain scans. Lines. Graphs. The kind of imagery designed to make cruelty look sterile. She leaned forward. “Unfortunately, your Trials have only just begun.”

Minho’s face twisted. “Trials? We just—” He cut himself off, because we just lost everyone sat like a bomb in his throat and if he said it aloud in front of her image, in front of this smooth cold architect of their suffering, he might actually put his fist through the console.

“As you will no doubt soon discover,” she continued, “not everyone agrees with our methods. Progress is slow. People are scared. It may be too late for us. For me. But not for you. The outside world awaits.” Her eyes shifted, as if she was checking time on something just out of frame. She raised a gun, pressing the barrel to her temple. Chuck gasped. Frypan swore. “Remember… WCKD is good.”

She pulled the trigger.

And the screen went black.

For a beat, only the buzzing lights and the crackle of sparking consoles existed. Nobody moved. Nobody seemed to remember how. The blue-white flicker from the half-dead machinery kept catching on blood and broken glass and the dead. Then, slowly, every head turned to Cass. She stood with one hand braced on the console, chest rising and falling too fast, eyes fixed on the dead screen. For one second she looked almost as stunned as the rest of them, but then she exhaled, long, controlled, like someone forcing their own mind back into alignment, and when she spoke, her voice came out flat and sharp enough to carve with. “I don’t buy it,” she said. The sentence landed hard because it gave them something to hold besides horror. “I think the world was panicked,” she went on, glancing around at the room, taking in the white coats, the ruined consoles, the bodies torn apart on the floor. “And these WCKD guys tried to make money off that panic. In catastrophic scenarios, Governments allocate funds to containment zones so the virus doesn’t spread, medicine, food distribution, infrastructure, all that.” She flicked two fingers toward the black monitor. “WCKD saw the gold mine and went for it. You promise a cure, you get funding. You get power. You get to make the rules while everyone else is scared enough to let you. You become the only ones who ‘know what to do.’” Her gaze dragged over the room again. “Too much cash and no idea how to fix the mess the world’s in?” She gave a humorless little shrug. “You build mazes and make monsters and throw kids in to die, and you sell it to the world as research.” No one said anything. Because not a single word sounded like a guess or some lucky chain of logic. It sounded like experience. The way she said it carried the shape of someone who knew exactly how power rotted from the inside, how organizations learned to feed on fear, how rich men and sterile rooms and polished language turned atrocity into policy and called it progress. That soldier guess from the Glade didn’t feel like a guess anymore. Hadn’t for a long while. But standing there in that blood-slick lab, hearing her dissect the logic of power like she’d watched it happen before, it felt like even soldier wasn’t enough.

Newt sank down onto a broken chair, putting his face in his hands. Everything was catching up at once. The Maze. The deaths. The room. The video. The world outside, or what was left of it, reduced to heat-scoured ruin and plague and rich people packaging children’s pain into research grants. They had escaped one hell only to crawl into a worse one. The shock of that sat in him like ice. No fields. No streets full of normal people. No old life waiting behind the walls with all the missing pieces stitched back in. Just ash and sickness and companies like WCKD deciding whose terror got monetized. Gally raised a brow at Cass, but there was none of his usual real bite in it. “You believe all that?”

Cass’s eyes flicked to him. “Only what makes sense.” Her lip curled. “That bitch didn't kill herself. She looked too polished for that. That was staged. She didn’t have the look of someone about to die. But this...” She gestured around the room, at the blood-soaked floor, the bodies, the broken glass, the half-eaten scientists and the infected tangled among them. “—this is definitely not fake. And it's a stretch to think she'd dress people up as scientists and let others with the virus have at them just to convince us it's real.”

Winston murmured, “What if it’s just another—”

Cass cut in before he could finish. “There’d be no point in making up a lie for another test, because the second we stepped out of here and saw the world all sunshine and flowers, we’d know it was bullshit.” Her voice sharpened. “We’d lose trust in her company. She wasn’t trying to scare us for fun now. She was trying to gain our trust. And the only way to gain it was to give us just enough information to feel like we knew something without actually telling us shi—”

She never got to finish. Blinding light ripped through the ruined lab. A hard white flood, like the damn sun had been kicked through the wall. It slammed across the room and painted every blood smear, every shattered console, every body in brutal full detail. At the same time, a wall of air hit them, hot, violent, thundering, flattening loose papers and whipping Cass’s hair across her face. Her head snapped toward the source. Then came the boots. Not one pair. Dozens. Hitting the ground in synchronized thunder, fast and hard and everywhere at once. The sound filled the room so completely it seemed to punch into their lungs and rattle around there. Soldiers poured in through smashed entries in practiced formation, armored head to toe, faces masked, holding weapons that made the Gladers’ spears and knives look like children’s toys. Some moved straight for the exits, covering angles while the others flooded the room. A soldier grabbed Winston by the arm. Winston reacted on pure instinct, spinning and biting the man’s wrist through the glove. The soldier didn’t even flinch. He just twisted, moved too fast for the eye to follow cleanly, and in one brutal efficient motion Winston was on the ground with his arm cranked behind his back and a set of cuffs snapping around his wrists. He yelped and kicked, then went still from sheer shock that resistance had meant absolutely nothing. Another soldier lunged for Frypan. Frypan swung first, catching one guy across the side of the helmet hard enough to ring the room. It bought him half a second. Maybe less. Two more were on him immediately, one pinning an arm, the other sweeping his legs, and then Frypan was on his knees screaming “Get your hands off me!” while they forced his wrists behind him and locked the metal shut. Newt didn't even get to stand up from the broken chair before three soldiers were on him. Gally went down in a tangle of limbs and rage. He fought like an feral thing, knees, elbows, head. A soldier tried to restrain him high and Gally drove his shoulder into the man’s middle with enough force to nearly take them both into a ruined console. Another came from the side. Then another. Gally still almost won out of pure stubbornness before one of them slammed a knee into his gut hard enough to fold him. Air whooshed out of him in a grunt and that was all they needed. His wrists got yanked back and cuffed while he was still trying to recover enough breath to finish the threat he’d started. “I’ll—” The rest died in his throat. Minho managed two hits. One elbow that caught somebody under the chin. One kick that actually connected with a knee joint and made a soldier stagger half a step. Then someone took him from behind, hooked one arm across his chest, and ripped both his arms backward so hard his shoulders screamed. “Cass!” he shouted. A soldier was on her already. Cass drove an elbow backward into a jaw and felt it connect. Spun. Kicked low. Caught one of them in the side of the knee. For one half-glorious second she had enough space to think good, again—then a second soldier hit from behind, arms locking around her ribs like steel bands. Another grabbed her wrists. Wrenched them back. Pain shot straight through her shoulders. She hissed and twisted, trying to torque free, but there were too many of them. One of the soldiers ripped his mask off. A man, maybe in his forties. He lifted one hand, palm open, voice carrying over the chaos. “Everyone calm down! We’re the good guys!”

“Good one!” Cass snapped back, still fighting the man restraining her.

He didn’t argue. He just watched while the cuffs clicked around her wrists and she was shoved down onto the bench of the helicopter waiting outside the breach in the wall. Outside, sand. The helicopter squatted in it, rotors chopping the heat into violent waves that slapped hair and dust and blood smell around in every direction. Beyond it, the world rolled out in dunes and wreckage and heat haze. They didn't have much time to take it all in before they got herded inside. Chuck was crying again, face gone entirely white under the dirt, his wrists too small inside the cuffs. Alby had his body angled in front of him even while restrained, trying to shield him with positioning alone. Cass landed hard on the bench, chest heaving, hair half in her face, eyes blazing with the kind of rage that stopped being expressive and became temperature instead. “You fucking—”

The unmasked man lifted a hand again and cut her off. “We’re military. What’s left of it, anyway.” He braced himself against the doorway as the helicopter shook under the rotors. “And what’s left of the world right now is ruled by elites, much like WCKD. They sell fragments of the cure to keep people dependent. Desperate. Just enough to stop the virus from eating your brain completely.” Minho jerked forward in his seat, straining so hard against his restraints it looked painful. “We’ve been working to shut WCKD down,” the man said. “Every facility they built. Every experiment. Every maze.” Cass cut in. “How convenient you just happened to show up the second we got out—” His gaze flicked to her. There was something in his eyes that made Cass’s instincts itch. “I was getting to that. The Mazes are no-signal zones. The only window we have to locate and breach them is in the small gate between the activation of a console and WCKD arriving to collect you all. You opened the exit, we caught the ping. Got here first. Lucky you.” Newt scoffed. The man ignored him and continued, voice smoother, sales pitch now. “We’re headed to one of our safe zones. Others we’ve rescued are there. Kids from other Mazes we got to before WCKD did. Food, shelter, walls to keep infected out.”

Infected. Chuck flinched closer to Alby at the sound of it like the word itself could bite. For a long beat, none of the Gladers said a thing. They just looked at one another over the chop and roar of the helicopter. Minho’s brows furrowed so hard they almost met. Newt’s lips pressed into a line thin enough to cut paper. Gally’s jaw worked, but for once he held the comment back. Thomas’s eyes flicked once to Cass and then away again. They were all thinking the same thing. They had just crawled out of one cage and landed in another. Different shape. Different walls. Better weaponry. Better pitch. But a cage nonetheless. They were cuffed. Weaponless. Stuffed into a helicopter headed God knew where with a man who had all the right story beats. Play nice was the agreement that moved between them in that glance. Especially for the obvious candidates for immediate disaster—Cass, Gally, and, Thomas if somebody breathed at him wrong in the next two minutes. Watch. Listen. Gather information. Wait for the moment the game flipped enough to be worth the move.

The helicopter lifted with a violent shudder that rattled through the metal frame and up into their bones. The rotors beat the air into a deafening rhythm, chopping the desert wind into hot, furious gusts that slammed sand against the sides and sent the whole thing vibrating like it was trying to shake them off. Inside the cabin, everything felt too loud and too tight at once. The straps on the seats were cracked and sun-bleached. The metal floor was scored and scratched from too many boots, too many crates, too much movement done in haste and under orders. Cass sat on the bench, shoulders set and jaw tight, staring at the soldier across from her like she was trying to decide exactly how hard she’d have to hit him to make him stop breathing. He had one of those faces. Extremely punchable. The kind that looked self-assured in a way that made every instinct in her body start hissing. She felt naked. Stripped of every advantage that mattered. No weapon. No map she could trust. No ground under her feet she could claim. These strangers expected them to simply… adjust. To pivot from erased memories and dead friends and a blood-soaked lab into some new version of captivity and call it rescue. Chuck had been pressed so tightly into Alby’s side that he might as well have been trying to climb inside the older boy’s ribs, but then his eyes went wide and he leaned toward the little helicopter window. “Alby…” Alby bent forward at once and followed his gaze. His jaw tightened so hard the muscle stood out near his ear. From high above, the desert was even more jarring. On the ground, it had felt vast and dead and wrong in an immediate, suffocating way. From the air it looked endless. Flat in some places, broken by wind-cut ridges in others, dunes stretching in every direction until the horizon blurred under heat shimmer and distance. Not a single tree. Not a single thread of green. No river. No road. No city. Just long scars in the sand where wind had been carving the world down for years with no one left to stop it. A planet skinned alive. Cass leaned toward the glass too, and though she’d predicted it, though she’d called desert before any of them wanted to believe it, the reality still hit like a fist. The world outside was gone. Not metaphorically. Not “damaged.” Gone. Cooked into this. She looked at it for one long second, face unreadable except for the tightening at the corners of her mouth, then turned her head toward the soldier. “Where exactly are we?”

The man didn’t look away from the horizon outside his own side of the helicopter. “It wouldn’t matter even if I told you,” he said flatly. “Everything looks the same now.”

Cass clicked her tongue against her teeth, disgusted by the answer and by how smoothly he delivered it. “How long ago?”

This time he did answer directly. “Twenty-six years.” Not a handful of catastrophic seasons. Two decades and then some. Newt’s head tilted just slightly at that, his eyes narrowing the way they did when he was trying to fit something impossible into the shape of reality without letting it shatter him. Thomas stared out the opposite window with his mouth open, as if all the little pictures he’d accidentally painted in his head about “outside” had just been lined up and shot. The chopper kept whirring, a steady, punishing thrum that vibrated up through their boots. Cass leaned closer to the window again, her eyes narrowing. Something was moving down there. At first it just looked like shifting dots in the sand, heat distortion making everything waver. Then the helicopter banked slightly and the angle changed and the dots turned into people. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds, scattered across the emptiness in loose, aimless trails. Everything about their movements was wrong. Limping, jerky, heads cocked at angles that weren’t human anymore. Some staggered in wide circles. Chuck pressed closer to the glass on his side. “What are they doing there—”

The man answered without softness. “They're infected.” He shifted his rifle across his lap, not protective of it so much as used to its weight. “Some stages you never recover from. Not even with the cure. The ones outside are shoot on sight.”

Alby glanced across the cabin to Newt, their eyes meeting for one beat. “So they did find a cure,” Alby said, voice low.

“Yes,” the man replied. “But not thanks to the cruelty of the Mazes.” He hesitated. “From what I gather, WCKD found faster ways. Used advanced tech. Made kids see their worst fears, mined brain activity from it. I don’t know the full mechanics, but other children we’ve rescued told me they made them live every terror they could conjure. So I guess you got off better.” He shrugged with a carelessness that made the whole cabin feel one degree colder. “Those kids ended up in psychiatric wards.”

Got off better? Oh, he's got guts.

The man finally looked at them properly then, gaze moving down the line like he was assessing threat level. “I would’ve loved if we had time to talk in there so this didn’t feel like kidnapping, but we had to move fast so WCKD couldn't track us back to our base. This was the only way.” His tone was smooth now. Reasonable. Selling. “I can uncuff you,” he added, “if you promise not to do anything stupid.” His eyes flicked briefly to Cass and then back to the whole group. “You kids get… awfully violent when you first get out.” Minho scoffed. “Wonder why.” That got an almost-smile from the man. The Gladers all nodded to being uncuffed, not even looking at eachother for confirmation. It wasn’t like they could do much anyway, not with literal miles of desert stretching below them, armed soldiers in every corner of the cabin, no piloting knowledge, no clear coordinates, and nowhere to run. The soldiers moved down the line getting the restraints off. Metal clicked open one pair at a time. Sore wrists were rubbed and flexed. Chuck held his hands close to his chest after his cuffs came off, still not fully trusting that he was allowed them. Frypan rolled his shoulders. Gally looked at his uncuffed wrists like he was offended the metal had ever presumed to touch him. Minho immediately adjusted into a better position. Newt stretched his fingers once and then let his shoulder brush Cass’s. No one made a move. They just shifted into better positions and closer to each other. “It’ll be a long ride,” the man said. “Make yourselves comfortable.” Alby straightened instead, eyes still fixed on the man. “What’s your name?” The man looked at him for a long second, then said. “Oh, where are my manners? I'm officer Janson.” The name landed like a stone in Cass’s stomach. She didn’t know why. No image came with it. No story. But something in her blood went cold all the same. A shiver ran up her spine before she could swallow it down. Her instincts, those old buried things that had saved her over and over without ever explaining themselves, lit up all at once. Danger. Her fingers twitched toward where a weapon should’ve been. Every muscle in her body itched to launch forward, rip one of the rifles out of the nearest soldier’s hands, turn it on him, and erase whatever future he meant, but she knew that doing something like that would risk them, so she kept her face neutral, her eyes downcast just enough to hide the fire in them instead. Newt caught the shift in her immediately, the sudden rigidness in her posture, the way her shoulders pulled inward, and he leaned closer. A silent message in contact. I’m here. We’re still here. Cass didn’t look at him, but her fingers shifted on the bench between them and brushed against his.

Janson let out a tiny exhale. They'd stopped fighting, their wrists got uncuffed without incident and Cassandra was sitting still instead of trying to tear someone’s throat out, which meant he’d done his job well. Paige’s orders had been clear: “This group needs extra careful handling” -> “Cassandra needs extra careful handling.” Because this wasn’t WCKD’s first rodeo with her. Long before they shaved her mind down to name-only and stuffed her into a Maze, she had been circulating through their internal reports like a bad omen none of the analysts could agree how to phrase without sounding superstitious. Entire departments spent months trying to reduce her into language that made her manageable, and every time they got close, she’d hit another facility and make the report outdated before the ink dried. By the end, some of the lower-level staff had started talking about her like she was folklore wearing boots. The first site she hit had been a supply depot buried three miles off a refugee corridor. It held transport drones, fuel reserves, suppressant canisters, med shipments, and enough ration stock to keep all of their operations running for another month. Cassandra installed charges and hit it at night. The drones went first, gutted before they ever got off the pad, then the fuel, but not in one stupid fireball, no, she split the detonation so the blast wave traveled outward from the reserves instead of inward toward the adjacent shelter where civilians were sleeping wall to wall on concrete. WCKD lost transport, fuel, and mobility in under thirty seconds, while the shelter beside it woke to noise and smoke but not collapsed roofing. The blast pattern was so neat, so insulting in its restraint, that one of the engineers reviewing the damage actually wrote whoever did this knows what they're doing in the margin of his report, as if the alternative explanation had been God personally deciding to sabotage them with mathematically obscene precision. Trucks stopped arriving where they were supposed to. Patrols ran dry. Drone routes went blind. Their little empire coughed and stumbled, and the civilians they’d been starving suddenly had a breathing gap. The second was a records hub. She didn’t blow it, she fucking stole it. Slipped in, copied everything, and left the building standing so WCKD wouldn’t even realize the wound until it started bleeding. By the time they cought on, names were gone. Routes were gone. Transfer schedules. Medical inventories. Subject movement logs. Suppression trial rosters. Intake lists from camps that had been “misfiled” so parents would stop asking. Coordinates for holdsites where children were kept prior to transport. People suddenly knew where their missing kids were being held. WCKD spent the next several weeks moving facilities in a panic, burning records, purging staff, changing codes every forty-eight hours like a frightened animal. The third? She’d turned their own infected containment against them. Set steel traps in a dry riverbed where the infected tended to drift at night, then triggered WCKD’s perimeter alarms from the opposite side so their security teams ran straight into the stampede they thought they were preventing. She didn’t have to kill anyone herself. Didn’t even need to stay long enough to watch.

The fourth and fifth strikes were the ones that dragged her out of local reports and into executive briefings. WCKD was already calling her a “high-priority hostile” by then. She’d taken down relay towers. Burned lab equipment. An entire batch of Flare suppressant went bad overnight, every sealed unit contaminated, every test ruined, every shipment dead on arrival, yet not a single canister in the civilian ration queue had been compromised. She’d pulled kids out of holding cells, dozens at first, then hundreds as copycats started using her methods, studying her wreckage like field notes. WCKD sites stopped feeling like untouchable fortresses. She didn’t do things like a psychopath. She did things like a surgeon. Maximum loss of function. Minimum collateral. She made them spend money faster than they could explain spending it. Made board-level people lose sleep. Made Ava Paige lose sleep.

They tried to catch her. They set ambushes with decoy prisoners, hoping she’d rush the wrong cage. She walked perimeter twice, watched body language instead of faces, and left without touching the bait. They sent an extraction team with drones overhead and sniper nests tucked into rock rise blind spots. She led them into a dead zone where the heat warped their optics, the sand jammed their drone intakes, and the old relay rock beneath them turned comms to static. By the time they regrouped, she was gone, along with the prisoners and more than half their ammo. Nothing ever worked. It was like she had a sixth sense and saw three steps ahead at all times. WCKD finally got her on the seventh base. The site itself wasn’t special. Another secured facility on paper, another node in the machine. But this time they layered the perimeter with a containment field and loaded the air systems with engineered sedatives tuned not to knock a body out outright but to slowly convince the nervous system that fighting had become too much. She still made it ten more steps than anyone expected. She still reached for a weapon. She still managed to spin, grab a man, and yank him backward into her. That man happened to be Janson. One second the team had her half-ringed and wavering, the next she was on him from behind, one arm locked around his chest, the other forcing his own sidearm up under his jaw and then higher until the cold of it pressed against his temple. Even drugged, even losing the battle with her own body, her control had been obscene. He remembered the heat of her breath at his ear. The steadiness of her voice while the world was already dimming around her. No panic. No big heroic speech. Just a promise delivered in a tone that made his stomach go tight. You're coming with me and you won't like where I'm going. That was all. Janson had gone still so fast it embarrassed him in hindsight, because in that instant he understood that this girl didn't give a single fuck if she died right then and there. She acted like someone who had made peace with death long before that room. And Janson knew with terrifying clarity, that if she’d had one more clean second, if the sedatives had hit half a breath later, she would have pulled the trigger with his skull pressed to the muzzle and not wasted a thought on whether she survived the aftermath. They took her down. A second wave of sedatives. Hands wrenching her arms back while her body finally stopped agreeing with her. But even falling, even with her knees folding and the gun ripped out of play and six people on her at once, her eyes stayed on Janson. Not wild. Not confused. Calm. Memorizing. That look followed him into quiet rooms for months. Into showers, where the water hit tile and for one stupid second his body would think it was footsteps and his shoulders would lock before his mind caught up. Into briefings. Into those little waking pockets between dreams and dawn when the body mistakes memory for immediate danger and sends panic through you before your thoughts catch up. He started checking doors twice. Started turning his head faster when he heard female voices behind him in corridors. Men like Janson did not like being afraid. They liked being informed, armed, insulated by systems and rank and the fiction that being in danger was something that didn't apply to them. Cassandra had ruined that for him with a single whisper in his ear. So Janson had tried to get her killed. He recommended termination, suggested risk thresholds had been exceeded, flagged her as too costly to retain, too dangerous to secure long-term and to justify continued resource drain. He even cited morale. Not I am terrified of her, but that personnel exposed to prior contact demonstrated measurable stress responses detrimental to site performance. Then he sent it up the chain and waited for the approval that should have made any practical sense.

It never came, because Cassandra’s brain, once WCKD got it under glass and light and algorithmic scrutiny, stopped being a security problem and became a profit center. They had profiled bright minds before, immune minds, adaptive minds, strategic minds, minds that responded well to induced stress or memory fragmentation or controlled terror scenarios. They had built entire departments around ranking children by how much money their neurology would make. But Cassandra’s scans had landed on tables full of experts and made them sound religious in the briefings. Her numbers didn’t just trend high. They embarrassed the models. Pattern recognition so advanced it made predictive simulations break formation. Spatial processing that let her grasp and retain complex evolving structures at speeds the analysts had to replay twice because the first pass looked like machine error. Response mapping under pressure so unnervingly clean that one senior neurologist, a man who hadn’t sounded impressed by anything in fifteen years, leaned back from the screen and said, very softly, “That is obscene.” WCKD had never profiled anything quite like her. She didn’t merely solve patterns. She seemed to feel where they were headed before the pieces finished arranging themselves. They found her immunity gene later than they should have, which irritated everyone involved because WCKD functioned on the “time is money” idiom. In hindsight, the signs had been there, but in the beginning, they used the wrong methods because the people designing the tests thought in straight lines. They assumed extreme stress would be enough. Pain stimulus. Sleep deprivation. Isolation. Extreme temperature shifts. Sensory deprivation. Controlled fear induction. Physical exhaustion. Torture, in all the respectable scientific wrappers WCKD preferred to put around the word. They built rooms that froze and rooms that denied time. They strapped her down, denied food, denied sleep, shocked muscles until her teeth cut the inside of her mouth, flooded her system with compounds meant to trigger fight-or-flight responses and then measured the chemistry like miners panning a river for gold. Nothing. Not nothing in the ordinary sense, her brain responded, of course it did, she suffered, she endured, but not the response they wanted. They were looking for a specific biochemical cascade, a substrate tied to their cure work, and no matter how much they hurt her directly, the readings never spiked high enough. Her body took everything and converted it into control. She gave them data, yes, but not the miracle curve they wanted. Some of them argued she was a failed investment. Others argued for escalated force. That was the stage where Janson began praying that somebody, anybody, would authorize a simpler ending. Just fucking kill her.

Then one of their psychiatrists finally figured her out. It happened during one of the paired stress trials. Another detainee, male, already fraying under repeated exposure, began breaking down in the adjacent chamber. Hyperventilation, crying, incoherence, the works. Cassandra heard him and her readings went vertical. Her whole neural profile lit in a way it never had under direct assault. That flood they’d been hunting, sudden, clean, measurable, potent, arrived all at once when the pain belonged to someone else. After that, they tested the pattern. They built chambers where other prisoners were suffering within earshot. Rooms where they staged triage failures, suffocation scares, coercive interrogations, all while Cassandra was restrained somewhere nearby with too many sensors and pulse monitors. If the suffering was directed at someone else and she could hear it, or see it, or even infer it from interrupted sound patterns and half-finished pleas, her brain produced exactly what they needed, impressive quantities of it. They ran enough sessions to remove doubt, then the psychiatrist wrote the two words that would follow Cassandra through every higher-level discussion after: pathological selflessness. Her nervous system could not remain neutral when other people were breaking. Their suffering breached her by force. She wasn’t deciding to care. She was built to care, couldn't help it, and under the right pressure, that care became chemistry. WCKD had seen that and thought: excellent, we have just the right thing for you. Enough pressure to keep her nervous system cooking. Enough human collateral to trigger that reaction again and again and again. Yeah, putting her in a Maze was only logical. Her brain would make more of that juice they needed for the cure, and when she eventually got out, because they knew she would, they'd be there to collect it.

And now, Janson had been tasked with building an immaculate story so Cassandra wouldn't suspect a thing. A mission against WCKD. Give her a cause shaped exactly like her values. It would ring true to someone like her. She’d want to believe in protecting, in saving, in rebuilding. And seeing that she hadn’t lunged for a gun, hadn’t poisoned the others against him in the first five minutes the way the old Cassandra would have, Janson let the old knot at the base of his skull loosen by half a degree. Maybe the memory wipe had made her less of a prick. Maybe the Maze had left her worn down enough to be guided, if not exactly controlled. (Who was he even kidding, he was fucking terrified. Every tiny thing she did hit old wiring. The slight twitch in her hands when he said his name. The way her shoulders had gone rigid and then deliberately loose. The moment her eyes lifted and met his and something in his body remembered cold metal at his temple and the sound of her voice in his ear. His heart had been racing ever since he saw her again in that ruined lab. He'd seen how many highly trained adults it took to put her on the floor, and how even on the floor she had still looked like a person making plans. Breathe, he told himself. The wipe held. Paige signed off. The med team confirmed no bleed-through. She does not know you. She does not know herself. The Maze dulled her. But then, what if she does? What if she's simply waiting for an opening? What if—)

The chopper droned on with that steady, soul-flattening whum-whum-whum that sank into bone and made every thought feel like it had to swim through syrup before it could reach the surface. Outside the small windows, the wasteland dragged on beneath them in endless strips of dead color, all sand and heat shimmer and wind carving long scars into the earth like the world had been flayed and left out to dry. The boys watched it with the focus of people trying to measure survival in real time. How far could you walk in that? How long before your throat started bleeding from thirst? Could you hide anywhere? Could you fight out there? Could you outrun anything, or would the world itself just grind you down slow until one day you stopped moving and became another shape in the sand? Chuck was the first to fold. He’d cried himself empty twice over, had watched too much, lost too much, and he was still young enough that his body hadn’t learned the adult trick of pretending it could go on forever if fear demanded it. His chin dipped. Jerked up. Dipped again. His eyelids fluttered with this stubborn little effort, like he was trying to glare exhaustion into backing off through sheer attitude. It did not. One minute he was still staring out at the desert, the next he sagged sideways into Alby’s side, all resistance gone out of him at once. The others held on longer. Paranoia kept them awake. It had their spines straight and their hands tight and their eyes cutting to every soldier, every rifle, every little change in Janson’s expression. But eventually, despite all that suspicion and anger and adrenaline, their systems started giving way. Heads dipped forward, then jerked back up slower each time. Lids grew heavier. Winston fought it with the panicked desperation of someone who fully believed sleep around these people was the same thing as suicide, but his breathing had already gone long and even, and every time the helicopter hit a patch of rough air his body sagged another inch farther into the wall. Thomas kept blinking hard and rubbing one hand against his own knee as if pain might help, but even he had that drawn, distant look by then, the look of somebody so worn through the nerves had stopped broadcasting properly.

Cass sat stiff as wire. Spine straight. Jaw set. Hands folded too tight in her lap. Eyes glassy but still open, because every cell in her body screamed the same thing: don’t sleep around strangers with guns. The problem was that her body did not particularly care what her mind wanted. The ache in her bones had gone too deep. It wasn’t normal tired anymore, not the kind you could reason with or bully. This was the sort of exhaustion that crawled into your blood and whispered just one second. just one blink. Her head tipped sideways against Newt’s shoulder and stayed there. Pale strands had slipped free from her braid and lay against his neck and the side of her face. Her lashes rested dark on skin gone too pale with exhaustion. The necklace Minho had given her was still there, glinting at her throat every time the helicopter shifted and the light caught it. Newt eased her sideways from the hard angle of his shoulder until she ended up curled in his lap with her cheek pressed against his chest. One hand moved into her hair, fingers combing through and separating strands, smoothing them back from her face in slow repeated motions. Each stroke felt like a vow he could not yet say aloud. Newt loved her with the kind of seriousness that made his chest go oddly calm once he stopped trying to resist the word. Not infatuation. Not some panicked attachment born only of shared trauma and proximity, though there was enough of both around to feed cheaper feelings for years. But no, this had gone deeper. He loved the shape of her mind. Loved the dangerous immovable mercy in her. Loved the way she learned people. The way she catalogued strengths and weaknesses and always ended up gentler with those details than the world had been with hers. Loved that she would tear herself open to protect others and hated that about her in equal measure.

There had been a time that Newt had not been able to imagine lasting in the Glade another hour, let alone another day. The place had not merely frightened him then. Fright was ordinary. Fright was manageable. Newt had hated the Glade down to its very marrow. When he first arrived, long before he had the wit to hide pain behind sarcasm, long before he knew what the boys would all become to him or how many steps it took to get from the Pit to the Homestead after drinking too much moonshine, he had tried to end it. He'd climbed the wall and had thrown himself off it. He remembered it in flashes more than a continuous line. His hands bloody on the stone. His breath shredding in his chest. The shouts below, boys he didn’t know yet, boys who would one day matter more than his own breath, all of them strangers then, voices trying to pull him down from something he had already decided was mercy. The absolute certainty in him that this was not survivable. He’d looked up at the sky, at those unseen bastards presumably watching from somewhere, and shouted at them, I don’t know who you people are, but I hope you’re happy. I hope you get a real kick out of watching us suffer. And then you can die and go to hell. This is on you. Yet, the wall had not given him death, only a ruined leg for months and the humiliating lesson that the human body, however willing the mind may be to call it quits, was a stubborn little bastard built to cling and last.

And now, he found himself absurdly, painfully grateful that he'd failed. Grateful that the universe had kept him alive long enough to meet her. Even with the world gone to sand and sickness and laboratories full of corpses, even with all the boys they had lost and all the things he wished he could unsee. Cass had changed his days in the Glade so completely that now, looking back, Newt could hardly line the two realities up as the same place. Before her, every morning had been a continuation. One day connecting to the next by sheer inertia. After her, mornings had become something he looked forward to. He looked forward to hearing what wild thing she’d say that day. To finding her already awake somewhere, map pages spread around her like she was trying to personally out-think God and see her smile when he said good morning. To her exasperated expression when he made a stupid pun. To the moments she drifted toward him without even seeming to know she was doing it. He had started looking forward to her laugh. That sound had rewired something in him. Cass laughed like she had not expected joy to make it through all that iron in her and was a little annoyed that it had. Newt had spent whole days to earn the softer version of it, the quiet one that slipped out when it was just the two of them. He loved the brighter version too, the one from tht happened when someone said something so stupid that she bent forward laughing. And those moments slowly began to matter more than getting out. That was yet another scary thought. Newt had spent so long wanting out that he thought the wanting itself was part of his skeleton, that if someone cut him open they’d find escape written down the inside of his ribs. Outside had become a religion, though none of them knew what outside meant anymore except not this, not here. Then falling in love with Cass happened to him, and suddenly, getting out became an afterthought.

It wasn’t madness, this strange sharp tilt his mind had taken toward her while the world kept collapsing in fresh and inventive ways around them. If anyone had cracked open his skull right then and asked how the hell he could be sitting in a helicopter over a dead planet with boys missing from the count in his chest and end up thinking about her, the answer would’ve been uglier than romance ever sounded in stories. He wasn’t being insensitive. He wasn’t choosing her over the dead like the dead had become light enough to set aside. It was shock. It was grief so large the mind had to take it in pieces or be crushed flat under the whole of it. It was that stubborn part of him reaching for the one thing that still made life feel inhabited instead of merely endured. There are only so many times the mind can look directly at ruin before it starts hunting for a reason not to step into it willingly. And Cass was that reason now, whether he’d meant her to become it or not. Parts of him had not caught up to the room with Ava Paige killing herself on the screen. Parts of him had not caught up to the Box, to the Glade gone grave-quiet, to the sight of boys they’d laughed with lying dead in the grass. So his mind, clever and cowardly and desperate in equal measure, had reached for the one thread that did not immediately end in screaming. There was a bleak little lucidity in him about it. He thought, dimly, that maybe that was how people lived through endings, not by becoming hard enough to feel nothing, but by becoming momentarily fixated on the one small living thing they could not bear to lose. Maybe that was what love did in places like this. It did not make grief smaller. It gave grief a rival. Something bright enough to stand in the same room as horror and keep the room from belonging to horror alone. He lowered his cheek lightly to the top of her head on that thought, closed his eyes for one blink too long, long enough for sleep to drag him under.

Gally drifted off not long after, though “drifted” made it sound gentler than it was. One moment he was still glaring at Janson like he meant to remember the exact shape of the man’s face for future violence, his jaw set, one boot braced hard against the floor, the next his head rolled back against the metal wall with a thunk and he was out. Frypan slumped sideways slowly, one shoulder bumping Winston’s. Winston startled at the contact, blinked at him for two seconds, then gave in too, curling around his own middle and falling asleep with his cheek against the cabin wall like a child on bad transport. Thomas leaned back into the bench and let his head loll to one side, lashes dropping shut. Alby’s chin dipped once toward his chest and jerked back up. Then again. The third time it stayed down. His arm around Chuck loosened. Janson watched it all with the patience of someone who’d spent a lifetime learning how to make people think they’d chosen a path that was actually built beneath their feet from the very beginning. Of course they couldn’t stay awake. Not with the sedatives pumped through the trackers buried in their necks. He could have dropped them the moment they stepped aboard. Hell, he could’ve dropped them back at the lab if he’d wanted to deal with unconscious cargo instead of frightened adolescents. But that would have made them harder to win over later. You didn’t want them thinking they’d been taken. You wanted them thinking they’d given in. You wanted them thinking they’d chosen to trust him. It kept the mind softer when it woke. Less likely to bite.

