The Storm: Chapter Three


Poe's hands were on his head, like he couldn't believe at what he had just done.

"It was an accident," Poe whimpered in a state of shock. "It was an accident."

Alice was dead, her golden eyes fixed and vacant. Her chest red and still.

"I didn't mean it."

I saw as Poe clenched his teeth tightly together, exhaling a raspy groan as he tried with all his might to fill the air into his lungs. It was quite an eerie thing to watch. I felt like I was looking into a mirror and I could actually feel the anguish and fear radiating inside of him. But it wasn't me. It wasn't my panic attack. I didn't think I had ever grasped the idea that other people felt the exact same way as me. Not until I saw this with my very own eyes. The tears that fell his eyes were so familiar to me, and the panic behind those tears looked identical to the panic I had seen manifest in my own.

It was an intense moment. The urge to help him get through this conflicted with my own self barely clinging to the calm. A panicked oblivion stewed within my own chest. I felt the grips of my own panic attack starting to take over. My thoughts raced and began to clamour in my mind of the situation that we had found ourselves in.

Somewhere in those moments of panic, I heard myself repeating the words Newt had used to help my through my own: "In through your nose, out through your mouth. In through your nose, out through your mouth." Eventually, both of us calmed down. Eventually, the tears stopped rolling down the side of his cheeks. Eventually, normal breathing was restored. Eventually, our eyes showed no signs of panic. It was a telling moment for me. To see someone else experience exactly what I experienced. And the way I was able to help them, despite myself being in a mid-panic.

"We should rest for a bit before we carry on," I said to Poe. He only nodded in agreement, his eyes still fixated on the body. A second later, he silently brushed past us and walked round the other side of the building where a long shadow had been cast. I motioned for Jamie to follow him, hoping that the kid would keep an eye on him whilst I handled Alice.

It was a sorrowful sight to behold. The initial shock had now cooled off and I was now able to fully look at the body slumped against the side of the building. The golden eyes that had shone in the light had now dulled to a husk. The venomous scowl that she wore in her last moments had softened into a blank expression. Without her eyes open, and avoiding the stain of red of her shirt, she looked like she was sleeping. The effects of death had yet taken a hold of her body.

I sucked in a hot breath and willed myself to move closer to her. This was the first time I had seen a dead body. The first time had I seen death at work. I had only ever heard about it passing. How we had assumed Ben had died in the Maze when he was Banished. There was a difference between hearing about it to seeing it.

I crouched over Alice and rested a hand on her still chest. A feeling deep below wished that this was just a hoax and she would spring up any second. However, I knew that was wistful thinking. Alice was gone.

In a mark of respect, I closed her golden eyes so that she looked peaceful in her dead slumber and pulled her body down until she lay flat. There wasn't much else I could do. There was no entrance into the building, otherwise I would have placed her body inside so that it was out of the way from the weather. I ultimately would have to leave her there to succumb to the environment. I felt a tear snake down the side of my cheek and the taste of salt on my lips. It was painful to see her like this. Alone. Alice deserved more than this pathetic ending. And I couldn't give it to her.

"I'm sorry for everything I have done." It was a pitiful apology. I knew it could never make up for whatever I had done in Eden. Nonetheless it was all I could give in that moment.

I bowed my head and walked away from the body of Alice. This would be the first time I had seen a body, but I knew in my mind that it would not be the last. These Trials were going to test us and we had only just begun.

The intensity of the sun lessened when I re-joined the boys under the shade. The feeling like a burning weight being lifted of my shoulders. I found Poe slumped up against the side of the wall, his cool eyes had glazed over and were fixed on the buildings that lay in front of us. Poe was deep in thought. His eyes were puffy and his face smeared with the remnants of tears. We all knew that Poe had not meant to kill Alice. He was a man that sought for resolution not violence. That was very clear with the way he approached every fight I had witnessed so far. Still, I dared not disturb him. Not in fear of how he would react, but in fear that I would say the wrong thing. I just did not know what to do.

Instead, I chose to push the memory away and focus on the present. The death was a shock in itself, but only one of us could afford to grief in sadness in the moment. I directed my attention to Jamie, as a replacement for the emotion, who was gently whimpering beside me, his lips puckering together, his arms wrapped round his chest. The blood had started to dry on the side of his face, a tarry-looking mass cracking every time his faced twitched. I instinctively touched his shoulder and guided him to the shaded area so that I could tend to his wounds the best I could. We sat a hair's length away from Poe, close enough to monitor him but far enough for him to have space to process.

