So, hello. Thanks for reading this. I really appreciate it, even if it's just a few people reading. It still makes me feel happy knowing that somewhere, someone is enjoying what I am making for them. Well, for me and them.
U: I don't really know what to say, but I did try to make Janson really creepy. That's just how I've always seen him from the very first time since I ever saw Janson's face. And that was before I knew that the actor had acted Little Finger, which was a bad guy, and before I ever read any of the books. So, Janson was supposed to be creepy, and I'm glad I managed to pull that off to you. (This was a little late, I'm sorry.)
Nur123: Trust me, it will all become at least a little bit clearer. Just hold out for a bit.
And for the people that I don't know about, thank you for even making it this far into the story. It was supposed to be just Janson torturing Thomas without actually doing anything, but then it turned into an elaborate plot that somehow is working out a bit. Just need to work on a few of the details from earlier, and we're all set.
If I have any spelling errors, it's because I have no one but myself to proof-read this, and then when I publish it I'm already on the next chapter. So, I most likely won't fix them. Sorry.
Don't worry, I'll try to check it as often as I can while writing. There might even be an error in my note. But just understand that I am one person, and my friend just skims through it. They don't even try to check it for any minor spelling details. So, I most likely won't know about it.
Wow. I didn't even mean to make the note that long. It just...became like that.
Anyways, onto the story!
I could feel that my eyes were open, but there was no light at all, so it was pitch black where I was. After a few moments of darkness, scratches echoed off the walls, and then a small flame lit up, chasing the shadows away a bit. It wasn't much, but then the flame began to eat away at a candle, and it was just a bit brighter. Bright enough for me to recognize 15 holding up the lit candle.
"Here." She hands me the burning candle and the box of matches, and I take them, nodding once and giving a small smile. 15 returned it with a grimace, but she tried, and that's all that matters. "I'll be gone for a bit, but don't even think about leaving. It won't take me long, but if you hear any scratching sounds or just anything other than you, blow out the candle and HIDE."
Her face was cast into shadows by the flickering glow of the flame, and it was terrifying. I nodded, and I could swear that 15 looked relieved when I did so. "Good. And don't trust anyone other than me, okay?" And with that, 15 disappeared into the darkness.
A grate slide across the floor, and I could hear it locking into place. The pain in my arm has dropped to a dull throb, but if I move it too fast, it feels like someone poured acid on it. So I have to do everything slowly, and gradually, I built a mental map of the room that I was in. It was small, big enough for just a child's bed to take up most of the room. But if I moved my hand alongside the wall, I could find a crevice that I could squeeze into, hidden among the darkness.
Every now and then, I would hear a moan breaking the heavy silence, or scratching noises on the other side of the walls. Whenever that happened, I blew out the candle and squeezed into the crevice, lightly breathing and trying my best to keep quiet. One time, I could hear something enter the room, but after a few sniffs, they left, and I could let out a sigh of relief. But other than that, it was completely silent. So silent that I could hear the ringing in my ears, and then it felt like the room was shrinking, about to crush me any second.
I wasn't claustrophobic. You couldn't be, if you wanted to survive. But this room was still a bit suffocating, especially when you only have one candle that poorly lights up the room. Every shadow could be Janson, lurking in the darkness and waiting for me to relax before he—
"Boo!" Yelping, the candle almost goes out when I flail. 15 hangs upside-down from the ceiling, laughing at my spooked self. "Dang, you're so easy to scare. I told you I wouldn't take long, didn't I?"
She gently set herself onto the floor, her nails gleaming as the light of the flame reflected off of its smooth surface. As she settles in, her nails a constant reminder of how dangerous 15 is, my mind begins to wander. It seems like now would be a good place to ask questions, for later we could be running for our lives or doing something else that would prevent me from actually getting answers.
"Hey, 15?" My voice was raspy and raw, and my throat still hurt after the screams I had let out earlier. Her eyes met mine, and in the dim lighting I could imagine Janson hovering over her, a hand on her shoulder in a threatening manner. Choosing the most basic question, I asked, "What is this place?"
15 examines her nails, and she refused to meet my eyes. Softly, 15 said, "This is where all of the subjects that managed to run away hang out. 1 protects us, as long as we don't look at him, and he keeps this place clean. Of course, not all of us have some of our sanity left, so that's why you need to keep a low profile."
Our eyes lock on once more, and I swallowed out of fear. This question would either get me killed, or give me answers. "So, you're a subject. A subject of what, exactly?"
