This Conspiracy

Chapter 3

Author stuff: Guys, I'm so dumb. I found all the old chapters. Here I am, thinking I have to completely rewrite the majority of this thing because I only have these three files from my old computer and on my Google Docs. I opened them up and got really confused why the first chapter was 82 pages. I scrolled down and screamed. Actually screamed. And then I checked the other two files. All 40-something chapters are there.

I am so dumb.

They're all there. All 40+ chapters. I'm going to cry.

Anyway, enjoy!

Chapter 3

In Which The Greenie And The Greenbean Have A Run In

The boy with the odd accent was named Newt – after the little salamander creature, from what Flossy could tell. He was kind and patient, explaining things Nick didn't want to go into too much detail on. They explained where they were – a lush, green place called the Glade – and how almost all of them had come up in the box.

"Save for a group of us," Newt said. She noted the slight tension between him and Nick, as if something had transpired between them. Something fairly recent. She kept it to herself, though. It was best not to butt into other peoples' business on the first day of meeting them. "Thirty of us just woke up around it with no memory of who we were. We learned quickly that certain things had to be done a certain way or everything falls apart."

"We have an order here," Nick said, looking them both over, "and we expect you to follow it."

"We have three rules. Fairly simple enough."

"One: Do your part."

"Can't have blokes being lazy. Like Nick said, we have an order here. Break it and everything falls apart."

"Two: Never hurt another Glader."

"Pretty self-explanatory, but we all trust and depend on one another. If we can't do that, well, you get banished."

"And, three: No going beyond those walls," Nick said, gesturing to the high walls boxing them into the Glade.

"Only a few people are allowed outside of them," Newt said.

Curiosity flared across Flossy's mind. What was beyond those walls? She studied them from a distance.

She guessed they were three times the height of the trees in the forest – the Deadheads, she thought that that was what Newt called them. And there was ivy climbing up the sides, though they didn't reach even half way up. There were four large gaps that could be doors leading out into... Into what, exactly, she would find out later. They gaped open at the four cardinal directions – though how she knew that, she wasn't exactly certain.

"And who are these people who can go out there?" the boy who'd come up in the Box said. He had rather pleasant features, she thought. Dark hair and eyes, with olive skin and an aquiline nose and square jaw. When he spoke, his cheeks and chin dimpled. He wasn't as tall as Newt or Nick, but he was still taller than her. She was just shorter than his shoulders. And he wasn't very broad.

He didn't intimidate her as some of the others did – like, what was his name? Gally? Yeah, she thought his name was Gally. Gally was... He was made to be intimidating. She almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

She felt, rather than saw, Newt and Nick share a glance over her head. She'd purposefully positioned herself between them. Something told her she could trust these two to keep her from any harm, or rather from any of the boys who wished to do her harm.

The spot they'd chosen was a little hill away from everyone else, sort of overlooking the Glade. She could hear the shouts and calls of the boys as they helped one another and tried to get each other's attention.