Chapter Text
“Mrs. y/n, Doctor Paige is ready to see you.”
A woman stands under the doorway, beckoning me to follow her down the corridor
I sit at my bedside in a small desolate white room, taking a moment to check myself back into reality. I must have been lost in my head again.
“Right. Uh…right behind you.” I reply getting to my feet.
She nods and begins walking down the hall without waiting.
I quickly grab my jacket from the nightstand, swing it over my shoulders, and begin to follow behind the neatly dressed woman. Her black heels echo off the hall walls and her tightly pinned hair seems impossibly perfect, not one strand out of place. Every stride she walks is swift and confident.
The woman suddenly stops in her stride and gestures to a door at my right. “Just right in here,” She says, her tone inferring she knows something I don’t -almost excited for me in a way.
“Okay…” I reply, questioningly eyeing her. I approach the door and open it slowly.
In an instant, my eyes lock on a girl who rests in a chair on the other side of a small table. Her once familiar, long, silky hair is now cut to her shoulders. She holds my unbelieving stare with a warm smile.
“Hey,” Caroline greets shyly.
I can’t bring myself to reply. I can only stand and stare, unable to process that she is here in front of me, alive .
She fiddles nervously with her sleeve, “I think we uh.. have a lot to talk about.”
“How…How are you here? I- I watched you die.” I mutter, slowly walking closer to the table. Pools of tears beginning to flood my vision.
Caroline shakes her head. “You watched a griever impale me, yes. But I never died.” She says softly, standing from the stable. “I’m here.”
I inhale a shaky breath and rush towards her, entraping her in a tight hug. “I missed you so much” I breathe into her neck with a sob.
Her arm wraps around my shoulder as her other hand cradles the back of my head, “I know… I’m so sorry.” She mumbles.
I squeeze her tighter, scared if I don’t hold tight enough she’ll slip away again.
My tears dampen her shoulder. It’s hard to tell if these tears are of longing or relief. Maybe it’s both or maybe it’s neither. They could be tears of fear. A fear that this is all another tauntful dream. But with the way her warmth radiates onto my skin in our tight embrace, I wonder how this could ever be a dream. No, this is reality. She is alive.
Finally, I manage to compose myself and pull away.
“What happened?” I ask wiping away tears. “I mean, how are you even here?”
She caresses my cheek and sits back down, gesturing to the chair across from her.
I take the seat and scoot it closer to the table, eagerly awaiting an explanation.
“When everyone finally escaped, Wicked did one final sweep, made sure that those who chose to stay behind were… killed by grievers,” Caroline explains hesitantly. “Then they stumbled upon me, at the moment I was unconscious, but nevertheless breathing. They took me in, aided me, educated me, and made me an observer. I was told to watch and observe your next trial, the one you just finished.” She pauses a moment, searching my expression for any confusion. “Why they spared me, I don’t know. But they did. They saved my life y/n” She leans in closer, a warm smile plastered upon her lips.
“Thats…,” I hold a response, unsure of how to react. “I can’t believe you’ve been alive all this time. I can’t even begin to imagine what that must've been like." I take a moment to gather my thoughts, suryeing her appearance and convincing myself of this reality. But one nagging question keeping interupting my thoughts. "but…why didn’t you ever leave?”
She knits her brows in confusion, “Leave?” She questions.
“Yeah, as in escape?”
“Why would I do that?”
I lean further into the table, almost talking in a whisper. “Because of what they did, what they planned to do. I mean what reason to stay?”
She leans back into her chair and looks at me with concern. “What reason? They saved me. Isn’t that reason enough?”
“No... no it’s not. They tried to kill you, Caroline. Tried to kill me, kill everyone!” I almost want to laugh at the absurdity of her reasoning. But I also wanted to excuse it -act like she didn't actually mean what she was inferring.
“They didn’t target anyone directly. Those who died contributed to the factors and variables needed for the cure. They didn’t die in vain.”
“I don’t fucking care if they died in vain or not. They’re dead! Teenagers -children dead.”
“Y/n, you don’t understand. They are so close to a cure. What's a couple of lives when we could save thousands? Millions even! I would die in an instant if it meant finally finding a cure.”
My expression twists into one of intensity. “How could you say that? How could you say that after everything that’s happened?” I sit back in my chair, eyes boring into her. Something is wrong. The Caroline I knew would never believe something like this. “And what do you mean they're so close? They said they already found a cure.”
she scoffs. “I think we both know you’re smarter than that y/n. That was only for leverage, to get everyone to come back to us, to listen -to understand.”
