"In the beginning." She started to explain as Thomas and I sat side by side, our eyes on our friend in front of us as she began to deteriorate. "We were lost."

Mary continued to rummage around the shelves behind us. "All we knew was the younger you were, the stronger your chances."

Thomas turned around, and I knew the wheels were turning in his mind as he looked at her. "You worked for WICKED?"

I suddenly furrowed my eyebrows and looked at her as well with curiosity. If she worked for WICKED then why was she here? More importantly, why was she helping us? So many questions that needed to be asked swirled around in my mind like they were in some sort of blender. As she continued to talk, Thomas and I stayed silent—needing to hear every word that came out of her mouth.

But as soon as he mentioned the question, Mary stopped what she was doing and stared at her hands almost as if she were remembering things she didn't want to. But the woman nodded, humming once before sighing and speaking again. "Long time ago."

Thomas and I looked at each other as she ranted. "You know, at first...we had the best intentions. Find a cure, save the world."

She poured a blue liquid into another beaker, not making eye contact as she spoke. Seeing her handle the substance with so much care set me on edge as I swallowed—vividly remembering the day we had escaped from the WICKED facility. As hard as I tried, those moments would still find their way into my memory from time to time. The pain. The hopelessness. The fear of dying on the white tiled floor of my childhood room, holding a drawing that had been my only sense of security. At the thought, I reached my hand into the pocket of my leather jacket, pulling the crumpled piece of paper out.

It was worn down now, the colors fading into the tainted white. The sun was beginning to smudge the corners, and Newt's hair went from a vibrant yellow to one that was more realistic. The blue veins that occasionally scattered my body were dulled, now more of a blackish color as I stared at the image. I no longer wanted it. The reminder that I had been through such tremendous pain wasn't doing anything for me. If anything it just made me sadder.

"It was clear you kids were the key because you were immune." She set the blue beaker down and swished the other, looking at Thomas and me finally. "But why?"

Folding up the drawing, I looked back at Brenda. She was still wheezing for air, like she couldn't get enough of it in one breath. Her face was a pale color, the ripped red shirt tightening around her chest with every heaving breath she took. There were so many ways we could've avoided the situation that caused her to become infected, but as usual, our curiosity took over, and led us down the dark hole of danger again. I wished that we could just turn it off. No matter how hard I tried to not let it win over—to not ask questions, my mind always won.

"Eventually." Mary's soft voice brought me out of my thoughts as she began to speak again. "We found an answer."

I turned toward the woman once more as she began to fill her concoction into a tiny vial, pouring what looked like more chemicals into it as well. She was now wearing blue gloves, keeping any unwanted germs from possibly interfering with Brenda's health. "An enzyme produced by the brains of the immune."

She swirled the vial in her hand, seeming to know what she was doing without having to even think about it. "Once separated from the bloodstream, it can serve as a powerful agent to slow the spread of the virus."

My ears perked up as I slowly turned my body to face her. "So, you found a cure?"

Mary turned around to face me, disappointment showing all over her features as she gently shook her head. "Not exactly." She sighed. Speaking softly, voice full of sympathy. "The enzyme can't be manufactured. Only harvested from the immune. The young."

We went silent as we soaked up all the information she was willing to tell us within the few short minutes we've known her. She popped a cap off of a syringe, placing the needle in the vial of blue liquid that sent goosebumps down my spine. "Of course, that didn't stop WICKED. If they had their way, they'd sacrifice an entire generation."

She set the vail back down in a case as she held the syringe carefully between two fingers. Her eyes twinkled as she examined what she had created—almost proud of herself.

"All for this." She breathed, practically speaking to herself as she became lost in her thoughts. "A gift of biology. Of evolution." She turned to Thomas and me. "But one not meant for all of us."

Mary made her way over to Brenda, gently pulling up her sleeve as the girl continued to hyperventilate, seeming as though she was trying to fight off whatever pain had been induced on her by herself. But as soon as Mary stuck the needle inside her, I turned away, grimacing at the sight. Brenda, however, inhaled a large gasp of air, letting it go slowly as though her lungs had just reopened. It reminded me of whenever I took my inhaler.

