ACT III  SCENE LVII
AIGUPTIOI

   CASSANDRA sucked a small breath between her teeth before exchanging glances with her friends. Getting back her full memories was the farthest thing from her mind. In fact, she thought that the less she remembered the better.

She stiffly went to sit down in the front row with Minho alongside Thomas, Newt and Teresa. Everyone seemed to have been taken aback by the Rat Man's announcement. He waited patiently for everyone to settle in place before starting his briefing.

"As you were informed in your one-on-ones," he began. "The Trials as you've known them are over. Once your memories are restored, I think you'll believe me and we can move on. You've all been briefed on the Flare and the reasons for the Trials."

His eyes flickered to Cassandra briefly. "We are extremely close to completing our blueprint of the killzone. The things we need—to further refine what we have—will be better served by your full cooperation and unaltered minds. So, congratulations."

"I ought to come up there and break your shuck nose," Minho said with a calm voice but a sneer on his face. "I'm sick of you acting like everything is peachy—like more of half our friends didn't die."

"I'd love to see that rat nose smashed," Newt glowered from the other side.

The Rat Man rolled his eyes and sighed. "First of all, each of you has been warned of the consequences should you try to harm me. And rest assured, you're all still being watched. Second, I'm sorry for those you've lost—but in the end it'll have been worth it." Those were the same words that Teresa had said earlier. "What concerns me, though, is that it seems that nothing I say is going to wake you people up to the stakes here. We're talking about the survival of the human race."

Minho took in a breath, as if he was going to say more but Cassandra beat him to the punch. "You guys killed a bunch of humanity's best hope for survival, I bet you feel so good about yourselves," she said scathingly.

The Rat Man laughed with a bitter tinge. "You just don't get it, do you?"

"Let's all just slim it," Thomas suggested evenly. "Let's hear him out."

Frypan spoke up then. "Why should we trust you people to...what was it called? The Swipe? After everything you've done to us, to our friends—you want to remove the Swipe? I don't think so. I'd rather stay stupid about my past, thank you very kindly."

Cassandra had never been so proud of the Keeper of the Cooks than at that very moment.

"WICKED is good." Everyone turned to look at Teresa when she suddenly spoke. She looked back at them with resolve in her eyes. "Of all the things I could've written on my arm when I first woke up from my coma, I chose those three words. I can't stop thinking about it and there has to be a reason for that. I say we just shut up and do as the man says. We can only understand this with our memories back."

"I agree!" Aris shouted from further back.

Arguments started to erupt around the room between the Gladers and Group B. The boys were against the procedure while the girls were very much for it. Cassandra felt a prick of betrayal in her heart. Teresa surely couldn't have meant that. WICKED was not good.

"Silence!" The Rat Man roared, pounding his fist repeatedly on the lectern. "Look, no one is going to blame you for the mistrust you feel. You've been pushed to your physical limits, watched people die, experienced terror in its purest form. But I promise you, when all is said and done, none of you will look back—"

"What if we don't want to?" Frypan interrupted. "What if we don't want our memories back?"

The Rat Man sighed tiredly. "Is it because you really have no interest in remembering, or is it because you don't trust us?"

"Oh, I can't imagine why we wouldn't trust you," Frypan replied with sarcasm, earning a couple of snickers.

"Don't you realise by now that if we wanted to do something to harm you, we'd just do it?" The Rat Man shook his head. "If you don't want to remove the Swipe, don't do it. You can stand by and watch the others."

He stepped away from the lectern and moved towards the doors, pausing to look back at them over his shoulder.

"You really want to spend the rest of your lives having no memories of your parents?" he asked. "Your family and friends? You really want to lose the chance to hold on to at least a few good memories you may have had before all this began? Fine with me. But you may never have this opportunity again."

Cassandra stood up immediately, her hands clenched in tight fists by her sides. "I may remember my family and friends. I may have one or two happy memories with my parents. But the pain from watching how they died, how the world ended, the death and devastation. Is that worth it? I wished I never did remember them. Because now all I remember when I think about my mother is how the virus made her bleed from every part of her body. All I think about is how my dad was ripped apart by Cranks to give us time to escape. I even had to kill my dog to put him out of his misery when a Crank tore him open for trying to protect me. Do I really want to remember the rest?"

"That's exactly why WICKED is looking for a cure," Teresa said coaxingly. "I'm sure all of us have had some kind of horror in our past from the Sun Flares and the Flare. If there's hope for fixing it—to fix the world—then shouldn't we take the chance?"

Cassandra turned to look at her sorrowfully. "There is no cure."

