Disclaimer:

Daaamn, J-Dash! Back at it again killing all the characters I love.

  -✼-

"Mom, I don't want to leave you!"

My brother's cry was getting more annoying each time he said it, tugging on Mommy's hand and sometimes digging his feet into the ground to stop her from walking. My hands wrung together as I followed the strange-looking people with guns up to the gate lined with spirals of metal at the top. The bright lights that shined on us caused them to glint in the otherwise looming darkness.

"I don't want to leave you either, baby, but I have to," she replied sadly, running her fingers through his messy hair. She had woken us up really early in the morning and made us get dressed. She let us have chocolate chip cookies for breakfast, which was weird because she never let us do that, then we took a bus here. I had no idea what was going on.

We kept walking, pushing through the other adults that were yelling loudly. I could see a building ahead of us- it was huge and my eyes widened at the sight of it. I had never seen a building so big. It was a lot for my seven-year-old self to comprehend.

"This is where we stop," one of the men announced gruffly once we approached the gate. My mother took hold of my hand as well as my brother's and bent down so her soft brown eyes could look into ours. Tears rolled down her pale face; her chin wobbled as she looked between us.

"Remember that I love you both, okay?" she said through sniffles. "You stay close to each other. Mommy's sick and she'll never get better, and she doesn't want you to get infected, either, so that's why she's doing this, okay? Maybe you can help cure people like me."

"I don't want to leave you!" My brother screamed over the other people's voices, sobs racking his small body. I used my free hand to entwine my fingers with his. "Mommy, don't leave us like Daddy did!"

Our mother didn't respond. Instead, she lifted us both in her arms and passed each of us to one of the guards. The man's arms squeezed me harder than necessary and I felt tears prick at my eyes as he unlocked the gate. My brother was still screaming, thrashing in his guard's arms and begging them to put him down. I simply stared over the man's shoulder and watched my mother cry as we were taken away.

She said one final thing before the gate closed behind us.

"Stephen, Lucy, I love you!"

I love you too, Mommy.

-/-

A tall lady with dark, wrinkled skin that stood out against her white lab coat came up to me with a needle in her hand. She cleaned the inside of my elbow with a cotton ball, making me shiver at the coldness of her gloved hands and whatever was on the cotton.

"Don't worry, sweetie," she cooed as the needle pricked my skin. I jumped at the stinging sensation. "I'm just taking a little blood."

"Where's my brother?" I asked in a shaking voice, unable to look away from the tube that was being filled with my blood. "Our mommy told us not to get sep - separ -"

"Separated?" the lady asked with a nice smile. "You'll see Stephen soon. He's just with another doctor."

I nodded and sniffed, blinking away the dryness in my eyes from when I had cried. At first, I fought away anyone who tried to come near me after they took my brother, but then this nice woman came and I decided to trust her. She also promised me candy.

Once she took the needle out, she stuck a Band-Aid on my skin and dropped a mini chocolate bar in my hand. I tore it out of its wrapper and shoved the whole thing in my mouth. The doctor laughed softly and walked away from me to a counter, doing something I couldn't see from my position in the big chair in the middle of the room.

The door opened, causing me to look toward it, still chewing. So far everything was white, from the walls to people's clothes and the weird machines around me. I felt out of place in my red sweater and jeans that were ripped at the knees from use.

Another lady walked in, this one with dark brown hair that was pin-straight. She was so pale that she almost blended in with the white wall behind her. The doctor turned and nodded to her respectively, then went back to what she was doing with my blood.

The pale woman approached me and bent down so my face was level with hers. The wrapper to the chocolate bar crinkled in my hand as my fist tightened. The look in the lady's eyes wasn't friendly like the doctor's. It was the kind of friendly that masked the mean behind it.

"Hello," she said in a sugary-sweet tone. "I'm Ava Paige. What's your name?"

I squinted at her and swallowed the candy. "Lucy. Can I have a glass of milk?"

Ava chuckled and shook her head. "Not right now. I'm here to tell you something important. You won't be called 'Lucy' anymore; we're going to give you a new name once we choose an appropriate one for you, okay? From now on you'll respond to 'Subject B1,' and your brother, 'Subject A2.'"

"Why?" I asked, crossing my arms over my chest. I liked my name, and I didn't like the idea of 'Subject' anything. "What's wrong with Lucy?"

"Nothing's wrong with Lucy," Ava promised gently upon noticing that I was getting mad. "Nothing at all. But what we're doing requires new names, and we promise you'll like yours once we decide what it will be. You'll be named after someone important, or your new name will be important in the future. Does that make you feel any better?"

"No."

Ava sighed and stood up, facing the doctor. The dark-skinned lady held another small bar of chocolate in one hand as she looked at Ava. "Will you be seeing Subject A1 next?"

"No." Ava shook her head. "She's in Surgery right now. Besides, we came up with a name for her already- Teresa Agnes."

The doctor smiled. "Mother Teresa?"

Ava nodded and started to leave, her heels making clicking noises on the shiny floor as she walked. She opened the door and turned to me. "Believe me, Lucy. You'll like it here. Welcome to W.I.C.K.E.D."

The door slammed shut behind her.

-/-

I woke suddenly and out of breath, eyes snapping open to reveal nothing but darkness above. My brain produced invisible warning signs at the sight of the unfamiliar surroundings. But as soon as I let my eyes swivel around to access the rest of the area, my heart started beating less rapidly.

