"…Thanks for… the meal." Tim's voice was quiet, still timid and shy.

Looking up from stamping down the fire, Saph grinned. "Not a problem, Greenbean."

"Again with the greenbean?" Newt looked up from his plate, looking as though he thought she'd gone a little off.

"Y'know, something that's green." Saph looked at them expectantly before elaborating. "Fresh. A greenie?"

Five faces looked at her blankly.

"C'mon, y'all must've heard the term before, somewhere in those klunk-for-brains," she urged them. "Even Minho, somewhere in there."

"First of all, I object to 'klunk-for-brains'—" he began.

"It's a farm term." Nick interrupted. "I've heard it - well, at least, I think I have. Fittin' nickname."

Shooting him a victorious smile, Saph winked at Tim, still hanging, gangly and unsure of his place. "So, Greenbean it is."

With a small, shaky smile, Tim inclined his head, grateful and a little awkward. "Uh… good night, I guess."

They waved him off.

It was an unspoken social cue that they wanted to talk without him - about him - and he had picked up on that. He could sense it in them, the closeness that had already been forged between them. So he left, to cry and sleep, much the same way Alice had done just thirty days earlier - indeed, had just a few nights ago, after Minho had called her a crybaby.

The group of six faced one another, firelight flickering, creating shadows that danced across each of their solemn expressions.

Of course, it was Minho who spoke first.

"I think we should explore outside the Walls."

He was utterly serious, she could tell, but Nick rolled his eyes in unison with her. "Sure. Go dancing into hell. We don't know what's out there, shank."

"Exactly why I wanna go out there." Minho insisted.

Hedy and Alice exchanged a glance. Generally, Minho had a way of convincing them all to do what he thought was best. She didn't know if it was innate leadership or his own bratty-little-brother relationship he had developed with Nick, but either way, it didn't work on her. While he was convincing and intelligent in his own way, his ideas did not often sit well with Hedy.

"The walls close at night," Hedy scoffed incredulously. "That implies either that we're being kept in - which probably isn't true because they open during the day - or that something is being kept out, which is more likely," she said scathingly, and he shot her a glare.

"Okay, but if the walls are only closed at night, that means whatever is being kept out is nocturnal," he argued. "We have maybe two square miles of space to our names and no memories. Doesn't this feel like total bullshit?"

"It feels like a prison," Alice put in quietly, her high-pitched voice soft and squeaky, silencing them. "It feels like, before, we must have done something terrible to deserve this."

She and Minho quit bickering at that. The solemnity of Alice's words was not lost on them. Minho had shared – often – his idea that they were being experimented on. While it made sense, it felt too sci-fi to Hedy, unrealistic. It was far more probable that they were in a prison of some sort – but how and why had their memories been taken? It was the technology that fascinated Hedy. Who had built these walls? How had they managed it? Why had they done it? And what did the six of them have in common?

It certainly wasn't their personalities. Nick and Hedy tended to be more standoffish – or awkward, to hear Alice put it bluntly – while the other four were outgoing and talkative.

It wasn't their athletic skills – Saph had proved that her running speed was nearly the same as her walking, and Alice could hardly pick up her food, her upper body strength was so underdeveloped.

It wasn't their ethnicities, either, particularly since Newt had an accent quite unlike any of the small differences in the other's tongues, proving him to be quite foreign. Neither was it their race, either – Newt was white, Minho was of some sort of Asian descent, and Alice and Saph were black. Hedy wasn't fully sure what her nationality was, and neither was Nick. No countries came to mind, only vague continents. Asia, North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Australia, Antarctica. No associations came with that. No understanding of any traditions or culture, any common economic systems, anything but the instinctive knowledge that had been bred into them. It was like their names or their patterns of speech – unconscious. Even though they had no specific memories, if too much was taken, they would be blank slates, unable to walk or talk or survive. There was a logic to their memory loss, a pattern to what had been stolen. Everything in their minds, prior to the Meadow, was wholly… impersonal.

