❝i know there's something waiting for us. ❞

RIDING IN A CAR WAS SO MUCH FUN. Even though Iris was stuffed in the back with Jem, Aris, Minho, Brenda, Thomas, and Frypan, she was having a blast. She laughed at Newt who was grinning in the front seat, having the time of his life. They drove for a while in the direction that Marcus had told them to go, but they finally reached a road that was blocked by a ton of old cars.

"Well, I guess we're on foot," Jorge breathed out as they climbed out of the vehicle. They walked a little ways down the road, examining the cars as they went, which slowed them down a lot. They only walked a couple of feet when a gunshot rang out through the canyon, and a bullet almost hit Thomas. "Get down!"

They all dove behind cars, and Jem was sitting next to Iris behind one. There was some yelling, and Newt finally asked the question that they all wanted to know the answer to. "Anyone know where those bloody shots came from?"

"Everybody! Get set to sprint back to the truck! And hold your ears!" Jorge shouted to them, and Jem and Iris looked over to see him hand Thomas something that resembled a bomb. Her eyes widened, and she crouched, getting ready to run. Her eyes got even wider when she saw two people come up behind them.

"Drop it," one of them said, and Iris realized that they were both female. They were wearing masks over the bottom of their faces, probably to hide their identity. "Now! I said drop it! On your feet. Let's go. Let's go! Move! Back!" The girls waved her and Jem over to stand next to the rest of them as well. "You two, over here now! Don't be stupid! Move." She froze for a second, and she seemed to be staring incredulously at the teenage boy that was not a Glader. "Aris? Oh, my God."

"Harriet?" Aris exclaimed, and both of the girls pulled their masks off their faces and smiled at the boy. Harriet, as they had just learned, lunged for the kid and hugged him.

The blonde girl did the same afterwards. The boy breathed out, "Sonya."

"Aris, you're lucky we didn't shoot your dumb ass," she told him, patting him on the back as she backed up from the embrace to look him in the eye. Iris might just be crazy, but it seemed like there was something going on between the two.

Minho furrowed his eyebrows, almost as shocked about the fact that Aris might actually have a girlfriend than he was that the boy knew the people that were about to kill them or rob them or both. "What's happening?"

"We were in the Maze together," Nick explained. The blonde girl nodded slowly as if she was trying to process what he was saying. She was still confused as to how the hell these girls got away from WICKED and why they just completely abandoned Aris.

"We're clear, guys!" the girl introduced as Harriet called to the mountains. A bunch of people popped out, and it was clear that were holding guns. Jem figured that that was where the first shower of bullets came from. "Come on out!"

"Wait, so, how did you guys get here?" Aris questioned as the girls led them through a tunnel to where a bunch of cars were waiting. A couple dozen people were there, loading the trucks up with their weapons and supplies.

Harriet brought them over to a car and explained, "The Right Arm got us out." That made all of their eyes widened because that was what they had been searching for that entire time.

"Wait. The Right Arm? Do you know where they are?" Thomas exclaimed, practically jumping forward in excitement.

"Hop in," the female ordered, opening the door for them with a smirk. They started driving again, the Gladers having a lot of fun in the vehicle, and they pulled up to what looked like some sort of camp. Harriet explained, "They've been planning this for over a year now. This is all for us."

Sonya nodded along to what she was saying as they stopped and all hopped out of the car. "You guys are lucky you found us when you did. We're moving out at first light." She looked over to some guy that was walking past with a crate of supplies. "Where's Vince?"

"Who's Vince?" Thomas questioned as the guy shrugged and kept walking.

Harriet sighed and answered, "He's the one who decides if you get to stay." Iris furrowed her eyebrows. What did she mean? Wasn't the Right Arm all about helping people get away from WICKED and giving them a safe place?

"I thought the Right Arm was supposed to be an army," Minho commented, and it was clear that a lot of the Gladers were thinking the same thing as Iris because what they were looking at looked less like an army and more like a camp.

"Yeah, we were," came a voice from behind them. They turned around to see a guy staring at them, and, putting two and two together, Jem assumed that this was Vince. "This is all that's left of us. Lot of good people died getting us this far. Who are they?"

Harriet informed him, trying to sound as nice as she could because he seemed really suspicious about the group. "They're Immunes. Caught 'em coming up the mountain. I know this guy, Aris. I trust him."

"Well, I don't. Check 'em,'' Vince told a couple of men that approached the group with him, and they moved toward the group of teenagers. In response the Gladers, along with Aris, tried to step back a little bit.

