"Greenie, wake up!" a cheerful voice interrupted Sara's peaceful sleep. She opened her eyes and stared back at whoever was talking to her.

"Hey, Chuck," she mumbled as she rose from her hammock. She swung her feet to the floor, testing to see if she'd be able to apply pressure on her injured leg.

Chuck scurried over to her and grabbed her arm to help her to her feet. She felt the strain on her thigh, but she figured she could manage to walk. As she attempted wobbly steps, Chuck was there to steady her. He was such a sweet little boy.

From the moment she met him the night before, she gained a certain liking for the kid. He was probably the nicest one out of all the boys in the Glade. Quite possibly the youngest too. She didn't even know he was part of this group of boys. Back at the lab, she never even saw him. She couldn't believe her uncle had the nerve to put a kid his age into that stupid Maze.

She limped her way to the kitchen with Chuck tagging along, and while Frypan gladly served them some breakfast, she noticed the scornful stares from the Gladers sitting at the tables nearby.

"Hey Chuck, where's Minho?" she asked the boy, trying her best to block the other stares from her peripheral vision.

Chuck looked amused. "Woke up with a massive hangover. The dumb shank still had to go run the Maze like that. He's Keeper of the Runners, so sucks for him," he chuckled.

She frowned at him. "How can you laugh about something like that? Don't you ever worry he might not return? I mean... the Runners, they have to go in there every single day, risking their lives to find a way out. How are you guys not bothered by this?" she asked, bewildered at the lack of seriousness from the kid.

He swerved his lips to the side, staring at her with a new somber look on his face. "No, it's not that," he paused, and she followed his eyesight until it landed on the imposing walls of the Maze, "that just doesn't lead us anywhere. We've learned it the hard way."

Hard way?

She thought everything they'd been through was already difficult in its own sense. How could they think they were better off where they were?

"Just take things calmly, Greenie—or at least try. It's a lot to take in, and we've lost so many boys to fear and panic." Chuck paused with slight realization. "Holy shuck..." he huffed in shock, "I sound like Alby." The boy's cheeks puffed up as he giggled with pride.

"Isn't that something to be proud of," she joked, ignoring the kid's glee.

He was silent for a bit before looking at her as if she had the answer to a question he'd been dying to ask.

"What is it?" She decided it was best to pry it out at once rather than taking a wild guess.

The boy's eyes sparkled with curiosity, and Sara hoped he wouldn't ask something she wouldn't  know how to answer. "Do you know what happened to Newt? I mean... like do you know him?"

She immediately stopped eating, her fork midway toward her mouth as she stared ahead at nothing in particular. Silently, she set the fork down.

No, she didn't want to talk about this. God only knew how hard she'd tried not to think about Newt or what she saw, but everyone just made it incredibly difficult.

"I don't," she replied sadly. "I only saw him on the floor, seconds before I passed out. Must've been a horrible injury though." Chuck nodded understandably.

Before Chuck could get any more from her, three muscular boys approached their table with arms crossed and an angered look on their faces. Gally was one of them.

Oh joy.

"Take her to the pit," he ordered emotionlessly. The other boys complied to his command and they brought her to her feet rather roughly, grasping her arms behind her back, causing her to squeal in pain.

Chuck stood up to defend her. "Whoa, what the shuck dude?" Gally ignored him as he shot Sara a glare. She responded with the same gesture as she struggled to break free from the boys' grasp.

Something seemed really off about those accusations. "I thought I was cleared. Does Alby even know you're doing this?" she asked.

His eyes snapped wildly back at her. "Shut your hole," said Gally, pointing a warning finger directly at her face, "Alby will have to hear me out."

Next thing she knew, she was being hustled along, and then she was thrown into a small prison-like chamber before Gally smashed the door shut.

She gripped the bars with anger, as if that would change a thing about her predicament.

"I don't know what it is, but I'm gonna find out what you're hiding," he sneered at her before leaving her alone in the darkness of the pit.

For a moment, she wanted to break out of there and beat him up for being such an idiot, but then again, he was right. She was hiding things. Plenty of them. And she didn't know how to make these boys trust her. She'd have to tell them eventually, but it looked like it was going to be a hassle. If she told them now, Gally would have her lynched before she could even lead them out of the Maze.

Unable to say or do anything else, and with those pestering thoughts still fresh in her mind, she lay on the cold, hard ground, stretching out her throbbing leg. It didn't take her too long to fall asleep eventually, as that seemed to be the only outcome of her helplessness, otherwise her restless thoughts wouldn't let her forget what was yet to come.

❀❀❀

"Greenie," she heard someone call, but her eyes remained shut. "Greenie! Wake up."