When consciousness came back hours later, it wasn’t gentle. Gunfire cracked sharp and close, so close it sounded like the air inside the helicopter was splitting. The chopper shuddered violently, metal screaming somewhere underneath as if something had slammed into the frame. Alarms barked over the rotor noise in ugly mechanical bursts. Red light strobed. Men shouted over each other. Someone was shaking her shoulder, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. Newt. “Cass—up, now!” She blinked and the world came back wrong. Tilted. Too bright in flashes and too dark in between. She sat up too fast and nausea rolled through her so hard it felt like her stomach was trying to evacuate through her throat. Her mouth tasted like metal. Her head pounded behind her eyes with a dense ache that had nothing to do with ordinary sleep, and somewhere in the back of her skull a thought peeled itself free through the fog. You didn’t choose that sleep. The ramp at the back of the helicopter was open. Wind and grit tore through the cabin in whipping hot gusts, carrying the scent of fuel and scorched metal. Minho was being dragged by one of the soldiers, boots scraping the floor while he fought to find his balance, one arm still jerking as if he meant to swing at somebody and his body simply hadn’t caught up with the decision yet. “MOVE! GO!” the soldier barked.

The night outside was chaos. Floodlights burned white across the sand in huge cones that made everything beyond them look even blacker by comparison. A massive building loomed ahead, all clean hard lines and brutal angles, too modern and too whole against the wasteland around it. Its windows blazed white. Its walls were smooth and pale. Soldiers had formed a ragged defensive line between the helicopter and the entrance, boots dug into sand, rifles kicking in controlled bursts as they fired into the dark. Muzzle flashes strobed across the dunes and lit shapes that should never have been moving like that. And the sounds, Jesus Christ, the sounds. Human throats doing inhuman things. Not words. Not cries. Snarling. Howling. Wet guttural shrieks that sounded like language had rotted away and left only hunger behind. The kind of noise you only made when the part of you that understood being human had been stripped down to nerve endings. Cass’s stomach dropped. The first infected she saw was close enough that she could make out the wet shine of its teeth and the black spit stringing between them as it ran. It moved wrong. Too fast and too jerky at the same time, like its joints were suggestions now and pain no longer existed as a concept worth obeying. Black veins webbed its face and neck in hard branching lines, the skin around them stretched too tight and waxy, as if something underneath was trying to claw its way out. A soldier opened fire and the thing’s head snapped back in a burst of black. It folded in half and hit the sand, twitching, immediately trampled by the next one behind it. More came pouring out of the dark beyond the lights, shape after shape stumbling and sprinting and hurling itself forward with a speed that made the whole line of soldiers look awfully small. Newt had her wrist and he was hauling her toward the white glare of the building where two soldiers by the doors waved frantically with one hand and fired with the other. Gally was right behind them dragging Chuck by the upper arm, half carrying him because the kid’s legs were moving but not usefully. Alby shoved Winston forward so hard Winston nearly pitched face-first into the sand. Thomas came out of the helicopter already running. Minho, on Cass’s left, stumbled once and then caught himself. An infected lunged out of the dark with one arm hanging wrong and its mouth open wide enough to show the blackness coating its teeth. Minho reacted on pure instinct, driving a kick into its middle so hard the thing folded and tumbled sideways in the sand. A soldier fired before it could get back up. The shot blew through its temple and painted the dune behind it in a dark wet fan. Cass caught the flash of its mouth, the black saliva, the jerking rage in the limbs, and Ben hit her all over again. She saw him in the Slammer, veins black, eyes gone wrong, and then Newt’s hand jerked her forward and the image tore loose before it could root.

They crashed through the doors of the building in a wave of bodies and heat and gunfire and panic. The last few soldiers staggered in after them backward, still firing into the dark until the final instant before the heavy metal panels slammed shut and locks clanged down in a brutal sequence. The gunfire outside dulled at once. Not gone. Just sealed out. Muffled under layers of reinforced wall. The snarling still came through, a scratching pressure at the edges of hearing, like the building itself was trying not to acknowledge what was throwing itself against it. Inside...everything was pristine. White walls. Polished floors so clean and reflective they threw back the blood and dust on the Gladers like a taunt. Bright sterile lights humming overhead with the particular indifferent buzz only medical buildings and laboratories seemed to have. The air smelled wrong after the desert, cold and processed and filtered, touched with antiseptic and something citrusy beneath it. It was jarring enough to make Cass’s brain stutter. Outside was apocalypse, all sand and infected and gunfire. Inside was a pretty little hospital brochure.

Hands were on them instantly. Soldiers, medics, whatever the hell they were, it was hard to tell with the pounding in her skull and the flood of white and the afterimage of muzzle flashes. One reached for Frypan. Another for Thomas. Two moved toward Gally as if somebody had read a file and drawn the correct conclusion that he was a group project. A woman in pale scrubs and a tactical vest came at Cass from the side and Newt from the front. Cass twisted away from the first grip, elbow coming up fast, mouth opening to—A sting at her neck. Her knees buckled before her brain fully registered it. She dropped into someone’s arms, vision tilting, the room sliding sideways like the ground had decided to quit on her. “Cass!” Minho shouted, lunging, but then he staggered, legs going soft under him all at once. Gally swung on pure reflex and connected. There was a satisfying ugly crunch as his elbow hit somebody in the jaw. For one glorious half-second his face lit with the bright violent satisfaction of having at least hurt something. Then he stiffened, eyes widening with pure betrayed fury, because he’d been tagged too. He got one step farther before his muscles turned traitor and his body pitched sideways into the waiting arms of two men who looked entirely too practiced at receiving furious collapsing teenagers. Newt hit the floor hard, breath punching out of him in one blunt sound. The world blurred around him and whatever they’d put into him started flooding his limbs with lead. Thomas was already down. Winston was being lowered. Chuck was trying to reach Alby when his legs folded. Alby himself was swearing right up until something found his neck and took his body out from under him too. Cass tried to fight it. She tried to claw focus back with sheer violence, tried to root herself in spite, in the sound of her own pulse. But her vision had narrowed to a tunnel already. Voices stretched and warped like they were reaching her through water. “Vitals?” someone asked. “Stable. Sedation effective.” “Prep them. Standard post-extraction.” “If they ask?” “Infection screening. Mandatory.”

They worked fast. Too cleanly for this to be the first time they’d done it. Gurneys appeared from nowhere and one by one the Gladers were rolled onto them. Restraints snapped over wrists and chests and ankles. Fingers checked pulses. Lights were shone into eyes. Blood pressure cuffs hissed tight and released. Needles flashed. Tubes filled. Somebody clipped something metallic against the base of Cass’s skull, right near the place where the sting had gone in, and a fresh wave of nausea twisted through her. She drifted in and out of consciousness in that ugly middle place where you could hear and could not act, where the body had become a locked room and you were on the wrong side of the door pounding with numb fists. The ceiling above her was painfully white. Too bright. The medics lingered near her table, double-checking her restraints, whispering to each other as they adjusted the scanners over her head. “She’s… still reading high.” somebody murmured. “Even sedated. Brainwave’s… wild. Still can’t believe she’s human.” Each word floated toward her and then drifted apart before she could pin them down. Something cold slid into her arm. The ceiling light above her doubled and smeared and went liquid.

Janson’s gaze lingered on Cass. His mind was still stuck on the “what if she remembers, what if she knows” spiral. Not possible, he told himself for the nth time. WCKD had assured him repeatedly that the wipe was permanent, clean, stable. No cracks. But fear did not care about official language. Fear cared that there were still things in this girl’s brain no report had fully been able to predict. Fear cared that the sedated body on the table was the same one that had crippled facilities, starved operations, pulled children from WCKD’s hands, and nearly put a bullet through his skull while drugged. He turned away before he did something stupid like let his expression show. “Keep her monitored,” he said, voice way steadier than he felt.

“Yes, sir.”

The boys woke like they were dragged up from the bottom of the ocean by their throats. For the second time today. There was no soft edge to it, no drifting, no merciful slide back into themselves. The room hit them in blinding white slabs, the ceiling too bright, the walls too clean, everything washed in that hospital glare that made skin look sick and eyes look hollow. Limbs answered slowly, like thought had to travel through wet cement to reach them. Minho surfaced first with a groan that sounded dragged out of him by force. He blinked hard against the light and tried to sit up only to discover that his body had all the grace and cooperation of a wet sock. The room lurched sideways and he had to slap a hand to the mattress to stop himself tipping right back over. His head swung left, then right, trying to force his vision into something useful. White walls. Rows of beds. Then familiar shapes resolved out of the blur one by one. Alby’s broad shoulders on the next bed. Newt on another. Thomas half-curled like somebody had dropped him there instead of placing him. Frypan. Winston. Gally. Chuck—Hold up. That ain't right. Minho’s eyes tracked over them again, sharper this time, panic cutting through the fog like a blade through cloth. Alby. Newt. Thomas. Frypan. Winston. Gally. Chuck. “Cass.” He pushed himself upright, ignoring the way his skull throbbed in protest, and scanned again, with even more focus, like that would summon her into existence. She's not here. His pulse climbed so hard it started banging in his ears. “Cass.” Louder. Sharper. The word ripped out of him with the beginning of panic. “Where’s Cass?!” Thomas jolted upright so fast the whole bed frame rattled. He made it halfway vertical before the sedatives reminded him they were still there and his body lurched sideways. One hand clamped to his forehead like he could physically hold his brain in place. “Wha—” His voice was rough, still drowned in whatever they’d put into them. “Minho—” Then he saw the expression on Minho’s face and whatever else he’d been about to say died immediately. His eyes snapped across the room and began doing the same count. Newt. Alby. Frypan. Winston. Gally. Chuck. Minho. Him. Eight. Thomas went pale so fast it looked like his blood had simply decided it wanted out. “No.” Alby planted both palms on the mattress and sat up, shoulders bunching under the thin shirt they’d put on him. His eyes did one sweep of the room and stopped dead on the same realization. Cass is not here. Newt woke wrong. His stomach rolled before his eyes were even open, the chemical aftertaste of sedation still thick at the back of his throat. He turned his head and nearly gagged at the brightness. The world swam in white and hum and lingering rotors that weren’t there anymore but had somehow stayed vibrating in his bones. His body felt disconnected, too heavy in some places and too far away in others, like he’d been put back together by someone who had not cared much about getting the wires right. Then he heard Minho’s voice, “Cass—” and he was upright before the room had fully steadied, the motion bringing black spots skittering across his vision and another violent wave of nausea up into his throat. He swallowed against it and then counted. Refused. Counted again. Refused. Counted again. No no no no no. He could feel panic coming up under his ribs like a flood—

But before any of them could stand, throw punches or get ideas to burn the whole place down, a voice cut across the room, way too calm for the situation. “No reason to panic.” Every head snapped toward the doorway. A woman stood there. Early thirties, brunette, white coat, clipboard tucked under her arm like it was an extension of her skeleton. Everything about her was arranged. Hair neat. Posture easy. She looked like the human version of fluorescent lighting. The sort of woman who said awful things in kind tones and expected gratitude for the packaging. “You’ve just been tested for infection,” she said. “We had to make sure you were clear before welcoming you into our safe zone. It's protocol. The tranquilizers were for your comfort. You kids tend to be terrified of any standard medical procedures after those awful Mazes so we saved you the trouble.”

Minho couldn't belive what he was hearing. “Saved us the—” He was already on his feet despite the room still trying to sway under him. “You shot us!”

The woman’s smile didn’t falter. “Would you have come quietly?”

Minho's jaw locked so hard a muscle jumped near his temple. Every inch of him had gone rigid with the kind of fury that came from being too weak for the violence your body wanted. He took one step forward, but Alby’s hand hit his forearm without looking, hard enough to stop him cold. Winston made a low miserable sound from his bed. Frypan blinked at the woman as if he was expecting her to continue with, also we’ve stolen your kidneys, but don’t fret, we used very clean tools, and we did it for your comfort, obviously. Gally finally sat up, rolled his shoulders, each joint clicking faintly, and stared at the woman with the expression of a man memorizing a face for future head trauma. The woman tilted her head, every inch of her body language radiating practiced de-escalation. “Whenever you’re ready, I’ll show you to the cafeteria. You should eat. It will help flush the sedatives and reduce the nausea or other side effects you may experience.”

Newt wasn’t hearing any of it. His mind had narrowed down to a single fact and was slamming against it over and over hard enough to bruise itself: Cass isn't here. “Where's—” Alby cut over him before the question could come out raw enough to show too much. “There were nine of us when we came in. There's eight of us now.” An awfully polite way of saying what the hell have you done with Cassandra?! The woman’s smile thinned a fraction. “Oh, she’ll join you boys shortly,” she said. “She’s still waking up.” A lie. They all knew it the second it left her mouth. Minho’s hands curled into fists so tight the knuckles went pale. Thomas’s leg started bouncing where he sat on the edge of the bed. Gally’s mouth curled in pure disgust, like he was already picturing how many vertebrae the woman could survive losing. Chuck’s eyes darted between their faces. Frypan rubbed one hand over his mouth and looked, for one brutal second, like he might simply sit back down and refuse to participate in this nightmare any further. Newt held the woman’s gaze for a long second, long enough that her smile started to feel less secure. But eventually they followed her into the hall. They couldn't afford to cause a scene now, not with Cass missing.

The hall was just as goddamn white, clinical, artificial, and scrubbed of personality as the room they’d woken in. White walls, white floor, white lights buzzing overhead in perfect little rows, every surface polished to the point of insult. Doors lined the corridor at measured intervals, each one marked with neat little labels in black lettering. The air smelled like disinfectant and something sweet that made Minho’s stomach roll because it felt like they'd sprayed the place with everything’s fine perfume. If this was a safe zone, it sure as hell didn’t feel like safety. Safety didn’t echo like this. Safety didn’t shine. Safety didn’t have people in white coats giving you prepared answers while the person you were looking for stayed out of sight.

At the end of the corridor, a set of double doors slid wide enough to reveal the cafeteria. It was massive. Long rows of tables stretched beneath banks of white lights, trays stacked in neat towers at the serving stations, steam drifted up from plated food in soft white ribbons, the sound of forks against ceramic, low conversation, chairs scraping against tile. Dozens of kids filled the space. Boys and girls both, scattered through the cafeteria in little clusters and broken islands. Some looked barely twelve, others were older, their shoulders wider, bodies carrying the same hard edge the Gladers had grown into over time. Some ate silently, others huddled together, shoulders angled inward, talking too low to hear. For a moment, they just stood in the doorway, frozen. Girls. Not one. Not Cassandra’s singular, breathtaking, impossible presence. Dozens. A whole sea of them. Braids. Loose hair. Crooked ponytails. Freckles. Sharp eyes. Soft faces. Scarred knuckles. Some staring openly. Some pretending not to. Some glancing over and then looking away. Minho had half-expected something to hit him, some leftover spark of fascination, the thing that had leveled them all when Cass rose out of the Box like some otherworldly apparition, but nothing came. His stomach didn’t flutter. His chest didn’t lurch. No awe, no gut-pull. If anything, the unease only went deeper because the absence of that old thunderclap made one thing brutally, stupidly clear. The magnetism hadn’t been girls. It had been her. Cass had wrecked the damn scale. No one else even registered in the same category. Minho would've laughed if his throat wasn't so tight with worry. Thomas felt the same hollow drop. It felt like standing in a crowd and realizing the one face you were desperate to find wasn’t there, and suddenly every other face blurred. It wasn’t that the girls weren’t pretty. Some were. But the room felt empty of the one person his eyes were built to search for now. Newt scanned the room like a man looking for a missing limb. Cluster by the back wall. Pair near the windows. Two blond heads. Neither hers. A girl in a brown jacket turning toward the noise. Not her. Another farther left with pale hair cut short. Not her. Where are you. Where are you. Where are you. Where are you. Where are you. Chuck pressed himself closer to Alby, fingers hooking in the older boy’s sleeve. “She’s okay, right?” Alby didn't answer, just squeezed Chuck’s shoulder once. The woman leading them didn’t slow. She ushered them toward a long, empty table near the edge of the room. The Gladers moved automatically, keeping close to one another. Minho brushed Thomas’s shoulder on one side, Newt stayed close enough to Alby and Chuck to reach both if needed, Gally let Frypan and Winston pass before him, then they sat, one by one, benches cold and too smooth under them. Within minutes, trays appeared. Roasted potatoes glistening under oil and herbs. Steak with an actual sear on it, juices still shining at the cut edges. Vegetables too, bright and steamed. Real color. Real heat. The smell alone was enough to make their mouths water. Frypan stared at the steak like it was a religious experience and a trap at the same time. You could actually watch the conflict happen across his face. Awe. Suspicion. Hunger. He leaned in slightly, nostrils flaring, eyes narrowing as if his nose alone might determine whether the seasoning was genuine or if these bastards had somehow faked meat too. Winston looked at his own plate like it might bite him. Minho stabbed the steak once, the fork sinking in with real resistance, and then just… stopped. He wasn’t hungry. Gally didn’t look at his plate at all. He sat with both forearms braced on the table and his eyes fixed on the doors, waiting for Cass to walk through. The room full of girls barely registered beyond one blunt irritated realization: none of them were worth his attention. Where the fuck was she?

Newt wrapped his fingers around the water glass. Didn’t drink. Looked at the doors. Looked at the guards. Looked back at the doors. His whole body had gone into that silent state of alarm where every sound came through too clearly and none of it was her voice. No dry “what fresh hell is this?” from behind him. No flat “you guys are a bunch of drama queens” cutting through the tension. His thoughts wouldn’t settle. They kept snagging and restarting. If she was hurt, if they had separated her because she fought them, if she woke up alone, if she thought they’d left her—his stomach twisted so hard he almost had to lean forward with it. One girl with a shaved side cut and sharp eyes watched the Gladers over the rim of her cup with open curiosity, then glanced toward the doors too, as though she’d noticed the shape of their attention and understood they were missing someone important. At another table, a boy no older than thirteen smiled at Chuck. A trio of older girls whispered to each other with the low murmur of people measuring newcomers and trying to guess their story from scars and posture alone.

That’s when the cafeteria doors slid open and Janson walked in. Heads turned in unison. Forks paused halfway to mouths. Conversations clipped off. A girl near the back straightened so fast her chair legs scraped a sharp line against the floor. It rolled through the room in widening circles until the whole cafeteria had subtly reoriented around him. The bastard knew how to make an entrance, Newt thought dimly, with immediate disgust. On the chopper he’d looked like a soldier trying too hard to seem reasonable. Here he looked polished. Dark uniform fitted too well, every line of it pressed and clean, boots shined, hands clasped neatly behind his back as he stepped up onto a raised platform at the front like he belonged above them by design. “Good evening, gentlemen. Ladies.” His voice carried easily. “You already know how this works.” A wave of quiet excitement rippled through the room. “You hear your name called,” Janson continued, gaze sweeping over them with the calm of a man distributing mercy, “please rise, and in an orderly fashion join my colleagues. They’ll escort you to the eastern wing, where your new lives are about to begin.” Scattered clapping broke out. Some of the kids actually looked happy. Big smiles. Wet eyes. A girl at the far table covered her mouth with one hand and laughed once, shaky and bright, like she was trying not to cry. The Gladers exchanged looks across their table with identical what the fuck is this written all over their faces. One of the guards stepped forward and handed Janson a sleek black tablet. The kind of device that looked far too expensive and clean for a world gone to rot. Janson glanced down at it, then back up at the room. “Connor. Adeline. Justin. Peter.” Each name was met with cheers and applause from the tables. A burst of noise and movement and relieved laughter. Four kids stood from different points around the cafeteria, all grinning like somebody had opened a gate in the sky just for them. Connor, an older boy near the center actually punched the air once before catching himself and trying to look more composed. Adeline looked stunned for half a second, then her face split open in joy so quick and helpless Newt felt sick watching it. Justin slapped Peter on the shoulder on his way up and nearly knocked over his cup because he was smiling too hard to coordinate properly. Guards moved in from the walls and the four of them followed like they were walking toward sunlight. More applause. Somebody wolf-whistled. One of the younger girls by the windows laughed outright and shouted, “Told ya you're next!” Janson kept on reading. “Abigail. Franklin… and Anna.” More cheers. More chairs scraping. Groans came too this time, envious from the ones left behind, as if this ritual had become normal enough for their disappointment to have rhythms. “Lucky bastards,” someone muttered loud enough for half the room to hear. Janson smiled at that, and then, comforting, “Now now, don’t be discouraged. If I could take more, I would. But there’s always tomorrow. Your time will come too.” Newt’s skin crawled. It was the tone more than the words. That indulgent, paternal little thing. The way he spoke to them like a teacher managing a raffle and not a man deciding which traumatized children were moved where and when. It set every alarm in Newt off harder than the white coats had.

At the Gladers’ table, Minho leaned sideways toward the nearest occupied table where an older boy sat with two others. Sunken cheeks. Too-sharp eyes. Minho pitched his voice low. “Where are they going?” The boy didn’t look away from the departing group. His eyes followed them all the way to the glowing doors on the far wall like he was trying to walk with them by sight alone. “Far from here,” he murmured. “A better place.” His mouth twitched with something that might’ve been envy or worship. “They say it’s a real town.”

Minho frowned. “Better place?”

“Better than here,” the boy said. “Just…” He shrugged. “Better.” His eyes cut briefly to Minho. “They can only take a few at a time though. I really hope they take us next.”

Before Minho could ask more, Newt’s chair scraped back across the floor so violently the sound cracked through the cafeteria like a shot. He was on his feet before anybody around him processed the movement. “CASS!” His voice rang hard and raw across the room, louder than he'd ever been, loud enough that every conversation died at once. Glass overlooked a corridor outside the cafeteria, and there she was, their Cassandra, surrounded by guards, walking fast, head angled forward. Her hands weren’t visible. Her posture was controlled, but her jaw was clenched so tight it looked painful. A strip of white bandage circled one forearm. Every Glader jerked upright with him in the same heartbeat. Minho was standing before his brain had caught up. Gally came up in one violent motion that sent his water sloshing across the table and onto the floor. Thomas stood so abruptly his knee hit the underside of the table with a crack he didn't even feel. Cass turned at the sound of Newt’s voice. Not fully. Just her head, quick over one shoulder, enough to make eye contact with him. Newt felt the message in his bones. Not fear. Not help me. A warning. Don’t do anything stupid. Then she faced forward again and kept walking. “No—Cass!” Newt called again, louder, ignoring the fuck out of her warning, already moving, one step, two, toward the nearest door out of the cafeteria. A guard stepped in front of him immediately, palm up. “Hey, hey. Relax. Sit down.” Relax. Newt nearly hit him on reflex. Not because he was the sort to make scenes. He wasn’t. God knew he wasn’t. He was the one who calmed scenes. Managed them. Smoothed edges before they turned into cuts. But seeing her after the panic of not knowing where she was, after forcing himself to sit at that table and pretend there was strategy in patience when all he wanted was to tear the place apart looking for her had snapped something in him. He had to get to her. Full stop. Minho was at his shoulder by then, breathing hard through his nose, every tendon in his neck standing out. “Where are they taking her?” he asked. “They’re just patching her up properly,” the guard said blandly. “She’ll be done soon.” Gally made a sound like he was chewing on the lie before spitting it out. “Bullshit,” he muttered. The guard’s eyes flicked to him and away again. Gally straightened another inch, jaw locking hard enough to crack teeth. He wasn’t posturing this time. There was no bark in it, no performative aggression. Just the very real possibility that if anyone put a hand on her wrong, this cafeteria was about to become a crime scene. Frypan had gone pale. They had done something to her and the fact that all he had no power to stop it made his stomach turn colder than the sedatives had. Newt stood there another second longer, breathing hard. The guard’s expression did not change and another one was already angling closer. The cafeteria had gone very, very still. He could feel all those other kids watching now, fear climbing through the room because this was out of script and they weren't playing along. Alby caught Newt by the sleeve and tugged once. Not now. Newt let himself be pulled back. His body sat before the rest of him agreed to it, bench cold under him again, pulse still kicking hard against his ribs like it wanted out. Two younger boys near the serving line looked almost scandalized, the way kids did when rules they’d accepted got broken in front of them. One girl by the wall had gone very still, watching Newt like she recognized that look in him, the look of somebody one wrong sentence away from causing an incident.

When the room resumed breathing, three older boys edged closer. One of them, tall and dark-haired with a scar near one eyebrow leaned in slightly. “Never do that again.” Newt turned his head and looked at him with the flat, cold stare of a man in no mood whatsoever to receive life advice. Minho turned first, ready to chew the guy out. “Do what?” The boy shot a quick glance toward the guards. “Never make them explain things. They hate that.” His voice dropped another notch. “They get pissed if you ask. They’ll bump you to the back of the list.” Then the second boy added, “See that guy over there?” He nodded toward a skinny teen at a far table, hunched over his tray with his shoulders bowed in around himself like he’d been trying to disappear for days and hadn’t succeeded. “Been here a week. They say that’s the longest anyone’s lasted on the waiting list. He asked too many things and he’s still waiting his turn.” Frypan looked over at the kid, then back at them. “How long have you lot been here?”

“Three days,” the first boy said, “But tomorrow's ours. I'm sure of it.”

Newt barely processed most of the conversation. Pieces caught. Enough to matter. A list. Punishment for questions. But all of it kept sliding against the same wall and failing to stick because his thoughts were still in the corridor with her. He saw Minho’s anger sitting there like a live wire and Gally’s restraint hanging on by its fingernails and Thomas’s leg still bouncing under the table. “How do they know our names?” Minho asked. The third boy shrugged. “Maybe missing kids lists. Maybe they’re psychic. Don’t care, man. As long as I’m far away from those things...” His eyes flicked to Chuck, softened by a fraction and explained. “Everyone in our Maze got infected but us three. If this town has no infected like they say, then that's exactly where I wanna be.”

Gally’s voice came out low and flat and mean enough to cut with, not giving a single flying fuck about the guy's backstory or anything he had to say, really. “They took one of ours.” No room for the boy’s hopeful little mythology about better places. The first boy blinked at him, thrown for half a second, then made the catastrophic mistake of smiling like Gally had just said something reassuring. “That’s good, though,” he said, glancing between. “You should be happy for her. Means she got picked early.” Happy. Minho’s stare could’ve stripped paint off the walls. Newt clicked his tongue under his breath, the sound sharp and disgusted. Frypan looked at the kid the way a man looked at a burnt pan. The boy seemed to finally notice the tension, so he shifted, cleared his throat, and stuck a hand out, trying to smooth things over. “Caleb,” he offered. “Tyler,” the second one said quickly, like names might save the moment if they stacked enough of them on top of it. “Leo,” said the third, a little more wary, his eyes already flicking between Gally’s shoulders and Minho’s jaw like he had better instincts than his friends and had realized only now that the table he’d leaned toward was not a normal one. The Gladers gave their names back, but every introduction came out clipped and bloodless. “Alby.” “Newt.” “Minho.” “Thomas.” “Frypan.” “Gally.” “Winston.” Even Chuck mumbled his own because everyone else did, though he barely seemed to know his mouth was moving. Names thrown over the top of a panic attack felt fucking ridiculous, but here we are. Caleb, apparently mistaking their silence for space to keep talking, leaned in again. Maybe he wanted to ease the tension even more. Maybe he thought this was how boys bonded. Or maybe he was just genuinely stupid. “So…” he said, lowering his voice and putting a smirk on it. “She that good of a lay to get you all this worked up?”

The air at their table dropped ten degrees.

The words weren’t even fully out before Gally moved. His hand shot across the table, fingers catching Caleb’s collar, and the next second the boy was yelping as Gally hauled him up and over the table with enough force to make the dishes jump. The tray in front of Caleb went skidding, fork clattering, water sloshing across the polished surface. Tyler swore and half stood. Leo froze. None of the Gladers stopped Gally. Thomas didn’t even blink. Frypan actually sucked air between his teeth in a sharp little hiss like he had it coming. Newt’s fingers clamped around the edge of the table so hard the tendons stood out across the back of his hand. Gally dragged Caleb close enough that their faces were only inches apart. “Say that again,” he said. “Go on. Say it.” Caleb’s feet scrambled uselessly against the floor. Whatever grin he’d been wearing had collapsed into pure alarm. “I didn’t—I was just—” Two guards reached them before Gally could decide whether one smashed nose counted as overreacting. One shoved in from the side, bracing a forearm between bodies, while the other grabbed at Gally’s wrist and tried to pry his hand loose. Gally resisted long enough to make damn sure everybody in the room understood the point, then he finally let go with a last rough shove that sent Caleb stumbling backward into Tyler and Leo. Tyler caught him under the arms, eyes wide. Leo looked like he wanted very badly to say something and equally very much wanted to keep his teeth where they currently lived, so he settled for glaring.

It was almost impressive, really, how many times the Gladers could silence an entire cafeteria in the span of ten minutes. Alby exhaled heavily, rubbing a hand over his face. This was exactly what they didn’t need. More attention drawn to them. If they made themselves a problem, they might never get near Cass again. The guards didn’t let it go at a warning. “On your feet,” one of them snapped. No room for argument. Just the flat expectation of compliance backed by enough bodies nearby that refusal would become physical very quickly. Newt shifted as he rose, just enough that his body blocked Chuck from the soldiers’ direct line of sight. Small movement. Instinctive. Protective in the way he always got with the kid. Alby noticed it and moved too, broadening the shield on the other side without a word. Minho shoved his chair back with a scrape and stood looking like a man choosing not to throw the first punch of six only because somebody he loved was not in the room to watch yet. Thomas came up with his shoulders high and his mouth in a hard line. Frypan muttered something under his breath and pushed back from the table. Winston rose slower, already regretting the fact that his body belonged to situations like this at all. Gally remained standing exactly where he was, chest rising and falling once, twice, staring over the heads of the guards at Caleb like he was still deciding whether the lesson had been sufficient. They were marched out. Not violently. No rough grabbing. No dramatic hauling. Just close enough presence, just enough pressure. A hand at the back if somebody slowed. A shoulder guiding too firmly near the turns. The sort of handling designed to preserve the illusion that nobody was forcing anything while making it very clear that cooperation was not optional. The cafeteria fell away behind them in a hush of whispers. Newt could feel the eyes on their backs all the way to the doors. The corridor they took this time was narrower. Same white walls. Same disinfectant smell. They got shoved through a set of heavy metal doors at the end of the hall into a dorm-like room. Long and rectangular. Metal bunk beds bolted in rows, thin mattresses, folded gray blankets at the foot of each. No decoration. No color. No windows worth speaking of, just a narrow slit high up near the ceiling that showed nothing useful but a slice of night. The doors clanged shut behind them, and then came the lock: a sharp metallic slide and click that echoed too loud. The Gladers stood there for one beat, staring at the door as if that might unlock it. The second the guards were gone and the last sound of boots outside had faded, Minho started pacing. Long strides. Fast turn at the wall. Back again. The room was too small for the amount of panic in him. Every step said the she’s out there, they have her— Thomas went straight to the door and tested it once, twice, because some part of him wanted to prove the click had lied. It had not. He pressed his forehead to the metal for one second and then stepped back, hands on his hips, breathing through his nose like he was trying not to sprint through solid matter. Newt sat on the edge of a lower bunk because if he stayed standing with the others his body was going to choose violence before his mind had the chance to object. Elbows on his knees. Hands clasped loosely enough to look calm, tightly enough that the tendons in his wrists stood out. “She wants us to stay put,” he said. It sounded stupid the moment it left him, especially after he had ignored that warning once already and shouted her name a second time across the cafeteria, but he also knew that if they gave these people more reason to separate them, more excuse to label them difficult, it could result in not getting anywhere near her again.

Gally spun on him immediately, frustration burning in every line of his face. “She just looked back, Newt. That could mean anything.” He flung a hand toward the locked door, then toward the hallway beyond it like outrage itself might punch through walls. “What, you a translator for her now?” His voice cracked on the edge of anger and fear. “What if they threatened her? What if they told her they’d kill her? What if she was trying to stop you because—” He broke off, jaw working. Because saying the next thought out loud would make it too real. Because she’d absolutely let them hurt her if it kept us alive. Everyone in the room knew that already. “Nobody’s killing anyone—” Alby tried. “How do you know?” Gally snapped, rounding on him so fast the anger barely had time to change targets before it struck. “Because far as I’ve noticed, you only make the promises. She’s the one keeping hers.” His chest heaved. “She got us out just like she said she would. She—We can’t just sit here and—”

“Oi!”Newt’s voice cracked sharp enough to stop the room, dragged up from somewhere near the base of his spine where all the fear had hardened into edge. “Don’t you talk to Alby like that.” Silence hit the room for half a breath. Everyone turned toward him, because this was Newt. Newt, whose whole thing was being the pressure valve, the one who turned conflict down, not up. And yet there he was on the bunk edge, one frayed nerve away from cracking in a direction no one in the room wanted to witness. His gaze fixed on Gally and did not waver. “If she looked back at us like that, then she had a reason for it, and I am not making this worse for her because I can’t keep my own head on straight for five bloody minutes.” Gally stared at him, jaw shifting, some of the fight in him stalling not because he agreed, but because Newt’s voice carried something he could not easily hit back against. Winston, who had been hovering uselessly near the far bunk with all his nerves outside his body, finally threw up his hands. “We’re locked in here because that guy asked a question,” he said, voice climbing. “Tell me that’s not insane.” Minho stopped pacing so abruptly it looked violent. He turned on Winston in the next breath. “We are not doing this again.” His voice was pure threat. “Last time we did, Thomas broke your face. I’d rather not make that a tradition.” Winston bristled at once. “I’m just saying maybe grabbing people by the throat every time they say something stupid isn’t exactly helping—” “Then stop saying stupid things,” Gally shot back, already shifting half a step toward him, like he might enjoy round two. Alby’s voice cut straight through it. “Are you done? All of you?” They weren’t. But they shut up anyway because he looked exhausted. More exhausted than any of them had seen him in a long time. “This girl,” he said, and his voice roughened around the word in spite of him, “spent the last few weeks breaking herself to get us out of there. Losing sleep. Driving herself mad over details and routes and what-ifs so we’d make it. And before any of that, she was in the same place we were. No memories. No clue what was coming. Just dumped into hell and expected to make sense of it.” His gaze moved from Gally to Winston and then to the rest of them in turn. “And instead of panicking or making it about herself, she thought about us. Every damn time.” He let that sit. “You lot tearing strips off each other because one idiot made a comment is useless. You think this helps her? You think she needs us in here acting like children? She's out there alone and whatever’s happening, we’re not making it better by turning on each other.” Gally looked away first. Not submission. Just the sort of guilty recalibration that came when someone you respected put your anger next to something bigger and all at once it looked stupid.

