A/N: Oh my god I hate this chapter so much! Just like with the plan chapter, I wanted things to happen but I think they happened way too quickly and not in the right way and that things just weren't explained at the right times! So apologies!
Aimee and I worked quickly and quietly, making sure the cantine was empty before sneaking into the kitchens and starting to raid the pantries.
"Grab everything you can..." I whisper in the darkness, my crying seeming to have ceased with the reassurance that we were speeding things up. A tired mumble answers me. "We can't take everything Dani. We need to take enough that we will all survive on for a few days as long as we ration properly, because if we take too much then your mum and the guards will notice how much is gone and will set up a search for it." Aimee responds.
I nod my head, though she can't see me, and continue to pick up ration packs and novelty foods that none of the guys in The Glade had had in a good while (just like I hadn't). I made sure to pick up a bunch of plastic water bottles and a few medicine bottles, which from what I could see in the light, were labelled supplements and nutrition which I knew that both I, and the Gladers would need to get to a somewhat healthier weight and proportion again, due to the sparse and out of date food we were given in The Maze.
"Do you know what the time is?" I whisper shout to Aimee, who was on the other half of the kitchen. "Um... Not sure. I left my watch on my bedside table." She whisper shouts back, trying to keep her voice as hushed as possible. "It can't be that late... I would say around 4 maybe 5? What time was it when you left your room?" She continues, making me furrow my eyebrows.
"There aren't clocks in neither the hospital rooms nor the monitor room remember." I laugh light-heartedly, the action feeling a little forced against my aching heart. "Oh yeah..." She laughs back, going back to scanning the shelves for anything else we may need for our journey to wherever this rebellion group is.
I start to look through my jam packed bag to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything, when the answer to Aimee and my question became apparent. The sudden noise of growing voices was coming straight towards us, and Aimee and I only had a split second to look at one another and duck before the owners of the voices came into the kitchen.
"So, I'm making a slightly bigger breakfast this morning because you feel guilty about sending Thomas into The Maze today?" A stern, feminine voice asks, rounding the corner closest to me. I watch as the shadow grows nearer to me and start to crawl across the floor towards Aimee.
I dart round the corner and startle Aimee, slapping my hand to her mouth as quickly as I can so that she doesn't give away that we were out of bed. "No, not because I am guilty about sending him into The Maze. It is a neccassary move I need to make to get us closer to the cure. I'm guilty because I'm not only taking one of my daughter's best friends only a few days after she has woken up and started to integrate into the facility again, but I'm also taking away one of the most important people to Teresa. I need to make up for that as I need her on my side as much as possible."
Fuck. My mother.
This situation just went from bad to worse.
"Ok. So am I making different food or just making more of it?" The other woman (who's voice sounded too familiar, yet I couldn't place a name nor face to it) asks with an annoyed tone.
"That's your decision. I just needed to tell you to do something extra before you started making breakfast." Ava responds, the sound of her clacking heels heading away again.
"That is all. I shall see you later this evening." She finishes, the doors being pushed open a few moments later. Paige's heels clack away into the distance, leaving Aimee and I alone with this woman who had no idea that we were only a few metres away from her.
'How are we getting out?' I mouth to Aimee, hoping she had some form of idea that I didn't have. 'I don't know.' She mouths back, leaving me to frown in concentration. An idea comes into mind, and I hope that it will work, though the chances of that happening are extremely low.
I wave my hand towards the opposite end of the counter, the one closest to the door, for Aimee to start crawling. She nods her head and starts to move away from me, having me follow her a few moments later at a steady pace. We reach the other side of the counter as the woman's footsteps ring out from the opposite side of the kitchen, giving us a higher chance of getting out.
Aimee looks from me to the doors, nodding her head towards them as if to say 'Let's go'. I nod my head and take a deep silent breath, turning to face her with an open mouth. I mouth, 'One.' And she joins in on 'Two'. And by 'Three' we both jumped up and ran as fast as we could out of the big double doors.
