Exposed

➰8➰

Creepy.

She sat down and put the blanket over her lap.

"The next clips will be in the order of the second phase."

Everyone nodded and the next videos loaded up onto the screen.

"What's wrong with you? Is it compulsive?" Irene asked him, making him smirk.

"Nah, just me being me." She shook her head at him and he faced back to the screen, to hide his smirk.

There were gasps from the pack, as they saw the bodies of the other kids and Ava talking to Janson.

"I still don't get why she faked her death?" The twins said, looking at the others in confusion.

Irene answered them, cutting off anything that anyone else may have attempted to say.

"Martyrdom. She wanted them to see her as the noble scientist with a good heart. A person they could trust and miss."

"There's no way that could work, though!" Isaac shouted, getting nods of agreement from the other people.

Irene just shrugged, "maybe not, but that was the general idea."

Thomas stood from the floor and looked at the door in relief. He saw Janson standing on the other side of the glass with a pissed off face and held up his middle finger, causing the male to smirk.

A few of the survivors laughed quietly when they saw Janson's face. It was always nice to see him not getting his own way.

"How is it that you nearly get trapped or crushed by something, in every single video?" Melissa asked with a concerned face.

Thomas shrugged and Newt shook his head along with Minho, they always asked that and they never got a satisfactory answer.

He and the others all ran towards the main entrance and waited as the large metal doors slowly unlocked and opened, revealing complete darkness and rushing winds that battered against them the second it was able to pass the threshold.

"Yeah, no. I'd just camp out in the compound until it looked better. Surely you could've hidden somewhere, without them being able to find you." Scott asked, looking at him funnily.

The scorchers all shook their heads in the negative.

"We couldn't. WCKD is too thorough. They would have found us, for sure." Frypan said, the others nodding in agreement to his words.

Thomas looked out into it with a determined scowl, the others wearing faces of uncertainty, as they looked between Thomas and the darkness.

"Alright! Let's go! Let's go!" Thomas ushered them out the door, leading the way out of the compound.

"Was it cold out there or was the wind just very strong?" Chris asked as he watched the screen.

Thomas hummed in remembrance.

"It was quite cold. But the biggest issue was the sand that kept hitting us. It felt like little sharp shards hitting us. It stung."

Chris nodded his thanks at the answer and looked back towards the screen, prompting the others to do the same.

They ran as fast as they could, slipping slightly on the loose sand dunes and keeping low to avoid the spotlights that had emerged from the compound, in search of them.

"Wow. They really wanted you guys. How long did they search?" Malia asked from where she was sitting, turning in her seat slightly to look over at them.

"Until they found us." Thomas said.

"On several occasions." Newt continued.

"And then lost us." Thomas added.

"And had to find us all over again." Minho finished.

The group just looked at the trio in amusement.

They went over a dune and were about to continue running when Teresa called out to them, making them all turn towards her.

"Isn't it just ironic that she lead us to that mall?" Frypan asked, frowning at the screen.

"What?" The pack asked, but none of the scorcher boys elaborated.

She pointed through a broken glass window, indicating for them to enter by the slope of sand that had filled the open area.

When no one moved, she pushed them to the side and stepped in by herself, sliding quickly down the slope and waiting for them at the bottom of the pile.

"She seems like bad news." Noah said, watching the girl as she looked around the pitch black, cavernous room and beckoned them to follow her.

"She was." Thomas agreed.

Thomas called out to try and stop her but she ignored him and he hissed in annoyance under his breath, before going in behind her, the others following his lead.

"Now that was just stupid." Peter said bitingly, as he looked over at Thomas.

"Hold up! You can call me many things, but stupid is crossing the line." Thomas defended, getting snorts of amusement from his beacon hills friends.

"You're not stupid, your actions are stupid." Lydia corrected, deeming not to look in Peter's direction.

Thomas could only frown at her behaviour, thinking that holding a grudge would give her age lines, eventually.

Though he didn't say it aloud, she would not appreciate a comment like that.

Seriously, saying something like age line within her proximity, even not directly aimed at her, was grounds for a screaming.

Peter shrugged at her behaviour and chose to return the favour, looking away from her position with a prominent scowl.

The gladers watched the interaction with curiosity. They could see that there was a bad history between the two and the longer they watched, the more curious they got to know what that history actually was.