A/N: You may notice a few cameos in this chapter.
Enjoy, quirkykids <3
She awoke to the sound of yelling. Her head was already pounding, and the sound just made it forty times worse.
"What did you do with him?!" one voice screeched accusingly.
"Who are you?"
"Where did you come from?"
"How did you even get in here?"
Then, in the midst of it all, a voice she knew. She didn't love the voice- she could barely tolerate it at the best of times- but now it brought some kind of weird sense of relief; it was the only voice she recognised amongst the commotion.
"We don't know! Alright? We don't know anything about how we got here- all we know is that we fell asleep in a complex with a group of boys, and woke up in here with you."
Teresa could always be counted on to lie through her teeth. It was rarely useful, but right now, Trace appreciated it.
She really, really didn't want to, but Trace decided now would be a good time to get up. She wriggled a little in preparation.
"She's waking up!"
Wow these girls were smart.
Trace squinted an eye open, wincing at the bright light filtering in. She could make out the vague structure of the bunk bed above her through her blurry, sleep-filled vision. With a sigh, she opened her other eye and rolled over to face the rest of the room.
"Hello."
"Oh my shucking-" Trace jumped about a foot in the air at what greeted her. A girl's face, mere centimetres from hers, flanked by about a dozen others behind her. "Haven't you heard of personal space?" She groaned, rubbing her head. "Who got me drunk? Because I feel shucking hungover."
But the girl paid no attention, instead deciding to fire off a round of questions in quick succession. "What are you doing here? What's your name? How did you get here? Is your hair naturally that colour?"
Trace must've looked more than a little overwhelmed, because that was the moment Harriet decided to step forward and introduce herself.
"I'm Harriet," she said. "This is Charlene, and over here's Sonya." She gestured first to the girl who'd asked all the questions, and then to the beautiful blonde girl standing beside her. Trace's heart clenched in her chest. Sonya looked so much like Newt.
She caught Teresa's eye from across the room, who gave her a quick shake of the head to say 'don't give it away'. Trace knew she was right; she couldn't tell Sonya she had a brother- not until she could promise to save him. Trace definitely couldn't do that yet.
So, with some stupid, ridiculous twist of fate, she found herself doing what Teresa wanted.
Gross.
She'd have to make up for this somehow.
"What's your name?" Harriet asked, her eyes seeming to drill right through into Trace's soul. Somehow, Trace still admired her. Harriet was a really interesting character, and one Trace had really wanted to get to know throughout the series. Now she had the chance.
"Ava. Her name is Ava."
They all turned to look at Teresa, wondering why she was the one to answer the question. Trace wanted to ask the same exact thing; she could speak for herself.
"I think she can speak for herself," said one of the other girls, stepping forward to give Teresa a scrutinising glare. Trace really liked this girl.
"What is your name?" Harriet asked again. "I want to hear it from you."
Trace knew they'd be suspicious if she hesitated. She also knew they'd be suspicious if she changed her name from what Teresa had said. Granted, they'd be suspicious no matter what she did, but she didn't want to make things any more difficult than they needed to be.
"Ava," she stated, hating herself. The name tasted bitter on her tongue. "My name is Ava. Her name is Teresa. And we're just as clueless as you are as to how we got here."
The last part was a blatant lie, but that was kind of the theme of this whole series, wasn't it? Blatant lying and children dying?
Yeah, that pretty much summed it up.
"You have no idea? You just got moved from a building of boys to a building of girls and don't have any recollection of how that might've happened?"
"Nope. None at all. Just woke up here- thanks for that, by the way. I was planning on sleeping in."
"Sounds a little familiar, don't you think?" Charlene said, turning to Harriet with her arms crossed. Harriet stared at her and blinked once.
"This isn't like the maze. We're not even with WICKED anymore. We got out."
"Yeah, but don't you think it's a little weird, Harriet? Aris just disappears overnight? Two mysterious girls appear in his room by the morning? Sounds an awful lot like WICKED to me," said another girl, the same one who'd stood up for Trace.