Jamie fidgeted as he sat crossed-legged in front of me, his fingers intertwining with each other and occasionally fumbling with the sleeve of his shirt. I positioned my pack in between us and removed one of the bottles of water. I unscrewed the cap and offered it to Jamie, who gladly took it. He gulped half of the bottle down before he stopped for air. Then he passed it back to which I took small sips, weary that Poe and I would have to ration our supplies again to accommodate Jamie. According to Jamie, his supplies went missing when Alice had chased him to the building.

"After this," I uttered to the boys, not caring if one was not listening to me. "We need to make a real plan of how we approach the buildings."

From where we sat, the buildings had grown in size. No longer did it look like a small cluster, but a large ominous shell of a city that loomed over us. Between us and the buildings, there were still several miles for us to travel and the sun was still very much blazing in the sky. If we carried on now and did not stop, we could make it just as twilight merges into the night. After today's events, I knew I would have to keep my feelings about the place under wraps. There was no place for it when survival was far more important than it looks scary.

I lowered my eyes to Jamie and spoke "I'm gonna clean your face."

He lowered his eyes and murmured a soft okay in response. I inspected the head wound first that was hidden under his wet curls. I brushed back his hair and noticed a small cut just at the tip of his hairline. Small enough to miss, but large enough that the blood poured freely and down the side of his face. I removed the scarf that had now positioned itself round my neck and applied pressure to the area hoping that the bleeding would stop. Jamie squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth together as I pressed down.

"Nearly over," I whispered to him. I removed the scarf after a few moments and checked again if the wound was still bleeding. The bleeding had stopped, the cut not as deep as it made out to be.

"It hurts." Jamie wiped his nose with the end of his sleeve.

"I'm sorry, I haven't got anything for the pain." I sympathised with the kid. Without the rush of adrenaline pumping through your veins, there was not stopping the magnitude of pain that rushed forward. I felt even worse, there was nothing in any of the packs to help with this. "You're just going to have to be brave. Can you do that for me?" Jamie nodded his head, his eyes glistening in the drooping sunlight. I smiled back as best as I could. A smile that I hoped would reassure the kid with at least a drop of hope.

We sat in silence for a further ten minutes. I opened a packet of the meat substance and allowed us to have a strip each. Jamie nibbled at his like a little animal, a very different image of him eating compared to what I witnessed in the room.

"Poe, will you eat with us?" I quietly said to him. He had not moved the whole time we rested. The rise and fall of his chest the only indication that he was still alive. I noticed his finger twitched, then a movement of head and the cool eyes resting upon me. He sniffled a little, wiped his eyes dry and rose. He took the meat substance I offered to him and chewed down on it slowly. That was about as much as I was going to get from him at that moment.

In the final minutes of our rest, I gently pulled out the hunting knife from my trouser pocket, which I had stuffed in there when I walked away from Alice's body. The blade shone a dull red, the blood had now dried upon it. In an instant, I had scrunched up the now bloody scarf and furiously rubbed the blade to try and remove the blood as best as I could. The knife itself would be a reminder of what happened here, the blood did not have to be a part of it too.

I felt a hand rest upon mine and force me to stop what I was doing. I glanced up to see Poe staring down at me, a blank expression written on his face. He plied my fingers open and removed the knife from my grasp. He held the hilt in his hand, inspected the blade then said: "If you don't mind, I'd like to keep hold of this."

"Sure," I said, glad that the weapon had been taken from me. Poe, though seemingly not coping, was the less inept person to carry such a weapon. It did not matter what they said I was like before, the me now was not thrilled to have one in their possession.

"We should keep walking," Poe informed me. "The water won't last if we sit around any much longer."

I agreed with him, partly on the water front and partly on wanting to leave this place as quick as we could. In our short time resting, the unbearable heat that suffocated us for the majority of the day had started to ease into a moderately bearable heat. The sun was no longer deep centre of the clear sky. It had travelled further into its journey of setting in the west. The shadow of the building growing even longer.

Mind you, it still was hot.

"It must be mid-afternoon," Poe muttered. "It'll be dark soon."

"What do you suggest then?" I rose from the ground and moved closer to him.

"We should keep walking. I reckon there is only a few miles to go to get there. Hopefully we should reach it just as darkness falls. We can then reassess what we should do next."

"What about Georgie?" Jamie injected before he explained the plan Alice had been instructed to carry out by Georgie. It was here that we learnt, not much to our surprise, that Georgie was intent on eliminating everyone that stood in her way of getting the cure. Alice had been told to deal with the stragglers (Jamie, Poe and I) and then would re-join the group once she was done with us. The idea sounded good. Omitting from the fact Alice stupidly thinking that she could take all three of us on by herself.