In the dim light, 15's face was absolutely murderous. Curling up a bit, I withdrew from 15, scared by her face. Her hands curled into fists, and she breathed heavily, as if she was trying to keep herself from screaming at me. Eyes glowing in the light, she was glaring at me, and I ducked my head, not wanting to see her nails flash as they slice through my head.
But she never came close to murdering me. Instead, I could hear 15 sighing deeply, and a droplet hitting the hard floor echoed through the room. "They were experimenting on us. Trying to find a cure, they would take the volunteering Immunes' enzymes and force our body to make the enzyme, hoping it would at least give us a chance at being Immune to the Flare." Then she took in a shuddery breath, and another droplet splattered onto the floor.
"They...It didn't...The scientists only caused us to go insane, and I was the fifteenth subject that they had. 1 was the first to escape, the first to help others escape, and the first to be killed." Cracking every so often, her voice wavered and sounded as fragile as china.
Her face hardened, and 15 drew in a breath or air, puffing her chest up in an attempt to bottle up her feelings once more. "Now, we live here, claiming this part of the building as our own and killing anyone that so much as breaths over the invisible border line." Here was when she paused, a thoughtful look on her face.
"Now that I think about it, you seem...different than the others. You were already an Immune, but when your blood was spilled..." 15 shuddered violently, enough that I could see her entire body vibrate even in this dim lighting. "It was horrifying," she finally concluded.
Curiosity peaking, I couldn't hold in the question. "Why was it horrifying? What happened?" An eyebrow was raised.
"You seriously want to know?" Pausing briefly, I nodded in response. Shrugging her shoulders, 15 collected her thoughts. "Okay, fine. Here's what I saw."
I waited patiently, holding my breath and allowing the silence to stretch on before 15 continued. She brushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear, reminding me of Brenda, and then she said, "When 5 slashed your arm—."
"Hold up! That thing was 5?!" My mouth was agape, hanging open in bewilderment. "The person that we were trying to find this entire time?!"
"Shush!" She clapped a hand over my mouth and listened, her muscles tense, and the air around us seemed to thicken. There was nothing I could hear, nothing at—
Wait! There was something outside the room, slithering along metal. Probably the interior of the vent. "Duck!" She didn't need to tell me twice.
I grabbed the matches, extinguished the candle, and hid from view under the bed, having no time to run for the crevice. 15 huddled next to me under the bed, her hand forcing my head down further. No arguements from me, for there was a loud *BANG* from where the grate was. The grate flew right at the bed and hit the wooden posts, getting the hairs at the base of my neck to stand straight up.
Something slithered along the floor, but I couldn't even see my hands, so I had no idea what was making the noise. 15's hand was covering my mouth, keeping my breaths quiet, and then the thing stopped moving. Silence.
A minute passes. Nothing.
Two minutes. Nothing again.
Three minutes. One tap against the wall.
Six minutes. It took whatever was out there six minutes before it finally gave up and slithered along the ground once more, sliding into the vent where it had come from.
Usually, I would have pulled myself out from underneath the bed and start booking it out of there. However, this was something I never had to experience before, hiding in complete darkness with something intelligent hunting you down. So we waited.
Two minutes passed before the slithering thing returned. But now it didn't sound like a snake sliding across the ground. It sounded like a human being dragging their bare belly across the concrete, desperate for something, anything, to eat. That thought sent shivers down my spine, and I wished that I could pull out the candle, just to feel safer.
My body itched to crawl out from under the bed, but the thing didn't leave this time. I could hear it grunting as it pulled itself across the floor one last time before it collapsed, its body thumping against the concrete. Both of us held our breaths, trembling under the not-so-well-hidden hiding spot. Then, I felt 15's hand move from my mouth down to my hand, squeezing gently, and I squeezed right back, smiling even though 15 wouldn't be able to see it.
Multiple pricks in my palm alerted me that 15 was digging her nails into my hand, and I tried to pull away before I could begin to bleed out. Still, I could feel blood droplets slide down my palm and drip onto the floor. On my right, I could feel 15 tense right as the thing in the room with us began to sniff loudly. Purrs filled the room, and the sound of it had my entire body entering the flight-or-fight response.
When 15 began to rapidly leave me, I decided to fles and crawled out from underneath as well. As I did so, the slithering noise started up again; I could feel cold, thin fingers gripping my ankles, getting me to make this odd whine that was almost as scream but not as loud. The purring grew louder and louder, and the hand latched onto my legs was vibrating intensely. The muscles on my legs grew lax, and it wasn't responding anymore. Without one of my legs to use as support, I clumsily crashed onto the ground, almost hitting the bed as I fell.
