Author's note~ I hope you enjoy.
Shaking from the toxic mess of emotions storming inside him, he closed his eyes for a second and thought of his friends.
The gladers.
Alby.
Minho.
And Adrian. Always Adrian.
His legs tensed and ready to kick off strongly from the wall, a farewell he'd never get to say on his lips, he let go of the vines and jumped.
Newt being gone when Adrian woke didn't particularly surprise or alarm the man; life in the glade tended to start early. While he still felt a lingering concern over the Newt's abrupt nose dive into dejection and despair, he tried to brush it off, telling himself he had no right to nag at the boy. He applied himself to thinking his way through the previous evening, trying to rationalize Newt's actions.
Being held in captivity, being forced to face such a brutal and cruel challenge like the maze, having to live with the constant itch of not even knowing who you were before being sent here...the barbarism exerted upon these boys was truly astonishing. It was only reasonable to expect periodic bouts of depression, angst, despondency. While curious over what the possible trigger for the downswing in Newt's emotional state could have been, he assured himself that the therapeutic tears and access to palliative company would have eased the worst of the pressure. He'd offer his couch to the runner again tonight and, in a day or two, his friend would undoubtedly be back to his old self.
Feeling decidedly better about the whole situation after thinking it through, he proceeded with his normal morning routine. He had a quick breakfast, sitting and chatting breezily with his 'girls' before heading off to spend the rest of the morning in the med hut with Jeff and Clint. He was puttering around alone, going through his book and contemplating possible additions while he waited for the duo to return from a foraging trip when Alby poked his head through the door.
"Hey." He said, his manner still a little cool and reserved after their heated exchange a few days ago. "Newt been through yet?"
Adrian's eyebrows winged up at the question. He hadn't given Newt's absence that morning any real thought at all, assuming the boy had been slated to work the maze today.
"Nnnnno? Should he have been?"
"Well, yeah. He's been doing the rounds today – checking in with all the keepers, getting updates, that kind of thing." Alby answered before taking a quick glance around, looking for eavesdroppers. He dropped his voice, just in case. "He's been kind of...down, lately. He's been pulled from the active running list until he's a bit more...stable."
"He was pretty wrecked last night when I found him." Adrian confessed, rubbing a hand over his face as he thought about it. "Once he'd evened out a bit, I took him to my place; he spent the night on my couch. He wasn't really in a talking kind of mood – he just curled up and passed out – but it felt like he was through the worst of it. This morning, he was gone before I got up...I figured he'd be running today, so I didn't think much of it."
Jeff and Clint bustled in right about then, effectively cutting off the conversation.
"Hey, you guys see Newt today?" Alby demanded, trying and failing to hide his agitation.
"Yeah, he was headed out the West gate when we went by. Tried to get his attention; I wanted to ask him something, but he just kept on going. I don't think he heard me." Jeff informed them, moving to unload his hands and totally missing the pointed look Adrian and Alby shared. "Guess he got a late start; he must've been trying to make up for lost time. Why, did you need him?"
The alerted pair headed for the door immediately, ignoring Jeff's confused calls and questions. Alby peeled off first and ran straight to the map room, producing a rusted metal key that always hung on a string around his neck, carefully hidden under his shirt. Of everyone in the glade, Minho trusted only Alby with the spare key to the terribly important building, and had taken the time to walk the leader through the breakdown of the job and the layout of the storage trunks, just in case of emergencies. Alby hurriedly unlocked the heavy metal door, scurrying to the chest containing the maps he needed and grabbing a handful right off the top of the stack. Impatiently taking the time to lock the door behind him, he sprinted to the Western wall and found the man standing right at the entrance, his form almost vibrating with urgency as he waited on the threshold of the great yawning gate.
"I'm going after him. Alone." Alby asserted, shooting Adrian a burning look that instantly cut his protest off at the knees. "You've never been out there; I have. You'll just slow me down. I need you to stay here. If I don't make it back, it something happens...I need you here. You have to take care of the others." Alby stated with a grim finality, locking eyes with Adrian, his face said so much more than his words.
Adrian swallowed shallowly, pushing down his snarling arguments, his gut screaming that they couldn't afford to waste time bickering about it. He nodded reluctantly, putting his faith in the leader's hands.
"I will. You have my word." Adrian promised gravely.
Alby turned and sped into the murky gloom of the maze, leaving Adrian behind to wait, watch...and worry.
Time dripped by sluggishly, each moment feeling like an eternity.
The light ever so slowly started to fade from the brilliance of afternoon into the softer warmth of early evening, and still Alby hadn't returned. Adrian fought to not pace, leaning against a tree on the outskirts of the forest and attempting to give off a relaxed air, despite his stomach knotting a little more with every minute that passed. A number of the other gladers trickled over and began hanging around, keeping him company, waiting with him. Some had seen their leader vanish through the gates with their own eyes while others had overheard the curious and worried mutterings, and they gathered in seemingly casual groups to keep an eye on the gate. As the light grew dimmer, more and more gladers took up the vigil.
