This was a fun experiment in writing styles. Plus, Newt and Death Cure. How could I resist using this cathartic fic as therapy?
It's kind of like-well. Like nothing you've ever felt before. At least, nothing you can remember. But somehow you doubt you ever felt anything like this even before the Maze, the Glade, Thomas. Because if you had, you're pretty sure you would have been shot in the head, body wrapped, cold, into a sheet and tossed into a burning, burning furnace to protect everyone else from your filthy, contaminated body. So. It's new. The whole thing is new.
When you first see the lines of poison (funny, you don't think they were the first symptom. They were just the last piece of the puzzle to click into place, the reason for the headache roaring inside your skull and the distinct impression of wrongness you felt in your body, like something inside waiting to come outside, sort of like a fever but worse), you almost ignore it. Want to. Shake it off, cover it with a blanket, lock it behind the door of a hut in the woods no one's allowed to go in, protected and secret and forgotten. If it wasn't for the itch beneath your skin, you might have believed it was just the shadows playing a trick on your bleary eyes in the dim lighting. The black curling around your forearm might have been anything. Maybe just a product of the adrenaline-producing fear you've come to live with nearly everyday for the past eight months. But that's not right, and you know it.
It's not really anger. Not at first. That comes later. It's not even sorrow or terror or probably any one of a dozen things you should be feeling when you discover the first sign of your terminal disease. No, the first thing is more of a lack of surprise than anything else. Everyone admires how you can keep calm in even the most horrible of circumstances. When everyone else is shouting and fighting, crying and cursing, you manage to keep your feet beneath you and your head on straight. That's one of the things Alby admired most about you. You wonder if he'd be proud for how you're handling this. (Not that it matters. He's dead. Like Chuck is. Like Winston is. Like Ben. Like Zart. Like-stop. If you start thinking through the list, you'll never come to the end of it and someone might come looking for you and find you with your sleeve rolled up to expose this vileness crawling just below the surface of your skin.) You're not surprised to find out you're not Immune. You already know not everyone is. If Winston wasn't, why would you be? It's not like you're any better than anyone else. There's nothing special about you. Except how you don't curse and shout and raise a commotion over this thing you've found in your body.
You know they won't shoot you. Well, you're pretty sure. Odds are, they probably won't. At least, not Thomas or Frypan or Brenda or Jorge. They seem sort of attached to you. And they'd most likely be able to convince the others not to either. It's not as though you being here is going to put them in danger. You're in the lower city, the part that's already overrun with the infected. If they really want, they could put their masks back on if it made them feel safer. So you're not hiding this out of fear. Yes you are. But not out of fear for yourself. It's fear for Minho. Fear that the he'll never be saved. Fear that you'll fail him. Fear that if anyone finds out about the condition you're in, they'll want to put everything else on hold and futilely dive wholeheartedly into all the countless methods that don't work. (A loaded pistol might actually do the trick-). And then what happens to Minho? His only chance of rescue, the rescue he's been waiting on for months (he has to know that you're coming, right? Has to know you wouldn't leave him with WCKD, leave him to be experimented on, and tortured, and drained. Not with everything you've been through together) would fall apart, split at the seams, unravel like an old sweater. And Minho would be left to rot in the clutches of WCKD and Thomas would be left to rot in the clutches of guilt because, for some reason, he seems to think it's a good idea to assume responsibility for every person he's ever met, along with putting the weight of the rest of the world on his shoulders no matter how many times you tell him otherwise.
All that to say, you quietly and calmly roll down your sleeve. Straighten your shoulders. Put that little smirk, the one that says you're living life for the heck of it and nothing it throws at you can hurt you-only amuse you-back in place. Go back into the other room with all the other people and nod when Thomas asks if you're okay. It's not lying. You're not okay physically, but you're okay with the situation. See, you're not panicking or crying or anything so you must be fine. If you remember right, (how could you ever forget), Winston made it a day. And he would have made it longer if you hadn't given him the gun he asked for so you figure if you start the clock now, living on borrowed time, you should have just enough to get Minho back. Maybe. If Gally-and how weird is it starting a sentence like that when you were so sure for so long that you'd watched him die-if Gally's tip pans out, if there really is a way to get to the other side of the wall, if you can somehow break into the most carefully guarded facility in the world and locate one of their prized test subjects and get out without being caught. You're not too worried though. You've seen Thomas accomplish some pretty amazing, incredible, impossible feats.
