"So when did you- you know- fall in love with her?" Thomas smirked, knowing he had him right where I wanted him, with his head in Fionaland.
"Woah," Newt defeated with his hands up, "What?"
"I may be slow to getting to know things around here, but...
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Joining the right arm was not the Nirvana we wanted. Yet, it was what we needed. What all the other kids still stuck in WCKD's clutches needed. We'd become leaders of some sort here, working hand and hand with Vince. He agreed to help us get Minho back, which lead us to our mission today.
One WCKD train against us. And they had lost.
I found Tommy, clapping him on the back. Once for the success of the mission, and the second to acknowledge missing Minho, nothing was quite the same without him.
Vince was quite the speechmaker, if there was a keeper position for it, it'd be all his. "I know you've all been through hell. I wish I could say our troubles are over. But we're not through this yet. WCKD's still out there. They're not giving up. 'Cause you got something they want. They took you because you're immune to a plague that's wiping out the human race. And they think you're worth sacrificing to find a cure. Well, I don't. So in two days, when we get this tub of rust seaworthy, we're getting the hell outta here. We're gonna go to a place where WCKD will never find you. A place you can start over. A place you can call home. Are you with me?"
The new kids had little choice in reality. Anything was better than WCKD.
I ended towards the outskirts of the camp, at a building we used for meetings and distributing resources. Back in the corner room to the left, a certain brown-skinned beauty lived her life between the four walls.
She'd taken up Mary's role, studying samples from immunes, nonimmunes, and cranks. She also was the closest thing to a Medjack they had. Her only wallpaper was the taped-up pages of Dr. Cooper's work, which never got easier for me to understand. Without Mary, much of it was a puzzle. Oh, how Fi loved puzzles.
The Right Arm had opened up opportunities for all of us. We learned to use their skills for survival to save others. We all fell into roles quite simply. Thomas was back beside the leaders. I remained a second in command and Fiona found herself a new maproom.
Ava had confirmed she was meant to find the cure claiming that was the entire reason behind her hyperintelligence. She wasn't the key to the survival of the maze, she was the key to the survival of the species.
If boys in the maze thought she was going crazy in the maze, they would burn her as a witch now.
I walked in, finding her hunched over a microscope. There was needle marks up and down both arms and the dark circles under her eyes told me no one forced her into a bed in the two days we were gone.
She heard me enter, turning around and giving me a smile. I wrapped his arms around her back picking her up out of the chair and spinning her around. She laughed lightly, "Welcome back."
She'd fought Vince for weeks when he made the executive decision to keep her in camp. It was one of his conditions when agreeing to save Minho. She was too valuable to risk on missions. Naturally, she resisted. None of us rushed to support her since it was mere hours after we watched WCKD drag her into the back of their berg. Without Minho's intervention to get her back to us, she'd likely be lost.
"Any earth-rattling discoveries while I was gone?"
She shook her head. I sighed and kissed her forehead, hoping she wouldn't take the impossible science personally.
I think what killed her most of all was that after Brenda improved, Fiona now knew there was truly a cure. Not just hypothetical. Every day, seeing Brenda walk, talk, and fight reminded her that she was failing some part.
Her eyes flashed with light in the dark room, "Minho?"
It was my turn to shake my head, "Your plan worked, though. We got forty, maybe 50 kids out-"
"-Just not Minho." Her hand ran through her dirty hair.
"Aris was in this group." I tried to find the brighter side of things. A habit I had developed over the past few months.
At the start of her research, Fiona requested samples of all our blood to establish a baseline for the DNA sequencing involved in the immunity. That was her first sleepless night. She discovered who and who did not have immunity to the Flare. With myself among the 'did not' category, she rarely thought of anything else.
Since her blood was the one to cure Brenda, she was convinced that she held the cure in her veins, which only made her that much harder on herself. Mary didn't exactly leave a step-by-step guide for serum. She was starting at square one, trying to catch up to WCKD scientists who have been doing this for almost half a decade.
It was true, her blood was coded differently, she told me. Something about her DNA bonds being slightly different than the rest of us. She studied and saved almost every drop she could. But then one day, the unique sequencing disappeared.
Which leads her to believe a discovery she never wanted. WCKD's trials might have been working. Or at least, whatever chemicals she was induced with before the maze, to multiply her intelligence, might have multiplied something else.
Now they were gone, and she had no idea where they went. With only a few blood bags filled with her blood from two months ago, she didn't have much room for mistakes.
"You should go see Aris," I suggested, thinking of anything to get her out of the so-called lab. "I'm sure he'll love to see you."
"Vince ordered all the new incomings to report to me in the morning. I have-"
"I meant go see him, as a friend. Not Dr. Blue."
The pang of guilt always hit on nights like this. A girl of only eighteen with the whole world on her shoulders. Some nights I worried if she truly believed her only purpose was to find the cure. And now that I know she's doing it for me? To protect me in case I got infected? I couldn't sleep unless she did.
That was probably the reason I had refrained from showing her my arm.
In the beginning, it was like a dull ache. It's grown into a pain more aggravating than my leg. It hasn't been merciful. If she knew about the infection, I would lose her to the science of it all.
She blinked a few times, almost remembering that she is human, "Right. Yes. I should go see him."
She kissed my cheek, unplugging a few machines before leaving. I spun around in the room, looking at the mess she's made.
I didn't wish to be taken from this world. But she didn't deserve to be Keeper of the Mapmakers all over again. Each day chipped away at her and I never wanted to see a day where I couldn't recognize the girl I fell in love with.
--
Fuck the train scene. Go watch it on youtube, it will be more entertaining than me trying to retell it.
The beginning of the end, starting out with a Newtie POV <3