Alby's heart thudded loudly as he made the first turn and the glade suddenly vanished behind him. Immediately panic threatened to set in as the walls appeared to lean in towards him, the sky nothing but a narrow strip of blue inconceivably high above him. It felt as though he was laying at the bottom of his own grave, hopelessly trapped and just waiting for the first shovel full of dirt to be thrown in and bury him alive.
Shuck, he hated being in here!
Back in the beginning when they were first stranded in this alien, hostile place, Alby had been one of the first to start exploring the maze. He'd never found anything of importance, never personally come face to face with the hideous creatures that haunted the labyrinth of stone and ivy.
But...
Just being out here, the utter quiet around him, his only company the sounds of his feet slapping the rock beneath his feet and the panting whoosh of his own breath...it was terribly eerie, and immensely unsettling. You felt as though you were being watched, every turn, every step, every hesitation being viewed by...something. He'd been (secretly) wildly thrilled when the original group of gladers had unanimously decided that the best way of handling the task of cataloguing and exploring the maze would be to turn it over to a specialized, carefully selected group. Nick, their old leader, had figured it was safer and more efficient to have a smaller, tighter unit work on the outside problems while everyone else focused on trying to make the glade more hospitable. He hadn't been out here since the runners took over, well over a year ago now, and the creeping fingers of fear and paranoia tickled the back of his neck and made him shiver violently.
He stopped dead in his tracks, closing his eyes for a few precious seconds.
He shook himself vigorously and grit his teeth, forcing down the fear and crippling claustrophobia by will alone. He had a job to do. He HAD to get to Newt, before his friend did something stupid or careless and got himself hurt – or worse. He straightened his back and held tight to his spine, opening his eyes and moving forwards with fiery purpose, shuffling through the maps in his hands as he followed the turns and twists. After a while it became glaringly apparent which map was accurate; he folded the unnecessary ones around his finger and tucked them carefully into his belt, studying the schematic detailing this section.
He moved faster and with much greater confidence after that.
He'd been navigating the maze for close to two hours before he came upon a long straight corridor, overgrown with ivy. A lumpy mass was was laying in the center of the stone hallway, motionless. As he got closer he could see it was a crumpled figure, a heap of a person with a very familiar mop of blonde hair.
"Newt!" Alby cried, running to his fallen friend, terrified of what he may find. Had he been stung? Had he been savaged by one of the monstrous grievers that ruled the maze with unequivocal impunity?
He fell to his knees, blanching at the pool of blood slowly spreading from the heap of tangled limbs that appeared to be all that was left of his old friend.
"Please, please, please!" He begged. Reaching shaky hands out to turn Newt over, he was afraid to move him. He heard a rattling wheeze of air and saw Newt's chest moving slightly as his body struggled to breathe. Alby's heart rate slowed slightly – Newt wasn't dead. Battered, broken, bleeding – but not dead.
He looked closely at the bloody gash on Newt's head and queasily checked the freely bleeding wound on his leg, where a shard of broken bone had pierced through both skin and pants. It was a gruesome sight, and seeing it made his head spin a little.
It was bad. It was very, very bad.
Unfortunately, Alby knew next to nothing about how to deal with any of the injuries he could see, let alone how to check for other less obvious damage. He ripped a couple of strips from the bottom of his shirt and tied them tightly over the gory wounds, but the makeshift bandages bloomed with dark stains almost before he could knot the ends. Praying that it would be enough to keep him alive, he knew their only hope was to get back to the glade as quickly as he could. If he could deliver Newt into the hands of Jeff and Clint and Adrian...Maybe they'd be able to put him back together again.
Alby gingerly lifted Newt's dead weight, pulling the injured boy upright and looping a firm arm around his waist, grabbing the boy's cold hand and wrapping the rubbery arm around his own neck. Newt's head lolled bonelessly against his shoulder as, half-carrying, half-dragging his unconscious burden, Alby broke into a staggering run.
It felt like he was trying to run through sand while wearing lead boots. His heart drummed frantically, his chest heaving in ragged painful pants as sweat cascaded down his face in rivers and soaked through his shirt. Alby pushed every muscle to the limit as he doggedly lugged the limp form of Newt towards the safety of the glade. The sky grew dimmer and dimmer as he staggered around the seemingly endless corners and pushed through junctions without stopping.
An icy wave of terror crept down his spine, a little voice urgently whispered in his ear that he'd never make it in time. A tiny kernel of cowardice, the self-preservation instinct that exists in every soul, insisted that he leave Newt to the maze and get out before it was too late.
