Whirlpool | The Scortch Trials- Newt

You Don't Want Your Dead Parents To Fight Over You

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

ADELAIDE

I never realized that in that scorching heat and my terrible condition, I still managed to detour a very long distance from my squad. We were driving at a speed of above eighty, yet we were nowhere near my friends. I couldn't even find footsteps or anything that might say that a bunch of humans had travelled through them, anywhere. I am beginning to worry if they had survived the bombings in the first place.

Chewing mercilessly on my bottom lip, so hard that I already have drawn blood, my leg bob up and down rapidly as my eyes strain to look for any human activity in the horizon.

Aislinn is too stressed as her fingers drum rapidly on the steering wheel.

Seeping through the masses undetected is my specialty. That is exactly what made Adelaide, the infamous, Cube. My feet glided through crowd of the doctors and nurses as they gathered in the hall, ready for the shift change.

I had always worked for the WICKED; cleaning their path to success off thrones, and going uncover to weed out spies and betrayers. Now, the tables had turned. For WICKED'S favorite and invaluable Cube, the only living Semi-Immune, had turned her back on them.

I had to; I couldn't let them continue their way with the kids. I couldn't let them continue using me like that anymore.

Only when I reached a safe place, I leaned against the pillar and closed my eyes, trying to calm my thudding heart.

I had done my job. Now it was Thomas' turn.

I clicked my pager twice, sending our secret code to Thomas.

"Florencia?"

I freeze completely at the old voice. My eyes widened and my face paled. My heart beat uncontrollably against my chest. Feeling like I would retch any moment, I slowly turned back, my breath getting caught in my throat as I saw who called me.

My parents.

My mommy and daddy. My mommy had a knife wound in her stomach, blood staining on all of her clothes. She looked just the way I had remembered her. Her soft face smiling at me while her brunette curls cascading down her shoulders. She was smiling brightly at me.

Daddy too stood there, but he wasn't smiling. He had a bullet wound on his forehead, just between his eyes. Blood from his wound trickled down from the side of his nose, settling on the right corner of his mouth.

His emerald eyes burned into my soul as he snarled at me.

"Stop it, Augustine," Mommy glared at daddy, "You are scaring my Flo."

I couldn't stop shaking, as tears tumbled down my eyes uncontrollably. My bottom lip trembled as I looked back and forth my parents. I wanted to ask them if they were real, but it was as if my voice was gone.

Dad growled at mom and took a threatening step towards her. "I tried so hard to keep Flo safe. Safe from outside, safe from WICKED, but you had to destroy it. You had to give her up to WICKED."

Mommy took a step back in fear, "Augustine, you need to believe me, that was the only thing I could do to save our daughter."

"Really? Is that what you've been telling yourself? To my daughter?"

Mommy straightened herself and snarled at daddy, " 'My daughter'?! Now she's your daughter? Was she your daughter when you rained punches on her? Or when you locked her in the basement? Or that one time you almost killed her?"

I didn't know what was happening- whether it was all just my imagination or it was real. I take a step back, tears spilling out of my eyes. My breath was heavy as I stood, looking at my dead parents, fighting like some hungry jackals over a piece of meat.

"I was trying to protect her!" mommy shouted.

"By sending her to the very place where kids like her are killed? The very place where we were avoiding all those years?!" Daddy too, raised his voice.

"I send her to the only person who would protect her. The only place where she won't be lynched for being a Semi-Immune!"

"Did she? Did she remain safe? Could Aislinn keep her promise?"

"You don't get to say things!" my mother howled, clutching the side of her head, "You left me to raise a Semi Immune! You don't know how stupid, stuttering mess she was, clinging onto me for hours together just because some passer-by snarled at her!"

Slowly, my father turned towards me. His eyes darkened, and his nose scrunching in a snarl, he takes a threatening step towards me. "You are the cause of this. You have always given us trouble."

My mother was too snarling at me, "You are the reason why we were outcastes. You were the reason why we always had to hide, to keep looking behind our backs!"

I shake my head and take steps away from them. My body shaking like a leaf, I wipe my tears.

"Mommy, please. I didn't mean to."

"Of course you meant to." Daddy chuckled darkly, now dangerously close to me. "You enjoyed every single moment you watched us die!"

"Flo!"

"You hear us? You killed us. You were a murderer even before you became The Cube." Mommy suddenly had a broken bottle in her hand. She was waving it dangerously at my direction.

"Mommy please." I raised my both hands, trying to brace myself.

"Flo! Snap out of it!"

"Don't call me that!" she snapped. "I'm not your mother."

"Stop! Florencia!"

She swung her hand and brought the broken bottle to my chest.

"Florencia!"

I take in a huge shuddering breath. My ears are ringing, and my whole body is trembling. I am clutching my chest tightly, gasping for breath.

I can hear someone, tightly holding my hands against their chest, rocking me back and forth as they whisper incoherent words in my ears.

When the ringing in my ears stop, I look down on my chest. Instead of having a bloodied wound, it is completely clean and dry.

I look my hands in confusion and find it clean too.

Aislinn softly tugs my hands away and encloses them in her soft ones. "You're okay." She whispers to me.

Somehow I am out of the jeep now, kneeling on the hot sand with Aislinn. The jeep door on my side is wide open.

Aislinn carefully pulls me in a hug. She rubs her hand on my back in soothing circles, chanting, "You're fine," like a mantra.

Please vote, and comment on the favorite part of the chapter