Before the men could do anything, Brenda suddenly collapsed. Jorge lunged forward to catch her before she could hit the ground. He grabbed her face as he started coughing and made her look at him. "Brenda! Brenda! Brenda! Brenda. Brenda, talk to me. Brenda, are you all right? Brenda? Talk to me."

"What the hell?" Vince muttered, and he kneeled down next to the sick girl as everyone crowded around her to check on her. He rolled up the leg of her pants to reveal a very infected bite on her ankle, one that looked exactly like the cut in Winston's side right before he died. Vince jumped up and pointed his gun straight at Brenda. "Shit! Crank! We got a Crank!"

"No, no, no. Wait, wait! Listen, okay? This just happened, okay? She's not dangerous yet," Thomas told him, standing up and getting in between the gun and Brenda.

Vince continued to yell at him, jerking the gun every which way and letting them know that he would happily shoot through Thomas to get to Brenda. "You shouldn't have brought her here! We let Cranks in here now, the Safe Haven doesn't last a week! Step back!"

"I understand, okay? I understand. Just listen. Please. Please, okay?" Thomas begged, and the man in front of him made a face like he was listening. "I told her that you could help. Okay? No. There's got to be something you can do."

"Yeah, there is. I can put her out of her misery," he answered, and he was about to pull the trigger when everyone in the group yelled.

The thing that stopped him, though, was a woman coming up from behind him and standing next to him. "Vince, that's enough! Let him go. Let him go!"

"She's infected, Doc. There's nothing we can do for her," he said, defending himself. Iris kind of understood because having a Crank there would compromise the safety and the location of the camp, but they couldn't just leave Brenda like that.

"No, but he can," the woman informed them, looking up at the leader of their little group. "Hello, Thomas."

Thomas furrowed his eyebrows, and all of his friends mimicked him because none of them had ever seen that lady before in their life, at least that they could remember. "What? You know me?"

"How does everyone know Thomas, but he never knows them?" Iris whispered to Minho, who just shrugged.

"Interesting. It makes sense they'd put you in the Maze," the woman muttered to herself as she took a step closer to the boy. "Though I must admit...I was worried they'd kill you after what you did."

"What I did?"

She nodded, and when it was clear that nobody in the area knew what the hell she was talking about, she went into further detail. "The first time we spoke, you said you couldn't take it anymore...watching your friends die, one by one. The last time we spoke, you gave me the coordinates of every WICKED compound, trial and lab." She turned to Vince. "He was our source. We couldn't have pulled all this off without him." She gestured to Brenda, telling the men to help her out. "Take her to the tent. Get these guys some warm clothes." The men did as they were told, and Thomas followed them as they dragged Brenda down a path.

They got settled in, and Brenda was taken care of. Iris was going to go sit with the others when she noticed Jem sitting alone up on the small mountain that the camp was near, if you could even call it a mountain. She walked up the side and made her way over to him, and he head snapped over to her when he heard her voice. "If you're trying to look cool and mysterious, you kind of just look like a loser with no friends."

"You're an asshole," he chuckled out as she sat down next to him.

There was a moment of silence where neither of them knew what to say. They had been through so much crap in the past week, and they were finally getting a breather, which also meant that they had to think about all of said crap. "How are you doing?"

"I'm doing," he responded, glancing down at the rocks below them as he picked at his fingernails and cracked his knuckles one by one. When he was nervous, he always did things with his hands.

She tilted her head slightly, offering a smile, but he would not look up at her. He kept looking between the ground and the horizon, like he was waiting for something. She sighed, "I don't think that's an answer." He didn't respond. "It's nice, finally being able to breathe for a second after everything."

"I have a feeling it's not gonna last long," he breathed out, and he finally brought his head up. As soon as his eyes met hers, he forgot about everything that had happened. All he could think about was that night when he kissed her, how she responded to him, how he wanted it to happen again, and again, and again.

He inched ever so slightly closer to her, and she did the same until their faces were just a few inches away. She muttered, "Maybe we should make the most of it."

That was all he needed. He captures her lips in his, his hands going to the back of her neck to pull her in. She put her hands on his shoulders to stabilize herself. His fingers danced on the skin just above her neckline before trailing down to her hips. His hands gripped her firmly, pulling her up so that she could lift her leg and straddle his lap.

His hands stayed on her hips and hers on the back of his neck as their lips moved in sync. Iris couldn't think, but all knew knew was that she wanted him closer. Her fingers ran through his hair like they had done it a thousand times. Everything felt so familiar.

After a minute or two, Jem pulled away just a little bit so that she could hear him whisper over the sound of their heavy breathing. He started, "Iris, I lo—" He was interrupted by yelling, and they both looked into the distance to see a WICKED Berg heading straight toward them.

Shit.