The Dark Side of the Maze

15-The Changing

Harriet's POV

Going through the changing and seeing the changing are two completely different things, and if someone asked me to explain the changing, I have one very distinct word in mind. Death. You lay down, near unmoving, while your body decays and your life flashes before your eyes. It terrifying seeing faces put onto memories. I couldnt keep track of time. I couldnt move my body. It was like a dream in a way: you see all these things coming together in a way that sorta makes sense, but at the same time confuses you. Also i was aware that i was going throught the changing. I was also somewhat aware of what was going on around me.

***

I walked around a deadly hot wasteland, that seemed to have been a remnant of a forest, where all the trees were reduced to ashes.

The scene changes, and there was a woman who was holding hands with a man, and I remembered them in an instant. Mom and Dad. How could I have forgotten them?! They seemed to be talking between each other, and I stood with my young little body between the two. I was both watching myself from the outside and seeing it from my own perspective at the same time which was very surreal.

Suddenly there were screams from outside. Dad ran to the front of the hut while mom suddenly had me in me a hug, and she seemed to be crying. I couldn't make out a clear thing that was happening, it was all too hazy.

Suddenly dad was in the hut again, his eyes were wild and he loooked pale as a ghost. He crumpled to the floor with a thud, revealing his blood-drenched back. Mom looked like she was screaming, but no noise was happening. My body was only about 9, so i wasnt all that sure what had happened. I felt tears streaming down my face and my eyes were swollen and red. "Daddy!" I heard a voice scream, not realizing it was my own. My mother was hysterical when two men in white bio-hazrd suits came in. They held strange instruments.

I could hear them talking to my mother. I swear I heard the work crank, but I don't know why. She was frantic and threw her body over mine, as if protecting me. Then I heard the gunshot. Blood spattered acrossed my vision and my mother crumpled to the ground near my feet. I stared at her in horror as blood poured from her temple.

The scene changes like a slideshow, showing me different footages of my memories.

Then I find myself standing over an operating table. I look down in horror realizing the girl on the table is me. I stare at my small figure as a woman in a white suit slides a knife over the side of my head. I hear the crunch of my skull as they remove part of my cranium. I see her picking and proding at my brain. She implants a thin metal chip into the side of my brain.

"Now what was programmed on this?" a familiar voice asked. I gasped. It was Aris.

"This is a pre-programmed chip that will erase her mind, except for some things we wanted her to retain," another voice says.

"She seems to be one of the brighter Munies we've had, she'll be a great canidate, along with Thomas." The voice says. It's Rachel. The scenes turns black.

***

My eye's open, and I am in a room alone. My hands go straight to my head and my fingers gingerly move over my skin. I feel a rough ridge that ive never noticed, it must be the scar from my brain dissection. It's like I have awoken from a deep sleep, but this time is different from other sleep's, because instead of the disoriented feel I usually awake to, I awake with an emotion very strong, so strong I feel like I am burning with it. I blink, and the thing that is fueling me hatches a plan. The thing that fuels me, I realize, is Hatered. And that hate is aimed for only one person. A person I have to kill to end this nightmare. A person who has done me wrong. She is one of them. Her and the boy did it. They killed my family. They took my memories. They put me in this endless maze. Rachel. I can't just kill her, they would banish me in a second and I am not in the mood for another night with the grievers. No, I have to be strategic, I have to be smart about this. Then I come up with a terribly evil plan. She will die, one way or another.