The thing crawled over me, trying to reach for my hand, purring and moaning all the while. Everywhere the thing touched, my muscles grew limp, and I was soon hardly able to even move. A tongue lapped up my blood, and the vibrations turned into shudders, and a long whine left the creature. Something hard, perhaps the back of their claws or nails, was pressing into my side a bit, yet it was hardly as important as the sharp teeth the thing had biting down into my hand again. I yelled, and I could hear 15 knocking into the bed, most likely trying to find where I was in the darkness.
As the tongue lapped up the blood again, 15 slammed into the creature, and a fierce roar of anger was torn out of the thing's throat. Drowsy, I could hardly move until 15 slapped my face a couple of times, almost shouting, "Wake up!" Feeling returned to my body, but it felt like sharp needles poking into my skin all over. The feeling that you get when your arm "falls asleep" was the same feeling around everywhere the stupid creature touched.
"We have no time to lose!" The arm with the claw marks was pulled on, and blistering pain sprouted up along my arm. Everywhere was hurting. I was one big bruise posing as a functioning human being, and I was not a very good actor at that. "Come on!" My legs recovered the fastest, allowing me to stand on my own without support, and my arms were recovering fast.
The creature was slowly getting up again, and I could hear the dopy whines turning into ferocious growls and hisses. "Come on!" Her whisper helped to guide me into the vent, and I clambered through right behind 15, favoring my right side. Trailing after us was the screams of the creature, alerting anything else in the vicinity our whereabouts.
"Hurry! Before 1 gets here!" Even as 15 said that, I could hear the faint sounds of water sloshing, and it helped to propel me forward. From behind, the creature was sliding along the vent, babbling nonsense in howls and shouts.
A few more seconds, and the walls of the vent pressing down on all sides ceased to exist. I was lifted up onto my feet, and I fumbled for the matches I had somehow kept ahold of, since the lights had most likely been shut down. Since the hushes of water flowing grew louder from each direction, there was no way to know which way 1 was coming from. "Which way?" I half-yelled, the cacophony of noises from the water and the growls from the creature in the vent making it impossible to hear each other otherwise.
"This way!" 15's voice came from my left, light and gentle compared to the other noises filling my ears. I chased after her voice, and tried to direct myself away from any strange yelps or hisses that now filled the hallways. "Over here! Hurry!"
As we ran, the slithers of the creature faded away, but the water never stopped running, and I could feel and hear my feet hitting water while I followed 15's guiding voice. "Come on! We need to find a room!" I nodded, mentally slapping myself when I remembered that it was darker than the darkest night.
Soon after, the creature that had followed us screamed into the night, cutting off abruptly. Chills slide down my spine, and the water that had reached my ankles began to drain, which meant 1 was gone. That was one good thing.
Before I could sigh in relief, howls erupted from almost every hallway around us, and 15 yanked me into one of the rooms on my left. The door was silently shut behind us, and the new surroundings had me bumping into a bed in the middle. Every room had a bed in the middle of it, it seemed. "All we have to do is survive a few hours. That shouldn't be too bad."
15 wasn't sounding very convinced about what she said, but I was willing to believe that we could do this. Screams filled the night, and I hugged myself tightly, wishing that I was back with my friends, wishing I had never joined Sadia, and wishing I had just stayed outside the room. Slim arms wrapped around me as best as they could, and I leaned into them, desiring comfort from any human being by this point. "You might want to hide your blood, or else they'll find us again." 15 pulled away, ripping off some clothing before wrapping the cloth around my hand.
"Why would I need to hide it?" Loop around the tree and through the rabbit hole. Tighten the bow to keep the bandage on. The darkness kept me from seeing 15, but I think she's looking right at me.
A tiny gasp echoed through the room right as I could feel the sticky bandage on my sliced arm peeling off. "Did I do that? Sorry..." *rip* Another article of clothing was being wrapped around my other arm this time.
"Well? Why would I need to hide my blood from them?"
"Because they can smell it. I don't know why, but for some reason, the smell of your blood drives the others bonkers and makes them act like they're drunk or intoxicated just by the smell. Even 9 was affected, though not as severely as 4 or 5." Her warmth leaves me, allowing the cold to sweep in and take the remaining warmth away. There was no way I was sleeping on that bed, who knows what might have been on it.
"Intoxicated? On the smell of my blood?" That was hard to believe. How would you react if you were told that your blood makes monsters around you drunk? 15, however, didn't even acknowledge that I said anything of the sort.