Thomas' mouth was agape in awe as he turned back to the woman. "How long will that give her?"

She shrugged, pursing her lips as she emptied the syringe—I continued to stare at my hands. "It's different for everyone. A few months maybe..."

From the corner of my eye, I saw Mary place the empty needle on a table that stood close by as she continued to speak, her eyes never once leaving Brenda. "But that's the catch, isn't it? She'll always need more."

I stared at my friend, wondering what she was thinking about in that mind of hers. Was she dreaming? Or was she simply in a state of tranquility as all the pain slowly reduced in her body, the stinging sensation no longer harming her insides as a joke. I've never felt like she has—I know that. But I can only imagine what it must've felt like. An itch that she couldn't scratch. It's how I felt as they were sticking needles into the side of my neck for hours and hours on end. The thirty minute breaks in between were the only things that could have possibly granted me some sense of release. And even then, I spent most of them laying on the floor, staring at the ceiling and wishing the pain would go away.

As Mary stood up, she cleared her throat, ridding the tension in the room. She turned to me, pursing her lips into a smile as though she had many things to say. I had almost forgotten about the conversation we needed to have about somehow knowing who I was...and crying when she realized it. The woman fiddled with her fingers as I stared at her, waiting for her to say something.

"Let's um..." She started. "Let's go outside. Let them rest." She walked towards me and pat my shoulder, silently telling me to stand. I hesitated, my nerves starting to get the best of me as Thomas suddenly met my gaze. He gave me a slight nod, and I gave one back, finally standing up and following the dark-haired woman outside into the cold.

The air caught me by surprise. A huge gust of cold wind blew over us as I folded my arms to my chest, glancing at Mary as she came out from the tent behind me. When I met her eyes, they were already glossed over with tears.

I furrowed my eyebrows as I turned around. "You okay?"

She nodded as she sniffled through her nose. "Yeah. I'm just..." She sighed, facing me and bringing one gentle hand up to move some loose hairs behind my ears. Like in my dream, her touch was soft, delicate. I felt the need to close my eyes and lean into her, but before I showed any type of affection towards this woman, I needed to know who she was.

Her hand dropped to her side as a tear fell from her eye. I watched her as she took a slow step forward, moving towards a fire that had been burning in what looked like a tin barrel. Logs and stools were set up in a circle around the heat source, but nobody was there. Distant chatters were nothing but an echo as I followed her. She sat herself down on a log, patting the space next to her for me to sit. I glanced down at the space, then back up at the woman, wondering why I suddenly felt the overwhelming sensation that I was suddenly going to start crying. Her presence was nothing that I've ever felt before—not even with Newt. It was undefined, but somehow in the deepest depths of my mind, I knew what it was.

So, I moved around the log, and I took a seat next to this strange person. We were silent for a few seconds, just looking at each other, letting our minds wonder together. It scared me how identical she looked to the woman I had seen in my strange dream. The hair, the eyes, even her voice was the same. Like I could say anything I wanted and not feel judged.

"You're so beautiful." She suddenly whispered. Her voice was filled with secret, somehow knowing me although I had no idea who she was. As thought she snapped out of her trance, she shook her head and breathed a laugh, wiping the few tears that had fallen onto her cheeks in the process. "Sorry. I just...I didn't know whether you'd still be alive. And here you are..."

I pursed my lips and looked down at my hands, feeling the questions bubble up inside of me before I finally exploded. "Who are you? I...I mean, you look familiar, but you keep saying that you know me. I don't remember you. I don't remember anything..."

Mary sighed, looking at her hands as well before clenching her jaw and taking a deep breath...in through her nose and out through her mouth. "I've known you...since before you could speak. We..." She licked her lips—anxiety basically plastered on her forehead. "We met when you were just a child. We lived in the basement of a small house, surviving on only scraps before WICKED was formed. Before the sun flares, I was working as a nurse at a local hospital. When WICKED said they were looking for recruits to help them try to find a cure for the new disease, I thought that would be good for us."

