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Minho at some point, probably: I'M A BAD BITCH YOU CAN'T KILL ME

-✼-

Thomas and I shared a heavy glance at those words. The Right Arm's intentions weren't to take over, but to destroy W.I.C.K.E.D. As much as I wanted to see the organization go, I couldn't help but think of all the technology, all of the resources that were in the complex. They could be used for a different purpose. They could help the remaining Immunes in the world or provide more comfort to those waiting until they reached the Gone. But, it seemed that they had been waiting for this moment for so long that they only considered themselves.

I realized, at that moment, that W.I.C.K.E.D and the Right Arm were two very different sides of a spectrum. The rest of us were in the middle.

"You're doing a lot of heavy thinking in those noggins of yours," Willa mused.

I shook my head to clear it; the world came into focus around me. I came to the sudden conclusion that things were moving fast and my brother and I had a job to do. "Sorry."

"When do you think they're going to set off the explosives?" Thomas questioned. While I could detect the apprehension in his voice, nobody else could.

"Pretty soon, I suppose," the woman replied casually. "They've been planting for hours. They want them all to detonate at the same time, but I'm guessing we aren't quite that skilled."

It didn't make me feel better whatsoever. Anxiety churned my gut. There wasn't even a certainty that we could get the Immunes — and ourselves — our in time if we didn't know exactly when the explosives would go off.

"What about all those people inside?" Thomas asked. "What about the ones we came to rescue?"

Alessandro and Willa looked at each other, shrugging. "Vince hopes to get everyone out."

"Hopes," I repeated incredulously, then scoffed.

Brent noticed my displeasure and folded his massive arms across his chest. "Thing is, only Vince knows what's truly goin' on. He calls all the shots, tells everyone what to do, and if you don't do it, you mean jack-shit to him."

Thomas swallowed. "So, what does that mean?"

"It means I mean jack-shit to him." Brent grabbed the two of us by our sleeves and pulled us inside the building, balancing perfectly on the rubble. "Come on, twerps."

As soon as we stepped onto flat, level ground, he released us and allowed us to walk on our own. His purposeful strides were a bit hard to keep up with; even though he wasn't overly tall, his years in W.I.C.K.E.D had placed a natural urgency in the way he moved.

"Where are you taking us?" Thomas questioned as he fell into step with the older man. "Ava gave us a map—"

Brent shushed him. "Kid, keep your voice down. And I'm taking you to Vince. There's something I need you to see."

We followed him to a seemingly nondescript room, the door of which was propped open. He walked in with his hands up even though nobody was carrying any weapons. Thomas and I copied his actions anyway as we went inside after him.

There were several tables turned on their sides and acting as shields, several people guarding them with sinister gleams in their eyes. More tables were bunched together behind them. What looked like blueprints or maps were sprawled over every surface. About nine people were hunched over them, two of which I recognized instantly— Vince and Gally.

"Psst," Thomas hissed to the former Glader, for which Brent shot him a withering glare that he ignored. "Hey, Gally!"

The boy turned in the direction of his voice and blinked as if he couldn't believe his eyes. To our surprise, he motioned for us to come near him.

"Brent," Vince greeted. "Good to see you're alive."

"Unfortunately for you," the dark-skinned man replied with a wry grin. I was hit with the remembrance that these two had never gotten along— Vince mainly trusted Brent because he could get them inside W.I.C.K.E.D with fewer complications. The room suddenly felt very dangerous.

Now that the focus wasn't on us, Thomas and I scurried our way over to Gally. My brother plopped on the floor. I settled for standing.

"What happened?" Gally inquired. "What did they do to you?"

We hadn't been as lucky as we'd thought. Vince caught my gaze and shot the three of us a glare, but didn't speak.

"Nothing fun," I responded vaguely.

"Look, we found out where they're keeping the Immunes," Thomas jumped in eagerly. "You can't blow the place up until we get them out."

"Then go get 'em," Vince said. "We've got a one-shot deal here, and I'm not going to waste it."

His puffy face was appearing very punchable at the moment.

"You brought some of those people here!" Thomas bellowed. He glanced at Gally for support, but the stocky boy merely shrugged. "Where's Brenda, Minho, everyone else?"

Gally nodded toward a side room. "Those guys are all in there, said they wouldn't do anything until you came back."

I felt a rush of pride for my friends that swallowed me so intensely that my head spun. Until now, I had felt a certain type of emptiness, like although there were many people around us, Thomas and I were alone. But they were here. Just a few steps away. That thought alone was enough to make my heart burst with joy.

Thomas' brown eyes flooded with desperation. "Come with us, Gally. Let these guys do whatever they want, but come help us. Don't you wish someone had done the same for us when we were in the Maze?"

Vince spun, suddenly even angrier than before. "Don't even think about it. You two knew coming in here what our goals were. If you abandon us now I'll consider you to be turncoats. You'll be targets."