It's time to climb down into a sewer with your best friend and the guy you thought was your friend who wanted to sacrifice your other friends to the freaky monsters that had haunted you for all of your remembered life and then followed you when you escaped only to kill Chuck in an attempt to kill Thomas in a move that prompted Minho to retaliate with a spear to his chest that he somehow survived. (Yeah, it's complicated.) The smell below ground is pretty bad, but so was the smell above ground. A different kind of bad though. Up there it smells like too many people crammed into too small a place, with too little soap and even less hope. Down here it smells like sewage. Bad, but not quite as depressing.
The city, the real one, the protected, favored, rich, WCKD controlled one, is huge. Big and bright and, well. Not quite beautiful. At least not to you. When you're favorite memories are of the sunlight on the trees in the Glade, skyscrapers lit up against the night sky don't seem as pretty to you as they might to someone else. There's a lot to look at and it's almost enough to distract you from the gradually increasing heat in your arm. At least, it's centralized in your arm. You know, the one with all the dark lines. Your whole body feels warm though. And not in the content, 'have everything you need' kind of way. You might have felt that at one point in your life but it seems so long ago now, and definitely never to be repeated, that it's hardly worth remembering. This warmth is more of the one you felt when you first ran from WCKD. When you stumbled out into the Scorch with nothing but the conviction that there was a better place out there somewhere (now you suspect that it might be found at the business end of a gun) for the taking, and the sun was a relentless pressure against your eyes, an endless sting on your face, an unquenchable power source lapping up the sweat just as quick your dehydrated body could produce it. So you have the sun trapped beneath your clothes, beneath your skin, uncomfortably close to your internal organs. It's distracting for sure, makes it hard to concentrate on the shape of Gally's hulking frame as it lumbers through the winding roads, but it's not unbearable. You push it down long enough to focus on Thomas' face after he looks through the telescope, to identify the expression that only one person can put there.
The way back to Lawrence's hideout is a blur. There's a lot of sneaking around, and hiding from patrol cars (that's nothing new, you have lots of practicing hiding from patrols). At some point, Gally grabs your collar and yanks you back before you step into the street in front of one. That wakes you up a bit, enough to keep you in line through the rest of the journey back. And actually longer than that, you find out, as you lay on the cot Gally scrounged up from somewhere. Or maybe it's not that. Maybe it's the warmth that's kicked up a notch in your forearm and ribcage. It's gone from warmth to heat in the space of an hour or two. Or it could be longer than that. It's not like you have a clock to use to track the time. Or the stars (you got good at that in the Glade). You stare up at the grungy ceiling, listening to Gally snore (which sounds familiar and comfortable and like the closest thing to home you ever had) and Thomas tossing and turning. Neither of you are getting any sleep. That's great. You'll be a big help to Minho like this.
Morning comes, not nearly as quick as you'd like, and you can already hear the muffled noise of the city outside as it wakes up to another day of scraping existence off the dusty walls of dilapidated building. Thomas shoots off his borrowed bed like it's made of hot coals and that irritates you. Fry looks well rested, like he didn't spend the night lying awake and avoiding thoughts he'd rather not think about, and that irritates you too. So does having to joustle strangers out of the way in order to snag a bowl of thick colorless mush that Gally tells you is supposed to be oatmeal. You don't care if it sticks to your ribs and keeps you from being hungry the rest of the day. You end up giving it away and that makes you feel a bit better, enough so that you don't feel the same prickle of annoyance when Thomas informs you of the planned meeting.
