He raised his hands to silence the rumblings that had broken out. "Now, now! No need to worry –the Flare takes while to set in and show symptoms. But at the end of these Trials, the cure will be your reward, and you'll never see the… debilitating effects. No many can afford the cure, you know."

I remembered the woman on the bus. She had said the Flare destroyed your brain… little by little ripping away your humanity and stripping you of basic emotion as it slowly drove you off the deep end. How you became no more than an animal…

"But enough of the history lesson and time-wasting," Rat Man continued. "We know you now. All of you. It doesn't matter what I say or what's behind the mission of WICKED. You'll all do whatever it takes. Of this we have no doubt. And by doing what we ask, you'll save yourselves by getting the very cure so many people desperately want."

I heard Minho groan and fought back the urge to do the same. As Thomas shushed him.

Ratty looked down at the messy stack of papers sitting in the open folder and picked up a piece of it, barely glancing at it before clearing his throat and speaking. "Phase Two. The Scorch Trials. It officially begins tomorrow at six o'clock. You'll enter this room, and in the wall behind me you will find a Flat Trans. To your eyes the Flat Trans will appear as a shimmering wall of gray. Each of you must step through it five minutes after the hour. So again, it opens at six o'clock and closes five minutes after that. Do you understand?"

We all stared at the man, transfixed, dumbstruck, at a loss for words. No one answered. No one gave any sort of response at all.

"I'm quite certain you can all hear. Do… you… under…stand?"

Scattered nods and murmured 'yeahs' and 'yes'es seemed to satisfy him.

"Good," he said, picking up another paper and giving it a once over. "At that point the Scorch Trials will have begun. The rules are very simple. Find your way to open air, then head due north for one hundred miles. Make it to the safe haven within two weeks' time and you'll have completed Phase Two. At that point, and only at that point, you'll be cured of the Flare. That's exactly two weeks –starting the second you walk through the Trans. If you don't make it, eventually you'll end up dead."

The room might've erupted into panic, chaos, shouting, arguments, questions if it had been anyone but us. But it wasn't. And we were seemingly well past that point.

Rat man slammed his folder shut, the papers within bending even more. And then he putit away in the drawer from which he pulled it from. The man stood, stepping to the side and pushing the chair neatly under the desk before folding his hands in front of him and turning back towards us. "It's simple really," he said as if he were instructing us on how to turn on the shower or something equally menial task. "There are no rules. There are no guidelines. You have few supplies and there's nothing to help you along the way. Go through the Flat Trans at the time indicated. Find open air. Go one hundred miles, directly north, to the safe haven. Make it or die."

The last words seemed to snap everyone out of their stupor as everyone began speaking at once. Hurling questions at the man.

"What's a Flat Trans?" Well, I'm guess 'trans' is… like transportation, but who knows.

"How'd we catch the Flare?" Shuckfaces probably infected us.

"What's at the end of the one hundred miles?" The safe haven, stupid, weren't you listening?

"What happened to the dead bodies?" They were never there, he already explained this. WICKED was messing with our heads.

But it didn't matter. Ratty wasn't answering, and he wasn't going to. There was no point.

"You shanks shut up!" Minho yelled. The questions stopped instantly. I almost smiled at that. Almost. "This shuck-face ain't answering, so quit wastin' your time."

The man nodded once toward Minho, as if thanking him… which was weird in and of itself. "One hundred miles. North. Hope you make it. Remember –you all have the Flare now. We gave it to you-" SEE! "- to provide any incentive you may be lacking. And reaching the safe haven means receiving a cure." He turned away, moving towards the wall as if he intended to walk right through it. But then he stopped, looking back. "Ah, one last thing. Don't think you'll avoid the Scorch Trials if you decide not to enter the Flat Trans at between six and six-oh-five tomorrow morning. Those who stay behind will be executed immediately in a most… unpleasant manner. Better off taking your chances in the outside world. Good luck to all of you." And with that last comment, he turned away, walking towards the wall.

But before any of us could see what was happening the barrier separating us from Ratty began to fog us, whitening in blur before completely disappearing, once again revealing the other side of the common room.

No desk. No chair. No rat man.

"Well-," I began, Minho finishing my sentiment.

"Shuck me."

Tommy disappeared somewhere in the chaos of the questions and arguments that filled the room following Rat Mans little stunt.

I leaned against the wall, just waiting for it all to die down. They'd calm eventually, they just needed time to process it all. Hell, I needed time to process it all, bodies hanging from the ceiling, the smell of death radiating off them, then gone. A random shank at a desk that weren't there before, an impossible barrier shielding him. And then gone. Disappearing in the blink of an eye.

