"Drop it now girlie" a voice shouted behind me. Obeying the voice now I dropped my glass shard as Jorge's back up and the Glader's now watched in horror whilst Jorge was trying to beat Minho to a pulp.
"Minho say it" Newt snapped at him.
"I'M SORRY" he apologized holding his hands up in surrender towards Jorge.
"To late hermano" Jorge replied giving him another swift kick to the gut.
"Stop, listen we're more valuable to you guys alive then dead" Thomas tried to bargain with him. That made Jorge pause mid kick as he turned towards Thomas.
"And why's that?" he asked him. I looked at Thomas wondering what he was going to tell him to get us out of this.
"Just give me ten minutes to talk with you...alone" Thomas told him. Jorge pondered it for a moment and then looked at his back up.
"Any of these punks do anything funny, let the death games begin" he ordered them as him and Thomas left the room. Newt and I knelt down towards Minho to check on him as he sat up and spit out a bit of blood.
"What're we going to do leader?" Newt asked him.
"Right now Thomas is the leader not me" Minho admitted.
"Well we need to sorta plan for something in case worse comes to worse" I whispered. I took a glance around the room at the people, basically holding us captive at the moment. We were way outnumbered and there was no chance in hell we could take them physically unless we obtained firearms.
"Shut up and move away from each other" A man that look a bit older then Jorge, said as he came over to us and smacked Newt on the back of the head.
"Hey!" I instinctively shouted at him standing up now and then regretted it.
"You wanna say something?" he asked me, getting closer to me and lightly shoving me. I stayed silent as I could feel anger pulsing through me.
Stay calm stay calm I tried to remind myself but my anger got the best of me.
8 pounds of pressure that's all it takes I remembered from the back of my head as I swung back and directly connected my fist with his collar bone feeling it break under impact. Part of me wanted to do more damage until something stopped me.
"Stop now before you get yourselves killed" a strangely familiar female voice whispered behind me as I felt a very sharp and most likely very rusty object get held at the back of my neck. The doors opened and Thomas and Jorge had returned to find the man on the ground in pain. Thomas's eyes got wide at the sight and he turned to Minho and Newt who then pointed accusingly at me, to which I childishly stuck my tongue out at them.
"What happened here?" Jorge asked with a chuckle in his voice. He seemed to have had a sudden change in mood.
"I think she broke my chest" the man wheezed out
"Collarbone actually, know your own anatomy slinthead" I commented. The person behind me gave me a warning thump on the back of the head.
"So what do we do now?" A man asked from across the room.
"We give them some nice hospitality. Brenda, El, and I are gonna get them some food and then let them go on their merry way" Jorge explained. There were shouts of complaints from around us.
"They'll overtake the three of you" the man pointed out.
"Thanks for the math lesson but I think we've got this handled. Now go" he ordered slowly but surely they began to filter out giving us weary glances as they left the building. Now it was just Jorge, a pretty girl with dark hair that had to be Brenda, and the person behind me. Minho slowly got up and glanced at Brenda.
"Hey" he said giving her a flirtatious nod making us all groan. The girl behind me removed her weapon. I glanced back at her and was shocked at the who I saw. It was the girl I had seen in my dream a while back. In the blink of an eye she looked up at me and gave me a look of recognition before quickly erasing it.
"What?" she asked defensively.
"Thanks" I muttered to her. If she was who I thought she was then she had just saved me from starting what would've been a massacre. Then she glanced behind me. I followed her line of vision as we saw the girl, Brenda, giving Thomas a quick kiss on the cheek making him freeze on the spot. We both let out a chuckle at the sight and then looked at each other again as if mentally saying I know who you are. She stayed close to me as we followed Jorge out of the building.
"How much do you know?" she asked me.
"I know who you are to me in a relationship sense and that's it" I explained to her. She looked down at her feet in disappointment.
"Tommy?" she asked.
"He knows nothing" I told her.
"Just in case you can't remember...it's Elizabeth, but here you call me El ok?" she told me before running up ahead to help Jorge lead us into what looked like a subtrans station. For a moment though I was distracted as I saw my reflection in a window of one of the buildings. Surprisingly it was the first chance I had to actually look at myself. My hair was light brown, almost dirty blonde, and was an awkward length between long and shoulder length, my eyes were a blue green color, and my sunburned skin was fading back into a pale color with freckles here and there.
"What you looking at?" Thomas voice interrupted me making me jump. Out of some forgotten habit I shoved him in the shoulder.
"That, it's the first time I've really gotten a look at myself" I told him the truth and he looked at his reflection now. Although I knew he couldn't see it I noticed the minor similarities between us like our hair's current matching dishevelment, the dimples we got in our cheeks when we smiled, and our posture.