"They're dead. Ava Paige is dead. Come on, Lara, surely you don't believe what you're saying?"
Lara raised an eyebrow. "I believe they've deceived us before. I certainly believe they'd do it again."
"Not to this extent though," spoke another girl, from within the group. "They wouldn't fake their deaths, would they?"
"They've done worse," Sonya muttered, seeming to believe in the theory. "What's to say we're not still being tested?"
"That's just crazy," laughed the other girl. "No way! We just got rescued!"
"I think Sonya's right, Emilia. How else could you explain this?" Harriet turned to the girl.
Emilia threw her hands up in exasperation. "I don't know! Literally any other reason!"
"What was that?" Sonya muttered, staring at Emilia's shoulder with curiosity.
Emilia looked alarmed. "What's what?"
Now was a good time to butt in if she wanted to get a good look at everyone's tattoos, so Trace stepped forward. "On your shoulder," she said. "It looks like a tattoo." She pulled the back of Emilia's shirt down a little to reveal that all-too-familiar text on her shoulder blade.
"Subject B14: The Latch," Trace read aloud.
"What? Let me see," Harriet urged, pushing through to see the tattoo for herself. "It's true," she remarked. "That's what it says."
"You have one too," Sonja gasped, pulling on Harriet's shirt. "You're Subject B4: The Charge."
Harriet read Sonya's: Subject B5: The Chain.
"The Chain?" Sonya asked, confused.
"Yeah," Harriet replied. "I guess it's because you link us together, you know? Stop us from coming apart."
"I hate this," Trace muttered, struggling to contain her emotions. "I hate this so much."
"Let me read yours," said a voice from behind her. It was Lara.
Trace supposed she could trust her.
"What does Ava's say?" Charlene asked, approaching them.
"Slow down, you stick. I'm about to check." Lara rolled her eyes before pulling back Trace's shirt.
They both frowned.
"What?" Trace asked. "What does it say?"
"I- it says Subject A250."
Trace paled. "250? Why would it say that? Why 250?"
"Why is she Subject A? The rest of us are B..." Charlene pondered.
Trace ignored that part. "What does the rest say?"
Lara frowned at the tattoo for a second time. Finally she replied: "It says 'The Fraud'."
They went quiet. Whatever that tattoo meant, it wasn't good. It was Charlene who broke the silence. "I'm B9," she said. "The Hedgehog."
Lara snorted. "The Hedgehog? Why?"
Trace tried hard not to laugh at that one. Instead she tried to decipher its meaning.
Charlene stood up taller. "Because I'm small and cute," she announced proudly.
"Or nosy and diseased," Lara countered.
"Curious," Trace added, and they both turned to frown at her. "Hedgehogs are symbols of curiosity," she explained.
Charlene nodded. "Ah," Charlene said. "Curiosity. I guess that could be it."
"Well, then I must be really smart, because I'm B11: The Lighthouse."
Now Trace did laugh. "The Lighthouse?"
"Yes, Fraud. I light the pathway to our success."
Charlene laughed. "More like our demise."
Trace met two more girls: Sakina and Alana. They were known as the B8 and B9. The Wind and The Rain. She thought that was as equally poetic as it was ridiculous. WICKED sure had fun coming up with these nicknames.
By then, Harriet and Sonya had stopped by every person, checking every tattoo. Most people didn't have nicknames, so Trace was feeling pretty darn blessed. Right up until she realised that she and Teresa had arrived as 'The Betrayer' and 'The Fraud'.
Probably not the best first impression.
Trace wasn't a fraud, was she? She might know a little more than the others, but she certainly wasn't a fraud. She wasn't pretending to be anything other than herself. The whole ordeal just confused her even more. She decided it was probably a ploy of WICKED's to make the others suspicious of her.
It was already working. A group of girls had already started talking about her in the corner.
Typical.
It only made her want to be back with Group A even more. She missed them.
But she knew if she played along and stayed vigilant, there was a high chance she'd see them again.
She just had to be patient.
It was going to be a long week.