Gally starts off by explaining his plan. He's clearly had time to think about this. Something like this takes months of surveillance, patience, and secrecy. Gally is clearly not the same rash, rule-keeping, status quo-balancing young man you left in the Maze. The plan unfolds and it gets to the part about Teresa and that's where your brain gets stuck. The conversation keeps going but all you can think about is the girl who (worked for the people who) shoved you down into the box, up into the Maze, into that nightmare and all that followed it. The girl whose very appearance started unraveling the carefully constructed life you'd made out of the Glade. The girl who betrayed you. Once would have been forgivable. Heck, Gally murdered Chuck and you somehow found a way to look past that because he was out of his mind, beyond reason. Perhaps you're willing to concede that Teresa was under the influence of WCKD back then. Didn't know what she was doing when she helped them put you and your friends into that horrific situation, out of her mind for all intents and purposes. But to choose willfully, knowingly choose to subject all of you to that sort of trauma again, that you can't forgive. And you can't believe Thomas would either. That he would pick this girl, this person who's responsible for the loss of your home, the constant struggle just to make it another day, the life-threatening situations, being hunted, the search for Minho, (heck, even your infection) over his friends, the guys he fought beside, bled with. That makes you angry.
Or at least, your heart rate speeds up, your pupils dilate and the sweat that's collected on your skin slides down to the low of your back. It feels like anger. Like your body is telling your brain what to do instead of the other way around. But if it's angry and it wants your brain angry, then darn if you're not going to be angry. And so your hands find their way into his shirt, slam him against the wall, faces only inches apart, panting, shouting, accusing, angry, angry, angry. But...this isn't you. This isn't how you act. That isn't who you are.
The realization slips down your spine like ice water and you release him, release your friend, apologize (even if you did sort of mean a little bit of some of what you said), and take in the worried expressions on the others' faces. Heck, Brenda even looks scared. You don't want to be scary. You don't want to be angry. You don't want to stand in this dim little room with the single bulb and the windowless walls and the concern and the stale air and the way Thomas didn't even fight back and the apprehension and the black lines that are past your wrist up to your shoulder now and the uneasiness and you should probably get out and shuffle past the strangers and navigate through the unevenly laid out camp and up some stairs and find some quiet space but not quiet enough and out the narrow door onto the roof with the sun that is in the sky, not in your skeleton. A light breeze (probably carrying the Flare, though you've already got it so who cares?) brushes feebly at the tattered curtain of a nearby window and you close your eyes. Take a moment to just breathe. Breathe in, breathe out. In and out. Breathe, breathe, breathe.
Somehow, near one corner of the roof, there's a plant growing (miracles happen in the strangest of places). A splash of color in a drab landscape, you gravitate to it like a bee to honey. Sit down on the edge and dangle your legs over the side, nothing between your shoes and the dusty pavement below (it's okay, you're kind of used to a lack of solid ground. Not physically). You sit. There. On your carved out section of private space, far above the city below, far below the sky above. A lovey in-between area, somewhere like the pause between one heartbeat and the next, a silent spot to think about what you were and what you're becoming. (What you are right now is a bit fuzzy, less distinct, harder to define.)
You're sorry for what happened in that room, when you lost the temper you didn't even know you had, the one that impressed everyone with its absence (now they know better). That's not how you normally behave and it feels like you're being dissolved in water. Like chunks of you are being pulled out and the crevices filled up with something different, something hot and itchy, something hungry and malicious (you pull up your sleeve to run a finger over the raised black lines). It's happened before (sort of). Having your identity stripped away, filed off, scrubbed out, is not pleasant. It's disorienting and terrifying. And you'd really rather not. But at least when you got to the Glade, you were a blank slate (and Alby, Minho, Gally, Chuck, Winston, Frypan, everyone got to sign their name on you with permanent ink). You got to pick to fill the cracks with a cool temperament, with a desire to keep the peace, with the ability to push through everyday. But now those fault lines are predetermined seams the virus seems intent on ripping out. And you don't have a choice what replaces it. And if this happens too fast, if the virus spreads too fast, if it transforms you too fast, everything will have been for nothing. Alby's death, Chuck's murder, the friends you lost, the battles you fought, the risks you took, the pain you endured, your whole life, it'd all be a waste (you would be a failure). So. There's really no option. You have to save Minho.
Footsteps behind you and it's too late to cover the evidence (you don't want to anyway. Not anymore. He probably suspects already). You show him and you try, try so hard to get him to understand. To tell him without telling him that you're starting to get a little scared of losing yourself to this, that the only way to keep yourself, the parts of you that really matter, the ones that are in the most danger, is to save one of the people who shaped them like that in the first place. Saving Minho is the only tangible, effective way to save yourself.
