< Thomas >

Their guide stopped at the end of the hall. It seemed to be the only door that was still attached with the only window not broken. The black boxy letters on the tinted glass had been peeled off long ago, still leaving the outline 'BOSS' on the door.

Thomas was feeling jumpy and extremely apprehensive. On the surface he knew this probably wasn't a good idea. But deep in his gut, there was something about this female stranger. He really wished Jina was awake so he could get her opinion. She was a good mix between Minho's bold bravery and Newt's strategic thinking.

"Let's just hear him out." Thomas finally voiced his thoughts. "See what he has to say."

The group all hummed or grumbled. He glanced at Aris who gave him a nod of reassurance. And that helped. Jina trusts the kid. And if Jina trusted him, so did he. With that, Thomas turned around and nodded at the girl in front of them. She opened the door and strolled in.

"Jorge, they're here." She announced.

There was a middle aged man leaning on a table in the back of the room. It was cluttered with all kinds of stuff, books, tools, a backpack, papers, and a big generator was set up right beside. But right now, he was fiddling with what looked like a radio. The room was quite large. A shabby couch was shoved into a corner, a desk with a chair on each side sat by the window. Boxes of supplies and stuff stacked all over the place.

"Quiet." He snapped. He fiddled with it again. All Thomas heard was static. The man cursed and slammed his hand down on the table. "Damn it." He grumbled as he turned the old radio off.

He straightened up. And looked over his shoulder. His eyes took in the group. He slowly turned around and picked up a glass cup. Some kind of amber liquid was inside, but what caught Thomas's attention was the little frozen cubes of ice that crinkled around.

The man slowly took them all in, he had greying hair, wrinkles around his eyes. Thomas could see the intelligence and cunning in his dark eyes, though. They landed on Jina and seemed to soften ever so slightly. Then they flicked to Thomas.

"Do you ever get the feeling," he pointed at Thomas, "the whole world's against you?"

Thomas snorted. And tried hard to cover up the scoff. Yes. He thought. All the damn time.

"Three questions." The man, presumably Jorge said. Taking a slow sip of the liquid in the cup. His eyes danced with some kind of malevolent amusement. "Where did you come from? Where are you going? How can I profit?"

Thomas was silent, the group was silent. He didn't know how to answer any of these questions. He pulled his eyebrows together and frowned. Still trying to sort out how to even begin answering.

"Don't all answer at once." Jorge said sharply, raising an eyebrow at them all.

Thomas felt the presence of the huge ugly dirty guys behind them. The tension in the room rose.

"We're headed for the mountains." Thomas blurted out. Taking a step forward, " Looking for the Right Arm."

There was a snort of laughter from the guys behind them. Minho and Thomas glanced at each other. Thomas could tell Minho was ready to do something that could endanger them all.

"You're looking for ghosts, you mean." Jorge snickered at them. He pointed at Thomas with a finger with the hand holding the drink.

"Question number two. Where did you come from?"

"That's our business." Minho snarled.

That clearly wasn't the right answer. The huge guys behind them sprung forwards.

"Hey!"
"Get the hell off me!"
" Get off me man!"
"Jina!"

The huge dirty men had ripped the Gladers away, pinning them all to the wall. Jina was ripped from Minho, and had landed with a loud thud and a weak whimper.

That set Minho off and he lunged at the closest person. Which was Jorge. He smacked the glass from his hand and it shattered all over the floor. Minho was quick, he always was. He swung a fist into Jorge's mouth.

Minho!" Thomas shouted. "Stop!"

He took a quick glance behind him as he made for Minho, ready to tackle him off Jorge's body. There was movement in several places. The girl had scooped Jina up and was dragging her to the couch in the corner. The huge men had produced even more deadly looking objects and a few had pressed the glass shards close to necks.

Thomas rammed into Minho, sending him sprawling; they crashed to the ground. Thomas quickly spun to grab his friend, wrapped his arms around his chest and squeezed against his struggles to escape.

