Apparently that time was weeks later. We were all sitting in the old auditorium, my cut almost completely healed and then the doors opened, heads turned and in walked Thomas with a huge smile on his face.

"Well I've been shucked and gone to heaven. It's Thomas!" Minho yelled. After him a lot of cheers went around the room.

Newt who was sitting beside me got up and greeted Thomas "Well at least you didn't bloody roll over and die." He squeezed his hand.

"The mighty Gladers back together again. Good to see yah alive, shuck-face. I've imagined you dead in about a hundred different ways. I bet you cried every night, missing me." Minho said before hugging Thomas.

"Yeah." He replied, ignoring Minho and going over to Teresa who was sitting in the row in front of me.

Newt came back to sit next to me and actually grabbed my hand and squeezed it, showing how happy he was. When Teresa tried to grab Thomas' hand he quickly pulled it away from her grasp.

"Awwww" Minho said. "That's almost as sweet as the time she slammed the end of her spear into your shuck face."

"True love indeed" added Frypan. "I'd hate to see what happens when these two have their real first fight."

"Uh oh, trouble in paradise" Newt whispered to me causing me to laugh.

"Oh don't even get me started on the two of you." Minho said tuning to Newt.

It was then when Janson busted into the room, marching down the isles clapping his hands. "Everybody take a seat we have. Few things to cover before we remove the Swipe."

Everyone stilled.

"That's right ladies and gents. You're about to get all your memories back. Every last one of them. As you were informed, the Trials as you've known them are over. Once your memories are restored, I think you'll believe me and we can move on. You've all been informed of the Flare and the reasons for the trials. We are extremely close to completing our blueprint of the killzone. The things we need to further refine what we have, will be better served by your full cooperation and unaltered minds. So, congratulations."

"I ought to come up there and break your shuck nose." Minho said, breaking the silence. "I'm sick of you acting like everything is peachy, like more than half of our friends didn't die."

"I'd love to see that rat nose smashed!" Newt yelled causing me to jump and the sudden outburst.

"First of all you have all been warned of the consequences should you try to harm me. And rest assure you're all still being watched. Second, I'm sorry for those you've lost, but in the end it'll have been worth it. What concerns me is that that nothing I say seems to wake you up to the stakes at matter here. We're talking about the survival of the human race."

"Let's all just slim it." Thomas spoke. "Let's hear him out."

"Why should we trust you people?" Frypan spat. "To... what's it called...swipe? After everything you've done to us, to our friends, you want to remove the swipe? I don't think so. I'd rather stay stupid about me past, thank you very kindly."

"WICKED is good" Teresa said blankly.

"What?" Frypan asked as everyone tuned to look at her.

"WICKED is good." She repeated louder. "Of all the things I could've written on my arm when I first woke up, it would have been those three words. I keep thinking about it and there has to be a reason for it. I say we all just shut up and do what the man says. We can only understand this with our memories back."

"I agree!" Aris shouted to loud.

And then the room broke out into arguments.

"It's bloody rubbish!" Newt yelled.

"I don't know, they might be telling the truth" I said.

"Tessa, they stuffed us in a maze, stole our memories and killed half our friends."

"But now they're giving us our memories back."

"I can't belie-" Newt was cut off.

"Silence!" Janson yelled. "Look I understand the lack of trust. You've been pushed to your physical limit, watched people die, experienced terror in the purest form. But I promise you when all is said and done none of you will look back-"

"What if we don't want to?" Frypan called out. "What if we don't want our memories back?"

"Is it really because you have no interest in remembering, or is it because you don't trust us?"

"Oh, I can't imagine why we wouldn't trust you." Frypan relied.

"Don't you realize if we wanted to do something to harm you, we'd just do it? If you don't want to remove the swipe, don't do it. You can sit by and watch the others."

Janson walked off the stage down the aisle and stood by the door. "You really want to spend the rest of your life having no memories of your parents? Your family and friends? You really want the chance of having no good memories you may have had before at the beginning? Fine with me. But you might never have this opportunity again." With that Janson opened the door and stepped out.

Thomas leaned into Newt and Minho and whispered "we aren't really doing this right?"

"There's no way." Newt said.

"Amen. Even if I did trust those shanks, why would I want to remember?" Minho said.

"We need to make a bloody move soon." Newt whispered." And when we do I'm going to knock a few heads together to make me feel better."

"Not too soon, though." Thomas agreed. "We can't screw this up, we need to look for our best chance."

They stood up and started toward the door, when Thomas opened the door Janson was waiting outside. He led us down several hallways until we were outside a metal door. He slid a key card and the door open to reveal rows of beds against the walls.

"This is how we're going to remove the swipe from your brains. Don't worry I know these devices look frightening, but the procedure won't hurt nearly as much as you might think."

"Nearly as much." Frypan repeated. "I don't like the sound of that. So it does hurt, is what you're really saying."

