Reprogrammed

Chapter One; "Hello, Newt"

TW: Murder, death, gore

     Sand scattered under his tread, dust still swirling in thick clouds around the group. For once, they were quiet, unmoving except for Newt.

     He walked forward, looking into your eyes with hope. He hadn't felt that way since the day he watched you die. Now there no where in Scorch he wouldn't travel just to know that you had lived.

     His footsteps weren't hesitant, he wasn't scared of you. Despite the protective gear, the hooded scarf wrapping around your head and covering the bridge of your nose. No matter how fearful you looked at him or the blades held at your sides, he didn't fear you.

     He stopped, only inches away, the only person you would ever let that close.

     His hand raised and you shut your eyes, letting him pull the scarf from your face. He only let out a small breath that you were barely able to decipher.

     "Y/n."

     And when you opened your eyes, you stared at him like you did when you were his friend and he was your first love. A time before the glade.

     "Hello, Newt."

     Now let's take this back, two months back to when you came up in the box against your will. When you were a deranged assassin for Wicked
     But for you, you had known him for years.

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     The box rumbled under your feet, staring at Alex with such horror. He stared back, eyes wide and frightened as yours were. There was no choice in the matter, the pressing weight of the daggers in your hands, the burns in your abdomens, the marks carved into the curve of your shoulders. There should be no hesitation, trained to survive and kill but you only stood here with your jaws on the floor.

     It was in your head, driving into your mind. Blood, violence, blades sinking into flesh and blood oozing through the cracks of your fingers. They hardwired it into your brains like a program, the need for bloodshed being driven to an impulse, a release.

     Wicked only wanted the best of the immune, and if you weren't the best. Well. They couldn't waste their immunes, so they made you their puppet. Every generation, every line of immunes who didn't fit their perfect intellectual structure were reprogrammed against all human empathy, any moral code. Able to be controlled through compulsion, used like vessels and cameras. Forced to wickeds command.

     And they put it to the test.

     It started with just the clutch of the handle in Alex's hand, the set of his jaw that dissolved years of alliances, friendships and history. In a blink of an eye you fell to the wall of the moving box, rising faster and faster with each second. Instincts kicked in, lashing out skillfully even with only flickers of light coming through the grooves in the metal walls. Only shadows of features could be made out, the cut of Alex's jaw the darkness cast over his frame.

     He was a friend, you sat together for hours distinguishing what was a friend and what was an enemy in the same cell, held by the same binds like the laboratory experiments you were. You learned the raise of his eyes showed kindness when his expression didn't show it so. You found trust in the twitch of a smile from his lips when he would stand by your side. All of this was there, in him you saw a friend but it didn't matter what he was to you when wicked flipped that switch.

     You weaved around him, knocking over crates and scuttling over food in the small confined room. You went low, kicking into his knees to make him buckle. Your blade missed his throat by inches, cutting a gash into his shoulder as he moved.