I glanced at Brent, who gave me a grim nod. This was what he wanted us to see— that sometimes the good guys were too chaotic to see the destruction of their decisions. They'd end lives just to see the building go down in flames. And with Immunes trapped inside, what for?

Thomas had been staring at Gally. I flickered my gaze to the boy with the marred nose, the black hair, the eyes that used to be so full of hatred every time they looked at us. But now they were only full of one thing— trust.

"Come with us," Thomas whispered.

Miraculously, a smile appeared on Gally's face. "Okay."

My brother didn't wait for a reaction, and neither did Brent. The muscular man shoved things out of our way to make the path to the side-room clear. Then, giving a red-faced Vince a mocking salute, closed the door behind us.

We all meant jack-shit to him now, too.

I squeaked as a wave of long, black hair hit me in the face. Then a pair of nimble arms were around me. I realized that it was Teresa, and the terms of our embrace were so ironic that I wanted to laugh. Before, she'd been in this complex as she'd said that W.I.C.K.E.D was good. Maybe she'd finally realized that although its intentions were, it was a long shot from purity.

Next, I was pulled away by Brenda, who was enthusiastic about my return. My heart swelled as I hugged my friends — Garret, Jorge, and Aris among them — and I allowed myself to relish in this happiness. Even though I knew it could come crashing down.

I whirled around and realized that I was facing Minho. Something strange brewed in me. I wasn't sure that it was because this was the first time I'd seen him since Newt had said those somehow scathing words, or simply the shock of how much I was glad to see him again. But it didn't stop him from scooping me into a bear hug.

"Thanks for surviving," he muttered.

I thought back to the unsent letter, to the fact that I almost had been killed only an hour ago. "Always."

We released one another. I turned to see Sonya staring at Brent, who was standing to the side along with Gally. Her mouth was slightly agape. That was right— I'd forgotten that Sonya had her memories back.

"Brent?" she asked, though it was more like she was testing out his name.

Our old trainer grinned. "Hey, Blondie."

Sonya slowly pivoted like the image of him was too much for her to bear. But then she saw me, and it all seemed to dissolve.

"Dylan," she gasped. To my surprise, she bent down to hug me as well, and I found myself returning the embrace. We had seen one another in the room where we'd been kidnapped, but it hadn't been an adequate time for emotions. "I remember."

Thomas addressed everyone once we pulled apart. "I can't explain everything right now. We have to go find the Immunes W.I.C.K.E.D took, then find this back-door Flat Trans I learned about— and we need to hurry before the Right Arm blows this place up."

"Glad to see you're the bearer of good news," Aris mumbled.

"Where are the Immunes?" Brenda asked.

Minho chimed in, "Yeah, what did you learn?"

Thomas already appeared like he was bracing himself for their reactions. "We have to go back to the Maze."

"Before you go crazy," I began immediately afterward, watching how Minho's mouth dropped open and Garret's eyes went wide as saucers, "hear us out."

Thomas pulled Ava's letter out of his back pocket and explained the gist of our plan to the rest of the group. Surprisingly, there weren't any arguments — I supposed we were in too much of a time crunch for them — and we came to an agreement almost instantly. It was time to abandon the Right Arm.

Brenda examined the map carefully. "I know how to get us there, but we have to be quick."

She handed Thomas a small knife. Jorge slipped one out of his own pocket and passed it to me. I kept the handle firmly in my hand, shoving down the feelings of anxiety that crashed into me as I held it. It might come down to facing my fear and having to use it.

As expected, Vince and the others in the room started yelling at us as soon as we walked out of the side room. They raised their voices, called us idiots, and we ignored every word.

Thomas was the first one out of the door and into the hallway. We waited with bated breath, but he gave a signal to let us know it was safe to follow. He decided to opt for speed rather than stealth and began sprinting down the hallway at full speed. The lights had gone out after the initial explosions, plunging us in near-complete darkness, glowing exit signs and weakly flickering lights our only means of seeing. It felt wrong.

We followed Brenda as she took the lead, never seeming to think twice about which way to go. Thomas followed her closely behind. I pushed myself to move almost as fast as them, but Minho edged alongside me and gave me a sarcastic grin.

"Guess you didn't quit being a Runner, after all," he said.

"I didn't quit— you fired me," I huffed through heavy breaths.

Minho attempted to shrug — or maybe he succeeded, I couldn't tell. "Details aren't important."

He flew past me. I slowed my pace, allowing Sonya, Aris, Brent, and Garret to pass me. Teresa, Gally, Harriet, Jorge, and I made up the back of the group. There wasn't a point in trying to keep up with the fastest people.

As we turned to the right, I barely had time to gasp before slamming into something. Fingers gripped my shoulders and forced me instantly to the ground. My back slammed against the thin tile, causing my breath to escape my lungs. Then a guard was on top of me; they were barely visible in the lack of lighting.

