❝when a machine keep me alive❞

"JEFF, WHAT'S GOING ON?" NEWT QUESTIONED. He, Minho, Thomas, and Iris walked into the Med-jack hut to where Jeff was tending to the unconscious girl. "What's the matter with her? Why won't she wake up?"

"Hey, man, I got my job the same way you did," the boy informed him with a shrug, telling them that he had absolutely no clue why she would not wake up or why she just woke up for a second. If Iris was being honest, she did not know either.

The blonde boy looked over to Thomas who was staring at the girl with an unreadable expression. He raised his eyebrows as he asked, "Well, do you recognize her?"

"No," the brunette boy replied, shaking his head.

"Really?" Newt did not seem convinced. Iris had to admit that it was a bit weird that the one girl that came up in the Glade for three years just happened to know Thomas when none of the rest of them remembered anything about their lives before and who they knew. "'Cause she seemed to recognize you."

The awake girl shrugged before suggesting, "Maybe it was a different Thomas." They all just deadpanned at her, causing her to fall silent again and look down at the ground.

"What about the note?" the Greenie quizzed, and Iris just recalled that there even was a note. She had been so focused on the girl and why she knew Thomas that she forgot about their biggest problem.

The second-in-command sighed, "Yeah, we'll worry about the note later."

"I think you should worry about it now," the other boy let him know, and he had a good point. They really needed a plan before everyone started to freak out.

The blonde boy glared at him and gestured to the girl and Alby who was moaning in the other room. "We've got enough to deal with at the moment."

"He's right, Newt. If the Box isn't coming back up, how long do you think we can last?" Iris piped in, causing all of them to look at her in a bit of shock. It was unlike her to agree with a Greenie over a fellow leader.

"No one said that. Let's not jump to any conclusions. We'll just wait until she wakes up and see what she knows. Somebody has gotta have some answers around here," Newt breathed out before nodding to her. "Iris, you're a girl."

She was a bit taken aback by that comment. "Nice observation, Newt. Glad that you finally noticed after three shucking years."

"I'm just saying that you should probably be here when she wakes up. Maybe, it'll make her less scared," he pointed out, and it was a pretty good idea since the girl would be freaked out when she woke up.

"Seriously?" she exclaimed with an upset voice, throwing her hands up in the air. "You're putting me on dead girl watch?"

He ran a hand through her hair. "She's not dead."

"That doesn't make it any less boring," she said. What the hell was she going to do to entertain herself when she was just sitting there and staring at a sleeping girl that was barely breathing.

He just shrugged, not really sure what to tell her. He offered, "Make a game out of it or something."

"I'm sitting here and watching someone sleep," she groaned, rolling her eyes. What did he expect her to do. "What do you want me to do? Count how many seconds she stops breathing for?"

"That sounds like a great idea," Minho told her, shooting her a thumbs up before pushing Newt and Thomas out of the Hut with him. Iris flipped them off as they left even though Jeff was the only one that saw it.

She turned back to him, looking up at him for help to cure her boredom that she was already feeling. He just sighed, patting her on the back as he went to the other room to help out the other patients, Alby specifically. "Can I please help with something?"

"No," he told her. "You're supposed to be watching the girl."

"I'm your boss, you know?" she reminded him, but he just chuckled and shook his head before dabbing a wet cloth on their leader's forehead, trying to bring his fever down.

Iris groaned, looking down at the unconscious girl. "You know, I could murder you in your sleep right now, so you better not be annoying."

《 ✢ 》

"YEAH, WE FOUND THIS," Thomas informed Newt, Iris, Jem, and Gally as the blonde boy examined the device in his hand, and the girl peeked over his shoulder to look as well. "It was inside a Griever."

She sighed, "I still cannot believe that you guys went to go see a dead Griever without me. Not only that — you left me with the dead girl that never woke up."

"These are the same letters we get on our supplies," the second-in-command pointed out, ignoring the girl's complaints since he had gotten pretty much used to them.

"Yeah. Whoever put us here obviously made the Grievers," the Greenie explained. He looked to the Runner next to him. "This is the first real clue, the first anything, you've found in over 3 years. Right, Minho?"

Minho confirmed, "Right."

"Newt, we gotta go back out there. Who knows where this might lead us," Thomas said, and it was clear that he was trying to convince them to take some action finally.

"You see what he's trying to do, right?" Gally spoke up, kicking off of the pole he was leaning on and looking around at them in disbelief. "First he breaks our rules, and then he tries to convince us to abandon them totally. What? The rules are the only thing that have ever held us together. Why now are we questioning that? If Alby was here, you know he'd agree with me. This shank needs to be punished."

The blonde boy thought about it for a second before nodding slowly. "You're right. Thomas broke the rules. One night in the pit, and no food."

"Come on, Newt! One night in the pit? Do you think that's gonna stop him from going into the maze?" Gally questioned, and Jem had to agree. That was not really much of a punishment.

"No," Newt answered. "And we can't just have non-Runners running into the Maze whenever they feel like it. So let's just make this official. Starting from tomorrow, you're a Runner."

As the rest of them nodded in approval, Gally scoffed, "Wow." Then he stormed out of the room angrily. Frypan was about to move to follow him out and try to calm him down, but Jem stopped him.

"I got it," he muttered, holding up a hand to make him pause before walking up the stairs and out of the Hut as well. Jem stepped outside and saw his best friend pacing back and forth in front of the Hall, grunting angrily. He sighed and leaned up against one of the poles as he watched him. Finally, he said, "Gal, you know that I trust you, and you're only trying to do what you think is best for the rest of us, but you have got to loosen up, dude."

"That shank in there is gonna get us all killed," he insisted, pointing to the door where Thomas and the others were. Jem had still yet to hear any real, logical reasoning for Gally's hatred. The only thing he had said at all was that he just had a bad feeling about the kid, which was hardly a reason to stop them all from possibly getting out.

"Or he might get us all out," Jem pointed out, but Gally just glared at him for siding withe the new kid instead of him. Jem would follow Gally off a bridge usually, but he was starting to doubt that. He just needed to convince his stubborn friend to follow him off a bridge if it came to that. "He's onto something. I can feel it. We're closer than we ever have been to getting out."

The Builder scoffed, and he could not believe what he was hearing. He thought that Jem was on his side in this, but he guessed he was wrong. "You're telling me that you'd rather follow the Greenie than me?"

"That's not what I'm saying," Jem argued because he just needed Gally to listen to reason and even consider the possibility that this kid could have found them a way out. That was all they had ever wanted, to get out and find the people that put them there.

"I've been here three years, Jem, and so have you," Gally reminded him, as if the kid was not aware of the fact that he had been stuck in that hellhole with the rest of them for what felt like forever. "Do you honestly think that some guy that's been here for, what, three days has a better chance of figuring it out than the rest of us?"

"You know what, Gally? Maybe he does. Why are you so against this? Do you not want us to get out of this shucking place?" Jem asked because he was honestly just trying to figure out why Gally was so opposed to the idea that they could be free. He was starting to think that the guy did not want to leave.

The Builder shook his head, and he was not very convincing when he said, "Of course, I do. I just don't trust him."

"If you don't trust him, then trust me," Jem responded, grabbing his friend by the shoulder and forcing him to look him in the eye so that he knew that he was being serious. "I believe that this could work."

"Hey, guys," came a voice from behind them, and they turned around to see Minho standing there. Jem released Gally, and they both looked at him and waited for him to say what he needed to say. "The girl's awake."