The blaring alarm scared Allen so much that he became tangled in his hammock and bruised his tailbone falling to the hard earth. He squinted at the light breaking through the canopy of leaves and groaned in discomfort. It was still mid-day; much too early for Allen to be awake.
Sirens continued to sound from every corner of the Glade, creating an eerie silence in the woods between shrieks. Allen picked himself up and scratched his head where months-worth of caked on grime and dead skin peeled off under his fingernails. There wasn't a reason for the alarms to be going off. It wasn't a supply day and a Greenie had just arrived – the brown haired boy with Newt from yesterday.
While debating whether or not to see what was going on, Allen spotted a Beetleblade flash across a tree branch and out of sight. He clenched his fists. Their beady little red eyes always shined in the dark as they spied on Gladers while they slept. Allen spit in the direction that the Beetleblade disappeared. If he could spit on it he would have but the shucking things were just too quick.
Falling back to sleep with the sirens still going would be impossible so Allen gathered himself and left the shelter of the trees. It was easy to spot everyone crowded around the opening to the box in the center of the Glade. Must be something big, Allen thought to himself, picking up interest. Knowing that no one would want him too close because of his smell, he walked up and stood several feet behind the outermost layer of Gladers. In front of Allen were the youngest kids in the Glade, Rick and Roy, trying to stand on their tippy toes to see over the shoulders of taller boys.
A breeze pushed passed Allen and into the nose of Roy, a rather sour looking boy who constantly whined. He turned at the rotten smell to see where it was coming from and nudged Rick in the ribcage when he spotted Allen standing behind them.
"Well look who showed up to the party!" Rick exclaimed, making a few other boys look for a fleeting moment. "Haven't see your shucking face for a few weeks now, Al'. Where ya' been? Tryin' to make soap out of pig klunk?"
Allen stood there and waited for the abuse to end. It was standard at this point when people saw him around. Make a few jokes, point out the obvious, but Allen always got what he wanted in the end, and the smell hasn't failed him yet at keeping others away.
He glared at the younger boys, unimpressed with their jokes, and then nodded to the crowd in front of them.
Rick cracked a snide little smile, "think a shucking pile of klunk like yourself stands a chance? No offense, Al', but no girl is ever gonna want to talk to you – even if you did shower. Nah, I think this one is mine."
Allen furrowed his eyebrows, crossed his arms, and nodded again.
This time Roy talked, but not to Allen. "She said something!"
"What the shuck did she say!?" Rick dropped his conversation with Allen quicker than a piece of klunk to its pee-pot and tried to see over the shoulders of older boys.
The two boys climbed on top of each other, "I don't know! Something about the Greenie." Replied Roy, accidently sticking a finger in Rick's eye as he tried to get on his back.
She? The title caught Allen off guard. She? His heart rate quickened and his feet carried him a few paced away from the group. There was no way a girl could be in the Glade, it just wasn't right. A girl doesn't belong here, the very firm and assertive voice of his brother rang through Allen's mind sending shivers down his spine. This is no place for girls. Allen let his arms fall limp to his side as nerves bubbled in his stomach. He felt like he had done something wrong, like Greg was standing right next to him, scolding him for making a mistake. The only reason a girl would be sent up to the Glade is to cause trouble, and we aren't looking for trouble. Right? Allen pursed his lips as his breathing picked up. He didn't want any trouble.
The Glader's pushed in tighter around what Allen assumed was the girl. He watched as the boys tried to climb on top of each other while smaller boys, like Rick and Roy, started to crawl on the ground through legs to get a better look. Nothing good would come of this.
Allen's eyes went slightly wide with panic and his legs started filling with led as he turned on the Gladers and headed back towards the woods. He should have never come out.
Just after Allen passed the first tree in the cluster of many, the chaos behind him started to move. Looking over his shoulder, he watched as the Med-jacks carried a limp body in the direction of the Homestead and a crowd of hungry looking boys waded behind them. Pausing to watch a moment longer, he saw Newt with his head bowed talking rather seriously to the new Greenie and Alby.
There was a time when he would have been included in on that discussion. There was a time when Allen would have been the one examining the body of new injured Greenie. And there was a time when Alby would have been talking to Greg like that instead of Newt.
A bitter heat rose in Allen's belly from anger and jealousy.
"Go back to the woods," a very feminine voice urged him in a whisper.
The voice appearing didn't scare him. What scared Allen was how much it had changed since the last time he, or anyone else, had heard it.
Allen spit in the direction of Newt and disappeared into the shadows of trees.