"We are some sexy people" he said with a nod of his head before turning to me.
"By the way...you broke a guys collarbone? Really? Was that necessary?" he asked trying to lead us forward now to meet up with the group.
"I had to" he gave me a look and I returned it as we went below level now. I noticed Brenda staring at him and I nodded towards her making him give me a look saying Shut up.
"Here" El said walking over to us with two opened cans. We both gladly took them and went to go sit down.
"I'm actually going to take a second over here" Thomas told us walking off to the side. I saw the look of disappointment flash across El's face again. From what I could remember her and Thomas had been the closest between the three of us.
"Come on" she sighed as she nodded her head to where the other Gladers were. I plopped down next to Newt and he nodded at me as he ate the chili like food. El took the spot on the other side of me and I noticed something different from our food choices.
"You have more than me" I told her.
"No I just took the beans out of yours" she said as if it was obvious.
"What?" I asked. Then she looked sad again as she remembered that I was about as clueless as Thomas was about our past life.
"You used to hate them. So I took them for you" she explained as she began to eat her meal.
"Oh" I said stupidly trying to move on now. After we finished our meal in silence I went to go explore the little station we were in. I stopped at where you would usually hop on a train when it came to a stop and then jumped down onto the tracks looking down the tunnels.
"Can't get these up and running again?" I asked anyone who was listening.
"Any chance of them reviving was dashed long ago. You're more likely to find a gun then get on a train and gun's are mighty rare as well" Jorge shouted from up by the storage closet where him and a couple Gladers were taking some food out. Within a few minutes I found El by my side.
"Do you have any questions you want me to answer?" she asked now that we were alone. It sounded like something a mother would say.
"Where do I start?" I told her with a shake of my head. She was about to say something but was cut off by Newt.
"We have flashlights now" he said as he hopped down onto the tracks with us and gave me one. The inner 9 year old in me lit it up and held it under my face as I tried to make a demonic voice and say "Hello, I want your soul". Newt gave me a look that just blatantly said He thought I was a weirdo, there was a moment of silence before El burst out laughing at my idiocy.
"You're such a dork" she whispered to herself.
"EL" Jorge shouted but it was too late as there was a sudden rumbling noise and suddenly we found our way back to the surface and the other Glader's blocked by fallen debris.
"Shiza" El muttered as she ran to the wall blocking our path. Newt and I followed her trying to see if we could move things out of the way but there was no way anything was gonna budge.
"Guess the cranks weren't as stupid as we thought they were" El said as she gave up. Newt and I looked between each other.
"What now?" I asked the obvious. El let out a sigh and then began walking down the only path not cut off, and that was through the tunnel.
"It circles round so we'll make it to the surface at some point" she explained making us follow her now.
"The others though, our friends?" Newt asked.
"Are big boys lets worry about ourselves though, because we are not alone down here. So be quiet" El told us and we obeyed. We didn't come to a stop until we ended up at a crossroads where there were tunnels before us going several different directions. Breaking the silence, there were maniacal screams off in the distance that made us pause our trek.
"Are those cr-?"
"Shhh" El cut me off holding a finger up. You could practically hear a pin drop as we all strained our hearing. The screams and shouts seemed the be getting closer the more we stood still.
"It sounds like a herd that's way past the gone. We need to hide" she whispered. To our right we found an empty train car that we squeezed into.
"Ok here's the plan and you have to listen to everything I say, no arguments. These are all the weapons I can loan you. Most likely they can take down one crank at a time, if you have the chance. Going for the head will put them out as quickly as possible. They're not real people anymore, remember that" she instructed us as she handed us what looked like makeshift box cutter knives that had probably seen better days.
"We need to split up so they don't get us all at once, and there's a chance at least one of us can meet back up with Jorge. Rendezvous back here once the herd has passed you if we don't meet up after 15 minutes max try and find the other group, and no flashlights"
"You've got to be shuckin' kidding me with this. Splitting up?" Newt snapped at her.
"Shut up and listen to me. I said no arguments. I'll distract them, you two find a place to hide" she gave us all a nod as she grabbed a discarded bottle.
"Ready?" she asked.
What a stupid question! Ready to try and not get killed? I wanted to snap at her. As if by some signal we all turned our flashlights off in unison. For a few mere seconds we were in pitch black darkness making me nearly have a heart attack as I thought back to the tunnels. Either I was with two people that really knew me or I might have accidentally been vocal at this sudden darkness but I heard two reassuring "shh's" and two hands grab mine.
