Chapter Text
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Chapter 1.
People cheer as Ava Paige, Doctor in Biology, former politician and the Last Chancellor of the now-defunct WCKD is executed for Crimes Against Humanity: including Unethical Medical Practices, Fraud, Child Endangerment, Child Abuse, Torture, Kidnapping, Aiding and Abetting as well as being directly responsible for an endless list of Murders.
“So, it’s over then?” A male voice says thoughtfully.
“For now, at least,” the woman sitting across the table from him says thoughtfully.
They’re Vince and Mary Cooper, the leaders of the Right Arm, the organization that took it upon themselves to oppose WCKD, to fight them and eventually take them down. It hasn’t been easy, it’s taken years; blood, tears, and even lives lost along the way, but they believe it to have been worth it (it must be worth it, otherwise, what was the point?).
“The trials of several high-ranking officers are still in progress,” Mary points out as she looks through some papers. “Including Ava’s protégé.”
“At least Janson is dead,” Vince mutters angrily. “He was a loose cannon. God only knows how much worse things might have been if he hadn’t had that accident…”
“It almost doesn’t seem fair, you know?” Jorge, the former WCKD pilot, turned high-ranking Right Arm member, speaks up from his position in a corner of the room. “I mean, el desgraciado killed how many of our own? He almost killed Brenda! And to be able to just die like that, of an accident? He never got to pay for his crimes. How is that justice?”
“It might not be what we’d have preferred, Jorge,” Mary agrees. “But like Vince said, there’s no way of knowing how much worse things might have been, had he been around when we took the Last City. He certainly wouldn’t have surrendered quietly. Do you honestly believe that the lives lost then would have been worth the satisfaction of killing him ourselves?”
No, it wouldn’t have been, and Jorge knows that. Doesn’t mean he’s happy about it.
Silence lasts for just a few seconds, before the door opens unexpectedly, and a young woman with hazel eyes and blonde hair in a fishtail braid bursts into the room. She blinks a few times when seeing all three adults, clearly not having expected all of them.
“Sonya…?” Mary asks, curious about what brought the girl to them.
“Oh right, we have a bit of an issue,” Sonya announces looking, not worried, but certainly at a loss.
“What kind of issue?” Vince asks, tensing immediately.
“Harriet called,” Sonya explains. “Agnes is asking to speak with someone of high rank. She wants to make a deal.”
“A deal?” Vince scoffs.
“That’s ridiculous,” Jorge snaps. “She’s guilty. They all are!”
“We know that,” Mary assures him. “Though I am curious as to what she might think she can offer in exchange for… well, anything.”
“You won’t make a deal with her, will you?” Jorge asks, hating the idea.
“I don’t see what she could possibly offer,” Vince shrugs. “WCKD is gone. Janson is dead. And every other high-ranking member of the organization is accounted for. Paige is dead, and everyone else who was in her Council will follow. The scientists and soldiers probably won’t get the death penalty, but most will probably be spending the rest of their lives in prison. Only those who switched sides early enough to actually be of aid to us stand a chance at getting out any time soon, and even then…”
Even then, no one would be avoiding prison. And certainly not someone like Teresa Agnes!
“She said she has information you’ll want,” Sonya explains. “On…” she looks down at a piece of paper where she wrote the details, as if to confirm things. “On someone called… Stephen?”
Mary and Vince’s expressions change so abruptly, both of them growing pale, tears forming in Mary’s eyes. Sonya can only wonder, who is Stephen?
xXx
Newt is well aware of how lucky he is.
Waking up in a metal and concrete box with nothing but his own name could have been the end of it all. Instead, it was the beginning.
He became a Glader. Part of that community of boys who would grow up to be men. He was one of the first to run the Maze, and the first Keeper of the Runners. Then…
There was a dark period in his life. A time during which the holes in his memory felt like they were too big, like what he couldn’t remember mattered more than what he did. There was an emptiness inside him, like he was missing something so important and the absence of it was only made worse by the fact that he didn’t even know what it was he was missing. For a while there he thought there was no way he could possibly live like that. Things got bad enough inside his head he tried to end it all.
Thankfully, Newt had good friends. Wonderful friends. Also, according to said friends he must have had an angel or something watching out for him, for how else could they explain Minho even finding out that Newt needed help?
The hole in his mind, in his heart, never really vanished, but Newt at least learned to live with it. He did his best to move on, to keep himself busy so the dark thoughts wouldn’t have a chance to take over.
And then came the day when everything changed.
It was the day before the Box came and Newt had been going around, listening to the Keepers list all the things they were out of and the things they needed. It’s not like Newt could submit a list to the Creators, or whoever else sent the supplies that arrived in the Box with their monthly Greenie, but for some reason the Keepers still seemed to want to tell him all about the things missing. And since someone got it into their heads that being Second-in-Command meant he had to listen to all those shanks complain… At least it was something to do, he supposed.