My mouth falls agape. I feel betrayed -torn between the conversation and the girl sitting in front of me. “I can’t believe what you’re saying right now.”
If there never were a cure, that would mean I might still have the flare. It would mean Wicked sent us into the scorch to purposely catch the virus they’ve been working so hard to run from. But why?
Caroline reaches out and touches my hand. “Y/n, you need to listen to me. The sooner you corporate, the sooner we find a cure. They need you. I need you .”
I yank my hand away. “There is no cure, Caroline! Don’t you get that?” I stand above the table, looking down at her in frustration. “Don’t you think they’d at least have some sort of prototype by now? After all they’ve tried?”
“A cure takes time.” She sighs, disappointed. “I don’t want to fight anymore y/n. Can’t we just be happy we’re together again?”
I stare at her a second longer, studying her odd demeanor. “No, we can’t,” I answer bluntly. Tears begin to resurface and trickle down my chin. “I refuse to sit here and listen to your bullshit! This- This is bullshit!
She abruptly stands from her chair. “Excuse me?”
“You’re not the Caroline I knew,” I mutter.
She stares at me a second longer, her face dropping to a mix of pity and irritation.
“Y/n…” She begins, slowly taking something out of her pocket, holding it up, and presenting it to me like a piece of evidence. She reveals the heart-shaped stone I made her that day in the maze. “I was so excited to see you again. So excited for even the possibility that we could work together. With your knowledge and my reasoning, I truly believed we could find that cure together…but you’ve changed.”
I stare at the stone she holds, heartbroken by the mere sight of it. I feel for mine, but it’s gone. The stone I was sure I fell asleep with, was gone.
“I was watching you out in that scorch and the person I saw…wasn’t you.”
“What are you talking about?” I question.
“Just the other day… you-” She stares deeply into my eyes contemplating her words. Then her eyes shift to something behind me. She points over my shoulder, “There.”
I turn around. In the corner of the ceiling hangs a Monitor, playing footage of our escape from the scorch. It shows an aerial view of me, relentlessly harming the creature I fought that day. Over and over my body lunges at the limp monster in my arms. It’s an unbearable sight. All the emotions I felt in that moment begin to resurface. I don't recognize even myself in this footage.
I quickly turn my head away from the monitor, eyes glued to the floor. Ashamed of what had overcome me that day. “You… you have no idea what it was like.”
Her tone turns soft as she inches closer to me. “And what was it like?”
“Debilitating,” I answer. “Every minute of every hour I was terrified. So terrified it made me sick to my stomach.” Tears begin to return in my eyes, slowly falling onto my cheeks. “ I didn’t want to watch any more people die. I couldn’t bear it anymore.”
Caroline rests her hand gently on my shoulder, “I understand.” She whispers.
I pull my shoulder away and turn to her with a glare. “No! No, you don’t! You weren’t there! You sat here and watched us suffer! The least you could’ve done was gotten yourself out of dodge -Escape for us, Live the life we talked about back in the glade… but no…you chose to stay and help them.”
Caroline’s once warm and pitiful expression, turns cold and resentful; like a switch had just gone off in her head. “I really tried y/n. I did. I just wanted to make things easier for you. And I was hoping this talk would make your transition easier, but clearly, you’re distressed.”
I back away from the table slowly, her new tone bringing up a sense of unease in my chest.
“It’s time to wake up now y/n.”
“What?”
“It’s time to wake up.” She repeats. “Wake up, Wake up, Wake up, Wake-”
...
I gasp for air as I lurch my back off the surface below me. I take heavy breaths as I observe my surroundings.
I’m sitting on a stiff hospital bed in a dull, white testing room. Monitors beep and click rapidly around me. A large mirror encompasses the wall in front of me, which looks to be a two-way mirror. I look down at my body. Tubes and wires connect to my limbs and chest. I can feel suctions clinging to my temple. My breath pulses with the speed of my racing heart and the room around me spins. In a complete panic, I frantically rip off all the devices and hop off the bed in a panic.
A woman, Ava Paige, walks through the door. “It’s okay, It’s over” She reassures desperately, as she gestures with her hands for me to relax.
“What was that?” I ask, my voice shaking with fear.
“It was only a simulation. It wasn’t real.” She walks closer, moving her hands to my shoulders.
I pull my body away from her. “Why? Why would you do that?”
“y/n I need you to calm down-”
“No! I want answers! Why would you do that?”
Ava Paige once again puts her hand on my shoulder and gently pushes me into the bed. “We needed more data on your brain waves during times of distress.”
