Before You Read:

1. This story is NOT movie-canon, but rather goes with the events of the book.

2. This will be stated in the WICKED email, but the characters are not named after people from history, but rather retain their birth names.

3. This Group was engineered to be a sort-of "experiment" group. Adrian, the year-two Greenie, the equivalent of Thomas, is not a Trigger subject (Meaning he's special) but he will still be the protagonist for most of the story.

4. There WILL be multiple perspectives, and they are all in the third-person. Sorry if you don't like that. :(

5. I reply to reviews in PMs. :)

Read on!

WICKED Memorandum

Date 230.1.04, Time 15:26

TO: My Associates

FROM: Ava Paige, Chancellor

RE: THOUGHTS ON MAZE TRIALS, Group C

Our plans to initiate the third Maze Group have been working splendidly; This group will consist of the many subjects that we did not implement into Group A due to our calculations: Seventy-five subjects, all as efficient as those in Group A. We'll start with an initial group of fifty-one and then over a course of two years we will monitor their killzones. Subject C-1, otherwise known as Lee, is showing high signs of leadership, and our calculations show that he will likely "lead," if you will, Group C, similar to Group A's "Alby" and Group B's "Harriet." We will not pamper these subjects and will give them the same Maze as Group A and B, but there will be some changes to their Trials to accommodate this new Group: No Trigger subjects will be used. I feel fairly sure that in a course of two years, these boys will crack the "code" to escaping their Maze. We will still initiate a Trigger, but there will be no Trigger subjects involved (In Group A's case, the subjects were Thomas and Teresa, and in Group B's case, they were Aris and Rachel).

I am very confident in Group C and I expect them to function just as well as Group A and Group B.

And another thing: These subjects will retain their original birth names, rather than gift them the names of geniuses that have blessed our planet.

WICKED is good.

Lee eyes cracked open to sunlight. The redhead blinked, raising a hand to shield himself from the sun's rays. Lee moved, groaning a bit as his stiff limbs came to life. He rose his head, propping himself on one elbow, expecting to find himself in a backyard.

Instead, he was greeted by grass.

Lee lay in a sprawling green plains surrounded by huge, thousand-foot stone walls that formed a perfect square around the grassy area. In the corner was a small forest, and in another corner was a barn, with penned animals; Sheep, cows, pigs, everything. There was a house and a reasonably large garden as well. In the center of the plains was a black hole, maybe the size of two elevators. The only other building of interest was the small concrete one, which lay in-between the house and the elevator. But it was none of those things that baffled Lee.

What baffled him was his loss of memory.

He had no idea why or how he was there.

He knew how the sun was blue and how the grass was green and how cows mooed but he didn't know he got there, why he was there, or who he was. Blotchy images jumped around his head, lingering only for a second. He knew his name, and that was it. Not his age, his appearance, or his family. Over and over he racked his brain for anything, anyone. Nothing. The memories taunted him, just out of reach. It took him almost five minutes to notice the fifty boys.

Boys of all shapes and sizes lay in a huge group, ranging from fourteen to seventeen. Many sat there with blank faces, others were crying, a few were walking around the group trying to spot a familiar face in the crowd. Lee rose to his feet, feeling a nagging hunger. He guessed it must have been around noon, maybe later. Lee started walking towards the elevator, feeling drawn to the device. A few boys who had regained their wits tried to warn him.

"Watch out, man. There might be, like, alligators in there or somethin'," A shorter boy with black hair warned.

Lee, undeterred, continued towards the box and closed the distance within seconds. The redhead peered into the box, half-expecting the alligators the other boy had warned about.

Instead, he found supplies.

Crates, packages, backpacks, a few burlap sacks, several tools; They all lay within the box. Lee jumped down, rattling the elevator as his sneakers connected with the metal, and slid the top off of a crate. He was greeted with cans of food. Peaches, peas, chicken, beef, beans, pears, the whole nine. Several cans looked like they had been grabbed straight from the supermarket (At least Lee thought it was called that) while others looked like they had been plucked from military bases. Relieved, Lee slid the top off of another crate, finding jars of water, maybe three dozen of them at a glance. Lee was about to open a third backpack when he heard a voice.

"Need some help?"

Lee whirled around to see two boys; One of which was a tall, Asian boy with jet-black hair and the other was an equally tall boy with short, curly brown hair and bright-blue eyes.

Lee paused, observing the strangers. "Yeah...help would be nice."

The blue-eyed boy jumped into the box first. "Name's Justin," he introduced.