He leaves sometimes later, a few minutes, more or less. You don't. You sit on the edge of that building, feet hanging off, shoes tasting thin air. You're not doing anything at the moment. You probably can't even remember the last time you did nothing. There's always been something to do. Some task that needs to be accomplished, some goal to achieve, some fight to be fought. There's probably one thing or another you could be doing. In a group like this in a city like this there's definitely some way you could help. But you just aren't feeling the normal urge to lend a hand. The desire is still there (hidden beneath the expanding black lines), but you're okay with sitting up here. Just a little longer. For all you know, this might be the last time you see the sun (instead of feeling it broil your insides).
Eventually, you get up, have to get up. Not a second after you're back inside, back downstairs, back in the gloom, Gally thumps you on the shoulder (big heavy builder's hands just like you remember) and grabs your elbow and steers you into a small side room, all the while chatting about how good you are with details and would you mind taking inventory for tonight? Thanks, Newt, you're the best and Gally's got to go check with Lawrence about networks and signals and some other stuff that makes no sense to you, not without the context. Then he's gone and you're left standing alone in the middle of a closet, shelves crammed full with all manner of knick-knacks, spare parts, and useless junk (forgotten pieces of forgotten lives shoved into a forgotten room).
You don't know what draws your eye to it. Or why your hand closes around it and you open the top, inspect the cylinder, close it. Loop it over your head, relish the sensation of it around your neck. What happens next is odd. You have an idea, one you can't trace the origin of (which can only mean it's from one of your stolen memories, of a time before WCKD), and before you think better of it, you're out the door and asking everyone you pass if they know where you can find Gally. Because this is suddenly very important to you (almost as important as finding Minho but not quite). Eventually a girl with a piercing in her eyebrow points you outside, where you find Fry sitting on a crate and Gally leaning against the wall, deep in their own conversation. While it's almost heartwarming to see them reunited, you're in too much of a hurry to wait. So you grab Gally's elbow, steer him into a small alleyway, all the while muttering about how you need something. He's surprisingly compliant, doesn't resist as you drag him away from his friend, patiently listens while you babble on about how you didn't see any in the supply closet but you really could use some, although maybe they don't have any, which would be a shame because you were sort of hoping they would, otherwise your whole idea won't work. With a quiet smirk of amusement, he asks what it is you're looking for. Paper, you say. Paper. You don't need a lot. Just a few sheets. His eyebrows go up but he doesn't comment, merely gestures for you to follow him.
So that's how you come to find yourself up on the roof again. The sun is still shining, though it's inching its way westward. You've got a pen in one hand, a sheaf of papers in the other, and a brain full of words you're not sure how to say. (How do you say goodbye?)
By the time you're done, the last of the light is fading from the sky. You missed the sunset, head bent over your lap, writing. Brenda meets you at the bottom of the stairs, looks surprised to see you, tells you Thomas and Gally already left for the tunnels, implementing the first step of the plan. That makes you the same sort of heart-racing, pupils-dilating, heavy-breathing mad as this morning. You raise your voice for the second time in your memory, demanding to know why nobody bothered to tell you. Why no one thought to come and let you know that the mission was starting. Why Thomas would rather trust the guy who tried to put a bullet in him to have his back instead of you when you've been with him every single day for the past eight months. Your hand flies up and Brenda flinches, even though you wouldn't hit a girl (would never hit Brenda). But you're not going to hit her. You hit the wall instead. Hit it hard. You're about to punch again but a dark hand catches your swing, holds you back, stops you. The desire for violence fades. If your face hadn't already been flushed with anger, it would have from the embarrassment of throwing a tantrum in front of Brenda, in front of Fry. Both of their eyes are big and wide, and in Brenda's case, wet.