Poe, with a glint of a joke in his voice, commented that this was the reason why she was passed over for Captain. "She just doesn't think things through."

With the new information in our grasp, we all agreed to continue into the scorching heat. Staying put probably was a better idea. The cover of darkness would have helped with our approach. Yet, the knowing that a dead body sat yards from us just did not sit well with us.

"It's a big risk," Poe expressed. "Georgie is dangerous. This time her actions are calculated. She doesn't have the restraint of Eden. She will try to eliminate us. Either option we take, Georgie will be waiting for us. We can't waste any more time in fear of her. She, and the others, are ahead of us and right now we are losing. So we all agreed we keep moving."

Jamie and I nodded. We fully supported the idea. The stupid idea. But the idea we needed to take. Time was not on our side. We still had far to travel.

And with that, we carried on into the setting sun and the moderately bearable heat.


Four hours of mindless chatter had gone by before Jamie plucked up the courage and outrightly ask me "Where were you after you disappeared?"

I was aware that I would eventually have to explain my story (or what I was actually allowed to remember), I just did not want too. It felt strange detailing everything to them like they were old friends. Which they were. I just did not see them like that. No matter how much information they were able to give about me that indicated that they really knew who I was. I just did not trust them. And it killed me inside. These boys would do anything to help me, they had showed that much. Nevertheless I just could not accept that they were part of my life. It made the memories of the Gladers feel something of a lie. Like I was never supposed to be there and they are just falsehoods, hiding the reality of who I really was.

Jeez Clarke, get over yourself. Any memory is better than none.

I contemplated for a second. Who would have benefited more from being told about the Glade? Me or them? There was something about opening old wounds that I really didn't want to do at them moment. The thought of it and the realisation that I had lost what I thought was the only group of friends that I had.

A long minute passed. Neither Poe nor Jamie nudged for an answer. Well, Jamie tried, but with a quick glare from Poe he immediately stopped.

"I woke in a Box," I started eventually, letting the story take over me. And with that I told them the story of Glade and the what happened, the people that I met and how it ended. I, obviously, left some very big things out. That was something I wanted to keep for myself entirely and I couldn't bare to think of him at the moment. I was still so angry. But I yearned for him. Now that there was a small chance that he may be alive.

"So is Newt your boyfriend then?" Jamie cut in when I spoke about Newt and the maps.

"Wha- no, what?" I responded dumbfounded. "He isn't my boyfriend."

"Sure he is," Jamie snickered with a smile now etching at his face.

"No … stop it … Jamie!" I huffed. I wasn't sure what else to say. Newt wasn't my boyfriend. He was … well … I didn't know how to describe it. I huffed again, which only made the boy laugh out loud. His teasing attempt successful.

I hate him.

"He isn't my boyfriend," Jamie mimicked in what he thought I sounded like. I scowled at him which only incited the kid further. Jamie had started up a little song about Newt and I. Even a hint of a smile etched at Poe's mouth from the ridiculousness of this. "Clarke and Newt, sitting in the tree…"

"You are horrible," I chided. I stormed ahead of them, frustrated at his childish attempts to mock me. All I could heard behind me was Jamie again repeating everything that I said.

Eventually, the mocking both quietened to a low whisper between the boys. I glanced over my shoulder and noticed that the smiles had turned into serious looks as they conversed between themselves. Poe caught my eye and immediately stopped talking to Jamie. Whatever they had been speaking about definitely involved me. No one stops talking mid-sentence unless the person of topic is looking. I asked them what they were speaking about and was given the answer "how you were just normal then".

"Oh," was all I was able to reply back to them. We fell into silence again and another half an hour passed by until another word was spoken. The sun at this point had settled firmly in the west, the light continually shifting from a luminous red glow to a hesitant chiaroscuro and back again in such a way that it almost felt like the sun was warning us about something.

My admiration of the sunset was interrupted by Poe shouting from behind me. I looked over my shoulder to see him running towards me and pointing at something. It took a moment for me to realise what had caused him to erupted into such an outburst. In front of us, a small figure was running towards us. Their body a ghostly form of darkness in the heat mirage, small trails of dust rising and falling at their feet.

Poe and Jamie had joined me by my side. Jamie flung himself around my waist as he sought protection from the figure. Poe thrusted a hand out in front of me whilst the other gripped Alice's knife. We drew in closer as the figure approached, not caring about the heat that radiated around us.

