Hello again everyone!

(I bet you weren't expecting an update for another month. I'm finally upholding my promises to update more quickly!)

Just FYI, this chapter gets sort of graphic (Like violence and blood- but definitely not enough for an M rating), and I figured I should warn you.

Again, I'd really appreciate it if you favorite/follow/review!

Byeeeeee

- Plerfstacks :)

Chapter 6

Thomas was curled on the ground in the fetal position, with one hand clasped over his left shoulder. His blood had begun pooling over the concrete and seeping into the cracks. Anna rushed over and knelt beside him, rolling him over as gently as she could. His face had turned paper-white and his eyes were tightly closed; his eyebrows were knit so close together that they were almost touching. Anna looked over at the others, who were just watching her in shock.

"Somebody help me," she cried. "Stop standing there!"

Newt dropped to the floor beside her, snapping out of his daze. He yanked off his t-shirt and pressed it to the wound in Thomas's shoulder. Thomas's eyelids fluttered slightly, and his breathing quickened, but he didn't otherwise respond. Newt cursed, looking down at the instantly blood-soaked shirt, and looked at Anna helplessly.

"What do we do?" he asked desperately. "We can't just let him bleed out."

"I can help him," Jorge volunteered. "We need a fire."

Anna wheeled around to glare at him.

"Why didn't you mention that before, shuckface? Now he's already lost about half the shucking blood in his shucking body—"

Newt shushed her.

"Good," he said to Jorge. "What do we do?"

"Just bring him somewhere safe. I'll do the rest."

Anna looked down at Thomas, who still seemed conscious, though he was definitely teetering on the edge.

"We're gonna try and pick you up, okay?" Anna said to him, hoping he could hear her. She wasn't sure, but Thomas seemed to nod slightly in response. Anna gingerly placed her hands under Thomas's arms and nodded to Newt, who grabbed his feet.

"This is gonna hurt a lot, Tommy," Newt said to him. "We're trying to be careful, but there's only so much we can do."

Thomas grimaced harder, but he didn't respond otherwise.

"Okay, one, two, three," Anna said to Newt, and on "three", they both stood up. Thomas's back arched as he cried out once and then fell limp in their arms. She and Newt carried him as quickly as they could, following the group. They stopped when they got to a small, secluded alley about a hundred yards from the building that they'd been in previously. They set Thomas down on the pavement, and Jorge set to work on building a fire. Anna and Newt sat together, leaning against the brick wall of the alleyway, watching anxiously as Jorge grabbed a very convenient pack of matches from his pocket and lit a piece of paper. He added cardboard and additional paper until they had a large, flickering fire.

"This is only gonna burn for so long," Jorge warned them. "Be better if we had some wood, but I haven't seen that stuff in what feels like forever."

Anna nodded.

"You guys keep adding stuff to keep it burning," she instructed the others. "Use your shucking clothes if you have to."

She turned to Jorge.

"What're you planning?" she asked.

"I'm gonna try and get the bullet out—and cauterize the wound while we're at it," he replied, grabbing a knife from his pocket and holding it into the flames. "It should work—I've done it before."

Anna nodded again and left Jorge to it. She walked over to where Newt was sitting beside Thomas.

"Is he alright?" she asked.

"Oh, yeah, he's just peachy," Newt said sarcastically. "Better than ever, if you ask me."

Anna frowned.

"Okay, sorry for caring," she said, slightly annoyed. Newt sighed.

"Sorry," he said. "I'm just stressed. First I practically die from dehydration, and then Tommy gets shot by a Crank."

"Yeah," Anna agreed softly. "But you just need to get used to it. We're the shucking test subjects. We're essentially just lab rats, so our life is gonna suck no matter how you spin it."

Newt nodded thoughtfully.

"But, you know, it hasn't beenall bad," he said. "I have you."

Anna felt her face warm as she smiled fondly at him. Leave it to Newt to say something sweet at the exact right moment. She leaned forward to press her lips against his, but pulled away after a moment. Anna needed to face reality, and right then, reality was the fact that Thomas was going to die if they didn't help him. Anna glanced over at Jorge.

"You almost done?" she asked. He nodded.

"Just give it thirty more seconds, muchacha."

She waited impatiently until Jorge removed the glowing knife from the flames and turned toward Anna.

"Be careful," she warned him. "You don't want to make it worse."

"I know," he replied. "I've done this before, remember?"

"Okay," said Anna, nodding. "I'll stay out of your way."

Jorge held the knife loosely in his hand as he assessed Thomas's injury.

"Yeah, we definitely need to take the bullet out," Jorge muttered, seemingly to himself. "Who knows what sort of dirt there was on that thing."

"Wait, I think he's awake," Newt said from beside Anna. She swore. Out of all the times he could've chosen to wake up, now was possibly the worst.

"Okay," Anna muttered. "Just… hold him down."