I can feel my face beginning to turn red with fury. “I thought this was all over. You said it was over.”
“I’m sorry you were deceived. If It means anything, I never wanted to lie to you children about the 3rd trial. But the others feared you wouldn’t cooperate if we told you.”
“Third Trial?” I ask with exhaustion.
She nods. “That simulation was your third trial.”
It felt so real. One moment, I was ecstatic. Caroline was alive, she was breathing and talking right in front of me, though her words made me falter, I truly believed she was there -the girl I had known so well behind those maze walls. But the next moment, she was gone. She returns to the ghost of a friend I had once known.
I can’t bring myself to respond. I was naive. I put my guard down, and Wicked took the first opportunity they got to use that. It wasn’t enough for them to put me through the brink of death. They had to mingle with my perception of those I lost. They tainted my image of Caroline, a power they should never have had.
It all makes me want to scream til my voice gives out. It makes me want to sob till my throat closes. It makes me want to run out of this building til my legs collapse. But most of all, It makes me want to see my friends. To hold them and cherish them, never let them go, never give Wicked the chance to do what they did to me.
“Where are they?” I ask.
Ava stares at me a moment longer, choosing her words carefully. “Your friends are undergoing their third trial as we speak.”
“No,” I demand getting to my feet. “You can’t do that to them. They’ve been through enough.” I make my way to the door and try the handle but it doesn’t budge. She’s locked us in. Ava stares at me from the bedside. Her expression is oddly empathetic and dejected.
“Y/n, please sit back down. We need to have a very important discussion.”
I stare at her for a moment. I know refusal will only keep me in here longer. I want to get out of here and find the others as soon as possible. I need to help them. Without a word, I make my way to the bed and take a seat.
“Thank you,” Ava nods with a genuine appreciation. “I know you want to help your friends and trust me, I do too-” I huff a laugh at her remark. “But it's already underway. There is nothing you or I can do to stop it. We need these results for a final blueprint. All these trials and variables we put your group through was to get a better understanding of what makes your generation's biological makeup so different from our own.”
“Why would you need to know something like that?”
“As you know, the outside world has been…consumed by the flare. For years we worked and worked to find something, anything to combat this virus. We found nothing. Until your generation showed up. Y/n, your generation is immune. You never had the flare nor will you ever have it.”
I look down to the floor, processing all that she said. I have no reason to believe her, all she and Wicked have done was lie. But this answer finally feels right. It feels like I’ve known this. “How long?”
“How long what?”
“How long have you been searching for this cure?” I ask with hostility, afraid of what I’ll hear.
“Your two groups are the first -and hopefully last. So to answer your question…18 years. All that research and preparation was in anticipation for these next few months.”
“All that time and there is still no prototype?” I begin to interrogate. “Do you seriously still believe there even is a cure? Don’t you think you would’ve found something by now?”
Ava’s expression lights up, like she's been waiting for this exact question. “That's the thing. We have found something… You. Your generation. You’re all our key. They're the light at the end of the tunnel-”
“Yet you’re willing to kill that light to save yourselves.”
Her face falls, though not in anger or frustration, but in guilt. She’s aware of the absurdity of these trials, the absolute inhumanity. Yet, she defends them. And I can’t pinpoint why nor do I bother to ask, I wouldn’t get a straight answer anyway.
She shifts her posture and looks me in the eye, readjusting her demeanor. “I understand your frustration. I know how hard this must be to take in. But I promise you all of this will make sense once we’ve removed your swipe.” She answers casually.
“Sorry?”
“We’re going to remove your swipe. Meaning, you get your old memories back, the ones before the maze trials.”
I don’t know how to feel. All this time, I’ve been yearning to know what life was like before the maze. I was so curious to know who I was. But now, I’m not so sure. What if I don’t like what I learn?
“Do I get a choice in this?” I ask.
Ava gives me an apologetic look. “Unfortunately, no.”
“Are my friends going to have to do the same?”
She pauses, searching for the right words. An indication that she probably isn’t going to be honest with me. “We hope so.”
“You hope so?”
“Y/n, I’m going to be honest with you. We are giving them the option to remove theirs. But we can’t give you the same because… we need you.”
Before I could open my mouth to question her, she put her hand up. “The swipe removal will explain it better than I can. Now if you will please follow me, I’ll take you to your room.” She begins to make her way to the door, swiping her key card to unlock it.
I want to interrogate further, ask why they need me specifically, but my wish for isolation triumphs my curiosity. So, I get to my feet and follow Ava out the door.