My muscles tensed and my heart beat faster as the anticipation ate away at me. We huddled together as we prepared ourselves for what was going to happen, the feeling of dread feeling us as the memory of Alice all entered our minds. I did not want to relive that moment again. It had barely turned cold.

The figure, first blurred by the plumes of heat waving of the ground, now came into focus a hundred or so meters from where we stood. It was the slight relaxation in Poe's body that caught me off guard. "Maya," he first whispered, uncertainty cracking his voice. "Maya!" he said again, this time loud enough for the figure to hear. And they did. The figure stopped in their path, a scrapping of shoes releasing a cloud of dust around their legs. "Poe?" the figure called back in a high voice.

Poe ran from my side, the call of his name plentiful evidence that he knew who he was running too. He rushed to Maya, his arms outstretched as he embraced her in a tight hug. Jamie had left my side as well and joined the joyous reunion of friends.

I held back. I felt like an outsider looking in. I longed for something similar to that. A reunion of my own comparable to theirs. I wanted to be reunited with Newt and the Gladers. Even so, that seemed like an odd concept for me. No matter how much I longed for such a thing, deep inside I didn't feel a part of them either. Just another outsider looking in. I felt like I was on the brink of something, caught between two worlds, neither one I could not enter. It felt so lonely being stuck there … here. The uncertainty of if I would ever feel like I would belong somewhere.

I walked up to them, but I dared not interrupt the moment. Knowing how much I longed for one, I knew how special it was to them. The briefest moments of familiarity.

"I'm so glad to it's you," Poe says as the hug ends. A glint of happiness sparked in his voice as he spoke.

"Me too," Maya replies amid breathes. Her shoulders went up and down as she sucked the air back into her lungs. "Me too."

Brown eyes caught mine and Maya straightens her back. "Hello." Her tone had changed from the happy friend to the I'm-not-sure-who-to-react-to-you tone. A mono tone. Maya fussed with the hem of her shirt as she waited for the next move. I probably should have said hello back, but something compelled me to stay quiet. In the end, she broke the awkward silence and asked "still don't remember?"

"No," I answered. An awkward silence emerged amongst us. I wasn't sure what else I got say to her. Yes, I was happy to see someone that didn't want to kill me. On the other hand, the only memory I had was when she stood between Georgie and Poe back in the room. Forcing excitement didn't sit right with me. I wanted to be happy. I just couldn't.

Poe interrupted the silence. "What happened to you?"

Maya quickly shifted from staring to me to facing Poe her face changing from happiness to an expression best described as shock. The moment of their reunion casting a shadow on the danger that she had arrived from. "We need to go now! They're in danger, Maggie and Lottie."

"Lottie," Poe stuttered, a sense of urgency in his voice. "You've seen Lottie."

"Yeah, but they're in danger. Georgie and Leo ambushed us."

Poe's face crumpled into anger. His lips pursued together as he tried to contain the anger that swelled inside of him. "We go then."

"Poe be reasonable. They could be–" I start to say before he flings a hand up in my direction to silence me.

"No Clarke," he retorted, his eyes ablaze with anger. "We need to save her. I will not lose Lottie."

"And I Maggie," Maya said. She held the same expression as Poe, as if the elder had taught the younger. She shifted her attention from mine (her eyes narrowing every second she looked at me) and told Poe that she would explain the situation once we had gotten to the city. Poe agreed and ran off with her with Jamie and I following behind as fast as we could.

I didn't like where this was heading, the path that they were travelling down. Whatever had happened in the city with the others had significantly scarred Maya. I barely knew her, but some deep instinct whispered to me that her behaviour was not right. Her erratic behaviour felt out of character, as if her urgency to save Maggie and Lottie blinded her from reason. Worse, Poe had been sucked into the same hole as her.

And I knew from watching them that they're behaviour was familiar, for if the same thing had happened to Newt, I would react in the same way. Maybe Newt was more than just that friend to me. Maybe he really meant more to me than I thought. It explained why he was the person I wanted to see so desperately. And pined for. And was always the person I thought of first before Chuck, Thomas … Minho …

Off topic.

Okay, back to the story then.

I was already incredibly sweaty from the day's hike. My armpits were soddened, the back of my knees soaked. I didn't dare venture towards my feet. Basically, name a place on my body, it was sweaty. Really sweaty. The tip of my plait dripped every now and again from the constant stream of sweat that trickled from my head downwards. No matter how much I tried to wipe the beads of sweat that formed on my forehead, more formed soon after. Running made everything worse. I did not care that maybe once I spent a part of my life doing this exact thing. Running in the heat was the worst and gross. Fortunately I was not the only person suffering.