Newt looked over at her for a moment, and then, with a slightly sick look on his face, he positioned himself so one of his knees was pressing into Thomas's chest and his hands were pinning Thomas's wrists to the hard concrete of the ground.

"Do it," she instructed Jorge. "Just shucking do it."

Jorge nodded and leaned over Thomas's inert form, holding his still-white-hot knife in a steady hand. Anna couldn't tear her horrified gaze from the tip of the blade as Jorge pressed the knife into Thomas's shoulder with a sizzling noise and the smell of cooking meat. Thomas let out a shriek as he struggled to release himself from Newt's grip, but Newt wouldn't let go of him until he collapsed to the ground again. Anna tried hard not to vomit as Jorge, unaffected by Thomas's outburst, continued cutting the bullet out of his shoulder. Blood ran over the pavement, soaking Anna's hands and knees. It felt like an eternity before Jorge, his face sweaty and smeared with blood from his hands, looked up at Anna and triumphantly presented the bullet to her. Anna really did vomit at the sight of it, dripping with blood and covered in little bits of Thomas's flesh. She wiped her mouth with her wrist, and threw up again when she realized that she was just spreading blood all over her face. Jorge finished his job quickly after that, and before too long, Thomas was as patched up as they could manage.

"Will he be alright?" Anna asked Jorge.

He shook his head indecisively.

"I dunno, hermana," he said. "I guess we've just got to find out."

Jorge instructed Anna and Newt to stay with Thomas, and then he walked over to join Brenda, who had been watching from a short distance with a look of horror on her face. Anna wanted to glare at her, but she couldn't find it in herself. She was too frazzled from the past hour's events. She turned towards Newt, who looked just as upset as she was.

"You okay?" she asked. He shook his head.

"No," he replied. "What kind of question is that?"

"Yeah, I'm not okay either," Anna admitted. They lapsed into silence for a moment.

"Hey, you're still not wearing a shirt," she realized, looking at Newt.

"I don't have one," he said, shrugging. "I gave mine to Tommy."

"Yeah," she said. "I have your jacket, though; do you want it?"

Newt nodded.

"Yeah, thanks," he said. "It was getting sort of awkward."

Anna smiled slightly. She wasn't going to admit it, but she didn't mind Newt's lack of a shirt. Newt seemed to be aware of this fact, however, because he was blushing as he pulled on his jacket and buttoned it up as far as it would go.

Anna leaned into him, letting her head rest against his chest where it fit so nicely, and traced her thumb over his knuckles, which were cracked and bleeding just like hers from the dry weather. He put his arm around her shoulders and looked down at her through his long blond eyelashes, a small smile quirking the side of his mouth up. Anna smiled back, snuggling her head closer into his chest. She closed her eyes contentedly, allowing herself for just a moment to forget all her problems.

The Gladers, Brenda, and Jorge stayed there for the next few days, unable to abandon Thomas lying helplessly on the ground. Anna wasn't sure when they'd be able to leave, because Thomas really wasn't getting any better. His shoulder, though it had stopped bleeding quite some time ago, had become swollen and off-looking, and Anna was almost certain that it wasn't supposed to do that. She spent most of her time worrying about the kid, and she wondered what had happened to her not-quite-friendly relationship with him. She'd gone from finding him irritating to trying desperately to save his life in about ten minutes. She supposed that that was how it was in a life-or-death scenario. You saved the person, without worrying about who it was or how you felt about them.

Brenda had taken to sitting beside Thomas for hours on end, holding his hand and staring down at him with her brow creased. Anna still didn't like Brenda, but she did respect her for her devotion.

It was on the second day after the Crank had shot Thomas when Anna heard Jorge shout,

"Berg!"

His shout was followed immediately by a deafening whirring noise that almost shook something loose from Anna's memory blocks, but not quite.

Anna frantically looked for the Berg, whatever that was, and was met with the sight of a large plane that landed on the sand about fifty yards from where the Gladers had set up camp. Two people ran out of the plane and over to the group, and Anna had grabbed her knife and was about to tear them to shreds when she saw that they weren't trying to attack them. Instead, they ignored the Gladers entirely and went for Thomas, grabbing him by the arms and legs and carrying him into their ship.

"Tommy!" Newt cried from behind her. "Where the bloody shuck are they taking him?"

Anna could only shake her head as she stared at the plane—the Berg—as it took off and flew away. Her head began to throb as the dam that held back all her missing memories threatened to break once more. She clung to it desperately, trying to reclaim whatever she could. A few brief flashes flew through her mind—a small, soft hand held in her own, a room splattered with blood, the feeling of abandonment. She blinked hard, trying to get rid of the vertigo. Regaining her balance, she turned towards Newt.

"What do we do?" she asked, thoroughly shocked by what had just occurred. Newt shook his head helplessly.

"I dunno, love," he replied. "We've just got to sit here and wait it out, I guess."

Anna sighed in response to his words and trudged back to the small shelter that the Gladers were staying in, preparing herself for a long day of waiting.