"Of course you'll experience minor discomfort, it is a surgery." He walked over to a machine next to one of the beds. "We'll be removing a small devise from the part of your brain devoted to long term memory. But it's not as bad as it might sound, I promise."

He pressed a button on a wall and a buzz filled the room.

"Wait a second," Teresa spoke up. "Is this going to take away whatever's in there that lets you control us, too?"

Silence

"And what about..." she became flustered, "is everything going to be out of there? Everything?"

"Everything but a tiny devise that allows us to map your killzone patterns. However you will have your long term memory restored, and we won't be able to manipulate your minds."

A lot of whispers and questions floated around the room.

"I think we're about ready." Janson clapped. "One last thing though, something I need to tell you before you regain your memories. It'll be better to hear it from me than to remember... the testing."

"What're you talking about?" Harriet asked.

Janson called his hands, "some of you are immune to the Flare...but some of you aren't. I'm going to go through the list, please do your best to stay calm."

Everyone got quiet. Stricken in fear. The only sound was the machinery's faint hums. I felt my heart thumping against my chest. So nervous. I had seen what the Flare did to people and I wasn't ready for that especially after everything is just been through.

"For an experiment to provide accurate results one needs a control group. We did the best to keep the virus from you as long as we could. But it's airborne and highly contagious."

"Just bloody get on with it!" Newt said, he had been standing right behind me the whole time. "We all figured we had the buggin' disease anyway. You're not. Reading our hearts."

"Yeah" Sonya added "cut the drama and tell us already."

"Okay then, most of you are immune and have helped us gather invaluable data. Only two of you are considered candidates now, but we'll get into that later. Let's get I the list, the following people are not immune. Newt..."

At that moment Thomas doubled over and looked like he was about to throw up.

"...Eleanor, Jackson, and Mary." Janson finished the names and a few girls butted out in tears and went I hug Eleanor and Mary.

I felt a heavy weight off my shoulders when I didn't hear my name but then something somewhere else felt wrong. Newt.

"Tommy slim yourself." Newt spoke up. His arms were folded and I could tell the grin on his face was forced.

"Slim myself?" Thomas questioned. "That old shank just said you're not immune to the Flare. How can you-"

Newt cut him off "I'm not worried about the bloody Flare, man. I never thought I'd be alive at this buggin' point," he gave me a reassuring smile and it was at this point I realized I had been staring at Newt as if he was infested in hives. "And living hasn't been so great anyway."

"If you're cool with slowly going crazy and wanting to eat small children, then I guess we won't cry for you." Thomas joked.

As on cue tears poured out of my eyes, but to hide it I went and hugged the other girls who had just found out they were not immune to hide how devastated I was about Newt.

"Good that." I heard Newt reply, mixed in with all the other sobs from the girls.

"I wanted to get that out of the way." Janson added. "Mainly so I could tell you myself and remind you that the whole point of this operation had been to build toward a cure. Most of you no immune are in the early stages of the Flare, and I have every confidence it will be taken care of before it goes too far. But the trials required your participation."

"And what if you don't figure this out?" Minho spat.

Ignoring his question Janson walked over to one of the beds holding on to the metal machine hanging from the ceiling. "This is something we're very proud of here. A feet of scientific and medical engineering. It's called a Retractor, and it will be preforming this procedure. It'll be placed on your face, and I promise you'll look just as pretty when everything is done. Small wires within the devise will descend through your ear canal. From there they will remove the machinery in your brain. Our doctors and nurses will give you a sedative to calm the nerves and dull the discomfort. The procedure will happen and your memories will occur as they did when you went through the Changing, but they will be nowhere near as bad. Give me just a few moments to make sure the medical teams are ready."

He crossed the room and exited through a metal door.

Everyone stood in a group and asked Teresa what she thought we should do.

"We should do it." She replied. "We need our memories back so we can be smart about things. Decide what to do next."

"How would you know if they're giving us back our memories or shoving new ones into our heads?" Minho said angrily.

"You're missing the point! Right now they can control us, they just said they're taking out the part that lets them control us. It feels legit to me."

Teresa walked away to a group of girls from group B.

"I don't trust her, anything she does I'm not doing." Spat Minho.

"Me neither." Newt agreed. "And I'm the one who's supposed to have the bloody Flare, so I have more stake in it than anybody. But I'm not falling for one more trick."

Minho, Thomas, and Frypan agreed, continuing to talk, Newt looked over at me. With a stern look he said. "I'm not doing it."

"I know." I replied.

"Will you?"

"I have to know. Who was I before this, who was my family..."

"I have a slim time left and don't want them anywhere near my head. I just hoped you wouldn't let them manipulate you."

"They're not, maybe you don't care about your past but I do, I'm going through with it and no matter how much you guilt or make me feel bad about doing it, I have to know."

Doctors started coming in, I turned around and walked to an empty bed and didn't look back at him.