Newt: A Broken Boy ↠ The Maze Runner

18

"What is that..." Minho began softly.

I looked over at Chuck, expecting to see him horrified. I wasn't wrong. The boy's eyes had widened to almost double heir normal size, and his skin had paled to an almost white colour. I didn't blame him, the sight was not a nice one.

"Hey Chuck," I muttered. "You okay?"

He nodded.

"I see you've found my brother." A voice, deep and gravelly, approached us, nearly making me jump out my skin. I whipped around, my hand automatically going to the stick that I had been keeping at my waist. The owner of the voice - a man with brown hair that reached just above his shoulders - put his hands up, backing away.

"Who are you?" Minho, too, had turned around, immediately on his guard.

"Whoa. Calm down, kids." The guy said. "I'm Louis. And that is my belated brother, Aiden. He was a crank, by the way." I must have noticeably flinched away from the body at his words, because Louis gave a large chuckle, and said, "Aiden isn't contagious anymore though, you realise. No need to be scared of catching it, the Flare, he's been dead long enough."

Minho stepped up, a defiant look on his face. "It doesn't make a difference to us if he's contagious or not," he said cooly.

"Munies, the lot of you?"

Minho nodded. Louis smirked, and pointed at me. "That one isn't."

Minho's mouth dropped open, forming an O shape. "Wh- what do you mean, he's not?" He half shouted, have whispered the question, as if it were a stage whisper.

Louis gave another smirk, his face smug. "You mean you didn't know? Well this is a weird way for you to find out."

I wanted to tell him to shut up; to tell Minho that it was lies, all lies. I didn't even want to know what Chuck was thinking. But in one way, it was a relief to have someone know, to have that weight lifted off of my shoulders. I'd been hiding it for years, knowing that I had no trace of the flare and yet also knowing that every step near a crank could be my demise. For years I'd been hiding it from my roommate, my best friend, thinking that he'd look down on me if he knew. That being said, I still didn't know how he felt about it.

"Kids these days," Louis said to no one in particular. "Don't tell each other anything, do they?"

Minho turned to me. "Is it true?" I didn't answer. "Newt! Tell me, is it true? Are you really not immune?"

Shutting my eyes tightly so that I wouldn't have to look at him, I nodded. "Yes. Yes it is."

Minho half dragged, half carried me into the room we had come from. Chuck was left with Louis, which didn't feel like a good thing. Unfortunately, Minho already seemed mad at me, so I didn't bring it up.

"Why? Why didn't you tell me?" Minho muttered, taking my hand in both of his. "I would never've agreed to let you get out of the compound if I had known!"

Exactly, was what I wanted to say. Instead I just mumbled, "I didn't think it was important."

"You didn't think it was important!" Minho shook his head, rueful, as if he was questioning his decision to ever make friends with me. "You idiot."

I opened my mouth to answer, maybe give some cutting retort, but I never got the chance to, as a scream came from the next room, a scream that sounded a lot like Chuck's. I sprang back from Minho, and sprinted to the room where we had left Chuck and Louis.

Chuck was whimpering quietly, and with good reason. Louis had the boy lifted against him, his feet a good twelve centimetres above the ground. One hand held him up, but in Louis' other hand was a glistening, thirty centimetre long, knife. It looked deadly sharp, and it was held against Chuck's throat.

Louis flashed a wicked smile. "One move, and the kid dies. It's simple, really."

Chuck's eyes widened, pleading with me. I couldn't blame him, he was a nine year old boy who had a knife pressed against his throat.

"Fine." I gave in. "What do you want from us?"

Louis licked his lips, and grinned. "Why, I'm going to sell you, of course. With all that money I could buy myself into Paradise no problem." I must have looked slightly bewildered, because he then added, "You're wanted, the two of you. Have you not seen the posters?"

He pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket. It was smudged and dirty, but not so much so that you couldn't see the pictures. There were two. One was of me, taken a few days after my twelfth birthday, part of a monthly experiment on how the flare affected height, weight and all those other physical things. The second; probably the most stained, but I could just make out features that belonged to Minho. There seemed to have been some lettering at the bottom, but it had presumably been torn off. There was nothing about Chuck on the paper.

I looked over at Minho; he hadn't said a word since we came back in. His face had paled at the sight of the photographs, bringing out a cut on his cheek that I hadn't noticed before. I decided to ask him about after we were out of there, because at that time, I had not a clue as to where it came from.

"Right kids," Louis said, smiling. We knew we were at his mercy, and he knew we knew it. "I'm going to put little... Chuck, isn't it?... over here. You're not going to try to run, because I assure you, I've used this knife," he indicated the knife with his eyes, "I've used it since I was ten years old. I have a very good aim, even in a throw."

"Now you, little crank, you come here." I felt like snarling at him, punching his nose and making it bleed at the use of the word 'crank'. I wasn't one. Not yet. Maybe soon, but I wasn't one yet.

Louis tied my hands behind my back with a piece of rope that he had taken from his brother's pocket, then did the same to Minho and Chuck. He kept his knife in his hand, twisting it in his hand from side to side.

"Now follow me. We're going back to WICKED."

~

A/N: Can you guess what I'm gonna say? Sorry that it's late, but this week it was Easter AND my mum took my phone, ipad and computer. Basically, I could NOT write. So yeah. Baii.