When she opened them, she groaned as the light that crept through the holes jabbed her eyes. "When will you stop calling me Greenie?"

"When will you remember your real name?" he retorted.

Wow, okay.

She looked closely as her eyes gained focus to recognize Alby. His salty expression relaxed a bit. "It'll come to ya at some point."

Just the words I wanted to hear.

Pretending like she didn't know her own name made her question her identity, believe it or not. Sara hated the feeling. Her only comfort was knowing there had to be a right time for the 'revelation.'

"I'm getting ya outta there," he said, and she finally sat up and scooted towards the door. Alby was unlocking it and she looked at him suspiciously.

"Decide for yourselves already. Am I a criminal or not?" she demanded, annoyed with their indecisiveness.

"Alby!" she heard Gally's pestering voice nearby, seemingly approaching the pit. As she was being set free, Alby raised his palm to stop Gally from talking. That kid didn't have a mute button unfortunately, reminding her of a certain someone who stayed back at the lab doing Janson's deeds.

But Gally complained anyway. "No, you've gotta listen. You can't just ignore what's going on. First, she comes from the Maze and survives! Obviously, she knows how to work her shuck way in there—it has to do with the creators. And what about her reaction? Judge me all you want, but I've never seen a Greenie act so relaxed—"

"I was scared, Gally. But, I'm a girl, so I'm pretty sure it's normal for me to react differently from all of you boys," she argued, even if she knew it sounded ridiculous. That was not the reason, but it was what she knew she had to say to calm people down. He simply wouldn't shut up about the same freaking thing.

"We've already talked about this, so slim it, Gally," Alby added.

Gally stared at him with disbelief and scoffed. "What happened to your 'if ya ain't scared, ya ain't human' speech, huh?"

Sara knew it was her fault. Maybe she should've acted more afraid—make it believable even for Gally.

Alby was clearly annoyed with the futile argument. "That was until a girl showed up, slinthead. We'll keep an eye on her until she proves she's not a threat to any of us. And listen to me, Gally. If ya don't shut that shuck mouth of yours, I'm gonna lock ya in the pit instead. Good that?"

"Good that," Gally muttered between his teeth, glaring at Sara before stomping away. Alby turned to her with a serious look.

"I'm sure Minho told ya about the different jobs, right? I wanna leave it to you to decide which one ya wanna try—"

Someone jogged over to them, unintentionally interrupting him.

"Alby, Newt's awake." Jeff was breathless. Alby glanced from Jeff to Sara, then back to Jeff.

"Alby, let me be a Med-jack," Sara barely had time to process what she'd just blurted out.

Both boys gave her surprised looks, but they shrugged it off and started jogging over to the Med-jack hut, completely ignoring her.

"Hey!" she called to them, and they stopped in their tracks to look back at her. "A little help, please," she said, gesturing to her injured leg with an irritated look. They apologized, jogging back to her, and each grabbing an arm to help her walk to the hut.

She had no idea what to expect when she had to face Newt again, but she needed to talk to him. The apprehension made her stomach feel jittery, but being a Med-jack would give her the opportunity she was looking for.

When Alby opened the door, Sara was the first one to rush into the room practically limping, another one of her reckless instincts she really needed to watch out for. Clint and Minho were already in there, standing beside the bed while Alby and Jeff sauntered into the room.

Newt was sitting upright on the bed, with his leg extended but still wrapped in the gauze. His deadpan facial expression was a reminder of every single word he spoke to Sara before climbing that wall.

He was desperate, but the pain had been so intense that it literally numbed him, and that was all he felt—the absence of feeling. The fall didn't kill him, but it did quite enough damage to shatter his hope.

Sara had heard a saying before, about how the eyes were the reflection of one's soul, but looking at Newt's eyes staring at the floor, she saw nothing. Absolutely nothing was left. Even without his memories, his life took a dramatic turn from which he couldn't escape.

At the sound of the rest of them barging into the room, Newt raised his head to see the three of them. When his eyes met Sara's, his brows knitted together.

"You," he called out with a hint of recognition in his voice. She didn't think about the implications of him recognizing her from the Maze because Alby, Minho, Jeff, and Clint all gave her the same strange look she was already getting used to receiving.

"Newt, ya know her?" Alby approached Newt's bed and pulled up a chair to sit down.

"Well, I saw her in the Maze right before... I lost consciousness—but I have no bloody idea who she is," Newt replied quickly and indifferently, without diverting his eyes from Sara the entire time.

Alby turned to her. "Greenie, I thought ya didn't know—"

"We didn't come here to talk about me," she hissed and raised her eyebrows at Alby. His face remained stern, but he recognized what she was trying to say and placed his hand on Newt's shoulder.

