The Reason

The Heist

Luckily, Nicola was tall enough to pass as a guard. She followed Gally through the parking structure till they met up with Thomas, Newt and Teresa. The four of them took a stairwell to the sublevel, leaving her to stand guard and watch for Brenda to come with the bus. She felt Gally touch her arm before he slipped away. It was hard enough to focus when she was in Wicked's own house with guards crawling all over the place, she didn't need to go swooning over the recently resurrected Gally on top of it all.

She tried to breathe normally and not fidget so she wouldn't draw any attention to herself. She wondered what would happen when Thomas got Minho out and the Right Arm had brought Wicked down. Would she have to part ways with Gally? That would suck, knowing he's alive and just leaving him. She doubted he would want to come with them given how they'd greeted him, but she hoped he would. Or else she might have to risk making a fool of herself to ask him if she could stay with him. He hadn't really explained clearly how he felt about her after they cleared things up about the kiss, she still worried he didn't want her.

It might have been five minutes later that she heard a blip on her walkie talkie, breaking her run away freight train of thought. She slipped into the stairwell while no one was looking and answered.

"Hey, we hit a snag," came Gally's voice over a terrible racket. "Minho's not here, they're going to get him. I need you to come down and help me out."

"Ok, I'll let Brenda know," She agreed before setting off down the stairs.

She got to the holding cell and immediately faced some armed kids and put her hands up, the loud grinding of a saw coming from the back of the room.

"Take off the mask," one of the kids instructed.

"Ok, it's ok," she said as she slowly reached up and began to take it off. "I'm here with Gally to get you out."

"Show us your hair," they demanded next, confusing her until she realized. She pulled her ponytail over her shoulder, showing the long and short parts. "It's her."

They all lowered their weapons and led her back to the vault where Gally was, still sawing away. Nikola came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder to let him know she was there.

"What do you need?" She asked him over the noise.

"As soon as I get in, we take the serum and the kids and get out of here," he told her. "And we have to catch up with Thomas after he gets Minho."

"Ok... what do I do right now?" She asked him, a bit confused still.

"Just be ready to help me grab the serum when I get the door open. Until then you can just stand there and look pretty."

She lightly narrowed her eyes at his back, a smirk pulling the corner of her mouth. She turned to the kids who were watching them with big, scared eyes.

"It's going to be ok," She told them again. "Wicked isn't going to hurt you anymore. We're going to get you on a bus and get you out of here. We have it all planned out, ok? So don't worry."

They looked so young. She wondered if she had been that young when she wound up in the maze and what she looked like now.

"Did- did you all come from a maze?" she asked them out of sheer curiosity.

They looked confused by that and shook their heads. One told her they had gone through other trials and Minho was the only one from a maze trial.

"That's... good, I guess," she muttered to herself before there was a clang behind her.

She hopped to and went in the door as soon as Gally pulled it open, shuffling through the supplies until she found vials of blue liquid just like Lawrence had. "I got it!"