"I want to go out there so we can figure out just what the hell this is." Minho articulated himself gently to the now-weeping Alice.

"That's a ridiculous idea—" Hedy began, but Newt slowly nodded.

"It sounds a bit rich, but I agree," he admitted, his accent thickening. "Even if we get nothin', at least we buggin' tried. You have to agree with that, right Hedy?"

Before she could summon up an appropriately scathing response, Nick interrupted, broodingly: "Even if you go, you can't go alone, Minho. Buddy system."

"I'll be his bloody buddy," Newt said firmly.

Hesitatingly, Saph's voice broke through. "It's gonna be dangerous, more likely'n not."

The tiny girl was so rarely solemn that everyone else was taken aback. Even Alice's crying stopped, so interrupted by Saph's words.

"For one thing, we dunno what it is. It's a corridor, definitely, but other'n that, we're shooting blanks." Funny, Hedy noticed, that little expressions flowed so easily, idioms remained unforgotten, but the context in which they'd been created was lost. "I say that even if you do go out, you should go out when the Walls first open. Leave a trail, too."

"What are you saying?" Nick stared at her soberly, as though he were suddenly seeing her for the first time.

She bit her lip. "It's a weird theory, but that place can't just be a giant hallway. I'd say it leads to something – maybe more woods, something easy to get lost in."

"Like we're surrounded, and we really can't get out." Alice interrupted gloomily.

"We were surrounded anyway, shuckhead." Minho snapped impatiently, looking at Saph intently and ignoring Alice's wounded glare.

"I think you're right, Min. The key to figuring out why we're here – it has to be out there, because it sure ain't in this shucking place."

"Do you ever hear the screams at night?"

Alice's voice was cold and quiet, suddenly eerie and serious. Between the rest of them, it was rather an understanding that Alice's theatrics were different from Saph. While Saph was lighthearted, playful, constantly fighting their gloom, Alice fed into it, dramatized every tiny mishap. Molehills into mountains, Hedy thought to herself.

"What screams?" Nick demanded in disbelief.

"After the doors close… late at night…" Alice's face was downcast and her hands were fisted tightly together in her lap. "Sometimes… there are moans. They're horrible. They give me nightmares."

Firelight burned her features into a deep contrast, orange against black, moving in a way that almost transformed her, aged her. So rarely were Alice's concerns coherent that they all took note, even Hedy, who generally dismissed her. She did recall that once, Alice had woken her up with muffled weeping. When she'd asked the sobbing girl what the problem was, wondering what could have possibly happened, the girl demanded to know who had been screaming.

"Nobody's screaming," Hedy replied, bewildered and irritated. "Except you."

"No!" Alice insisted, voice a hoarse hiss. "Someone was screaming."

The girl thrust her arm at Hedy, revealing thousands of tiny pinpricks. Goosebumps, up and down her arm, to go with the glowing whites of her eyes and enormous pupils.

"Sure it ain't just your imagination?" Newt looked troubled by the revelation. "Situations like this… they bloody do things to ya."

"I'm sure," she insisted. For the first time since they'd woken up in the Box, Alice's tone was deadly serious. No histrionics, no tears, no shrieking or screaming or melodramatics. Just a frightened girl who worried for the worst.

"I've heard 'em."

They turned to look at Saph, who had been collecting dishes to wash later. She wasn't looking at them, and her tone was businesslike, as if she were discussing where to hang Tim's hammock. The girl was strange, and Hedy liked her quite a bit. Despite her constant, lighthearted teasing, she seemed to be brutally intelligent and knew when to cut her jokes down. Like now.

"It's like… a machine, almost. But like, a woman screaming." Alice shivered.

Solemnly, Saph nodded, finally turning to face them, her expression blank. "If we go out there… there's somethin' else out there, and we have to know what we're getting into."

"So before we go explore, we do sweeps. The first hallway – the one you can see into – we go there. Every day for a couple days we go out, check it, test the waters." Minho was speaking rapidly. "Make sure we don't get our klunk-for-brains into any hot water. Then we explore."

