"I only ever cared for..."
Teresa's words were cut off as she felt a choked sob rise up to her throat.
She knew she was going to die and she was scared. So scared.
Thomas..
She squeezed her eyes shut, tried to communicate...tried to contact Thomas with her mind.
She couldn't. This was the end.
The end of the trials.
She'd been running from death her whole life, and now she greeted it like an old friend. She had no other choice.
Very slowly her vision blackened until she fell into darkness, never to awaken on the beaten, dry, scorched earth again.
"NO!" Thomas shrieked and his voice echoed with the pain of every trial WICKED had ever put him through.
This wasn't happening.
It wasn't.
He ripped away from Minho and Brenda and dropped next to Teresa, tears streaming from his face.
He grabbed her limp hand and held it in his.
A rock grazed his shoulder sending a burst of pain through his arm, but he didn't care...he couldn't bring himself to care. Teresa was his best friend. His first friend. And that was forever. Thomas would never abandon her.
"We don't have time for this-" Minho began to announce without meaning to be cold, but he wasn't intent on loosing his best friend. His sentence was cut short as the wall above cracked. Both of the boys glanced at it.
Thomas met his friends frantic eyes. In that split second the two shared a mutual gaze of friendship- the last they would ever have.
Thanks for being my friend, Thomas thought to himself before forcing a sad smile.
"I'm sorry," said Thomas right before the heavy wall crumpled on top of his body. And he meant it.
Minho felt the breath knocked out of him- he never would know where he got the energy to scream his friends name, but he did. His knees buckled out of place and his mind went numb.
Numb.
Alby, Newt, and now Thomas.
"This isn't happening, it's not-" he never finished his sentence as Brenda grabbed his arms and dragged him through the flat trans, just as the building burst into bright flames.
The trials were over.
And they had taken Teresa and Thomas with them.