~|Charge|~ Thomas

Chapter 41: The Death and The Savior

All of the gladers that were left there turned around in hearing the voice that they never thought they'd ever hear again. Gally's. Gally looks straight at Linnea with the same anxiousness that ate at Linnea's nerves.

"Gally?" Thomas starts to walk forward to him, but Linnea recognizes the pain that he wore in his eyes; it's enough to dry her throat to silence. In her gut, Linnea slowly realized what happened to him. He had been stung.

"Don't," Linnea put her hand on Thomas's arm, holding him back. "He's been stung." 

Tears fall from Gally's face as he grips a gun tightly in his grasp, the same one that Linnea had killed Nick with. She recognized it from the blood stain that was printed on its ejection part. Gally's eyes narrow into dangerous slits, and he's the one to act first. "We can't leave," he sniffles out a breath, and his words are tight in his throat. His expression darkens to one Linnea can't quite decipher.  At his sides, with his hand that was holding the gun, his hand shook uncontrollably, and it was proven to be sure that he was slowly going crazy, as Linnea had almost done, as Thomas had almost done to himself, and as had other gladers, who lost their lives to the effects of it.

"We did," Linnea stuffled out, her words are fierce, but controlled. "Gally, we're out. We're free." Her fists clench tightly at her sides, and she lets her own words sit there for a moment, letting the others digest them.

"Free?" Gally sets his words out, tears continuing to roll down his cheeks, his face red, and the circles under his eyes dark, as if he hadn't slept for years. "You think we're free out there? No," Gally shook his head. "No, there's no escape from this place."

As if out of fear, Gally held the gun up at Linnea and Thomas, straight in-between them, and if it was fired, could have easily hit one, if not both of them.

Thomas carefully tried to pull Linnea back, out of the gun's view, but she stamped her feet put, and put her arms out in front of her. "Gally, listen to me," she said. "You're not thinking straight, alright? I've been there. You're not. But we can help you. Just put down the gun."

His face red, and tears flooding down his face, Gally stated, "I belong to the maze."

"Just put down the gun," Thomas said, his hands not letting themselves out of holding Linnea. 

"We all do," Gally said, and then two noises were heard.

The shot of the gun, and the spear that Minho threw, piercing through Gally's heart. Everyone let out a gasp of relief,  but Linnea sees the small boy of Chuck, standing in front of her, which he wasn't before, and anxiety crawls at Linnea's skin and the room becomes suddenly small and suffocating. Chuck goes deathly silent, and Linnea sees him fall down, blood seeping out of his heart. He whispers her name, as Linnea holds him on the ground, and the tension in Linnea's chest snaps.

Her breaths quicken as beside, her, Thomas comes up to Chuck, kneels down quickly, and is in the same panic that is expressed upon Linnea. They were both muttering all sorts of things, about his chest, the blood seeping out of it, trying to comfort him that it was going to be okay, but Linnea knew she could never be too sure of that, because whenever she said that, something bad had to happen. Chuck's expression sent shivers down Linnea's spine as his eyes were flung wide open.

Chuck puts his small hand on Linnea's shoulder and holds up his figure, the one he had been working on for so long. "Take it," he told her. The words grinding into her like a rusted knife.

"No, no, Chuck," Linnea tells him, her voice cracking, but still, unlike all the others around them, her face, her eyes showed no sign of crying, no tears drifting off of them. "You're going to give it to them yourself, remember? I told you that." She held his hand, and Thomas held his other, tears flooding down his face, and Chuck's breath started to give out, showing his first sign of true death.

"Take it," Chuck insisted once again. With open eyes, Linnea held it in her hand, and Chuck muttered, "Thank you." Then suddenly, his last breath is heard, and his body went still and is eyes stayed open, but in her heart, Linnea could feel his soul leaving her, her friend, the boy that meant a lot to her, the boy, who out of everyone in the glade, deserved more than anyone else, leaving her, and the rest of them.

"NOOOOOOO!" Linnea screamed. "CHUCK!! NO!" Thomas tried to shake the boy awake, giving him encouragement as tears flowed down his cheeks, but nothing, absolutely no response was given from Chuck. Because he was dead. He left them. Why? Why did it have to be Chuck. And what made it even worse, was that he did it, saving her and Thomas's lives. He went and took the bullet, just as George had done for her all those years ago. 

Linnea's breathing continued to quicken and she laid her head down on his stilled chest. At that moment, every muscle in her body ached or throbbed, every piece of her felt like it was being torn apart. "Damn it!" She screamed, hearing the cries of the others behind them. "No, we made it, come on!"

Behind them, the door fully opened, and people started running through, but Linnea barely noticed. People started grabbing the teenagers, and pulling them out. One started pulling out Thomas, having him leave Linnea, who was kneeling over Chuck, her screams loud, but her body almost un-moving. The noise behind her grows louder; Linnea couldn't hear it though. She feels warm hands wrapping around her waist, pulling her away, and looked back, trying to crawl her way out of Thomas's arms, and was successful, and went straight back to Chuck, as Thomas was pulled away, once again, by the men. Linnea was grabbed at, but she kept fighting, as she seemed to always do. Her screams of adamnetation did not stop, even as they finally got her off of Chuck, and pulled her out through the hall, light coming in from it.

As she was pulled away, finally able to hear her own screams again, Linnea caught a glimpse of Gally, lying there with a spear in his heart. He was dead too. Chuck was dead. Jeff was dead. Alby was dead. Zart was dead. Clint was dead. Ben was dead. Nick was dead. George was dead. They were all dead; and somehow, Linnea wasn't. Somehow, just like her mother had said in the recording, Linnea made it out. Somehow she knew that her daughter was going to make it out, but it was almost as if Linnea didn't want to. 

But she heard something that made her want to. Thomas. He screamed her name as he was being held back by two of the people. She was being dragged by the arms, and was not letting out without a fight. 

Her weak body was dragged out into the scorching sun, sand below her boots, the sky thick with sand and moisture. She was immediately thrown into Thomas's arms, and he helped her carry herself over to a chopper that was there, full of the other gladers that had survived, and they were thrown in there. Immediately, as they got in the helicopter, they took off, the door shutting them in. They were lifted into the air. Below them, the gladers could see the place they had lived in for so long. The glade. The maze. Everything, displayed below them, and it was as if none of that was real. None of that had happened. It couldn't be real.

"Relax, kid," One of the men said to them, as Linnea sat herself down, each of their faces filled, now with not purpose, but defeat. "Everything's gonna change."

Her breaths quick, Linnea curled herself up in Thomas's arms, and with him, his own tears flowing down his cheek, but hers still dry, only a bit damp from the sweat that had remained on her for so long, and the blood that stained her cheeks. Thomas stroked her hair with one of his hands, as she stared off into the horizon, looking at the place below that she had called home for so long. "Shh," he whispered to her. "We're out, Nea. We're going to be okay."

"Are we?"

Author's Note:

Ended the book on a FREAKING cliffhanger!!! Y'all know we love that!!!!!! I'm going to miss writing this book for a while, while I write 'The Line Cannot Be Crossed~|S.Stilinski|~ I loved writing this book!! I love Linnea and Thomas so much and I will miss writing for them a lot. I don't get to exactly do it yet, and I won't spoil anything yet, but for TLCBC as you may have read in DCTL, Linnea and Stiles are not together yet, so we still need to develop on that, so the types of things that I wrote in here, might not be in that book. Hopefully that's okay with you! I will miss you for now, but I probably will start TLCBC soon, and I will hope that you will check that out, but please check out DCTL first!

Vote and Follow!!!

TOODLES!

Voidlinnea