"Who knows what we could find out there," Newt brooded. "Good or bad."

"I wanna go out there." Alice looked up. "With you and Newt."

The reaction was instantaneous and incredulous. "You?" Nick demanded. Even Saph looked thrown.

"I know I'm not strong, but I can run," she insisted. "I wanna face my fear. I wanna get the hell—oh, pardon me," she lost steam as she flustered, embarrassed at her unladylike language. "I... I just…"

"No." Hedy said defensively, just as Minho nodded in agreement. "Minho, shut up, don't you dare."

"You don't get to give her shucking-fudging permission," Minho argued. "You're not her freaking—" mentioning family was almost taboo, and he stopped himself before he could say anything.

Ignoring him, Hedy rounded and looked at Alice, who was shrinking into herself. That very movement, to Hedy, was proof that whatever was out there was too dangerous for Alice. The girl was immature, not particularly fit, and couldn't even stand the argument around her without becoming as timid as she'd been her first day.

"Minho, look at her. If you think even for a second that she's right, that there's something… whatever the shit it is, whatever is out there, you cannot send her out there. If you have a conscience, you can't let Alice go out there. It's a fucking stupid move." Hedy did not yell, but neither did she use any stupid slang words. She disliked raising her voice at anyone, so despite her harsh words, her tone was level. "Even if you wanna go risk your… your slinthead self out there, you aren't bringing Alice."

"Hey, Hedy…" Newt began, but Hedy held up a hand to quiet him.

"No. I don't care if I sound like a bitch or a shuck or whatever the hell new word Minho invented today. Both Alice and Saph are serious. We haven't heard what they heard, but now we know that, at the absolute least, at night there is something there. It could be a friend, but it could also be dangerous. We could also lead it here, which puts everyone else in danger. Anyone who steps past the Walls has to be fit, in case you need to run or fight." She bit her lip. "Alice, until you prove that you're capable of lasting in that situation, I can't let you go out there. Or until Minho and Newt prove its safe."

After she spoke, the aura around the fire had become serious. They were all still seated, and just sat quietly for a moment.

"So Minho and I can scope out the bloody outside tomorrow." Newt said, standing and looking irritated. "Until then." He walked away, hands stuffed in his pockets, broad shoulders hunching. Guilt flooded Hedy, but she did not budge. It would be next to murder to let Alice out there.

Alice fled, and Nick, yawning, followed her, throwing out a good night.

"Why don't y'all help me clean these dishes," Saph said, finally. Minho and Hedy obediently followed her, washing and scrubbing the tin dishes and carrying them back.

After a few moments of tucking away odds and ends – there were hardly any bugs, but Saph was nearly religious in her devotion to cleaning up after herself – she left too, claiming she needed to comfort Alice, leaving Minho and Hedy alone, next to the dying embers of the fire.

"So why do you hate me?"

He casually moved to sit next to her, on one of the dry logs they'd managed to hack down. It had yet to rain, and the weather seemingly stayed constant. She wondered if whoever had put them there could control the weather.

"I don't hate you," she tried to inject all the surprise she felt into her voice, to show how genuine her statement was. Why would he think that? Well, she supposed she knew. Their argument from just ten minutes ago was a good reason.

"You think I'm annoying."

"I do think that," she agreed, half smiling. "But I figure you can't help that."

"So why do you always disagree with me?"

"Because I think your ideas are usually wrong," she said dryly.

Holding up a hand, he ticked off examples. "When I said this was a test—"

"It's a little farfetched," she rolled her eyes.

"When I tried to cut Newt's hair—"

"There's no way I'm letting you near Newt's neck with anything sharp."

