IRIS WAS ABSOLUTELY EXHAUSTED AFTER HER TIME IN THE TORTURE CHAMBER. When she returned to their room, neither she nor Minho spoke for about an hour since he had just experienced something similar right before her. They were both shaken up and drained, but neither of them could sleep, knowing what nightmares awaited them.

"What happened in yours?" he questioned after a very long period of silence.

"Nothing I want to relive," she answered, shivering at the thought of everything that she had just experienced. She hated thinking about it, and she definitely did not want to talk about it. "They're evil."

He let out a cough that sounded like it was supposed to be a chuckle, but it really was just a wheeze. "Their name is WCKD for a reason. If they wanted us to feel safe with them, they should've picked a better name."

"Where do they get off on traumatizing us?" she asked, and her voice was completely empty. She couldn't believe what had just happened, even though it was not the first time they had done something like that. However, this simulation felt ten times worse than anything she had ever experienced.

He answered, "They need our brain juices flowing so they can harvest our blood for the Cure."

"Does it even work? Do we know?" she questioned. Why the hell were they being put through all of that if nothing was freaking happening. There was a point when she wished that they never found the Cure, but she found herself praying for it to happen so that it would all stop.

"Nope," he told her. There was another long moment of silence, each of them working up the energy to speak again as they stared at the top bunks above them. Finally, he broke the silence by quizzing, "Iris, do you ever wish we were dead?"

She knew what he meant. He didn't actually want to be dead, but anything seemed better than where they were then. They were not helping anything, and they were just being put through the ringer until they could barely breathe. She nodded, and she would've groaned in pain if she was able to. "All the time."

"I just can't help but think we're doing more harm than good here, for our friends, I mean," he explained. They definitely were not helping their friends in any way. If Thomas, Newt, and Frypan were looking for them, then they were definitely hindering them and stopping them from finding somewhere safe and escaping WCKD completely.

"I know. I'd rather be dead than helping these assholes," she scoffed, but both of them knew what the other was thinking. They wanted the Cure to be found, and they wanted everything to just stop. She stopped for a second before adding, "Jem tried to play the nice guy during my simulation and stopped it before..."

She trailed off, not even wanting to revisit what had happened back in the simulation. She sure as hell was not going to tell him that she almost shot him, either. He asked, "Before what?"

"Nothing," she replied, shaking her head. She moaned, "He just... He makes me so mad."

"He always has," Minho pointed out, recalling the dozens of times when he had to break up a fight between her and Jem. And he was only there half the time. He couldn't imagine what went down while he was out in the Maze.

She thought about how they got into that situation in the first place, and she wondered if Jem really had honorable intentions the whole time. And if he did, why the hell was he letting WCKD do experiments on them? "Do you think that he really thought that he was protecting us when he called WCKD?"

"Honestly, yeah," the boy revealed, which shocked her. She was expecting some yelling and some bitter comments that would make her angry at the boy who betrayed her. She needed to be mad at him. "I didn't want to believe it, but I think he believed that he was helping us, helping you." He exhaled deeply before continuing, "I think Teresa's getting to him. She started it. She was the one that manipulated him into helping her in the first place. If it's anyone's fault, it's hers."

"You've got to stop defending him. It's getting to my head," she sighed. She desperately wanted to hate him more than anything in the world. But she just couldn't for some reason, and she hated herself for it.

Minho licked his lips, and he knew what she was thinking about. He knew that she was trying so hard to be mad at Jem and feel nothing but hatred when she saw him, but Minho knew her too well. "Sorry. Get some sleep."

Meanwhile, Jem was sitting in the lab, doing some examination of Iris' blood while Teresa was off testing Minho's blood on one of the infected children that they had on site. Jem was awful at talking to children, so she always went while he hung back and looked at cells through a microscope.

He had learned a lot during his time at WCKD. He never thought that he could be good in a lab, but he wasn't awful after months of training. While he was working, Janson walked into the room with raised eyebrows. "How's it going?"

"Well, I think. I'll need the results of Minho's back before I can do much with Iris', though," he explained half-mindedly. He was switching slides, but his head shot up when he realized that he had called them by their names. He always forgot. It was something else that Teresa was better at than him. "Sorry, I meant A-7 and A-8."

"It's fine, Jem. They were your friends. It takes a while to get used to calling them numbers. Just remember that now, they are numbers. They are no longer your friends. They are a means of finding the Cure," Jandon reminded him, moving over to stand next to him and put his hand on his shoulder.

Jem always felt uncomfortable under his gaze, especially when he was alone with him. When Ava was there, she was usually able to keep him from doing anything too drastic, but it still freaked him out. He nodded, his entire body tense as he finally made eye contact with the man. "Right. Thanks, sir."

"Of course, Jem," he answered, patting him once on the back before removing his hand from him. He turned back toward the doors, getting ready to head back out. Before he could leave, however, Jem remembered something that he had heard about earlier that day.

"Oh, uh, Janson?" he called, causing the man to turn back around and face him with an expecting expression. He immediately felt self-conscious about what he was going to ask, but he had to know. "What happened at the wall today? I heard something about a ton of gunfire from us."

Something in the man's face dropped, just for a millisecond, before he replied. "Just people trying to break in, as usual."

Author's note: sorry, this chapter's a bit short.