They never made it to that point, however. For right as night was falling; when the last of the Runners had made it back to the Glade, but the Doors hadn’t closed yet, a new sound broke the quiet.
The sound, they would eventually learn, was that of rotors, the noisiest part of a berg. And a berg was precisely what descended upon the Glade that day.
That was the day the Gladers met the Right Arm, who rescued them from the Maze, and from WCKD.
It wasn’t all perfect, and lives were lost when the Creators became aware of what was going on. They sent the Grievers into the Glade after the Gladers and their rescuers, but even though Newt and the rest of the Gladers would forever mourn the many lives lost that day, both of their brothers and the people who bravely went in to rescue them (most of whose names they’d never know), they would never not be grateful for making it out of there.
A lot changed after they left the Glade. As much as the Right Arm wanted (needed, even) soldiers, they refused to let any of the Gladers feel like they had to join the fight. Like they owed it to the Right Arm because they’d rescued them. In the end the Gladers split into two groups: Alby, wanting nothing more than to rest, to be at peace, to be safe, lead those who had no interest in fighting as they joined the growing community at an island in the north, which most called simply the Safe Haven. Newt became the leader of those able and willing to fight.
Even when his limp could make things harder at times, especially if he stepped wrong at one point; he was a hell of a fighter, and both Vince and Mary valued his strategic thinking and the way he was able to keep calm even in the most insane situations.
It was that which led to Newt being one of those leading the charge the day they took the Last City. The day WCKD’s rule came to an end once and for all.
And now they’re asking him to take on another mission for them. A very different kind of mission:
“Who is this Teresa Agnes and why are we even considering making any sort of deal with her?” the blonde asks straight out.
A file is handed to him even as Mary starts talking.
The top page of the file shows the picture of a young woman, blue eyes, brunette, Newt might even call her pretty. Not like he’s attracted to her or anything, she really isn’t his type. What strikes him most is that she looks like she can be no older than him, and he knows for a fact the picture is recent, taken upon Agnes’ arrest.
“Teresa Agnes is an Immune, one of the Favorites, as they’re often called,” she explains. “She’s also Ava Paige’s protégé and was slated to be the next Head of WCKD’s Science Department, and perhaps even the next Chancellor of WCKD, once Ava retired.”
Ava Paige’s heiress?! And they’re thinking about making a deal with her?! Why?!?!?!
Then Newt sees something else:
“She was in charge of harvesting the immunes?!” Newt feels like he’s going to be sick.
“For the last year or so, it’d seem,” Mary nods.
“Why exactly are you even considering making a deal with this bitch?” Newt demands.
Because he can still remember seeing those few immunes they managed to rescue who were subjected to the torture that WCKD called ‘harvesting’. And what’s more, he can remember all the ones they didn’t get to in time…
“She claims to have information on Stephen,” Mary announces.
“Stephen?” Newt repeats, not getting it. “Who’s that?”
“He was… he was our Source, inside WCKD,” Mary explains quietly. “Everything the Right Arm has achieved over the last couple of years. The fact that we managed to defeat WCKD at all, we owe in no small part to Stephen.”
“And you’re hoping to… what?” Newt wants some clarification. “Rescue him?”
“No, I…” Mary hesitates, clearly at a loss how to explain.
“Stephen is dead,” Vince is the one to speak up then, blunt as ever. “WCKD discovered he’d been passing information on to us. They tortured him and eventually killed him.”
“Then… then what…?” Newt just doesn’t understand.
“I want to know what WCKD did with him!” Mary finally snaps. “He deserves to be more than just a forgotten corpse in a hole somewhere. He deserves so much more than WCKD ever gave him… so much more than we ever gave him.”
Newt turns to look at Vince, hoping he’ll be able to explain what’s going on.
“You know, from the moment we first created the Right Arm, we always intended to do all we could against WCKD.” When Vince talks there’s almost a… detachment from him, and Newt cannot help but notice that the older man won’t look at him.
“We did our best to rescue immunes before WCKD could get their hands on them, and followed any and all rumors we could regarding their facilities. We had deals with a number of people to help us save those kids; which seemed to be working fine… at least until WCKD found them and made them a better offer. In the end, we weren’t managing much. It was like WCKD got immunes faster than we could rescue them. Also, the location of their facilities, especially the ones where they were holding their Trials, were so top-secret even Mary, who once worked for them, had no idea where they might be.” Vince shakes his head. “So, all in all, we had the best of intentions, but very little to show for it.”
Which makes Newt wonder, how then did the Gladers get rescued? And all the others? And not even just the Mazes they rescued, but all the other raids on WCKD facilities the Right Arm has been doing the past year. How…?
“And then Stephen came into the picture,” Vince goes on. “There were a few false starts. We didn’t know who we could trust, and there was always the chance that things could be a trap. Eventually, Mary agreed to hear him out, and we set up a time for a radio conversation.”
