I do not own The Maze Runner or any of its characters.

Lauren: Have you ever looked at someone and wondered, what is going on inside their head?
Any Builder or Slicer: *Wii Music*

Lauren
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I finally found Newt and Alby and sat them down inside a room in the Homestead. It was like herding cats.

"What are we doin' inside here, Lauren?" Alby grumbled.

"I had a dream last night," I told them.

Alby sighs. "This is what you wanted to tell us?" He stood up.

"No, you don't understand. It was about my time before the Glade." He couldn't leave just yet.

"But you've only been here, what, two weeks? You haven't gotten stung yet, either." Newt commented.

"That's what I thought too. But then everything made sense." I tried to explain it to them in the easiest way possible, but to do that, I would have to go back to the very beginning of my memories. We were in for a very long night.

"What was your memory about?" Alby asked.

"A different Maze. One with girls instead of boys."

"Well, tell us everythin'," Newt instructed me.

I pulled out my journal and started to talk. I explained my feelings of being here beforehand and managed to get Minho and me out of the Maze after only being there once. Newt seemed impressed, but Alby just looked bored. I tried not to get mad. This is what they wanted, right?

"The last one I had, about the other Glade, it showed all the girls in the beginning. I was tasked with rallying them all, and then we assigned roles. I was deemed Keeper of the Runners. We named a leader, Harriet, and then a second-in-command, Sonya." I finished. After saying it all out loud, it didn't seem as cool. But info was info, regardless of it being cool or not.

Newt straightened up at the name of Sonya. I was confused as to why.

"That's it?" Alby asked.

"Uh, yeah." I didn't know what else to tell them.

"I'm sure there's something we could use. Thanks, Lauren." Newt walked out of the room, Alby behind him.

"Well, that was a fabulous waste of time," I muttered as I walked to my bedroom. I guess I understood where they were coming from, but I was only here for two weeks, as Newt had said. They would have to wait to get anything else.

I went to my room and wondered what I could do to get more memories. I took my journal out for the hundredth time and flipped to a very familiar page. I studied the memories I already had, trying to glean anything I could from them. The pages were slowly crinkling and looking very weathered as I kept erasing and writing more notes in the margins.

After an uneventful supper, where Peter and Gally bugged me about what Newt and Alby said, I went to the showers. Standing under the slowly cooling water, I ran my brain through everything I had learned. I went through the very familiar movements of brushing my hair and throwing it into a braid, not really thinking about it at all. Flopping on my bed, I hated not being able to be more helpful. A conversation drifted into my head.

"That's the Grief Serum," Clint said. He must have noticed me looking at it.

"Oh. What's it do?" I asked. But I felt like I knew the answer already.

"When someone gets stung by a Griever, they go through the Changing. It's a tough thing to go through. And if they don't get the Serum, they'll die. If they do get the Serum, they'll make it out alive with a few memories." He explained.

"Memories? Like, before this?"

"Yeah."

Oh no. I could not be thinking about this. I guess it was a viable option, but I wasn't sure that I could execute it. It was, for all intents and purposes, a gamble. A test. A losing bet. I was testing fate to the highest degree. I stood up and started pacing my room.

"Lauren, you have a habit of creating bad ideas." I tried to tell myself.

"Yeah, but this could be valuable." Another side of me responded.

"I could die!"

"Or you could get memories, and we could get out of here."

"I kinda like it here!"

"Do you really?"

"I-" I stopped. "Yes, I do!"

"No, you don't. You can lie to everyone else, but you can't lie to yourself. Remember Lauren. I'm a part of you."

The voice made me think. Did I like it here? Deep down, I had felt this weird feeling. It was a sense of familiarity intertwined with a feeling of wrongness. I started feeling it as soon as I came out of the Box. And ever since I had gotten the memory back from the Glen, it started nagging at me, telling me I had to leave the Glade. Getting Banished didn't seem all that bad anymore. I tried to stop it and tell myself that I had a deathly fear or Grievers, but ever since escaping them twice, I had conquered it. It probably wasn't good to not fear the deadly creatures, but knowing how to escape them was good.

"You know you don't belong. You're a mistake, and you're meant to be somewhere else. You're supposed to be in the Glen, with all of your friends."

"I-" I sighed. They had a point.

"When are we going to do it?"

"Depends on if you can buck up and tell yourself the truth about you."

"This seems wrong."

"But it's true. Say it. I'll leave you alone if you do."

I hated the voice, regardless of the truth it was telling. "I need to go back."

"That's a good girl." The voice left my head.

"But what if they won't take me back?" I asked the silence of my room.

I didn't know it then, but another person was listening outside my door. I have no idea why they were there. They weren't a friend, and they were very much a foe. They had heard my one-sided conversation and took it way wrong.

Zeus, once again, was going to make my life miserable.

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Muahahahahahahahahaha!
If you look back at the convo and just say Lauren's spoken words out loud, there is a VERY real chance that you can take it the wrong way.

Questions!

-What's going to happen to Lauren??

-How many of you guys ACTUALLY like book!Alby? (I think movie!Alby was wayyy better.)

-Opinions on Zeus?

-Questions, comments, CC?

Author Confessions:
I knew from the VERY start that Lauren wasn't going to have a box scene. Even in the terrible starts of this book, there was no real reason to have one. It wasn't going to add anything to the plot.
Props to me for being smart even back then

(How many people went back and looked at Lauren's side of the convo XD)