"We're going to be here a while. Might as well relax." With that, 15 returns to snuggle up closer, sharing our warmth and shielding the other from the unrelenting cold surrounding us. Her arms wrapped around mine, and mine were wrapped around hers. The concrete wall dug into my back, and the hard floor wasn't any better.
Though it made for a lousy bed, I managed to close my eyes and nap, even if it was for just a little bit.
[Fatigue]
Looking over the desert, I shield my eyes from the sun, ignoring the scorching heat cooking my skin for the moment. All that really mattered was getting to the mountains. Find the Right Arm. Defeat WCKD.
Simple, right?
"How's it looking?!" I turn back to my friends, and there's a blond guy, Frypan, and Minho seated on some rocks, skin turning red from the unrelenting heat and sweating profusely. The blond's name was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn't quite get it out.
"It's a little further!" They all turn around, quite obviously not convinced. I can hear one of them muttering something, but that doesn't matter right now. What matters is the girl in front of me.
Her face worries me, so I express my concerns. "Hey, what's going on with you?" My heart sank at the thought of her getting hurt by something WCKD had done to her.
"They did something to me." She paused, as if something she was trying to keep inside was eating away at her. "At first, it just felt like I was waking up from a dream or something. Then they all started coming back."
"Your memories?" A slight nod. Softly biting her bottom lip. "What do you remember?" I was desperate to know something, anything.
"I remember the first time they brough you in. I was taller than you, then. Faster, too." She let out a light giggle, and butterflies fluttered in my stomach at the sound of her laugh. A blush fought to be seen, but I buried it down.
"Okay."
"And I remember why we were all there. We thought we could fix all of this." The girl rubbed the back of her neck, facing me once more with a bit of nervousness yet determination in her stance. "I think we should go back."
"What?" Did she seriously just SAY that?! That we should GO BACK?!
"Just listen to me—!" No! They hurt us. What else is there to consider?
"What are you talking about? Go back? After everything they've done to us?" Her eyes showed conflicting expressions, as if she was ACTUALLY thinking about if she should side with WCKD or not. There's nothing to think about, WCKD is evil and that's that.
She shook her head, desperation in her voice. "It's not that simple." How is it not simple? Does she seriously think it's complicated? WCKD hurt us and are hooking us up to machines to suck the life right out of us, of COURSE we can't go back.
"Yeah, I think it's that simple."
Her eyes were ablaze with hidden loss and annoyance at how I wasn't getting what she meant. "No. You don't understand."
"What don't I understand?" I took a step forward, silently daring her to say something that would change my mind.
"Everything was fine until you..." She fell silent, letting the sentence trail off. Why does everyone want to keep secrets from me?
"What?" I'm tired of all the secrets, all the lies. I NEED something to satisfy me, some kind of truth.
"Nothing." Her head was bowed, and she wouldn't look me in the eye.
I couldn't take it anymore. I needed answers. "Teresa, what aren't you telling me?" I deserve to know...
"Hey!" Our heads rose in unison, observing the others. "Guys, get down here!"
"Thomas, wake up!" My lids flew open and I straightened up in an instant, a crick in my neck. Spooking 15, I silently cheered for getting revenge. Then, I realized that I could see. Did I really make it through the night?
"You scared the crap out of me!" Her dress was torn at the hem, and I could see the fabric of her dress wrapped around my right hand and my entire left arm. Sweat shone on her head, 15 was breathing heavily, and splatters of blood stained her once pristine dress; in her hand, she held a burlap sack full of who knows what. Most likely the sack 5 was said to have. A grin split her face in half, but there was an underlying sorrow under her cheerfulness.
I rubbed my eyes, wishing for a sink to wash away the blood stains that were scattered around my ripped shirt. The dream that I had was already fading, and I could hardly even remembered what had happened. But one name stuck to me, the name that I finally had a face to match it with. Teresa, the girl Minho had mentioned, was the dark haired girl that betrayed us at one point.
I never had any time to sort through my memories, but now that I had some time to sort through them, whatever Janson did removed quite a bit. There were parts that seemed out of place and had no context, and sometimes I would be in one place and then be in some other place with no clue as to what had happened in between. It was horrifying to know that Janson had removed so much of it just to make me hurt less, and it hurt just to know that I had forgotten people that were important to making me who I am.
"Come on!" 15 pulled on my right arm, wary of my wounds. "If it's bright out, we should leave as soon as possible! I got the sack that has everything we need to get you where you need to be!" Basking in her victory, 15 grinned and slung the sack over her shoulder.
