|I'm a soldier, 'til it's over, you and I fighting for the art of war

|Song: Art of war, We the kings

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Lisa's P.O.V.

Silence came down over the room. I couldn't even hear my own heartbeat. He offered back our memories, just like that, without any test or trial. The first thing to cross my mind was that it had to be another lie. How could it not? I had no reason to trust these people.
Still, as I looked at my father I couldn't help but imagine having them back. Having my old life back.
My eyes found Dawn, she noticed me staring and slightly nodded at me. But I frowned, my heart racing. My memories back, was that honestly what I wanted?

Ratman cleared his throat, making me jump in my seat. 'As you were informed in your one-on-ones, the Trials as you've known them are over. Once your memories are restored, I think you'll believe me and we can move on. You've all been briefed on the Flare and the reasons for the Trials. We are extremely close to completing our blueprint for the killzone. The things we need- to further refine what we have- will be better served by your full cooperation and unaltered minds. So, congratulations.'

Next to me Minho sat up straighter in his chair. I eyed him carefully. 'I ought to come up there and break your shuck nose,' he said, his voice terrifyingly calm considering the threat in his words. 'I'm sick of you acting like everything is peachy, like more than half of our friends didn't die.'
'I'd love to see that rat nose smashed!' Newt snapped, an anger that I had never heard before was evident in his voice.
Ratman simply rolled his eyes and sighed. 'First of all, each of you has been warned of the consequences should you try to harm me-' Images of the heavy armed guards outside the door flashed through my head. '-And rest assured, you're all still being watched. Second, I'm sorry for those you've lost but in the end it'll have been worth it. What concerns me, though, is that it seems that nothing I say is going to wake you people up. We're talking about the survival of human race.'

'The human race can shuck my ass,' I mumbled and crossed my arms.
'Let's just all slim it,' Thomas spoke next to me. 'Let's hear him out.'
But Frypan spoke up before Ratman could say anything. 'Why should we trust you people to do...What was it called? The Swipe? After everything you've done to us, to our friends, you want to remove the Swipe? I don't think so. I'd rather stay stupid about my past, thank you very kindly.'

'Wicked is good,' Teresa her voice suddenly sounded through the room, making everyone go quiet.
'What?' Frypan asked.
'Wicked is good,' she repeated, turning in her seat to meet our gaze. 'Of all the things I could've written on my arm when I first woke up from my coma, I chose those three words. I keep thinking about it and there has to be a reason for that. I say we just shut up and do what the man says. We can only understand this with our memories back.'

The room was completely silence for a couple of seconds, then I jumped up, unable to hold the raging hate inside of me any longer. This wasn't Wicked controlling me, this was my own pure anger for the words that she just dared to put out of her mouth.

'Well, if Wicked being good means you beat the klunk out of your best friend and leave him for dead, if Wicked being good means you kill innocent people even if they are as little as Chuck without feeling a bit of remorse, If Wicked being good means people like you with your sick minds can do whatever they want...' I took a deep breath. 'Then you can go to hell because no sane person would call everything we had to endure "good".'

Then I sat down and arguments broke out, mostly between the Gladers, who sided with Frypan, and the members of Group B, who sided with Teresa.

'Silence!' Ratman shouted, hitting the lectern with his fist.

It took a couple of minutes for everyone to calm down and find their seats again.

'Look, no one's going to blame you for the mistrust you feel. You've been pushed to your physical limits, watched people die, experienced terror in its purest form. But I promise you, when all is said and done, none of you will look back-' 'What if we don't want to?' I interupted him, sick of listening to his words. I was never going to believe them anyway. 'What if we don't want our memories back?'

Thomas turned to look at me and I saw a relieved expression on his face. Clearly he didn't want his memories back as well.
Ratman sighed. 'Is it because you really have no interest in remembering or is it because you don't trust us?'
I let out a sarcastic laugh. 'Do you really need to ask that question?'
He narrowed at me. 'Don't you realize by now that if we wanted to do something to harm you, we'd just do it.'
Silence fell and I could feel my insides starting to boil at his words. 'Is that a threat? Father.' I heard gasps through the whole room but ignored them all. Ratman didn't take his eyes off me but I saw my comment had hurt him in some twisted way. Which had been exactly my intention. But when he spoke again there wasn't a hint of emotion in his voice. 'If you don't want to remove the Swipe, don't do it. You can stand by and watch the others.'

Again the room was silent and before anyone could speak Ratman stepped off the stage and walked towards the door. When he reached it he turned to face us. 'You really want to spend the rest of your lifes having no memory of your parents? Your family and friends? You really want to lose the chance to hold on to at least the few good memories you may have had before this all began? Fine with me. But you might never have this opportunity again.'
His eyes landed on me and he slightly nodded at Minho. Then he walked out of the room and slammed the door shut.

My eyes were glued to the place he just stood. The image of Minho being tortured suddenly fresh in my mind. I had to keep my mouth shut, I had to cooperate, who knew what would happen to Minho if I didn't?

'There's no way we do this. No way,' Thomas said, taking me out of my thoughts.
Minho squeezed Thomas his shoulder. 'Good that. Even if I did trust those shanks, why would I want to remember? Look at what it did to Ben and Alby.'
Newt nodded. 'We need to make a bloody move soon. And when we do, I'm going to knock a few heads of to make me feel better.'
'We need to move, but not too soon though. We can't screw this up. We need to look for our best chance,' Thomas said and Minho nodded firmly.