Minho was yelling curses at Jorge and anyone else.

The look on Jorge's face was enough to ram a spike of fear straight through Thomas's heart. There was no telling what the guy would do or what he was capable of.

"Wait!" Thomas shouted. "Please, wait!"

Jorge spat a large amount of blood onto the floor. Thomas gulped. "Please give me a minute," Thomas said, urging his heart and voice to calm down. "Won't do you people any good to hurt us."

"Won't do us any good?" Jorge asked; he spat another mouth full of blood onto the floor. "It'll do me a lot of good. That, I can guarantee, hermano." He balled both hands into fists at his sides, "that was the last of my good scotch."

Thomas frowned. Minho squirmed, growling the whole time. He pressed a hand flat down into Minho's back. "Stop!" He hissed. Thomas slowly got to his knees, hands out.

"Please. Everyone just...calm down." Thomas tried.

Jorge looked down at him. His face as hard and unreadable as Minho and Jina's sometimes. He tilted his head ever so slightly. And there was movement again. Thomas was grabbed by one of the biggest guys there and was yanked in front of Jorge, on his knees.

"Hey! What the hell!" Thomas cried.

"Shut up, you big baby." The girl rolled her eyes. She was holding some kind of taser gun in her hand. Thomas's head was pressed down and she yanked his collar back. She pressed the gun to his neck.

"What is that?" Thomas demanded, as he squirmed under the grip of the big burley man. There was a beep. The gun was removed.

"You were right." She said.

"I'm sorry, hermano. Looks like you're tagged by WICKED." Thomas was released and he scrambled back to his feet.

He took a quick look around at his friends. Minho was held by two guys, the others were held at sharp pointy deadly object point. Jina was now laying on the threadbare couch, still unresponsive to anything around her.

Thomas had the sudden and absolute certainty that he was now pleading for their lives. The Gladers couldn't win in a fight against these people. No way. They weren't Grievers, but there also wasn't a magic code to shut them down. The men looked like they had seen death up close and personal.

Willing his voice not to waver and his heart to slow down a little, he held a hand out, in a peaceful gesture.

"Listen," Thomas said, slowly. He also hoped Minho wouldn't be stupid enough to try anything again. "There's something about us. We're not just random shanks who showed up on your doorstep. We're valuable. Alive, not dead. Whatever you mean by tagged...I'm sure it's the same...we're valuable."

Jorge hummed. Folding his arms, and looking hard at Thomas. There was no immediate instructions to kill them or something. So Thomas took that as a good sign. He straightened his back and raised his chin.

"Me and you. Ten minutes. Alone. That's all I ask."

< • >

"Sit down," Jorge said, his voice less gruff than Thomas would've expected.

His friends had been hauled out of the room, not sure where they were being taken to. Minho fought and struggled and swore the entire time he was dragged out of the room.

Thomas sunk down onto his knees beside Jina on the couch. He took her hand, it was burning up. She whimpered and stirred.

"Please...is there anything you can do?"

Jorge regarded them for a moment. Then gave a sharp nod. "Brenda?"

"Ya ya, already on it." The girl called over her shoulder as she dug through a closet in the back. Thomas sat stiff and tense as she came back over, setting things down on the side table. She eventually shooed Thomas away. She cleaned the crook of her arm and inserted a small thin needle into her vein.

"What's that? What are you doing to her?"

Thomas watched as she hooked a bag of clear fluid to some kind of metal pole. Thomas watched it start to flow and drip down the tube into her arm.

"Relax, son. It's a cocktail of antibiotics, pain meds and electrolytes." Jorge said. He was surprisingly very gentle, he motioned for Thomas to sit at the chair by the desk. "Let Brenda do her thing." Thomas slowly sunk into the chair and perched at the edge.

"I'm surprisingly a very good nurse." Brenda said as she pulled the dirty gauze away from Jina's forehead. She winced. "What the hell happened?"

