A/N: For those of you who responded thanks! And I'll try to have more MaC/Newt in here soon, but they've got stuff to sort out first.

Recap-

MaC and the boys have just escaped the Maze and were taken in by a group of rag-tag mercenary lookin people who infiltrated the WICKED facitlity, or at least that whay they think. They were taken to this little buildig, fed, clothes, and cleaned.

MaC and Newt are still struggling through it together, Minho and Tommy by their side. (in casr i didn not fix this earlier in this story, MaC is in fact named after Marie Curie). they're getting through this klunk togethe, but last night they were separated and for the first time they can remember, neither of them had access to the other.

And now... our story...

I couldn't sleep, I dozed for a few hours, and then woke up again. Teresa was up too. We'd spoken before she'd gone quiet, seeming to have fallen asleep. I got up and tried the door again, sighing when I found it was still locked. Leaning against it, I thought about them. What were they doing?

Probably sleeping, you sentimental fool.

I wonder if they had tried their door. Probably. Probably weren't worrying about it like I was though. I sunk down to the ground so I was sitting with my back to the wall, dozing off…

Someone yelped in surprise, waking me. Jumping to my feet I found myself face to face with a boy I'd never seen before in my life. He had olive skin and his dark hair was cut short, surprisingly enough. He was short… almost shorter than me. His eyes were wide in innocent surprise.

"Who are you?" the both of asked the other.

I furrowed my eyebrows. "What did you do to Teresa?"

"Who's Teresa?" He asked, crinkling his nose, "What did you do to Max?"

"Max?"

"Alright," I said, "We're both missing someone… but how did you get in here?"

"Me?" he asked, "How did you get in here? They locked the door." He said gesturing behind me towards the door in question.

"They put me in here last-"the door shook, cutting me off mid-sentence. I looked back at the boy and backed up slightly, moving towards him, readying myself for anything.

The door clicked and swung open. Revealing a familiar brown-haired boy from the Glade, "Tommy?" he was staring at the boy like I had been a few minutes ago. With complete and utter surprise.

"Who are you?" he asked, the words a bit harsher than I would have expected as he advanced on the boy.

"Who am I?" The boy said almost sarcastically. "Who are you?"

"MaC?" Newt. He came into view, walking up beside me, "Are you-"

"Yeah, I'm fine," I said almost smiling at his concern as I turned to the boy, "Just tell us your bloody name."

"You know them?" He asked sounding almost betrayed, like just because we woke up in the same room we were suddenly buddies.

"Yeah, so start talking there's a whole lot more of them then there are of you."

The boy folded his arm as defiance come over him. "Fine. My names Aris. What else you wanna know?"

Thomas looked angry and I couldn't blame him. Teresa was missing and here was this shank acting all high and mighty. But then I remembered that he was missing someone too. "How'd you get here? Where's the girl who slept here last night?"

"Girl?" the boy, Aris asked, "The only girl here is her," he said gesturing at me, "She wasn't here last night. Where's the boy?" he asked.

"What boy?" Thomas asked, confused. "There's a sign our here that says this is the girls' room. Teresa… Agnes-" Agnes… what? That a last name? "And MaC. No mention of a shank names Aris."

"Look man," he said holding out his hands in a consolatory gesture, "I don't know what you're talking about. They put me and my friend Max in here last night, I slept in that bed," –he pointed towards a bed with a rumpled sheet and blanket- "and I woke up five minutes ago and found her- "he pointed to me, taking a snooze by the door. Never heard the name Teresa Agnes in my life. Sorry."

Newt gave me a questioning glance when Aris said I slept by the door, which I did, but I just shrugged, muttering about it being a long story. "Who put you in here last night?"

Aris threw his hands up, before letting them fall back down to his sides, "I don't even know, man. A bunch of people with guns who rescued us, told us everything would be okay now."

"Rescued you from what?" Thomas asked.

Aris looked down at the floor, his shoulders slumping as some terrible memory washed over him. He sighed before looking back up and locking eyes with Tommy. "From the Maze, man. From the Maze."

I snapped my eyes to Newt sharply.

"Maybe you should sit down," Thomas said. "I think we have a lot to talk about."

"What do you mean?" Aris asked. "Who are you guys? Where did you come from?"

Thomas laughed slightly, "The Maze. The Grievers. WICKED. You name it."

"You're lying," Aris said, his voice dropping to a low whisper as his face paled.

"No," I said almost sadly, "We're not."