Regardless of my complaints, I knew that we had to get to the buildings as swift as possible. There was no point complaining to anyone. My complaints certainly would have landed me with a speedy retribution. So I kept remanding myself I was running in the gross heat to save Lottie and Maggie. Two people who, apparently, I knew but felt nothing towards. Gosh, I was starting to sound selfish.

What felt like an eternity of running turned out to be not that long – an hour maybe (Jamie would disagree and heaved through breaths "I was not built for this"). The buildings loomed over us as we approached closer to them. They were much taller than I had expected, which to be fair I did not know what I was expecting when I arrived there. The sun and fully set by the time we entered through one of the many broken glass windows into a small room.

To my dismay, the dust had also found its way into the room as well. What once must have been a doorway into another part of the building, was now half a wall and a mound of dirt piling up so high that you had to crawl over it to get any further in. The walls themselves were cracked beyond repair. The weather had stripped the colour from them and only left the metal skeleton exposed for everyone to see. It did not feel safe being stood here in a building that looked like it may fall at any given moment. Yet, with the way that it had deteriorated who knows how long it had been standing in this state.

Stop worrying.

"We need to rest," I called to Poe and Maya as they powered through the room. Taking no hint at the very tired Jamie that swayed beside me. "We can't just go into the city without it."

Maya and Poe glanced at each other. They both expressed shock on their faces, as if they had not expected me to command them to stop. It felt odd ordering people around, even odder that I once did do that to these people.

"We need to find Maggie and Lottie," Maya responded, her voice giving away that she was annoyed at me for daring to mention that we were tired.

"And we will," I reasoned with her. "But right now, we are no help to them without rest."

Maya opened her mouth to retort but Poe cut her off. "She's right Maya. Clarke and I have barely stopped all day. We can't save them if we are too tired."

Maya looked at him as if he had betrayed her. Her face scrunched from a look of disgust to a realisation of the situation. I wanted to help her find Maggie and Lottie. I just had no energy to carry on. We needed the rest so that we could clear our minds and figure out what our next move was.

In huff Maya stormed off into the belly of the building. I instinctively started to follow her, but Poe motioned for me to stay and told me to give her some space. He was right. Maya had yet to tell us what she had been through. And from the way she has handled herself, well it hasn't been fine.

I nodded at him and chose instead to venture outside to seek the cool air that replaced the heat. It was a relief to be able to breath in fully again without the burning sensation. The air felt different, almost crisper the further I took it in. Twilight had finally succumbed to the darkness, but what a treat the sky unfolded.

Even before we knew that the sky was fake in the Glade, the stars that shone down always felt fake. Their shine just to perfect, the twinkle to right. Nothing ever wrinkled unexpectedly, all of it was timed to a tee. Out here, under the real sky the stars were magnificent. There were lighter patches in part of the skies, clusters of faint and bold light. These were the same stars that greeted the ancients, the same ones that would be there in millions of years after I was gone.

"Und dass meine kleine Jägerin die schöne, aber eitle Cassiopeia ist. Sehen Sie, wie das W einen Stuhl bildet."

"Ich sehe es," I whispered back involuntarily, the words slipping out from my tongue. I tore myself away from the stars and spun around to see if someone had spoken beside me. Yet no one was there apart from Poe and Jamie whose outlines were just visible from inside the building. I was alone, standing on dirt, going absolutely mad.

I shook my head trying to rattle the words to come back again. The language that I spoke was not one I recognised. I didn't even know what language I spoke now. The only thing I knew that was different about how I spoke was pointed out to me by Chuck. So how was it possible for me to understand whatever was spoken and reply in the same language. Unless it was a memory from way before Eden and the Glade. Another clue into who I really was.

It was a strange concept to have a proper memory instead of the cruel ones that seeped through every now and again. Though brief, the voice felt soothing and familiar, a voice that I was sure I had heard recently but could not understand why or how. The voice and memory felt like home, a place where I would have loved to be right now. If I actually had one.

It was the realisation of the new memory that bought on the dread of sleeping. The day had already been so long that I had almost tuned out the final moments of the Glade. It dawned on me that not only would fracture memories twist themselves into horrible nightmares, the new ones I had created will do the same. I was doomed to relive moments of my past.

Sleeping, originally the first thing on my mind, had suddenly turned into the last thing I wanted to do. Especially round people who did not know of the terrors that plagued me. What would they think if they couldn't stop me from crying out? We were in danger after all.