"A crank got her with a shard of glass. I did my best after we were hidden...but in the scorch in the dark with the bare minimum..."

She pressed her lips together and leaned over her and got to work fixing Jina up. Thomas slowly relaxed as he watched Brenda. He knew Jina would be ok. Jorge sat down on the other side of the desk, then leaned forward and put his elbows on top, hands clasped. His face was blank, his eyes glued on Thomas.

"Talk."

Thomas wished he could take a second to sift through all the thoughts that were flying through his mind, but he knew there wasn't any time for that.

"Okay." He hesitated. One word. So far, not so good. He pulled in a breath. "Look, you mention being tagged by WICKED. We know all about those guys. I'm sure you saw the shucked tattoo they gave me too. To be killed.  Great... It'd be really interesting to hear what you have to say about them."

Jorge didn't budge; his expression didn't change. "I'm not the one talking right now, young man. You are."

Brenda made a noise as she was cleaning Jina. He glanced over at them. Brenda had her back turned to him, but it definitely sounded like a scoff.

He ran a hand down his face. "Yeah, I know." Thomas scooted his chair a little closer to the desk. Then he pushed it back and put a foot up on his knee. He needed to calm down and just let the words flow. "Well, this is hard because I don't know what you know."

Thomas took another deep breath. "We used to be a group of about fifty guys...and a girl. She came from a group of sixty girls. And ... a boy. Now we're down to only a few. I don't know all the details, but WICKED is some kind of organization that's doing a whole load of nasty things to us for some reason, trying to round up kids who are immune to the Flair. We saw them hooked up and being harvested. Draining kids for something in our blood. We both- like both groups, girls and guys, started in a place called the Glade, inside a stone maze, surrounded by these creatures called Grievers."

He waited, searching Jorge's face for any reaction to his burst of strange information. But he showed no signs of confusion or recognition. Nothing at all. And so Thomas told him everything. What it had been like in the Maze, how they'd escaped, how they thought they were safe, how they meet Jina and Aris inside the Waystation, how it ended up being just another layer of the WICKED plan. He told him about the Rat Man, discovering the kids, escaping WICKED, the wild flee into the Scorch, the crank mall, Bobby, Leroy, Jina, Winston and then Joey. The storm.

He told Jorge the whole story. And the more he talked, the crazier it seemed that he was sharing it. Yet he kept talking because he couldn't think of anything else to do. He did it with the hope that WICKED was just as much his enemy as it was theirs.

He didn't tell Jorge about Jina and his emotional connection- he left out the intimate details. He told him, though about the memory wipe but yet still remembering her and her remembering him and Minho.

"That's quite the story."  Jorge responded, the first he'd spoken in at least ten minutes, the allotted time already gone.

Thomas slumped. "Ya..." He straightened up and leaned back in the chair. "So, here we are, on the supposed advice of Captain David and Doctor Crawford and Tim from Surveillance... hoping this is Horhey's Warehouse at the edge of the scorch the alley of the Right Arm." Thomas finished lamely.

This was the first time Thomas saw Jorge's face change from it's blank look. The corner of his lip twitched.

"Brenda? You heard of this Horhey?" He asked, finally leaning back with a slight groan.

Thomas turned and looked eagerly at the young woman. She was kneeling beside the couch, wrapping a rather nasty burn mark on Jina's arm. Thomas saw her lip curl into a smirk. She scoffed.

"Oh, I've heard of him. He's an old cranky man now."

Jorge snorted in amusement. Thomas frowned, and looked between the two.

"He's not that old!"

"Oh he's old old."

"Where can I find him?" Thomas asked, frustrated with the two.

Brenda gave him an 'are you serious' look while Jorge raised an eyebrow. He folded his hands and looked Thomas dead in the eyes and waited. And then it clicked. And Thomas felt waves of embarrassment wash over him. This is why he needed Jina...she would have clued in to this in about two minutes, saving him embarrassment of explaining for the last fiveteen minutes, what they already knew. Thomas groaned and placed his face in his hands, with his elbows on his knees.