He laughed a little and scooted towards her, wrapping his free arm around her, ticking off another finger. "When I made up 'klunk'—"

"Which is a disgusting word, and you are also disgusting," she said, and felt herself smiling a little. Thinking back, in the past month – the only memories she had – she hadn't touched anyone except in passing. When they'd climbed from the Box, when she'd needed a lift to climb up trees, when she'd held Tim's hand earlier. None of those movements had been particularly… casual, like this was. And of all of the others, Minho was the one she knew the least well.

As time passed, she and Nick had become good friends, mostly because he was difficult to speak to and the others didn't like him as well. Even in a group this small, there were different connections. Alice she hung around, too, and Alice and Saph were always together. Hedy herself found herself becoming increasingly closer to Newt. He was calmer than Alice, who was constantly verging on hysterics, and Saph and Minho, who were the group goofballs. He wasn't as negative as Nick, either, and just lacking those unfortunate qualities left her inclined to prefer his company. Additionally, though, he was also considerate and even-tempered, and she found it easy to speak to him. Not that any of them were particularly fond of sharing their innermost, deepest thoughts

Minho was right though, she realized as he ticked off another example – when he'd wanted to send a note down the Box when it left, and she'd worried about the repercussions (he'd been right, and they were all sporting a new pair of socks, and Saph had just requested a table) – they really never did get along.

She hadn't seen their relationship as antagonistic. It was simply another dynamic. The same way Nick scowled at everyone or Alice accused someone of making her cry at least once every few days. It was simply the way they were. As irritating as they all were to one another, they were all they had. Truly, they were all they had. No memories, no families, no help but the supplies that came in an elevator they had no control over and that could stop coming at any time. Nothing was certain here, and they still ha about as many answers today as they had a month ago.

"Why are you so against it?" he asked, quietly.

Realizing, with a sly smile at his cunning, that he'd cuddled close to her so they could speak without the others hearing, Hedy leaned into him. "I think it's dangerous," she said bluntly. "I think Alice would get herself killed, and honestly, I'm worried about you and Newt, too."

"Good that," she heard the teasing in his tone. Suddenly, he grew serious, the change instantaneous and a little jolting.. "But we need to start looking for answers. We've been here a freaking month, Hedy—"

"Please tell me this is not playing into your experiment hypothesis."

"It's a shucking-fudging hypothesis because we don't have any answers yet," he said with no little amount of frustration. "That's why we need to test it."

"Bacon," she said suddenly, a memory pinging into place.

"What?" Minho leaned back, releasing her and scooting back, twisting his seat slightly to face her more directly. "As good as that sounds, what does freakin' bacon—"

"That's one of the dudes who designed the scientific method. Him and..." she tried to think of more names, but the bright flash of memory had suddenly become elusive. "Y'know... observation, hypothesis," she ticked them off on her fingers, trying to summon it accurately. "Prediction, testing, analysis." She counted them off, surprised that she could remember that so vividly, but not how she knew it or where she'd learned it or if it was the right order or the right method with the right guy. Bacon - why had she remembered that? It seemed something so trivial. It was like the strange recognition she had with other things - how to dress herself, what sort of foods were generally considered 'breakfast' foods, the Pythagorean theorem, idioms and lines of poetry that had no context and almost no meaning. "You're observing the Wall phenomena, making a hypothesis, and you're trying to test it. So what's your prediction?"

His eyes were dark, his expression shadowed in the dimness of the fire. It died while she stared, and everything was blank. There were no noises but Nick's steady snores and the occasional whimper from Tim. After staring at her for a long, disconcerting moment, he finally replied: "That there's a way out of here. To home."

She turned away.

Suddenly sounding angry, Minho grabbed her. "C'mon, don't tell me you think it's bullshit again—"

"I do. I completely do," she replied bitingly. Looking down at the hand that gripped her wrist, she said pointedly, "Let go."

He released her, and she wordlessly stood. "Why?" he demanded, as if her skepticism were a personal affront.

That only made her angrier, and she articulated herself coolly. "I think we're fucking trapped, Minho. I think this is a punishment. Alice says it's a prison here and I agree. And I think that… whatever the hell we did to deserve being sent here, without family, without friends, without culture or real resources, without education or memory or anything that makes us human… we must have fucked up bad."