Another apology feels useless but you say it anyway. You nod at Fry, a gesture of gratitude, and you move to step around him, to leave, to bolt, to run, and end up slamming into Jorge's chest. He frowns at you (at your red stained cheeks, your red bruised knuckles, your red bloodshot eyes), announces it's time to leave. You must have missed something somewhere (too busy writing your goodbyes to live in the present), the meeting where all these final details were determined. Apparently, you're supposed to be on the move right now. Fry and Brenda scurry down the hall. You try to follow but Jorge blocks your way, tilts his head, studies you. Asks if you're okay. You're a lot less okay than you were yesterday but there's nothing anyone can do about it, nothing that won't distract from saving Minho, who's been held prisoner for eight months so who cares if you've had this disease for one day, he's the one who's suffered longer, who needs help. You nod, more of a reflexive twitch than confirmation. Jorge stares you right in the eye, waits until you stare back, until he has your full attention to say that if you need anything, he's there. Just say the word and he'll be there, Brenda isn't the only stray he's taken under his wing. The nod feels more real when you do it this time.
Later, you're waiting in the church. Pacing, when you used to sit still. But the heat under your skin is making you buzz with excitable energy and you don't have your customary patience. Jorge is guarding the door, and Brenda plays cards at the table while Fry watches. You can't remember if you were a religious person Before (unsure if the lack of that memory is a good thing or a bad thing) but you think you might like church since you kind of like this one. At least, you would like the stained glass and the solemnity and the arched ceiling if you weren't too busy marching back and forth across the floor (since your body won't let you sit still without pricking you with needling sensations in your limbs and backbone), worrying about Thomas. About whether or not he can actually do it (you believe he's capable), if his romantic feelings will blind him to what has to be done (you know he still loves her, even if he won't admit it), if Gally can keep him safe (he did try to kill him once), if they can even find her (the Last City is a big place), if WCKD doesn't find them first (Janson has a personal vendetta against Thomas).
Right when you think your head might explode from all those thoughts (or maybe just from the virus eating its way through your brain), Gally bursts into the room, hostage in hand, Thomas trailing behind. Then everyone takes their places and before you're quite ready for it, the bag comes off and you're looking at the face of the girl who cost you your life (you're not dead yet but it's only a matter of hours...if you're lucky). Logically, you knew she wouldn't look different. Eight months isn't enough time to change her facial features. But you're still oddly disappointed when you find she looks the same. The same way she did when she betrayed you and your friends. When she brought WCKD to the Right Arm, instigated a slaughter that culminated in Minho's capture. She doesn't look like a monster. Her face isn't disfigured, eyes wild and mouth hanging open to reveal jagged fangs. She looks the same. Better even (and that now familiar flicker of annoyance kindles in your gut), like she eats well, showers often, and doesn't have to fight her way through the day just to live to see the next one. The talking part is shorter than you anticipated (maybe there's hope after all, maybe she will help you, maybe she won't betray you again), and then comes the part where she gets a knife and free access to all of your necks. Not even Thomas looks eager about that. So you volunteer to go first (heck, if she slices your throat, she'd be doing you a favor-although you'd really like to live to see Minho rescued first).
You straddle the chair and she stands behind you. She smells good, really good. Clean and feminine. No offense to Brenda, but you had kind of forgotten what girls smell like. The rattle of metal instruments on a tray shakes you out of those thoughts. Then she's tugging your collar down, only to stop with a sharp gasp. And you realize, the lines have spread. You clap a hand over your neck, exploring by touch what you can't see. They're there. The wide, hard, ebony lines that look like veins where there aren't any. You pull your hand away roughly, and tell her to get on with it already. It doesn't hurt that bad (you've had worse). As soon as she yanks out WCKD's chip (she was probably the one to put it there in the first place), you snag a piece of gauze, apply it, and head out to the truck to grab the stolen uniforms. (You don't have much time left. You have to save Minho).
It's takes a bit of shuffling and reshuffling before you find the right combination for all the uniforms to fit correctly. Frypan's fits, but Thomas' is too big, Gally's too small, your's too baggy. So you and Thomas switch, which is a little better but then there's still the problem of Gally and you have to change again. As you all strip once more, lifting shirts over your heads, elbows knocking into each other in the side room off the sanctuary, you see a thin line of red trickling down Thomas' neck. He didn't keep his gauze on.
