"JEFF, WHAT'S GOING ON?" Newt questioned as he, Minho, Thomas, and Alex 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.

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. Alex 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 Alex 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?" Alex 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. "Alex, 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. Alex 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 used to be 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.

Alex 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, Alex, 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 Alex 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 the girl stopped him.

"I got it," she muttered, holding up a hand to make her pause before walking up the stairs and out of the Hut as well.

She found him standing by a tree and kicking rocks angrily. He only looked up for a second when she approached before going back to his pebbles. She sighed as she leaned against the tree and watched him. "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 yelled, pointing a finger in the direction of the Gathering hut, but she already knew that he was talking about Thomas without  the gestures.

"Or he might get us all out," she countered because she knew that it was possible. She had known it ever since he ran into that Maze and saved Minho and Alby. "He's onto something. I can feel it. We're closer than we ever have been to getting out."

He looked at her with a betrayed expression, taking his attention away from the rocks and toward her. "You're telling me that you'd rather follow the Greenie than me?"

"That's not what I'm saying," she muttered with an eye roll. Why did he always have to be so dramatic? 

He scoffed, raising his eyebrows at her in question. "Then, what are you saying? I don't know if you remember, but I've been here three years, Lexi, and so have you. Do you honestly think that some random slinthead 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!" she yelled, running a hand through her hair as she stepped away from the tree and toward him. She was so confused as to why he hated Thomas so much. They could be getting out, but he refused to believe any of it. He was too paranoid for his own good. "Why are you so against this? Do you not want us to get out of this shucking place?"

 "Of course, I do. I just don't trust him," he told her for maybe the millionth time since Thomas had arrived. She had started to realize that he never used the boy's name. He just referred to him with Glader slang or other bad language.

She grabbed his shoulders, making sure that he was looking her in the eye so that he heard what she was saying clearly. She shook him a little bit with every word as she tried to get him to understand. "If you don't trust him, then trust me. I believe that this could work."

"Hey, guys," came a voice from behind them, and they turned around to see Minho standing there. Alex released Gally and stepped away a bit as he did the same. "The girl's awake."