"Tommy's right," Newt said, "We need to talk. Sounds like we come from similar places."

"Who's that guy?"

I turned a bit confused to see Minho standing in the doorway a pack of Gladers behind him, their faces scrunched up in disgust at a smell which was wafting him here. "What is that smell?" I said, scrunching up my nose in repulsion.

"You don't want to know," Newt said steadily. Cause that made me feel better.

"Minho, meet Aris," Thomas said, taking a step to the side, "Aris meet Minho."

Minho stuttered out a few unintelligible words, as if he didn't know where to start, before his eyes found me. "MaC!"

I smiled, "I'm alive."

"Look," Newt said, ignoring our little reunion. "Let's take down some of these top beds and move them around the room. Then we can all sit and figure out what's bloody going on."

Thomas shook his head. "No. First we have to find Teresa. She must be in some other room."

"Isn't one," Minho said.

"What do you mean?"

"I just checked this whole place out. There's the big common area, this room, our dorm room, and some seriously shucked doors that lead outside –where we came in from the bus yesterday. Locked and chained from the inside. Doesn't make any sense, but I don't see any other doors or exits."

I narrowed my eyes in confusion. None of this made any sense. "But… what about last night?" Thomas asked, "Where's the food come from? Didnt anyone notice other rooms, a kitchen, anything?" he looked around as if hoping for an answer, but none came.

"Maybe there's a hidden door," Newt finally said. "Look, we can only do one thing at a time. We need to-"

"No!" Thomas shouted. "We've got all day to talk to the Aris guy. The label by the door said Teresa should be here somewhere –we need to find her!"

I went after him as he headed for the door. I gasped, my eyes wide as I stopped in my tracks, all thoughts of chasing after Tommy ceased. There were people hanging from the ceiling by their necks. At least a dozen of them, all strung up, ropes twisted around bloated skin turned purple. Their bodies swung side to side as Thomas ran through them, their eyes glazed over with death. Theyd been that way a while. And the worst part of it was.

I knew them.

We all did. They were the ones who'd rescued us just the day before.

It was horrible.

And it smelled.

Really bad.

Minho put hand on my shoulder, "C'mon."

I nodded, following into the room. Just as Newt had ordered, the top beds had been unhooked from the bottom ones and placed around the room against the walls creating enough space for the twenty boys –including Aris- and myself to sit in a circle, everyone facing everyone.

I sat down beside him, looking over to Newt who was just sitting down just one bed to the right of us.

And then we waited for Tommy.

Minho patted the seat to his left, "Told ya, dude. Have a seat and let's talk. We waited on you. But close that shuck door first –smells worse than Gally's rot out there."

Without a response, Thomas pulled the door shut and walked over, sitting down beside Minho.

Newt was the first to speak. He was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees as he sat on jus the edge of the mattress. "Alright, let's get started on the bloody story tellin' so we can get to the real problem –finding something to eat."

My stomach churned… yeah, food sounded good. That thought hadn't occurred to me yet. Hadn't had time to be hungry. Woke up with a strange boy in my room only to be barged in on by my friends and find there were dead bodies hanging just outside the door.

It was a strange day.

"Good that," Minho said, "Talk, Aris. Tell us everything."

The new boy was directly across the room from us, the Gladers on either side of him had scotched towards the ends of the bed. He shook his head, "No way. You guys first.'

"Just talk, Aris," I said exasperatedly. Did he have to be so difficult?

"No."

"Yeah?" Minho responded. "How about we just take turns beating the living klunk out of your shuck face? Then we'll ask you to talk again."

"Minho," Newt said sternly. "There's no reason-"

Minho pointed sharply at Aris. "Please, dude. For all we know this shank could be one of the Creators. Somebody from WICKED, here to spy on us. He could've killed those people out there –he's the only one we don't know and the doors and windows are locked! I'm sick of him acting all snooty when we've got twenty guys to his one. He should talk first."

Newt glanced to me as if asking me to calm him down. I shrugged, he sighed, looking back to Aris. "He's got a point. Just tell us what you meant about coming from the buggin' Maze. That's where we escaped from and we obviously haven't met you."

Aris rubbed his eyes before meeting Newt's gaze. "Fine, listen. I was thrown into this gigantic maze made out of huge stone walls –but before that my memory was erased. I couldn't remember anything about my life from before. I just knew my name. I lived there with a bunch of girls. There must've been fifty of them. There was only one other boy, Max, and he'd been there a lot longer than I had. We escaped a few days, then moved me and Max from here last night –but no one explained anything. What's this stuff about you being in a maze too?"