"I'm Thien," the Asian boy added.

"Do you two know each other?" Lee asked.

"Not a shuck clue who this guy is," Thien replied, pointing a finger at Justin. "Actually, haven't a shuck clue about who anybody is. Barely know my own name."

Lee's nose wrinkled. "What does 'shuck' mean?"

"What does what mean?"

"You said 'shuck' just a second ago."

Thien blew air through his mouth. "Did I? I don't know what it means. Maybe, like, some of our vocab was erased with our memories, y'know?"

Lee didn't like that word. Erased. To Lee, it meant that his memories were no longer obtainable. Nonetheless, there was work to do. Justin started to *carefully* hand the crates and packages of food up to Thien whilst Lee zipped open a backpack full of medical supplies.

"Whoa!" Justin exclaimed. "Gimme that pack, yeah?"

Lee tossed the backpack to him and continued to take inventory of what they had. A notebook and a few pens. Another pack, filled with toiletries, a few bottles of water, and fruit and vegetable seeds.

"How's it looking?" Lee asked to Justin, who was still rifling through the backpack.

"Penicillin, morphine, aloe, bandages and gauze, auto-injectors, antiseptic, even a few herbal meds. The whole nine," Justin replied. "And these."

Justin was holding four auto-injectors in his hands. Each one had the same thing scrawled on it in black letters:

PROPERTY OF:

World In Catastrophe, Killzone Experiment Department

WICKED

GRIEF SERUM

"What's WICKED?" Thien asked. "Sounds real menacing."

Lee ignored the seemingly made-up curse word. "'World in Catastrophe? Killzone?' That doesn't sound good at all."

Justin shook his head. "No, it doesn't," he said. "Looks like this is something called the 'Grief Serum.' Doesn't sound too nice but I'll keep them. You can put me in charge of meds."

"We'll be needing at least one medic around here," Lee half-thought, half-said aloud to Justin. "You can be in charge of the medics; We'll call 'em Med-jacks. Pretty soon we'll be needing to assign jobs."

"Jobs?" Thien asked.

"Yeah. Odds are, we're gonna be here for awhile, right? Gotta have order. We need to function as a community to make it through this. Communities have jobs. Farmers, builders, doctors, custodians, baggers."

"Baggers?" Justin asked.

"Not all of us will make it through this."

Thien chuckled dryly. "Shuck, man, that's a pretty dark way of lookin' at it."

"And a real one," Lee retorted. "I bet you a million bucks that not all of us will survive this. We've gotta bury the dead. Let's assign a job of being a Bagger. Baggers clean up the bodies of dead people, and then bury them. Don't want the farmers getting squeamish."

"Shuck man," Justin replied. "That's dark, real dark, but I guess it makes sense. Will the Baggers just sit around and bury shanks all day?"

"No, they'll have other jobs. Maybe butchers or something, shuck, they can figure it out. But what's a shank?"

Justin shrugged. "Not sure. Just rolled off the tongue. I didn't make it up, though. It just...came out."

"Who cares?" Thien asked. "If this little civilization klunk is gonna go through, we better be feeding shanks. I'll ration out the food, and I can be one of your chefs. I'll get some poor kid to help me with the distribution."

At that statement, Justin seemed to remember something. "Oh! Yeah! What are we?"

Lee looked at him. "Humans? Boys?"

"Yeah, I know that klunk," he said, rolling his eyes. "But what do we call ourselves?"

"Gladers?" Lee asked.

Thien wrinkled his nose. "Gladers? The shuck is that?"

"Well, I mean, a glade is an open, like, grassy place or something. Who lives in the grassy place thing? Us. Gladers."

"Oh. That makes sense," Thien responded, and then lifted up a crate of canned food and then lumbered off to go feed the other Gladers.

Lee and Justin cleared the rest of the elevator with ease, finding a few blades and hatchets, a small bit of food, and a lot of building materials and tools; hammers, crowbars, nailguns, you name it. As they were taking out the last of the supplies gifted to them by, well, whoever built this place (presumably), Justin pointed at something.

"What's that?"

Lee turned. "What's what?"

"That," Justin replied, finger still pointing at a scrap of paper on the floor.

Lee bent over, picking it up. On it was scrawled:

Supplies every week

People every month

You ask, we deliver.

"You think this was sent in by the people who made this place? The Creators?" Justin asked, who had approached Lee to get a better look at the note.

