When I opened my eyes the next morning, a feeling of excitement ran through me that I hadn't felt in which felt like ages. My expectations for our trip were ambivalent; after all, I didn't know what to expect. But I was eager to find out.
Slowly, I straightened up in my hammock and noticed that, besides me, only Francesca was already awake. She was sitting across from me on the edge of her cot, which she actually hardly ever used because she mostly slept in Minho's hammock. She stared blankly at her hands, which lay limply in her lap. While I could only see her profile, I still recognized that there was more despair in that blank expression on her face than I had ever seen on her before.
Quietly, so as not to wake Gally on the cot next to me, Minho in his hammock on my other side, or any of my other friends, I got up and walked over to Francesca. Briefly, I let my eyes wander across the beach to the ocean and realized that the sun was just rising. Immediately, a warm feeling spread through me as the memory of my personal sun, Newt, flared up inside me. But then I refocused on the girl on the cot who needed me now.
"Hey," I whispered as I lowered myself onto the mattress beside her. "Are you okay?"
She didn't even look up, just shook her head silently.
Why even ask a question to which the answer is so obvious?
I thought for a moment before continuing to talk. I didn't want to say anything wrong.
"I'm scared, too. I don't know what to expect, and I know there's something you're not telling me. But I know that if we are together, we can do anything. Thomas, Pan and I have made it out of the Maze, through the Scorch, into the mountains and all the way across the sea to this island and along the way we have made and re-made the best friends anyone could ask for. We are a family and the best team I could imagine being around. Together we can do this, Franci, believe me."
Slowly she looked up, grazing my face with her gaze, letting it roam over our sleeping friends and then rest on Minho. In her gray eyes I could see the same warmth that I had always felt when I looked at Newt and that still coursed through my body when I thought of him, even if today it was mixed with the feeling of a deep emptiness and sadness.
Francesca nodded. "Before we leave you have to promise me something, Anna."
Now she looked me straight in the eye and I knew immediately that she was serious. Tensely, I looked back.
"No matter what happens and what we see at WICKED, you have to stay with us and especially with me, do you understand? You can't do it alone - whatever it is. We have to stick to the plan, find out what the radio message meant and how we can destroy WICKED. The success of this mission is our top priority."
For a moment, I didn't know what to say. I understood what she was trying to tell me, but one thing bothered me. She had explicitly talked about me staying with her. Did she think it was likely that we would separate from the others?
But there was no time to ask her that question, because diagonally across from us, in our field of vision, at the edge of the tent, Brenda was now awake and stretching in her hammock. When she saw us sitting there, she sat up and grinned sleepily at us.
"Well, let's get off this island, huh?" she yawned, "You guys coming to the showers?"
We nodded and Francesca slowly rose to gather fresh clothes. When I too, still completely confused, got up and was about to walk past her to get my own things, she held me by the arm, murmured in my ear a "Promise?" and then looked meaningfully into my eyes.
I nodded silently, looking back just as meaningfully. Then I pushed past her and pulled a fresh T-shirt, jeans, and underwear out from under my hammock, put a hoodie and the box of my belongings next to my pillow to decide later what of them I could use on our trip, tucked my shoes under my arm, and then followed Brenda and Francesca to the selfmade showers.
I tried to enjoy the clean water, knowing that I wouldn't be able to have that luxury for a while now, but my mind kept wandering to the conversation between Brenda and Minho last night and the one just past between Francesca and me. Why were they all acting so strangely? What did they know that I didn't? When could they have known about something when I hadn't been there?
And that's when the scales suddenly fell from my eyes and I gasped for air, which is why I choked on the cool water that had just run down my face and had to hold onto the wooden wall of the shower stall for a moment.
The night of Newt's death, when I went after Thomas.
That had to be it. That was the only moment they had all been together, without me. And it made sense, after all, that night had taken such a toll on me physically, as well as psychologically, that it was almost understandable that my friends had kept something from me about what had happened.
Only what could that be?
Francesca had not wanted Brenda to hear what she had made me promise. And that didn't fit with the rest. If they had a shared secret, why was Francesca again keeping something from Brenda?
I vowed to myself that I would find out what was going on, and I decided that I needed to talk to Thomas to do that.
YOU ARE READING
Till The WICKED End | A Maze Runner Story (English Version)
FanfictionThey thought that was everything, they thought it was over. They had made it, were at the Save Haven, had destroyed WICKED and what remained was the memory. But the past catches up with the chosen ones around Anna when Vince makes a terrifying disco...
