search and destroy || thomas

part two

present time

I hadn't realized how bad things had gotten until the nightmares plagued my nights.

Till they didn't feel fake. They felt so real I'd wake up shaking, or running with adrenaline from the dream. Maybe the real nightmare was waking up.

Over the span of seven months, I'd grown to realize that not finding a cure was unacceptable. There was one out there, no matter how long it took, it would be found.

That's the unfair part. Was what we were doing here actually making a difference?

I spent my days in the lab now, playing with chemicals, testing new reactions. Trying to scramble my brain hard enough so that new thoughts could emerge.

Ava and her companions had put me through a series of challenges to test me. How much I could assist finding a cure. They were not only terrifying, but traumatic. 

She told me that I was one of the best she's ever seen. That after finding me, she had real hope.

After seeing what the Flare did to my mom, there's nothing I wouldn't do to find a cure.

Until him.

I always watched him. Never talked or interacted. Just watched.

It was easy to admire someone from the distance, it was easy to look away when he looked up. To not interact when he typed me messages.

It was easy to keep up the walls that wouldn't allow his brown eyes to pierce.

Everyone said he was the smartest. The brightest. The one that could change everything.

He had been here since he was a toddler, he had all this time to find a cure, but yet, we still had nothing.

Not until the day he disappeared. 

I thought he had been sick, I thought it would blow over. No.

He never came back.

And then, every single thought, every single inch of his face, every single molecule of my brain that even saw the thought of him, gone.

Except for one. They forgot to take away the first time I ever laid eyes on him.

It was a late night a few weeks ago, I couldn't sleep, another night plagued with nightmares. I decided to go down to the lab, just walk around while on the way to the cafeteria.

He was working late, I didn't think anything of it before, not until he disappeared. I thought he conspiring against WICKED, that he was planning on giving away important things.

But part of me thought it was wrong, that he was the one everyone liked. He was the best here, he was the one that was going to find the cure. Ava told me to ignore, Dr. Reed told me to ignore it, but something about it, boggled me.

Made me wonder what happened to him. Ava told me he ran away, but how did he get out?

No one gets out of WICKED.

I was exploring new sides for the cure in the lab when Ava came to get me. I washed my hands before following her out, down the hallway towards the normal control rooms.

"You've been here for a while now and I've seen you blossom into a smart and sophisticated young woman," she said as I followed her. "There's something we've been working on for the past three years and I think it's time for us to take another step forward."

"Okay." I nodded as she unlocked a door and pushed it open before pulling it closer to her.

"I'm trusting you to help us find the cure, no matter what," she said to me. "No distractions, no communication and you have to keep this a secret."

I nodded. "Okay."

She opened the door fully, allowing me in. I walked into the room, taking in the stuff on each monitor. 

"This is the Maze, it's our human trials," she explained. "Each boy is immune and we're going to find out how to make everyone immune and we're going to use the immune blood to cure the already infected."

I was too shocked to say anything.

I sat down as she explained the controls to me. 

That's when I looked up, my eyes landing on Thomas.

Oh god, they put him in the Maze.