Lee crumbled up the note and put it in the back pocket of his jeans. "Might very well be. We might get new people, maybe new boys, a month. And perhaps supplies? But what in the name of shuck is all that stuff about asking and delivering?"

"I guess this place will never have its share of unfinished shuckin' questions," grumbled Justin. "Well, we better explore."

"Explore?"

"Yeah. Thien's got the majority of the Gladers under control with the food and water; I think some cans actually have water in them. But we should go check out the rest of this glade thing and make sure it's, y'know, habitable. Don't want snakes or gorillas killing us."

Lee raised an eyebrow. "Snakes and gorillas?"

Justin sheepishly grinned."Maybe not those, but you never know."

Lee chuckled and the two got out of the elevator, heading towards the barn. Within minutes, they reached the barn. Lee stepped inside while Justin walked around, inspecting all the animals. As expected, the barn looked like a slaughterhouse. The thought of getting the Gladers organized still fresh in his head, Lee marked the barn as the primary place where the butchers, who he had named Slicers, would be spending their time. He stepped out of the barn, where Justin greeted him with a report on all the animals: Sheep, cows, chickens, pigs, goats, and even a few horses. Lee started to jog towards the gardens while Justin broke off, telling him that he would go help Thien with the food rationing. Once reaching the garden, Lee began to take inventory. It was a decently-sized garden, but it would have to need a ton of expansion if it was to be farmed by the Gladers, and Lee imagined a great deal of Gladers would be farming. He decided that the farmers would be called Track-Hoes. It was also equipped with a water pump; Lee made a mental note in his head to He grabbed a handful of berries from a nearby bush, and popped them into his mouth as he strolled towards the house. The berries were not very filling, but were sweet and tasted nice enough. Reaching the house, Lee walked in.

It was a large, single-story building. It had a fairly large living room, with stairs leading up to the flat roof of the house. A few empty bedrooms lay inside, which Lee decided would be infirmaries for the sick and wounded. A kitchen, not the biggest ever but it had all the functions of your average kitchen. Deciding the place looked over, Lee left the house (naming it the Homestead) and started to sprint towards the other Gladers.

Thien, Justin, and two other Gladers Lee didn't recognize were distributing cans and jars/bottles of water to hungry Gladers.

"Hey, Lee," Thien greeted.

"You're the leader?" asked one of the boys distributing the supplies. He had curly black hair and bright-green eyes.

"Yeah," he responded. "Name's Lee."

The boy smiled a little bit. "I could've guessed that, with Thien's greeting and all," he said. "I'm Chris. Just call me Kit. I heard some klunk about jobs? I think I've got an eye for architecture. Could I be one of the builders?"

"Yeah, sure. But for now, we've got to rally these shanks into accepting that just sitting here won't do us any good."

"We got a few Gladers to man up," Justin added. "Kit and Adam here—" at his mention, the other boy turned and waved—"But nobody seems too keen on doing anything right now save for eat and sit here."

Lee felt a plethora of emotions and feelings swirl up within him; Fear, motivation, anger, relief, more fear. Waking up in this glade without your memory and with fifty other boys would be pretty scary. And leading them (Which Lee intended to do)? Even more terrifying. But Lee felt that if someone didn't take charge, soon fighting would break out, and that would worsen the whole shuck thing more than anything.

Without full knowledge of what he was doing, Lee started to clap to get the attention of the eating Gladers. Thien continued to give cans of food to the remaining unfed Gladers whilst Adam, Kit, and Justin started to clap as well. Within seconds, all of the Glade's residents had their eyes glued to the pale boy.

Taking a deep breath, Lee started his little speech.

"I'm willing to bet that all of you have no memory."

"And just bloody how did you come to that conclusion?" someone shouted from the crowd.

"I don't have my memory. Thien and Justin here don't have their memory. I don't think Kit and Adam have theirs. I think it's the same story. Now I have to ask you again. Do you all have no memory of how old you are, how you got here, or your past life?"

A few yeahs and yeses swept through the crowd of teenagers. A few in the crowd nodded.

"Alright, now we're on the same page, I have to tell you shanks something. Odds are, we're gonna be here awhile. We need to start working. Sustaining ourselves. Living. This canned food won't feed us forever. I took a look around this Glade, and I found a garden and a barn. A house, too. We have to work hard if we're gonna make it through this."

"What's out there? Outside the walls?" a younger boy asked.