“Over the radio?” Newt is surprised by that.
“Yeah, it’s one of the reasons I was so, so doubtful about it all,” Vince admits. “I mean, if the guy couldn’t even meet us in person… He explained it eventually. How he worked in one of WCKD’s top facilities, in the one that held one of the Mazes, in fact, and he couldn’t leave…”
That, Newt has to admit, he did not see coming.
“How many times did you communicate with this Stephen?” the blonde wants to know.
“Not many,” Vince admits. “Even with the communications being as secure as we could make them, there was always the risk.”
“The first time we spoke, he said he couldn’t take it anymore, watching his friends die, one by one.” Mary murmurs in a low, almost haunted tone. “The last time we spoke, he gave us the coordinates of every WICKED compound, trial and lab.”
“Oh…” Newt’s jaw drops as he processes the implications: the fact that he and all of his friends owe their lives and freedom to this guy. “What happened to him?”
“He was made,” Vince states, clearly trying hard to keep his voice even. “Or so we’ve always believed. He said it too. During that last talk. He told us that he thought he’d been made and…
“We left him there!” Mary snaps abruptly, unexpectedly. “He was scared half out of his mind, feared for his own life, and still he gave us everything he could, so we could make things right. And we left him there! We didn’t… we didn’t…”
“You didn’t even try to get him out?” Newt asks in disbelief.
“We didn’t have the kind of resources needed to storm one of WCKD’s top facilities, not back then,” Vince tries his best to explain. “Even now, even with what we did in the Last City, the only reason we could do as much as we did is because someone inside literally opened the doors for us! The greatest security measures were inactive at the time we took WCKD Tower, and once Lawrence and his own army started shooting up the place…”
“But you went after the Mazes…” Newt murmurs.
“And that was hard enough, many lives were lost in the process,” Vince reminds him. “But we believed it to be worth it, to save children’s lives…”
And one man wasn’t worth it?
“We should have gone after him anyway,” Mary says quietly. “Should have at least tried! Instead, we abandoned him. We basically told him he was worth less to us…”
“So, to summarize,” Newt clears his throat a bit. “Teresa Agnes has information on this Stephen. What is it she wants in exchange for it?”
“Mercy,” Vince states. “Apparently, though, not for herself but for another.”
As he says that, Vince passes Newt another file.
The top page reads ‘Thomas’, the surname blacked out for some reason. Underneath the name there’s a picture of a guy, maybe Newt’s age, maybe a year younger, with messy chestnut brown hair and eyes that look like they might be amber or whiskey, or something along those lines. What strikes Newt most is that… he knows that guy, he does! He just cannot remember how, or where from, exactly…
“Thomas, second name unknown,” Vince states. “The last of the Favorites, though apparently he fell out of favor sometime in the last year or two. A gifted programmer, rumor has it he might have been involved with the Maze Trials in some capacity.”
“How do you guess that?” Newt inquires, taking a quick look through the file.
There are more pictures, several charts and graphs detailing things way above Newt’s pay grade.
“He was posted to Maze A, your Maze, for years,” Vince explains. “Same as Teresa Agnes. The two were transferred to the Last City very suddenly a year or so ago.”
“A year or so ago?” Newt blurts out before he can even think about it. “You mean, around the time you guys rescued us?”
That seems to give Vince pause. Even Mary looks more than a little surprised by that.
Newt reaches the last page of the file and what he reads shocks him.
“He’s a Volunteer?” he asks, so very, very quietly.
The Volunteers are those immunes who, of their own free will, have chosen to become donors in order to create serum for those who might need it.
While the Right Arm might refuse to utilize WCKD’s barbaric methods, Mary and several other doctors working together have found a way to create a serum, extracting the needed enzymes from the blood of a Volunteer much like one would extract plasma, or red blood cells.
This is of particular importance to Newt because he’s not immune. What’s more, he became infected with the Flare, while they were in the Outer City, preparing for their final assault on WCKD. They hadn’t been aware of it at the time, but the Flare mutated (again) and went airborne. Newt was far from the only one to become infected then.
There were several who died that night, during the fight itself; while others, because of how fast the Flare can act when the infected one is in a heightened state of emotion, went past the Gone much too fast for there to be any hope for them. Newt came very close to that point himself. It was only Minho’s refusal to give up on him, his insistence that all avenues were explored. And then… then Mary arrived with a dose of serum. He was the first to receive one that night. It’s probably the only reason why he’s still alive… and not a Crank.
Thinking about that, about how he’s only alive because of a Volunteer himself… and not just him. Brenda as well, and Miyoko, and so many others…
“I’ll talk to Agnes,” he announces.
Really, it’s the least he can do. And maybe in the process he’ll be able to find out why this Thomas looks so bloody familiar…