Chariot | Group B → The Scorch Trials²

i.twelve

╔⏤⏤⏤⏤╝☼╚⏤⏤⏤⏤╗
● [ i . continued ]

Thirty minutes later, they were sent to bed with a cold dinner and a promise that tomorrow would be better.

The girls lay shoulder-to-shoulder on the floor, the stale heat of too many lungs turning the upper room into something close. Someone's elbow jabbed someone else's ribs. Someone's foot found the wrong hip. Sonya shifted so continually that Rogue suspected she did it out of spite. By the time Rogue finally stopped noticing the discomfort, the room had taken on a soft harmony of sniffles and the occasional muttered dream.

She drifted last.

When sleep did claim her, it was shallow. A hovering sort of sleep: one ear open, one hand already half-curled as if ready to strike.

So when the scream ripped through the floorboards, Rogue was upright before consciousness properly returned.

It was a girl's scream, torn from the throat like something pulled loose. For a heartbeat Rogue thought it was Wally playing some cruel trick, but the sharp, cracking explosion of a gunshot burned that thought away. The walls shivered with the noise. Dust trembled from the rafters.

The girls around her were already out of the room.

The mats lay empty, tossed aside, blankets trailing off them like shed skins. The door to the landing stood wide open, a collection of panicked voices and shouts rising from below.

Rogue's heart knocked hard once, twice. It steadied into a Carrier's rhythm.

She rose to her feet.

Then froze.

A blade, unmistakable, kissed the hollow beneath her shoulder, angled upward. Not hard enough to pierce, but just hard enough to promise it.

She felt curls brush her back. Light brown, messy. Not immediately recognising them, she assumed it to be Gwen. Her breath came fast against her shoulder, warm and sour with deceit. 

She was right, she realised, as Gwen began to speak. "Shut up and don't move," she whispered.

Rogue didn't. Not at first. Her fingers twitched once. She heard Gwen tighten her grip on the knife.

Below them, the screaming had not stopped. It came in loud and unbroken. Something or someone had crashed against a wall on the landing. The girls cried out.

Gwen shoved Rogue with her shoulder. "Get on the floor."

Rogue slowly raised her hands, palms outward, a gesture of surrender. She let Gwen see her give in. She let the girl believe it.

And then, at the very last second, Rogue twisted.

She didn't think about it, not really, she simply let her body do what it must. She seized Gwen's wrist, wrenched it sideways, and shoved. Hard. Far harder than she intended.

Gwen was airborne. A small shape hurled across the dim room and hit the far wall with a thud. She slid down, cursing and clutching her spine, teeth gritted against a groan. The knife clattered across the floorboards and came to rest at Rogue's feet.

Rogue snatched it.

The noise downstairs had risen now. Below the scream, there were shouts, stomping, something being thrown. The girls were crying her name though she didn't yet know why. She bolted from the room and reached the landing.

It was chaos walking.

All the girls stood there, packed in tight on the stairs and the railing, looking down into the house's long kitchen. Rogue shoved through them. Sonya grabbed her arm; Rogue tore free. Hashlinger's voice shouted something sharp, something angry.