Lee paused, trying to come up with a good reply. "I don't really know, but I have a feeling it won't just be a door if we explore. It could be a twisting and bending road or just an empty road that goes on for miles or a maze or whatever, but for now we need to focus on what's inside the walls: our to-be home. Would anyone be willing to join Kit here—" He jabbed a finger towards the boy—"In building a home for ourselves?"

After a moment or two, a couple of Gladers stepped through the crowd, and reluctantly took their place at Kit's side. Fear was etched across each and every one of those boys' faces; Lee wondered if his was the same.

"Good. We'll start assigning jobs tomorrow and the day after. Keepers will be in charge of each job. I know this may seem bleak and you don't know who I am and I'm sure you don't like getting ordered around, but if we are going to live, we need to understand who we are."

He took in another deep breath.

"We are Gladers."

o0o

The fire crackled and popped as Adam tossed some firewood on it.

"There," he said. Adam had dirty-blonde hair and turquoise eyes. His face was covered in sweat.

"Nice job, Adam," congratulated Thien, who was currently spooning out some canned corn.

"Wish we had some shuckin' baths or somethin'," Adam replied, plopping down with a tired groan next to Justin. "Tired as shuck, though."

"We'll work out a bathing system in a few days," Lee said. "Can't have dirty, sweaty shanks running around like pigs."

The fire was small, and only Thien, Justin, Lee, Adam, and another boy named Hunter could sit around it. Kit had gone off with the few Builders he had several hours ago, and had been around the Homestead all day. To Kit's luck, however, a few more Gladers decided they wanted to be Builders and joined him. From Lee's spot near the Box, it looked like Kit had constructed a few hammocks and had also started on the second floor of the Homestead. Well, "started" wouldn't really be the right word. He clearly planned it out, but no work had really been done due to lack of tools, people, and materials. Kit, a second in-command of the Builders, Matthew, and a couple other Builders lay in the constructed hammocks. Kit and Matthew were talking to each other but the other Builders appeared to have already drifted off.

"Gotta say," Thien said through a mouthful of corn, "You got these shanks under control pretty quickly. Nobody died or anything, so that's pretty great. What're you thinking for tomorrow?"

Lee paused, hand on his chin."We should assign Gladers jobs. Justin, you could do with some Med-jacks, and Thien, a few more Cooks wouldn't do any harm."

"I don't think I'll need too many Med-jacks," Justin replied. "Maybe, like, one or two."

"Alright, if you insist. We still need Slicers, Bricknicks, Track-Hoes, Sloppers, Runners, and Baggers."

"Wait, hold up," Hunter interrupted. "I think I can maintain the farmers, but what in the name of shuck is a Slopper, a Runner, and a Bricknick?"

"Well, the Bricknicks will fix up things the Builders break, the Sloppers will just clean up klunk and trash, and the Runners will explore."

Hunter was still confused. "Explore what?"

Lee nodded to the North Door. "Whatever is out there."

"Do you think something bad is out there?" Justin asked.

"As in?" Lee replied.

"Like, giant snakes or like slugs or huge shuck spiders."

"Better not be," Hunter chimed in. "Done with this whole shuck mess if I've got to deal with shuckin' spiders."

Lee was about to agree when a terrible grinding sound filled the air. The boys around the fire and the other Gladers scattered around the Glade put their hands to their ears.

"What the shuck is that?!" Thien yelled through the grinding.

"The doors!" Lee cried.

The large doors leading to whatever was outside of the Glade were moving. Seemingly defying every law of physics, Lee and the others watched in a mixture of shock and awe. Each one moving with ease, sliding across the exits to the Glade. Within a minute, they had shut.

Dead silence filled the Glade.

o0o

It was early. 5:53 in the morning, to be exact. At least that's what Lee's watch read. The newly-crowned leader of the Gladers maneuvered his way through the pack of sleeping Gladers, careful not to step on anyone. Luckily for him, Kit and a couple of other Gladers had slept in the hammocks, making Lee's task much easier. The doors to the outside were still sealed, hiding their secrets for the time being. Needing some time away from the snoring horde of teenage boys, Lee ran to the forest area, or the Deadheads as he called it. Upon reaching it, he plopped down in the grass, and started to think. Over the next hour, Lee planned out a method of setting Keepers and exploring whatever was outside of the Glade, which he decided to temporarily call the Outside. Something nagged at him, telling him that there was a reason that the doors closed, that something bad was out there. But he had to know what. As the Glade started to awake, Lee left the Deadheads and rejoined with the groggy Gladers. Thien and another Glader named Nolan set to work on preparing breakfast, and soon had served up a breakfast of bacon, eggs, and toast. Not every Glader could be given a generous helping, but all had a full stomach.