"Danielle?!" The woman's voice cries in shock, making me stop in my place and turn around slowly, completely ready for the scolding I was about to get.
Crap... I fucked this up... How are we going to lie our way out of this one...?
I stare at the woman on the other half of the kitchen of me, her face holding a certain level nostalgia for me. As I thought, the woman opposite me had happened to be my mother's best friend before we came here to the WCKD facility. Of course she had come here too and I'm guessing they are still best friends now, as they were when I was taken away.
"Melissa?" I ask quietly, unsure whether I should be afraid that she is going to rat me out to Ava Paige or if I should be happy to see her once more.
As the corners of her lips curl up into a smile, her arms unfold in front of her, beckoning me over to her. With the odd feeling of tears in the backs of my eyes, I move cautiously around the counter and straight into the arms of the woman I could easily call my second mother, smiling into her tight embrace.
She pulls away yet holds onto the tops of my arms tightly, her eyes scanning over my bruised and skinny body sadly with regret and guilt. "Look at you... What did they do to you..?" She whispers, rubbing my arms as if to warm them up. For some odd reason, I have the over-bearing need to cry once more, as if now, when I finally had one of the women I had looked up to all my life and still had respect for, I finally had someone to break-down in front of and let them take care of me.
And Melissa McCall is that person for me.
She was always there for me when my mother or my aunt weren't around to take care of me (the three women practically sharing custody over me as they were all best friends when they were my age, and even younger) and now when all the stress, fear and worry was piling up on me I finally had her to talk to again. Except these conversations will be a lot more mature, and hold more daring topics.
I knew I could trust her now. I might not have a few seconds ago, but that look she had in her eye when she looked over my body held so much guilt and regret that I knew she had to have been one of the people against my mother's decision to send me into the Maze.
A small sob escapes my lips as she holds my hands in her own, and her face falls. "Oh, sweetheart." She cooes, instantly willing the rest of my tears to spill down my cheeks. She cradles my sobbing body in her arms again, whispering apologies into my ear as if that was the soul reason I was crying.
"I'm so sorry darling. If I had known what your mother was going to do when she came up with the idea, I would have talked her out of it and kept you here. You didn't and still don't deserve to be treated like a test subject." She whispers, her hand caressing the back of my head gently.
I pull back out of her embrace and wipe the tears from my cheeks, though it was no use as they were only going to be wettened again by my tears a few seconds later. "No... No... I'm not upset about being sent into The Maze. I'm mad at her for sending me into The Maze sure, but now since I've been in there I've made even more of the most incredible friends that I could have ever asked for. I have a boyfriend back there, and we wouldn't be together if I hadn't of gone in there. No, the reason I'm upset is because I can't do this alone... I'm- I." I sob, not wanting to say the P word aloud.
"I can't do this knowing I could be like her. Just has horrible as a mo-mother." I tremble.
Melissa gives me a confused looks for a second, rethinking over my words as the suspicion set into her bones. She grabs onto my hands again and looks up and down my body, her eyes lingering on my stomach for a little longer than the rest. When her eyes meet mine again they are filled with sympathy. "Oh..." She whispers, biting her lip as I nod my head, telling her what she was thinking was correct.
"Who else knows about this, Dani?" She whispers, as I throw my head over my shoulder to see Aimee stood shyly in the doorway. "Only Aimee and I. I only found out yesterday." I tell her, the sobs seeming to have stopped, yet not the tears which seemed to be falling like an endless, numbing waterfall. "Good. You can't let your mother find out about this otherwise she will take that baby from you the second she knows it will have a chance to function properly outside of your body." She tells me, her expression and demeanour suddenly going serious.
"I know. That's why we are-" I start, but she cuts me off. "Why you're trying to escape. I guessed you were." She states, a hint of question in her voice which dissapates when I nod my head. "You need to sweetheart. Because the longer you stay here the more danger you are putting yourself and that baby in. I'm guessing you and Thomas have some sort of plan to get the others out too? Is that why you were in here? To get rations for your journey?" She asks, somehow hitting the nail on the head.