I was laying in Newt's lap again, but we weren't in the same building we had been in before. We were in some sort of dark hallway, with Gladers sitting on both sides of the narrow walls. People were scooping food hungrily out of cans. The only sound I could hear was the scraping of silverware against metal.

I sat up, my head swimming for a second before my vision cleared up. I noticed Theo sitting across from me; he was trying to get every last bit of food from his can. Minho was beside me and kept rubbing a spot on his throat. It was cut open slightly, and the wound hadn't been there before. The sight of it made me wonder what happened while I was asleep.

"Glad to see you're awake, hermana," Jorge said to me in a booming voice, much to my surprise. He approached me with a can of beans and a spoon in his hand. I accepted them uncomfortably. "You're a heavy sleeper."

"How long was I out for?" I asked Newt, who had his empty can set next to him on the opposite side that I was on. He stared at a random spot on the floor.

"Fifteen minutes," he replied blankly. "But Jorge's right— you slept through a lot in those fifteen minutes."

Minho scoffed and let his hand fall from his neck, producing a slapping sound as it hit his leg. "'A lot' is an understatement. I almost got my friggin' fingers cut off!"

"What?" My eyes went wide as my head jerked to look at him.

Jorge waved a hand in dismissal. "No matter. The past is the past. We're all amigos now! Eat up- we want to get a move on soon. Your brother told me all about your little mission."

Without responding, I opened the can and stuck the spoon inside, lifting it into my mouth. The beans were cold and mushy. However, I'd take any type of food at that point, so I dug in and tried to ignore the texture of them.

"Few things you need to know about Cranks," Jorge began, now standing and walking between us. "One" - he spun on his heel to walk in the other direction as he held up a finger - "some are worse than others. You've got Normies like us and those that are past the Gone. They aren't human anymore. Don't even think about the person you're killing because they're no longer people at all. Two, even if you don't have the Flare, you do. Thing spreads quicker than gossip between a bunch of girls. Three, if you get bitten by a Crank past the Gone, you may as well be Gone instantly. Takes only a day or two because it infects you more deeply that way." Jorge clapped his hands with a joyful smile. "That's it! Keep those things in mind, and you might make it."

Through bites of beans, I surveyed those around me and noticed Thomas sitting at the end with a girl I'd never seen before. She had dark hair in a pixie cut, and the poor lighting made her skin look dark like it did to Theo's. They were talking amongst themselves like they'd known each other forever.

But suddenly, their talking stopped, and the girl said, "Wait. Something's wrong. I think we have visitors."

My heart leaped into my throat and I began shoveling the beans into my mouth like there was no tomorrow, knowing that we'd have to be on the move in seconds and I wouldn't be able to eat for a while. I was almost making myself sick from how fast I was eating. Minho stared at me with his eyes the size of small planets.

Jorge was at the girl's side before I could blink, whispering in her ear. Just as she went to stand, a loud crash sounded from a set of stairs I assumed we used to get down here. It sounded like the building itself was crumbling. A large cloud of dust billowed toward, blocking the single light in the area and plunging us into near darkness.

The can dropped out of my hand and hit the floor with a clatter. I was standing before I could process it and then I was following Newt as we ran, turning down a hallway behind Jorge. He shouted a curse in Spanish as a section of the wall fell down and nearly hit him right in the head. Dust was spilling into the hall, choking me and evoking coughs from everyone else. Every muscle in my body ached as I pushed myself to keep going.

"This way!" Jorge shouted above the noise of the shaking building, but I could hardly hear him with one ear. It sounded like he was trying to talk over a sonic boom.

I took a sharp turn down to my right as he instructed, then up several flights of stairs. Chunks of the ceiling were falling, brushing my arms as I threw them above my head for protection. The dust was filling the air, smothering it completely until my lungs were full of it. I could hardly see through the clouds of white.

My shoes began to slide as I ran. It felt like the gravitational pull had switched to in front of me as I struggled not to fall backward and slip down the corridor. Still following the faint outline of Newt, I burst through into open air and realized with the terrifying realization that I was falling - actually falling – toward the ground. The building was tipped over into another so the window we had jumped out of was diagonal to the ground.

But now I was descending toward the ground from a three-story building, my legs shifting as I clawed at the air like I could magically grab onto something. I couldn't scream; all of the air had been sucked from my lungs until it felt like a weight was in my chest. The sound of crushing stone filled my ears. I looked down and realized with alarm that the ground was mere seconds away. Three, two, one.

My feet slammed onto the gravel and I tucked into a roll, popping up from the ground and cringing at the sharp pain shooting up from my ankles. Jorge and the others were still running at top speed away from the crumbling building. I briefly turned around to see several others jumping from the window, as well as Minho right behind me. He caught up with me easily.

"C'mon, shank!" he shouted, grabbing my sleeve and nearly causing me to trip. I regained my footing and pushed myself farther and farther from the mass of destruction behind me.

And then, I realized something with absolute horror.

I hadn't seen Thomas following behind me.

gif is that building they're running from

-------

sorry this is a little short, but i hope you liked the memories! the next few chapters will be a challenge to write because we literally have no idea what happened to Jorge and the others in the town :/

questions:

-do you like dylan's actual name?

-would you rather be in the town with brenda or jorge?

-group a or group b?

not a lot of questions because i'm super brain dead and tired atm, sorry!

-kristyn