That was… if they were even there in the first place.

Rat Man had said not to trust our eyes, or our minds. How were we supposed to trust anything ever again? Anyone ever again. We thought we were safe with the so-called rescuers and look what happened then. Dead. Gone… if they were even killed. Who knows? Who cares! We had some shuck disease eating at our brains now thanks to those shmucks.

Phase Two.

Another trial. This time, supposedly worse. At the end there was a cure… or so they said. Personally, I questioned if the whole thing was a lie. That Ratty was just saying we had the Flare. That we'd make it to the end, if, we made it to the end, exhausted and weak only to find that we hadn't any need of a cure in the first place. I wouldn't put it past them.

And then there were those crazy people… the ones the boys had told me about. Cranks they called themselves. How were we gonna deal with them?

All this thinking was making my head hurt, so I decided to stop. We were fine for the moment. Just fine. And that's what mattered. So off I went in search of Newt and Minho.

But- oh hey… peanuts!

Reaching out, Frypan slammed my hand away, ranting about being in charge of the food and how we had to save it up, and on and on and on and… I just backed away from that mess.

Walking into the dorm I found Minho and Newt by the door to the bathroom with Tommy looking tired and somewhat annoyed. "Well, we've got stuff to figure out," I heard Newt say as I approached. "And I need help to make sure the bloody foods not gone before we leave tomorrow. Something tells me we're gonna need it."

"You're right," Tommy said, "Are people still chowing down at there?"

I shook my head, entering the conversation. "No, Frypan took charge. That shanks religious about food."

Newt nodded, "I think he's just glad to be the boss about again. But I'm scared people might get panicky and try to get it anyway."

"Oh, come on," Minho scoffed, "Those of us made it this far got here for a reason. All the idiots are dead by now. He gave a sideways at Thomas, like he thought he might think he included Chuck in that assessment. Which, of course, he didn't. Minho had liked Chuckie in his own way.

"Maybe," Newt responded, "Hope so. Anyway, I was thinking we need to organized, get things back together. Act like we did back in the bloody Glade. Last few days have been miserable, everybody moaning and groaning, no structure, no plan. It's driving me psycho." A small smile, tugged at the corner of my lips. Order. Newt may have been just a bit OCD when it came to order. It was… sort of cute actually… man, I'm whacked.

"What'd you expect us to do?" Minho asked, "Form in lines and do push-ups? We're stuck in a stupid three-room prison."

Newt swatted the air as if the offending words were insects. "Whatever. I'm just saying, things are obviously going to change tomorrow and we gotta be ready to face it." What was he getting at? I wondered, narrowing my eyes slightly.

"What are you getting at?" Tommy asked, mirroring my thoughts exactly.

Newt paused looking between the three of us. "We need to make sure we have a solid leader when tomorrow comes. There can't be any doubt who's in charge."

I furrowed my brows in confusion, about to say something when Minho spoke, "That's the lamest shuck-faced thing you've ever barked. You're the leader and you know it. We all know it.

Newt shook his head stubbornly, "Bein' hungry make you forget about the bloody tattoos? You think they're just decorations?"

I slapped him upside the head, stepping in front of him, "They don't mean nothing."

"They're just playin' with our heads!" Minho said.

Instead of retorting, Newt stepped forward towards him and pulled back his shirt, revealing the tattoo branded into his skin. None of us has to look. We all knew it had branded him the leader. Minho shrugged him off, starting his usual rant of sarcastic remarks, to which I would usual listen to with a small smirk, but all I could do was look at Newt. "Why?" I asked quietly… so only Newt would hear.

Silence stretched as Newt looked at me, his eyes boring into mine, asking me to listen to him. I took a breath and shook my head. He didn't want to be the leader anyway. Never had. Breaking his gaze I looked over to Minho. "He's got a point."

Minho shook his head, throwing his hands up in the air in frustration. "You too?"

"Minho-" I began but he stormed off leaving Newt and I to talk. "Are you sure?" I asked, looking up at him.

He nodded.

And so I obliged, nodding, "Okay. I'll talk to him then."

He shook his head, "No, I'll do that, you get the others moving."

And that's how I ended up helping the boys make crude packages out of the bed sheets for carrying food and extra clothing that had appeared in the dressers. The food that had come in packages was now dumped in with the other foods and the bags were filled with water and tied off with fabric ripped from the curtains. We weren't expecting the poor excuses for canteens to last long before leaking, but it was the best idea we had.