The room deflated by degrees.

Chuck had been silent through all of it. Curled into the corner of a lower bunk, knees up, trying to stay small, trying not to be the sort of kid who made trouble when bigger boys’ tempers started smashing around the room. He always did that when people fought. Folded in on himself like maybe if he became less visible the anger would pass over him, but his chest had been hitching for a while now, and eventually the sob broke loose anyway. It bubbled up ugly and helpless and all at once the room’s remaining tension snapped toward him instead. Everyone turned. Chuck’s face was scrunched and wet and red-eyed. His voice came out small and cracked. “Why do you hate each other?” They didn’t. They were just frightened and powerless and too on edge to tell the difference between anger at the world and anger at the nearest familiar face. Newt was off the bunk in a heartbeat, kneeling in front of Chuck so fast his own body barely seemed to register the motion. His whole voice changed when he spoke. “We don’t hate each other, Chuck.” He brushed a thumb under one of the kid’s eyes, wiping away the wet there. “It’s just… a disagreement.” Chuck hiccupped, looked around at all of them with the brutal clarity children sometimes had. “Cass would tell you this is stupid.” That landed like a dropped stone. Newt let out a breath he had not realized he’d been holding. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “She would.” Chuck’s lip trembled. “I just… I want her to be okay.”

That did it.

Every single boy in the room looked away at that, guilt hitting all at once. Gally scrubbed a hand down his face. Minho stopped moving entirely and stood with his head bowed a fraction. Thomas sat down on the nearest bunk with a long exhale. Winston stared at the floor. Frypan closed his eyes briefly and pinched the bridge of his nose. Newt swallowed against the tightness in his throat and kept his hand gentle at the back of Chuck’s neck. “So do we,” he murmured. “That’s why everybody’s so wound up.” He looked over Chuck’s head at the others then, pressing the next words harder, not loudly, but with enough force that nobody could pretend to miss them. “But we’re done with that now, yeah?” He held their eyes one by one. Winston gave the smallest nod first. Gally took longer, but eventually he looked up and muttered, “Whatever.” Alby exhaled like someone had finally stopped pressing against his temples.

They eventually started climbing onto the bunks because there was nothing else to do. No pacing room except the narrow strip between bunks. No corridor to search. No window big enough to climb through. Just four walls, one locked door, and the knowledge that somewhere on the other side of both, Cassandra was alone with people none of them trusted. The metal frames creaked as they settled in. Springs complained. Somebody’s boot hit the ladder rung with a hollow clang. Chuck curled under his blanket. His eyes stayed open longer than they should have, trained on the door until the effort of keeping them there became heavier than the worry. Alby leaned over the side of the upper bunk and told him low, “Get some shut-eye, Chuck,” in the closest thing to gentleness his voice could manage under the circumstances. Frypan lay on his back, eyes fixed on the ceiling. He hoped it wasn't cold where they took her. He hoped she had blankets if it was. He hoped they weren't hurting her. God, how he hoped they weren't hurting her. She should’ve eaten more before they left the Glade. He should've nagged her about it. Thomas sat on the edge of a top bunk first, elbows on his knees, staring at the door so hard it was a wonder the metal didn’t give, then he stretched out but propped himself on one elbow, still looking, then he rolled onto his back and dragged one forearm over his eyes. His leg kept bouncing against the mattress. Every now and then he’d sit up again, listen, exhale sharply through his nose, and lie back down with the same restless frustration. Being made to stay put while Cass, Cass, of all people, was off somewhere in this place, possibly hurt, was chewing through him. Gally lay on his back with one arm under his head and the other over his middle, staring at the underside of Thomas’s bunk. If they touched her wrong, I’ll break somebody’s hands. If they lied to us about it, I’ll break somebody’s neck. If she comes back hurt and says, I’m going to burn this place to the ground. He was worried sick. The sort of worry that made his skin feel too tight and his heart feel too large for his ribs. Cass had become part of the structure in his head labeled ours. People in that structure were not supposed to vanish down white hallways while he sat on a bunk like some obedient little prisoner. Minho, on the upper bunk, did not lie still for more than twenty seconds at a time. He flopped onto his back. Rolled to one side. Flung an arm over his face. Yanked it back down. His foot tapped against the metal railing until the frame started making a dull repetitive ping that set everyone’s teeth on edge. Newt finally looked over, and that was enough for Minho to mutter, “Yeah, alright,” and stop. For maybe thirty seconds. Then he started up again, this time with his fingers instead of his foot. Newt lay on a lower bunk with his hands laced over his stomach. Every noise in the building felt aimed at him specifically. The hum behind the walls. A distant door opening somewhere in the wing. Footsteps that weren’t coming here. He listened to each one with his whole body. He kept trying to reason with himself. If they wanted her dead, they wouldn’t march her where you could all see her. That was the logic. It was sound. It did absolutely nothing to ease his worry. Patience felt like treason and the image of her waking up and finding none of them there made something feral in him rake its claws down the inside of his ribs.

Minutes passed. Or hours. The room had that strange elasticity where time either dragged itself across your nerves one second at a time or skipped whole chunks without asking. Newt had gotten so used to listening for footsteps in the hall that at first he thought the noise came from there too. A faint metallic tick. Then a scrape. Not outside. Inside. Lower. His head lifted. Minho heard it next. He stopped moving altogether, one leg hanging off the bunk, body going alert in a single clean line. Thomas sat up so fast the mattress springs let out a complaining twang. Alby didn’t move much, but his entire face changed, eyes narrowing toward the floor. Gally was already half off his bunk when the sound came again—a little click beneath one of the lower bunks near the wall, then the slow grind of metal shifting against metal. Not loud. Whoever was doing it was trying very hard not to make noise. Frypan slid off his mattress. Winston looked like all the blood in him had gone to hide in his spine. Chuck made the tiniest startled inhale and clutched his blanket to his chest like that might count as defense. Eventually, the maintenance vent panel under a bunk shifted and a rectangle of darkness opened under the bedframe, dust drifting out into the room in a pale, dirty ribbon. Fingers appeared first, gripping the lip from inside, then the panel got pushed aside with one careful shove and a skinny body started wriggling out from underneath the floor vent like the room itself had coughed up a kid. His shoulders scraped. One knee knocked the metal. His hair was dusty.

Nobody even saw Gally move. One second the boy was still dragging himself free of the vent, and the next Gally’s hand had already hit his collar. He yanked him up so fast the back of the boy’s shirt bit into his throat and his feet barely found the floor before he was pinned against the side of the bunk, eyes huge and breath gone. “I’M TRYING TO HELP YOU FIND YOUR FRIEND—” He blurted before Gally could say a word, voice coming out thin and panicked.

Newt felt his heart kick so hard it hurt. Relief came at him so fast it almost made his eyes burn. A way to her. That hit his chest like the first clean breath after being held under too long. He knows something. He’s seen something. He wouldn’t say that unless— Then the other half of him crashed down over the first one immediately. Or he’s lying. Or he’s bait. Both thoughts landed together and tore at each other inside him. He couldn't move. He was too busy holding the room in focus and keeping himself from grabbing the kid and shaking the answer out of him with both hands.

Gally did not loosen his grip. “The hell did you just say?” His voice was low enough to do damage all by itself.

The kid swallowed hard, fingers scrabbling once at Gally’s wrist before he seemed to think better of making that a physical issue. “The blonde girl,” he said quickly, breath snagging around the pressure on his collar. “The one you all nearly tore the cafeteria apart over. I can help you find her.” Minho was off the bunk by then, eyes raking over the boy in one fast sweep. Skinny, too-thin wrists, nervous eyes, the exact same one those boys in the cafeteria had nodded toward and said he’d been here a week because he’d asked too many questions. The one nobody picked. Thomas was on the other side of Gally now, not touching the kid but close enough to stop him if he bolted. “Gally,” Alby said. Gally held the boy another second anyway, jaw grinding, eyes locked on his face as if he might find the lie physically sitting there if he stared hard enough, then, with visible reluctance, he let the collar go. The kid stumbled back into the bunk frame and caught himself with both hands. “Talk,” Gally said. “Fast.”

The boy coughed once, dragged in a breath, and rubbed at his throat. Up close he looked even younger than he had in the cafeteria. Sixteen at best. His cheeks were hollow, his hair hacked too short in places like he’d cut it himself with bad tools, and there was dust up one sleeve and across his knees from the vent crawl. His eyes kept flicking to the door every few seconds like he expected it to open on a guard at any moment and was already calculating just how fucked that would make him. “I saw you in the cafeteria,” he said. “And I thought, finally, someone who looks at this place and sees something wrong with it. I’ve been trying to warn everyone since I got here but they all think I’m either insane or bitter because I haven’t been ‘picked.’” The word came out with enough contempt to prove he’d stopped believing in the room’s little theater days ago. “They keep saying I can’t stand watching other people get lucky. But I saw it with my own eyes. This place—” He exhaled sharply, realizing he’d come in too hot.

“Go on,” Newt said, even though his mind was screaming was tell me where she is, tell me how to get to her, tell me what they’re doing to her, tell me now now now. He kept his face still anyway, or as still as he could manage with his pulse trying to batter through his ribs. The others looked at him when he spoke, maybe because they heard the strain there too. Or maybe because Newt was usually the one putting shape to panic, not letting it leak through his own words. He didn’t care. The kid had information. Every second spent dancing around it felt like blood loss.

The boy nodded once, hard, and tried to arrange his thoughts into something less frantic. “First day they brought me here, they told us the same thing they told you. Safe zone. Wait list. Real town. Better life. All that.” His mouth twisted. “I didn't believe it, so I went to see for myself.” Thomas looked at the vent opening. “Through there?” The kid nodded. “The panel under my bunk wasn’t screwed all the way in. I didn’t get far though,” he said. “The vents don’t run everywhere. But I saw enough.” His face had gone paler while he spoke, which seemed difficult given where he’d started. “There’s a room on the lower level. They wheel gurneys in every night.” His voice dropped lower. “You can't see their faces. They’ve all got white sheets over them and tablets clipped onto the side rails with vitals and stats and all these numbers.” He saw the panic ripple through the room and spoke faster, trying to keep ahead of it. “I don't think they're dead. The nurses wouldn't check their stats if they were. After they check, they roll them into this room and the doors seal and they never come back out.”

The words hit like thrown bricks. Newt felt the room drop away around them. The kind of internal falling you got when a fear stopped being abstract and started putting on clothes. Gurneys. Sheets. Tablets with vitals. A room downstairs. Cass somewhere else in this building after being separated from them. If he let the full picture in, even for a second— His eyes flicked toward the vent and then the door. Minho dragged a hand over his mouth like he could physically hold the panic in. It didn’t work. His eyes had gone too bright. Too wide. Every bit of him looked seconds from movement. “How do you know they never come back out?”

“I watched for hours the first night,” the kid said. “Then the same thing happened the next day. And the day after that.” His eyes flicked toward the vent. “It happens a little after they call the names. Six names, six gurneys. Eight names, eight gurneys.”

Winston made a small sick noise. “That’s not… that can’t…” Frypan had one hand pressed hard to the bunk post beside him. Chuck looked like he might cry again. Thomas’s fists had curled so tightly his nails were biting his palms. Newt couldn’t look at any of them for long. If he did, he’d see his own horror reflected back and lose whatever little hold he still had. Minho found his voice first. “You said you can help.”

The boy reached into the back of his waistband and pulled out a keycard. Gally leaned in by half an inch. Alby’s gaze sharpened. Thomas looked from the card to the vent to the kid’s face. Newt’s entire body tightened. A keycard meant access. “I took it off a guard three days ago,” the kid said. “It opens doors.” His fingers tightened around the card. “I haven’t used it because if I get caught, nobody would even know I'm gone. I have nobody here who'd look for me or back me up.” He looked around at the Gladers, and this time there was no attempted humor in him at all. “You've got each other. And that girl,” He glanced at Newt, then at Minho, then at Gally. “She seemed important to you.”

The understatement nearly made Minho bite him. “She is,” Thomas said, before anybody else could answer with something stupider. The boy nodded once, like he’d expected as much. “But only one of you can go. Too many bodies means too much noise and too big a chance somebody hears a vent shift and we're all done for.”

Silence. The sort of silence that only happened when a room full of frightened people all arrived at the same terrible conclusion at once and then immediately began trying to decide who got to move toward it. “I’m going,” Minho said immediately. Not even a beat of delay. Just the words, out and certain, like they’d been waiting behind his teeth the whole time. He was already half turned toward the vent like momentum alone might count as a plan.

“No,” Alby said.

Minho swung on him. “What do you mean no? I'm the fastest—”

“I mean no.” Alby’s voice stayed low, which only made it stronger. “You’re the first one in this room who’ll lose his head if you see something you don’t like.”

“That applies to all of us,” Minho shot back.

“Not equally,” Frypan muttered.

“I’ll go,” Newt said.

Heads turned.

Minho looked at him so sharply it was almost a physical strike. “No.”

Newt turned to face him. “Yes.”

Gally shook his head. “You're the second one in this room who'll lose his head if you see something you don't like. You almost started a riot back there.”

Newt bristled. “She was right in front of us,” he snapped, and there it was, some of the raw panic finally slipping through. “Excuse the bloody reaction!”

“You're both ruled by your feelings right now,” Alby said, aimed at both of them.

Gally opened his mouth, clearly about to say then I’ll go, but Newt cut in before the first syllable got out. “Volume alone rules you out,” he said flatly.

Winston, in one of the very few useful interruptions of his life, got there before Gally’s outburst did. “How do we even know this isn’t a setup? He could be leading one of us straight to—”

The vent-boy blinked. “If I wanted you gone, I could’ve told them you were planning something, not crawled through vents and choked on dust to do charity work.”

That was, unfortunately, a fair point. The room sat with that for half a second, then the boy looked at Thomas. “You,” he said. “You’re coming with me.” Gally laughed immediately, sharp and disbelieving, because Thomas was absolutely also in the ruled by feelings, might lose his head category and everyone in the room knew it. Newt’s whole body jerked in outrage before he even had an argument ready. Alby opened his mouth, probably to say no, but before anyone could throw the room into another full debate, the kid was already on his knees at the vent. He shoved the panel wider, dropped flat, and started crawling back in. Thomas didn't hesitate. He dropped too, heart first, body after, ducking right behind the kid before anyone could stop him. Newt’s voice snapped across the room, but he was too late. Thomas had already vanished up to the hips into the vent.

The metal scraped at Thomas’s elbows every time he dragged himself forward, and each movement sent a low hollow rattle through the narrow space that made him wince. The air in there was stale and tasted like rust and insulation. Dust got up his nose and clung to the back of his throat. His knees knocked every now and then against bolts or seams in the metal and every little sound felt criminally loud. Ahead of him, the kid moved fast, practiced, like he'd done this enough times for it to become muscle memory. Thomas followed one hand, one knee, one breath at a time, his shoulders brushing both walls of the shaft whenever he shifted wrong. They twisted through one junction, then another. Once, the vent dipped sharply and Thomas nearly slid, catching himself hard on his palms and biting back a curse when the metal bit into his skin. The kid stopped twice to listen, hand raised in warning, head tilted toward the thin seams of sound bleeding through the shaft, distant footsteps, some far-off voice over a speaker he couldn’t make out. Each pause stretched Thomas tighter. He wanted to ask how far, how much longer, are we close, but the kid had made it clear in the room that noise was death, and Thomas had understood, so he kept his mouth shut and let his lungs burn. Eventually the shaft widened just enough that the kid could stop without immediately blocking the whole path. He flattened himself beside a vent grate set into the floor of the shaft and motioned Thomas forward. Thomas edged up next to him and looked down through the slats. A hallway. Empty. Long and glaringly clean, lit by the same pitiless white light as the rest of the place. Smooth polished floor. Reinforced doors at measured intervals. No guards in sight, no movement. Thomas had never been so suspicious of a clean corridor in his life. The kid glanced back at him, then reached into his pocket and pressed the keycard into Thomas’s palm. The plastic was warm. “I’ll wait here,” the kid whispered. Thomas looked at him for one second, then he nodded once. The grate gave way with a soft shift when the kid eased it up from the inside. Thomas lowered himself carefully through the opening and dropped down. He landed softer than he expected, knees absorbing the impact, palms catching him on the tile with only a muted slap. For a second he just crouched there, listening, body coiled for the shout that didn’t come. Nothing. No alarm. No boots. Just the hum of lights and the mechanical pulse of some system deeper in the building. He got up and crossed the hall to the reinforced door, and swiped the card. Green light.

The door hissed open with a sound like a throat clearing. The second he slipped inside, his blood ran cold. The room was enormous. Warehouse-sized. Big enough that the ceiling disappeared into dim industrial shadows above the blue spill of light that seemed to seep from everywhere at once. The first thing he saw were the tanks. Rows and rows of them, towering glass cylinders lining the walls, all filled with thick blue-green liquid that glowed from within. Wires and tubes fed into the shapes suspended inside. Little Griever-like creatures. Not fully grown, not as massive as the ones that had hunted them in the Maze, but close enough for recognition to steal all the air from his lungs. Their limbs jerked in slow wet spasms. Their mouths opened and closed in strings of trapped bubbles. Mechanical plating glinted through flesh. One dragged its claws weakly down the inside of the glass with a sound Thomas couldn’t hear but somehow still felt under his skin. Tiny red lights blinked on control panels mounted to the tanks. Labels in sterile text, columns of numbers, specimen codes, nutrient flow rates, maturation stages. The things that had terrorized them reduced to livestock in glowing jars. Thomas’s skin crawled so hard it felt like it might peel itself off him. But then he saw the rows beyond them. Human bodies hung upright in glass pods, all lined up like products on a shelf. Children. Teenagers. Pale under the lights, unconscious, motionless except for the occasional twitch of a finger or a tremor in a shoulder. Each pod had tubes running from arms and necks and ribs, IV lines, drains, monitors, things Thomas didn’t have words for but still understood in his bones. Small displays by their feet pulsed with green lines and numbers, heart rates, respiration, neural activity, blood pressure, something labeled substrate yield, something else labeled extraction stability. Like the bodies were batteries. Cattle being milked. His stomach turned over so hard he thought for one humiliating second he might actually vomit right there on the pristine floor and die in a puddle of his own panic. He went down one row with his eyes jumping from face to face. Not Cass. Not Cass. Not Cass.

Then the door hissed open behind him.

Thomas moved before he thought. One second he was between rows of pods with his heart trying to punch out through his ribs, the next he had thrown himself behind a bank of consoles near the central floor space so fast his boot slipped on the polished tile and nearly sent him sprawling. He caught himself on a metal housing and crouched low in the shadow between two towers of humming machinery, pressing himself into the gap until the edge of a panel dug into his spine. His pulse was a drumline. His palms had gone wet. His lungs were too loud. Footsteps. Voices.

“Sir.” A guard, probably. “She wants to speak with you personally.”

“Can’t it wait?”

Janson. He sounded annoyed, but not surprised. Like this was expected. Thomas hated how calm the man sounded, how casually it moved through all this horror.

“No, sir. She said it was urgent.”

A pause, then the whir of a projector. Thomas risked lifting his head just enough to see through the narrow gap between console banks. A hologram flared to life in the center of the room, crisp and blue-white and sickeningly vivid. Ava Paige. Alive and well. Perfectly composed. Thomas’s whole body went cold in a fresh direction. His brain needed time to accept that the woman whose neat little suicide speech had been played for them in the ruined lab was now standing here in light and speaking like she’d just been delayed by traffic. Hair immaculate. Suit immaculate. Face calm.

“Good evening, Dr Paige” Janson said. “Didn’t expect to talk to you this soon.”

“I’ll be there first thing the day after tomorrow,” Paige said. Her voice came through the projector smooth and absurdly intimate, like she was standing in the room for real. “I trust progress is acceptable?”

“More than acceptable,” Janson said, sweeping an arm toward the rows of unconscious bodies like he was showing off artwork or a garden he'd grown. “The results so far are extremely promising.”

Thomas felt like he couldn’t breathe. Results. Like these were just charts. Like these were just numbers. Like these were not people. Like these were not kids.

Paige’s expression did not shift. “I need everyone you’ve got there ready by the time I arrive.”

“We’re moving as fast as we can,” Janson replied. “Still running final tests—”

“Not fast enough,” she cut in. “Be quicker.” A pause. “Have you located the Right Arm?”

Janson’s jaw tightened a fraction. “Not yet. We’ve tracked them into the mountains—”

Paige interrupted him. “They’ve already destroyed two of our bases following Cassandra’s example. We are at risk. I want them gone before they reach us again.”

Cassandra. The sound of her name went through Thomas like live current. He forgot the room. Forgot the pods. Forgot to breathe. Cassandra. From Paige’s mouth. Not like a new subject. Like a known problem. An enemy. His mind grabbed at it immediately, trying to build structure out of shock. So Cass had history with these people. Enough that they spoke of her like a precedent. Following Cassandra’s example. The Right Arm... Resistance, then. Actual resistance. A group hitting WCKD bases. Not just hope wearing a fake uniform in a helicopter. Help. Or at least opposition. And Cass had been opposition as well before they took her. A grim confirmation of the person he’d already seen in her. Cassandra, who couldn’t stand cruelty. Cassandra, who treated injustice like a personal insult. Cassandra, who would absolutely take a bat to the knee of anyone who dared to do something like this.

“If you’re not up to the task,” Paige said, “I’ll find someone who is.”

Janson’s jaw tightened. “That won’t be necessary.”

“Speaking of which,” Paige went on, and Thomas hated the tiny pause before it, the one that made it sound as if she were shifting to a secondary inventory concern. “How is that going?”

Janson didn’t hesitate. “The memory wipe held. I’d say that the best indicator we have is that she hasn't tried to kill me again.”

Thomas’s fingers dug into the edge of the console. Again. Try to kill him again. Cass had tried to kill Janson before. The looks she gave the man in the helicopter wasn't simple distrust, but something in her that had recognized danger despite the wipe.

Paige’s eyes narrowed. “Losing six bases because of a single girl is something we can’t afford to let happen again. I need her on our side, Janson.” She leaned in slightly, and even as a projection she felt oppressive.

“They’re currently prepping her for extraction,” Janson said. “But everything will go smoothly. I assure you.”

Paige gave one last nod. “See that it does. I want her nice and pliant by the time I arrive. Make no mistake.”

The hologram winked out. The room dimmed by a shade, the blue glow reclaiming the space where her face had been. Thomas stayed crouched there shaking. Janson turned without hurry, guard falling in beside him. The reinforced seal hissed shut behind them. Thomas did not wait. The moment the door sealed, he exploded out from behind the console. Pure instinct and terror and the violent need to get back with what he knew before his own head split from holding it. He nearly slipped on the tile in his first three steps, caught himself on the edge of a workstation, almost shoulder-checked one of the smaller Griever tanks hard enough to set it rocking, and then was sprinting with the keycard in his hand and his breath coming too loud and too raw in his own ears. He swiped the card so hard at the door reader on the way out that he missed the first pass, swore, hit it again, and bolted into the corridor the second it flashed green. The second the kid saw Thomas barrel into view, still upright, still breathing, the air visibly left him. For a moment he looked almost dazed by it, because when he’d seen Janson and the guard go into that room after Thomas, he’d assumed that he’d just sent a stranger to his death. But here he was, white-faced and wide-eyed and moving like the floor behind him was on fire. The kid yanked the vent panel wider and made room. Thomas shoved himself inside so fast the metal tore at his elbows and he barely noticed. The kid dragged the panel back into place and then they were in the shaft again, shoulders scraping, knees hammering metal. Thomas followed him back on pure panic, hands slipping in dust, shoulder banging a seam hard enough to send a hollow clang up the duct. He didn’t even flinch. His head was full of blue tanks and Paige’s voice saying I want her nice and pliant. When they finally burst out back into the dorm, every Glader jolted like they’d been shot. Thomas hit the floor on one knee, palms slapping hard against the tile, then scrambled upright so fast he nearly took the bunk frame with him. The kid spilled out after him, coughing, half turning back toward the vent like he expected the whole shaft to vomit guards after them. Thomas didn’t waste a breath. “WE GOTTA GO!” he shouted, voice already fraying from too much fear and too little air. “WE GOTTA GO RIGHT NOW, THEY’RE COMING FOR US—” He snatched the nearest sheet off a bunk and tore it free so hard the mattress jumped, then crossed to the door and looped the fabric through the handle and around the metal bedframe with shaking hands. Minho was beside him before the knot was half done, ripping another sheet off another bunk to reinforce it. Gally dragged a mattress off the lower frame with one brutal yank, the metal screeching across the floor loud enough to set nerves on edge, and jammed it upright toward the door. Frypan grabbed the second side and shoved with him. Newt had seen Thomas scared. He had seen him shocked, but he had never seen him like this. This was pure terror.

“What happened?” Alby asked, grabbing Thomas by both shoulders, not to stop him, just to make him focus enough to speak in a straight line. Thomas’s voice cracked hard. “It’s WCKD. It’s all WCKD. Paige is alive—” Winston made a noise like his body had given up trying to process one horror before the next arrived. Chuck clapped both hands over his mouth. Gally shoved harder at the mattress as if sheer violence toward furniture could make the rest of the news arrive slower. Newt felt the floor drop out from under him because even if he had expected exactly this, he still hadn’t been ready to hear it said aloud. Thomas tried to keep going and kept running over his own breath. “There were—there—rows of people hanging there with tubes in their veins—” He tore another blanket free and balled it into the gap between the mattress and the wall. “They’re making Grievers in there—we have to go. We have to find Cass. They said they’re prepping her for extraction, they—” That word hit Newt like a blade under the ribs. Extraction. His mind supplied the image around it before he could stop it. White lights. Straps. Tubes. Hands on her. Alby’s voice cut through the panic. “Thomas. Breathe. Tell us what you saw.” Thomas did breathe, once, badly, and then the story came in shards while everybody else worked. Blue-lit room. Tanks. Griever babies growing in liquid. Rows of kids in pods. Vitals on monitors. Janson. Paige alive. Cassandra’s name in Paige’s mouth. The Right Arm. Destroyed bases. The more he said, the worse the room became. The little dorm shrank around them under the weight of it. Frypan stopped pushing the mattress at one point and just stared at Thomas in open revulsion. Winston had gone paper-white. Minho kept moving because if he stopped moving he was going to start smashing things and never stop. Chuck was crying again. Newt helped rip the vent panel open properly with hands that did not feel like his. He was aware, in a dim practical way, that he was functioning very well for somebody whose internal life had become one continuous scream. It was almost insulting. His body was efficient. Useful. It grabbed the edge of the vent, pulled, braced, shifted the bunk enough for access. His mouth even worked. “We find her,” he said, and his voice came out frighteningly calm, as if somewhere in him the panic had burned clean through into something colder. “Now.” Whatever had still been uncertain in that room had just been burned out of it. Cass was in danger.

They shoved in one after another, everything stripped down to movement and breath and whoever was immediately in front of you. The kid went first because he knew the way. Thomas was right behind him. Newt followed close enough that if Thomas stopped suddenly, he’d ram right into him. Minho needed space to remember how to breathe and this was anything but. Alby forced Chuck ahead of him, Frypan came after, swearing under his breath every time his shoulders scraped the metal. Winston was desperately trying not to tremble and was failing big time. Gally came last, dragging the vent panel roughly back into place behind him. Every scrape sounded too loud, fabric dragging over steel, sharp little knocks of kneecaps against rivets, someone’s breath hitching when they caught on a jagged seam. Their movement made the whole shaft shiver around them, as if one bad shove might send the whole thing crashing down around their heads. Eventually, the kid yanked a vent panel open and dropped out into an empty corridor. They followed one by one, soft thuds to tile, knees bending, palms catching. The corridor looked exactly like every other one: white, sealed, overlit. Newt’s eyes swept it in an instant. Left. Right. Camera dome in the corner. No guard in immediate sight—right on that thought, a woman in a lab coat rounded the corner and froze. A bit older than the brunette with the clipboard, maybe in her forties, hair caught up in a careless knot, tablet tucked to her side, badge swinging from her pocket on a retractable clip. Her eyes widened. “What are you kids doing out—” Minho was on her in two steps. He shoved her back against the wall with just enough force to shut her up without cracking her skull, one forearm braced across her upper chest to pin her there. His face was inches from hers. “Where’s Cassandra?” The woman’s throat bobbed. “I—” Gally stepped in closer, cracking his knuckles once, deliberately loud. It was such a cartoonishly violent little sound in such a pristine hall that it worked better than a weapon might have. “Wrong answer and I start redecorating this hallway with your teeth,” he said. Newt's voice, when it came, was low enough she had to listen for it. “You're going to take us there.” She nodded too fast. “Okay,” she whispered. “Okay—” Minho didn’t let go. He just turned her loose enough to move. “Walk.” Corridor after corridor blurred into white and fluorescent glare and identical doors. Thomas saw the pods every time he blinked. The room had burned itself onto the inside of his eyelids. Blue tanks. Griever bodies twitching in fluid. Kids hanging upright in glass while green lines pulsed by their feet. His stomach kept threatening to revolt every time the woman turned them down another too-bright hall instead of where they were keeping Cassandra.

Elsewhere in the building, guards had started their rounds to collect the kids for transfer in advance of Paige’s arrival, and they eventually hit the dorm they’d locked the Gladers in and found enough resistance at the doors to make the curse and call for another man. By the time they forced it open with a metal pry bar, the room beyond sat empty under the buzzing lights. Janson was in the control room, one hand braced on a console, screens stacked across the wall in grids of hallways, wards and lower-level lab access. He turned the second the report hit his ear. “Say that again.” “The dorm’s empty, sir.” Janson blinked once at the monitor like maybe the man had mispronounced reality, then the meaning hit in full. Fuck. Not the dignified irritation he preferred to wear when things went sideways. Not the cool annoyance of a man inconvenienced by incompetence. Real panic. Sharp, humiliating, alive. Paige was going to have his head if Cassandra didn't get there first. “Lock the building down,” he snapped. “Nobody leaves until every subject is accounted for.” His hands were already moving over the console before the order finished leaving his mouth. Security feeds bloomed across the wall in squares of white hallways. Corridor twelve lit up with exactly the sight he did not want to see: a clustered rush of bodies, Crawford in front, pale and stumbling, and around her Cassandra's group driving her forward. His mouth flattened. “They’ve got Crawford,” he said, and then, quieter, uglier, because he saw their direction. Lower east approach. Extraction wing. “They’re going after Cassandra.” He hit another control, one tied directly to the tranquilizer in their trackers, then his eyes locked on the screens. Nothing. No collapse. No sudden stumbles. No wave of bodies dropping. They just kept running. Janson stared, then hit it again, jaw tightening hard enough to hurt. Somewhere deep in the system, a sterile line of text flashed a delayed, blinking refusal across the lower monitor. DELIVERY FAILURE. He felt a fresh flare of rage so sharp it bordered on nausea. Whether the trackers had been damaged, burned out, or corrupted by whatever obscene things her presence seemed to do to every system around her, he did not know. He only knew that the chemical leash had failed, and the building was now full of highly motivated variables moving toward the one subject Paige had all but wrapped in warning labels. “I need them alive.” Then, sharper: “Move.” Guards barked into comms. Fingers flew over panels. Red lockdown markers pulsed across the digital floor map. Hallway doors began sealing in calculated sequence. Sirens started up a heartbeat later, not yet full-volume but rising into being, a growing scream through the walls of the building, like the whole place had realized too late it possessed a nervous system.

Back in the hall, Crawford took a corner too fast and nearly lost her footing. The soles of her shoes slid on polished tile. Her shoulder knocked the wall. She might have gone down if Minho hadn’t caught the back of her coat and jerked her upright again in one violent motion. “If you’re stalling—”

“I’m not stalling,” she hissed, and fear had finally stripped every soothing layer out of her voice. It came out human now. Thin and brittle and fast. “You want extraction prep, this is the fastest route.”

Then the alarms started. Not a gentle warning chime. Not a discreet little tone. Full building alarms. Harsh. Layered. The kind that shot straight into the teeth and rattled the inside of the skull. Red lights began to pulse at intervals along the ceiling, bleeding over the already white halls and making every surface look worse. Chuck flinched so hard he nearly ran into Alby’s back. “They know,” Thomas breathed. Yeah, no shit. A guard came charging around the next corner ahead of them, rifle raised before his brain fully caught up to what he was seeing. His mouth opened, maybe to shout, maybe to call for backup. Minho was faster. He hit him, shoulder to sternum, full speed. The guard flew backward into the wall hard enough to make his head snap once against it before they both went down. His rifle clattered loose. Minho wrenched it free before the man could recover, drove an elbow once into the side of his face for emphasis, then tossed the weapon over without even looking. Thomas caught it automatically. Gally kicked the guard's outstretched hand away from his belt radio before he could reach it.

The woman led them to a set of double doors framed by glowing monitors and biohazard indicators, one of them flashing some long clinical string of words that Thomas only registered in pieces, pre-op, extraction. Gally didn’t bother reading any of it. He just planted one boot and kicked the doors open so hard the impact thundered through the corridor. The room beyond was a surgical suite. White light poured off every surface in merciless sheets, flattening depth, turning stainless steel trays and glass partitions into things that seemed to sneer by existing. Machines beeped in calm, measured rhythms. Monitors glowed in organized rows. Stainless instruments lay arranged with beside a central operating table. Nurses and technicians whipped around at the intrusion, faces draining white in real time. “Where is she?” Gally barked. Thomas, swung the barrel of the rifle toward the nearest nurse on reflex. The nurse choked on her own breath. “WHERE IS SHE?!” Gally roared louder. Every single person in the room flinched like a shot had gone off. One tech shrieked and pointed with a trembling hand toward the far side of the suite.

