Chapter 2. Awakening.
With a jolt, Thomas' senses came back to life, along with immense disorientation and about a hundred questions. Questions like: 'how am I alive' and 'what the shuck is happening'.
Opening his eyes didn't help in the slightest since all he saw was blackness.
A surge of panic threatened to overwhelm him, but Thomas knew from experience that panicking wasn't going to lead anywhere. He decided to approach the situation calmly instead. That's what Newt would have done. (Not that it had helped him in the end).
He thought that maybe taking deep breaths would help.
That's when Thomas realized he was immersed in water.
Somehow he'd missed the fact that he was floating in water, a fact which he hadn't realized until he had inhaled liquid rather than air.
He forgot completely about staying calm. All rational thoughts abandoned him and he started to panic, waving his arms around wildly, searching for something, anything.
What he found were walls, four of them, just close enough to make him feel claustrophobic.
The water he'd accidentally inhaled felt like acid in his throat, making him want to cough.
He felt like his brain was about to explode. Partly from the lack of oxygen, but mostly from the confusion. Had he somehow survived getting shot, only to be drowned when that didn't kill him?
He felt certain that it was WICKED's doing, because honestly, everything seemed to be WICKED's doing these days, and they were the ones who had tried to kill him most recently, but it didn't really matter at the moment, if he didn't get out of wherever he was, he was going to die.
Thomas kicked one of the walls in an attempt to break it, but his foot traveled too slowly in the water.
He pounded on the wall with his fists instead, but that had little more effect.
He got so desperate that he even tried shouting for help, which was pretty stupid of him; not only did the water fill his mouth, but he also didn't even make a sound.
Thomas gave up. He didn't really see any point in continuing, it wasn't taking him anywhere. His airway was filled with water, if he didn't get any air soon it would be over.
Besides, he didn't really have anything to go back to if he survived.
Sure, he still had his friends, but they were all as sad and miserable as Thomas. None of them really knew what to do, they needed a leader, but no one was willing to take charge. If only Newt had been there. He was called 'the glue' for a reason. He held the group together. If he'd lived, then things would have been different.
Thomas had never really given much thought to religion, but he found himself wondering if there was such a thing as the afterlife. He hoped so.
Then he would get to see them again. Newt, Teresa, Chuck. Maybe they were waiting for him.
And Thomas was coming.
He was just about to stop resisting and give in to the water when he was suddenly rescued.
The wall in front of him was no longer there, and the water was spilling out, pulling Thomas with it.
He stumbled out of the small chamber, nearly falling over.
He coughed and wretched to rid his lungs of water while sucking in air greedily.
Once he'd recovered somewhat he realized that he was kneeling on a cracked, grimy, white-tiled floor. The water had disappeared through a bunch of small holes in said floor, leaving Thomas drenched, cold and confused.
He then realized that he wasn't alone, he could hear the sound of someone else's breathing. He stood up quickly to face the potential threat, but before he could see anything the unknown person slammed into him.
It took Thomas a split second to realize that he wasn't being attacked. He was, in fact, being hugged.
Thomas' face was buried in the person's clothing, thus he had no clue who was hugging him, or whether he should return the act of affection. That is until the person spoke.
"Tommy, I'm so sorry," the person said, with an all too familiar accent.
"Newt?" Thomas asked. His voice, already weak from the near-death experience, was muffled. He doubted it had been heard, but it didn't matter, he already knew for certain. There was no mistaking that voice.
Newt didn't respond, he only hugged Thomas tighter.
Thomas wrapped his arms around his friend, not even caring that Newt was supposed to be dead. Not caring about anything, really. Except for the fact that Newt was there, alive and breathing.
Thomas didn't know how long the hug lasted, and when Newt broke the embrace, Thomas didn't want to let go, but he knew he had to, so he did.
Thomas took a step back and looked at his friend. He searched for any sign of the wounds he'd had when they'd last encountered, but Newt looked perfectly normal, aside from the fact that his clothes were almost as soaked as Thomas' from hugging him.
"Newt? How…? Why…?" Thomas had so many questions that he didn't even know where to start.
"Am I dead?" Was what he finally got out.
"I don't know," Newt responded "maybe. But I don't think so."
"What do you mean?" Thomas asked.
"Well, when I… Died… I just woke up in that thing," Newt pointed at a small chamber on the other side of the room that looked exactly like the one Thomas had been in.
"And I don't know about you, but I didn't wake up in the clothes I died in," He continued.
Thomas looked down at his own outfit and found that it was entirely different from the clothes he'd been wearing before.
He looked up slowly.
"So, you're thinking… It wasn't real?"
Newt nodded slowly.
"I mean, this is WICKED we're talking about, they're always playing mind-games on us," he said.
"You're right," Thomas admitted. "this feels like something they would do. And before I woke up, I met Ava Paige, she told me I had completed the fourth trial. Then she shot me, and then I was here. But how much do you think was fake? was everything just an illusion?"
"I hope it was," Newt said, "that would mean everyone is still alive."
Thomas thought it seemed a little too optimistic, but he wanted to believe it, desperately, and there was really no point in opposing the idea.
"Have you seen anyone else?" Thomas asked, looking around the room as he said so, but he couldn't see any people, or chambers, aside from the ones he and Newt had been in.
"No," Newt said. "Maybe they're being kept somewhere else."
Thomas nodded. He pushed his wet hair away from his face and gave the room a once-over. It was empty aside from the two cubicles. The room looked like it hadn't been cleaned for ages.
He walked over to the cubicle he'd just exited. It resembled a large shower stall from where it stood on a small platform, with one of its walls pushed to the side. Speaking of the walls, they were all white, rather than see-through, and the inside was much cleaner than the outside.
Thomas peered into the cubicle to find it empty.
"What happened exactly?" Thomas asked.
"Not sure," Newt said, "when I woke up I nearly drowned in one of these, then it just opened. I tried to open the other one, but it wouldn't budge. I had no idea you were in it until it just opened and you fell out of it."
"But how were we able to breathe before we woke up?" Thomas wondered.
Newt shrugged. "Who knows?"
"Well, neither of us do," Thomas said, "so, are we stuck in this room?"
"No, there's another room," Newt explained, gesturing at something behind Thomas. He turned to see a slightly rusted door.
"I went in there, but I didn't find anything interesting except for a door that's probably the exit. Locked, naturally."
"Naturally," Thomas repeated, "we might as well check it out in case you missed something."
He walked the short distance to the door and opened it. He let Newt walk through first and then followed him inside.