It also seemed that with the doors to the Outside closing, Gladers were a lot more willing to do work. Lee individually asked each and every Glader their skills and what they thought they could do most efficiently; A few boys were stubborn about it but the process was surprisingly easy, and he had assigned Keepers to the various jobs:

Rowan: An Irish boy with a short temper who had to be seventeen at least, Keeper of the Bricknicks.

Hunter: Keeper of the Track-Hoes.

Kit: Keeper of the Builders.

James: A friendly, patient blonde boy who was heavily freckled around the age of sixteen, Keeper of the Baggers.

Adam: Keeper of the Slicers.

Thien: Keeper of the Cooks.

Justin: Keeper of the Med-jacks.

Paul: A short, kind yet sensitive boy who walked with a heavy limp, Keeper of the Sloppers.

Lee: The to-be Keeper of the Runners.

By noon, the Glade was no more a place full of crying and helpless teenagers, but rather a little society, working. Understandably, a good portion of the Gladers weren't totally sure what they were doing. The Baggers, realizing that nobody was dying on day two, had taken up secondary jobs, something that Lee didn't expect them to do immediately. The three Baggers in the Glade all ended up working in the fields.

Lee didn't know what he was to do. He had decided not to explore the Outside until the day after tomorrow, so he found himself in the infirmary, helping Justin and Aaron, the two Med-jacks in the Glade, patch up one of the Builders, who had already sprained an ankle.

"How'd this even happen?" Justin asked.

"Fell," the Builder responded.

"Yeah, we know that, slinthead," replied Aaron with a laugh, "But how'd you fall?"

"I fell," he replied, a look of embarrassment on his face.

"Give it up," Lee said. "This shank was acting like a dumbo and then he fell."

"Bingo!" The Builder said, obviously embarrassed about how he got his injury.

Lee left the infirmary and found himself working in the gardens with Hunter. It was only then that Lee started to realize that Hunter was a very orderly person. All of the Track-Hoes were assigned different tasks for the day, and couldn't move on from that task; Most of the Track-Hoes worked in unison, with teamwork and coordination being the key to success in the gardens. Lee also noticed that the Track-Hoes seemed to do what they did well; Save for the Baggers, who were assigned to getting water for the plants and the thirsty Gladers, the lot of them were hard workers. Lee noticed something new as well: Signs of the Gladers' past lives. A few Track-Hoes had personal mementos and marking from before the Glade. Hunter had a small scar below his left eye; A Track-Hoe whose name was Jakob had a necklace that featured a small, white turtle; Another Track-Hoe whose name Lee already forgot kept retrieving a pocket watch to look at the time. Leaving the Track-Hoes, Lee went to check on the Builders. As expected, they were working hard. A couple were pitching more hammocks, presumably for the Keepers, Kit was overseeing the construction of the latrines, and Matthew had taken a few more Builders (The work force of the Builders had increased significantly) to work on a storage shed for the Track-Hoes. Lee noticed more signs of what were the Gladers' lives, as well: Kit had a beige cap on, with the letters 'CJ' stitched into them; Rowan, who had joined the Builders since nothing had been broken wore a worn, somewhat-tattered army jacket of sorts, and he also sported a scar on his neck. Seeing that the Builders were working heavily under Kit and Matthew's command, Lee returned to the Homestead, careful to avoid a medical tent being pitched by a few Builders, and found himself on a leather sofa. Feet aching from walking around all day and brain exhausted from lack of sleep, Lee found himself drifting off to sleep.

"Hey, sleepyhead," someone said, nudging Lee.

Lee mumbled something, groaning and opening his eyes slowly.

"Have a nice nap?" Thien asked, a slight smile on his face. In his hands was a wooden bowl and a spoon, with some sort of chowder in it.

"Yea, yeah," He replied, sitting up. "What's the time?"

"Around 7:30."

"We serve dinner pretty late."

"Nah, dinner was about an hour ago," he replied. "Let you get your beauty sleep."

"Why, thank you so very much."

Thien laughed a little. "Bon appétit, le shank," he said with a terrible French accent, and handed him the chowder. "Clam chowder. The good stuff." And with that, he started walking away.

"You mean the canned stuff?" Lee called after him. "Not exactly the good stuff!"

"Well, the canned type is the only clam chowder we have!" Thien replied, chuckling.