Dressed now in suits the proper size, or close enough, you separate. Directions in mind, you walk the path Gally told you to, even as the appropriated uniform scratches against your body. You don't know how any of those WCKD guards do it. The material is heavy, drags against your skin like steel wool, each fiber catching on the very hairs of your arm (then again, this sensitivity might be a symptom). The helmet is nice though. Quiet and dark. So dark. So very dark. It helps. You like the dark (didn't used to, do now). It blocks out the too bright lights in the lobby of WCKD's headquarters. No one bothers to give you a second glance, you look like you're marching purposefully and confidently (mostly, you're just focused on putting one foot in front of the other since you've discovered that your mind has suddenly developed the tendency to wander every twenty minutes or so).
Everything's going well. That makes you suspicious because when do things ever go the way they're supposed to? You're in the staircase, on your way down to (Minho) the holding cells. When Gally pauses to sabotage an electrical box, you pause to grip the rail and catch your breath. Instead of taking in oxygen though, your lungs want to expel...something. You never could tell what it was when it first started dribbling out Winston's mouth, and it's not like you could ask him (hey man, what's that disgusting black sludge oozing out of your mouth). That's what's in your lungs. What they're trying to spit out. You manage to escape with just a cough. A cough that sends you reeling over the handrail, nearly wrings tears from your eyes, siphons off your already waning supply of strength. But still. No black stuff appears so you count it as a win.
Teresa's staring at you and if you weren't concentrating on swallowing down a glob of...whatever...you might have been able to decipher her expression. There's probably disgust there (you are a Crank, after all. Or at least well on your way to becoming one). Some pity maybe (even if you don't want it from her, not from Teresa of all people, it would still be kind of nice to know that someone felt sorry you were turning into a horrible monstrous not-quite-human thing). You didn't catch it, not even when you pulled yourself upright and stalked down the stairs after Thomas, passing her along the way, but she also had a calculating gleam in her eye (the stirrings of a ploy, her view of you as leverage).
You get to the central room, dispatch a few guards, release the kids (most of them are your age. But you haven't thought of yourself as a kid in a long time). Minho isn't there. Thomas says as much, sounding angry and worried, but you're not surprised. You've heard those same words so many times over the past several months that honestly, you'd be shocked if he was here. Thomas wants to split up. Wants to go find Minho with no one but Teresa to help. Teresa (who you still don't trust. Not completely). You're a decent judge of character and you know she can't be trusted. So no. You're not going to stay here in this room while Thomas recklessly finishes the mission. You're going with him. You are. You have to save Minho. Because if you stay here, get the serum, get cured and live, and Minho dies instead, you'll take that pistol and shoot yourself, Flare or no Flare.
Thomas wavers, looks to Gally for assistance. When Gally sides with you, you feel like you could go over there and kiss him. Instead, you stifle another cough, pull your helmet back on, follow Thomas out the door. You're on your way to Minho (finally, finally), then Janson shows up and it all goes to pieces like you figured it would.
There's running, lots of running (seems like you're always running), some shooting, some close calls. Paradoxically, you feel tired, even as the adrenaline is pumping through you at full speed, shooting through your veins like a freight train. You're soaked with sweat. The thick material of the uniform traps all the searing hotness of your body and there's no relief. Pressure builds in your chest cavity, makes even your shallow pants difficult. But your driving force (save Minho) pushes past all that, all the heat and the exhaustion and the way your mind drifts a little bit. You've got to run, shoot, protect Thomas, save Minho. Run, shoot, protect Thomas, save Minho. RunshootprotectTommysaveMin…..Run!
Time holds no meaning in these white walls, these flashing lights, alarms blaring, guns firing, hot, hot, hot. It doesn't even cross your mind to think of how long it's been before Minho charges around a corner, tackles a man, stops him from putting a bullet in your brain (where it belongs). Minho appears, raging and screaming, like some untamed beast. But when he looks at you, recognition slowly dawning in his eyes, you don't hesitate to rush forward and throw your arms around him.
This moment, this one brief second, with your arm slung across his shoulder, Thomas next to you and Minho's hair tickling your ear, this makes it all worth it. Your infection, your disease, your death, it's worth it. Because this is what you've been fighting for. This is why you followed Thomas into all kinds of crazy, nonsensical, convoluted, daring situations. This is why you killed people. This is why you rationally calmed every disagreement that threatened to tear the remnants of the Right Arm apart. This is why you dreamed of a better future. This is why you didn't pull the trigger long before you ever found you were susceptible to the Flare. This is why you kept going, even when you were swallowed up by despair and hopelessness, pain and depression. This, this, this. Minho-safe and sound, rescued and free. Thomas-safe and sound, happy and victorious.