His eyes filled with sympathy for his friend. "Newt, how do ya feel? What happened out there? We went shucking nuts when we realized you were missing."

Newt's expression darkened and he raised his eyes timidly, scanning the four boys until his eyes landed on Sara once again. She just knew it. He was embarrassed to confess the truth, and he felt uncomfortable with her because he knew she'd seen everything.

He sighed shakily, and with a helpless look on his face, he glanced at Alby who was sitting to his left. Newt's forehead creased, and his eyes flooded with tears as he was struggling to fight them back. Sara was on the verge of tears herself from just witnessing how fragile he was, and how he'd had the worst take on life out of every one of them by far.

At first, Newt couldn't articulate anything. He opened his mouth several times but closed it back up. When he was finally able to speak, he almost couldn't stop.

"I—I can't anymore... I just... I hate everything about my life. Everything's so shucked up. My life is empty—I'm empty," he said, and his voice cracked. "And this..." he motioned to his surroundings, "...what's the bloody purpose of all of this? I'm tired. Tired of this life, tired of all the unanswered questions. I want it all to end," he said, lowering down to a whisper and shrugging feebly.

He wasn't staring at anything in particular, but after a brief pause, his eyes met Alby's stunned expression, almost as if he were ashamed of himself for being vulnerable in front of his friends.

"Newt, c'mon," Alby urged as he shook the blond boy's shoulder. "Ya just can't give up, shank. You're one of the strongest guys out here, and these kids all rely on you. If the strongest ones quit, we all quit. It's over. Simple as that. We gotta keep going, 'cause there's something out there for us somewhere. Don't give up on hope."

Newt scoffed. "Yah, well, maybe you're just fooling yourself. I'm not strong. I'm not exactly the guy that's supposed to be next to you, leading a group of lost shanks... when I've never felt so lost myself. We can't escape this bloody place and you know it." He looked quite furious with Alby. "Hope? Are you serious? It's nonsense," he muttered, shaking his head.

"Slim it, Newt. Don't say that," said Minho. His face radiated genuine concern for his friend. He sounded so serious that to say he was normally a sarcastic fool would sound like a joke at the moment. It was quite the anomaly.

Minho had barely finished talking when Newt spoke up once more. "This isn't 'living.' It's 'trying not to die every single day.' You want to talk about hope? Ask the shucking creators. They probably hope we die soon," he said, bitterly.

Sara really wanted to cry again but the tears refused to come out, as if she'd ran out of them already. He reminded her of herself when she went through that pity-party phase back at the lab. Now that she thought about it, it was nothing compared to Newt's situation. She felt like an idiot.

"Guys..." Clint stepped forward, "Why don't you leave him alone for now? Give him some time to cool off and we'll take care of his injury."

Alby nodded and gestured for all of them to follow him outside.

"Alby, wait," Newt called out, making him stop short. "Please, just... don't tell the others. It's not fair on them." He gave the leader a pleading look. The look in Newt's eyes and how his eyebrows scrunched together was reflective of his pain. Simply looking at him was painful.

"Good that." Alby nodded reassuringly. Behind his grumpy personality, Sara could tell that it affected him seeing his friend and Second-in-Command in such misery.

He turned around to exit while Minho followed suit. Upon noticing that Sara hadn't moved from where she stood, Alby returned, and with a low whisper, he ordered her to follow him. She looked him dead in the eye.

"No," she said. "Let me try. I'll be a Med-jack today to take care of him." He gave her a warning look. She hadn't gotten the job yet, but maybe this could be an opportunity for her.

Alby must've thought she lost her mind. "Ya haven't even started any of the jobs, and we haven't had a Gathering to name you a Med-jack. Now ya wanna demand it?"

"Please," she begged. Her voice was barely audible. "I'm just training today; I'm not saying it's official." Alby looked at Minho, who only shrugged back at him. Clint and Jeff hesitated for a moment, but they nodded, agreeing to let Sara stay if they kept an eye on her. With that, Alby and Minho made their way out of the hut.

Clint and Jeff both took turns explaining to her what the job implied, and where she could find certain things in the hut. Next, she was told to unwrap Newt's gauze, disinfect his injury, and wrap it up in new gauze. They said they were going to teach her everything, but she told them she'd been observing how they did it with her and Newt earlier. She was sure she could manage with whatever medical equipment the Gladers had there, but her urge was to talk to Newt.

As she gently unwrapped the gauze around his foot, she could feel his penetrating stare on her. That was nothing new. She wanted to say something, but she couldn't manage to be the first to do it, which was something to thank her shy nature for.

"This is so bloody strange," Newt casually said, an unpleasant ring to his voice.

