They Don't Own Me

Chapter 48

"Mae, what are you doing?" Tyson asked.

He slowly rose to his feet, followed by the others. He stepped slightly in front of the others to keep them separated from Mae. They could all tell that something was off due to the way that she was swaying slightly.

"I could ask you the same thing, Ty," she replied, walking toward them. "You know, it's very strange. I could have sworn you were supposed to be working earlier and that you were going to be back by now. But when you weren't, I came looking for you. God, you had me so worried! I kept thinking the worst things, like you had been taken by WCKD because they discovered that you had developed the Flare, or that you had somehow been shot."

The group watched her with wary eyes, constantly looking between the gun that she was now waving around and the crazed look in her eyes. Her hair was a completely tangled mess on her head, as though she had been running her fingers through it and had pulled at it nonstop. Her voice, normally very stoic and serious, had a strange giggle to it, making them extremely uncomfortable.

"And you know," Mae continued, "this one thought crossed my mind: is he... cheating on me? Of course I thought that that was crazy because you would never do something like that to me. But now here am I and here you are. And you're with Jackie, the same girl you had patrol with yesterday and the one who has the same shift as the one that you switched to. What a coincidence!"

She suddenly raised her gun to point it at Ivy, her normal serious expression returning. Several shouts of "No!" erupted from the group, Tyson taking a quick step forward, Ivy taking a step back, and Gally quickly raising his gun to point it at Mae. She came to a halt only half a dozen feet away.

"Mae," Tyson said, lifting his hand slightly toward her to try and keep her from doing anything rash. "You need to put the gun down. There's no need for it. Let's talk about this, okay?"

"Talk about what, Ty? About the fact that you are cheating on me with a younger b*tch, or the fact that you're conspiring with her to take down the organization we work for?"

"You don't know the things that they do, Mae," Ivy tried to say. "You don't know the hells we've been through the last few years."

"Shut up!" Mae suddenly shouted, her almost feral voice echoing off the buildings around them. "Just shut up, Jackie. Or is that even your name?" Her voice was sweet once again.

"Her name is Ivy," Tyson told her. "She was one of the teens that WCKD sent into the Mazes. WCKD has been experimenting on them, looking for a cure. They're killing them, Mae. I couldn't let them keep doing that. That's why I'm helping them."

"I don't care what WCKD's doing," Mae snapped, taking another step forward. "If killing a bunch of kids is going to find us a cure, then let's round up as many as we can."

Their eyes widened as they looked at Mae.

"Mae, are you all right?" Erin asked carefully. "You don't look so good."

Erin was right. In addition to her messed up hair, her clothes were crumpled. Her eyes were almost entirely black and black veins were spreading up her neck and into her face. Black goo seemed to drip from her dry lips. Their eyes widened even more and their hearts sank.

Mae had turned into a Crank.

"Mae, I need you to put down the gun," Tyson said. "Before someone gets hurt."

"I think it's a little too late for that, Tyson."

Another gunshot rang through the air, followed quickly by another and a gasp. The air seemed to still as everyone waited with bated breath. Tyson regained his balance from being shoved, his eyes quickly finding Erin as her body swayed before beginning to collapse.