A new candle (we had forgotten the last one when we were running away from the purring creature) and the box of matches were almost pushed into my hands. It hurt when the match box dug into one of the bite wounds, but I didn't react. "There!" 15's face glowed with pride and hid a bit of the sadness that I could see in her face, so I decided not to mention anything about what she was feeling. Even though she might be hurting, I wanted to keep her happy for as long as I could.
I'll just talk to her later about this.
Another pull, and I laughed. "Okay, okay!" Now that the hallways were bright and empty of any sign of life other than us, it was less eery and foreboding to walk with 15. The howls from last night had stopped now, but it was very quiet through these halls. And bright. Like the calm before the storm.
Then we stopped in front of a blank wall. No grates, no doors, nothing remotely interesting about this wall. But 15 dropped the sack right in front of the wall, stuffing her hand into it with a wet *squish* that had me cringing. Her hand rummaged through the sack, creating more wet sounds and sometimes a loud *BANG* or a small *click, before pulling it out, holding a smal yellow key in her hand.
She knocked on the wall, fast and sharp, and then knocked a few more times. It went on, becoming more and more complicated, but at last, something began to move from within the wall. A section of the wall, after a minute or two, slid to the right to reveal a small metal door with a keyhole yet had no doorknob or handle. 15 prodded the hole with the key, before the key finally sunk in deeper than the other times. She twisted the key and kept on going before it couldn't go any farther.
The door swung towards 15, and 15 helped it continue. Once it was wide enough for us to squeeze through, 15 yanked the key out and motioned for me to go through. Complying, I crawled into the small metal duct, but I didn't hear 15 following after me. There was enough room for me to look behind me, but I couldn't turn around.
"Come back soon!" With that, 15 shut the metal door, and I could feel the metal vibrating as everything slid back into place. It was dark, but I still had the matches and a candle, so I lit them. I never had the chance to talk about what might have been eating away at her, and the guilt began to weigh down on me.
As I crawled forward, I couldn't help but let the thoughts of guilt roll over and over again through my mind. Should I have talked to 15 about what she might have been feeling? What would have happened if I did decide to talk? Is she going to hate me for not talking about it with her? What if she's so sad she doesn't notice when 1 might be walking around?!
All of these thoughts swirled in my mind as I reached the end of the duct. I hopped out, remembering to shut it behind me, and I was impressed at how well the exit blended into the wall. Even if I knew what I was looking for, I still would have had so much trouble just trying to find the exit, and would have had much more trouble just trying to get in their territory through it. These kids and possibly teens/adults were the masters of disguise.
As quietly as I could, I opened the door, thanking the universe that the hinges were well greased, and poked my head into the hallway, looking both ways. There was one door to my left that had been boarded up, and the hallway continued a bit farther down to my right, with multiple doors on both sides of the corridor, before turning left. Coming to a conclusion that it was safe, I stepped out of the room, almost expecting 15 to pop out from the ceiling or behind me. Every single sense seemed to be on hyper alert for anything dangerous.
I couldn't hear anything, couldn't see any other signs of life, and no alarm bells were going off. But it was too silent. By the way the other rooms I entered looked, it should have been bursting to the seams with activity. There was nothing there.
Thankfully, one of the rooms had a spare t-shirt, probably taken off because of the coffee stain. It was a purple plaid button-up shirt and looked horrendous to wear, even by my standards, but I put it on anyways. It was better than having a sliced up, bloody white shirt any day. There were a few bathrooms that I could shower in, for I had most likely been exposed to a lot of germs, but I was too scared to look in the mirror.
Ready to take on the world, I wandered up and down the place, finally reaching where the scientists worked. I could see multiple labs, and there were a few teens and children chained up and snarling at me, glaring as I walked past. Every time I looked at them, or made eye contact, they bared their sharper-than-normal teeth, and everything about them screamed "I'm insane and I'll kill you!"
A shiny object caught my attention, and I almost grinned in victory at what I stumbled upon. There, lying harmlessly on a metal cart with some sheets of important-looking papers, was a camera. They must have been taking photos and videos of their subjects, recording when and how the subjects slowly lost their minds. This would be perfect to show my friends if they didn't believe what I was going to say to them.
As I picked up the camera, one of the cell doors burst open to reveal Katy, mutilated to the point where she was almost unrecognizable, if it wasn't for her voice screaming, "It's all your fault! You're the reason why they did this to us!"
And...that's it. Sorry for the cliffhanger (again), but I want to post this chapter today. So, I have to end it here. See, I gave you some answers!
Anyways, I hoped you liked this chapter! See you all in the next chapter/story!