She wanted to believe she knew what he meant.

"How so?" she asked, nonetheless.

"'Cause we've never had a girl in the Glade before. Especially a Greenie that comes through the Maze on top of that. You scared the klunk out of me back there," he said.

Was he mad? She couldn't tell. But she was growing tired of all the commentary about her arrival. She understood it went against the usual, but it was irritating that they kept bringing it up as though it were a personality trait.

Trying her best to hide her annoyance, Sara smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you."

Newt gave her a nod, then simply stared at her for a couple of seconds as she was about to disinfect his foot.

"Do you know your name yet, Greenie?" he asked with a curious voice.

She ignored his question as she pressed a wet cloth against the cut around his ankle. He definitely broke it, she heard it break, and some of the bone did pierce the skin. The bleeding subsided but the cut was still open.

He didn't have time to repeat the question because as soon as she applied pressure on the wound, he doubled over, hissing in pain.

"Ow! Careful!" he groaned in a strained voice.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Newt," she rambled, retracting her hand from his foot. He frowned at her again, and Sara was starting to get uncomfortable with how much he kept staring at her, deep in thought. She could tell he wanted to ask her something, as if what she'd just said had remotely triggered something from his memory.

"For a moment, I thought you were part of my imagination back there, you know? But now I've been meaning to ask you..." She looked at him expectantly as he asked, "Who are you exactly?"

She shook her head vehemently. "How many times am I gonna have to answer that?" she demanded.

He blinked back at her skeptically. "Really? Then explain how I heard you say my bloody name while I was on the ground."

Her eyes widened and her heart almost skipped a beat. "What? You—you were unconscious—you must've been hallucinating, or dreaming maybe—"

"I was half-conscious," he interrupted, sounding very confident to her dismay. "I don't remember anything after that—but I know what I heard." He eyed her suspiciously. "So, tell me, who are you, and why are you here? What do you know that we don't?"

Her thoughts roamed back to the letter folded in the pocket of her shorts at that exact moment. It was probably a good time for him to read it since it explained everything that she was unable to say to him in person. She snuck her hand into her pocket, once again feeling the soft texture of the paper. She was pretty sure that if she kept doing that, she would soon wear off the ink on it with her sweaty hand.

Newt was still looking at her, demanding an answer she couldn't really give him right then.

Deciding not to give him the letter yet, she figured she should probably just get rid of it if it was just going to bring her more problems.

"I—uh... I guess I had a flashback when I saw you on the verge of death. Might've sparked the recognition." She shrugged nervously, and Newt still didn't look satisfied. "Listen, I don't know how that happened, okay? My best guess is that we probably knew each other before the Maze, you know? Listen. I woke up, I ran, I slashed my leg, ran some more, and I still didn't know where in the world I was." She tried making that sound simple and believable.

She hated lying to him more than to anyone else, but she was hoping to throw some truth in there to lessen the remorse.

Newt looked even more doubtful. "You think... you think we might've known each other? How's that even possible? Nobody's ever remembered anything besides their names since they got here," he argued.

"I don't know, okay?" Her voice began to get wobbly. "I just hate it that I have no idea why we're all trapped here, or who we are to WIC—the... creators, or even what we have to do to figure it out—ohh my goodness, why am I crying?" Her voice quivered as she burst into tears in front of him, adding to her frustration for not being able to tell him who was responsible for their terrible predicament.

She wasn't lying at this point. She actually didn't know the answer to everything, and she'd been meaning to find out for years now. Things still didn't click enough for them to make sense.

Newt shifted on the bed uncomfortably, clearing his throat. "Um, are you... are you alright?"

Sara rubbed her eyes, sick of crying in front of people. "I'm sick of not knowing things, and everyone thinks everything's my fault. I was put in here just like you guys. I get how much you guys have suffered—I mean look at you! I just wanna help you guys get out here—discover the whole reason behind this, okay?"

Newt looked at her sympathetically, but he still had a dismal expression that just wouldn't go away. Sometimes Sara would forget how defeated he was, and then she realized how selfish she was being for sobbing in front of him when he was feeling much worse.

Nonetheless, Newt understood. At least he, among all those boys, knew what it was like.

"Greenie, I get what you're saying. We all do." His voice was soft, and his eyes were understanding. "The others are just... scared of the changes. They just want to blame the slightest irregularity as an excuse to not feel scared."

He tried to smile, but it was so broken and hopeless, that it didn't do much help to either one of them. They stared at each other with the same dejected expression for a few seconds of mutual helplessness. As if that were the only connection their miserable lives allowed them to make to establish peaceful terms.

"My name is Sara," she whispered, breaking the silence as a tear rolled down her cheek.