"Ah. Now it's clicking, hey hermano?" Jorge chuckled.

There was a scrapping sound of the chair and then footsteps, a hand was placed on his shoulder.

"Don't worry son. We'll get ya where you belong."

Thomas sat up. "Really?"

Jorge was looking down at him. "Absolutely. David sent a message ahead of you, we knew to be expecting you- not so soon, mind you, you guys moved faster than expected. We're not quite ready, but we'll make due."

"We actually made it. Ha. But...wait. If you work for the Right Arm- what's with the thugs and cranks? And why-"

"Keeping up appearances. I'm Horhey the gang leader. Not Jorge the WICKED defector, Right Arm Leader."

Thomas made an 'oh!' face as it all came together. And he felt another wave of embarrassment hit him hard in the chest. Then he frowned as something else clucked.

"You're a WICKED defector? How come they haven't found you? You're so close to one of their bases! How come WICKED hasn't found you guys yet?"

"I'm good at what I do, Hermano. And WICKED doesn't really care about a Berg piolet and a nurse in training."

Thomas nodded. "Why didn't you stop me? Why let me yap for fifteen minutes?" Thomas cried throwing his hands into the air in frustration.

"Brenda needed time to fix up Jina. And you needed to get that off your chest." Jorge explained gently. "Now. We need to figure out what to do with you and your friends and how to avoid Barkley actually selling you back to WICKED."

"Yeah, that would be much appreciated." Thomas nodded.

"Okay. Well, I think we need to feed you guys. You look half starved."

"Food would be appreciated. And some water."

There was a harsh pounding on the door. Jorge's face was an instant mask and his eyes were hard. How he could switch back and forth was insane. He had been hanging out with cranks too long, and picked up a few traits.

"What?" Jorge barked.

"It's been almost twenty minutes that's longer than ten minutes, Horhay!"

"Yes, thanks for the math lesson, Barkley. Next time I forget how many toes I have, I'll be sure and spend some counting time with you. For now, shut your flappin' lips!"

From behind the door Thomas could hear a mix of angry grunting and wild laughter. Jorge stormed over to the door and ripped it open. A few of the huge dirty guys stood at the door.

"Now. If we are to cash in on these runaways. We gotta make sure they look their best, now go grab some of them nasty ass beans and let them eat. Oh. And water."

Barkley was old but looked tough, veined muscles stretching the sleeves of his shirt. He held a nasty dagger in one hand and a big hammer in the other.

"What? Sharing our grub with them?"

"Give 'em the pork and beans―I'm sick of that horse crap anyway." Jorge shrugged. "And like I said. You idiots want more money? Then fatten em up!" Jorge suddenly yelled, making Thomas.

"Fine," Barkley said after a long stare down with his leader. "But what about that one?"

"What about him?" Jorge asked. Thomas couldn't see his face, but he could imagine the look on his face. "Take him to the others in the pit, feed them. We'll get more money if they don't look like starved zombies. And then when I give the word, we we'll let them...hang about."

Thomas didn't like the way the cranks at the door smiled at the words hang about. Thomas gulped.

"What about the girl?" Barkley asked.

"She stays where she is."

There was another state down. Barkley relented again. Jorge was clearly in charge despite how huge the crank was. Jorge waved Thomas over, and clapped him on the shoulder when he came over hesitantly.

"It's nothing personal Hermano, it's just business."

"Wait...aren't you gonna help?"

"Oh...we'll get you to where you need to be."

Barkley grabbed Thomas and pulled him from the room. He looked over his shoulder at Jina one last time, and looked up to Jorge. Thomas saw his hard look and a sharp nod. Thomas had to pray Jorge was a man of his word and would get them all out. Thomas and his friends were at the mercy of a crank gang leader.

< • >