Of course, you're not actually safe yet. None of you. WCKD won't let you go without a fight, Janson gives chase, and you're running again. Running with Thomas and Minho through these hallways. Just like you ran through the Maze, WCKD's other facility, the Scorch, Jorge's hideout. Running from Grievers, from Cranks, from WCKD, from capture, from fear, from death. Running, running, running (always together, always running, Thomas-Minho-You). It looks like you're trapped but Thomas thinks of a way out (he always does) then you're leaping from the building, falling through air, splashing into water. Dark and wet. And cold. You're surprised there isn't steam coming off you because you are so, so hot.
Gally's back, coming to your rescue again (you've lost track of whether or not he's made up for all the times he tried to kill you. Actually, you're losing track of a lot of things). But one thing you do know: you saved Minho. That makes you smile, even if the furnace cooking your organs kind of makes you want to cry instead. You get a minute to rest, a minute to catch your breath, squeeze it past the cough and pack oxygen into your lungs, to sit and not run.
The break is over far too soon. You are not ready. (You have to be ready.) You are ready. Just need a little help, is all. Some assistance to keep you upright when the world spins in a dizzying kaleidoscope of color and shadow, to push you forward when your feet don't want to move, when your soaked uniform isn't nearly as soggy from the water as it is from the sweat gushing out of every single pore because the sun locked inside your bones is shining in all its obliterating brilliance.
As your small group races through the city, you come to realize that you don't really have as much control over your body as you thought you did. It's different from being so tired you can barely lift your foot off the ground. It's different from being the kind of fatigued where you don't move an inch after you collapse. It's different from being exhausted to the point where even sleeping sounds like too much work. (You know what all those feel like, have experienced each type more than once.) This is different. It's more like your limbs are puppets that have had their strings cut. You used to be the one pulling the strings. But now, someone (something) is tying those strings onto new poles, getting ready to pull them in all new directions, preparing to put on a whole new show.
Fire dances in front of your eyes and it's only when Gally swears and Thomas swerves with you that you realize it's real. You lose time after that. Get flashes of tunnel, Brenda, serum between longer periods of hot, burning, hungry. There's also gunfire and explosions, some near, some 's a struggle to think past the hotburninghungry (hard to think at all), but when you finally manage to string together a coherent thought, it's not a pleasant one. The others are all fully functioning, fully capable (Immune). They could make it. Get to…the tunnels, right? That's where they want to go? They want to get there so they can meet...meet up with….Darn. You almost completed that thread. Oh yes of course. They could make it. Could run. Could run from the fire, from the blaze, from the hot burning hungry. But. You can't. Not without control of your body. Control of your mind. Which is melting like ice in the face of the hot burning hungry. They have to go.
And leave you behind.
You try to tell them that. You do tell them that. At least you're pretty sure you do. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. Suddenly, Minho's kneeling next to you, hand on your knee and 'just hold on'. You'd love to. Really you would. But, metaphorically speaking, your fingers have already been chewed off, burned up. You're not going to make it. (You really wish you were.) You can feel your imminent death as clearly as you can feel the black ooze finally forcing its way past your gag reflex. The goo slides the wrong way up your esophagus (thick like the syrup you collected from maple trees in the Glade), rushes in to fill your mouth, moist and warm and tasting like rot and decay, too much, all through your teeth, coating your tongue, too much, overflowing, spewing out your lips, dribbling off the edge of your chin, spurting out in fits and bursts, leaving gooey trails of muck across your jaw (at least it matches the dark lines already maring your face). It tastes sort of like blood too, like spoilt blood. Like this virus is taking what's good and normal about you and corrupting it into something bad and unnatural. The next spasming cough jerks your whole body, arches your back away from the barrier you're propped against, and as your chest heaves, you feel that small smooth cylinder press between your breastbone and the armored chestplate. You begin to frantically claw at your throat, trying to shove shaking fingers between skin and heavy fabric, trying to reach it. At last, you manage to catch the cord in your fist, to yank it over your head, to hold it out to Thomas. He's not looking, doesn't notice, won't know. He's got to take it, has to accept it, to read it. It's your final words, the last sane thoughts you had, captured in ink and paper, all the things you need to say, never had the time for, couldn't find the way to communicate before, everything you'll never be able to express because you're already drifting again, already melting (hot, burning, hungry). You beg and plead and beg and he finally takes it, expression pained and terrified and determined.