The boys turned, and the room went silent. Cass. Their brains had to drag the sight of her through too many impossible categories before it would settle anywhere useful. The light overhead made her skin look almost translucent, drained to something that made their minds think of death before they thought of sleep. The dark under her eyes had deepened into bruised shadows. IV lines trailed from both wrists. One ran blue fluid in a slow, cold drip. Another line coiled up toward a hanging bag half-empty above her, clear tubing glinting under the surgical lights. Small sensors had been stuck at her temples and throat. Somebody had put her in a hospital gown. Too much evidence of hands that should never have been on her. Minho felt his stomach drop so violently he thought he might actually fold in half. A second ago he’d been all motion and fury. Now his whole body had seized around the image of her on that table. His first thought was not coherent, not anything noble or useful. It was just a brutal, horrified no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Thomas' rifle barrel dipped. He had just come from a room full of suspended bodies and tanks full of growing monsters, and still this hit him harder than all of it, because those other kids were horror, yes, but abstract in that sickening institutional way horror became when it was repeated too many times in rows. Cass was not abstract. Cass was Cass. Cass who laughed at Minho’s dumb jokes. Cass who threw herself between danger and literally anyone with a pulse. Seeing her reduced to this did something ugly to his pulse. Frypan’s face changed all at once, all the blood draining down and away. Even Gally, whose first instinct in any crisis was to become louder, just stared for one raw beat. Winston’s breath caught so sharply it almost whistled. Chuck looked at her, took in the lines in her wrists and the way she wasn’t moving, and his face crumpled. Even the vent kid, who had only known her through secondhand feral devotion and a glimpse through cafeteria glass, flinched. Newt moved first. “Cass,” he said, and his voice broke right through the middle of her name. He crossed the room in three long strides and touched her shoulder carefully like she might shatter under anything more. Warm. She was warm. The relief of that hit him so hard it almost brought him to his knees. Warm meant alive. Warm meant not gone. Warm meant there was still something here to drag back from these people. Then he saw the tape on her skin up close, the lines in her wrists, the dried antiseptic glisten where they’d swabbed her arm, and terror turned feral in him so quickly it made him sick. He turned on the staff so fast the motion made one of the nurses flinch back into a tray stand, hard enough to rattle the instruments on it. “Wake her up.”

“That isn’t—” one doctor started.

“WAKE HER UP!” Newt shouted. The force of it came from somewhere under thought, under speech, under all the social machinery that usually made him measured and sensible and the one people leaned on when things went bad. There was no diplomacy left in it. No careful tempering. It was pure terror. He was one second away from crying and one second away from breaking somebody’s jaw and the only thing keeping either from happening was the fact that she was right there under his hand and all his body knew was that she had to open her eyes. She had to. He could feel his own pulse in his throat, in his teeth, behind his eyes. He wanted to throw every metal tray in the room through every glass surface until the place bled. He wanted to burn every person who had ever signed their name beneath anything that put her on this table. Gally took the rifle right out of Thomas’s hands and shoved the muzzle against the temple of the nearest doctor. The woman gasped, hands flying halfway up in surrender. “You wake her up right now,” Gally said, “or I blow your brains out and let somebody else have a go.” He meant it. Every person in that room knew he meant it. Even Alby, who would absolutely have stopped him under different circumstances, did not object. The doctor's hands shook so hard she almost dropped the syringe case the first time she grabbed for it. “There’s something,” she stammered. “It won’t clear it, but it’ll pull her up enough to—”

“Do it,” Alby said immediately. Seeing her there, seeing the one who had dragged all of them out of the Glade reduced to vitals and tubes and a chart on a clipboard—She had become one of his. The instinct to kill over that was so old in him it barely felt like thought. The woman drew a dense yellow liquid from a vial with fumbling fingers and injected it into the line still running into Cass’s arm. All of them waited. The alarms outside kept shrieking. Somewhere beyond the doors, boots slammed past, then doubled back, then voices cracked sharp through radios. Then Cass’s lashes fluttered, one tiny movement, and her eyes opened, sluggish and unfocused, pupils too slow in the light. “The fuck—” she rasped. Her voice was rough, wrecked, confused, but it was hers. Every single one of them nearly went under from relief. Minho made a sound between a laugh and a sob and covered it by dragging a hand over his mouth. Thomas had to grip the end of the surgical tray so hard it rattled because his knees had suddenly gotten dangerously interested in giving up. Frypan let out a long shuddering exhale through his nose and had to look away for one second just to keep himself together. Gally lowered the rifle just a fraction without realizing it, all his fury briefly punched through by the miracle of her being alive enough to cuss. Winston, who had looked on the verge of collapse ever since Thomas said the word extraction, actually put a hand over his own eyes for a moment like he couldn’t survive the release of that much tension without blocking part of the world out. Chuck’s face broke open entirely. He made a tiny sound and clapped both hands over his mouth again to stop himself from crying harder. Even the vent kid smiled, small, quick, genuinely happy for them in the middle of all that terror, like watching this many people get their person back had touched some bruised thing in him that hadn’t died yet. Newt’s whole body softened in one involuntary wave.

The first thing Cass saw, just like when she’d woken up in the Glade after that awful first night in the Maze, was Newt. She squinted up at him, vision sluggish, features struggling to reassemble the room around his outline. “Newt—”

“Yeah,” he breathed. “I’m here. I’m here now.” He slid one arm around her shoulders and began helping her sit up. “We’ve gotta go.” Cass looked... confused. Not just groggy but misaligned, like her mind had been pulled out of sequence and jammed back in crooked. Her eyes moved over the room in halting little catches, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.

Around her, the room snapped back into motion. Gally put the rifle back in Thomas’s hands and stared shoving a metal supply cabinet across the doors. It screamed on the tile with a noise that set everybody’s teeth on edge. He got it into place just as the first impact came from the other side. The whole cabinet jolted. Instruments jumped on nearby trays. Gally braced one shoulder into it, muscles jumping under his shirt, face already red with strain and fury. “MOVE!” he barked, but his eyes kept cutting back to Cass every half second in the most hilariously transparent display of care he’d ever accidentally committed. The look practically screamed, if you die right now I’m going to fucking crumble. Chuck hovered near the table, hands fluttering uselessly because he wanted to help and had no idea how. “Cass—”

“I’m fine,” she muttered automatically, which would have been convincing if she hadn’t looked like someone had drained half her blood and replaced it with static. Newt bit into his cheek hard enough to taste blood. She wasn’t fine. His whole body was screaming at him to pick her up and carry her but his brain kept reminding him she’d stab him if he treated her like glass while she could still stand, so he settled for steady hands and the kind of closeness that let her lean if she had to. She and Newt took one step and the nausea hit her full force. The floor tilted under her. Her knees threatened to fold. She leaned into Newt without meaning to. “Okay,” she said through her teeth, voice thin with the effort of keeping control. “Okay.” The vent kid looked at the scene and some small voice in his head went, even through all the alarms and shouting and panic, oh, these two are in love. The kind you could spot because one person’s pain had clearly become the organizing principle of another person’s entire nervous system.

Minho moved to help reinforce the barricade because his hands needed something to do besides shake. He hit the cabinet beside Gally with both palms and shoulder, boots grinding for traction. Frypan’s eyes did one full sweep of the room and landed on the side wall. “Window!” he shouted suddenly. A wide glass panel looked into an adjoining room, empty save for equipment carts, more storage cabinets, and the same hateful dead lights. Gally grabbed a metal stool and smashed it through. The glass exploded outward with a crash loud enough to make Chuck squeak and duck. Safety glass burst into glittering chunks and cubes, spraying across the next room’s floor. Cold air bled through the opening. “Go!” Minho shouted. Gally was at Cass’s other side in two strides. He and Newt helped her toward the broken opening. Cass tried to lift herself cleanly and caught the edge wrong, one palm slipping, body pitching forward. Newt’s stomach lurched into his throat. Gally swore and got her over. Alby shoved Chuck through next, lifting him across the frame and into the next room, then Winston, then Frypan, then Thomas, then the kid, then Minho. The supply cabinet behind them jolted under another impact from the hall. The doors screamed in their frame. Cass stumbled again, dizziness hitting her so hard the whole world tipped like the room had become a ship in bad weather. Newt held her steady with a hand around her waist. “Easy, now,” he murmured. “I’ve got you.”

Alby managed to open the door and they ran. Sirens howled behind them in layered waves, the sound bouncing off white walls and polished floors until it felt like the whole building was trying to spit them back into captivity. Red warning lights pulsed over the corridor in ugly intervals. The hall ahead stretched long and too bright, ending in a massive security door with a glowing scanner panel beside it, black glass and thick steel and every possible insult a system could invent for a person trying to get out. Thomas got there first, lungs shredding in his chest, keycard already in his hand. He slammed it against the scanner. Red light. Locked. “Shit!” The word tore out of him. He swiped again. Red. Again. Nothing. He smacked his palm against the panel like violence might bruise it into cooperation. Behind them, the sound of boots multiplied. They turned as one, and there he was at the far end of the hall: Janson, flanked by guards, pistol raised but not firing. That, more than the gun itself, was what made Newt’s stomach twist. If he’d wanted them dead, he’d have fired already, which meant he was planning something way worse. “I’m trying to save your lives!” Janson shouted over the sirens. “The Maze was one thing, but the Scorch will eat you kids alive! The infected will tear you apart, you won’t survive a day out there. Listen to me! I only want what’s best for you.” No one answered him. Janson’s expression tightened. “You are not getting through that door.” And just as he said it, a beep cut him off. Every head snapped toward the panel. Cass. Dazed, barely standing, one hand braced against the wall, the other flying over the keys with a speed that did not belong to someone who had just been lying unconscious on a surgical table. Her fingers moved like they’d found a language her mind had not yet had time to question. Newt saw it happen and still could not quite process it. She looked like she might pass out standing, yet she was punching through the system like she’d designed the damn thing. That's when Janson’s mask slipped fully. “SHUT THE MAIN HALL DOOR!” he barked. “NOW!” But the door was already flashing green. The mechanism unlocked with a heavy clunk and the steel panels began to slide apart.

They bolted into a hangar. The space opened so suddenly after the corridor that it felt like running into the mouth of a giant. Huge and industrial, all steel ribs and hanging chains and stacked crates and squat armored vehicles crouched in rows under banks of harsh lights. The air changed at once, less antiseptic, more oil and dust and heat. Somewhere overhead, fans roared, trying and failing to bully the desert out of the building. Sand had already found its way in under the seams and around the loading gates, thin drifts gathering in the corners like proof the outside world was patient and always eventually got what it wanted. Their footsteps turned hollow in the vastness. There were guards waiting inside. Not many. Three near the far gate. Two by a loading platform. One turning already because the shouted order down the corridor had told the room to expect trouble. Thomas got the rifle up, but Cass moved before any of them fully processed it. A guard lifted his rifle but Cass hit him before he could fire, shoulder slamming into his chest while her hand ripped the weapon from his grip in one fluid motion that looked practiced enough to make the hair on the back of everyone’s neck rise. She pivoted and fired low, fast, controlled. Five shots. Five legs. Not kill shots. Guards dropped with strangled cries, weapons clattering away across the concrete. Gally barked a laugh that sounded one breath away from hysteria and then immediately put both shoulders back into motion. Frypan muttered, “Jesus Christ.” The vent kid learned that whatever side this girl was on, being on the other side of it looked like a terrible life choice. Alby and Gally slammed their shoulders into a massive levered gate at the far end of the hangar. The thing groaned and resisted, huge and old and weighted against the storm outside. It gave half an inch, then stopped, shoving back at them. Alby cursed through his teeth and shoved harder, boots squealing against the floor. Gally put his whole back into it, muscles standing out in hard ropes under his shirt. Minho was there next, abandoning the idea of another weapon because opening the way mattered more. The gate moved. That's when the storm hit. Sand and wind punched into the hangar all at once in a roaring wall. The gust almost knocked Winston backward. Chuck threw both arms up over his face. Frypan spat grit immediately and swore louder. The lights nearest the opening flickered under the blast. Visibility beyond the threshold went to hell in one breath. No horizon. No distance. Just the raw body of the Scorch throwing itself at them. “Go, go, go!” Cass yelled, shoving Chuck ahead of her with the hand that wasn’t holding the rifle.

They spilled out into the desert storm. Sand lashed their faces hard enough to sting. Heat pressed against them from every direction, wrong and dry and merciless, while the wind tried to push them sideways, backward, down. Breathing hurt instantly. Every inhale came with grit. Every exhale got ripped away before it felt complete. Their eyes watered and their throats burned and every one of them understood exactly what Janson had meant about the Scorch eating you alive. They still preferred this to one more minute under WCKD lights. Behind them, soldiers poured out of the hangar, shouting orders that the storm shredded into nonsense before they got ten feet. Shapes moved in the blowing sand, dark and abrupt, but distance collapsed strangely in the storm, men looked near and then vanished, sounded near and then weren’t. A dune rose ahead of them like a wall made of shifting spite. Minho started climbing first, digging fingers into the slope and hauling himself up like he could physically wrestle the desert into submission. Sand spilled out from under his boots in sheets, erasing every half-step he earned. Gally followed with Chuck basically welded to his side, one arm around the kid’s middle whenever the slope pitched too sharply, swearing every third breath like profanity was helping with traction. Alby stayed near Winston and the vent kid, driving both of them upward because apparently he was extending Glader protection to strays now too and that was that. Frypan was breathing like he’d eaten the dune for breakfast and it was fighting back in his lungs. Thomas kept turning around to look behind them, rifle useless in the storm but held anyway because giving up a weapon still felt wrong. Every time he looked back he saw motion and shouting and nothing stable enough to shoot. Winston kept coughing and spitting grit, pausing just long enough to make everyone hate him and then scrambling again because Cass’s glare would’ve made a Griever reconsider its life choices. Cass was the worst-off. Her medical gown flapped and snapped like it had a death wish (her thoughts, not mine). Every few seconds she swallowed a cough that eventually turned into a full body wince, the kind that made all of their jaws clench, all thinking the same thing in increasingly frantic repetition: please don’t die on us please don’t die on us please don’t die on us. Newt stayed glued to her side, one arm ready whenever the slope gave under her, one hand at her elbow or waist whenever her balance went strange, body angled enough that if she slipped he’d be able to catch her before she went down. The vent kid understood more with every yard. Whatever these boys were, however insane and sharp-edged and badly behaved, their loyalty to Cassandra sat in them like religion. The kind of loyalty that made people move toward danger instead of away from it. The kind that was probably going to get several of them killed, and yet somehow still looked like the only good thing in miles and miles of sand and ruin.

Finally, through the curtain of blowing grit, ruins loomed. Jagged concrete bones of some long-dead building rising out of the dune like the earth had spat up the remains of a city and then lost interest. “This way!” Cass shouted over the storm. She waved them toward it and they all started down the far side of the dune. Sand gave way under every step, stealing their center of gravity and turning descent into impact after impact. Chuck yelped once when Gally practically surfed him the last few feet. Winston lost one shoe and then found it again. Frypan hit the bottom coughing. Thomas came down on one knee and rolled the rest. Newt dragged Cass through the last stretch. They stumbled into the ruins and dropped behind a crumbled slab of concrete to catch their breaths.

Then, one by one, the boys reached for Cass. Nobody said anything like are you okay or even thank God, because language had gotten too small for what had just happened. Minho hooked an arm around her shoulders like he was afraid if he let there be any space between her body and his, she might disappear through it. He pulled her in until her forehead bumped his collarbone, his whole chest shuddering with relief he was trying and failing to act cool through. He didn’t say anything. His throat had gone too tight for jokes. Newt’s palm cupped her cheek, thumb resting just under her eye. Thomas folded himself around her from the other side, pressing close enough that his breathing hit her temple in ragged little bursts. Gally’s hand landed between her shoulder blades, broad and warm and rough, the kind of touch that would’ve seemed almost shy if it hadn’t come from someone built like a fucking threat. Chuck clung to her waist with both arms like she was the only fixed object left in the universe. Frypan got a hand on her arm. Winston managed one on her shoulder. Even Alby, who was usually sparing with touch unless he was patching somebody up or dragging them out of trouble, laid a hand on her other forearm and left it there a second longer than necessary. Anywhere they could. Any part of her they could reach. Just to confirm it. Alive. Here. It's over. Cass hissed under her breath but she didn’t shove any of them off. Didn’t snap. Didn’t call them clingy idiots or ask if they were planning to fuse into one giant trauma-blob. She just let them have it. Let Minho’s arm tighten around her. Let Chuck squeeze like he was trying to anchor himself through her bones. Maybe because some part of her understood exactly what she’d looked like on that table and what that sight had done to them. Maybe because she needed the proof too and was too Cass to admit it in any language but tolerance. Whatever it was, she stayed still under all that desperate contact—Yeah, just kidding. This is Cass we're talking about. She pushed herself back after five seconds, maybe even less, and her eyes swept the ruined shelter. The others followed her gaze and flinched as one. Bodies. Half-buried in drifts of blown sand, curled in corners, wedged against broken walls and collapsed beams, long-dead husks of people who hadn’t made it through the Scorch. Some were little more than bone under cloth. Others still held enough shape to make the human in them recognizable, which somehow made it worse. One corpse sat against a cracked pillar like it had simply gotten tired and decided to stay there forever. Sand had sifted into eye sockets, into mouths, into the folds of ruined clothes. It looked like the desert had been slowly trying to swallow history and had gotten bored halfway through. “Perfect,” Cass said, eyes fixed on one corpse near the wall. They all turned to stare at her because what the fuck did she just say but she was already walking toward the corpses. Oh, right, it made sense. She was in a flimsy medical gown, and barefoot. Her feet were a mess, skin abraded raw in places, cuts packed with grit, a darker red smeared across one heel where the sand had bitten deepest. Every step made her wince if you were looking close enough. The dead, on the other hand, had boots. Pants. Shirts. Scorch-appropriate attire. “I need clothes,” she said without looking back, already crouching by the nearest body. “Unless you want me to keep flashing the absolute shit out of this apocalypse.”

The comment loosened them by degrees. Even half-dead and freshly escaped from a surgical suite, Cass was still Cass. Comforting thing, really. Her fingers went to a dead woman’s jacket first, testing the fabric, then the belt, then the boots. Gally knelt beside her without a word and started stripping jeans and boots off another body with all the focus of a man dismantling scaffolding. His eyes stayed very pointedly angled away from the corpse’s face, like if he pretended hard enough that this was a lumber problem and not grave-robbing, the universe might cut him some slack. A minute later he shoved a pair of boots toward her. “Here.” Minho hovered nearby, torn between wanting to help and wanting not to catch a fist for poor timing. “You—uh—need help?” Cass glanced up at him, deadpan as one can be. “I can handle a zipper, thankyouverymuch.” But when she spoke again, it was serious. “What you guys just did was awfully stupid.”

Minho’s head jerked up. “How is—”

She gestured around them with a sharp, exhausted sweep of her hand. The dead world. The storm still shrieking outside the broken walls. Chuck crouched half-hidden behind Alby with his face still blotchy from crying. The jagged ruin they had dropped into by luck and desperation. “Chuck is fourteen, for fuck’s sake,” she said, voice tightening the more she spoke. “How am I supposed to keep you all alive out here? I needed time to gather intel about those sick fucks before we—” She broke herself off, jaw flexing.

“You knew?”

Cass looked up at him like he’d just asked if the sun was bright. “Of course I knew.” Her tone said are you all concussed? “The second they came for us, I knew.” She dragged the dead woman’s pants off and sat back with a hiss as the motion pulled somewhere sore. “But maybe it would’ve been nice if we’d had a car. Or actual weapons. Or if I had some damn clothes on when we busted out, huh? I was planning—” She cut herself off because something in the sentence had clearly hit a nerve she didn’t want touched. “Well, doesn’t matter now, does it?” Minho opened his mouth, then closed it. Because yeah. Fair. They had gone charging after her on love and panic and exactly zero logistics. If she had been fully conscious and fully in control of the plan, she probably would have stolen three keycards, mapped the lower wing, acquired transportation, robbed an armory, and walked them all out with a bag of snacks like it was a field trip. The fact that his heart still didn’t care and would absolutely do the same stupid thing again if given the chance was a separate issue.

“They were going to put tubes in us and—” Thomas blurted, then stopped because her head had snapped up so fast he heard the crack of it in the silence.

“What?”

Thomas swallowed. His voice shook. What he had seen still hadn’t finished settling inside him and probably never would. “There was a room,” he said. “Kids. Hanging in glass pods with tubes and monitors. They had Grievers in tanks, Cass. They were Growing them.” He looked at her properly then, trying to condense all of that horror into one thing she could use. “They talked like you were old enemies, said you destroyed six of their bases before. That there are people in the mountains following your example. The Right Arm.”

Cass went very still. “Who talked?”

“Janson and Ava Paige.”

“I fucking knew it,” Cass muttered instantly, like she had been waiting for the confirmation. “Nobody kills themselves with a monologue and perfect eyeliner.”

Minho let out a breath that was half laugh, half horror. “That’s what you focus on?” Stupid question, really. Of course that was what she focused on. They’d known her long enough now to understand that when things got truly monstrous, Cass’s brain would often grab the driest, pettiest detail and use it like a pry bar to keep herself from splitting in half. Cass shot him a look. “Let a woman have hobbies, yeah?” Then her eyes snagged on the vent kid. It was the first proper look she’d given him. The kid swallowed audibly. Which, fair. She was undressing a corpse in a hospital gown with blood on her feet and enough calm in her face to make anybody rethink their life. Swallowing audibly was the correct response. “What’s your name?” she asked. “I'm Cole,” he said, suddenly fidgety. Cass nodded once. “Hi, Cole. I’m Cass. Welcome to our circus! Lovely meeting you. Would’ve loved it even more if the circumstances were less…” She gestured loosely around at the ruins, the corpses. “…whatever this is.” Then, just as casually: “Okay, cool, now turn around, all of you.”

Minho blinked. “Huh?”

“I’m changing,” she said, already tugging the medical gown loose at the shoulders. “And while you’re at it, tell me everything you’ve gathered.”

The boys all scrambled to face the wall. Chuck spun around so fast he almost lost his balance in the sand, Cole closed his eyes before turning to be 100% sure he couldn't upset her, Winston’s ears went red instantly, Frypan found a crack in the concrete wall and stared at it with the commitment of a man trying to respect boundaries while fully aware that all boundaries had recently been shot, drugged, and thrown through a lab window, Alby turned Gally by his shoulder because he didn't seem happy about looking away, Minho turned, then half-turned to look at her again because self-preservation was not his strongest trait, and Thomas yanked him back by the collar without even looking. Newt turned as well, but his whole body was listening to her behind him, counting every swallowed hiss, every slight pause that might say this hurts more than she’s admitting. He was focused enough on those sounds that the rest of the conversation had to catch up to him half a beat late. “They had a list of names,” Frypan said after a second. “Told people that hearing their name called means they're going to get sent to some safe town before the others.” Thomas picked it up. “But they were actually taking them to that room I told you about. Paige said she needs everyone ready for tomorrow.” Newt started to glance back, then caught himself and faced forward again. The need to ask had been chewing at him since the operating table, gnawing all the way through the sprint, through the alarms, through the storm, through every second he’d had his hand at her waist just to keep her on her feet. He had felt bandages there through the thin medical gown. Every time his hand had brushed that spot his mind had gone someplace ugly. He’d also noticed the way her hand kept going to her side before she forced it away, the way she kept trying to breathe shallow and pass it off as irritation instead of pain, so when he asked, his voice came out thick with worry. “What about you?” There was something in the question that made the others go still. Even Minho stopped fidgeting. “What did they do to you?”

“Oh, they just gave me free drugs, nothing to worry about.” It was such an obvious lie it barely qualified as one. Newt closed his eyes and let out a long exhale. Free drugs. Right. And the tubes were decorative. The surgical lights were just a nice mood choice. His fingers flexed uselessly at his sides. He wanted to turn around and see the extent of it. To count every bruise and every cut. Wanted to put his mouth on every hurt and promise the body underneath it that nobody would touch it again. Cass didn’t give them time to challenge it. “Not a bad trip, though. Ten outta ten.” Gally rubbed one hand down his face and muttered “Fucking impossible.” Chuck whispered, “That sounds bad,” to no one in particular, and Alby squeezed the back of his neck once in silent agreement. Minho tried to turn again. Thomas yanked him back by the collar again. “What about when you passed by the cafeteria—” There was a short pause behind them, then, dry as kindling: “I was trying to tell you not to do anything stupid.”

“I told you lot!” Newt exclaimed.

That made her laugh. Proper laugh, too, or at least the exhausted sandpaper version of one. “Oh, very comforting to know someone got my message and then proceeded to fucking ignore it. Go team.”

Newt bristled instantly. “You were being marched somewhere by armed guards, Cass, excuse me for not assuming you were on your way to brunch.”

Cass made the most offended sound Newt had ever heard from another human being. “Your response to one look through a damn window was to start auditioning for public breakdown of the year.”

“That was not a breakdown.”

“That was absolutely a breakdown.”

“That was concern.”

“Concern on you is stupidity in a different font and with a hot British accent.”

There was a noticeable beat of stunned silence as everyone absorbed what she had just said. Newt actually choked. The phrase hit him low and hot and wholly unhelpful in the middle of everything else, and for one appalling second his mind just emptied itself out like somebody had tipped it over. His ears went warm. He was suddenly, viciously aware of his own pulse. Frypan’s shoulders twitched once with suppressed laughter. Even Alby tilted his head by half an inch. Cole hadn’t felt like laughing in a long while, but now he had to slap a hand over his mouth to suppress one because these two were delicious. Both arguing like they’d been married for fifteen years and had merely taken a wrong turn on the way home from groceries. And her just casually flirting with him in the middle of it? Goals.

“You can turn around now.”

The dark red shirt she’d scavenged made her look even paler. That was what they'd all registered after turning. The color should’ve brought life back into her face, instead it made the lack of it louder. It pulled the bruised hollows under her eyes into sharper focus. She saw the worried looks on their faces so she directed their attention somewhere else. “They told me they’d help me get my memories back,” she said, because she understood that if she kept playing it all for laughs, the idiots were going to tear themselves apart from the inside before dawn. “I knew it was bullshit, but fighting right then would’ve gotten all of us into trouble we couldn’t afford, so I played along. You should’ve seen how hard they were trying, though. Overexplained every litter thing. Story cleaner than that spotless lab of theirs. People don’t speak in bullet points unless they’re selling you something. And they were selling big time.” A pause. “Their big mistake was letting me go to the bathroom that one time just before I first woke up,” she added, almost casually. “I took a quick little detour to a nurse station I spotted on my way there and hacked into their database.” That, somehow, did not surprise any of them. Cole blinked, registering in real time that the impossible standard for “normal Cassandra behavior” had apparently already been set very high and everyone here had simply adapted. “I found schedules. They were gonna ship us tomorrow.” A beat. “Also,” she added, “we’ve got trackers in our necks and they can pump anesthetics through them.” She said it like she was discussing splinters. “I temporarily disabled them but I don’t know how long until they fix it, so we’ll have to take them out manually.”

That one took a second to properly land. Winston touched the back of his neck immediately, horror all over his face. He did it with his whole hand, fingers spread, as if the tracker might be the size of a damn coin and actively wriggling under there. Chuck did the same a heartbeat later because Winston did, eyes going huge. Minho’s hand shot up, fingers pressing at the skin below his hairline like he might feel the little bastard under there. Gally didn’t touch his neck. He just looked offended. Not scared. Not grossed out. Offended. Frypan muttered, “Well that is deeply upsetting information to receive while already dehydrated.” Chuck’s voice cut across the moment. “Are you… okay?” Cass turned her smiled, and even worn down to her bones it did strange things to the air. “Yeah, Chuck. Just peachy.” Her voice gentled. “How you holdin’ up?” Chuck gave a tiny shrug. “I don't like it here.” Cass nodded like that was a perfectly adequate apocalypse review, then her attention went back to Thomas. “You heard Chuck. Tell me about those people in the mountains.”

Thomas ran a hand through his hair. “Paige said they’d destroyed two WCKD bases. Janson said they were following your example. She called them the Right Arm.” His eyes flicked to her face, searching for every little reaction. “They seemed scared of them.” Cass tilted her head once, considering, and it was the most alive she’d looked since the operating table. Not healthier. Just more like herself. Mind catching, lining things up, already turning information into direction. “That’s where we’re headed, then.” Gally cut in exactly where everyone should have expected him to. “You need rest. You’re not going anywhere until—”

“They’re holding kids in there,” Cass shot back, turning on him so fast the movement snapped. “What if it was you? Or Chuck?” Her voice sharpened with every word, cold anger waking properly now underneath the exhaustion. “You think I’m going to give them a single second more than necessary?” She stepped toward him despite the wince it cost her. “We take the trackers out, then we move.” And she was already on it, crouching near the debris pile to look for anything sharp. There. A knife half-buried in sand and broken plaster. She picked it up, turned it once under the thin light, then started cleaning it as best she could with the discarded medical gown. Sand came off first, then flakes of old grime. She rubbed the blade against the cloth in short, efficient strokes, testing the edge with her thumb like she was evaluating produce at a market instead of preparing for field surgery. “Come on,” she said, raising it slightly. “Don’t be pussies.” Minho blinked, “That is not as motivational as you think it is.” Cass smiled without looking up. “It’s also not sanitary. At all. We can all get infections and die horrible deaths!” Frypan shook his head. “Your bedside manner remains terrifying.”

Dawn began to creep in then. The black gaps in the walls softened into shapes. The jagged silhouettes of collapsed beams took on definition. Outside, the sandstorm still raged, but the light behind it changed from void to bruised morning. Alby stepped forward first, moving into position in front of her and tipping his chin down enough to expose the back of his neck. Cass rose onto the balls of her new boots and reached up with fingers far gentler than the knife suggested they’d be. She touched the skin at the base of his skull first, careful, searching. Her fingertips mapped the area in small presses until she found what she wanted. Alby’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t move. Then, with a clean little motion, she made the cut. Not deep. Just enough. Alby hissed through his teeth, one hand twitching once at his side, but that was all. A second later Cass had pinched something tiny and metallic between her fingers and pulled it free, slick with a bright bead of blood. She held it up between her thumb and forefinger for all of them to see. “See?” she said. “Not so bad, was it?” Alby took the cloth she handed him and pressed it to the cut without complaint, which, in Glader terms, counted as endorsement. Thomas went next, kneeling in front of her and trying his best to control his breathing. Cass’s hand landed on his shoulder first. “Hey,” she said quietly, enough to make him look up. “Breathe.” She found the tracker faster this time. Press. Cut. Retrieve. Thomas flinched more at the anticipation than the pain itself. Once it was out, he laughed once under his breath, shaky and startled. “That’s it?” Cass nodded. “I mean, I can stab you if you want something more dramatic.” Thomas smiled despite himself and moved aside. Minho stepped closer. Cass touching the back of his neck scrambled every useful thought right out of his head. She was close and warm and breathing and—already done. “Come on, do it,” he said. Cass laughed. “Glowing review.” Frypan went next and swore so creatively through the cut that Cass actually looked proud for a second. Winston turned pale enough that Alby had to physically steer him into place by one elbow, but he got through it without passing out, which, honestly, huge win. Chuck walked over trying very hard to look brave, hands fisted at his sides because if he let them hang free they’d probably shake and expose the whole operation. Cass crouched to his level before he even reached her, knife held low and out of sight. “Hey,” she said, pointing off to one side. “See that bit of wall? With the weird fish on it?” Chuck squinted toward the broken slab she meant. “That’s a fish?” Cass huffed, visibly offended. “You're saying you don’t see the fish? It’s right there.” Chuck leaned harder, eyes narrowing. “Oh, I think I—” The others barely even saw the cut happen. One second Chuck was frowning at cracked stone, the next there was already cloth pressed to the back of his neck and the tracker was sitting in Cass’s palm. Chuck blinked at it. “Oh.” Cass smiled. “Yeah,” she said. “You’re awesome like that.” He puffed up, fear evaporating so quickly it was almost comical. He turned the blood-specked chip in his hand. “Can I smash it?” Cass’s mouth twitched. “Absolutely.” That was all the permission he needed. Chuck dropped it onto a piece of concrete and brought his heel down on it. The tiny crack of it under his boot gave the room a stupid, satisfying little burst of triumph. Frypan actually clapped. Winston looked deeply pleased on Chuck’s behalf.

Newt pushed off the wall and came over trying to act normal, which was ridiculous considering his pulse had been erratic all night and now apparently wanted to reinvent itself entirely. Her thumb brushed just under his cheekbone once, knocking a streak of dust off his skin. Newt’s whole chest tightened. His body, treacherous thing, leaned a fraction into her hand before he could stop it. Then her hand slid around to the back of his neck—the pad of her thumb pressed once, lightly, against the place just under his hairline. “There you are,” she said under her breath, then the tracker was already in her hand and the cloth pressed to his skin. “Congratulations,” she said, showing him the tracker. “You are slightly less WCKD property than you were five seconds ago.” Newt looked from the tracker to her face and back again. “How comforting,” he said. Gally stepped forward next. “Get on with it.” Cass cut, reached, removed, and then had to press the cloth harder because he’d bled more than the others. He turned, looked at the tracker in her hand and then back at her face. “Done?” “Done.” Then Cass looked at Cole and her expression shifted a little. More… considerate. Like she understood some things had to be handled differently because people came with different bruises. “You're next,” she said. Cole swallowed. The girl in front of him had, in the last hour alone, bypassed WCKD security under lockdown, shot five guards while still high and made eight boys look at her like she'd personally invented the stars in the sky. By all reasonable standards, he should've been terrified, yet there was something about her that just… made trust feel as natural as breathing. Cole stepped forward. Cass held his gaze for a second. “I’ll be quick.” Cole nodded and closed his eyes. The trust in that movement made Newt’s chest pinch, not with jealousy or resentment, but with this strange ache of seeing how fast she got perceived as safe by someone who'd met her only thirty minutes ago. Cass’s hand came to rest at the back of Cole’s neck, mapped the little shape of it under his skin, then made the cut. Cole flinched, sucked in a breath, and that was that. A second of pressure. A tug. Then something small and metallic dropped into his waiting palm. Cole opened his eyes and stared at it, then looked back at her with something dangerously close to wonder. Cass had already folded the cloth and was holding it out for him like this was the most normal interaction in the world. Cole took the cloth and actually laughed, quiet and disbelieving. “Thank you.”