My chest burned. I made a feeble choking sound, but that all stopped once the guard's fist connected to my face. Pain blossomed along my right eye like a freight train. Still fighting to get the wind back inside of me, I reared my leg up and put my palms flat on the ground, using that to support me as I kicked them off of me. I rolled to the side and got up on my knees. Hacking coughs came out of my mouth, but at least I was starting to breathe again.

Someone tackled the person. I squinted in the dark, barely able to make out Gally's bruised face. He was on top of them, swinging his fists wildly. Gratitude and surprise flooded me.

I turned, trying to find someone I could help, but it was all too gloomy for me to distinguish friend from foe. A figure of whom I assumed was Garret could be seen kicking the daylights out of a guard. Brent's distinct shape was throwing another person to the ground.

But we were winning. Impossibly, we were winning. A bunch of ragtag kids and two adults were beating W.I.C.K.E.D's guards.

Gally, having knocked the person out, stood and walked over, handing my knife to me. It had flown out of my hand from the force of the guard stopping my momentum.

"Thanks," I panted.

"Don't mention it," he replied nonchalantly.

"Come on!" Thomas voice shouted to Minho, who was mercilessly beating a man who was clearly in no shape to fight back. "Minho, leave him!"

The Runner stood and gave the guy one last kick for good measure. "I'm done. We can go."

We carried on. Brenda, slightly limping now, continued to lead us, though now we were considerably warier when we suddenly turned corners. She eventually led us to the familiar room where we'd been when we had escaped the Maze the first time. I stopped in my tracks.

There. Gally was staring at it too, his face full of shame and regret. The spot where Chuck had died was wiped clean, no sign of his blood smeared on the floor or any evidence that we'd been there at all except for the window to the observation room, which was still shattered.

Brenda pointed to a ladder that would take us to the long, pitch-black hallway above us. A pang of nostalgia hit me as I remembered our seemingly never-ending trip down the metal slide. And I recalled Newt's joyous, sincere laugh from behind me.

I shut it out. I couldn't cry now.

"Why isn't anybody here?" Minho asked. He turned in a slow circle as he examined the room. "If they're holding people in there, why no guards?"

"Who needs soldiers to keep them in when you have the Maze doing the job for you?" Thomas retorted. "It took us long enough to figure a way out."

"I don't know," Minho said with a frown. "Something's fishy about it."

Thomas shrugged. "Well, sitting here isn't gonna help. Unless you've got something useful, let's get up there and start bringing them out."

Minho grinned. "Useful? I got nothin'."

"Then up we go."

It seemed like I blinked and was back in the control room that Teresa had punched the code in with Chuck. Everything looked both the same and eerily different, and I couldn't place it until I looked at the perfect circle in the ceiling. The holotech concealing it in the sky had been turned off. The Maze could clearly be seen from the other side.

"Well," I said dryly, "I guess you could say that everything has come full circle."

Everyone turned to glare at me.

"I can't believe we're back here," Teresa said, her voice sounding as haunted as I felt.

Thomas turned to look at her. "Crazy, huh?"

It almost seemed like she smiled at him. "Crazy."

There was a pause. Garret dragged his finger over the dust on the control pad. Gally's expression was unreadable. It hit me, then. There really only were six of us who made it this far.

"Don't you think we better get up there?" Brenda asked, breaking the silence.

"Yeah." Thomas spoke as if he'd just snapped out of a daydream. "We better."

Teresa went first, quickly scaling the stepladder beneath the hole in the ceiling. I followed suit. Once I popped out, I could see that there had been floorboards connecting it to the Maze's floor, and balanced along them. When I turned around, I noticed that what had previously seemed like an endless drop into oblivion was now only a mass of blackness with a circle in it. The illusion had done all the work.

The sky was still the familiar, flat grey it had been when we'd left. I turned my head toward the Maze and felt a horrible pang in my heart at the sight of the massive ivy-coated walls. This was where we'd lost so many friends. I recalled feeling Max's fingertips graze mine before he was swallowed. Who knew if he'd actually survived like Garret and Gally had? Jeff had lost an arm. Clint was severed by one of the Grievers' scissor-like appendages. Still others were trampled. The memory of that final battle was still fresh in my mind— the strain on my muscles, the sweat coating my skin, the aching loss.

It was true. I was back, and I wasn't sure which ghosts would be waiting for me back in the Glade.

gif is minho beating the crap out of a guard

——-

there aren't many questions to be asked about this chapter, so i'll leave them out.

i hope you liked the glader reunion 2.0!! also gally helping dylan out YESS

did y'all see that deleted tdc scene where gally saves newt from getting hit by a train and thomas thinks they both die because it's heartbreaking gally is The Man

-kristyn