"Lets head out and hide" El promised as we snuck out of the car. My eyes began to adjust now and I could see shapes. To my right I saw moving forms coming towards us and off to the side of where we just came from there was a trash can that was probably used as campfire when people camped here. Slowly I moved towards it and ducked into it making myself as small as possible. I tried not to breath in to much as there was still ash in the bin. Suddenly the footsteps began to get louder as they approached my hiding spot. I was practically holding my breath now so I couldn't make any noise. then I heard the sound of glass breaking up ahead.
"HEY! CRAZYS OVER HERE" El's voice shouted and then she began to run. The footsteps changed direction.
Why do they have to walk so shuckin' slow I complained as what sounded like the last of the Cranks were moving away from me. I began to lose what little vision I had and my ears were ringing, but I kept holding my breath.
Just do one quick breath, quiet as possible I told myself. I did a quick breath but accidentally inhaled some of the ash making me cough and there was a pause in the last pairs footsteps.
No my eyes began to water at the thought of what was going happen next and I gripped onto my crappy knife. None of them were moving now. They seemed to be waiting for me to come out.
"I heard you" one of them sang and it was a woman's voice. I could feel a presence looming above me and I didn't have the heart to look up.
Please go away Please go away I pleaded.
"It's better to get attacked by two of us then all of us. We'll be nicer to you" she joked. The presence reached down and began to pat my hair.
"You still have yours" it said. With adrenaline pulsing through me I used the element of surprise as I grabbed down on the persons arms and pulled them towards me while I thrust the knife up. There was a shudder worthy gurgle as the crank fell over bringing me along with it and I fell out into the tunnel with a loud clang. The woman who had spoken earlier lurched onto me and I tried to squirm out from under her. She was screaming in my face and scratching at me while I was trying to reach back for the knife. Suddenly she began attempting to bite me and I had to then focus more on holding her face back. And all at once she came to a stop and I pushed her off me to find Newt standing above me and knife less. My fight must've attracted a lot of attention because I could here fast footsteps coming towards us now.
"I'll be back, just stay there" he promised before I could say anything, as he dislodged the knife from the crank.
"What're you doing?" I whispered to him.
"Stay, I'll circle back" he snapped before running off making way to much noise by shouting insults at the Cranks to draw attention to himself and they followed him. Something about the fight with the crank had made me obey as I stayed put horror struck at what just happened. After what felt like five minutes I heard footsteps again.
"It's me. I told you idiots to let me do the distracting" El's voice whispered to me.
"Where's Newt, is he with you? He said he'd be back?" I asked her.
"I'm fine thanks" she said a bit offended before offering me a hand up.
"You're really grody" she pointed out at how I was covered in ash and blood and I just stayed silent. Was I supposed to hug her. I knew she was my sister but I just didn't have that feeling of recognition and home with her yet.
"Ok then let's go" she sighed after my lack of response.
"What about -"
"No, we need to keep moving" she cut me off harshly. With a feeling of resistance I walked the other way.
"He said he'd be back so I'm sure he's alive. He'd look for us!" I told her over my shoulder.
"Right, I'm that sure of people as well after knowing them, what? 4 days?" I could hear El mutter under her breath. Jorge had seemed to have given her all of the information in such a short amount of time.
"A lot has happened" I snapped back. I felt the need to defend what I was feeling right now.
"What do you think I've been up to"
"Look this hasn't been the exact family reunion I would have wanted either ok. I'm sorry, that the world has gone to crap and none of us can remember anything but it's time to suck it up. Now please h-" I was cut off as I heard the sound of glass cracking under my feet. I lifted my foot up to see that I had stepped on a watch a, pink watch.
Stay calm that could mean anything I had to reassure myself. A pair of feet appeared in front of me and I heard a sigh.
"Thought I had lost that" Newt's familiar voice rang through the tunnel as he grabbed the watch.
"But now it's useless cause someone stepped on it" he muttered. I shut him up as I threw my arms around him and hugged him, which he shyly returned at first.
"Didn't want to lose another person" he whispered to me.
"You're back on the pedestal as my hero at the moment" I whispered back to him which made him chuckle.
"Yes that was my plan all along love" he joked.
"Both of you are" I corrected myself as I turned towards El.
Awwww they hugged yay and omg longest chapter so far awesomeness. So I now have visuals for El and Bri though. My fancast for El is Leven Rambin with her Brown hair and Bri is Elizabeth Lail (who is absolutley adorable)!. And I finished death cure this week man my feels. Speaking of feels has did you see the new Hobbit trailer ahh my little durin bebes. Oh big hero six come outs now two kinda really excited for that actually I hope it's good. Anyways thanks so much for the follows and favorites and if you could review and tell me if you liked this chapter that would be amazing. Hope you have a magical day my lovelies.