Cass nodded and wiped the blade, then she reached back, felt along the skin at the base of her own neck with her left hand, found the tracker by touch, and made the cut. A second later she had the tiny chip pinched between bloody fingers. She dropped it into the sand with the others and looked at Thomas again. “So…” She rolled one shoulder. “I had a vendetta with these guys before the Maze. Convenient for them to wipe my brain clean, huh?” Thomas nodded. “I think you tried to kill that guy Janson before. He told Paige you hadn’t tried again like it was some achievement.” Cass checked the rifle she’d stolen from the guard with movements that were too familiar to be newly learned. She worked the magazine, checked the chamber, and adjusted her grip. “If I pulled it off once…” She slung the strap and angled the barrel down. “I can definitely make it happen again. Let's get going—”

A shriek. High. Wet. Wrong. It cut through the ruin and bounced off cracked tiles and twisted steel until the whole building felt full. Then another answered it. Then another. Then a whole chorus, rising and layering and multiplying in the bones of the place until every surface seemed to vibrate with it. Well, at least the fuckers had the decency to let them have their reunion, collectively hate on WCKD, compare notes and take their trackers out before making an entrance. Every head snapped up. At the far end of the ruin, through the haze of dust and drifting grit, shapes began to pour in like something had uncorked a bottle and all the tar had come spilling out. Too fast, too sharp in the joints, too bent in the spine, jerking and lurching and then suddenly accelerating in a way that made the human eye lag behind them. Faces were torn, some by sand, some by bites, some by time and starvation and exposure, and their eyes were wild in that empty way that made skin crawl because there was clearly something behind them, but it sure as hell wasn’t a person anymore. One of them dragged a foot and still somehow gained ground too quickly. Another had a jaw hanging loose on one side, still trying to scream through it. What had once been a woman came with strips of dried skin flapping off one arm like cloth. Thomas felt his stomach drop in one sick lurch. Cole, who had seen them only from a helicopter window and from too-far-off shadows around the facility fences, felt panic try to climb straight into his throat. Newt’s brain skipped immediately past the infected to the one thought beneath all the others: Cass is in no shape for this. “RUN!” Minho’s voice rang out, loud and sharp and immediate, the kind of command that bypassed thought and went straight into muscle. The Gladers bolted. Boots slipped in sand and broken glass. Shoulders clipped old concrete. Breath came ragged and hot in their throats as they sprinted deeper into the ruin. Winston wasn’t fast enough and one of the infected broke from the pack with terrifying speed and lunged low, fingers clawing for Winston’s forearm, teeth already snapping shut on air half an inch from skin. Cass didn’t even slow. One clean shot. The crack of the rifle split the ruin, and the infected folded sideways so hard its shoulder hit the ground first and the rest of it spilled after. Winston made a choked sound of pure delayed terror. Cass’s free hand hit the middle of his back hard enough to shove him forward another step. “KEEP MOVING!” Minho swung a length of rebar like a bat at the next one that got too close. Metal met skull with a dull, awful sound, and the thing dropped twitching. Gally ripped a rusted pipe from a collapsed frame as he ran, and used it the same way two steps later, smashing another infected sideways into a broken pillar. Thomas shouldered the rifle he’d stolen earlier and fired once, then twice, center mass on one and head on the next because the first shot taught him the lesson fast.

They couldn’t go back out into the storm, those things didn’t seem bothered by it and would gladly tear them apart in open ground. “CLIMB!” Cass shouted. And because the ruin had once been something more than a shell, maybe an old depot or rationing center before it turned to dust, there were still a few vertical choices left in it. Not many. But enough. Up ahead, a collapsed loading bay opened into what had once been a raised storeroom mezzanine. The concrete platform still clung to one side wall, accessible by a steel maintenance stair that had partially sheared away but left enough of itself to function as a ladder if you didn’t mind tetanus. Above it, a broken service catwalk ran along the wall to an upper storage loft with waist-high railing and a jagged hole in the floor where something heavy had crashed through years ago. High enough to buy time. “There!” Minho yelled, already angling toward it. He hauled himself up the slanted remains of the stair frame, then turned and reached back. Thomas practically lifted Chuck and threw him upward, hands under his ribs, while Alby shoved from below and Minho dragged from above. Chuck yelped and then landed on the platform, scrambling immediately to make room. Gally shoved Frypan up, Winston nearly lost his grip and got hauled the rest of the way by the back of his shirt in Alby’s fist, then came Cole, Newt got one foot on the steel, turned to help Cass—No Cass—There she was, turning away from the climb and running across the bottom of the service court instead. She spun toward the advancing cranks and shouted at the top of her lungs, voice shredding itself raw on the effort. “BETCHA TWENTY BUCKS YOU CAN'T CATCH ME!”

Every infected snapped toward her.

“Cass!” Gally’s voice broke on her name. “WHAT THE HELL—”

“SHUT IT!” she barked back without even looking up. If she had spared them one second of eye contact, maybe it would have felt like a plan they were part of. Instead it looked exactly like what it was: Cass deciding she’d rather become bait herself than let the rest of them get overrun on the climb. Another infected lunged. She sidestepped, smashed the butt of the rifle into its face hard enough to turn the head sideways, and kept moving. She was pulling them. Drawing the swarm across the open floor and away from the base of the stairs. Newt swore under his breath, dropped half a step to go after her, and Minho caught him by the back of the collar with both hands. “She’s baiting them—” Newt rounded on him, eyes blown wide panic. “THAT'S THE BLOODY PROBLEM!”

Below them, Cass ducked behind a half-collapsed concrete support and scanned fast. Her gaze snagged left. The service court opened into what had once been a storeroom and loading pantry area, the sort of place a kitchen would have used to store dry goods in bulk when there had still been enough civilization left to justify large-scale food distribution. Most of it had long since collapsed, shelving twisted and buried and gnawed by time, but a few remnants remained: corroded metal racks, burst sacks, old hazard labels peeled almost unreadable from the walls. Near a fallen pallet, one torn industrial paper sack had split open ages ago, powder spilling like pale snow over broken tile and drifted sand. Not just a little. A lot. Flour. Her gaze snagged right. Above the old loading pantry—a welded service pipe cluster, a dead prep line, and a run of old fuel feed piping that had once supplied industrial ovens or propane-fed emergency cookers when the place still functioned. Most of the line had snapped loose and sagged in the collapse, but one section near the wall was still hissing faintly where the metal had sheared and some buried tank below was bleeding off what little pressure it still held. Not a full roaring leak, but enough that the air near it shimmered with its chemical tang if you got close. Perfect. She sprinted for the flour and a crank almost caught her ankle. Its fingertips brushed the back of her boot and she whipped the rifle down, cracked its jaw sideways with the stock, and kept moving, shouldering the heavy torn sack up against her body despite the way the lift clearly sent pain knifing through her side. Above, Thomas leaned so far forward Newt had to hook an arm around his waist to stop him going over. “CASS! COME HERE! NOW!” Cass didn’t even glance up. She was already moving again, dragging the sagging flour sack toward the hissing pipe line while scanning the debris field around it. Old junk. Broken metal bins. A shattered emergency lantern. And God fucking bless all the smokers in the world, a lighter. Cass scooped it up without breaking stride and thumbed the wheel once as she ran. Spark. “Stay put or I’m killing you myself, you hear me?” she screamed up at the boys when she saw Minho and Thomas inching toward the drop. “I MEAN IT!” Cole watched all of this with widening eyes. Cassandra was either the bravest person he had ever met or the most insane, and really, at this point, they were kind of the same thing.

Cass reached a section where a collapsed wall had left a slanted concrete brace and half a steel shelving unit wedged together beneath the broken kitchen overhang. It created a rough scramble route up to a cracked service counter ledge directly above the hissing gas pipe and the open floor where the cranks were funneling after her. She slung the flour sack over the ledge, climbed after it with one ugly, gritted wince that made Newt’s whole spine go rigid, then turned at the top and ripped it wider with the knife. Fine pale dust poured out in a thick stream. “WHERE'S MY TWENTY BUCKS,” she shouted again, voice echoing off the walls. “YOU GOTTA PAY UP, GUYS, DON’T TELL ME I DID ALL THIS CARDIO FOR NOTHING!” They all shoved through each other in that terrible jerking hunger. Below her, the gas leak hissed on. She started shaking the flour down over them in wide arcs. Not neat. Not a pour. A cloud. She burst the sack wider and stomped it with one boot so the powder billowed out thicker, hanging in the air around the cranks and over the clear stream of gas coming from the ruptured pipe. It coated shoulders, faces, open mouths. Cass flicked the lighter. Once. Nothing. Her heart hit the back of her teeth. Every boy above her stopped breathing. Twice. Spark. Three times—Flame. Tiny. Fragile. Ridiculous in that giant dead space. For a heartbeat it was just a little warm bead of light cupped in her hand while the swarm writhed below and the gas hissed and the flour cloud drifted thick and waiting. Then she dropped it. The ignition took the gas first with a whump that hit like a fist in the chest, and then the suspended flour dust flashed all at once into a rolling bloom of fire. Flame roared outward under the ruined overhang, fed by dust and vapor and every old dry scrap in the kitchen annex. The infected nearest the blast went up like dry kindling. The ones a little farther back got hit by the pressure wave and the heat front hard enough to stagger, arms flailing, jaws still working through the burn. The blast clipped Cass’s platform and sent her rolling off the service ledge in a hard tumble. She hit the slanted concrete brace, slid, dropped the last few feet, and vanished behind a fallen beam in a cough of dust and sparks. The last of the cranks that had pushed through the edge of the blast staggered forward. No no no no no no, where are you, where are you— One shot. Then another. Then a third. The last few infected dropped twitching among the flames and smoke. Cass came back into view, coughing, ash and flour streaking her face in pale smears, “Everyone okay?”

Minho pointed at her with all the wounded rage of a man whose nervous system had just been dragged behind a truck. “What the hell was that? What the actual hell was that?!” His voice cracked hard on the second what. Cass blinked up at him through drifting smoke. Gally was already climbing down before Minho finished shouting. He hit the lower level in a short drop instead of the safer route because patience had clearly left his body fifteen minutes ago and wasn’t answering calls. “What is wrong with you?” he barked. “No, tell me. Explain it slow. You got some death wish we should all know about?” “Are you out of your mind?” Thomas shouted down, hands white-knuckled on the railing. Above them, Frypan had both hands over his face, laughing once in that strained, disbelieving way people did when they were one inch from tears and their body couldn’t decide which road to take. “She just blew up the place with FLOUR, of course she's out of her damn mind!” he said to the cracked ceiling.

Cass, for her part, just stood there and let them spend themselves on her. What else was she supposed to do? Apologize for not letting them get ripped apart? Offer a heartfelt speech? Okay, she’d scared the shit out of them, but the alternative had been watching them die, so excuse her for not giving a flying fuck about their collective temper tantrum. Better loud and furious than cooling on the floor of this godforsaken ruin. Besides, she had bigger problems going on right now. The stitches under her bandages had torn when she fell. She knew it the second she hit the concrete. That immediate hot rip low in her side followed by unmistakable spreading warmth. The red shirt had been a lucky grab for more reasons than one. The jacket too. Layers. Compression. She had no idea what WCKD had done to her, but in the first few minutes after she woke on that table, she’d known that they'd opened her up to do it. There had been that specific soreness. Not just bruises, not just needles. Violation with a seam. And now that seam was open and soaking the bandages. And under no circumstance could she afford the chain reaction honesty might kick off. If she admitted it was bad, they’d slow down. If they slowed down, WCKD gained ground and they'd all be back inside those white halls before they even knew it. She couldn't become a liability, not now. She couldn't be weak when they needed her the most. No, they had to keep moving. They had to get to those people in the mountains. She had to get them all to safety—

Her eyes widened when she saw Chuck come down in a messy, desperate scramble. He slid the last bit, nearly ate dust, got caught for one second by Alby, tore free the instant he could, and then came straight for her. Cass had exactly enough time to think not the ribs, not the—before he hit her around the waist hard enough to make the world go white at the edges. She grunted. Not enough for the others to properly catch, she hoped. Pain detonated under the bandages. Hot. Nauseating. Immediate. A vicious pulse ran from her side all the way up into her shoulder and neck, and for one second every muscle in her body had the same thought: sit down or fall down. But Chuck was there and shaking and crying into her shirt and saying, “I don’t want you to die,” and she couldn't help but wrap both arms around him. “I'm okay, kid,” she murmured. The biggest lie she'd ever said, her vision was fucking blurry. “I'm not going anywhere.” The sentence came out steady enough that even she was impressed with herself. God bless adrenaline. She held him just a second longer than necessary because if she let go too fast the recoil of it would show in her face, then she dragged one hand once through his curls and eased him gently back toward Alby. Great. Still upright. We’re winning. Then she saw Newt waiting for his turn to rip her a new one for the stunt she'd pulled. We're not winning.

Newt was still stuck in the split-second before she emerged coughing from the smoke. His body had not fully returned from it. His stomach still remembered the freefall. He had moved since then, yes, climbed down, walked up to her, remained upright, but none of it really processed. He wanted to tell her that if she had died down there, he would have followed without a second thought, but that sounded too much like a confession so he leaned forward and rested his forehead against hers instead. It was not a kiss, but the tenderness of it made it feel like one. All the panic, all the fear, all the things neither of them would say packed into that one quiet point of contact. No one reacted much. Jealousy, tension, whatever private hurts or hopes any of them carried, the scare had burned them all out for the moment. She'd almost died. Anything that looked like relief, like you are still here and I can touch that fact with my own hands, got a pass. Cole, though, had to work real hard to stop the just kiss, dammit from escaping, because come on. Come on. The whole thing was so painfully obvious it looped all the way back into art. He stopped himself at the last second. After all, who didn’t enjoy a good slow burn? Eventually, Cass took one small step back and rolled her shoulders as if resetting her body into function. “Ight,” she said, clearing her throat. “Let’s get the hell out of here. Search the place for anything we can use.” She made it sound casual. Task-oriented. Very this is definitely not me trying to escape to find cloth and patch myself up before you see the rapidly growing blood stain on my strategically selected dark red shirt. The boys nodded and scattered because direction, any direction, was easier to bear than standing in the emotional wreckage of what had just happened. Good. Newt’s eyes were still on her. Not good.

Had she really thought he hadn't noticed? His hand had been on her waist multiple times since they’d dragged her out of that room. He’d seen the way she braced before moving. The microscopic gap where pain got the first word before she bullied it back down. He’d seen her fold around Chuck’s hug for one terrible blink and then mask it. Seen the set of her shoulders go wrong every time she forgot somebody might be watching. Clear signs. Loud signs. A whole bloody marching band of signs. He had half a mind, more than half, if he was being honest, to walk straight over, put his hand exactly where he thought it hurt, and ask her to try the lie again to his face. Could she look him in the eye and say she was fine while his palm rested over the heat of whatever WCKD had done to her? What are you hiding under there, Cass? What have they done to you? Why are you guarding your side like that? How bad does it hurt? How much blood have you already lost? How many more steps before your body makes the decision for you and drops? God, woman, I love you and what you're doing right now is killing me. He wanted to tell her he wasn’t moving another step until she talked to him. That Chuck could beg and Gally could shout and Minho could bite him if he liked, but he'd plant himself in that ruin and not shift a muscle until he knew exactly what was under those bandages. He wanted to say: I am done being managed by your sarcasm. But he also knew her well enough to ruin his own plan. Cornering Cass when she was hurting would not make her honest, it would make her retreat. Push her too hard now and she’d lock every door in herself at once. Stress was the last thing she needed on top of whatever the hell was going on under that shirt. If he made himself one more weight on her spine right now, he’d hate himself for it, so he made himself useful instead and brought her cloth. Cass was crouched near a fallen shelving unit, one knee in the dust, rifling through the pockets of a dead man’s coat. She looked up when his boots stopped near hers. For one heartbeat he thought about asking again. About saying her name a certain way and forcing the whole matter into the open. Instead he just held the bundle out. Her eyes dropped to the cloth, then back to his face. Cass took the cloth from his hand. “Right, forgot about your psychic antenna,” she murmured. For a second he thought she might tell him. Not everything. Just enough. A sentence. A real answer. But then her gaze flicked past him to the others, the way Minho kept circling back, the way Thomas still tracked her from the edge of every search path, the way Chuck looked toward her every thirty seconds just to confirm she remained upright, and whatever had opened in her shut again. “I need a minute,” she said, and went deeper into the shattered back section of the ruin, where a collapsed office wall and a half-hanging service door created a pocket of privacy.

The ruin gave them what it could. Minho found a battered rifle half-buried in sand, stock scratched, barrel dirty, but intact. Beside it sat a weather-beaten duffel bag with three loaded magazines and a handful of loose rounds. His now. Gally found a crowbar jammed under broken concrete and tested its weight with one hand like he was judging whether an argument could be won with it. Frypan found a sealed metal canteen in a locker. “Look at you,” he said. “Oh, I like you.” When Cass finally came back, her jacket was zipped fully. She caught Newt's eye once across the debris, and there was something in her look that amounted to thank you. The knowledge was no longer only his suspicion and her denial. It was shared now. Waiting. Cole found an old utility pouch strapped to a skeleton near the loading wall and brought it back like an offering. Inside were screwdrivers, wire, a small flashlight and a packet of waterproof matches. Cass took the matches and gave him a quick nod of approval and something in his chest lifted embarrassingly high. When they all lingered in the same place after scavenging, weighted down with salvaged weapons, rope, cloth, Cass looked past the broken mouth of the ruin and out into the world that had spent the last hour trying to sandblast them into history. The desert had changed. No more swirling walls of grit trying to peel their skin off. No more roaring blindness. The storm had passed on, or at least moved far enough that it had become somebody else’s problem. Now, an endless spread of gold, pale and merciless under the rising sun, dunes folding into dunes folding into more dunes until the eye almost gave up measuring them. And far off on the horizon, blue-gray and hard-edged through the heat haze, sat the mountains. That was exactly where they were headed. “Do we have water?” Cass'd barely gotten the sentence out before four hands were already in her face with canteens. She nodded once. “Good job,” she said. “We’re gonna need that.” Then they adjusted straps, checked weapons, redistributed the useful weight, and started walking. The desert hit them properly once they left the ruin. The sun was climbing fast. Every step sank a little. Every rise had to be re-earned. Their boots dragged. Their calves started complaining almost immediately. Heat shimmered up from the ground early, blurring the edges of the world into something feverish. They walked for a while in that strange, dragged-out silence that only happened after people had cried and laughed and nearly died too close together. The overcrowded kind. Too many thoughts in it. Too much heat pressing down. Gally glared at the sand every time it slid under his boots as if the terrain were disrespecting him personally. Their shadows had shortened. The sun had fully committed to being an absolute bastard.

Minho decided the mood had gone on long enough and trudged backward for three steps so he could look at them while still somehow not falling on his ass, then pitched his voice into a near-perfect imitation of Janson’s flat superiority. “‘You’re not getting through that door.’” He paused for effect, then swung his hands out like a showman. “Door proceeds to get got through immediately.” Thomas actually laughed, tired and sudden, the sound scraping out of him like it had been hidden under dust all morning. Frypan snorted too. Even Winston’s mouth twitched. “Top three most embarrassing moments of his life.” Newt muttered, wiping sweat off his forehead with the back of his wrist. “Nah,” Gally said, “the best part was how his face changed when Cass started typing, like his whole soul clocked it before the rest of him did.” Cass, walking a little ahead and a little to the left, didn’t turn. “Glad you liked it. We'll get to see that all over again when I put a knife to his fucking throat.” A little later, Frypan looked at Cass, “I still vote that next time,” he said, “your plans involve less… terrifying everyone into early graves. Can we do that?” “I thought it was pretty cool.” Cole said. Cass snorted, but Gally gave him a look. “You’re getting too comfortable.” “Maybe,” Cole muttered, squinting into the sun, “but your group energy is weirdly welcoming despite all the murder threats.” “The murder threats are the welcome,” Winston informed him. “Means you’re in.” Then he turned to Gally. “So. Gally. About that neighborhood.” Gally looked over at him. “What neighborhood?” “The one you promised when you were drunk off your ass and horizontal in the grass,” Minho supplied. “Ring any bells?” Chuck pointed at him. “Yes, yes, and my treehouse!” Gally groaned. “You really remember everything except the useful shit.” But, after a little while, “I was serious about the grill days.” “You do realize,” Newt said, “that saying things like that makes you sound almost human.” “Shut up.” “Can my treehouse connect to everyone’s houses by rope bridge? Like a pirate? Can I be a pirate?” Chuck asked. “Yes,” Gally said after a beat. “But if you fall off it, don’t come crying to me.” “Oh, come on, you’d definitely help him,” Minho said. “I'd complain about it.” Gally shot back. “That still counts.” “No it doesn’t.” “It absolutely does,” Cass said, and then she actually smiled a little. Gally saw it and immediately straightened like the approval had weight. Minho saw that, too, and rolled his eyes so hard he nearly walked into Winston. “I’m telling you,” Frypan said, looking toward the mountains, “if there isn’t a good kitchen up there, I’m having you build one immediately. I refuse to survive all of… this… just to eat like a raccoon forever.” Minho snorted. “Look at us,” he said. “Dreaming big.”

The problem with talking in the desert was that every conversation had to fight the terrain for breath. Words came in bursts between the rise and fall of walking, interrupted by sand slipping under boots and the regular need to spit grit out of one’s mouth. They were all sweating through whatever they wore now. The heat worked its way under collars, into bandages, into bruises, into thoughts. Cass was quieter than usual, and because the boys had already learned the language of her silences, they all noticed. She still answered when spoken to. Still directed the line if they drifted too far left or right. Still pointed out the better way to climb a dune when the sand looked unstable. But her words had gone economical. Trimmed. Not withdrawn, exactly. Just thinner. Newt clocked every swallowed breath and every time she pressed her mouth flat before taking the next step. Minho caught the way she had stopped tossing jokes into every gap and hated what that meant. Thomas kept finding reasons to walk closer without being obvious about it. Gally got even meaner, which in him was usually a sign of active distress. Frypan kept checking whether she’d drunk enough water under the flimsiest possible excuses. Cole leaned toward Winston and whispered, “Is she okay?” Winston looked ahead at Cass, then back at him. “No,” he said. “And that’s all I’m gonna say if I don’t wanna get yelled at.” Cole then fell back closer to Newt and asked, “Were you all always like this?” Newt didn’t look at him. “Like what?” “Like… a family,” Cole said, and then frowned at his own wording like he wasn’t sure he liked it. “I mean, not normal. Obviously. All of you are one bad mood from assault at any given time. But the way you talk. The way you all keep checking each other’s faces.” Newt let the question sit for a few steps. Sand hissed under their boots. “No,” he said finally. “Not at first.” Then, after a beat: “But when you’ve got nothing else, people become yours pretty quick.” Up ahead, Chuck stumbled a little in the sand and all three of Alby, Gally, and Cass looked back at the exact same second. Cole saw it and looked away before the feeling in his chest got too large to deal with.

Yeah, Chuck didn't look so well. He drifted toward Alby eventually, shoulders a bit slumper than they ought to have been, his commentary reduced to little bursts now and then. Alby, who had been pretending not to notice for the last half hour because noticing too soon turned worry into panic, finally reached down and adjusted the strap of Chuck’s bag so it sat better on his shoulder. “Drink,” he said. Chuck obeyed. “You feeling sick?” Alby asked. Chuck hesitated just long enough for everyone within earshot to get anxious, then he said, “Just tired.” “And hot?” Alby supplied for him. Chuck nodded, and after a little pause: “I miss the Glade.” The whole group slowed for a second, enough that the grief could catch up and put a hand on everybody’s shoulder at once. The Glade had been a cage. They all knew that. They had cursed it, fought in it, bled in it, thrown up in it, buried people because of it. But they had also made it theirs. They’d built the Homestead with their own hands. They’d planted the Gardens. They’d argued over stew at the Pit, slept shoulder to shoulder, made rules, broken rules, laughed when they could, cried where no one saw, and turned one square of trapped green into a home. They had left bodies behind in that grass. They had left family behind. Routines. Cass glanced back at Chuck over her shoulder. “Yeah,” she said. “Me too, kid.” The admission rippled through them. Because Cass was not, by nature, sentimental about places. She was strategic about them. Safe, not safe. Exit, no exit. So hearing that from her made the ache in the group feel less... embarrassing somehow.

The silence that followed was the kind where every person sank so deep into their own head that the group started turning into a row of ghosts sharing a direction, so Cole, apparently a far bigger menace than any of them had initially accounted for, glanced sideways and said, with all the casualness of someone who knew exactly what they were doing, “So… how long have you been a thing?” Alby didn't look up from where he was trying to keep his canteen from knocking against his hip. “Some of us’ve been together two years. Some less.” Cole made a face. “No, no. Not you all.” He pointed vaguely between them. “I meant…Cass and Newt.” Minho’s head snapped around so fast it was a wonder his neck didn’t click. Thomas nearly missed a step and had to correct with an ugly, sliding stumble that filled one boot with sand. Frypan choked on air, then bent forward with a sharp cough. Gally’s expression soured with instant, primal offense. Cass didn’t even turn. She didn’t slow, didn’t blink, didn’t give the question enough respect to visibly rearrange herself for it. She just kept walking and said, as casually as if she were saying the desert was hot, “We’re not together.” Minho felt two things at once and hated both of them. First: a sharp, shameful spike of relief, because alright then, good to hear confirmation that the field was not officially closed, thank you very much. Second: immediate irritation with himself for feeling relieved at all when Newt was right there and clearly taking the whole thing far too well for it not to hurt. He scrubbed a hand over his mouth like he could wipe the reaction off his face before anybody caught it there. Thomas, poor bastard, had the exact same flare of hope and the exact same guilt about it. Gally’s chest actually loosened. Not her boyfriend, and the way she said it suggested that she also didn't have plans to change that. Good. Great. Nothing was settled. Which also meant Newt did not, in fact, have the official claim his constant hovering seemed to suggest. Frypan, who was less romantically doomed than the others and therefore had more emotional bandwidth for observation, took one look at the male faces around him and thought, with deep weariness, damn, they all heard opportunity in that. And Newt... Newt just kept walking. His kept moving at the same steady pace, one boot after the other into the drag of sand, as if the sentence had not just lodged itself neatly under his ribs. Not because it was cruel. It wasn’t. Not because it was untrue, either. It was. They weren’t together. There had been no confession, no kiss, nothing you could put in front of a witness and call official, just this unbearable accumulation of a hundred smaller things. Her head on his shoulder, her fingers finding his, her eyes softening when he steadied her, all his freckles counted and accounted for, all of it everything and, technically, nothing. So he had no reason to be this upset—Hold up. Pause on that thought, let a better one take its place. The shape of her answer was actually worth analyzing. She had answered simply, not defensively. Not ew, no. Not even anything with an edge of ridicule in it. Just the fact as it stood. We’re not together. She had not rejected him, she had denied a premise. His brain focused on the difference because wanting what he wanted made it greedy for nuance.

Cole, because apparently he’d decided he’d either die in the Scorch or by Cass’s hands and had accepted both possibilities, made a thoughtful little face. “See,” he said, “I don’t believe that.” Minho laughed once despite himself. “You, kid, are extremely close to getting buried in the sand.” Cass, on the other hand, ignored Cole completely. It was not the same as brushing him off because she had no answer. It was more like she’d filed the question under too childish to waste oxygen on. She just kept walking, one hand adjusting the strap of the rifle, the other shading her eyes briefly from the glare, which somehow made it worse, because if she’d laughed or snapped or elaborated, the whole thing might have diffused. But indifference made the sentence sit there longer. Left everyone else to do what they liked with it. Meaning Newt was left alone with the shape of it in his head. He wanted to be with her more than anything. More than any vague dream of a safer place, more than wind or water in this bloody desert, more than rest, more than getting out, which was saying something considering how long escape had been the thing keeping him breathing—If the world had been generous enough to hold out one real miracle to him, just one, after all this, he knew exactly what form he would’ve wanted it to take: Cass, his. Yeah, it was embarrassing as hell. Felt fifteen years old just thinking it. But it was true. He wanted the label. The permission of it. The right to care openly and not have to disguise every protective instinct as practicality. And yet... Cass carried too much. Thought in terms of survival, movement, plans, other people. She treated her own life as expendable in every calculation. How was a person meant to ask for anything from someone who walked around like that? How did you tell a woman who kept trying to save the world that, selfishly and pathetically, your favorite thing in that world was her? That all the moments since she’d come up in the Box had accumulated into something so massive in you it had started changing your idea of what made life worth living—

Chuck dropped. A hard, ugly fold in his body like something had yanked all the strings inside him at once. Alby reached out on instinct, hand already moving before the thought had words. “Hey, careful—” But before he could help him up, a wet, black spill hit the sand, its color wrong enough to stop breath in nine separate chests at once. Everything stopped. No. No. No. Not him. Not Chuck. Not after all this. Not now. Not the kid. No. No. No. Cass was there instantly, dropping into the sand so hard her knees must have screamed, hands on his shoulders, turning him just enough so he didn’t choke on whatever was still trying to come up. “Chuck—Kid, hey. Hey, look at me. You’re okay, you’re okay—” Everyone was still staring at the black stain in the sand like if they looked hard enough it might become mud or shadow or anything else, anything human, anything survivable. Cass’s eyes snapped across Chuck’s sleeves, his legs, his hands, to every visible inch of skin like if she found the proof fast enough maybe she could bargain with it—

Her heart stopped. There. His sleeve. Torn. Not some big, obvious rip soaked in blood. Just a tiny little split in the fabric at the forearm, the sort of damage you could easily miss if you weren’t actively looking for catastrophe. She caught the edge of it and yanked the sleeve up. Veins were blooming black all through the back of his hand and running up under the skin like ink dropped in water. All of it from one small scratch no one had clocked in time. No, no no no no no. Please. Please, if there’s anything at all listening, I’ll give you anything. Take whatever the hell you want. Don’t let him go like this. Please. Please. Please. Not Chuck, not Chuck—“You’re gonna be okay,” she whispered, and her voice had dropped so low it almost vanished in the heat. “You hear me? You’re gonna be okay.” Minho's brain, even while his chest tightened around pain already too big to name, immediately started grabbing at anything that might hold. He found his voice by force. It cracked the second it came out, desperate, frantic, trying to fistfight reality into changing its mind. “We’ll get the cure, Chuck. That woman said there’s a cure. There’s a cure, alright? We’ll get to the mountains, they’ll have something, we’ll—” He stopped because Chuck was crying now. “Make it stop,” Chuck whimpered, clutching at his own stomach with one hand while Cass held his arm with the other. “Make it stop… make it stop…make it stop—” Newt didn’t wipe his tears. His whole mind had become one thought repeated in increasingly broken ways: Please let Minho be right. Please the mountains have something. Please let us not be too late. Please don’t make me watch him get eaten from the inside while all I can do is hold him and lie. Frypan felt his face go hot and wet and kept swallowing around the lump in his throat like that would be enough to keep functioning. Please, God, don't do this to him. Not Chuck. Please— Even Cole shed a tear. Chuck was so young and pure and full of life— They moved fast after that. Alby and Gally got under Chuck’s arms and hauled him up between them. “You’re alright, Chuck. Come on. One step. That’s it. There you go. Keep your eyes up. Stay with me.” “Keep moving. You hear me? Don’t you start that drifting crap. You stay right here. Right here with us.”

Time passed in uglier and uglier pieces. At first Chuck could still walk, sort of. His steps dragged, his body leaned too much on the two boys holding him, and every few minutes another shudder would go through him like the sickness was trying to seize the controls by force. His skin went wrong by degrees—too pale in some places, flushed in others, the black in his veins spreading visibly. Frypan kept offering water. Winston kept saying they should move faster. Minho talked in one long fractured stream, half to Chuck, half to himself. “It’s okay. It’s okay, alright? We know there’s a cure, they said there’s a cure, that means there’s a cure, so all we’ve got to do is get there, just get there, just a bit more—” Alby’s face was wet. The tears just kept coming and the heat dried some and replaced them with more. He never stopped walking. Never stopped talking to Chuck. Gally saw it at some point and looked away immediately, jaw flexing so hard it looked painful. Cass had promised herself, promised all of them, that she would get them out and keep them alive. And now the universe had chosen Chuck of all people to make a liar out of her. Please, please, take anything, take anything—Eventually Chuck’s head started to loll. His eyes would open and then lose focus halfway through looking at someone, then he’d come back again, enough to whimper or cling or cry, and the tiny return of him would somehow hurt worse than if he’d gone altogether because it made it obvious he was still in there to feel every inch of it. “Alby…” Chuck’s voice cracked around it so badly that Alby’s knees nearly gave out on the spot. Chuck clutched at Alby’s shirt with both hands like he was trying to climb inside him and hide there. “Please…” he whispered. Then louder, ragged. “Please… make it stop. Please make it stop. I don’t want to be a monster.” Alby did go down then. Not collapse fully, not some dramatic drop, but enough that both he and Gally had to ease Chuck into the sand because there was no carrying him through that sentence. He tried to answer and his voice failed on the first attempt. Tried again, throat shredding itself around the words. “You’re not gonna be a monster,” he said. “You hear me? We’re gonna get you the cure. We’re gonna get you—” He choked. Couldn’t keep the sentence alive long enough to finish it. Chuck clung harder. “Please… please… make it stop…” Cass bit the inside of her cheek so hard she tasted blood and thought, with sudden vicious clarity, I will burn this whole world for making him ask.

That was when the sound hit them.

At first it was only a tremor under the sand. A low mechanical growl that didn’t belong to the shifting of dunes. Then it built, thickened and multiplied until the air itself seemed to vibrate with it. Engines. Heavy ones. Tuned. Powerful. The kind of sound metal made when it expected to dominate terrain instead of survive it. Every head snapped up at once, every one of them thinking the same thing: WCKD found us. The fear hit them before the vehicles even crested the ridge. It arrived in the body first. In Minho’s hand tightening around his weapon so fast his knuckles barked white. In Thomas’s heart lurching, not now, not when Chuck’s fading, not after everything, not one more thing, not one more thing. In Gally’s spine locking as every protective instinct in him turned outward at once. In Winston’s stomach dropping through himself, because of course this was how it would happen. In Alby’s exhausted brain snapping, instantly and automatically, from grief to calculation, how many men, what weapons, which direction to move Chuck, whether any of them could outrun bullets carrying a dying kid. In Newt, it came as a cold tightening under the ribs, to which he responded by moving closer to Cass without thought, enough that anybody watching would know exactly what his priorities were. Cole thought it in one blunt lightning-flash: this is it. this is how we get folded back into the nightmare. Cass came up in one motion, rifle raised, mind already leaping ahead to the ugly possibilities. WCKD retrieval team. Another trap timed to land exactly when they were weakest. Of course they found them now. Of fucking course. Her face had gone flat in that dangerous way it did when she was giving the universe exactly one chance to explain itself before she forced explanations out of it herself. Then the first vehicle crested the dune, and it was not a rust-eaten scavenger truck, nor a skeletal little desert runner you’d expect from survivors who lived by praying to engines and stealing parts. No, this thing looked built. Matte black plating. Reinforced windows sunk deep into armored frames. Heavy tires chewing through the sand like the desert had no right to resist them. A second one followed, then a third, then a fourth. They fanned out as they came down, splitting left and right until the Gladers found themselves bracketed in a black semicircle. Doors burst open almost before the engines had fully settled. Boots. Masks. Tactical gear. Lived in tactical gear. Scarred. Patched. Adapted. Thomas’s brain did what brains did under too much pressure: it split the scene into layers. Chuck in the sand. Cass hurt to an extent he did not know. Black trucks. Masked soldiers. Mountains still far. Too many things demanding immediate terror at once. Gally’s, on the other hand, supplied a single sentence: I will kill at least one of them before they put us in another cage. Cole looked from the black vehicles to the black blooming in Chuck’s veins and had the horrible feeling of being trapped inside a story with no interest in pacing itself.

