Thank you all sososo much for the reviews! I got to a hundered last chapter! (Shout out to Kassidy10 my 100th reviewer). Thanks to those who were honest with me and those who gave me the amazingly nice and supportive reviews. I hope this chapter is as good as the last one!

"Explain. This. Now."

Prez wouldn't call himself an official doctor, but in his professional opinion (if he was qualified to say that), Minho was minutes from exploding with anger. In fact, "anger" was an understatement. As soon as he found out about the tattoos, Minho gathered all the Gladers, spat a series of strange curse words at the Vultures, and barged out. Of course the deadly storm sent them right back inside the shelter and thirsty for answers.

The Gladers stood on one side of the main room near the door and the Vultures stood on the other. Minho, Thomas, and Newt stood face to face with Kit and Ross and the others crowded around. Prez stood to Kit's right, just a few inches away from her. Kit and Ross remained silent, feeding Minho's fury like oxygen to a fire.

"We aren't talking until you calm down," Ross said crossing his arms.

"I'm not a shucking five year old! Don't tell me to CALM DOWN!"

Kit raised an eyebrow, "You just spit on my face."

"Listen, you slintheads have 10 seconds to give me some shucking answers or else we're going to fight you for them." Minho spat, "It's 20 something against 13, I think we know who will win that fight."

Slowly, Ross's hand gravitated to the Machete strapped on his back. Kit gripped the hilt of her sword. The Vultures stepped in closer, each one grabbing for their weapons.

Ross tended to be a calm guy; Prez knew that. He'd lived with him for almost 8 years now. But, Ross wouldn't stand for his family to be threatened.

"You listen to me." Ross demanded in a calm tone. "We are 13 of the meanest, toughest, and strongest teenagers you will ever meet. Not to mention, each one of us comes equipped with a weapon. Knives, spears, swords, machetes, bow and arrow, and even a gun."

Otto shouldered the sniper rifle he kept strapped to his back.

"We stand as a family, we fight as a family, and sure as hell die for our family. So if you want a fight, we're game. But understand this," Ross said dropping his voice and shooting daggers at the leader of the Gladers,

"We don't fuck around."

Minho grit his teeth. After several seconds of intense glaring, he backed away and put his hands up.

"We've come to like you guys in these last 6 hours, give us answers because you all are good people… I think." Newt said, stepping in for Minho.

Ross nodded, "We aren't WICKED workers, we hate WICKED more than anyone."

"But," Kit cut in, "They offered us a deal. Help them with their trials and they'd give us ton of food, water, and weapons. We couldn't resist that."

"So you're working for them?" Thomas asked, looking right at Kit.

The leader refused to show remorse or regret, she held her head high, "Yes we are."

"I knew it!" Minho yelled. He lunged forward at Kit.

Time went in slow motion for a moment. Prez leapt in front of the girl who was to shocked to move. He braced himself by holding his forearm up like a shield. Minho came crashing into the tall boy but Prez held him off well. Prez simultaneously pushed Kit behind him.

Thomas and Newt reached forward and attempted to hold Minho back. Jay prepared to pounce but Ice wrapped his arms around her. Wasp pulled out her knife and Cloud aimed her bow. Fox held his rusted machete out in front of him. Otto's hands wandered to the gun on his back.

Tension filled the air as Thomas and Newt finally pulled Minho back. Prez's blue eyes were filled with surprise and adrenaline pumped through his veins, but he stood firm. He didn't know what came over him, he was only thinking of protecting Kit.

Kit placed her hand on Prez's shoulder as a silent thank you. She stepped forwards again and looked right at Minho.

"If you can't handle the truth you can get the hell out right now, because the truth isn't pretty."

Minho flared his nostrils, "I should've known you all were liars."

"We were just supposed to mess with you a bit, make you a bit freaked out so WICKED could monitor your minds." Ross explained, regaining his composed stature. Prez noted that he didn't mention the "you can kill a few" part.

"So what now?" Thomas asked.

"Well…" Ross looked at Kit, then at the other Vultures. He knew what the right thing to do was. He looked over to Dana. Hurt filled the Glader boy's eyes. Ross bit his lip hard, "You all can leave, we won't stop you."

Thomas nodded, "As soon as the skies clear, we are leaving."