It didn't matter to me that my mind felt clearer ever since I had awoken on that cot. I had no care that the it felt like a cloud of mist had lifted from my mind and I was able to absorb the world without it being slanted. The idea of sleep no longer appealed to me. I ignored the screams from my body as it begged me to rest, even for a few hours. I just could not face the nightmares.

What I really was saying was that I needed Newt around me so that I could sleep. When he had slept in my room on the floor, I had relaxed almost allowing myself to face the terrors knowing that he would be by my side if anything went wrong. And when I found him in my bed. Well…

Puh-lease.

Maybe I was overthinking everything. I was fine up until the minute the voice spoke to me. I was ready to sleep. I even commanded Maya to stop. Why did it take something so small to unravel everything inside of me to pieces?

Sleep.

I headed back inside, leaving the twinkling stars to their glorious show. Maya had returned from her outburst. She was now sat beside Poe in deep discussion about the events that had both transpired. As a creeped closer to them, they briefly glanced up at me to acknowledge my presence before they carried on with their conversation.

I chose silence and sat down beside Jamie who was shivering under his jacket (the only thing he was able to save from his missing rations). I pulled out my own and shoved it on knowing that momentarily I would be in the same way. I wrapped an arm around Jamie and rested a head upon his. It didn't take long before I could feel the soft rise and fall of his shoulders and gentle deep breaths he took as he slipped in to slumber.

I allowed for my eyes to close as well. The heaviness of my eyelids too hard to resist. I was too tired to think about anything. I tried to focus on the hush conversation beside me, yet that took more energy in itself to concentrate.

"Schlaf meine kleiner Jäger."


Waking up to a dull, grey sky was a vast improvement on the brightness that I had come accustomed too. The added addition of a violent wind whipping through the building and tearing at my clothes was not a welcomed addition. A storm had swelled in the night whilst we had huddled together in slumber. The wind beat at my face and clothes, threatening to rip the fabrics to shreds if its invisible hands got a hold of me.

In addition to the roaring, the wind had also swept in the desert whilst we had slept. What was just a normal pile of dirt that was amassing had now turned into a huge mound that blocked our entrance to the city. To top it all off, I was buried underneath my own pile of dirt. I shifted my leg and an avalanche of sand trickled down revealing the fabric of my trouser leg. And the dirt just kept flying in from the strong winds rushing through the windows from outside.

I rubbed my face, trying as best as I could to remove the grime. It was no use. Every time I managed to scrap a bit of dust, more just seemed to replace it. Jamie poked his head out from under his jacket (which he must have pulled over himself in the night) to reveal a clean face. The lucky bugger.

Poe tapped me on the shoulder and shouted "…further … in…". I furrowed my eyebrows as I strained to piece together what he had been trying to say. He tried once again, but the roar of the wind over powered his voice and blew the words away. Instead, Maya pushed him back and motioned for us to go outside.

I gave a thumbs up in their direction and pulled myself up from the floor. The dust that had accumulated on me over the night blew from me and into Poe's open mouth. He spluttered from the dust cloud. I took a step toward him, but Maya pointed to the window. I grabbed a hold of Jamie's shoulder, yanked in up from the floor and we pushed we way back into the open air.

If I had thought the wind was bad in the room, I was in for shock for outside. Once I had managed to drag Jamie into the open-air the wind lashed against us even more. My braid strained against the wind, thrashing against the current that tried to tear it away from me. Shortly after we had left the building, Maya and Poe appeared arm in arm. They too struggled against the weight of the wind.

Maya reached out to me and I clutched arm, linking Jamie and I to them. She edged past me and took the lead. She gestured for us to keep moving, pointing to another entrance way that was further down. I acknowledged her plan and both of us then hauled the boys behind us as we made our way to the open window.

Despite the short distance that we had to travel, it was a struggle to get from A to B. The wind was far stronger out here in the open, and pushed back even more. With a free hand, I yanked my coat up above my chin to prevent any more of the dirt from flying into my mouth. My eyes, however, were barely open, my eyelashes struggling to stop every particle from hitting them.

Two more feet, nearly there.

Maya stretched out her hand and grasped the metal beam. She hauled herself forward and edged herself inside of the room. She let go of my arm allowing for me to take a hold of the beam and copy her motion. Once I was inside, I helped to drag Jamie and Poe in with Maya.

The wind was not rushing as violently in the room that we had found ourself in. The walls seemed more sturdier, in spite of the skeleton of the building that could be seen through dozens of holes that had been ripped through each floor.

We didn't stick round for long to observe our new surroundings. We entered the doorway in front of us and ventured further into the building to escape the bombardment of wind slamming against us. We passed through a small corridor a came across another large room, this time it facing out towards what must have once been a street.