I stayed silent as she spoke, my brain temporarily turned off as she went through what was my potential life before the Maze.

"So, I brought us both to WICKED. Of course, I had no idea that they would turn into what they are now...I just thought they were an organization brought together by the government to find a cure. That's what it was supposed to be. But...um..." She paused, clenching her jaw once more as she began to choke on her emotions. "When other parents of kids from your generation started to give them to us, that's when all the testing really began. Initially, we thought that training them to be a WICKED worker was all we needed. More doctors."

Mary shook her head. "But once Ava found out that brains were the heart of all this, she wouldn't stop until she found a cure." She stopped for a second, almost as if she was recalling the story in her mind and picking out what words to use to explain it. "I hadn't seen you in...years. They wouldn't let me. Said it was a distraction. They took all the kids and placed them in barracks. All except you, Thomas and Teresa."

"Why?" I asked, letting a question slip out.

She shrugged. "Thomas and Teresa were specially trained...something in their blood making them somewhat 'better' than the rest of your friends." She used air quotations to exaggerate her words. "But you...you were the best out of them all. A different chemical in your brain...you were different Mae. Are different. "

Suddenly, another tear fell out of her eye as she rubbed her face with her hands, too overwhelmed to keep going. But she did anyway. "I can't believe..." She let out a sob before inhaling sharply and letting out a shaky breath filled with sorrow.

"I can't believe I didn't know they were torturing my own daughter."

In that moment, the world stopped.

The people stopped conversing with one another, the fire stopped swaying from side to side—giving off heat. The sun no longer shined above us, my blood no longer ran to my heart...I wasn't even sure I still had one. It was like my body turned into mush and I forgot to function. I couldn't think. I couldn't breathe. I wasn't content, I wasn't sad. I was no longer relieved that we made it to the Right Arm, and partially saved Brenda. It just stopped.

But Mary continued to speak as though she had said something completely ordinary.

"They wouldn't let me see you. That's when I really knew something bad was happening to you. I would hear your sreams at night...and I remember h-hoping that you maybe felt the love I was sending to you. And I hoped you knew I was sorry." She wiped her nose and sniffled as she tried to contain herself. I sat still on the log, staring at her with the word ringing in my head like a broken bell. "When they started taking your friends in to be tested more often, which was when they started to build the Maze, I-I knew that something wrong was going on. I tried to—"

"Wait, wait..." I interrupted her, holding both of my hands out as I closed my eyes, my head clouded all of a sudden. She was talking so fast, giving me so much information while I was stuck on her previous phrase. "Y-You said that...You said daughter. Almost as if...if I was your daughter."

Her face dropped as I pointed to myself, trying to get everything to move at a pace I could process. "You...You were just joking, right? I'm...You're not my mom? My mom is dead, right?"

I ignored the fact that I've actually never really mentioned my parents to anyone in my life—except for in my head of course. I thought about them all the time, but since everyone else seemed to be orphans, I just assumed I was as well. Parental figures never really seemed like that big of a deal when we had each other. It has just been us from the beginning—the Gladers. Newt, Minho, Thomas, Frypan, the ones we lost...even shucking Teresa.

And now that this news was suddenly dropped on me like one of the many issues in my life, I didn't know how to feel.

Mary stared at me with an unreadable expression. I could tell the wheels were spinning in her head, probably contemplating telling me the truth or a lie. But I could already see it in her eyes. Her lack of an answer gave me one. I let a sharp breath escape my lips as I looked towards the sky, the waterworks suddenly turned on as tears lined the corners of my eyes.

"I'm sorry." She suddenly started as I looked up at the sky that was beginning to turn a darker shade of blue. "I-It just slipped out. I was so excited to see you were still alive that I just—"

Before she could get another word out, I wrapped my arms around her neck, letting all of my emotions go. The wall holding back my vulnerability finally broke, and I was now a tsunami of tears. Everything that I had been holding onto was no longer hindering in my mind and heart, but instead being let go as I sobbed into her shoulder.