A voice boomed through one of the masks, deep enough to carry over the engines. “Drop your weapons!” But before any of them could even process the words, the man ripped his mask off. The movement was so fast the strap snapped across his cheek and left a red mark. His rifle hit the sand at his feet like it had suddenly become irrelevant. Everything in him changed in one second. “Cass?” He said her name like it had been buried in him for ages and had just clawed its way back out. Cass turned and the man’s eyes went wet instantly. Not a slow build. Not even a fight. Just bright, immediate relief. He looked at her like the rest of the world had been wiped off the map in one blink. “You—” he started, then had to swallow because his throat had closed around whatever else was coming. He took one step, then another, disbelieving each of them. “You’re alive—” There was no vocabulary for what he was feeling, so he just crossed the distance and pulled Cass into him, and for some reason, Cass didn't recoil. Her body trusted the way he moved toward her in the same odd, involuntary way it had trusted some layouts and numbers in the Maze, the same way it trusted weapons in her hands and routes under pressure and things she could not consciously remember learning. He was... oddly familiar.

The Gladers froze. Before jealousy or suspicion or anger could take over, some quieter part of Minho registered that this was 100% not staged. It was shock so personal and pure it stripped a grown man down to the bone. Alby, who trusted almost nothing on first contact, felt his instincts hesitate, because no one that deep in performance forgot themselves like that. Not in the shoulders. Not in the mouth. Not in the way his whole body leaned toward her like the rest of the desert had disappeared. Newt felt something ugly tear straight through him. Not because of the hug itself, though that was bad enough. Not because the man said her name with that kind of history in it. It was the force of the grief. The obviousness of what she meant to him. The reminder that there had been a whole life around Cass before the Maze, a whole world of people who had loved her enough to mourn her like this. Jealousy was there, yes, hot and humiliating, but it was buried under something stranger too, fear that the life she had lost might come back and take her from them. Fear that this, whatever this was, would reorder her loyalties and leave them standing at the edges of a story that no longer centered them. The thought cut through him so quickly and so sharply he almost hated himself for it. Chuck was dying, Cass had just been found by someone whose body had clearly learned grief in her shape, and still some selfish piece of Newt flinched at the hug like it was a personal threat.

The man pulled back only enough to cup Cass’s face in both hands. His thumbs dragged across her cheekbones with the reverent disbelief of someone checking whether the image would vanish if he blinked. His hands were rough. Real. Shaking. “We searched for you for a whole damn year,” he said, and his voice had gone ragged now, every word pulled up over raw emotion like barbed wire. “God, I—” He broke there, tried again. “You weren’t—” His throat bobbed hard. “We—” Cass cut him off. There was no room in her mind for this. No room for old ghosts or new revelations or the shape of some life she did not remember. There was only Chuck dying. “He needs help.” He did not make her earn his urgency. Whatever hurricane was tearing through the guy got shoved aside instantly by the same kind of urgency that lived in Cass. He saw the kid on the sand and his whole posture changed. “MEDIC!” The shout cracked across the dunes and everything exploded into motion. A team broke from the vehicles at a sprint. Masks, gloves, medical packs already in hand, one of them snapping a folded gurney open mid-run like the movement had been practiced a hundred times under worse conditions. They dropped to Chuck’s side, scanning the bite, cutting the sleeve higher, checking pupils, pulse, airway, blood pressure, all while speaking over one another in quick clipped bursts of terminology the Gladers didn’t fully understand and did not care to as long as it meant they could actually save him. One medic pressed something against Chuck’s neck. Another was already drawing up an injection from a case clipped to his vest. And the Gladers, who had spent the last few hours hollowed out by helplessness, just stood there in the middle of it like they were not yet trusting their eyes. Please let this be what it looks like. One of the soldiers, not even looking up from helping secure Chuck to the gurney, said, “He's gonna make it.” Relief hit the Gladers like a physical thing. Minho actually had to close his eyes for a second because the force of it made him dizzy. Gally took two steps back and scrubbed a hand over his face like he was trying to hide from the fact that his eyes had gone bright. Thomas laughed. Frypan sat down right there in the sand because his body had decided enough was fucking enough. Winston was shaking now, not from fear but from the violent comedown of maybe. Newt felt that promise land in his chest with such raw need attached to it that suspicion had to fight just to stay standing. It could have been WCKD again. It could have been a trick, another m performance designed to pull hope out of them like thread. None of them gave a fuck as long as they saved Chuck’s life. Cass turned back to the man. “Who are you?”

The question went through him like a blade. You could see it. In the way his face folded before he could stop it. In the way all that relief had to make room, instantly, for grief of a different kind. He looked at her like the loss had just happened all over again in a newer, crueler shape. Not dead, then. Just erased. For a second he didn’t answer at all. His eyes searched hers as if maybe there’d be a crack somewhere, some glimmer of recognition if he waited one breath longer. “What have they done to you?” he said instead. Cass didn't hesitate. Her instincts remembered him even if her mind didn't. Something under language. Under logic. He hit her like déjà vu sharpened into a person. Safety. Familiarity. It made no sense, but she trusted him more in that second than she trusted the thought of trust itself. “Full memory wipe,” she said. The man closed his eyes for one sharp beat, and when he opened them they shone. “I told him they’d put you in a Maze,” he whispered, more to himself than to her. “I told him—” Whatever came after that caught in his throat. He swallowed it. Had to. There wasn’t time to break open properly. “We’ll talk when we get back,” he said, and the words came out unsteady. “It’s… it’s a lot.”

Understatement of the century.

They drove over cracked pavement and the skeletons of buildings, the world stretching out in dead geometry around them. What had once been roads were now more suggestion than structure, old blacktop split open by heat and time, warped upward in places like burnt paper. Sand had swallowed whole lanes, drifting over medians and street signs and the lower halves of traffic lights until the city looked less destroyed than slowly digested. The occasional burnt-out car jutted from the dunes at strange angles, half-buried and sun-bleached, like fossils from a species that had died stupidly and all at once. Whole facades had peeled off and collapsed into the streets. Then the vehicles turned between two collapsed overpasses that looked, at first glance, like a dead end. Just piles of concrete and twisted rebar and a collapsed sound barrier wall half-swallowed by drifting sand, the sort of place you’d glance at once and write off immediately as another ruin. But the lead vehicle didn’t slow. It drove straight toward the rubble, and only when they were almost on top of it did the illusion break. What had looked like random debris... shifted. Panels disguised as broken slab peeled back on hidden joints. Sections of dust-coated metal slid away from each other, exposing the seam of a massive gate so well camouflaged the eye had refused to register it until it moved. It was clever in the kind of way Cass respected immediately. Not polished. Not clean. Practical camouflage built by people who expected drones and satellites and patrols and wanted to be mistaken for ruins by all of them. If you weren’t looking for it, you’d drive right past without a second thought. Inside was a military base. An actual, honest-to-God military base. Cass felt that in her bones before she could articulate why. Barracks and maintenance sheds hunkered low and reinforced under patched roofing. Fuel drums were stacked under tarps and netting. Water tanks sat in guarded rows. Vehicles, some factory-built and some clearly salvaged into brutal new lives, lined one side of the yard. Sandbags had been worked into old concrete barriers. There were shooting lanes marked out near a far wall, target boards shredded to ribbons. A communications mast rose over the whole compound, clearly repaired about six times with whatever had been available. People moved everywhere. Carrying crates. Checking mags. Hauling water. Swapping tires. Arguing over inventory. Someone cursed when a cargo latch jammed. Someone else laughed from somewhere near the motor pool. A voice from a rooftop shouted, “You owe me five!” It was loud. Human. Messy. Frypan noticed the smell first and nearly sagged with the relief of it. Not because it was pleasant, exactly, but because it wasn’t fake. Winston, who had spent the whole ride waiting for the other shoe to drop, found himself thrown by the sight of soldiers bickering over a crate and a woman carrying three water jugs yelling at both of them to move their asses unless they wanted to drink sand. Minho’s eyes kept snagging on practical details, ammo crates, real fortifications, patched gear, a mechanic literally shoulder-deep in an engine while two armed men argued over spark plugs, and every one of those details told him the same thing: these people lived here. Worked here. Fought here. This wasn’t theater. Thomas clocked the signs of improvisation everywhere, repaired walls, patched concrete, hand-built shelving outside the storage sheds, uniforms mixed and unmatched in places, and felt a weird flicker of trust for no reason other than that the place had seams showing. It hadn’t been flattened into one aesthetic lie.

The engines died one by one. Doors opened. Soldiers jumped down and immediately started unloading gear. The Gladers climbed out rigidly, every muscle ready for the trap to reveal itself. None came. The medics didn’t even look at the rest of them after the first glance, only at Chuck. “Prep the line,” one of them snapped, already moving as they wheeled the gurney out. “Tell Singh we need clotting panel and full neuro read, now.” Another answered, “Already called it in,” without breaking stride. Chuck was swept away fast enough that Alby nearly lurched after him on instinct, and only Gally’s hand on his shoulder kept him from physically colliding with the medics. Cass followed the gurney without thinking. There wasn’t a decision in it. No pause. Her body just moved after Chuck like everything else had become temporary. The others trailed her immediately, moving as one battered little cluster through the yard and into the building the medics had headed for. The hall they entered wasn’t polished. Concrete walls. Reinforced metal doors. Functional lighting caged behind wire, one bulb flickering near the ceiling like no one had gotten around to replacing it yet. Hand-painted arrows on the walls in chipped red and blue. Signs screwed in crooked, some printed and some handwritten with thick black marker: MED BAY, SUPPLY, DON’T LEAVE YOUR SHIT HERE, and, taped to one door at eye-level in aggressively slanted handwriting, IF YOU STEAL MY SOCKS AGAIN I’LL END YOU, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. Under that, in a different hand: SAY IT TO MY FACE, COWARD. Frypan actually stared at that one for half a second like it had healed something in him. They wheeled Chuck through double doors and their Med Bay swallowed him. Beds separated by hanging curtains with half the curtains mismatched. Cabinets with labels peeled and rewritten. A whiteboard full of names and timings and medication schedules. Trays laid out. Monitors that looked older than the end of the world but still functioned. A nurse barked for saline before anyone had fully entered the room. Someone else was already cutting away the rest of Chuck’s sleeve, swabbing his arm, threading another line. One medic slid a needle into his vein with the speed of somebody whose hands had done this under worse pressure than tears. Another strapped sensors to his chest. The screen beside the bed came alive in hard little jumps of color and sound. His breathing eased fractionally after the first rush of medication. Then more. His fingers unclenched one by one, as if his body was letting go by degrees. The sound he made next wasn’t a cry. Just a weak, broken exhale that didn’t hurt as much on the way out. That alone almost dropped Alby to his knees all over again. Gally’s shoulders lowered by a fraction. Thomas gripped the bedrail and only realized he was doing it when one of the nurses said “careful” without any heat. Minho kept swallowing around something too big to call a cry. Frypan’s hands were shaking, so he tucked them under his arms and pretended that had always been where he meant to put them. Cole hung back enough not to get in the way, but his eyes didn’t leave Chuck’s face, tracking every breath as if each one were a little separate miracle. Newt stood slightly behind Cass, close enough to catch her if the adrenaline finally left her all at once and she folded. He saw the exact moment her shoulders trembled, not much, just the tiniest shiver through the frame of her body like the relief had found one crack and was trying it for size. It terrified him almost more than her crying would have.

The man who had recognized Cass had never stopped looking at her. Even while the medics worked. Even while he barked short answers to the people who asked him questions. His eyes kept returning to her face like some part of him still didn’t trust the reality of it and had to keep checking if she’d vanish. When he finally spoke, his voice had gone quieter, rougher, the volume a person used when they had found the edge of something raw and were trying not to lean too hard on it. “He’s gonna be okay.” Cass swallowed and nodded once. The doctor nearest the bed glanced up from the monitor and looked between the cluster of grim, dust-covered, armed kids. “You can stay with him,” she said, “but it’s better if he rests now.” Cass did not argue. That more than anything told the others how badly she’d been shaken. Under normal circumstances she would’ve pushed. Asked questions. Demanded specifics. Wanted to know what drug, what dose, what timeline. Instead she only looked at Chuck one more time, really looked, as if she needed to file away the proof of him breathing easier before stepping back, and then she turned without a word. Trust. They stepped back into the corridor and followed the man farther in. The hall widened, branched, then opened into a huge workroom. Tables everywhere. Some covered in maps pinned under knives and mugs and ammo boxes. Some buried in radio parts and paper stacks and half-stripped rifles. Crates of food, water, and weaponry lined one wall. Another wall held a patchwork spread of maps and routes and handwritten notes connected with string and marker. One table had disassembled drones on it. Another had a radio unit with the top off and two people arguing over its wiring. There were military jackets slung over chairbacks, open notebooks, dented thermoses, hand-drawn shift rosters, grease pencils, a coffee pot that looked like the apocalypse itself had failed to kill it, and enough human mess in every corner to prove none of it had been arranged for guests. And then conversation died. Not gradually. Not in ripples of politeness. The man had led them in fast enough that most of the room only half-looked up at first, ready to track whatever had pulled a convoy back so early. Then they saw her. “Cass?”The voice came from near the map wall, thin with disbelief. Another person, wrench in hand at one of the worktables, let it slip from their fingers. It hit the concrete with a hard metallic clatter that seemed absurdly loud in the sudden hush. A woman near the communications desk straightened so sharply her chair tipped over behind her. One of the men by the coffee pot just stared, mouth gone open. Someone else whispered her name again, like testing whether saying it aloud would make the apparition hold shape. “Cassandra…?” Then another voice. And another. Her name moved through the room in widening circles, breaking out of people with the same shock every time. There was no smoothness to it. No formal reaction. Just humans watching someone they had lost step through a doorway with dust on her boots and a rifle over her shoulder and a group of feral-looking boys at her back.

The Gladers' heads turned slowly, taking in every face that had changed on seeing her, and thought two things: One, that people did not react like this to nobodies, so just like they'd suspected, Cass was a literal fucking legend, and two, that if this many trained, armed soilders cared about her this much, then whatever she had been before mattered on a scale they couldn't even begin to understand. Newt looked at the room and understood, with a sick little tightening under his heart, that his fear in the desert had not been stupid after all. It made him realize how fragile his claim on her time had been. How recent. How contingent. He hated that thought the second it came and still couldn’t fully kill it. Then he looked at her, truly looked, and saw that she was not stepping forward into some beloved homecoming. She was frozen in the doorway with her hand tightening on the rifle strap, all her instincts telling her this should mean something and her memory giving her nothing in return. That put the selfishness in him in its place. Because whatever fear he had of losing her to this past, she had to stand there and face the fact that her own name could tear through a room like grief and still not unlock a single door in her head. Cass stared at them all, every stare feeling like a hand on a bruise she couldn’t locate. That was the maddening thing, not just that they knew her, but that their faces carried certainty. Familiarity. Love, maybe. Guilt. Reverence. Relief. She could read all of it. Could sort the emotions in the room with one sweep of her eyes the way she sorted threats and exits and weaknesses. But none of it matched anything inside her except that same destabilizing bodily déjà vu. A roomful of people looking at her like she was a returned pulse in the center of their history, and her mind was blank enough to echo. It made her fingers flex on the strap of the rifle because that was the only solid thing she could grip without insulting anybody. “Okay, what the fuck is happening?” The man from the dunes looked like he might cry all over again. “You… God, it’s—” His voice snagged on itself, too full, too raw, too crowded with everything he was trying to say. But another voice cut through the room before the man could fight another word out.

“You say her name one more time and I’m gonna fucking kill you.”

Time stilled.

Cass turned and her heartbeat slammed so hard it made her vision flicker.

A guy stood in the doorway. Tall, lean, hair her exact shade of blonde, eyes honey coloured and fierce—hers, if hers had ever learned to be gentler. The expression on his face was a perfect mirror of hers: same stunned break in the features, same raw disbelief, same thing breaking wide open beneath the surface like the universe had finally returned a missing organ and neither of them knew how to hold the pain of getting it back. Two halves of the same design finally forced back into alignment after being thrown into separate fires. Her fingers went slack, rifle slipping from her hands and hitting the concrete with a crack loud enough to ricochet through the stillness. His dropped too. They crossed the space at the exact same time. Cass didn’t realize she was crying until she felt wetness that wasn’t hers on her temple and then noticed her own breath hitching in little broken gasps against the base of his throat. “You’re—” he choked, and the word drowned before it reached shape. “I’m—” she gasped back, equally useless. Then both of them, perfectly overlapping, voices wrecked in exactly the same place, said, “Yeah.” That was all. No explanation. Just the collapse of two nervous systems recognizing each other in full after too much damage and too much absence. The hug did not feel like I missed you. It felt like I only stayed alive because some part of me knew you still were too. It felt like their bodies had been trying to complete the same unfinished motion for so long that now, finally, the impact of finishing it had robbed them both of language. His face pressed into her hair like he needed the scent of her there to believe this wasn’t some cruel trick. Her hands stayed fisted in his shirt, confirming, confirming, confirming. They stayed like that far longer than the room knew what to do with. Long enough for one of the mechanics by the far wall to drag a hand over his eyes and cough like that would disguise the way his face had folded. Long enough for a woman by the radio table to turn fully around and pretend to be searching through papers while she cried. “…What the hell,” Minho muttered, shaking his head once like maybe that would knock the scene into something his brain could file. The man from the dunes leaned toward the soldier beside him and muttered, rough and half-broken with wonder, “No memory wipe could erase that one, huh.”

Newt heard them both of them like he was underwater. The room had gone thick and warped around him, every sound arriving a fraction too late, every movement slightly off from the rest of the world, because this moment of theirs had hit him in a place he hadn’t had time to put armor over. He didn’t even have the spare breath yet to notice the hair or the eyes or the cheekbones. His mind had not gotten that far. It had gone somewhere uglier first. More immediate. It had gone to the way she’d run to him. To how fast it had happened. To the absolute certainty in it. No pause. No caution. No guarded edge. Just her entire body choosing him before thought had any say in the matter. And the way he’d caught her—God. Like he’d been built for exactly that shape of her. Like there was history in his hands, and a kind of belonging Newt had never once dared name for himself because naming it would’ve made all the want in him too real to survive. Something in his chest cracked along that line. His voice came out quiet, like the answer might finalize whatever his body had already begun grieving. “Who… is he?” Please don't say boyfriend, please don't say boyfriend, please, for fucks sake, don't you dare say boyfriend—The man glanced at him, then back to the two of them still locked together, and despite the tears still shining in his eyes, a tired little smile touched his mouth. “Look at them for a bit,” he said. “And you’ll figure it out yourself.”

The resemblance was uncanny. Not just the hair and the eyes, though those hit first because they were exact, hair the same pale gold, same way the light found different shades in it depending on the angle, eyes the same shade of honey. It was the whole arrangement of them. The way they existed. The shared geometry. The way their cheekbones cut. The way both of them, even crying and shaking and wrecked, carried that same unmistakable presence. Something hard to explain with words but impossible to miss. That same alertness in the bones. That same dangerous kind of competence that made you feel, irrationally, that if the building caught fire they'd already know where the exits were and who to carry first. When Cass pulled back a fraction to look at him, he mirrored her perfectly, same amount of distance, same drag of reluctant breath, same unwillingness to break contact fully. Their hands stayed on each other’s arms. Same angle. Same grip. Same need to keep one point of physical certainty while the room swayed around them. Two halves of the same blueprint.

That's her damn brother.

The relief nearly made him sway. Newt had to look away for one second because he could not let anyone see the full force of it on his face. Not just because he was embarrassed by where his thoughts had gone first, though he was. Not just because the stupid private ache in his chest got instantly recategorized from she belongs to someone else to I am such a bloody idiot. It was also the sheer tenderness of it all. Her brother. Someone who had looked for her long enough and hard enough that seeing her alive had made him forget his rifle and his men and his own body in public. He felt tears threaten to spill again, because a brother meant a childhood and arguments and shared rooms and inside jokes, and Cass probably couldn't remember any of it cleanly. God. Around him, the Gladers were having versions of the same revelation in their own different languages. Frypan’s mouth opened and closed twice before he managed any sound at all. Nothing came out. Winston whispered, “Holy hell, there’s two of them.” Minho stared and felt his brain short-circuit on three separate tracks. One was their uncanny resemblance, another was the fact that they were both hot enough to make him start picturing the Gods that had brought them into existence, and the third was... sadness, because while he’d been getting carried away imagining futures and kisses and houses and hot-date jokes, this whole time there had been someone out here who had loved her since before she could hold a knife, probably before either of them had teeth worth a damn, and he’d had to believe she was dead. Thomas, who had been standing there feeling his own stomach dropping in sympathy with Newt’s, blinked hard and then again, like the resemblance had suddenly registered and made him feel stupid for missing it for an entire minute. Gally’s snorted once, sharp and annoyed, as though he was pissed at the universe for making him mentally square up against a guy who turned out to be family. Alby had the indecency to grin, because he'd clocked the resemblance the second he saw the guy and watching his idiots go through six different feelings in less than a minute was funny as fuck. Or maybe he was just so wrung out and stressed that his nerves had begged him to find something, anything funny for the sake of his sanity. Winston’s brain skipped the emotional poetry and went straight to awe. It was one thing to know Cass had a past and another thing entirely to see it walk into a room and look enough like her to make your skin prickle. Cole was, despite everything, a little delighted by the drama. He had spent a week in that fake safe zone feeling like life had been boiled down to white walls and clipped orders and the long humiliating wait to be picked for some mystery process that smelled wrong from the start. Then he fell in with the Gladers and the first thing he learned was that their world revolved around a blonde girl who could make them lose all common sense. Apparently, said blonde girl had a twin brother who had threatened murder on entry and then dissolved into a reunion so intense it made grown soldiers cry openly in a workroom. Tell me that's not peak cinema. Frypan, when he finally got his brain to work again, could think only in absurd practical fragments because full feeling would have flattened him. Same nose. Same stupid expression. Same “I will stab God” energy. That's her brother.

“Tell me what happened to you,” the guy said, voice still shaky. “Talk to me.” Cass wiped her face with the heel of her hand, offended by her own tears. The movement only smeared dust and grief more. “Maze,” she said, the cleanest word for the first hell. “WCKD base. Then Wasteland.” Her gaze flicked toward the medical wing before she could stop it, toward where Chuck had disappeared. “That’s all I got.” His face tightened like she’d just shown him a knife wound. “Nothing else came back?”

Cass shook her head.

The air shifted again. People in the room went quiet in a different way. Grief, because they were looking at someone they loved and realizing she’d been robbed twice: once of her freedom, and once of her own mind. They had gotten her back, yes. But not all of her. Not the part that knew them. Not the web of histories and names and private jokes and old wounds that had once made her theirs in a way the Gladers had only begun to approximate. The man from the dunes caught it too and motioned subtly for people to give her space, because what stood in front of them was Cass and not-Cass both. The essence was there, that much was certain. But memory mattered. Context mattered. You couldn’t rush recognition just because your own heart was sprinting. She needed room to breathe and process all of this. What she did with that room was to turn back toward the Gladers, eyes still red, voice still shaky.

“This... is my brother.”

Yes, thank you, Cassandra, we got that. He is literally the male version of you. But the words were also weirdly comforting, because they made this whole thing stop feeling like losing her to her past. That fear they'd had, selfish, ugly, deeply human, that this place and these people might somehow reclaim her entirely, might take her back into a story where the Gladers were only a footnote, that fear loosened immediately, because Cass had turned to them. She'd looked at them like the moment mattered because they were standing in it with her. She had not turned away and disappeared into some private reunion. She had not shut them out of it. Her eyes had found theirs, and in that glance was something simple and enormous: I'm glad you're here for it. They were included. Not politely. Not formally. Instinctively. Her past wasn’t stealing her away. It was just unfolding.

“Twin brother,” he corrected immediately, because apparently emotional devastation did not prevent him from being a little shit. Then his smile widened, even while tears still tracked down his face. “But she doesn’t usually say that because it would mean admitting she had a shot at these genes and I still ended up hotter than her.” He waved his hand, “Name’s Will.” Cass shot him the exact same narrow look he’d thrown her. Not similar. Not comparable. The exact same look, mirrored so perfectly it made the room feel like it had tilted. Same slight angle of the head. Same flattening of the mouth. And then, in unison, because Will clearly knew what she’d say, and some pathways in her apparently did not require memory so much as provocation, they both said: “You had a shot at this brain and I still ended up smarter—” Cass froze in the middle of the sentence. The jerk had baited her. Thrown out the insult like a fishing line because he knew exactly which part of her would rise to snap at it. Will’s grin went shameless and triumphant and unbearably fond. “Don’t need your memories for that one, huh,” he said. “Oh, we can definitely work with this.”

That line did more to settle the room than any formal reassurance could have. You could see it in the way shoulders dropped, in the way some of the soldiers laughed through wet eyes and didn’t even try to make it seem like anything but relief. This was solid evidence that Cass was still in there. Not facts or names or all the missing years laid out cleanly, but wiring. The old current still running under all the stolen pieces. Cass was still in there. God fucking bless, Cass was still in there. Will squeezed his sister's shoulder once, then flicked the Gladers another small grin, shaky, smug, not nearly as recovered as he wanted anyone to think. “Looks like we’ve got some catching up to do.”

Yes, we do, actually, the Gladers thought almost all at once. They would love to hear the five hundred missing pages of Cassandra lore, thank you very much. They would like the uncut edition, please. Annotated, ideally. Footnotes welcome. Timelines. Childhood incidents. Training records. Every stupid thing she’d ever done. Every explanation for every impossible thing they had watched her do since she landed in the Glade like a problem sent by God specifically to keep them from ever knowing peace again. Cass bent to pick her rifle back up and then followed Will deeper into the workroom toward one of the larger tables. The Gladers filed in behind them. Some of the soldiers followed them as well, but they kept their distance, hovering just shy of them, close enough to step in if something exploded, because something was definitely going to explode. Every few seconds someone would glance at Will and ask themselves how long before he snaps? The vibe was less welcome back, Cassandra and more someone remove all breakable objects before the twins start communicating at full volume. They all knew how pissed he was about the stunt his sister had pulled this time. They knew there was no version of this conversation that ended without a few good punches. And because they also knew Cass, they were already taking bets in their heads on how much it would take before one of them tried to put the other through a wall. Cass dropped into a chair at the table with care disguised as indifference. The movement was small, controlled, but Newt saw the minute adjustment she made halfway through sitting, the barely-there hitch in breath. Part of him wanted to interrupt the whole thing and demand that somebody with medical authority look at her this instant. Another part knew that if he did that in front of a room full of soldiers and her twin brother and the rest of the Gladers, Cass would skin him alive, so he didn't say a thing. Will sat opposite her, elbows on his knees for one second before forcing himself back against the chair like proximity might make him either cry again or start shouting. The Gladers settled around them in an semicircle, no one even pretending this wasn’t the most important conversation in the world now. They leaned in without meaning to, hungry as hell.

Will took a deep breath. “Alright—”

Cass cut him off instantly. “You’re only gonna tell me what best suits your interests, aren’t you?”

Will smiled, there she is written all over his features. “I’m starting to think your memory’s actually fine.”

“I don’t need my memories to know how big of a jerk I’m looking at.”

“Who do you think I got it from?”

Cass huffed, visibly fighting the same stupid rhythm that had already betrayed her once. “Just fucking talk.”

Will leaned back, hands raised in mock surrender. “Should I start with our childhood trauma, military took us at thirteen type of thing, or—”

Cass’s tone sharpened. “Will.”

It was one syllable, but the soldiers in the room reacted like someone had cocked a weapon. One man went still with his coffee halfway to his mouth. Another actually closed his eyes for half a second as if bracing for impact. They’d heard that exact syllable right before furniture started flying one too many times. “Okay, fine,” Will said, and then, because apparently the self-preservation instinct in their family had always been decorative: “We’ll start with how you got yourself in this mess in the first place. Your WCKD fixation.”

A few soldiers facepalmed. It did not take him long at all. Barely a minute in and he was already on it. The room’s collective expression shifted into a tired, knowing kind of dread. There goes the first punch of the evening. The man from the dunes dragged a hand down his face. One of the women near the map wall muttered, “Three minutes.” Another soldier murmured back, “New record, huh?” then stopped when he noticed the Gladers listening.

Will glanced around at the boys properly then, really taking them in. Not as armed strays who had arrived with his sister, but as the people who had been around her enough to know what he's talking about. “You’ve all probably noticed my dear sister’s self-sacrificing streak.”

The boys all nodded without missing a beat. There was no moment of politeness where anyone pretended to think about it. The answer came out of them with the reflexive certainty of people who had lived too long in the blast radius of the thing being named. Minho actually let out a short, incredulous laugh as he nodded, because noticed was putting it mildly. Gally nodded with all the bitterness of a man whose life had recently become one long exhausting fight against Cass’s willingness to die for other people. Alby’s nod was slower, deeper, almost sad. This wasn’t new information so much as confirmation that Cass had always been this way. That it had nothing to do with the memory wipe or the Maze sharpening her down into some temporary crisis-version of herself. This was simply her foundation. Bedrock. Something built into the deepest parts of her. He'd had one too many conversations about it with Newt back in the Glade. Speaking of which, Newt... Newt just sighed. Every time she threw herself into danger with that infuriating calm, every time she bled and shrugged, every time she looked at someone else’s suffering like it automatically ranked above her own continued existence, Newt had felt like he was developing some private disease for which the only symptoms were rage, fear, and wanting to kiss her senseless in roughly equal measure. And here was Will, her bloody brother, going through the exact same thing. Here was a whole room behind him going through the exact same thing. Loving Cassandra should come with a mandatory support group: People Who Love Cassandra. Meetings on Sundays. Mandatory attendance. Tea, maybe. Or whiskey. Depends on the week and whether she’d nearly died in it. Newt would be the poor bastard who stood up every meeting and said, “Hello, my name’s Newt, and I am hopelessly in love with this absolute menace who thinks self-preservation is beneath her,” while everybody else nodded like yes, mate, we know, take a seat. Even Cole nodded, because in the short time he’d known her, Cass had already set an entire building on fire rather than let infected get close enough to the rest of them, and apparently that was only the latest entry in a much older series.

Cass didn't comment.

Will’s grin widened with the vicious satisfaction of a man whose case had just been handed supporting witnesses. “Our old base literally had a whiteboard that said Days Since Cass’s Last Reckless Move. Highest it ever got was ten. And that was only because she was in a goddamn coma.”

Why was hearing there had once been institutional tracking of Cass’s reckless behavior not surprising at all? Minho barked out a full-bodied laugh this time. Of course an entire base of trained people had at some point concluded that the only sane response to Cassandra was... that. Gally snorted. They had metrics. They had goddamn metrics. Alby closed his eyes briefly, because the general concept of a dedicated tally system for Cassandra-related incidents felt so correct it was hard not to respect the organization of it. Not just “watch out for her,” but “we all know this is a thing, we all carry it together.” Frypan wanted to ask for incident reports. Wanted to know what counted as a “reckless move” in the old base’s book, just to compare notes with the internal list he had been building: (insert literally anything she'd done since they met her) The whiteboard was maybe the funniest proof yet that she had been creating this kind of emotional logistics problem for years. Winston had thought Cass insane once, genuinely, and honestly, he still thought there was a little insanity in there somewhere, but now he had to update the file. Apparently it wasn’t trauma-madness. It was a baseline operating system. Which was worse, in some ways, because you could not wait that out. You could not get someone through the bad stretch and hope they settled. You were just dealing with a person who, at their core, saw danger to others as a personal administrative error that she was obligated to correct. Oh well.

Will turned back to her. “Your obsession started with a rumor,” he said, pressing on the last word. “Some scavenger we pulled out of a heat pocket said WCKD was snatching kids to experiment on them.”

“The rumor was clearly true,” Cass muttered, also pressing on the word and jerking her chin toward the Gladers.

“And where did that get you?” Will snapped, and his control slipped just enough for the real anger to show. He leaned forward, palms on the table, and for the first time the room stopped looking at this like a happy reunion with comic relief and started seeing the edge under it. “A rumor was enough to fuel an entire spiral that—”

Cass smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes, and everyone in the room who knew her, Gladers and soldiers alike, felt the temperature shift. “I’m not interested in your opinion, William,” she said, voice smooth, “I’m interested in what actually happened, so if you’re gonna be pissy about it, I’ll just ask someone else to fill me in.”

That landed. The man from the dunes closed his eyes for half a second and rubbed a hand over his mouth as if silently begging Will not to take the bait. A woman near the doorway actually muttered, “Don’t,” under her breath, though it was impossible to tell whether she meant Cass, Will or their tempers themselves. Will inhaled hard through his nose. God, he was itching for a fight, but he just kept himself talking. “You started strategizing,” he said, and his voice was steadier now, built back into a shape he could steer. “Planning to wipe WCKD off the map like they weren’t just another monster in a world full of them. Like if you worked hard enough and thought fast enough you could save the damn world from itself.” His mouth twitched, not into a smile exactly, but into the bitter shape of memory. “We did it for a while,” he said. “Six bases down. We blew their generators, their comm towers, their transport routes. We turned their own supply lines into liabilities. We emptied out their holding rooms before they could move the kids. We hijacked manifests. Burned research. Tripped security protocols and left them chasing ghosts. We fucked them up so badly they started writing reports like they were hunting a goddamn demon.” He let out one humorless breath through his nose. “And to make sure the terror really settled, that they felt it all the way down to the bone, you made them think you were working alone. You wanted to humiliate them into early graves.” Newt watched Will’s face, not just the words. Watched where the anger hardened and where the admiration still bled through despite his obvious best efforts. Because that was what this was, too, hidden under all the bitterness: pride. Furious, exhausted, betrayed pride. Will leaned back a fraction, then forward again, restless in the chair, unable to hold one posture because the memory itself had too much voltage in it. “Or at least that was what you told us,” he said, looking directly at Cass. “I knew better. You only gave them one target because if they had more, they would’ve escalated too fast and hit all of us.” His jaw shifted. “So you only risked yourself.” Will’s voice lowered. “We did things that should’ve gotten us killed ten times over,” he said. “Nothing new there. We’ve lived like that our whole lives.” The soldiers in the room exchanged glances, because they had seen the twins in motion before and they knew exactly what kind of storm he meant by we. Alby understood Will better for it. Because that line was not just backstory. It was why his anger looked the way it did. If your whole life with someone had been made of surviving together at impossible margins, then losing them to one stupid extra risk would not feel abstract. It would feel personal. Like betrayal. Will’s voice sharpened again, anger rising because it was the only way he knew how to touch the pain without drowning in it. “But this time, you couldn’t settle for being a fucking legend, you just had to turn yourself into a tragedy.” Not self-sacrificing streak. Not reckless move. No. Tragedy. That was the brutal version. The stripped version. The one without a soft edge. Will’s gaze dropped for a second. “We were at the seventh operation,” he said. “You were supposed to kill their assistant director. Janson.” Will swallowed the rest like it tasted like blood. “When I came looking for you after getting the kids to safety… you were already gone.” The sentence hollowed the room out. “And for the past year, I had to search for you, I had to curse you, I had to fucking hate you, I—” He stopped, because the next words were too honest. Too raw.