The wind seemed relentless. Mini swirls of air rushed everywhere, flinging whatever wasn't fixed to the ground into the air and beyond. What had happened to the Earth for something like this to happen?

Now mostly out of the winds fully frontal attack, and the roaring not as loud as it was juts metres away, we sat down and ate the remaining remnants of our rations. Maya had her own supply. However she too as well was running just as low as us. In the next two days we would have to find food and water, otherwise Georgie and her crew would be the least of our concerns.

"So, what do you suggest we do?" I said threw mouthfuls, trying to fill the silence with noise other than the wind.

"Well, food and water would be a start?" Jamie answered. He had already devoured his meat substance and was inhaling the remaining crackers. "Cause this beef jerky is not nice."

"Our top priority is finding Maggie and Lottie," Maya interjected with a stern look thrown Jamie's way. I took her expression to offence and laid an arm round the kid. How dare she speak to him like that?

"He is right," I countered trying my best to not escalate the situation into what it could become.

"But Maggie and Lottie could be in danger right now and your only concern is food." Maya's voice rose in volume as she struggled to contain her anger. It was hard watching this. If the shoe was on the other foot, I would have acted the same way. Nothing would have stop me, not even those that spoke sense.

"Look, Maya. We need supplies otherwise what good are we to them?" I started to say before Jamie cut me off with a whack to my stomach. I let out an 'oof' and turned to scold him when I hand flew on top of my mouth.

"Shut up," Jamie hissed. "Do you hear that?"

"What?" Poe hissed back. Jamie motioned for him to shush. Poe listened to the kid. We remained silent at Jamie's request, the only thing that could be heard was the roaring of the wind. Jamie removed his hand from my mouth and edged himself to the doorway. I gripped his hand and attempted to snatch him back from his approach. He was: one, not armed, and two, very much going to get killed if he did not stop what he was doing. I hissed his name but he only pulled against me. Clearly, he wanted to be the one to investigate. Please don't let this be Georgie.

"What ya looking for?" a voice whispered into my ear.

I tell you this now dear reader, my soul left my body. Quite literally.

My body propelled forward and smashed into the back of poor little Jamie. He went flying (head over heels) as I attempted to scramble to my feet and gather distance from whatever had spoken in my ear. At this point Jamie had become startled beyond repair and had managed to make matters worse. Instead of me being able to quickly spring into action, the boy had managed to get himself tangled beneath me. His legs thrashed around as he tried to free himself. After a moment of struggling against Jamie, we managed to stand to attention and face whatever had intruded upon us.

Thank goodness Maya and Poe were there.

A young man with wild eyes and jet-black hair stared up at us, his face plastered with a toothy grin and a glint of bemusement shining in his eye. The graceful display of the flight or fight response had amused the man, that much I was able to tell.

"I'm intrigued," the man said as he rose from the floor. "What brings a small rag-tag team like you to my palace of dreams?"

He took a step near Jamie and I. I responded by ushering Jamie to stand behind me and walking us back. Though the man looked to be unarmed, I had a funny feeling there were other ways he could harm us. Weapons were not the only masters of destruction.

"Cat got your tongue Chiquita?" The man giggled, his laughter electrifying chill up and down my spine. "Oh well, seems like I'm gonna have to do all the talking then."

The man advanced forward, taking his steps slowly but surely. A sudden sensation came over me that I had yet recognised however felt second hand to me. Instead of backing away from the man and blocking his path to Jamie, I chose to approach him. My hands balled into fists, and I shifted my balance ready to fight him if necessary. The man noticed my change of demeanour and stopped his advancement to us.

"Now, now Chiquita." He winked at me. "You don't want to be doing something like that under my roof."

I was fully ready to ignore his words and ready for anything that this man was ready to take. That was until a slight movement above me caught the corner of my eye. In the upper heavens of the skeleton building, dozens of heads were poked out stared down at us. From what I could see, everyone had the same wild look in their eye as the man in front of me. All the heads were in various forms of decay, from the point of nothing to the rot deteriorating the very essence of their humanity. It was maybe at this point I had to change from the 'ready to fight' stance to the 'do not piss this guy off' stance.

A swift glance over to Maya and Poe indicated that they too had noticed the audience that we had attracted. Poe caught my eyeline and nodded in my direction.

"Who are you?" I asked him, now weary that I had to be extremely careful in the words that I picked. Any wrong move and we were definitely their dinner for the evening. If these were the same creatures that graced our presence in the room.

