Wastelands → Newt [Movie Trilogy]

16 → "THE ABANDONED, BUT ALSO NOT ABANDONED, MALL"

16 → "THE ABANDONED, BUT ALSO NOT ABANDONED, MALL"

Adeline groans, pushing herself to her feet. Someone flicks on a flashlight, and that someone she realises is Minho. He flicks the flashlight around, trying to find where the hell they ended up. Adeline dusts the sand off of her pants, her eyes adjusting to the light of the flashlight.

"Where the hell are we?" Minho questions.

"We gotta go." Thomas breathes. Adeline wants to scold the boy. We just ran up a bunch of freakin' sand dunes, dude. Give us a moment to think. "We gotta keep moving!"

"No. Thomas, stop!" Teresa orders, her voice ringing out. Thomas turns back to them, as does Minho, who went to follow him. "Tell me what's going on."

Thomas moves back towards Teresa, still panting from all the moving that they'd done to escape their 'rescuers'. Adeline can't help but agree with Teresa, although she has some idea on why Thomas lead them to escape.

"It's WICKED." Thomas explains. "It's WICKED. They lied to us. We never escaped. Me and Aris, we found bodies. Too many to count."

"What do you mean?" Minho asks. "Dead bodies?"

"No, but they weren't alive either." Adeline feels sick at that, feeling the colour drain from her cheeks. "They had them strung up. With tubes coming out of them. They were being drained. There's something inside of us that WICKED wants. Something in our blood."

"Oh, shit." Adeline mutters, realising exactly what "harvesting" meant now. This gains everyone's attention and their gazes shift to her.

"What?" Newt questions her. "What's wrong?"

"That's why they put me in that room." Adeline said. "That would've been me if you guys hadn't rescued me from that buggin' room. I saw a file — the Doctor had left it behind. Said that I would be taken to the eastern wing of their facility, to be harvested."

"Wait, what?" Newt questions, unsettled by this.

"Wait, that's why they did another blood test on you." Thomas realises.

"Yeah. In that room was where I realised that you weren't being a paranoid shuck face." Adeline nodded. "That you were right about them."

Newt's hand intertwined with hers as she said that. Since they'd been here, they hadn't really held hands or showed any signs of affection towards each other. Too much had happened in the last two days to really have that chance. Adeline squeezed his hand, and he did back.