She moved away from him, walking purposefully towards her hammock, leaving Minho in the dark, alone, to consider what she'd said.

Instead of sleeping, though, she listened to the distant shrieks of the creatures they'd – luckily – avoided so far. Maybe, though, she thought to herself as she heard the fourth and by far the closest scream, that she was speaking too soon and tomorrow, all hell would break loose.

x

"I've got a proposition for ya," Newt said the next morning, putting down his work and kneeling, looking at her intently. Her fingers were long and purposeful, with strong nails that were bitten swollen. A nervous habit.

Hands spoke a great deal about people, he believed. If not people, at the very least about the only six other people he knew in the entire buggin' world. While he had not yet gotten a chance to observe Tim's hands, Hedy's clearly spoke of anxiety, of introversion, of duty. Saph's were the same. While the smallest member of the Meadowers, as Alice had called them once, Saph also had the craggiest, most torn up hands of them all. Covered with scars of all sorts - some white, some red-purple, some blue-purple, some angry, some old, some deep and others just a thin line across the dermis - her hands were wide and short, with long fingernails that often had dirt caked beneath them. As valiantly as she tried, she couldn't keep them clean, scrubbing them every night, picking at them all day. His own were large - big, swallowing up whatever tool he was using, with fingernails streaked with white. Saph had told him it was an iron deficiency, that he could be anemic, but both of those things meant nothing to him - he had no idea what she was talking about. She checked his nails every week, to see if more spots had sprouted or if they had begun to travel towards the edges of his fingernails, to be ripped off and thrown into the grass. Alice had the smallest hands - her nails were all even, though her nailbeds were not, with torn, bloody cuticles and chapped knuckles, and they trembled, never steady. She often bled at inopportune moments - like in the middle of weeding - and complained about the pain, despite Saph's best efforts to keep her hands from drying out. Nick's hands were long - he had spider-fingers, the opposite of the rest of his frame, and they curled outwards, as if bending away, like the stalk of a plant towards the sun. His fingernails were so long it was a little gross, and Saph often plotted on how to get him to trim them - he refused, claiming they were useful. Ever practical, ever dexterous, ever busy.

It was Minho's hands that were deceptive. His hands were a little too large for his body, the knuckles too wide, like a puppy who hadn't quite grown into his paws. His nails were wide and flat, even, and he did not bite them, though he did allow Saph to cut them. It was the steadiness, the symmetry of his fingers that surprised Newt. Minho was anything but even. But his palms were as perfectly even in their lines and callouses as the Walls -definitely different, but with the undeniable sameness, the parallelism that was haunting. Newt watched Minho work down the stream, his hands busy at work, when Hedy answered, interrupting his thoughts.

Hedy looked up from the clothes she'd been scrubbing – Alice's old socks. "About what?"

He shot her a winning smile. Or at least, what he hoped could pass off as one. Deciding to not beat around the bush, he said, bluntly: "Alice also can't go out there because she hasn't got a buddy. So—"

"Oh, no," Hedy knew exactly what was coming, read it in the pleading lines of his charming expression. "Don't—"

"If Alice and Minho go together – he's in the best shape of all of us – I'm alone—"

"Alice isn't going," Hedy said emphatically. "So you and Minho will still buddy up—"

"If there's any trouble, Minho'll take care of her."

He was pleading, and she wondered if he really believed Alice was capable or if Minho put him up to it, or if Alice had. Regardless, she wasn't having it.

Minho, who was a few yards away, scrubbing and talking to Nick, would hear if they spoke any louder. For now, he seemed to not be paying attention. Grabbing her chance to speak freely and glaring at Newt, she said, in an acidic whisper: "Fucking Minho can hardly take care of himself. He's got a big mouth and I don't trust him in a potentially dangerous situation like that. There could be other people, other meadows, other Alice is a chickenshit. She's not—"

"She's set on going, and nobody but you is gonna stop her." Newt said frankly. Hearing the prophecy from Newt – not even he would help her, he somehow agreed with Minho – she sighed. It wasn't like she could restrain her.