He ground his teeth together until they ached, pushing back against the shameful urge to abandon his friend, viciously crushing it out. Lurching clumsily, he gasped and groaned, refusing to stop moving.
Just a little farther.
He chanted the words in his head like a mantra, starting to feel a little dizzy from the strain.
Just a little farther.
He couldn't tell if the deafening roar he heard was the gates starting to close for the night, or just the sound of his own overworked heart thundering in his ears.
Just a little farther.
He rounded the last corner and saw the open welcoming green of the glade, tantalizingly close. He'd never been so happy to see the strict confines of their prison in his life! With a last heroic push of effort, he dragged his heavy burden through the gate and stumbled blindly back into the relative safety of their home. Their feet had hardly scraped from cold stone onto the softer brown dirt when the telltale grumblings of the gate mechanism sounded behind him. He expelled what little air was left in his lungs in a desperate call as soon as they were clear of the door.
"Medjack! Medjack! I need a medjack!"
The hoarse scream split the tense silence of the glade, turning the air electric in an instant. All who had been nervously waiting instantly ran over, fearfully buzzing at the sight of their leader dragging a bloody, unconscious bundle away from the slowly closing gate. Adrian had been staring off into space, trying to mediate a little to keep himself calm and collected, when the wrenching cries hit him like a hammer in the gut.
Recognizing the limp figure, his heart simply stopped.
His feet raced forward before his mind caught up and he was one of the first to reach the pair; the leader, doubled over and gasping for breath, and the runner, pale and prone on the ground. Ignoring Alby for the moment, he dropped to his knees beside Newt, taking his thin wrist with trembling fingers. He let out an explosive breath when he found the weak, thready pulse, and heard the faint rattle of shallow breathing. His tunnel vision widened enough to take in the crowd that had gathered, and he started snapping out orders.
"Get me a ladder, and a blanket! Now! I need a couple of short branches! And belts! Strip 'em off, pass 'em forward! Move it! Go!"
Half a dozen belts were shoved at the man as a handful of boys ran off to get the other supplies. Using the thinnest belt to tie a rudimentary tourniquet above the wound on Newt's mangled leg in an effort to slow the steady bleeding, he spoke sharply to Alby.
"What the hell happened to him?"
The exhausted boy had recovered enough to wheeze out an answer.
"I don't know...I just don't shuckin' know! He was just lying there in a bloody heap, not moving. Something must've gotten him! I didn't see...I've never seen anything like this. Is he..." Alby trailed off, scared to ask. "Is he gonna make it?"
"He better." Adrian replied grimly, running his hands over Newt's forehead, pulling the cloth away and probing gently to check the severity of the gruesome wound. "If he checks out now, I'll never get a chance to kick his ass for taking such a stupid risk."
Alby let out a weak laugh at the sentiment, moving out of the way as two rugged builders hustled over with a short length of ladder. Clint and Jeff were close behind, bearing blankets and rough lengths of broken branches. Not stopping to explain, Adrian strapped the primitive splints to the obviously broken leg with another couple of belts, doing his best to stabilize it until he could get the boy to the office. He tossed a couple of the blankets over the coarse wood of the ladder to pad it a little.
"Cliff, Jeff, Alby, give me a hand. We need to lift him on to the ladder so we can carry him to the med hut. Clint, Alby, on my go, lift him up and over, as gently as you can. Jeff – you're on the leg. Don't let it dangle, keep it steady and move with us. Quick and smooth guys. On three!"
They all held their breaths as they transferred the maimed boy to the improvised stretcher. Adrian hurriedly strapped him to the supports, securing him in place.
"You two!" He ordered, pointing to the builders who's supplied the important piece of equipment. "Get him to the med hut! Now! Jeff, Clint, with me!"
The man took off running, the medjacks right behind him. In the few minutes it took the nervous procession to follow them, they'd frantically prepared the office for major emergency care. Using the available muscle to make the transfer of Newt's damaged form to the exam table smoother, Adrian coolly dismissed the builders without a second thought. Alby was a little bit harder to get rid off. He fought to remain in the office while they worked, insisting he could help with something, demanding to stay. Despite his desperate arguments he ended up banished to the general care area of the med hut, forced to leave the office after a deadly serious Adrian strong armed him out and barred the door.
Alby walked back and forth in front of the office feeling useless, impotent...angry. Not with Adrian, though – he was furious with himself.
If he'd been quicker, he have gotten to Newt before he'd been attacked.
If he'd been smarter, he'd have made damn sure that someone was with Newt at all times today, so he couldn't have slipped away.
If he'd been a better leader, none of this would have happened.
He walked paced the small area like a caged beast, wearing a path in the floor, an unyielding wall of wood blocking his way and barring him from seeing his closest friend.
