ALEX WAS SPINNING A PENCIL IN HER HAND AS SHE SAT NEXT TO FRYPAN. They were waiting for Thomas, Gally, and Newt to get back with Teresa so that they could talk her into helping them. Fry leaned into her with a small smirk, "Was that a lover's quarrel I witnessed earlier?"

"Shut up," she responded quickly, shutting him down. If she was not willing to talk about her relationship with Gally with Gally then she definitely was not about to be teased by Frypan about it.

He sighed, removing the playful tone from his voice as he looked at her seriously. He knew that she did not actually hate Gally. It was just a temporary thing. She was never able to hate him. "You can't be mad at him forever."

"Why not?" she questioned curiously. She could not see any reason why she could not just be mad at him forever. Actually, that was a lie, but she was not going to admit that she could not hate him forever because butterflies still erup\ted in her stomach whenever she saw him, even then, after everything he did.

"Because I know you, and I know that you could never stay angry with him," Fry clarified, remembering every time Gally did something wrong in the Glade. There was always one pe\rson who never stayed mad at him for that long. Alex "Every time he did something in the Glade, you eventually forgave him."

She scoffed since doing something bad when they were in the Maze was nothing compared to this. She had gotten mad at him for bullying the Greenies or pulling pranks on her or her friends. This was on a completely different level. "This is so much different."

"I know, but he seems really upset," Fry pointed out.

She shook her head and continued to pretend like she couldn't care less as the boys walked in with Teresa. She stood up, ready to head back over to the main pa\rt of the room so that they could talk. "Good."

She had a bag over her head that they removed once they made sure that she was tied tightly to a chair so that she could not escape. She seemed really confused about what was happening, and she stared at the new boy that had rejoined their group in shock.

"Gally?"

"Here's how this is gonna go. We're gonna ask you some questions, and you're gonna tell us exactly what we need to know," the boy informed her, not even letting her recover from the surp\rise that he was still alive. "We'll start off simple. Where's Minho?"

She shook her head in disbelief as she looked between all of them, knowing that they were insane for thinking that they could get Minho out of there without getting caught. "You guys don't seriously think..."

"Don't look at him," Gally told her when he caught her looking at Thomas with a pleading look in her eye. He pulled up a chair and sat down right in front of her. "Why are you looking at him? Look at me. He's not gonna help you. Now, we know you have Minho in the building. Where?"
"He's with the others in holding. Sublevel three," she informed them, even though none of them really had a clue about what the hell that meant.

Newt leaned forward with a curious expression upon hearing the question about the others. They were going to need an exact count if they were going to rescue everyone else. "How many others?"

"28, including Nick," she answered, and she glanced over to Alex at the last part, knowing that the two were kind of close compared to her and the other Group B people.

Gally turned to Brenda to see what she had to say about that number since she was the one that was going to be transporting the kids. She nodded from where she was fiddling with a playing card. "I can make that work."

"No. No, you guys don't understand," Teresa insisted, acting like they were not very well-informed about what was happening when they really kind of were. "The whole level's restricted. You can't get in without a thumbprint ID."

"That's why you're gonna come with us," Thomas told her.

"Well, I don't know. We don't necessarily need her," Gally said, confusing a couple of them. Alex picked up on what he was about to say pretty quickly. She knew him that much. "Right? Not all of her. We just need her finger. I guarantee you she's done a lot worse to Minho."

The other boy that he was always fighting with stood up, and he put his hand in front of the other boy to stop him from doing anything rash. "That's not the plan. Back off."

"It won't make a difference. Do whatever you want to me," Teresa said bravely, even though they all knew that she would do it for Thomas. They would not even have to ask her really. "You still won't get through the front door. The sensors will pick you up the..."

"We know. We're tagged. Property of WICKED. You're gonna help us with that, too," the boy explained to her before lifting a knife so that she could see it. Her eyes widened slightly when she realized what he was asking her to do.

About half an hour later, Frypan, Gally, and Alex were sitting at a table, holding cloths to the back of their necks as they tried to stop the bleeding. Teresa had just dug the tags out of their necks, and it had not been the most pleasant experience. The short-haired boy groaned out, "She enjoyed that."

"You're probably right," Fry chuckled, checking his cloth before finally just dropping it on the table.

"Here," Newt said as he walked by them, and he dropped some clothes on the table in front of them. Alex picked them up to see that they were the same thing that the WICKED guards wore. Frypan and Gally took the bigger ones, and she grabbed the smaller one. "See if these fit."

As Teresa was working on Thomas, she glanced over to where Brenda and Jorge were talking. "She's looking good. Healthy. How've you been getting her serum?"

"What are you talking about?" the boy asked, wincing as she stuck the knife back in. This was probably meant to be a private conversation between the two, but they weren't exactly speaking quietly.

"Brenda," she clarified, watching said girl walk around, all happy and healthy like she had not been bitten by a Crank months ago. "I didn't think she'd still be alive. When was her last treatment?"

Thomas answered quickly and with a confused expr\ession, wondering why she kep\t asking. They had given her the serum, and she was okay. What more was there to it? "At the Right Arm. The last time we saw you."

"But that was months ago. Thomas, that's not possible. She should have turned by now. There's no way she could possibly still—" she started, but she was cut off by Thomas' chair sliding across the floor loudly.

He stood up and started walking away. "All right, that's enough."

"You don't believe me?" she asked with raised eyebrows and an almost hurt expression. Of course, they weren't going to believe her, not after what she had done. She would be crazy to expect them to. She can't just come waltzing and assume that they were just going to trust her again.

"Do you really expect me to?" Thomas scoffed, and that drew the attention of everyone in the room since he kind of yelled it. "You made your choice."

Gally finally walked over to them, stepping in between the two and making sure Thomas did not punch her or something. "Everything okay over here?"

"Yeah. Yeah, we're done," the other boy respo

ded before walking over to the table where Brenda was standing, getting things ready for them to go.

Teresa sighed, and her hand landed on the table. Alex watched in amusement as her fingers crept toward the knife that she had used to remove the tags, but before she could, Gally grabbed her hand. "Nice try."

"You were in love with her, weren't you?" Brenda asked Thomas, and Alex shot Frypan a look, wondering if they knew how freaking loud they were being. No one wanted to hear about Thomas's love life, not when they had a mission.

Thomas just shrugged. "I don't know."

"Just be careful. You sort of have this problem where you can't walk away from people. Even when you should," the girl informed him, looking up at him through her eyelashes. "You can't save everyone, Thomas."

"I can try," he responded while exhaling as he looked down at the wooden table that he was leaning on and thinking.

Alex decided that she should finally say something. "Just so you know, the echo in here is crazy. We can hear all of y'all's 'private' conversations."