Cass stared at him for a long moment. Her throat worked. She didn’t apologize. No, Cass did not hand out apologies to soothe hurt she believed had been incurred in the course of necessary action. But the muscle in her jaw still jumped like she wanted to.

Then Will did something that was so Cass-coded it almost made the room laugh. He leaned back, hands loose, shoulders dropping, as if they were catching up over tea instead of bleeding their insides onto a worktable. “Now,” he said, voice smoother, easier, like he had not just cracked his own chest open in front of the whole room, “you tell me yours in full, sis.”

Cass exhaled once through her nose, then started talking. “Woke up in the Maze,” she said, jerking her chin toward the boys.

Will cut in instantly, so fast it was obvious he couldn't have helped himself. “Don’t tell me,” he said, pitching his voice up into a mocking, wickedly accurate caricature of hers. “Figured the Maze out in no time but I couldn’t have possibly left without them, they deserve better than this—” He flicked a glance toward the Gladers and lifted one hand in brief apology. “No offense.” The Gladers were all genuinely impressed by how fast Will had nailed her. “None taken,” Alby said. Minho snorted into his fist and then immediately schooled himself because Cass was already annoyed and, unlike Will, he wasn’t suicidal. Gally’s mouth twitched despite himself, because hearing somebody else summarize Cass’s entire operational philosophy in one line felt almost healing.

Cass clicked her tongue, irritation sparking, but she kept going, counting on her fingers. “Spent almost three weeks there. We got out and Janson hauled us into a chopper straight to a WCKD base. Boys got us all out of there by morning.” She pointed as she named them, one by one, her hand moving around the table. “Alby. Newt. Thomas. Winston. Gally. Minho. Frypan. Cole, and Chuck… in the other room.”

And because, as previously mentioned, Will had a death wish, “And you were ready to die for them how many times?”

Cass shot to her feet so fast her chair screeched. Panic flashed through Newt immediately, because she did not need quick moves right now. He was halfway up himself when Alby’s hand landed on his forearm. Will stood too. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t back down. Didn’t even have the grace to look surprised. If anything, something in him looked relieved, like some rotten pressure valve in his chest had finally found an opening. “You act like you’re just a fucking rifle that took too long to reload,” he snapped, all the control he’d been hanging onto by his fingernails giving way at once. “Like it’s fine for you to die as long as somebody else lives. Do you know what it’s been like? Do you have any idea how much I prayed you were dead and not somewhere I couldn’t reach while they cut you apart? I searched for you until I nearly broke. I almost put a bullet through my—”

“BOOHOO!” she shouted right over him. “ALL I HEAR IS FUCKING WHINING—”

“Oh, I’ll show you fucking whining!”

A soldier muttered a quiet here we go, like someone watching a storm roll in exactly on schedule. The twins moved before anyone could blink. The Gladers lurched, chairs scraping, boots hitting the floor. Thomas actually barked, “Cass!” in pure reflex as he lunged around the edge of the table. “Holy shit!” Minho gasped. Gally shoved his chair back so hard it tipped. Alby’s hand remained on Newt, because even if Newt hated him for it right now, later, when the panic faded and he found himself still in Cass's good graces, he’d realize that staying put had been the right move. Winston startled like a cat with bad nerves. Cole’s eyes went huge. Apparently this family did not believe in gradual escalation. But the soldier from the dunes—the designated I’ve heard this song and dance before guy—just leaned against the wall and lifted one hand in a lazy, stopping motion. “No. Let them have it,” he said, as calm as one can be. “They’ll be unbearable if they don’t.” Frypan looked from the fight to the soldier and back again. “This happened before?” The man nodded, completely resigned. “Every damn time they find each other alive.”

Will anticipated his sister's swing half a heartbeat early, ducking just enough that her fist clipped past his jaw instead of landing flush. “You think it’s heroic to die for strangers? YOU'RE JUST A FUCKING COWARD. STAYING ALIVE AND DEALING WITH EVERYTHING THAT HURTS IS HARDER THAN—” Cass shoved him so hard he stumbled back against a table. Maps flied. A wrench clattered. A cup tipped and rolled in a circle, spilling cold coffee across a marked route. “You don’t get to call me a coward when all you did was sit on your ass whining about your lost sister,” she shouted. “What a sob story you are! POOR WILL! WHO GIVES A FUCK? YOU SHOULD’VE KEPT SAVING PEOPLE. YOU SHOULD’VE FINISHED WHAT I COULDN’T. AND I WAKE UP TO A WORLD WHERE WCKD IS STILL A THING BECAUSE YOU COULDN’T GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER, YOU FUCKING IDIOT!” Newt had given up the idea of stopping them, one, because he'd clocked that Will was shielding her side. Not obviously. Not enough that anyone who wasn’t already pathologically attentive to Cass would catch it. But Newt saw the micro-adjustments, the way Will redirected her momentum away from one angle, the way everything happened around the injury instead of straight through it, as if some buried instinct had already mapped her current damage from one glance and built the fight around not making it worse. And two, because it was obvious that this was not hatred speaking. This was love in one of its ugliest surviving forms. And the physical proof of it was that they were still in perfect sync, even while fighting. Cass shifted her weight exactly the way he did when he stepped in to shove her shoulder off-line. Same fire, doubled and mirrored. Same center of gravity, same economy of motion. So Newt just took a deep breath and stayed still. Easier said than done. Another deep breath. And another. And another.

Will’s face twisted like he’d been slapped with every second of that missing time at once. “OH, I’M A FUCKING IDIOT?” he shouted back. “THEY MANAGED TO TAKE YOU BECAUSE YOU WERE EXHAUSTED. YOU HADN’T SLEPT IN WEEKS BEFORE THAT. YOU JUST HAD TO KEEP ON WORKING, JUST HAD TO KEEP BEING THE DAMN MARTYR. I TOLD YOU YOU’D GET YOURSELF KILLED—” They hit the floor in the middle of that sentence. One second they were shoving and snarling across the table, the next Cass had hooked one leg behind his and dragged the momentum sideways while he twisted, and the two of them went down in a brutal tangle of limbs. Will got the top position for half a second, long enough for Minho to wince on Cass’s behalf, before she swung upward and caught him square on the nose with a sharp, sick crack that made the whole room hiss. Blood ran immediately. Bright red over his mouth, down his lip, onto his knuckles when he swiped at it. “I HATE YOU!” she screamed. “I HATE YOU MORE!” And then, because the universe had an awful sense of humor, both of them, in unison: “YOU’RE THE WORST THING THAT’S EVER HAPPENED TO ME!”

The soldier from the dunes was grinning like he was rewatching his favorite movie. “Anyone want a beer?” he asked, perfectly serious. He didn’t wait for an answer. Just gestured, and another soldier, who was trying very hard not to laugh, headed to a crate in the corner and started tossing bottles to the stunned Gladers like this was peak entertainment. Minho caught one automatically. Frypan fumbled his and had to snatch it before it hit the floor. Winston stared at the bottle in his hand like he was checking whether this was, in fact, a fever dream. Gally didn’t take his eyes off the twins long enough to reach for one. Thomas caught one against his chest and forgot to open it. Cole leaned slightly toward the dune soldier and asked under his breath, “Are they gonna… stop?”

“Eventually,” the man said while cracking his own bottle open. “This is the light version anyway. They ain't throwing things.”

Will was back on top by then, one forearm braced across Cass’s shoulder while he wiped blood from his nose with the back of his hand and kept shouting like he had a year’s worth of held breath to empty. “WHEN I WAS THE ONLY ONE LEFT AND I HAD TO DO ALL THE SHIT YOU USED TO DO, I REALIZED JUST HOW FUCKING INHUMAN IT WAS AND I BLAMED MYSELF FOR NOT CHAINING YOU TO A FUCKING WALL WHEN I HAD THE CHANCE! THAT’S THE ONLY WAY IT WOULD’VE WORKED WITH YOU! YOU HAVE NO OFF SWITCH! YOU JUST KEEP AT IT UNTIL THERE’S NOTHING LEFT—”

Cass bucked hard under him, one knee coming up, an elbow driving into his ribs. “YOU'RE SUCH A JERK!”

“YOU’RE SUCH A BITCH!”

Nearby soldiers had gone into full spectator mode, though with the kind of edge people got when the entertainment could still absolutely put someone through a wall. A few were wincing in sympathy every time a hit landed. A couple were openly taking emotional inventory, there it is, he said the martyr thing, now wait for the no off switch accusation, there it is, good, excellent, maybe he'll bring up— One woman near the maps shook her head and muttered, “He’s gone too hard on the sleep thing.” Another murmured back, “Yeah, but she started with the Poor Will line, so he’s got room.” It had the exact tone of sports commentary, which made the Gladers feel like they had stepped into a deeply deranged culture.

Cass kicked upward, rolled, and flipped him. Will hit the floor with a hard thud that rattled the table legs. Her fist caught his jaw with a clean hit that cracked his head sideways. Thomas made a strangled sound in the back of his throat. Gally grinned because that hit had been beautiful. Will swung back on reflex, but she ducked at the exact perfect second, slipped under the arc, caught his wrist, and pinned his arm flat like she’d been waiting for that move her whole life. Then Will twisted. His weight changed in one fluid line and suddenly he had her wrists trapped above her head again, both of them frozen there, breathing hard enough to shake. The room went dead quiet. It looked bad. Not rough sibling scrapping bad. Not let them work it out bad. They're actually going to kill each other bad. Instead, they stopped. Just… stopped. A breath. Two. Three. And then, in one violent, synchronized motion, they let go, yanked themselves upright, and stepped back at the same time, both wiping at their faces in exactly the same irritated way, and said, again in perfect unison: “You hit like a girl.”

The room nearly collapsed under the emotional whiplash. Frypan leaned toward Winston without taking his eyes off them and whispered, in a voice that suggested he had maybe just left his body for a second, “Am I dreaming?” The soldier from the dunes took a long swig of his beer and chuckled into the bottle. “You haven’t even seen them in the field.” That did not help. Cass stalked back to the table, dropped into a chair, grabbed the beer somebody shoved into her hand, and took a long pull like nothing had happened. Will did the same on the opposite side, swiping at the blood under his nose with the back of his hand, then glancing at the smear on his skin with the kind of weary, long-suffering acceptance that suggested this was the usual for them. Alby had been quiet through the whole...whatever the hell that could even qualify as, (watching lighting strike twice?) because understood, on some old, deep level, that this was between the two of them. A very old issue. But now that the room had more or less settled, Alby leaned forward, eyes fixed on Will with a steadiness that made the whole workroom hush. “Be that as it may, we’re alive because of your sister,” he said. It was not praise in the polished sense, because Alby knew Cass hated that. Knew she flinched from gratitude the way other people flinched from pain. It was more like testimony. A witness statement. A man who had watched her throw herself against impossible odds over and over because she had decided that his boys deserved better than the hand they’d been dealt, and needed Will to understand that whatever else he was furious about, that part had mattered. You can hate what she does all day long, but she kept us breathing. The Gladers all nodded with the same unhesitating certainty they had shown about the self-sacrificing streak and them looked at Will like they were daring him not to understand what kind of debt sat at this table. Cass’s head snapped up immediately. “Don’t—” Will didn’t even blink. He looked from Alby to Cass and smirked. “Aww, look at her, still allergic to praise, credit, and any other normal human thing one can do after she saves their lives,” he said, as condescending as they come. “Ain't she cute?” Cass turned slowly in her chair to look at Will, and if contempt could have physically altered air pressure, the room would have imploded. “I think I’ll take my chances out in the Scorch.” Will grinned wider, but what he said next was definitely not a joke. “Like I’d let you out of my sight ever again.” Will was ready to say something else, but someone's throat-clearing cut him off. Cass turned her head slightly toward the sound. The man from the dunes stood a few feet off, arms folded now, expression somewhere between concern and exhausted affection. Will exhaled and pinched the bridge of his nose with two fingers like he’d been personally inconvenienced by the continued existence of everyone else in the room. “Right,” he muttered. “That's Tony. You two were real good friends before and he’s currently pressed that you only remembered your brother.” Then, pointedly, very pointedly: “As you should have.”

“I’m not pressed,” Tony said flatly. “I’m worried. She comes back looking like a fucking ghost and you’re throwing punches instead of—”

“I’m fine,” Cass snapped immediately.

“No, you’re not,” Will and Tony said at the same time. Then, just Will, looking at Tony, “But now I know just how not fine we're talking, don't I?” Because the fight had told him everything he needed to know about the state she was in. Newt felt actual, physical relief upon hearing that. It washed through him so suddenly he almost sagged in the chair with it. Every minute she sat there talking was another minute his imagination got more inventive in the worst direction, so knowing that Will and Tony were also aware of it made something in him unclench despite the tension. Cass huffed a breath and stared down at her bottle, trying not to let the FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK behind her eyelids show. Will leaned back, rubbing at his face with one hand. “But that’s a talk for later,” he said, and though he sounded casual again, there was iron under it now. A delayed battle, not a dismissed one. “Now, tell me where this base was. The one they took you to.” Tony was already moving. He grabbed a folded map off a nearby table, crossed the room in three quick steps, and slapped it down in front of them with a flat thunk. It was not some pretty printed thing either. This was a working map. Real paper reinforced with tape at the creases, edges soft from use, hand-sketched overlays done in black and red pencil, routes marked and remarked and coordinates scribbled in cramped shorthand. It looked alive. Revised. Trusted. The kind of map people touched when they intended to survive by it. Cass leaned over it and circled a stretch of desert with one fingertip. “Should be around here,” she said. “Can’t give you exact coordinates, obviously, but we're coming from that direction. Five hours walk, give or take.” Will looked at Tony, then back at Cass. “Tell me everything you saw there.”

Cass didn’t answer, just turned in her chair to face Thomas, because Thomas had gone in. Thomas had seen it. Thomas had heard the things they weren’t meant to hear. He straightened so fast in his chair it was like somebody had pulled a wire through his back. He glanced once at Cass and then at the map and then somewhere beyond both. “There was… a lab,” he said, voice roughening around the words. “Giant tanks with— with small Grievers. That’s what we used to call them, anyway. The monsters from the Maze. They’re making them there.” A ripple went through the room. Not surprise, fresh hatred. Thomas swallowed and kept going. “Rows of people hanging from the ceiling with tubes in their arms. They were draining some blue stuff into containers.” His hand came up once, not quite gesturing, more trying to fend off the image. “And Janson was there, talking to Ava Paige.” The word came out with disgust because whatever it meant, it had not sounded human. “She asked about Cass. If she believed their story.” Will’s face had gone utterly still. That same kind of still Cassandra's had gone in the Maze when she’d decided she'd erase WCKD from the face of this Earth without even knowing that was her exact mission even before her memory loss. Thomas pushed on. “Paige also said something about a group in the mountains. Called them The Right Arm. Said they were following Cass’s example… trashing WCKD bases just like she did. That's where we were headed before you guys found us.”

“The Right Arm are kids we saved,” Will clarified for them. “Some of them started this whole thing after Cass went missing.” His mouth flattened. “They’re fucked if WCKD knows where they are.” He turned to Tony fully now. “Radio it. Tell them to get a move on.” Tony didn’t waste a breath. He snatched the comm clipped to his vest, thumb already on the side switch before it cleared the holster. He barked movement orders and people across the room started moving even before they’d heard the whole message. Someone grabbed another map. Someone else headed for the motor pool at a run. A woman near the radio desk was already adjusting frequencies. Then Will turned back, looking at Cass again. “And what about you, miss?” he said, too calm, too pointed. “Why don’t I hear it from you?”

Cass's lie didn't even get to form before Gally blurted, “She wasn't with us. They kept her somewhere else.” Cass’s head snapped toward him with a look that could have killed on the spot. Gally held the glare like a man accepting a knife wound on principle. Someone had to say it.

Will didn’t blink. Didn’t even look at Gally. He kept his eyes locked on Cass like a lock. “I asked you a question.”

“They drugged me and took some blood,” Cass said. “That’s all—”

“And if I take you to the Med Bay right now and have someone check you over,” Will pressed, “that story’s gonna hold up?”

Newt was proud and taking notes.

Cass tilted her head. “Trust issues much?”

“I know who I’m working with,” Will shot back. She stared him down for a second then pushed back from the table with a muttered, “I’ll go check on Chuck,” and simply walked out.

Newt was already up, chair scraping back hard against the concrete, ready to go after her. It was never a thought in full sentences anymore. It was instinct. Movement. A pull in the chest that became action before language ever caught up. He had spent too many days now watching her drag herself past reasonable limits and call the result acceptable. His nerves had stopped asking permission. “Let her go,” Will said. Newt stopped and turned, the frustration in him sharp enough to make his hands ache. Will had leaned back in his chair again, one forearm slung across the table’s edge, bottle dangling loose from his fingers like none of this required urgency. “I’ve seen that woman stagger out of a collapsed transport with two cracked ribs, a dislocated shoulder, and her leg stitched up with fishing line. Tried to steal my knife before she passed out, too.” One corner of his mouth twitched at the memory, but it wasn’t a smile so much as the scar tissue where one might have been. The Gladers heard the words and felt something ugly move through them. Not disbelief. Recognition. Of course some earlier version of the exact same infuriating creature they knew had been limping around with her body falling apart while still trying to remain armed. That tracked so perfectly it was almost insulting. Will took another slow drink before he went on. “If she’s still got energy to deflect and storm off, she’ll make it very difficult for anybody who follows unless she asked them to. And she didn’t ask you to, did she?”

Newt stared at him. He was right, of course. Cass would make it difficult. Cass made everything difficult when she was cornered or worried or hurt or simply in a mood to be difficult on principle, which, from everything he was learning, appeared to be congenital. But that didn’t make the staying put any easier. “You—” he started, and then stopped because he wasn’t even sure which accusation he wanted to use first. You’re just going to let her walk off? How are you this calm? How the hell did either of you even made it this long?

Will, infuriatingly, seemed to hear all of them anyway. “I’ve learned to pick my fights,” he said. The humor had gone out of him. There were years in that tone. Years and nights and bad outcomes and the bitter little wisdom that only came from losing arguments the hard way. “There are times to push her and times to wait until she runs out of places to hide. Right now she’s still got enough momentum to turn any conversation into a blood sport. So I wait.” He took another drink, eyes flicking once toward the hall she’d disappeared down, then back to Newt. That was when Newt knew he’d been made. The man looked at him like he’d already put the whole thing together from the scraps available. The way Newt kept tracking her. The way he’d been halfway out of his chair before the sentence had even finished leaving her mouth. A person who knew Cass well, who knew what her orbit did to people, probably did not need much more than that.

Silence hovered for a beat after that. Minho was looking between Newt and the doorway and back like he was trying to decide whether he’d lose face if he also admitted wanting to follow. Alby and Gally were both looking at Newt with the exact same “Congratulations, you've just won the Most Transparent Man Alive Award” expression. Thomas was suddenly very interested in his own boots. Frypan and Winston were also suddenly very interested in Thomas’s boots. Cole looked between Will and Newt and thought, with fascinated clarity, that there were apparently ranks inside the very specific profession of caring about Cassandra, and Will had just played his seniority hard. Will, because Newt’s obviousness was delicious and he wanted to see it on more faces than one, said, “You’re in love with my sister.” He didn’t aim it at anyone specific. Didn’t point. Didn’t single out a face. He just dropped it on the table like a grenade and watched it roll. It was very obvious that he had done this before, not this exact room, these exact boys, but the broad category of setting off social explosives for his own amusement. There was a practiced cruelty to the way he said it, lazily, like he wasn’t even especially invested in the answer because the reaction was the point. The man knew his sister was beautiful. Knew she had that catastrophic combination of smarts, competence, kindness and care and a face the world was not built to cope with fairly. Knew she saved people and that saved people sometimes got a look in their eyes after. And sometimes the easiest way to claw a little normalcy back into your day was to poke at the obvious and watch everyone implode.

It was funny, how fast panic erupted. Minho made a strangled sound first. Not a word. Not anything civilized. Just the sort of noise that came out when a body realized it had not prepared a lie fast enough. “What?” he blurted a second later, all false affront and zero conviction. “No.” That would have been more effective if his voice hadn’t cracked on the one syllable. Thomas's both hands came up in automatic denial even though no one had actually accused him specifically, palms half-out, eyes wide in the world’s least convincing picture of innocence. “It’s just—” he started, then stopped because absolutely no continuation of that sentence was going to save him. Gally scoffed like the very suggestion was insulting. “As if.” That would have carried more weight if he hadn’t said it with the exact defensive contempt people used when they were trying to cover something with volume. The sneer was doing too much work. Even Gally seemed to realize it half a second later, because his jaw tightened hard enough to crack stone and he looked angrier at being readable than at the accusation itself. Will’s mouth curled. “A lot of you too, huh.” That made the boys do exactly what people did when their lie wasn’t accepted: overcorrect. Minho started talking too fast, which was always how you knew he was off-balance. “No, no, you’re reading into— that’s not—it’s just, obviously we care, that doesn’t mean—” Thomas was red now. Bright red. The kind that traveled from throat to ears and stayed there like a public service announcement. He looked very much like he wanted the floor to split open under his chair and do him one favor. Winston stared between them all with a dawning, delighted horror because apparently he had not realized just how many idiots were sitting at this table until now. Frypan pressed his lips together so hard they nearly disappeared, which in him was the equivalent of trying not to laugh in church. Alby pinched the bridge of his nose. Cole looked at Newt with a smile on his face, because Newt had gone... awfully still. Yes, he was in love with her, hopelessly so, but he did not intend to shout that in front of a man who looked like he might stab people recreationally. Will leaned back and watched the panic unfold with the lazy, merciless enjoyment of a sibling who had clearly missed tormenting his sister’s rescues. Then he said, almost lazily, “Good. ’Cause I’ve killed people for less than that and I’ve been feeling pretty stabby lately.”

That shut down most of the scrambling for about half a second. Winston barked out a laugh because the line was so nakedly her that it looped all the way back around into hilarious. “You really are her brother.”

“Was there any doubt?” Will asked.

Thomas, still red enough to generate heat, muttered, “No. You both—”

“I’m hotter,” Will said, not missing a beat. The table outright cackled, but Will wasn’t done. “You know,” he said, one hand loose around his bottle, tone sliding fully into mock-thoughtful now, “after all these years, I’ve yet to figure out how someone can look at her and be like… yeah, I want that one. She’s clinically insane.”

That got Gally. Couldn’t help it. There were a lot of things he’d let slide for the sake of social peace, or at least the rough simulation of it. This, apparently, was not one of them. “Insane is you hating on her while you two talk at the same damn time and practically share a braincell—”

That made Will’s eyes widen.

Then he laughed, full and surprised and looked Gally over with open interest now, like he’d just discovered an unexpectedly entertaining species in the room. “Someone’s got guts,” he said. “Bet you’ve taken at least one good punch from her with that attitude.” Minho laughed so hard he had to put his bottle down before he dropped it. Thomas bent over the table. Frypan slapped the wood once with the flat of his hand. “He's taken more than one,” Winston said between laughs, jabbing a finger toward Gally. Gally rolled his eyes, but the muscle in his cheek had gone traitorously loose. Will grinned, immediate and bright. “Sounds like my Cass.” Then he set his bottle down and let his gaze sweep over them all properly. Not teasing now. Not just needling for sport. “What really happened in there?” he asked. “I’m never gonna get an actual story from her. She’s too—” He didn’t finish. Didn’t need to. The Gladers all knew what he meant. Too evasive. Too likely to summarize hell as “a bit rough” and move on before anybody could look closely enough to be appropriately horrified. Too practiced at cutting herself out of the narrative when the spotlight landed on the cost to her. Minho talked first. “First thing she did was bolt into the Maze before any of us could stop her,” he said. “Like straight up ignored every warning and every bit of common sense available in the Glade.” Will’s mouth twitched in a way that said yes, of course she did. Winston blurted before he could stop himself, “We were so upset. First girl we’ve ever seen and she—”

Will choked on his beer so hard he actually coughed. “What did you just say?” The whole table froze like someone had stepped on a mine. Minho and Newt shot Winston identical what the hell, you idiot looks so synchronized it could’ve been choreographed. Thomas actually made a face like he’d physically felt the mistake pass through the air. Gally’s eyebrows lifted, which for him was basically a public gasp. Frypan closed his eyes for one full second as if maybe reopening them would reveal he had hallucinated the line. Cole, who had not been in the Maze with them and therefore had this particular reveal land fresh, turned so sharply toward Winston he almost knocked his bottle over. The line did something else too. It reopened, all at once, the strangeness of those first days. The fact that they had all, idiotically, involuntarily and with no prior template for how not to, built entire internal crises around her. It was humiliating to admit, even silently, how much that fact had shaped the early violence of feeling in the Glade. How disorienting her existence had been before it even had time to become personal. Alby cleared his throat before the silence could backfire on them properly. “Cass had been the only girl in our Maze,” he said. Will blinked once, then let out a sharp, humorless laugh. “Paige really did wanna punish her, huh.” Because yes. Strip it all down and that was what it had been. To drop Cassandra into that place as the only girl among frightened boys in a closed nightmare designed to push every nerve raw? That had intent behind it. Malice.

Alby frowned. “We’ve all been very—”

“I know,” Will cut in before Alby could finish the sentence. “I wasn’t suspecting anything,” he said. “She only saves the good ones.” No one made a grand show of reacting, but the line landed like weight. Like being seen and sorted and, somehow, accepted. He was saying, in essence, she chose you, and I trust her instincts enough to not question it. Minho stopped fidgeting. Thomas looked down because the line hit too close to something he hadn’t wanted named. He had already been carrying gratitude toward Cass as something almost sacred and did not know what to do with hearing that some part of her had judged them worthy before any of them even knew how much they’d come to love her. Frypan swallowed. Winston, who had spent too much of his life assuming no one got granted that kind of faith, looked genuinely thrown by it. Cole sat very still, hearing the weight of his own inclusion in that sentence and not entirely sure what to do with the warmth and ache of it. Gally accepted it with his jaw tight and his eyes flat forward, because being acknowledged by Cass’s twin brother was not actually something he had prepared emotionally for. Alby took it like a fact already proven but still meaningful to hear. Newt just looked down and smiled to himself. “And as long as you keep your hands to yourself…” Will added, “There's absolutely nothing to worry about.” It sounded broad. A warning tossed across the whole table. But his eyes were on Newt. Newt blinked at him as if he had no idea what he was talking about, but his mind replayed every moment his hands had been on her. Oh, have they been on her. On her waist. On the small of her back. On her cheeks. In her hair when her head was in his lap. His throat worked once, but he said nothing. Tony, still on the comms and only half paying attention by outward appearance, snorted without looking up. “Leave them alone or she’s gonna rearrange your face again.” Will smirked. “Oh, I was just joking. You guys can take a joke, right?” No one at the table believed that, least of all Newt. Will paused a beat, letting them squirm just enough to be worth his trouble, then added, louder and more pointedly than necessary, “Thanks for taking care of her. That’s what I was getting at.” He said it in a way that made it obvious it was actually meant for Tony. Tony just shook his head and muttered something into the comm before walking out after Cass. After he was gone, Will exhaled and rubbed a hand over his mouth. “Wild couple of weeks, huh?”

Wild didn’t even begin to cover it.

Thomas glanced at Will, and finally worked up the courage to ask for the childhood stories they were all dying to hear. “You said the military took you two at thirteen…?” Will nodded, and the look that crossed his face then was enough on its own to make the room lean in. His features softened like some old light had moved under his skin. “Yeah,” he said, and the memory pulled a smile out of him. “Cass was just about to blow up their main gate so we could steal some of their weapons when they spotted us.” Frypan blinked. “Hold up,” he said. “She… what? At thirteen?” Will huffed out a short laugh and rubbed a thumb over the neck of the bottle. “Yeah, Cass had been building stuff for as long as I can remember. Bombs, field rigs, trip alarms, heat traps, signal scramblers, anything the situation called for. Real nerd, that one.” The boys exchanged glances over the table. They had seen what her mind did with a closed system and too little time. They had watched her take apart Griever anatomy in an afternoon, watched her turn fear into drills, uncertainty into systems, panic into contingency plans, watched her blow half a ruined building to hell with a sack of flour, a gas leak, and sheer, terrifying audacity. Nerd was an understatement though. Cassandra was not just a nerd. Cassandra was fucking brilliant. Will kept going, seeing the table’s attention hook into him and deciding he might as well. “We’d been watching the military base for a week. We knew they had weapons, water purifiers, med packs and batteries, and it so happened that we were in need of weapons, water purifiers, med packs and batteries.” He tipped the bottle back, swallowed, then went on. “Cass figured she could rig a charge small enough to blow the outer locking mechanism without inconveniencing the soldiers in there too much. Something they could easily fix after we were gone. We were halfway through setting the thing when a patrol spotted us. Our old commander looked at the wires in her hand, looked at the gate, and instead of chasing us off, he asked Cass what did she think she was doing” Will’s mouth twitched. “And Cass, being Cass, told him they were practically begging to be robbed with that blind spot on the east wall, and that if two thirteen year olds could sneak up on them, they stood no chance against raiders.” Minho put his face in his hand. Frypan shut his eyes and shook his head, already laughing. Newt could hear her in it so clearly it was like she’d walked back into the room just to say it herself. That impossible mix of nerve and competence and total disinterest in being impressed by authority. Will spread his hands. “Man adopted us on the spot.” His voice gentled around the memory, just a little. “Raised us like we were his own.” Will’s gaze softened for half a second, then dropped to his bottle. “Can’t believe they wiped her mind clean of it all…” he said, almost to himself.

Gally frowned. “She still remembers you, doesn’t she? That's more than nothing.” Will’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “She couldn’t have forgotten me even if she tried. We had times we’d wake up from the same dream,” he said. “Whole days apart and just… feel it in our bones when the other was hurt or needed help.” His fingers tightened around the bottle. “Some mornings I’d wake up angry for no reason and find out later she’d broken two fingers in training. Or she’d go dead still in the middle of a briefing and ask where I was, and it turned out I’d taken a hit on a run and nobody had gotten word back yet.” He huffed a little breath that might once have been disbelief before it became devotion by repetition. “Never made sense to anyone but us. It was—”

“Instinct,” Alby supplied quietly.

Will nodded. “Yeah. Instinct.” His eyes dropped to the bottle in his hand, to the amber moving in the glass when his thumb rolled it once against the table, and for a second he looked less like a soldier and more like a boy ambushed by his own memories. The whole base had been full of ghosts for a year. He’d worked hard not to look directly at most of them. You didn’t survive long doing that, not when grief had a way of eating whole days if you fed it too much. So he had rationed the past. Taken it in careful doses. Weaponized some of it. Buried the rest. But now his sister was here. One room away. Breathing. Mouthy. Alive. Against all reason and probability and all the sick little calculations the world had tried to force on him, she was still here. The Gladers clocked the change in him immediately and leaned in. Oh, he was gonna talk.

Will looked up from the bottle and exhaled through his nose, smiling to himself in a way that made it clear the first memory had already got him by the throat. “When we were eight,” he said, “we got stuck for two days in this busted little neighborhood. Streets all cracked to hell, shop windows gone, heat coming off the pavement so hard you could see it wobbling.” His smile faded, not all at once, but like a light getting slowly covered. “There were four of us at first. Me, Cass, and two other kids we’d been running with for a week, Mike and Laila. We found this apartment block with one working tap,” Will went on. “Thought we were kings. Water, shade, a roof that mostly still qualified. Then Mike started acting wrong. Real subtle at first. Meaner. Quieter. Snapped at us when nobody’d done anything. Kept rubbing at his temples like he wanted to claw through bone. By night he’d chewed the inside of his own cheek raw enough that blood was all over his teeth.” Will’s eyes had gone somewhere else now, not because he was avoiding the room, but because he was seeing over it. “Then he bit down on Laila’s wrist hard enough to hit tendon when she tried to help him sit up.” Frypan’s face tightened. Winston looked down. Thomas swallowed. “It all went bad stupid fast,” Will said quietly. “Laila screamed and he went for her again and she kicked him in the throat and then he was on her anyway, teeth, nails, all of it. She got his eye with a spoon from the floor. A damn spoon. He didn’t even seem to feel it. Then Laila bit him back, blood all over both of them, both of them making those... awful noises.” Will rubbed a hand over his mouth and kept going. “Cass put Mike down in a blink, didn't even see her,” he said. “Then she shoved me into the hall and slammed the apartment door. Laila was scratching at it and making this high, ugly whining sound like she still knew there was help just on the other side but couldn’t figure out how to ask for it anymore.” He let out a long breath. “I was crying so hard I couldn't even see straight. But we had to move because the noise was bringing more of those things.” That was when his smile came back. “We stopped in this alley two blocks over. I was barefoot, shaking, saying I wanted to go back for them every ten seconds out of sheer shock. And Cass...kept picking up junk. First some bent spoons, them some old wire, then half a toy spring from behind a dumpster.” He looked at the table again, eyes clearer now because this was the part he wanted to keep. “Sat cross-legged on cracked pavement in that dirty little alley and built me a tiny mechanical dinosaur because I wouldn’t stop crying.” Cole made a helpless, strangled sound. Minho’s face did something complicated and almost pained. Will smiled fully now. “Held it up and said, ‘Stop crying, moron, I talked to Rexy and he said he'll eat all the monsters if they come for us.’ The jaw snapped open and shut because she’d rigged the hinge with the spring. It had little claws made of fork tines. A tail from braided wire. Best damn thing I ever owned.”