Back in the center of the Glade, Alby was having a heated discussion with Newt and Thomas. "Don't matter if you remember her or not, Newbie. Point is she knows you." His voice was firm, and full of the unknown. "We've never had a girl here and I'm not sure I like it. So you better grind your pretty little head real hard to figure out who she is."
Thomas' was more focused on the distance that was growing between him and the girl that the Med-jacks were carrying away. He heard Alby's voice, but not his words. "Yeah, yeah- I know. I'll try, maybe if I-,"
"No." Alby cut him off, already predicting his request. "You're stickin' with Newt or Chuck. That's final. Good that?"
The Greenie, a bit dismayed, shook his head in agreement.
Alby, Newt, and Thomas stood there for a moment, taking a second to fully accept who had just arrived in the Glade. A girl. An unconscious girl. A girl who knew the name of their most recent Greenie. And a girl who held a note that said, "she's the last one ever."
B.T.
Greg worked hard to fulfill his dad's last wish. It wasn't easy to trick adults into believing a girl was a boy, especially when those adults were doctors and scientists. But somehow, the two 10 year old twins managed to maneuver their way through WICKED unhindered in their self-proclaimed brotherhood.
Every time blood needed to be drawn, Greg had his drawn twice. Every time an MRI or CAT scan was done, Greg had to do it twice. Whenever there were individual physical evaluations, Greg had to show his body twice. And each time the twins were called together, Greg spoke for the both of them.
They had created a name for Greg's new brother. The twins called him Allen. Allen was quiet, didn't like being touched, and was good at pretending to be crazy. He would throw tantrums and scream at the top of his lungs whenever they were a part. Allen would hit himself, or smack his hands aggressively against the wall – sometimes leaving bloody handprints on the nice white paint. These escapades became so difficult to deal with that the adults started to separate the twins less and less. Greg was so pleased with this he encouraged Allen to do it whenever they weren't together. Eventually, without any sort of actual tests or evaluations, a doctor said "he must have autism," and that was the end of trying to separate the twins.
It was that very act of assumption which allowed Allen and Greg to get away with everything.
As the years blurred by it was clear the twins were thick as thieves. They became decent pick-pockets, hoarding pens and anything sharp for the day they might have to fight their way out. Greg would watch the guards and learned how to do some basic punches and blocks. Allen enjoyed watching the doctor's work with other kids; how they repaired injury, sewed the skin, and made casts. But most importantly, the twins learned how to keep Allen's secret as they grew older.
When it was their turn to arrive in the Glade, everyone had made a unanimous decision on behalf of the twins. They would be sent together, and with their memories wiped besides each other. It was deemed "unsafe," for both the staff and Allen if the twins were separated; fearing he would lash out and hurt someone. But, truth be told, none of the doctors wanted to deal with Allen and his pretend tantrums. Sending them both was the easiest thing to do from the perspective of the adults.
After their memories were wiped and the boys were thrown into a cage, Greg changed into the steadfast young man that his dad would have been proud of. It was there, in the box on the way to the Glade, that Greg finally decided the best way to protect his sister was to permanently act like she no never existed.
"Allen?" He spoke out in the darkness as the metal cage rattled upwards.
"You don't have to call me that right now," a feminine voice responded.
Greg sat with his back to a wall and wrung his hands together. It got harder for him to hear her voice every time his sister spoke. It got higher while his got lower. A sign that eventually, in the near future, Allen would start to steadily take on the features of a girl and Greg could do nothing to stop it.
"Listen to me," Greg said again, "Look, I don't have a good feeling about where they are sending us-,"
"It's probably just another facility."
Greg made an exaggerated shushing noise, irritated by both the interrupting boy he sat next to and the girl's voice he spoke with. "Would you stop talking and let me explain?" He said trying to calm himself.
Silence fell.
"I think it's a good idea if we only call you Allen from now on. At least until we figure out where we're going and who's there."
She didn't like that idea, and shifted uncomfortably. "I don't kno-,"
The cage smashed into something hard and came to an abrupt stop. Allen and Greg smacked in to each other as the crash dislodged them from where they sat.
Greg looked up to see a very thin bright light above them and heard a few muffled voices. He turned to Allen. With a firm hand, and unwavering words, Greg spoke to his sister one more time. "Do you trust me?"
Her face lit up as the bright line above them grew bigger and boys could be heard talking. She looked to her brother, and nodded nervously as the voices grew louder.
"You have to be Allen now. Do you understand?"
"But Eg', I don't want-,"
"You have to!" He grabbed her shoulders and squeezed. "These people could separate us, do you want them to separate us?"
"No, but Eg'-,"
"Your name is Allen. Say it!" Greg yelled at his twin.
And for the last time, his twin sister spoke in a shaky voice as her true self. "My name is Allen."