Using a sharp knife Adrian cut away what was left of Newt's tattered, bloody clothes, leaving him bare except for a holy pair of graying underwear. Even as part of him lamented how small and helpless the boy looked, exposed and broken on the ratty blankets, his mind worked methodically on the task at hand. Clinically cataloguing injuries as he went, he worked to identify priorities and assemble a plan of action. With Clint washing away blood and dirt to afford them a better view of the injuries and Jeff grabbing every scrap of suture and bandage he could find, Adrian circumspectly felt along the back of Newt's skull and neck to search for fractures or telling breakage. His relief grew by the second as he found no areas of severe damage; the kid was going to have one hell of a goose egg and the mother of all headaches, maybe a moderate concussion, but his skull and neck appeared to be undamaged. The gash on his forehead, for all that it was ugly, was a relatively minor and easy to deal with. The integrity of his skull was intact, that was the most important thing.
The relief was short lived as Newt took two more faltering gasps of air and simply stopped breathing. His heart thudded once more, dully, before falling silent.
Adrian reacted without thinking, vaulting onto the table and straddling the terrifyingly still boy. His hands were in place and steadily depressing Newt's chest before he'd had a chance to miss more than three heart beats. The man's voice was frigid, his tone harder than steel as his whole being focused on saving the boy's life.
"Not happening kid. Think again."
He pinched Newt's nose closed and leaned down, tasting the coppery tang of blood as he locked his lips over Newt's and forced his own life giving breath down the boy's throat.
"Don't you give up on me now, kid. I'll be damned if I let you die on me now."
Pumping.
Breathing.
Pumping.
Breathing.
Adrian's world narrowed, his mind so focused on bringing Newt back that the glade, the medhut, even the two medjacks hovering powerlessly beside the table faded into nothingness.
Pumping.
Breathing.
Pumping.
Breathing.
Newt and Adrian, the only two people left in the world.
"Don't you give up, kid! Don't you fuckin' dare give up on me now! Breathe dammit!"
Pumping.
Breathing.
His arms were burning, his chest constricting tightly as he fought an uphill battle. His eyes started to burn, and not just from the perspiration that dripped into them as he incessantly worked.
Pumping.
Breathing.
Losing him.
"Come on kid...come on Newt. Please. Come back, Newt. Please."
He heard himself begging, but he couldn't stop the words.
"Please kid, it's not over yet, you're not done. Please, come back to me."
He felt his last shred of hope miserably start to slip through his fingers when, miraculously, Newt's chest started to rise and fall on its own. The man felt the raspy vibration of labored breath in battered lungs, the revived heart weakly throbbing against the shaking fingers he pressed into the boy's carotid artery. He dropped his head to the bruised flesh under his hands, delicately resting his forehead on the fragile pale skin of Newt's collar bone. He closed his eyes and his lips moved silently, offering thanks to a God he wasn't even sure he truly believed in.
Newt was alive.
For now.
Adrian and the two medjacks worked through supper, passed the setting of the sun and into the night, stabilizing and piecing back together the shattered body of the runner. The leg was the most delicate and dicey to repair; set and splinted, lines of stitches pulled the skin and muscles back together where the broken bones had punched through. Adrian had done the very best he could; he'd pulled out every trick and technique buried in the considerable memory bank of his brain, and still he wasn't sure if the boy would ever walk again. They'd stitched all but the most superficial cuts, treated the bruises, wrapped the broken ribs, addressed the dislocated shoulder and elbow on the right side of his body.
Newt had so many bandages, splints and poultices layered on him that he looked more like a crude rag doll than a person, something thrown together with hand-me-down bits and pieces by a tired parent and discarded by a cranky child.
Adrian wished for better facilities; the medical equipment that he knew could scan for internal injuries and view fractures impossible to see with the naked eye. He wished for actual drugs – to put the boy completely under while his body healed, and to treat the pain of what would surely be a long, long recovery period. He wished for access to actual medical professionals, qualified and trained individuals who would be able to do what he was struggling to accomplish without even breaking a sweat.
He wished for a lot of things.
The moon was high and bright when he finally sent Clint and Jeff off to their own respective beds; there was nothing else the tired and strung out boys could do tonight. Alone with only the broken shell of the boy for company, he saw in the warm light of many candles and soothed the leading edge of his raw nerves by sitting and watching Newt take shallow, steady breaths.
Keeping vigil, knowing he didn't have it in him to step out of the room for even a minute, as the fear and anxiety started to leach away, his canny, clever brain began to work.
What the hell had happened out there today?
He'd seen every inch of skin, treated every scratch, scrape, cut, bruise.
If Newt had been attacked by something...where were the defensive wounds?
If he'd been savaged by a monster...where were the stabs, the claw marks, the bites?
Newt...what did you do?!
It was a long, troubling night.
Author's note~
See you next chapter!
~Ruby