The Defective Soldier || Newt

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝟏𝟒

𝕋𝕙𝕖 ℂ𝕣𝕒𝕟𝕜'𝕤 𝔸𝕥𝕥𝕒𝕔𝕜

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It was dark inside the building, but William could make out the silhouettes of his friends as they descended the sand hill, some with more trouble than others.

Minho got one step ahead of everyone and rummaged through the backpack he had snatched earlier, finding a very convenient torch in it. He flashed it around just as everyone gathered together in the centre. The building was run down and practically destroyed. There were piles of bricks, dust, and pillars all around them.

"Where the hell are we?" Minho wondered out loud.

There was no answer. Instead, Thomas began walking away, waving everyone to follow him. "We gotta go."

Teresa, tired of being pushed around without an explanation, tried to get Thomas and Minho to stop until her patience ran out. "No. Thomas, stop!" She stepped close to William. "Tell us what's going on."

Thomas walked back to the group, not taking his eyes off Teresa and William. "It's WICKED . . . It's WICKED. They lied to us. We never escaped. Me, Flor, and Aris, we found bodies." Everyone glanced at Flor, who had a protective hand on Aris' shoulder. "Too many to count."

Minho turned his head from their surroundings to look at Thomas with a confused look. "What do you mean? Dead bodies?"

"No, but they weren't alive either," Thomas glanced at Aris and Flor, then back at Minho. "They had them strung up. With tubes coming out of them. They were being drained."

There was a pause, which no one dared to take to ask anything else. They accepted Thomas's words and wanted nothing more than to make their imagination stop showing them the possibilities of what the two boys and Flor had seen.

Without noticing, William's hand moved to his right, meeting Newt's halfway. Despite realising, the two boys allowed their hands to be together, intertwining their little fingers, which surprisingly enough made them feel calmer.

"There's something inside of us that WICKED wants. Something in our blood." Thomas continued explaining, seeing as no one would say anything else. "So we have to get as far away from them as possible."

With his free hand on his hip, Newt nodded along with Thomas's words. "OK, so what's the plan?"

Thomas stared at him, speechless.

"You do have a plan, right?" Newt insisted.

Only daring to look in Newt's direction for a second, Thomas' eyes stared at the floor, muttering his reply. "Yeah, I don't know."

As if not caring that Newt was becoming angrier by the second, or that Thomas was one step away from trembling in fear, Winston walked away. William watched him. The boy kept close to the group, his eyes glued to the floor.

"Well, we followed you out here, Thomas, and now you're saying that you have no idea where we're going or what we're doing." Newt snapped, stepping closer to Thomas and bringing William along with him.

As if he had remembered something, Aris raised his head, glancing from Newt and William to Thomas. "Wait. Janson said something about people hiding in the mountains. Some kind of resistance or army."

"The Right Arm," Thomas said in realisation, causing Group S to glance among themselves. "The Right Arm. If they're really against WICKED, maybe they can help us."

"And three, two, one . . ." Henry mumbled, pointing at Newt as he stopped counting.

Newt's eyes travelled from Aris to Thomas, absolutely baffled. "People. In the mountains. Mountain people. That's your plan?"