A slight panic settled in my stomach as Dawn and I looked at each other. We had both expected the boys to be stubborn and that made this only harder. Whatever Dawn was going to do, whatever I had to help her with, it was going to get our friends hurt, badly.

Ratman was waiting outside the room. He led us down several turns of windowless hallways until we reached a large steel door. It was heavily bolted and looked to be sealed against outside air.
Goosebumps tickled my skin by only looking at it.
Janson placed a key card next to a square recess in the steel and after a few clicks the large metal door slid open with an horrible grinding sound.
He lead us inside, nervously I followed him wishing that I had some kind of weapon with me.

The big room we had entered looked like nothing special. Same tile floors and beige walls as the hallways. Lots of cabinets and counters. Then I saw something that made my skin crawl and my insides turn into ice.
Several beds were placed against the walls. Each with a menacing, weird looking contraption of metal and plastic tubes in the shape of a mask hanging over it. They looked like giant metal spiders.
A shiver went down my spine.

Ratman gestured towards the beds. 'This is how we're going to remove the Swipe from your brains. Don't worry, I know these devices look frightening, but the procedure won't hurt nearly as much as you think.'
'Nearly as much?' Frypan repeated, 'I don't like the sound of that. So it does hurt, is what you're really saying.'
'Of course you will experience minor discomfort. It is, after all, a surgery,' Ratman answered as he walked over to a large machine. It had dozens of lights, buttons and screens. 'We'll be removing a small device from the part of your brain devoted to long-term memory. But it's not as bad as it might sound, I promise.'
He started pressing some buttons and a buzzing sound filled the room.
'Wait a second,' Teresa interrupted, 'is this going to take away whatever's in there that lets you control us, too?'

With that question I looked at Ratman. A hope that I never had allowed myself to feel took over me. Ratman nodded. 'Everything except the tiny device that allows us to map your Killzone patterns. And you didn't have to say what you're thinking because I can see it in your eyes, no you and Thomas won't be able to do your little trick anymore. However, you'll have your long-term memory restored, and we won't be able to manipulate your minds. It's a package deal, I'm afraid. Take it or leave it.'

With wide eyes and a wild beating heart I turned to face the others. Minho looked at me like he was solving a difficult puzzle.
But Dawn her expression hurt me most, her deal with Wicked was gonna happen no matter what I did. 'I'm not going to put that thing on my face,' I whispered, hating myself for sounding so afraid. I quickly blinked when I felt tears filling my eyes.
Turning around I looked at Janson and his sharp gaze told me that this wasn't an option for me. He appeared to be giving me a choice, but in reality he already told me that I would never have a choice.

Dawn walked towards me and pulled me in a hug. Slowly she let go and I stood face to face with Minho. He was still staring at me but the puzzled look was gone. He had no idea what I was about to do to protect him. And I had no idea why I was even doing it at all, why his well being was so important to me. All I did know was that the mere thought of him being tortured was unbearable.

'Is this really worth a discussion?' He asked, a frown appearing on his face.
I nodded, biting my lip. Impatiently I wiped away a tear that had been crawling down my cheek.
'It's okay, Minho, it's okay this way,' I whispered, knowing he wouldn't understand no matter what I said.
He looked like he was about to give a lecture when Ratman his voice echoed through the room.

'Okay, I think we're just about ready. One last thing, though. Something I need to tell you before you regain your memories.'
My whole body tensed up by hearing those words. With Wicked, that could never be good.
'It'll be better to hear it from me than to... remember the testing,' he continued.
'What're you talking about?' Harriet asked.
Ratman clasped his hands behind his back, his expression suddenly grave. The icy feeling in my stomach spread to the rest of my body and my hands became sweaty. Suddenly I was really afraid of what he was going to say. 'Some of you are immune to the Flare. But...some of you aren't. I'm going to go through the list-please do your best to take it calmly.'

The entire room was quiet and I could tell that everyone was stunned. No one had seen this coming.

'For an experiment to profide accurate results,' Janson explained, 'one needs a control group. We did our best to keep the virus from you as long as we could. But it's airborn and highly contagious.' He paused and in a reflex I took Minho his hand and pinched it as hard as I could. He didn't even flinch, completely lost in his own raging thoughts.

'Just bloody get it on with,' Newt said, 'We all figured we had the buggin' disease anyway. You're not breaking our hearts.'

I frowned when I saw Dawn shiver when he spoke and suddenly a haunting thought crossed my mind. Why Dawn had been chosen to work with Wicked, why she had been silent ever since we reunited and why she had been looking at Newt like this was the last time she would see him. I shook my head, that couldn't be true.

Ratman cleared his throat and I wanted to punch him for dragging the moment. 'Okay, then. Most of you are immune and helped us gather invaluable data. Only two of you are considered Candidates now, but we'll get into that later. Let's go the list. The following people are not immune. Jackson, Monica and Newt.'

And just like that, the world ended.

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Hi everyone,

I'm sorry that it's been so long since I updated but I've been really sick and school is killing me. So I just didn't feel like updating. But now I'm back on track! I'm still sick, sadly, but I figured that updating could no longer be delayed ;)

It's quite a long chapter but I'm still proud of it. I hope you guys understand what is going on, if you don't please don't hesitate to ask me!

Please leave a vote or a comment, I love getting those :)

See you all Sunday!

xXx
UYM