"How did you know?" I ask timidly, but she shrugs me off. "I thought of doing the same when I found out Elijah was being sent into The Maze. But I knew I would never pull it off and that I would most likely die out there. That's why I've been waiting for you guys," She pauses, nodding her head to Aimee, "To come up with a plan that I can help you with."
"You can help us?" Aimee asks somewhat shockedly. Melissa nods her head furiously and beckons Aimee over, just as I had wiped the last of the tears from my face. "I can make bread and food that will last you however long you'll need it for." She tells us, before turning back to me and squeezing my hands again. She drops them and moves around the kitchen, going to the cupboard where I had found the supplements. "And now you are pregnant Danielle, I can also help you keep that baby as safe as I can." She says, reaching up onto the top shelf to grab a basket.
She pulls the basket down and places it on the counter in front of us, rummaging through the dozens of bottles of pills and tablets, all for medicinal purposes. "Why do you have so much medication?" I ask her quietly, my body feeling drained from the lack of sleep and the amount of crying I had already done today. "You'll be surprised how often your mum asks me to hide pills in somebody's meal. Either because they refuse to take them or because like today, someone is being taken to The Maze and need to be given a relaxant so they don't have as many problems with getting them where they need to."
"I hate the system she has going on here. At first I thought it was a good idea, hence why I am actually here, but when she started locking all you kids up in The Mazes I knew I couldn't stand beside her. Hence why I stepped down to working in the kitchens. That way I could watch over what was happening and not have to be a part of it. It's horrible what she is doing. And completely dehumanising of you. It's basically slavery, and nobody will fight her on it. So I hope that your plan works and that I can help from the inside as much as I can over the next 24 hours to keep you safe. Because you are now our next generation and we need as much firepower against her as we can get."
Melissa searches through all the bottles and places 5 of them on the table, each having complicated labels on. "Alright, so you need to take one of these with each meal. You can't let anybody else have any of them as they are specific ones designed to not harm a foetus, and will only be wasting them if somebody else takes them." Melissa tells me, pushing each bottle forward as she told me what they did.
"This one is for the baby. Because you are only just getting a healthy diet again and now that you'll lose that diet, this will keep giving your body and the baby's body all the nutrients it needs to stay healthy itself. This one is a relaxant. I can tell that this is all starting to pile up on you seeming as you had a good cry a few minutes ago. And I'm guessing that with Newt being in The Maze and you being here after what happened last time makes it so much worse." She explains the first two, and I nod with a sad expression at the mention of Newt and how if I am not quick with this that he may commit suicide.
"And these last 3 are for sleeping, extra nutrients for your own body and then this final one is to make sure you don't miscarry. Because out of everything that is going on you do not want to have to deal with that on top of it. These should last you a month, and by then you should have found the resistance."
I smile at Melissa as she pushes them towards me, letting me stuff them into my bag. "We need to be quick now because more of the cooks will be here soon." She tells me, placing her hand on top of mine on the counter.
"Come back here after curfew tonight and I can give you more food and supplies that you'll need for the journey. Do you already know about the resistance that is working against us?" She asks me. "Kind of. We have no clue where they are or whether they will help us or not but we know there is someone out there." I respond and she nods her head.
"Oh they'll help you alright. Their soul purpose in going against WCKD is to get all you kids out and safe. They call themselves the Right-Hand, and they live far away from here. Too far for you guys to make it safely there before The Flare or other WCKD facilities find you. But luckily for you, you and I know somebody who is in their ranks. I will contact them tonight and tell them that you'll be making your way towards them at some point over the next two days and hopefully they will be able to find you first." She tells me, as Aimee and I slowly make our way towards the doors.
"Ok. Thankyou Melissa. I owe you so much." I tell her, giving her a sad smile which she returns. "It's no problem darling. There is more for you and I to talk about tonight, so don't let anything get to you today." She tells me, "Now go on. Before someone catches you in here."