You could barely hear the last few words of what Aris had said over the sounds of surprise from all the Gladers.

"Wait a minute," Newt said, "You lived in a big maze, on a farm, where the walls closed every night? Just you and a few dozen girls? Were there creatures called Grievers? Were you the last one to arrive? And did everything go buggin' nuts when you did? Did you come in a coma? With a note that said the last on ever?"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Aris was saying even before Newt had finished. "How do you know all this? How…"

"It's the same shuck experiment," Minho said the hostility that was in his voice earlier, no longer present. "Or same… whatever. But they had all girls and two boys, we had all boys and two girls. WICKED must've built two of those mazes, run two different tests!"

"Did they call you the Trigger?" Thomas asked Aris.

Aris nodded, looking just as perplexed as anyone else.

"And could you…" Thomas began, but hesitated, not finishing his sentence. "Could you speak to one of those girls in your mind? Ya know, like telepathically?"

Aris eyes widened as he stared at Thomas as if some big some secret had been revealed to him. One that only he and Thomas knew.

"What's going on?" Newt asked, looking between the two just as the rest of us were. "Why're you guys looking at each other like you just fell in love?"

Somebody snickered somewhere in the room as Thomas answered. "He can do it, too."

"Do what?" Frypan asked.

"What do you think?" Minho said. "He's a freak like Thomas. They can talk in each other's head."

Newt was glaring at Thomas now. "Serious?"

Thomas nodded and turned to Aris, "Who killed her? What happened?"

I raised an eyebrow looking to Minho. Did I miss something? "Who killed who?" Minho asked, "No more of your freaky voodoo klunk while we're around."

Thomas eyes were slightly glassy as he turned from Aris and looked to Minho. "He had someone he could do this with, just like I did. I mean… do. But he said they killed her. I want to know who they are."

Aris head dropped as he spoke. "I don't really know who they are. It's too confusing. I couldn't tell the bad guys from the good guys. But I think somehow they made this girl Beth… stab… my friend. Her name was Rachel. She's dead, man. She's dead." He covered his face with both hands.

I felt a painful stab of recognition it was all too familiar. Everything pointed to Arish having come from another version of the Maze we were in, set up with the ration of girls to boys being switched. That would make me Aris' version of Max… and Aris their version of Teresa… and Beth was like Gally. Did that mean that Gally was supposed to have killed Tommy? I mean… he'd been aiming for him, but Chuck. Chuck saved him…

"Well, how'd you end up here?" Newt asked. "Where are these girls you keep talking about? How many of them escaped with you? Did they bring all of you here? Or just you?"

"They swapped 'em," I said suddenly, looking at Newt.

"What are you talking about?" he asked.

"They swapped 'em. Whoever, whatever, but somebody swapped em. Your friend, er…Max, right?" I said to Aris. He nodded lookin up with a few tears in his eyes. "And Teresa… Max is Aris's group version of me." I pointed to myself, "They swapped 'em." I repeated before turning back and looking at Aris, "Teresa is back wherever you were in your place and you're here in her place. They swapped you."

Aris wiped a couple of tears from his cheeks with the slightest bit of shame. "Look, I'm just as confused as everyone else. About thirty of us survived, they took us to the gym, fed us, cleaned us up. Then they brought me to this place last night saying I should be separate since I'm a guy. That's it. Then you sticks show up."

"Sticks?" Minho asked

Aris shook his head. "Never mind. I don't even know what it means. Just a words they used when I got there."

I almost laughed at that, looking up at Minho and then at Thomas, half smiling. It seemed both groups had developed their own vocabulary.

"Hey," a black haired Glader named Ryan called out. He was leaning against the wall behind Aris as he pointed at him. "What's on your neck? Something black, right below your collar."

Aris craned his neck in an effort to look. "What?"

There was a dark splotch just above the back neckline of his pajama shirt as he shifted around. It was fairly thick, stretching from the hollow of his collarbone around his back to the other side. It seemed to be broken up. Lettering maybe?

"Here, let me look," Newt offered. He stood from the bed and walked over to the boy… his limp was showing more than usual. I narrowed my eyes in concern. Was it acting up again?

"It's a tattoo," Newt said, squinting like he could believe his eyes.

"What's it say?" I asked, getting up from the bed to get a look, Minho doing the same thing.

Property of WICKED. Group B, Subject B1. The Partner.