Break My Bones

Chapter 3: Heading

"There."

Thomas jabbed his finger on the map he'd spread hastily onto the meeting table.

"That's it."

They all stared down in silence at the point where Thomas's finger was stabbing. It was a map everyone in the room was well-acquainted with, having spent months poring over it and then poring over it some more. The map itself was mostly clean, the team having been careful not to make any long-lasting markings that could be interpreted should the map ever fall into the wrong hands. Now, many months since they'd first gathered together to look at this same map, Rachel was fairly certain that she could draw the damned thing from memory. But even so, she had no idea what Thomas was indicating to.

"It's a few hundred miles." Thomas went on, his eyes focused mostly on Vince, who admittedly would be the hardest but arguably the most important to convince.

"Based on the railways, everything that Aris told us, that's gotta be where they're headed. That's where they're taking Minho."

Vince pursed his lips, a discouraging sign. But Thomas ploughed on determinedly as he gestured around the room, saying grimly, "We take everyone who can fight. Follow the roads where we can. We can make it back within a week."

Rachel internally groaned at his words, while Vince looked up from the map to Thomas with a mixture of incredulity and dejection.

"A week?" Vince repeated before he gestured around. "It took us six months to get here. We got over 100 kids here now. We can't just hang out here forever after what we just pulled."

The leader of the Right Arm shook his head and he looked back at the map and then Thomas as he continued in a heavy and skeptical tone, "You wanna wander off to some random point on the map. You don't even know what's there."

"I do."

Rachel turned in surprise with everyone else to look at Jorge, who had been the one to speak. The once leader of the black market traders was always a valued contributor to recon or rescue ops alike but he had tended to keep mostly to himself during any meetings since they had joined the Right Arm. It was very rare for him to contribute any ideas beside the mild suggestion, so Rachel watched curiously as the man stepped forward from the corner where he usually sat.

"It's been a few years, but I've been there." He explained, looking first at Vince and then at Thomas. "The Last City. That's what WCKD called it."

Rachel and Newt exchanged looks at that, but they returned their focus to Jorge, listening carefully as the man explained to Thomas, "It was their whole base of operations. If that city is still standing, that's the last place you wanna go, hermano."

He pointed at the map as he finished grimly.

"That's the lion's den."

"It's nothing we haven't done before." Thomas countered, and Vince threw up his hands in exasperation.

"Yeah, with months of planning, and reliable information, the element of surprise, none of which we have now!" The Right Arm leader cried.

Rachel had to admit the man had a point. The odds weren't great... but neither had been escaping the Maze. The only question, at least in Rachel's mind, was not what the probability of success was, because that had never really been in their favour anyway. The question was: was it worth risking everything?

Thomas's answer was clear.

"Vince, I've thought this through. Would you just hear me out?" The teenager pleaded, but the Right Arm leader finally put his foot down.