❝choking like a dog on a collar❞

THEY ALL BACKED INTO A CIRCLE AS FAR AWAY FROM THE CREATURES AS THEY COULD. They were swinging at them with all of the weapons that they had and anything that could be used as a weapon.

"I see you've met our guard dogs," said a voice from behind them, and they all whipped around to face a door that just opened. There was a figure standing there, but the light was behind them, so none of them could see their face. The person approached, walking down an aisle that seemed just out of reach from all of the things that were chained up behind her. Iris had used her brains for once and remembered what Janson had said at the compound. If the Cranks don't kill you... She had been really confused at the time, but she figured that these were the Cranks. The person stepped into the beam of their flashlights to reveal a girl with short hair smirking at them.

"You guys look like shit," she informed them with a small smile. "Come on. Follow me." She started walking back toward the door that she came in through, but no one followed her. She turned and raised her eyebrows at the group. "Unless you want to stay here with them."

She led them into the door where it was revealed that they were in a warehouse of sorts. The place was huge, and there were people everywhere. Most of them were sleeping, but some of them glared at the group as they passed by. "Come on, keep up. Jorge wants to meet you."

"Who's Jorge?" Thomas questioned as they finished walking up a flight or stairs.

"You'll see," she responded simply, not making them feel any better about meeting this guy. She shrugged, "No one's come out of the Scorch in a long time. You've just got him curious. And me, too."

Newt furrowed his eyebrows as he walked alongside Frypan and behind Iris and Jem, suspicious of the girl and wherever she was leading them. "Anyone else starting to get a bad feeling about this place?"

"Let's just hear him out. See what he has to say," Thomas responded, acting like nothing could possibly go wrong if they met and talked to this guy. As far as they knew, he could be working for WICKED.

Jem looked around at his friends hesitantly but followed him nonetheless.HeSHehe knew better than to trust random people that they do not know. He had learned that lesson after being 'saved' from the Maze and it turning out to be WICKED again. Apparently, Thomas did not learn said lesson. "Are we sure this isn't a trap?"

"Nope." Iris shook his head.

The girl led them into a room where a man was fiddling with a radio. He was sitting in a chair, and his back was turned toward them. "Jorge, they're here."

"Quiet, Brenda. Damn it," he whispered, revealing the girl's name, and apparently his radio was not working because he ended up just unplugging it. He stood up and faced the group with a sigh. "Do you ever get the feeling the whole world's against you?" Iris looked to Frypan with a confused expression as the man continued. "Three questions. Where did you come from? Where are you going? How can I profit?" None of them said anything. "Don't all answer at once."

"We're headed for the mountains. Looking for the Right Arm," Thomas answered finally, and his friends eyed him warily because letting a random stranger know exactly where they were headed did not seem like the brightest idea.

Scattered laughs echoed throughout the room because a couple of men had joined them and were now standing around the group. If they tried to make a run for it, these men would have stopped them immediately. "You're looking for ghosts, you mean. Question number two. Where did you come from?"

"That's our business," Minho responded bitterly.

The guys did not like that, so they simply grabbed all of them. Iris struggled against the guy that grabbed her, trying to kick him or headbutt him in the nose or something, but he was too strong. Jem tried to dive toward her, but two men had a firm hold on him as well. Thomas yelled, "Hey! Get the hell off me! Get the hell off me, man!"

"Shut up, you big baby," Brenda muttered to him, and they all watched as she pulled out some sort of device and scanned the back of Thomas's neck. She looked at the scanner while the men released the teenagers. She handed it over to Jorge so he could see whatever the device said as well. "You were right."

"Right about what? What is she talking about?" Thomas questioned frantically, trying to lean over and read the scanning thing.

"I'm sorry, hermano. Looks like you're tagged," Jorge informed them with a shrug. Iris furrowed her eyebrows. Had they been tagged, whatever that meant, that entire time? It sounded like it meant that WICKED could track then somehow. "You came from WICKED. Which means...you're very valuable."

That was how they ended up hanging by their feet over what kind of looked like a bottomless pit. Minho mumbled, "Good plan, Thomas. 'Just hear what the man has to say.' Really working out for us."

"Enjoying the view?" Jorge questioned. He was standing on the side and watching them struggle against the ropes in amusement. They squirmed like worms on a fish hook, and he was enjoying it way too much.

Thomas snapped at him, "What the hell do you want?"

"That is the question." The man smiled at them, being all cryptic and everything before answering, My men want to sell you back to WICKED. Life has taught them to think small. I'm not like that. Something tells me that you're not either.

"Is the blood rushing to my head or is this shank not making any sense?" Minho asked, furrowing his eyebrows at him. Iris was starting to feel lightheaded from how long they had been hanging by their feet. There was no way that that was healthy for them. She doubted Jorge cared about their health, though.

Jorge ordered, "Tell me what you know about the Right Arm."

"I thought you said they were ghosts," Newt scoffed with raised eyebrows, causing the man to turn to him because it was his first time hearing the boy speak.

He shrugged in answer with a small smile creeping onto his face as he walked over to the lever controlling how high up they were and put his hand on it. "I happen to believe in ghosts. Especially when I hear them chattering on the airwaves. You tell me what you know, and maybe we can make a deal."

"We don't know much," Thomas informed him. Jorge was not satisfied by that answer because he pulled the lever slightly, causing them all to drop about a foot suddenly. He could release them and have them flying headfirst into the concrete below. Their lives were in his hands. "Okay! Okay, all right. They're hiding in the mountains, and they attacked WICKED. They got out a bunch of kids. That's it. That's all we know."

"Yo, Jorge. What's going on?" called a voice, and a man walked toward them and raised his eyebrows at the man interrogating them. This was clearly one of the men that he had been talking about earlier, the ones that think small.

"Me and my new friends were just getting acquainted. We're done now," he answered before turning back to Thomas who had a betrayed look on his face. "Don't worry, hermano. We'll get you back to where you belong. Hang tight."

Jem let out a loud, obnoxious, sarcastic laugh as they watched him walk away. They came up with a plan to push Teresa towards the rope and lever so that she could get them down since she was the closest to her. Thomas swung her over to Minho so that they could start from further back. "Gotcha. Okay. One, two, here we go. Three." He swung her, but she missed the bar below the lever by a pretty long shot.

"Come on, Minho. Push her harder!" Newt yelled when he saw his friend failing.

Minho glared at him, and Thomas repeated his previous actions so that his friend could try again. Minho grabbed Teresa's waist and counted down. "This is it. One...two...three!" He pushed her once again, and this time, she was able to grab ahold of the bar.

"Yes! Yes! Okay. Teresa, hurry!" Thomas urged because they needed to get out of there as soon as possible if they were going to get far away before someone called WICKED on them.

They realized that they were too late when they heard an aircraft whirring above them, the loud sounds of a helicopter filling the air. Jem muttered, "Damn it. We gotta go."

"Good evening! This is the World Catastrophe Killzone Department," Janson's voice announced, and he was clearly speaking through some sort of device that amplified his voice. Teresa untied herself before moving onto Thomas. "We have your compound completely surrounded. You find yourselves, through no fault of your own...in possession of WICKED property. Return them to us unharmed and we'll consider this a simple misunderstanding."

"Hang on, guys," Thomas told them once he was out, and he ran over to Minho while Teresa worked on Newt.

Janson continued to speak to them with a threatening voice, even though it sounded like he was trying to be kind of polite. "Or you can resist and every last one of you will die. It won't be long before the Flare wipes out the rest of us. The hope of a cure lies in your hands. The choice is yours."