The fire against your eyes and inside your eyes and. Stability lost, balance skewed, forward motion. Earth-shattering explosions, scent of gasoline, flavor of decomposition. On and on. Wait. Stop, pause, up and on. Keep going…..move. Unresponsive body, dragging limbs, pain. Pain. Scalding, agonizing, excruciating. Pain, pain, pain. Hunger, foreign hunger, hunger that doesn't come from the stomach.
There's a voice. Someone's voice (Tommy.) You try to latch onto that, to tie your unraveling sanity to it. To anchor yourself before-dark quiet want need hot burning hunger. A veil is over your brain, black velvet draped across to obscure function and shape. No, you don't have a brain. It's gone. Hollowed out, gnawed on, ground up. Slashed and ripped, can't. (Can't hold on.) (I'm sorry). Can't move, can't think, can't breathe. Can't-
You drop, slip, fall out.
Of Thomas' grip. Don't feel it when you hit the ground. Don't feel anything except for. Hot. Burning. Hungry. So hungry. Hungry, hungry, hungry. Already ate the brain. Gorged on white matter gray matter yum thoughts emotion memory need-more. There isn't enough. Need. More. So close, a lump of flesh that you can smell. The jumping pulse and secreted sweat. Eat. Feast. Eat. Tear skin muscle. Crack bone. Must have, must hot, must eat. Eat Thomas' face right in front of yours, so close both on the ground.
Horrified and repulsed (you were trying to eat your best friend), you scramble off him. Apologize, even if the words are useless. You're a Crank. You're a monster. You have to be stopped. You need to be killed. Don't know if you can do it yourself, if you have enough of your own mind left to fight off the insanity long enough to do the job and do it right. So you only have one option. You look to Thomas (Tommy), gazing at him blearily through the smoke and the background noise of destruction, and you beg and plead and beg, frantic and desperate. He won't, refuses because he doesn't know (the hot burning hungry) what it's like. Doesn't know the unfathomable horror of morphing into a cannibal. He doesn't know but you do, and if he won't then you will. Thomas has a gun on his belt and you yank it out. This is your freedom (the only cure you know of), your penance (you tried to eat your best friend), your death (one bullet should do the trick). You raise the gun, put it to your temple, shut your eyes. And your salvation is ripped from your hands and the anger rises once more, drowning out the rest of you.
Growling, spitting, raging. Snap your jaws around his throat. Make hot him bleed burning lap the blood hungry. Claw your way to supremacy power victory. Weapons weapons teeth hands knives weapons. Slice him cut him shred him into ribbons pieces cubes. On top in control stab stab stab! pierce his heart watch him bleed. Thrown off not for long get up get close get ready.
Blade in hand, heart hammering, lungs heaving. So close ready now. Manic delight in anticipated gore and death. And finally, finally, for once, for the only time, your sanity and insanity are in synch. There will be blood, there will be death (violent, sudden death). But not Thomas (never Tommy).
Your vision clears for the briefest moment, a split second of rationality, a mere heartbeat in which you gain control, reclaim dominance, hold the power. You're already charging at Tommy, too close to stop, nothing you can do to prevent the forceful collision of your bodies, chest to chest, full momentum. You don't have the space or the time to do anything except-. Except. Twist your wrist, turn your arm just so and…
The knife barely gets between the two of you in time. But then Thomas' torso hits your hand. Drives the blade deep, punctures your Infected heart. The metal is cool, blessedly cold as it glides through fabric and skin and muscle, brings an icy relief to your fevered skin. The cold starts there, starts in your damaged heart, grows, spreads. Very quickly, very rapidly, spreads faster than the Flare (hot burning hungry) did. The last thing you see is Tommy. His arms lowering you to the ground (you don't feel it when you hit it), shocked face hovering over yours, tears already gathering as he stares at you. If you could, you'd tell him you're sorry but you're already dying….
Dead.