Lee devoured the food, and its heat warmed him to the core. It felt good as he hadn't eaten lunch and his breakfast was meager (He insisted that the other boys eat, much to Thien's annoyance as he wanted the Glade's leader to function on a full stomach), so he was famished. As he was eating, Kit and Rowan passed through the house.

"That is bloody disgusting ," Rowan commented, eying the chowder.

"Hey! It's good!" retorted Lee. "It's clam chowder. What did you eat, then?"

"Tomato soup," Kit replied.

"I swear if you get the buggin' Black Death because of that klunk in a bowl, I'll rip ya to shreds. With what you're eatin', may the roads rise to meet you," Rowan said, and then continued through the Homestead. Kit, however, plopped down next to him.

"Rowan hates chowder, you know that?" he said. "Says he'll vomit up his lungs if he's served it."

Lee smiled. "I can tell. He implied that the chowder had the bubonic plague."

Kit laughed. "He's a strange one."

"You've got that right. Anyways, what did you and Matthew get done?"

"While you were having a nice lil nap, Matthew got a little shed for the Track-Hoes to keep their tools. He says he's gonna take Ross and Alex and continue working on it tomorrow."

Ross and Alex; If Lee corrected, they were the Gladers that joined Kit yesterday.

"We have an outhouse, thought it ain't much. We could extend the latrines and klunk, probably get a few more outhouses made, and I'm also thinkin' that we start devising a shower system. I've got a few ideas, but the thought of shanks stinkin' up a tub just isn't a good thing in my opinion, so showering would be the way to go."

"That's good," Lee replied. "How's the Glader that hurt his foot?"

"Oh, Cooper?" Kit asked. He laughed a little and said, "The stupid shank fell off the barn. He took an egg from the chickens and tried to egg one of the Slicers and fell off like an idiot."

The conversation was broken with the loud grinding of the Outside's doors closing. It was still loud, but noticeably quieter than last night.

"When are we going?" Kit asked, the lighthearted tone in his voice no longer present.

"Going where?" Lee asked.

"To the Outside," He replied. "You're the Keeper of the Runners and the leader of us all. When do you think you'll be heading out?"

"Tomorrow I'm training a few Gladers. There'll be eight Runners. Have anyone to suggest?"

Kit thought for a second. "Michael is a pretty fast runner, he's one of the Bricknicks. And then you've got Evan and Vex, they can run like the shuck wind. Haven't got anyone else in mind."

"Thanks, we'll start with those three."

"Sure thing, man," Kit said, getting up with a stretch. "Gotta go check up on Cooper. See you in the morning."

"See ya," Lee said.

And with that, Kit was gone. From outside, he could hear the mindless banter between Gladers and laughter. Feeling a wave of fatigue despite his nap, Lee let his head fall against the arm of the sofa.

oOo

Vex didn't know how he got the pocket watch, but he knew that it was his or was in his family's. The watch was nice but weathered with age; He guessed it had been in his family's for awhile then, at least a few generations. He felt that wave of sadness rush over him for not remembering his family or his life before the Glade. His thoughts were interrupted by a little nudge. Vex rolled over, expecting to see a Glader that had rolled around in his sleep, but instead was greeted by Lee.

"Mornin'," Vex said, his voice still groggy in the early morning.

"Good morning," Lee replied, a smile on his face.

Vex sat up, dropping the watch in the pockets of his cargo pants. "Need anything?"

"Yes, I'll be needing something from you, and two other Gladers," Lee replied. "And I feel like you're not going to like it."

"Sure, anything, just name it. What are you needing?"

"For you to run the Outside."

Thanks for reading the first chapter of "The Other Ones!" I feel like this is somewhat-unique and hope you'll enjoy it! I've sped up some of the details in the story as I was sorta having some writer's block in the whole 'Gladers missing their past lives' dealio; I'll probably include more of that in later chapters. Also, if anyone would be so kind as to review Chapter One, I was wondering: Would you like to see more of the WICKED side of things during Group C's time? I could include little excerpts from Thomas, Teresa, and other WICKED employees monitoring the Gladers via Beetle Blades or just talking about them. I want to take a lot of ideas from the readers into this story, so just letting me know would be great.

Also: If I keep to my current chapter limit thing (5,000 words excluding this little excerpt and a chunk of the WICKED email), I won't be able to post as much, but I'll try to stay to a solid schedule. I'm thinking of writing a few chapters ahead of time and updating this story every Monday and Friday; This is subject to change, however.