As soon as Minho was up, Newt curled up atop his blankets with his coat pulled over him, facing toward the wall. Minutes passed, but Thomas was certain by the tense stillness Newt maintained that the blond boy wasn't asleep – just lying there staring at the wall in the dark.

He studied Minho out the corner of his eye. Although there had been an unofficial all-around truce while they were out in the storm, Minho was probably the least trusting of them all, since there was nobody here that he did trust. Everyone else had somebody they trusted to cover their back, but not Minho.

"Hey, man," Thomas spoke quietly after a while, missing the brotherly familiarity he was used to feeling between himself and Minho. "You holding up alright?"

Minho glanced sidelong at him. "I'm fine."

Searching for something else to say, Thomas tried, "I'm glad you trusted us enough to come."

"I don't trust any of you shuck-faces as far as I can throw you."

"Well . . ." Thomas ventured, "Why did you come, then? You've got to have some tiny bit of trust, or you'd have stayed behind and taken your chances instead of coming out in a blizzard with us."

Minho looked like he was debating whether or not to answer that question honestly; after a moment, he shrugged, commenting gruffly, "I might trust you a bit. Just a bit. Maybe. I don't know."

Slightly surprised, Thomas questioned, "Why?"

"I mean, either you're even more of a dumb slinthead than I thought or you actually believe all this jacked klunk about everything since the Maze being fake. If you remembered all the same stuff I do that's happened since the Maze, you wouldn't have put down your weapons and tied yourself up for me to use as a hostage. Or been cool with me having a gun. Or let me run around with you buggin' idiots instead of tying me up and leaving me with the people back at that base."

Thomas thought about this for a moment, then asked, "Why did you come with us?"

Minho glanced his way, raising one eyebrow questioningly. Thomas elaborated, "I mean, in your memories, you work for WCKD, right? So, if that place where we woke up was run by WCKD – "

"Do we know that?" Minho interrupted.

"Well – didn't the lady back at the base say they were part of WCKD? Even if not, I'm kind of assuming." Thomas shrugged. "They were the ones in control of us when we were in the Maze, so if nothing since then has been real then it seems logical to me that it's still WCKD."

"Sure," Minho agreed. "If it's all true, it's probably WCKD. But as far as I'm concerned, you slintheads woke me up and told me all this klunk. And like I said, I don't exactly trust any of you."

"Then why do you believe us?"

"Because I killed Winston and Gally."

It took Thomas a moment to absorb that; then he clarified, "You mean, in the version of things that you remember, they're both dead?"

Minho nodded. Thomas tried to read his expression, but couldn't. What was he feeling right now –regret for having killed them? Relief that they were alive? Fear that they would want to get even? Anger that he had, apparently, failed?

"It was in self-defense," Minho said after a moment.

"What?"

"My job was to round you all up," He explained. "I had hunted you down separate from the rest and cornered you – you were the one they wanted most. Gally and Winston attacked me." It was a long moment before he finished, "I stabbed them and left them to bleed out."

Thomas bit his lip. This guy was the same tough, sarcastic Minho he knew – but darker, weighed down by what he remembered from after the Maze: the path he had chosen, the betrayals he had made, the crimes he had committed against people for whom he would have died at one time.

It occurred to Thomas that the same was true of himself; to say that he was a more troubled person than he had been when they left the Maze was putting things mildly. He wasn't so different from Minho, really. He had shot one of his best friends in the head. He had been betrayed by Teresa, who he'd thought he was closer to than anybody else. And even though he knew she had stabbed him in the back because she thought it was the right thing to do, he had hated her for it.

"Why did you choose WCKD?" He asked. "After everything we went through together in the Maze."

Minho shrugged, staring at the wall. "We came out of the Maze and my memories from before came back. At least, they made me believe they were real memories, but now I don't know. I remembered that I had been there all along as a sleeper, so that you shanks would trust me when we got out." He thought about it for a moment, then added, "It was hard, especially at first, because – well, I mean, you were my shucking friends. But I was working for the good guys. We were trying to save the world. I did what I had to do."

Somehow that phrase triggered a memory in Thomas' head and he froze, suddenly petrified. Minho must have seen the change in his expression, because he questioned, "What?"

It took Thomas a moment to form the word, "Brenda."

"What?" Minho repeated.

"Brenda – she was with us before the flat trans – before I woke up here." Thomas was stunned. How had he forgotten her until now? "She can't have been just my imagination."

"She came after the Maze, right?" Minho questioned.

"Yeah, but – " Thomas trailed off. After a moment, he leaned far enough to reach Cody and shake her awake. "Hey. Cody, wake up."

Her eyes snapped open and darted around, trying to figure out where she was before she made a move. Thomas waited until her tense face relaxed, indicating that she had recognized him and remembered her situation. She sat up. "What?"

"Before we all woke up here, I had a friend. A really good friend – her name was Brenda. She was real."

Cody was shaking her head. "Everything came from the sim, Thomas."

"No, but – " He didn't want to believe it. "She was so real. She wasn't some character being run by a computer."

"Did anything you remember seem like it was being run by a computer?"

"No." He shook his head. "But Brenda . . ."

"The people in the simulation were developed by a computer algorithm that plays off what's already in your head," Cody told him quietly. "If she seemed real, it was because she was taken out of what you wanted or expected or felt. She was custom-tailored to seem real to you."

Thomas sat silent, feeling empty as he absorbed what this meant. A shadow of sympathy played across Cody's face as she watched him, but she said nothing.

Finally Thomas mumbled hollowly, "I got Newt and Teresa and Chuck back. It would have been too good to be true if I hadn't lost someone in exchange."

"It sucks," Cody told him softly.

Irritated that she was acting like she understood his loss, he snapped, "Like you would know."

She scoffed harshly. "What, you think you're the only one that knows what it is to lose someone?"

"You've never been where I have," Thomas retorted. "The people I love are everything to me. They're all I have. You have a life and a family and memories. It's not the same."

Cody's eyes burned furiously; her voice was icy as she gritted, "You think you have a greater capacity for love because of what you've been through? How long have you known any of these people that matter so much to you? A couple of months? My family was my world! I lost them, okay? I lost my parents and my brother and it killed me!"

As she calmed down from her outburst, Thomas studied her, conflicted between anger and pity. He couldn't remember his parents and siblings, which made family seem all the more important to him. He wondered whether it was worse to lose them or to never know them.

A moment later Cody turned away abruptly, saying over her shoulder, "Sorry."

She curled up on her blankets once again, turning toward the wall the way Newt had and staying too still to be asleep.

Thomas glanced at Minho; the other boy shook his head. "You got a real knack for rubbing shanks the wrong way."

A/N: I haven't updated since February and it's kind of June. Really sorry, guys. It's not that I'm not interested in this story, it's just that I'm disorganized and inefficient. :P I'm going to try to do better, I promise.

Huge thanks to my reviewers! You guys' feedback is the only thing that motivates me to keep pounding away at this. UtilitarianShank and rosieposie511, you guys are the best! I hope you're still with me even though it's been so long since I posted. :(