Newt leaned in and whisper in Thomas's ear, "it's late, we need to rest. We should sleep here."

Minho overheard and didn't bother to whisper. "No way in hell are we trusting these shanks. We aren't sleeping here." He glared at Kit, "We leave as soon as the storm passes."

Kit felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned around to see Fox with his hand outstretched to her.

"I found this piece of paper," He told her, "It has all of the tattoos on it."

"Who wrote this?" Kit asked, taking the long, thin, dirty, white piece of paper. Her eyes scanned over it briefly:

Property of WICKED. Vultures, Subject V1. The Big Brother.

Property of WICKED. Vultures, Subject V2. The Boss.

Property of WICKED. Vultures, Subject V3. The Healer.

Property of WICKED. Vultures, Subject V4. The Sniper.

Property of WICKED. Vultures, Subject V5. The Daydreamer.

Property of WICKED. Vultures, Subject V6. The Crank.

Property of WICKED. Vultures, Subject V7. The Tinkerer.

Property of WICKED. Vultures, Subject V8. The Hothead

Property of WICKED. Vultures, Subject V9. The Comedian.

Property of WICKED. Vultures, Subject V10. The Fight-seeker.

Property of WICKED. Vultures, Subject V11. The Peacemaker.

Property of WICKED. Vultures, Subject V12. The Charmer.

Property of WICKED. Vultures, Subject V13. The Broken Pieces.

She didn't know who had each tattoo, but something stood out to her on each one: Property of WICKED.

Kit bit her lip, crumpled the paper, and looked up and Minho. "The storm won't pass anytime soon, you all are probably sleeping here." With that the leader turned on her heels and sped off to read the list over again.

*BREAKLINE*

"Ok, so what the hell do these tattoo's mean?" Ice asked.

Wasp shrugged. The two were sitting on the stairs, ignoring the continuous arguing and questioning. The storms had kept up and so the Gladers were stuck, along with their loud voices and large egos. The conversation was going around and circles and still no one had gotten over the whole helping WICEKD thing. Ice was more concerned about the tattoos that appeared on the back of their necks.

"I mean… mine says 'The Tinkerer', that's good, right?"

Wasp shrugged.

"What does yours say?"

Wasp took a deep breath, "WICKED doesn't know anything about us. These tattoos are bullshit. I don't even care what mine says."

Ice smiled, "Isn't that the truth." He stood up, "I'm turning in for the night, what about you?"

She nodded, "I'm going in a second."

As Ice walked away, her own words crumbled to dust in her mouth. It wasn't that she didn't care what hers said, it was that she didn't know what to expect. She didn't know what her tattoo meant.

Did WICKED know what was going to happen to her?

She stood up and walked down the stairs to her room.

She was subject V6. The Crank.

*BREAKLINE*

Otto wasn't much of a dreamer. But he was dreaming that night, he was sure of it.

He shared a somewhat cramped room with Tate, Tyler, Fox, Green and Cloud. Otto slept furthest from the door, right below the window. Outside, people shuffled and spoke in hushed tones. The weather hadn't cleared up yet and so the Gladers were stuck in the Base. Kit and Ross had remained awake, but the other Vultures had gladly gone to bed.

The dream was hazy.

Click. The door opened softly and a silhouette tiptoed through. Otto quickly shut his eyes and pretended to be sleeping... or was he already sleeping? In crept the female Glader, Jet.

What is she doing here? Otto asked his dream self, but he didn't speak up.

She walked carefully into the room and closed the door behind her.

Fox stirred.

Green snored.

Jet flinched.

Slowly she began walking forward again.

Otto had his eyes open slightly, he could see her walking towards him. She was a very pretty girl. She was taller than most, and relatively thin like most. Her hair was short and shiny brown, her eyes were a gorgeous shade of amber. She had a sort of prowl that Otto found almost attractive, but really he was more curious. In a shaky hand, she held a device that kind of looked like Ice's flashlight mixed with a label machine. After a few agonisingly slow and quiet steps, Jet stopped only 4 feet from his bed.

Jet hesitated. She lifted the device and pointed it at the wall. It flashed briefly and then went black. Her features relaxed as she breathed in sharply, turned swiftly and ran out through the door.

Otto's dream began to fade, and he fell into a deep sleep.