Chapter 23
Thomas explained their current situation. He was careful not to voice his own opinions on the matter, seeing as the room (or rather, cell) might be bugged. He just repeated what had been said to him.
"So five of us will be going," Thomas concluded, "me, three others that haven't been decided yet, and Isaac."
He locked eyes with Newt, who had been looking at Thomas intently all throughout his explanation. Newt looked puzzled for a few seconds before giving Thomas a small nod, thankfully having caught on.
Some of the others looked briefly confused, but they were smart enough not to ask any questions.
Good, their reactions wouldn't mean anything to anyone watching them, they would just assume they were thinking about all the new information they'd received.
Once the group had had some time to process the information they swarmed around Thomas, asking him in hushed voices about the conversation, if there was anything he'd forgotten to mention, what his plan was.
Their behavior was understandable, but it annoyed him nonetheless. He pushed past the crowd, looking for one person in particular.
He found her standing in a corner of the room, staring at the ceiling and appearing deep in thought.
"Harriet," Thomas said in an attempt to gain the girl's attention.
Her gaze shifted to land on him. "What?"
"I just wanted to let you know," Thomas began in a low voice, "that they know about the non-immunes in the group."
He hadn't told the group about that, he hadn't wanted to risk revealing the fact that he'd been lying to Vince, or let the poor girl that would now have to be referred to as Naomi know that she was being held hostage and risked getting shot if Thomas didn't obey Vince's orders.
"Yes, Isaac and…" Harriet said, deliberately trailing off.
"Naomi," Thomas finished.
He trusted Harriet to spread the information. She, as the leader of group B, knew which one of the girls they were talking about, unlike Thomas.
Thomas was about to leave, but then he noticed something, or more accurately, someone, or even more accurately, the absence of someone.
"Where's Sonya?"
"I'm not sure, we were all shoved in here except for her, and I didn't notice before it was too late. I'm assuming they're trying to fix her, but I don't know," Harriet explained, her voice cracking with emotion at the last word. She sat down on the floor heavily, as if her legs could no longer support her, leaning against the wall. Her face was set in a worried look.
"She'll come back," Thomas reassured her, knowing as he said it that it'd make no difference.
Harriet nodded absently.
Thomas decided against saying something in an attempt to make her feel better, he was not very skilled at consoling people and he figured Harriet wanted to be alone.
He turned away to see that most of his friends had gathered in groups of two or three, standing with their heads close together and whispering. It would seem suspicious to anyone watching, after all, why would they whisper if they had nothing to hide, but it couldn't be helped, they had a lot to discuss and they couldn't do that out loud.
He made his way over to Minho and Newt, who stood together and appeared to be waiting for him.
'"Do we all get new names?"' Was the first question, whispered to him by Minho.
Thomas shook his head and proceeded to explain the circumstances of the name change and the hostage situation.
"Sorry, mate," Newt said guiltily.
"It wouldn't have mattered either way," Minho reasoned, "even if they didn't know about you, they would still have most of the group here as hostages."
"except they need those hostages, they can't kill them. That group B-girl and I, we're disposable, we would be dead already if they couldn't use us as leverage."
"Well, they can't kill you either, because then they wouldn't have anyone to threaten to kill. We can use that to our advantage. We'll come up with something, we always do."
Newt looked at his oldest friend skeptically.
"Shouldn't we at least consider going over to their side before we start talkin' about ways to go back to WICKED?"
Thomas gaped at him, completely taken aback.
"What do you mean 'going over to their side'? They kidnapped us, threatened to kill us, and god knows what they intend to do with us when they don't need our help anymore."
"Are you describing The right arm or WICKED? Because, it sounds to me like they're equally horrible, except WICKED is the one we want to have revenge on, isn't that what all of us want more than anything?"
"No. What we want most right now is getting the shucking cure so we can get the real you back," Minho said in clipped tones.
"The real me?" Newt gave a bitter, hollow kind of laugh that didn't sound at all like him, "what if this is the real me, huh? did you ever consider that?"
He fixed each of them with a look so withering it made Thomas take an involuntary step back.
Minho did not back down, he took a step toward Newt and glared up at him with an equally fierce expression. "I know the real you, and it's not this... this..."
"Monster?" Newt suggested coldly, "lunatic? crank?"
Minho didn't respond. They kept glaring at each other, unblinkingly, as if they were having a staring Contest.
They were not the boys that woke up in the glade two years ago, the ones that had run into the maze together, bonded over their shared confusion, become best friends.
No. These were two boys that absolutely loathed each other.
Minho hated the virus that was taking his friend away from him. Newt, in his current irrational state, probably hated everyone and everything, especially the boy standing in front of him, who dared to challenge him.
Thomas tried to step in between them to stop things from escalating, but they were standing too close to each other and neither would budge.
Thomas knew that everyone in the room was watching the two of them, but nobody dared to do anything.
Newt took a step forward, closing the distance between them even more. He tilted his head downwards to avoid breaking eye contact, while Minho had to crane his neck to look at the blond who was now looming over him.
"This is who I am, who I've always been, you're just too stupid to see that, Minho," Newt said in a dangerously calm voice, except for the last word, which he spat out like it was a curse.
"No, you're the one whose brain is being taken over by a virus, Everything you're saying right now is a lie."
"Actually, this is the first time in years I've told the truth. The old me, the one you insist is the real me, that is the lie."
While Newt's voice was getting lower, silkier, scarier.
"No!" Minho managed, after opening and closing his mouth several times at a loss for words.