"And you want me to go with you."

He flashed a slightly crooked grin, dimples hopping into place. "Will ya? You're in the best shape, after me and Minho. Nick won't do, and Saph would be worse than Alice."

It was true, she realized, though she kept her face impassive. Nick was sturdy and strong, but he was not quick. If there was anything out there, which was a distinct possibility, Nick wouldn't be quick enough to get out of there. "One time," she warned him. "I swear on whoever sent us here that if anything happens to Alice, your ass is grass." It was an utterly empty threat – Hedy didn't even try to hug anyone, let alone touch them with malicious intentions. But she would make them shovel the goat shit.

Clapping broke out behind her, and Minho, still clapping, grinned and stood up, having been listening the entire time and pretending not to. "See!" he crowed, looking smug and triumphant. "Knew you'd come around."

"You're an idiot," she ignored him and looked away, walking back up to set the clothes to dry.

"But I'm an idiot who got my way," he grinned victoriously, jogging up in front of her so she had to look at his smug shuck face.

Even Nick was fighting a smile. "C'mon."

The four of them wandered back to where Tim sat with Saph and Alice – the latter of whom was looking antsy, hopping from foot to foot and humming along with Saph. Bemused, Tim was watching them, as if they were some sort of alien species.

They ate, quickly, with Hedy and Alice mostly pushing food around on their plates. The former because she was miserably mentally preparing, and the latter because she was close to bursting into tears she was so frightened.

By the time they were ready, the gates had been open for perhaps an hour. The sun had yet to fully climb over the hugely high Wall, and Newt and Hedy walked towards the southernmost opening, while Alice and Minho headed north. Tim and Nick went to see those two off, while Saph followed Hedy and Newt, a few steps behind.

"Are you ready?" Newt asked, clapping a reassuring hand on her shoulder. Looking up at the taller boy, she scowled, letting him know exactly how ready she was. He only chuckled. "The rule'll be stay to the right, and we'll see what happens. That way, if we hit any trouble, we can just trace our steps back."

"Make sure y'all make it back before the Walls close," Saph warned. Nodding, Hedy realized that the boisterous girl was as hesitant as she, though she did not voice the thought. "That's the only rule, for sure. They've been open for 'bout an hour."

Of course. It was impossible to miss the roaring of the moving Walls, even if they'd been used to it. And Tim's reaction had woken all of them up anyway.

"If we hit any trouble, I'm leaving Newt, so no need to worry about me," she replied blithely to Saph, not even looking at him. "I'm tough, look at me." It was pronounced with more bravado than she felt.

A flick of a knife caught her attention an she turned to see it – the blade was dwarfed by his large hands, but it was sharp and shining. "Don't worry," he said confidently. "We hit any bloody trouble, we always have this."

"Very macho," Saph replied sarcastically. "I'm sure my butter knife'll be real useful against the screaming wildebeests and the aliens coming for your organs."

"Stay within ten feet of me at all times." Hedy commanded him, but Saph looked up at her, gently holding her back.

"Hey, Gorgeous," her voice was reproving. "Alice isn't the coward you think she is, either," Saph said it softly, brown eyes kind. "She's four times as scared as you, 'n she's still doing the same work and livin' the same life. Keep that in mind before you write her off, a'ight?"

Startled, Hedy nodded, trying to process that. Turning away, Saph waited, waving. "Wish I had a bottle of champagne to crack against this ship, see y'all off." Suddenly mischievous, she reared back and tapped Hedy and Newt squarely on their asses, making them jump.

Newt only chuckled, and Hedy, too startled to do anything but blink and fight the amused smile that tugged at the left side of her mouth, and the two of them broke into a steady run, towards the Walls and away from the safety of the Meadow and the comfort of Saph's homey aura.