The arms being wrapped around my back as well finally made me realize that the woman in front of me was, in fact, my mother. The woman who gave birth to me and held me inside of her for nine months. I didn't blame her for introducing me to the greatest physical pain I've ever felt—if she hadn't brought us to WICKED, I would've probably never met Newt. As hard as being put into the Maze was, and no matter how many innocent lives were lost, we wouldn't be where we were right now without it. And without my mother, I would've probably been dead right now—killed off by one of those Cranks if we stayed with the outside world.

We had so many problems. But all of them made us the people we were right now. So I guess you would call them...beautiful problems.

After a few minutes of just holding each other, enjoying the reunion of a mother and a daughter, two people who never thought they would be hugging ever again, we broke apart. Wiping the river of tears from our cheeks, we both looked at each other and started to laugh. It was a relieved laugh, one that happens when you manage to escape the worst possible scenario—a laugh that I've had experience with. But now it took on a deeper meaning.

We laughed. We cried together. And I had my mother.

"Mary?" The sound of a husky voice caused us to turn around. Vince was standing behind my mom, his arms nervously swaying at his sides. The man's eyes darted from Mary to me, almost as if he was silently asking permission to talk to me.

She smiled and pointed to a chair that sat nearby. "Come sit, Vince."

I furrowed my eyebrows. "He's...He's not my dad, right?"

"Would that be a bad thing?" Vince asked as he pulled up the dirty red folding chair to sit between us. My mouth dropped open at his words, but he just laughed it off. "No. I'm not your dad."

A sigh of relief escaped my lips. I clamped my hand over my mouth as soon as it did. "I-I mean...that wouldn't be a bad thing, I just—"

"Mae." My mom placed a pair of gentle hands on my knees, causing my mouth to shut. "Stop talking."

"Okay." Silence filled the air around the three of us again as I turned back to Mary. "So...what do I call you?"

She shrugged. "What do you want to call me?"

I pursed my lips into a smile, "Mom." I tested the name on my tongue. "Mother. Mommy... Ew. Not that one, I'm not calling you mommy."

Vince and her started to laugh as I had a war with myself—a happy war. Trying to figure out a name to call my mom. My mom. It felt so weird to even think that I had one.

"So..." She sighed, the tension starting to grow as she put her hands together on her lap, "I'm guessing you want to know the rest of the story. Why I'm here...why I didn't take you with me. Mae, I need you to understand that—"

"No."

Mary stopped as I interrupted her, one single word throwing her off so much. Vince also leaned forward, letting his elbows rest on his knees. "What do you mean, no?"

"I mean I don't want to hear the story." I was speaking before my brain even had a chance to process the words. "You're here now, and you're against WICKED. I don't blame you for wanting to keep both of us safe. I probably would've done the same thing. But...someone I know once said that the people we were before don't even exist anymore. What matters is who we are now, and what we do right now."

Newt's words replayed in my mind so vividly, almost like it was yesterday. It seemed like lifetimes ago that we were escaping the Maze, sitting on the bed while we figured out the dream that brought us together. Time flies so quickly when you're running away from things that could kill you.

Both adults blinked at me as I went quiet, the words floating in the air above us as some kind of symbol. Eventually, Mary shook her head in shock. "Wh-Who said that?"

I tried my best to keep the blush from rushing to my cheeks, but it was no use as I thought of the boy. "Newt."

Vince noticed this. "Was he one of the kids back there?" I nodded. "Which one?"

"Blonde hair, has a limp." I bit my bottom lip as I clenched my jaw. "He's very wise."

Mary tried her best to keep herself from laughing, but it didn't work. She let out a loud cackle, slapping her thigh as she pointed at me. "You, my love, are blushing. What is he? A crush? Boyfriend?" She looked at Vince, who was still staring at me. "I bet he's a boyfriend."