"Yes. you understand now. You always have, haven't you? You've always known deep down that every smile, every laugh, was nothing but an act."
"That's not-"
"Don't deny it, you were the one who went to Alby that day, how could you have told him if you didn't know?"
Minho opened his mouth to say something, but Newt continued speaking before he got the chance.
"You're a coward, Minho. That's why you told Alby, so you wouldn't have to face me, and it must've taken you a while to gather up the courage to do even that, as I recall we made it out of the maze mere seconds before the doors closed. You can't do anything right, can you? A few more seconds, just a few bloody seconds and I would have finally gotten some peace. Do you know how much I suffered every day? And it was all because of you." Thomas stared in wide-eyed horror. Was this really what Newt had been thinking for years? He reminded himself that his friend wasn't in his right state of mind, but that didn't make it much better. The thing that made the flare so much more terrible than any other plague that had ravaged the planet was that it brought out the worst in people. Their darkest thoughts, their most deeply buried resentment, their worst instincts. It was humanity at its lowest point. The virus seemed to have a consciousness, a desire to hurt as many people as it could before it went down along with the person carrying it.
Saying that Newt wasn't the real version of himself was incorrect. It was very much him, albeit the worst part of him.
He wasn't lying. What he was saying was something he'd never say normally, but he'd thought it, no matter how little thought he'd put into it, no matter how much he had ignored it or forgotten it. It was rooted inside him. He was telling the truth in the most hurtful way possible, but that didn't make it any less true.
Minho knew that too. He was still glaring, but his angry expression looked forced, a facade to hide the emotions underneath that were struggling to show themselves. His eye twitched as his fists clenched.
Newt smirked. "Go ahead, punch me, kill me, I don't care, I've been dead for a long time."
But Minho didn't punch him.
"You're right," he said in a shaky voice, "about me being a coward. I knew something was wrong, and I didn't want to face it. After that day in the maze, I thought it was over, you acted like it was, and I wanted to believe you so badly. I'm sorry."
Newt's smirk had disappeared, he hadn't been expecting this. Thomas hadn't either, Minho wasn't someone who apologized, it simply wasn't in his nature.
Minho took a step back, he wasn't glaring at Newt anymore, just looking at him with pity.
Newt, on the other hand, was as angry as Minho had before. He had been sure that Minho would fight him, absolutely certain of his reaction to the provocation, but he had been proved wrong.
"Fight me," he said in a low growl.
Minho shook his head and took another step back.
"You're a coward," Newt said, trying to provoke Minho.
"I know," Minho responded.
Newt had had enough. He swung a fist at Minho. It would have hit the other boy in the face if he hadn't caught Newt's wrist before it connected. The taller boy made a furious sound and tried to punch him with his other hand, but Minho grabbed that one too.
Newt tried furiously to free his hands, but Minho was stronger than he was. Growling in frustration, he aimed a kick at Minho's shin.
Minho grunted in pain and backed away, releasing Newt's hands.
Newt would probably have leapt at him, but Thomas had seen enough of the fight. He ran up behind Newt and grabbed him by the shoulders just as he was about to throw himself at Minho. It resulted in Newt stumbling forward a much shorter distance than he'd intended. But Newt, while not as strong as Minho, managed to throw Thomas off with ease.
Thomas had thought Newt would turn on him, but his focus remained on Minho, who had instinctively scrambled backward as Newt had moved towards him.
The furious boy advanced quickly on his friend, fists at the ready. Minho kept backing away but soon found that he'd backed himself into the wall. To Thomas' relief, Gally and Frypan came to the rescue. They held Newt back as he attempted to attack his friend. Newt struggled and cursed for a while before realizing that it was pointless. They released him once he'd calmed down.
Newt didn't make any further attempts at fighting anyone. He walked past the staring crowd and sat down in the corner of the room, back turned and head bowed, breathing heavily. No one approached him.
It took a while, but eventually, the conversations started up again as if nothing had happened.
"Are you okay?" Thomas asked Minho.
"I'm fine, just… concerned, I guess. How much longer do you think he has?"
Thomas glanced at Newt, who was still in the corner, trembling slightly.
"A few weeks, maybe, if we're lucky."
Minho gave a snort, "since when have we ever been lucky?"
"You have a point." Thomas lowered his voice to a whisper, "we'll have to finish this stupid trial as soon as possible. Vince didn't give me any details, so we'll have to come up with a plan to get away from The right arm as we move along."
Minho nodded. "Unless he was lying, you, Newt, and three others will be going. It's likely they'll pick three of the girls, since there are more of them, so I'm probably staying here, but I suggest you go along with their plan until you get inside WICKED's base, where you can warn the people there and come up with a plan to take the people from The right arm out without alerting anyone here."
"That sounds like a good plan, though there's no telling what the situation will look like." Thomas said, "But the real issue is getting the rest of you out of here. According to what Vince's said, they want to take over the building and use it, that means they'll take you there once the coast is clear."
"And that means one of the people going needs to contact the people here and tell them to come, which they won't do if you attack them. it'll be a miracle if you even take them out before they can report your rebelliousness." Minho continued.
"However, as you probably saw, Brenda is here, Jorge too probably. She seemed to have forgotten ever meeting me, but if she's coming, I might be able to sway her to our side. Once the rest of them are out of commission she can tell Vince that they defeated the WICKED-staff there, he'll bring you over there and we can have an ambush prepared."
"Sounds like a plan," Minho said with a faint smile.