Just like the Griever's Hole, the dead men hung by hooks, the Rat Man, the Cranks and the brick walls, Minho had hopes that Frankie's death was just another illusion. As much as he tried to distance himself from disappointment, this was one thing he...
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AND THEN THAT happened.
Minho being Minho in a place he shouldn't be Minho.
Back in the Maze, he had authority to be cocky due to his Keeper position. But out here in the Scorch, that kind of attitude could lead to pointless death.
"Well, well, well," Jorge grinned, "We don't need weapons to control them, afterall. The WICKED girl's here."
The WICKED girl.
Eventhough she was no longer locked in the WICKED's headquarter and the lab rats had exiled her into this vicious wilderness to die, the tattoo stayed persistently on her nape like an itch she couldn't scratch.
Both her and Reggie had tried their best to scrub the ink away, but to no avail.
She finally settled with scraping it messily, as if those fresh pink scars could hide and bury that one aspect of her identity that she hated the most.
Property of W.I.C.K.E.D.
The fact that her nickname in the Scorch still labeled her as a pawn of that child abusive organisation irked her so much that she couldn't help but flinch whenever someone called her 'the WICKED girl'. But who could reason with a bunch of Cranks?
Living alongside them was already hard enough. Moreover starting an argument against them. She could die in a matter of seconds.
Frankie instinctively raised her right arm and traced the ragged edges of pink scars carved permanently there. Then came the matte feels of black ink embedded under her raw epithelium.
She blinked her twitch away and tried her best to appear as emotionless as she used to be.
But it was very hard trying to drown her overwhelming sense of loneliness and longing when the people she loved the most were standing right in front of her eyes.
It was also very, very hard trying to drown the questions and hatred that had haunted her every second of every day.
She drank in the sight of their exhausted faces and counted. One, two, three... seven... ten, eleven. Where were the others? Where was Chuck? Alby? Zart?
Even when the room was cleared for privacy, nobody dared to move.
(Jorge and Brenda seemed content watching them exchanged looks in silent amusement. Thomas and Aris were the only ones who seemed confused on what to do —the former knew her for only one day in the Maze while the latter didn't know her at all. Those who knew her, on the other hand, could see how torn she was on deciding what to do)
Newt.
He was looking at her with wide, alarmed eyes and mouth slightly agape. His back was hunched and his fingers were gripping the bottom of his crumpled shirt. His blonde hair was too caked in dust, sand, mud and filth to show its usual golden glow. But beneath it all, Frankie found him more... alive.