Frypan was crying openly, not ashamed of it in the slightest, tears rolling down his face while he stared into the middle distance like he could see that alley too, that bent-spoon dinosaur and the little girl crouched on cracked pavement. Thomas had to look down and wipe under one eye with the heel of his hand. Minho muttered “so dusty in here—” as if that was going to convince a single soul that the wetness on his lashes had nothing to do with Will's story. No, just... dusty in here. Gally was 100% with Minho on that one. Too much... dust. Horrible ventilation in here. Alby’s eyes had gone dark, full of the sort of grief adults carried for the children the world had used up too soon. Cole looked like somebody had knocked a wall down inside him. Newt was done for. Kiddo Cass was already endearing enough to make him emotional, but kiddo Cass stopping in the middle of catastrophe to build a toy with moving parts because her brother needed one reason to laugh... his heart melted clean through. Will started talking again after a while. “Found a pack of instant noodles once,” he said. “Whole store had been stripped bare except for one box shoved behind cleaning supplies. We thought we’d hit treasure.” His expression turned openly fond now. “Cass took one bite, and went, ‘Ew. Spicy.’” Minho barked out a laugh. “She doesn't like spicy stuff?” Will laughed now. “She absolutely despises spicy stuff. Always has. She kept eating anyway, but with a face of someone who would've strangled the man who made noodles this spicy in a blink if she ever saw him.” He pointed with the bottle. “And then, like two weeks later, I opened myself a packet and asked her if she wanted some and she went, ‘They're my favorite thing on earth, of course I want some.’ And it wasn't one of her sarcastic lines. She was for real.”

That got them laughing again. Frypan slapped the table and said, “I told you she's a masochist!” Winston nodded. “She did that with Gally's moonshine. I mean there ain't no way she actually liked it, that thing is battery acid!” Gally snorted and muttered, “Easy to say that when you've got a beer in your hand,” which only made them laugh harder because yes, of course he would defend his weaponized liquor like it had honor. Newt smiled helplessly into his bottle, picturing a tiny furious Cass glaring at noodles she refused to admit had beaten her. The sight was so adorable it made his throat ache. He wanted to go back in time to give her a cup of water and tell her she didn’t have to prove anything to anybody. Will kept going, warming to it now. He told them about rooftops in a dead city, where he and Cass had learned to parkour because the streets were too full of infected to survive on ground level. “We’d hear them below us,” he said. “Whole packs of them moving through old intersections, smashing into cars, screaming at nothing. She’d talk the whole time. Worst jokes you’ve ever heard. Absolute garbage.” His smile widened. “She’d be hauling herself over rebar and broken ledges going, ‘I had a good joke about a boomerang... but I forgot it. I'm sure it'll come back to me eventually.’ Or, ‘One bird cannot make a pun, but toucan.’” He laughed into the rim of the bottle. “Or just stuff like, ‘If you fall, I’m looting your shoes, just so you know.’” He shook his head. “Anything to keep me listening to her instead of them.”

“That one’s still alive and well,” Minho said. “Yeah,” Newt murmured. Cass still joked at the worst possible moments not because she didn’t understand the severity, but because she refused to let the fear own the room. Will glanced at Newt, then looked back at the bottle. He told them about the first time the commander handed Cass a rifle that was too big for her shoulder. “She got good stupid fast,” Will said. “That’s how she was with everything. Guns, knots, chemistry, rigging, hand-to-hand. She’d pick up a new skill and within a week some grown adult who’d spent ten years on it would be glaring at her from across a training ground like she’d murdered their family. Commander called her a genius in front of the whole line one day.” His gaze softened again. “And she didn’t talk for the rest of it.” Will snorted. “Wouldn’t say a word. Not to me, not to him, not to anybody. Just sat on the back steps cleaning the rifle over and over.” He looked down. “Took me a while to realize she thought praise was a setup. Like the minute somebody said she was exceptional, she’d owe them something bigger. Something she might not be able to pay.” He swallowed once. “Commander figured it out eventually too. Stopped praising her directly after that. Started just handing her harder work.” Gally’s jaw clenched because the line about owing something bigger hit too close to the version of Cass he knew now, the one who always acted like surviving while others suffered had already put her in debt.

Will gave them more after that, and the more he gave, the greedier the room got for it. Small things, mostly. Cass stealing their Commander's deck of cards and keeping the queen of hearts tucked in her boot for months because she liked the red on it. “Commander noticed,” Will said. “Never called her on it. Just started slipping red things into her gear when he found them. Bottle caps. Torn labels. Once a ribbon off a med crate.” That one almost took Newt out, because the thought of kid Cass quietly collecting bits of red like little pieces of proof that beauty still existed somewhere in the rubble was too much. He had to take a drink and stare very hard at the table. Will told them about how she once spent three days trying to fix a music box with two broken teeth in the cylinder because she liked the tune and had decided the thing deserved another chance. About how she had a habit, of talking to machines under her breath while she worked on them. Not whole conversations. Just little muttered negotiations. “C’mon, don’t be embarrassing.” “Work with me or I’ll turn you into spare parts.” “I know you want to live.” Frypan laughed so hard at that one he nearly cried all over again. “Oh my God, she still does that,” he said.

The stories kept coming, and somewhere after the third or fourth one, the whole room started feeling like a firelit place people had gathered to keep something precious alive by telling it out loud. “She used to hoard sugar packets,” Will said, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Would swipe them from supply crates, trade runs, anywhere she could get her hands on ’em. Had this whole stash hidden in the lining of her pack like she was a drug dealer.” He glanced around the table. “And then every time one of the younger kids got scared or upset, she’d act all annoyed about it, but five minutes later somehow a sugar packet would show up in their hand.” Yeah, Cass had never needed softness to look soft in order to be soft. “There was this rescued girl who couldn’t sleep unless she had a light on. Tiny thing. Couldn’t have been more than seven. This was before we had enough stable power for luxuries, so after lights-out she’d just shake in her bunk and try not to make a sound. Cass got sick of hearing it.” He lifted his brows at them. “That’s what she said, anyway. Claimed the crying was ruining her concentration.” His expression softened all over again. “So she found a broken flashlight, took the whole damn thing apart on the floor, rebuilt the contacts, swapped the spring, filed the casing, and rigged it to hold charge off an old battery pack. Handed it to the girl and said, ‘Infected are scared of this particular flashlight by the way, tested it myself. But crying, crying attracts them. So you might wanna change your nightly routine.’” Cole let out a soft, broken laugh, one hand covering his mouth. “She started checking the charge herself every night before bed to make sure it wouldn’t die on the kid in the dark.” Thomas looked like he needed to put his whole head down on the table for a minute.

Will laughed quietly to himself before the next memory. “I loved marshmallows.” That got a startled snort out of Minho. Will nodded. “And every night, one marshmallow found fuck knows where, would show up on my pillow.” The boys stared. Will grinned wider. “I knew it was her immediately, obviously. But every time I asked, she’d look me right in the face and go, ‘Probably a secret admirer. Try being nicer to people around you and maybe she’ll leave you two.’” Minho choked laughing. Frypan slapped the table again. “She never admitted it,” Will said. “I tried everything. Followed her, trapped her, bribed her, accused her. Nothing. She’d just get this little offended look and say I was harassing her over romance she knew nothing about.” Will rolled the bottle slowly between both hands. “She loved books. Novels, manuals, comics, old textbooks, half-burned magazines, didn’t matter. If it had words on it, she’d take it. Kept them stacked in crates, under her bed, in her pack, wherever she could fit them. Used to read while she ate, while she cleaned her weapons, while she waited for orders.” He shook his head, not even trying to hide the pride in him now. “And once she’d read something, that was it. Done. Stuck. Ask her about a page and she could quote you the paragraph back like she’d written the damn thing herself. Page number too.” Newt looked near-religious at that. “That’s...” Gally muttered. “Yes,” Alby said quietly. “It is.” Will smiled at the memory of it. “She talked about the world before like she’d seen it herself, even when all she had were descriptions from books. Streets with working lights. Schools with too many desks. Grocery stores full all the time. Museums. Trains. Cafés. Kids bored in classrooms.” His voice softened. “I told her once she would’ve made a good teacher.” The silence after that was immediate. Will’s eyes dropped to the table again. “She looked…” He huffed a little laugh, but it had no humor in it. “Moved. Like I’d said something bigger than I knew I was saying. Didn’t crack a joke. Didn’t roll her eyes.” Newt felt that like a bruise being pressed on. A teacher. Yeah. That fit. Not in the polished, gentle sense people usually meant, but in the real sense. Making a person see the shape of things and then refusing to let them stay smaller afterward. The idea of a world where Cass had gotten to spend her brilliance on books and classrooms and children instead of Grievers and wastelands and blood... God.

Will tipped his head and laughed again, softer now. “She found a snake once. Out in some rubble pile near an old freeway cut. I’m yelling at her not to touch it because it’s a damn snake and snakes are never there to improve your day. She reaches right down, picks it up with both hands, and sticks her tongue out at it.” He demonstrated with deadpan seriousness. “And the snake sticks its tongue out at the exact same time.” Cole slapped a hand over his mouth. “I’m losing my mind,” Will said. “Fully shouting. Telling her to put the thing down, it’ll bite her, she’ll die stupid and I’ll have to bury her in this hell hole.” His grin flashed. “She goes, ‘It likes me,’ and then carries the damn thing around for two hours, feeds it bits of jerky, names it Colonel Scales, and gets offended when it slithers off without saying goodbye.” Thomas was smiling so hard it made his eyes shine. Will’s smile faded into something gentler as he continued. “She left notes for strangers whenever she found paper and something to write with. We’d be passing through places where somebody might come after us, old stations, empty apartments, half-looted shops, and she’d tuck little messages in the obvious places. Not sentimental stuff. Useful things. ‘Water tank on the roof, second ladder’s safe.’ ‘Don’t use the east stairs, third floor’s rotten through.’ ‘There’s canned beans under the sink, check for mold first.’ That sort of thing.” He rubbed his thumb along the glass. “Once she found a whole stack of receipts and spent an hour writing survival notes on the backs of them and leaving them in an abandoned pharmacy.” The Gladers went quiet again. The image was too much of a straight line into the woman they knew. Will glanced around at them and seemed to see, really see, how hard all of this was landing. “When we first got to the base,” he said, “her room was always pristine.” He gave a short little shrug. “Like, weirdly pristine. Boots lined up. Notes stacked. Tools sorted. Floor swept twice if she had time.” He smiled. “Didn’t matter if the rest of the world was rubble. Her room stayed clean. Always.” His gaze dropped. “I think the wasteland got in deeper than she liked admitting. Dirt everywhere. Collapse everywhere. No walls that stayed walls for long. So if she had four walls and a door and a shelf that stayed where it was supposed to, she guarded it.” That particular habit, the boys didn't recognize. The Map Room was always a mess back in the Glade. Seems like the memory wipe had gotten her rid of it.

Will stared into the bottle a long time before the next one. “She got really sick once,” he said. The room changed around the sentence. “Fever. Shaking. Sweating through everything. Delirious as hell. She was burning so hard I could feel it from across the room.” He swallowed and looked up only briefly. “And she kept asking me for a gun.” No one laughed at that. Will’s mouth pulled sideways. “Which, obviously, I did not supply. I was an idiot, but not that much of an idiot.” His eyes darkened with the memory. “She kept asking. Over and over. Said she needed it. Said I had to give it to her now, before it got worse. Then she started crying.” The table had gone perfectly still. “I asked her what the fuck she was crying about,” Will said, voice lower now. “And she said she didn’t want to kill me in her sleep when she turned. Thought she was infected. Thought the fever meant that was it. And all she cared about, in that state, was making sure she didn’t hurt me.” Thomas’s eyes widened. Newt felt like someone had driven a blade slowly through the center of his chest. Feverish little Cass, terrified not of dying, but of what she might do to her brother if she did. That was… that was too much. Too pure and too cruel and too exactly her. The kind of thing that made every piece of tenderness in him turn painful. Will let out a breath that sounded like he still wasn’t entirely proud of what came next. “And instead of spending the next three hours reassuring her like a normal brother, I told her that we can turn together and lay down next to while she thrashed and screamed at me to go away.” Minho’s head snapped up. “You did what?” Will held up a hand in surrender. “I know. I know. In hindsight, absolutely unhinged behavior. Not defending it. I was stupid and I thought it was funny at the time.” He grimaced. “Commander almost killed me when he found out.” Gally stared. “He should’ve.” Will nodded, full agreement. “Anyway, she obviously didn’t turn. Just had some wasteland fever from contaminated water or whatever awful little bug decided to try its luck. She got better. And then she didn’t talk to me for three weeks.” That got a helpless, exhausted laugh out of all of them. “Three whole weeks,” Will said. “Would answer everyone else. Follow orders. Train. Eat. Plan. Not a single word to me.” His smile came back. “Commander kept pairing us up on purpose so we’d make up. Route runs. Inventory. Rifle cleaning. Perimeter checks. It got to the point where he was just inventing excuses. ‘You two, go count the medkits.’ ‘You two, reorganize the scrap pile.’” “What broke the silence?” Cole asked quietly. Will laughed and shook his head. “My dumbass falling down the stairs.” The Gladers laughed, and Will, encouraged by the reaction, kept going. “Middle of the night,” he said. “Power was spotty, lights were out in half the stairwell, and I was trying to get down without waking anyone because I’d stolen some bread and wanted to eat it in peace. Missed a step. Then another. Next thing I know I’m taking the whole damn staircase personally.” He lifted a hand and chopped it downward through the air to demonstrate the trajectory of his own humiliation. “Hit the landing hard enough to knock the breath out of me. Bread went one way, my dignity went the other. And my dear sister,” Will shook his head, “Was on the second-floor railing looking down at me, and the second she realized I didn't break something, she lost it. Couldn’t breathe. Had to sit down on the top step because her knees gave.” His grin widened. “Commander stormed out thinking someone had broken into the base and found my idiot ass spread across the stairs and Cass howling like a hyena. She couldn’t even explain. Just kept pointing at me like that was enough.” Minho had tears back in his eyes from laughing so hard. Frypan was red-faced and gasping. Gally was wheezing. Alby gave them a small snort. Thomas’s shoulders shook with it.

That was when Cass stepped back into the room. Her hair was damp and clinging in loose strands to the back of her neck and along the edges of her face, her cheeks were pink from heat and steam, and she had traded the stolen rags for an actual uniform now: dark cargo pants that sat clean along her hips, boots that fit properly instead of half-dead scavenged things, a black tactical shirt with the sleeves rolled to the forearms. She looked… placed, fitted back into a shape that matched her bones. Every Glader’s breath cought in unison, one stupid, helpless, deeply male flash of fuck, that’s so hot, and the speed with which all their eyes darted away only made it worse. Minho’s gaze shot straight to Will by instinct—don’t die today, don’t die today—like her twin was somehow going to hear the collective swallow in the room and decide it was reason enough to start strangling people. Thomas looked down so quickly he nearly gave himself whiplash. Frypan’s eyebrows went up and stayed there. Winston blinked twice like maybe the shower had somehow altered her molecular structure into something even more difficult to deal with. Gally stared openly, then realized the others had already looked away so he did too. Newt exhaled in relief. A shower meant she had changed the bandages. Or at least looked at the wound. Cleaned it. Rewrapped it. Maybe patched it up. The thought loosened something in his chest, but then, because he was only human and because she looked like a walking wet dream, that relief got tangled with some deeply unhelpful... thoughts. Will caught the shift in the room. His eyes flicked over the table, clocked the synchronized swallow, the sudden over-interest in bottles and maps and table grain, and smirked. But, to his credit, he didn’t say anything. Cass crossed the room and slid into the empty chair as if the last hour had not contained any revelations or childhood mythology. “Watcha guys laughing about?” Will gave her an up-down. “I was telling them kid Cass stories.” Cass raised one eyebrow. “Really? Don’t know the bitch.” Then she looked at the Gladers. At each of them. Not quickly either. She checked them one by one, as if inventorying the damage. “Chuck’s stable,” she said. Every spine straightened a little at that. “They said he’ll wake up soon. No more black stuff. One hundred percent human.” A beat, then, softer than the first part, “You all okay?”

They didn't get time to answer before Newt asked, “Are you?” Cass’s eyes softened just a tad when they landed on him. “Yeah,” she said, a lie, obviously, “Was asking because… all this is—” “—fucking insane?” Gally completed. Cass huffed out a laugh through her nose. “Yeah,” she said. “Fucking insane.” Then she turned to Will. “So what’d you got in here?” She wasn't asking about furniture, sleeping arrangements, whether they had enough soap or socks or whatever normal people asked when they arrived somewhere new. She meant weapons. Vehicles. Numbers. Reach. Supply lines. Next steps. Newt's head turned sharply, eyes narrowing at her in a look so pointed it might as well have been a hand flat to her forehead pushing her back into the chair. Absolutely not. Sit down. Breathe. Heal. Cass clocked it instantly, turned her head just enough to catch his eye, and the corner of her mouth tipped upward in a small, private smile that made the glare worth absolutely nothing. It should not have been as effective as it was. Will saw the exchange, and one eyebrow lifted. “Ready to fuck shit up, huh?” he asked, as if this was a normal catch-up question between siblings. His gaze ran over her once, too quick for anyone who didn’t know to catch, too assessing for anyone who did to miss, and the humor thinned. “How about you get some rest first? You look like you’re about to keel over.”

Newt was visibly happy with that answer. It flashed plain across his face: yes. correct. listen to your brother. Cass saw the satisfaction light across him and had half a mind to flip him off. “Uh-huh,” she said, not even pretending to entertain the idea. “Sure. So, what’d you got?” Will exhaled and rubbed the back of his neck, but before he could answer, Tony returned and had apparently heard enough of the conversation on his way in to immediately decide Will needed public correction. “Because of course you had to make yourself the victim,” he said. “Could’ve just went ‘hey, I've missed you’ and had a sweet reunion like everyone else. No, you had to tell her the whole thing and get her back into eliminate threat mode. Are you happy? Did you get it out of your system?” Will didn’t even glance back at him. He just kept his eyes on Cass, voice calm enough to be insulting. “Relax,” he said. “She knows that doing anything in this state will only make her a liability.” Cass's jaw ticked. Will smiled. Good. He still knew exactly which buttons to press. Newt respected the hell out of that. He’d been trying, in his own way, to keep her from sprinting headfirst into the next catastrophe since the minute he understood that this was how she operated, and he’d learned the hard way that direct appeals rarely worked unless she was already too tired to fend them off properly. But making it sound tactical instead of tender? Oh, the bastard was good. Minho thought, wow, okay, so rage bait is hereditary. He bit back a grin and took another forkful of pasta, because watching Cass struggle not to vault over the table and throttle her twin was objectively the most entertained he had been in hours, which said truly horrifying things about the kind of emotional ecosystem he now lived in. Winston almost laughed just from the sheer efficiency of it. No lengthy argument. No moral appeal. No soft concern she could shrug off. Just one word—liability—sent straight into the bloodstream. Gally, who recognized button-pressing as a legitimate communication style and had based half his own interactions with her on variations of it, looked genuinely impressed. Cole was beginning to think the only safe way to observe these people was from behind reinforced glass. Alby watched Cass and thought, not for the first time, that her control was a far thinner thing right now than she was pretending.

Trays of food started appearing then, slid down the table by soldiers who either had excellent timing or had decided that feeding people was the best available de-escalation strategy. Pasta. Real pasta, glossy with oil and herbs, steam lifting from it in thin white ribbons. Thick bread, still warm enough to tear with sound. Bowls of something that smelled like garlic and meat. After the Maze and the desert and the rationing and panic, it looked fucking obscene. Their forks started moving, but their eyes weren't on the food, but on the twins. Every small thing they did was mirrored. Cass reached for the salt and Will had already passed it halfway before she looked up. Tony said something from the far end of the table and both of them tilted their heads at the exact same angle, same fraction, same timing, no eye contact, no cue. Cass tapped her thumb against the side of her fork three times while listening. Ten seconds later Will’s fingers did the same against his bottle neck. Cass stabbed another bite of pasta and, without looking up, said to Will, “Sooo—”

Will sighed. That sigh contained whole years. Yes, his sister was relentless. Yes, she had already parked the earlier deflection and circled back. Yes, she was going to keep circling until she got enough information to start building a plan in her head whether he liked it or not. They had a locked room full of her old plans, all gathered WCKD intelligence, routes, patterns, stolen tech, names, codenames, movement logs, maps marked by her own handwriting from before she vanished—enough context and strategy to set her mind on fire the second she saw it. A room full of accelerant waiting for one spark of recognition. He was not giving her a thing until he knew what the hell was wrong with her and until she had fully recovered from said wrong thing. He knew exactly how quickly Cassandra could turn pain into a footnote and bury herself in mission out of sheer spite. Not happening. Not while he could physically stand in the doorway and be a problem. Still, he had to give her something. “We’ve got five choppers,” he said, finally. “A whole fleet of cars. Tech. Comms. Scramblers. Weapons. Supplies to last two years if infected hit us bad.” Cass nodded once, then went right back to eating like she’d just asked what time it was. She knew Will was holding back but she didn’t have the energy to argue with it right now, so she'll just see for herself while he was asleep or something. Will kept staring at her after answering. At the way she chewed, mechanically, like someone obeying instructions. At the way her eyes stayed lowered. At the tension still living in her shoulders, the economy of her movements that she probably thought nobody was noticing. He drained the rest of his beer and set the empty bottle down with a soft clink, already planning the conversation he was going to corner her into later when she couldn’t dodge him. He’d wait until it was only the two of them. Oh, she'll talk alright.

But then... “What kinda weapons?”

The whole table groaned, realizing Cass had not, in fact, accepted a partial answer and moved on, but was simply digging inward by degree like a particularly hostile excavator. “No,” Newt said at once, actually out loud this time. “No, that’s it—” He didn’t even know what he thought he was doing with that. Drawing a line, apparently. Trying to. It made Cass flick her eyes toward him, and there was enough heat in the glance to promise violence later if he kept getting between her and information. Will, instead of answering verbally, simply pointed at her, then at himself, like saying: this kind of weapons. Minho snorted into his pasta. Cass scoffed. “Just answer the question.”

“I’ll show you tomorrow,” Will said.

Cass’s fork paused mid-air. That was the only warning. “Paige is going there tomorrow,” she said, voice sharpening in a way that changed the whole table again. “That’s a full-ass opening.” Will’s jaw tensed. Tony was already losing his mind. You could see it in the way he looked from one twin to the other like he was watching a fuse burn from both ends. “I say we sedate her,” Tony muttered, not even entirely joking. Will tried to play it cool, though everyone could see the crackle of tension under the posture now. “We'll get information of their movements from The Right Arm and we'll act when we're all fit to be on the field... when your hands don't shake anymore. When we've you've recovered.” It was pointed. Newt wanted to back Will fully and physically if necessary. He also wanted to drag Cass out of the room and hold her until the fire burned off. Oh, God, she was infuriating. Thomas had stopped eating entirely. He was looking between them the way people looked at storms trying to judge whether they were about to get rain or lightning. He understood what she was hearing in Will’s words. He understood what Will meant too. That was the terrible part. Neither one of them was wrong. Cass heard insult. Will meant triage. Both true. Frypan was mentally trying to calculate whether sedation was actually an option and how many people it would take to survive administering it. Minho recognized the look on her face and immediately thought: Will, shut it, pal, we are one wrong sentence away from another fight. Gally really wanted to handcuff her to a radiator. Cass finally lifted her eyes from her plate. Not to Will. To Newt. Just for a second. And because Newt was already looking, already tangled up in concern and frustration and that awful soft thing she kept stirring up in him against his will, he saw the full shape of what sat under her anger. Not just fury. Shame. Humiliation. The sharp wound of being seen too clearly in a state she considered unacceptable. It made him soften by degrees. He gave her the smallest shake of his head. Please don’t.

But before Cass could answer, Minho said, “I’m in. Whatever you do next, whatever this is—I’m with you.” Thomas was right behind him. “We’re all in. That’s not even up for discus—” Cass turned on him so fast it made him flinch. The force of her attention was its own kind of impact. “The hell you are.” Thomas’s mouth shut on the rest of the sentence. Not from fear exactly. More from the sudden collision of two equal and opposite certainties inside him: the certainty that he meant what he’d just said, and the certainty that Cass believed with her whole soul that she was protecting him by refusing it. That was the problem with her. She never pushed back because she didn’t care. She pushed back because she cared too much and had no normal settings about it. Gally’s chair scraped hard against the floor. “Are you serious?” Gally asked, but there was no real question in it. He was already moving into the anger, building momentum word by word. “What are you gonna do, tell us to stay put?” He leaned forward over the table, both palms down, eyes fixed on Cass with the kind of ferocity that made the air feel hotter. “After everything we’ve been through? After the Maze, after the lab, after all of this? WCKD took everything from us. I won’t sleep until I know we’ve hit back.” “Gally—” Alby started, because Gally was already building speed and Alby could see the cliff coming. “No,” Gally snapped, not even looking at him, eyes never leaving Cass. “No. You don’t get to pull this.” He jabbed a finger toward her. “We said we’re in this together. And he’s right—” he jerked his hand once toward Will without breaking focus, “—you almost died saving us more times than we can count. And now you think we’re gonna let you do this alone? Do anything alone? You're dead fucking wrong. And I don’t care how many times I have to say it until it gets through that thick skull of yours,” he said, voice rising not with hysteria but with the raw force of somebody who had spent too long feeling things he didn’t know how to package politely. “The second you came up in that Box, you became one of us, even if I was a jerk about it. You were ours.” He swallowed once, hard, like the next part cost him more than the anger had. “And if something goes wrong—if it all goes to shit, if somebody gets hurt, if we end up dead—I’d still rather it happen with you guys than sitting safe somewhere while you carry it all by yourself like that’s your damn job.”

Cass just stared at him. Not angry now. Just caught. She had clearly braced for an argument she knew the choreography of. You’re hurt. Stay here. We’re worried. Be reasonable. The usual. Things she could roll her eyes at, shove off and outmaneuver. What Gally was handing her wasn’t that. It wasn’t caution. It wasn’t softness. It was allegiance, loyalty, devotion, rough and ugly and absolute, and it hit her somewhere she clearly had no clean protocol for. Minho slapped both hands onto Gally’s shoulders hard enough to jolt him forward and barked out, “Didn't know you had speeches in you!” with the sort of half-hysterical delight people got when someone else finally said the thing the whole room had been choking on. Frypan whooped. Winston smacked Gally’s arm and let out a laugh. Thomas was grinning, bright and wrecked and still visibly emotional, one hand coming down on the back of Gally’s chair with enough force to rattle it. “Where did that come from?” he said, almost accusingly, like Gally had been hiding the ability to speak from the heart as a personal insult. “Shut up,” Gally muttered, shoving Minho’s hands off and scowling at the table like he regretted every syllable now that applause had entered the room. “You can’t take it back,” Minho informed him cheerfully. “It’s already happened. That was a whole speech. There were themes.” “There was pacing,” Frypan added, delighted. “There was eye contact,” Winston said. “There was vulnerability,” Cole put in, zero survival instinct left. Newt and Alby both watched Cass in that moment, the way her throat moved when she swallowed, watched the flicker of something vulnerable cross her eyes before she shoved it down. They knew she wasn’t off-balance because she didn’t trust them. She was off-balance because she did. Because letting people in meant they could get hurt. Meant their blood could end up on her hands. Meant she’d have something to lose. Will, meanwhile, was enjoying this far more than decency should have allowed. Even he looked a little impressed by Gally’s speech, had the kind of expression a man wore when something had genuinely surprised him into respect. But that respect lasted approximately two seconds before his delight took over. “What about that, huh,” Will drawled, turning toward his sister with unholy satisfaction. He savored every word like it was dessert. “Someone you can’t brush off. This is downright delicious. Might even take a picture. Frame it on my wall—”

That was when the door swung open, and the whole table pivoted toward it at once like they were all strung on the same wire. Chairs shifted. Hands stopped halfway to mouths. Forks hovered in air. Even the soldiers nearby, who had been trying very hard to pretend they weren’t listening to every little thing happening at that table, turned. Chuck stood there. Or, more accurately, he was leaning on the nurse at his side, his body still not fully convinced that being upright was a sensible idea. Pale as paper, lips still lacking real color, curls sticking up in every direction like he’d been dragged through a wind tunnel and then argued with a pillow. His eyes were half-lidded and unfocused at first, the pupils slow, heavy with exhaustion and whatever they’d pumped into him to drag him back from the edge. He blinked hard once. Then again. The room must have been swimming at him in pieces, bright lights, soldiers, trays, faces, the sound of voices already starting to rise before he’d fully processed what he was seeing. And then he did. His gaze caught on Alby, then Minho, then Thomas, Newt, Gally, Frypan, Winston, Cass and Cole at the table, and his face did the slowest, most exhausted little sunrise of a smile. Every single one of them erupted. “CHUCK!” “Kid!” “Oi!” The noise hit him all at once and made him flinch, shoulders jumping, the nurse steadying him automatically with one hand under his elbow. Then his sleepy grin widened instead of faltering. Cass was already on her feet. One second she was in the chair, and the next she was across the room like the distance had offended her. Newt saw it happen and felt a familiar bolt of alarm with the relief, because Christ, woman, easy, your side, but then she was in front of Chuck, crouching despite what that movement had to cost her. “You should be in bed, kiddo,” she murmured. Soft. God, so soft. It did something terrible and tender to the whole room, that voice. Her eyes were already scanning him as she spoke, face, hands, posture, the amount of weight he was putting through his own legs, the gray cast still under his skin, the way he leaned too much on the nurse though he was trying to disguise it as casual. Chuck’s gaze dragged over her uniform, the cut of her clothes, then past her to the rest of the room, confusion flickering across his face as he tried to assemble a reality around all the unfamiliar pieces, soldiers, maps, lights, actual structure, Will’s face, Tony’s face, the whole impossible base. His mouth parted like he was about to ask something and had no idea which question to choose first. Cass beat him to it. “It’s okay,” she said. “We’re safe, kid. We’re all safe. This isn’t WCKD, okay? We’re safe here.” Chuck simply stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her middle. Cass’s arms came up around him automatically.

Will froze at that.

Minho caught his unease and leaned toward him, brow furrowing. “You good?” Will blinked once like his brain had to restart around the sight in front of him. His mouth opened, closed, opened again, and when he finally got words out, they sounded bewildered. Almost affronted. “…She like this ever since she woke up?” Minho frowned harder. “Like what?” Will gestured vaguely, like the entire concept was too ridiculous to hold in one hand. “Uh… touching people. Willingly.” Minho stared at him. What was that supposed to mean? Cass was guarded, yes, careful, yes, not exactly cuddly by default, sure, but she had let them in. Let Newt in more than most. Let Chuck hug her. Let Thomas lean on her. Let Minho nudge and hug and hover. Let Gally grab her without getting his wrist broken for it. So hearing Will say that—as if the very idea of Cass allowing ordinary touch was some kind of apocalyptic side effect—made him glitch a bit. “Huh?” But Will didn’t answer. He just kept staring at the way she held this kid with an ease Will had never seen from her. Because his Cassandra, his sister, the one carved out of a childhood where infected attacks didn’t politely knock, where you watched people you loved go wrong overnight and sometimes in the same room as you, had never liked being touched. She’d drag you out of danger, sure. She’d stitch you up. She’d put herself between you and death without flinching. But hugs? Closeness? A hand on her shoulder just because? No. Not unless you were dying. Or… him. Those had always been the exceptions. Him, and emergencies. That was the whole list. And here she was, arms around this kid like it was nothing. Will’s throat tightened so abruptly it hurt. Chuck pulled back just enough to look up at her. His eyes dragged over the uniform again, and his whole tired little face lit up. “You look so cool in this!” Cass laughed. Bright and sudden and completely unguarded. “A real sweet talker, aren’t you?” she said, and the fondness in her voice would have melted steel. She leaned down and pressed a quick kiss to his forehead, then guided him by the shoulders toward the table. “Come on. You gotta eat.”

Will’s eyes stayed on his sister and the kid. What the hell did the Maze do to you, he thought. Not in a bad way, though.

Chuck's gaze had landed on Will as they approached the table. Then back to Cass. Then to Will again. His head started going from one to the other in increasingly suspicious little jerks, squinting hard as if comparing two drawings in his mind. He tilted his head one way. Then the other. His eyes got wider and wider until he looked genuinely scandalized by what he’d discovered. “You two look alike!” he shouted, then, louder, “LIKE A LOT!” The whole room broke into laughter. Not just the Gladers this time. Even a few nearby soldiers cracked, because the boy had said it with the sort of astonished delight usually reserved for spotting a two-headed animal at the zoo. “This is my brother, Will,” Cass explained, amused. “TWIN brother,” Will corrected. “YOU DIDN'T TELL ME YOU HAD A BROTHER! THAT’S AWESOME!” Chuck gasped. He was still weak, still pale, still not really walking in a straight line, but none of that stopped him from marching around the table and straight up to Will with the solemn authority of a kid conducting a very important inspection. He took in Will’s face, his hair, the set of his shoulders, the expression in his eyes, then looked back at Cass and nodded to himself like he’d just confirmed a difficult theory. “YOU REALLY LOOK LIKE HER!” Will grinned at him immediately, because Chuck was impossible not to grin at. “How do you know,” Will said, “that I’m the one who looks like her and she’s not actually the one who looks like me?” Chuck frowned. Deeply. This required thought. “Which one of you was first?” And both twins, without looking at each other, said in perfect unison: “I was.” The table exploded. Will immediately snapped, “YOU CAN’T EVEN REMEMBER IT, THEY WIPED YOUR BRAIN CLEAN—” Cass shot right back, “YEAH, LIKE YOU COULD REMEMBER SHIT FROM YOUR FIRST MINUTES ALIVE, BET YOU WERE CRYING YOUR ASS OFF LIKE THE WHINY LITTLE BITCH YOU ARE—” They kept going, overlapping, matching cadence, the words hitting at the exact same speed and rhythm. Someone actually banged the table laughing. Minho bent forward wheezing so hard he had to put a hand on his knee to keep from falling out of the chair. Thomas covered his face with both hands, shoulders shaking. Even Tony’s mouth twitched hard enough to count. Chuck’s eyes were enormous. “YOU EVEN TALK THE SAME!” Cass ignored her brother mid-roast session and turned right back to Chuck, the softness in her voice coming back all at once. “You feeling okay?” Chuck nodded enthusiastically. “I’m glad,” she said. God, was she glad. All of them were. They stared at Chuck like they wanted to pick him up by the shoulders and yell at him for scaring them all and maybe never let him out of arm’s reach again.

A tray of food slid in front of Chuck by one of the soldiers, and Chuck, proving that he was still Chuck in all the load-bearing ways, immediately dug in like he had no time for emotional processing when there was actual edible food in front of him.

Will watched Cass.

Not Chuck.

Cass.

“Whatcha lookin at, loser?” Cass asked, catching him staring.

Will rubbed at his chin with two fingers, still looking at her. “Maybe the memory wipe wasn’t that bad after all,” he said. “You’re slightly less of a bitch now.”

She pointed to his dick and deadpanned. “You’ll be slightly less of a man if I put my mind to it.”

Will chuckled and shook his head.

He'd missed the hell out of this woman.

FIRST CHAPTER

THIRD CHAPTER