The resolve in Teresa's gaze wavered at her proclamation and the Rat Man was glaring heatedly. But Cassandra hoped she had succeeded in planting a seed of doubt in everyone's mind. The world—their past—was not worth remembering. As soon as the Rat Man pushed the door open and stormed out of the auditorium, Thomas and Newt leaned in to them.

"There's no way we're doing this," Thomas whispered. "No way."

Minho squeezed his shoulder. "Amen. Even if I did trust those shanks, why would I want to remember? Cassie and I were together, I don't wanna remember the stuff we went through—sorry, Cassie. Look what it did to Ben and Alby."

"Good decision," Cassandra responded. "And since we don't trust them, what's to stop them from implanting false memories?"

"Exactly," Newt grumbled. "We need to make a bloody move soon. When we do, I'm going to knock a few heads together to make myself feel better."

Thomas nodded. "Not too soon though—we need to look for our best chance."

Cassandra managed to catch Teresa's eye and the girl looked worried. Even if Teresa did hope, or believe, that WICKED was good, Cassandra was sure that she at least cared enough about her friends to not let anything bad happen to them. They made their way towards the door and Thomas paused with his hand on the handle to listen to the others. Despite what Cassandra had warned them against, most of the teenagers still wanted to get their memories back. Curiosity got the better of them.

Cassandra knew in her heart that she wanted to remember her father too. She wanted to hold on to those few good memories she had. But what WICKED was offering them now, it can't be as simple as that. Everything came at a price.

The Rat Man was waiting on the other side before leading them to a giant steel door. He swiped his card for access and they shuffled through a vestibule separating the operating theatre from the rest of the outside world. Beds lined the walls of the room on each side with odd contraptions suspended above them made of metal and tubes attached to masks. Cassandra thought they looked familiar, recalling a brief flash of the dormitory back in the Scorch and oddly enough, Brenda.

"This is how we're going to remove the Swipe from your brains." The Rat Man gestured. "Don't worry, I know these devices look frightening but the procedure won't hurt nearly as much as you think."

Frypan crossed his arms. "Nearly as much?" he repeated. "So it does hurt, is what you're really saying."

"Of course you'll experience minor discomfort—it is a surgery." The Rat Man walked over to a large machine that seemed to be the control panel for the contraptions. "We'll be removing a small device from the part of your brain devoted to long-term memory. But it's not as bad as it might sound, I promise."

"Wait a second," Teresa called. "Is this going to take away whatever's inside there that lets you control us too? And what about..." She trailed off, glancing momentarily at Thomas. "Is everything going to be out of there?" Teresa pressed on. "Everything?"

"Everything except the tiny device that allows us to map your killzone patterns," the Rat Man told them. "And no—you, Thomas, Aris, Cassandra and Minho won't be able to do your little trick anymore. We did turn it off temporarily, but now it'll be gone forever. However, you'll have your long-term memory restored and we won't be able to manipulate your minds anymore. It's a package deal, I'm afraid. Take it or leave it."

"That's a no-brainer," Frypan snickered. "Get it? No-brainer?" A couple of Gladers groaned at him.

"One last thing though," the Rat Man announced again. There was always one more thing with him. "Something I need to tell you before you regain your memories. It'll be better to hear it from me than to...remember the testing."

"What're you talking about?" Harriet asked.

"Some of you are immune to the Flare," he said, his expression turning grave as he clasped his hands behind his back. "But...some of you aren't. I'm going to go through the list—please do your best to take it calmly."

The group fell silent as they waited for him to continue and Cassandra took a sharp breath, her gaze subconsciously finding Newt on the other side of Thomas.

"Cassandra," the Rat Man started and everyone whirled their heads to look at her. She didn't think she was so popular. "Of course, you're considered half-Immune so it's still up for debate whether you are or not. Only time will tell."

"Shuck yourself," she told him, enunciating the words carefully.

He ignored her and went on, "For an experiment to provide accurate results. One needs a control group. We did our best to keep the virus from you as long as we could. But it's airborne and highly contagious."

"Just bloody get on with it," Newt snapped. "We all figured we had the buggin' disease anyway. You're not breaking our hearts."

"Yeah," Sonya added. "Cut the drama and tell us already."

The Rat Man cleared his throat. "Okay, then. Most of you are Immune and have helped us gather invaluable data. Only two of you are considered Candidates now, but we'll go into that later. Let's get to the list. The following people are not immune..."

Cassandra held her breath, felt her body tense in anticipation, and the room contracted with palpable tension.

"Newt."