"So you do have a voice." The man feigned surprised, his voice an octave higher and a swoon for added measure. "Well, Chiquita, to you I am Jorge. The King of the palace. The leader of the Cranks."

Jorge twirled on the spot and then gave a low bow towards us. He straightened his back and smoothed his shirt down, the restless motion almost like an involuntarily twitch. I opened my mouth to respond with another question, but Jorge held up his hand to silence me. He kept it up as he studied each of our faces. His eyes rested upon me last. I broke from his eyeline as soon as they had rested upon me, however in that brief moment that we had caught each other's eyes I swore I had seen something off about them. I couldn't put my finger on it. It was a look I had seen before, yet my mind at that second decided to cloud in anxiety as the spotlight had been fixed on me. Eventually … maybe … hopefully I'll remember what that look meant.

I glanced at Poe and Maya. They are both just as weary as me at the situation. We were sheep in a lion's den. This would not end well for us if we did not react accordingly.

"We have no trouble with you, let us pass." The words escaped from my mouth in confidence without the permission from my brain. In that very moment, I sounded like a different person. A more confident being that knew they had to cleverly think their way out of this situation. And I was not going to stop them. "Leave us alone, and we will allow you to live."

"Live," Jorge said in astonishment. He turned his attention to his crowd. "They say that if I let them go, we live."

Murmurs erupted above us. I caught a few nasty words and one comment regarding food consumption. My attempt to intimated them had gone terribly wrong. I had intended to threaten them with what WICKED may do to them if they did not live us be. If WICKED would do anything. It had been made very clear by the old man that we were humanities last salvation. Or maybe I had misinterpreted everything wrong. We had killed Alice with no consequences.

Either way, whatever I had said made the situation worse.

In a flash, Jorge had leapt across the room and violently pushed my against the wall. He firmly placed a hand on my shoulder, indicating that his slight figure was not something I should resist against. From my sight, I saw Poe flick out his knife and charge toward where Jorge had me pinned. A figure dropped from above us and blocked his pathway to me.

Jorge's tone had changed from the pleasing to the menacing. "Listen here, Chiquita. There is a lot of things you need to understand about how things work in this city. About the Cranks and about WICKED..."

Oh no, they know about WICKED.

"… about the government, about why they left us here to rot in our disease, kill each other, go completely and utterly insane. About how there's different levels of the Flare. About how it's too late for you – the ill is gonna catch ya if you don't already have it."

The Flare. The thing that I had forced myself to forget. The disease that WICKED had infected me with for their little experiments. With the army of Cranks surrounding us, it only bought the fear and anger back to the surface.

Jorge studied my face, his eyes darting up and down. His mouth gaped open as he went to continue with his monologue, yet no sound came out. I noticed the sternness in his face had shifted to confusion. It was a fast shift, small enough that a blink would miss it. But I noticed it. He relaxed his grip on me and I took the opportunity to force him away. The Crank behind him (a tall woman with a missing ear and red splotches all over her pale skin) spun and lunged in my direction. Jorge grabbed the Crank by the arm just before her claws for fingers poked one of my eyes out.

"Alma, I have spoken to you before about this." Jorge shoved her away and drove her to the ground. Alma whimpered in response and stayed on the ground as she was told. Our eyes met and she snarled in response. Jorge snapped her name again and she stopped. He pointed for her to leave. She crawled out of the room like a wounded animal. "You have a lot to learn Chiquita. But I don't care for you for your pals, so I'm gonna be nice and let you leave. The price of your arrogance is enough punishment for me to be satisfied with."

"Jorge you can't be serious, you promised me the blue eyes," Alma moaned from the doorway, her stare still fixated on me. She licked her lips when she noticed I was staring back.

Jorge put his finger to his lips and raised an eyebrow. "I promised you blue eyes, I didn't say which blue eyes." Jorge winked again at me. "Anyway, you remember what that nasty little girl said."

Alma nodded furiously. She was joined in by hums of agreement from above us as the rest of the Cranks remembered whatever had happened.

"She said she would pluck out my eyes and eat them." Alma flung her hands to her face and covered her eyes. "But I need them to see the colours."

"Oh Güera. It won't be her that eats them, it will be me."

Alma squealed in fright and darted from the room back into the building. Jorge held his belly as he laughed. Only he had found that amusing.

"You better leave now before I change my mind," Jorge warned after he had composed himself from his outburst. We didn't need to be told twice. I took a hold of Jamie's arm, scoped up my pack from the floor and hurried passed Jorge into the outside. I joined Maya and Poe who stood at the other side of the building and together we ran from that place into the city.


Here we are, another chapter to read. Enjoy, queenofthetear x