Till The WICKED End | A Maze Runner Story (English Version)

23. An ambush

My breath caught and the pistol fell loudly to the floor. Everyone's eyes, which had just been fixed on the screen, partly in horror on the part of my friends, partly in disinterest on the part of WICKED, now moved to me in a flash.
"Anna!" Thomas groaned out.
"No!" Gall cried, struggling wildly against his bonds, almost knocking Fry Pan over.
"What are you doing?" Minho hissed in horror, but fell silent when he caught sight of the screen. "Oh no..."
"Klunk, no!" Gally roared, now furious.
Brenda, Minho, Gally and even Francesca, who until just now had been dazed from the punch in the stomach, were now shouting in confusion, trying to stop me, to get my attention again - all except Thomas. He was staring just as incredulously and horrified at the huge monitor. But none of it helped, no shouting, no pleading, no begging. Dr Shepherd had had me when she had requested the video footage of subject A5. And now I remembered where I had heard that term before. Back when Teresa had betrayed us, when WICKED had kidnapped Minho and they had scanned our chips.
As if in a trance, I raised my hands and stepped towards the group. I wasn't really aware of anything around me, just staring at the screen in front of me. The soldier who had stayed with the two doctors tried to grab me, but Shepherd held him back.
"That won't be necessary. She will come willingly."
So he let me, let me step even closer to the screen, now not with my hands up. I stared at Subject A5, watching his movements, his behaviour. My heart contracted, then suddenly fluttered around and contracted again. I didn't know what to feel or think, couldn't find any logic in what I was seeing there and yet I was sure it was real.
After a few minutes of just being left to stand and stare at the screen, I turned to the doctor who was eyeing me triumphantly. My friends behind me had stopped struggling by now.
"You're letting them go."
Shepherd nodded. "All of them."
"You don't go after them. You let them go and then leave them alone forever."
"Forever."
"Only I have to stay."
Again she nodded. "We only want you."
"You won't come looking for them."
"They are free."
"You'll let me see him. You're making a cure with my blood."
"You will save us all," the woman replied.
The problem was, I believed this woman. I believed her that the video footage was real and that she would let my friends go. I looked her straight in the eye and could see that she was many things, but one thing she was definitely not - a liar.
"I want to see you let them go. I want to see them fly away."
"That can be arranged. Dr Avery will accompany you. Meanwhile, I'll prepare everything for the transfer. Tomorrow, when the sun rises, we will already have a cure."
Now it was me who nodded. "Then I'll stay."
Shepherd nodded to her colleague and the soldiers. "You know what you have to do."
The man who had just tried to grab me now grabbed Minho, who had apparently just picked up my gun but put it away and raised his hands. He also handcuffed him and brought him over to the others. I could see nothing but horror on their faces.
"Let's go then," Avery said, gesturing for the soldiers to follow us as he put a hand on my shoulder and pushed me towards the exit.
The group followed us. Just as we exited the airlock that had been waiting for us behind the door, Thomas was the first to find his voice again.
"Anna, listen to me. I still have the vial of serum Teresa had made. We'll find him and cure him. But please, don't do this. We can make it out of here, together."
But I did not answer. I just shook my head, biting my lower lip and thanking God that my friends could only see my back and thus not the tears running down my cheeks.
"Anna, please. We can do this..." my brother tried again, but I didn't respond at all. So he fell silent and no one else seemed to know what to say.
So we wandered through the corridors, entered a lift big enough to carry two hospital beds in, and exited on the ground floor. I had been right, we had been on the fifth basement floor and the hangar was also where I had expected it to be in my head. So Minho and I really could have made it out. But it was too late for that now. I couldn't leave. No more.
And I knew that my friends knew it, too. They had known it all along. That was what they had feared and why I had had to promise Gally to go with him. But I couldn't keep that promise, no matter who I had made it to.
Minho had known what A5 meant, I had been right. They had all guessed it all along, that had been it, their secret. Only I didn't understand how. They had kept it from only me and Thomas, the only ones who had rushed out of that fateful place on that night of flames and pain. What had happened? What had they been so determined to keep from me?
Silently we got into a van. I was made to sit in the front with Avery and a driver while my friends were taken into the hold. The journey took little more than five minutes. The distance we had walked seemed much shorter.
The driver stopped and we got out. The Berg was still there just as we had left it. My friends were unloaded. The soldiers pointed their guns at them, then the driver untied them.
I could see sadness in all their faces, horror as they walked one by one to the Berg. But one sight was the worst. The last look Gally gave me was so full of sadness, disappointment and betrayal that it broke my heart.
Before they got on and left, they turned around. No one raised a hand in greeting or said anything.
And so I took one last look at my friends. At my family.
Then Gally turned first, almost running up the loading ramp after giving me one last look of despair, as if he had just lost everything. My heart stabbed as one by one they disappeared. After Fry Pan had also entered, there were only Minho and Thomas left. The former slumped his shoulders like I had never seen him do before. Now he left me in the clutches of WICKED, just as it had been the other way round for what felt like an eternity. And I could remember only too well the feeling with which I had collapsed in Vince's arms back then.
Now only Thomas stood there and Jorge was already starting the rotors. The loading ramp began to close slowly when Avery next to me made a quick hand gesture and his men suddenly rushed towards the Berg. Two of them grabbed Thomas and literally yanked him off the ramp.
"What the -? Hey, what are you doing?!" I groaned in horror and wanted to take a step forward, whether to help my brother or why else, I didn't know at that moment.
I only knew one thing and that was that something was going very wrong and the man next to me was not keeping to the agreement I had made with his colleague.
Then two more men grabbed me from behind and held me so that I could do nothing but struggle and watch as they dragged Thomas away from the Berg and towards us.
Now life came to my friends. Brenda came running out, rifle at the ready, and was about to shoot when one of the soldiers, who was not holding Thomas or me, fired a shot and hit her in the upper arm. With a scream that I could hear even over the roar of the rotor blades, she toppled to the side.
"No!" I screamed desperately, but there was nothing I could do, nothing I could do to help her. "You bastards!"
In a flash the others were with her. Francesca yelled something that I couldn't understand, but she seemed to be instructing Jorge to flee, because despite his injured foster daughter, he didn't stop the Berg. They had no choice either, all available weapons were now pointed at them and the soldiers fired more shots.
Minho and Fry Pan dragged the huddled Brenda up the ramp and Gally was now the last one to be seen. He formed words with his lips just before he closed the ramp and they pushed me and Thomas into the hold of the van. Words that were meant only for me, I realised.
"I'll be back."