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"What the hell are those things?" •••
THE BUILDING IS dark. Sand has piled into the building, and it smells of something rotting. Outside, boys give in and run down the sand hill into the building to stand next to the girls.
With his flashlight, Minho looks around at the room around them. It looks big, with piles of rubble laying around. "Where the hell are we?"
"A mall, it looks like." Leanne exhales beside Juno. Minho frowns at her, not understanding. "A place where people would go shopping, to get clothes, and other objects."
"We gotta go." Thomas breathes heavily.
"Thomas, stop." Teresa says sternly, staying planted in her spot. Juno felt bad for the girl, because she was out of the loop.
He turns to look at her. "We gotta keep moving."
"Teresa deserves an explanation about what's going on." Juno says just as sternly as Teresa. If she emitted confidence, she could do anything. That's what she used to tell herself. She was definitely on the outside of the group, and although she didn't want to work her way to the inside, she did want to be friends with them.
"It's WICKED." Thomas says calmly. "It's WICKED. They lied to us... We never escaped." Thomas speaks clearly, like a leader. But Juno didn't think he was the only one who showed leader-like skills. Leanne certainly had authority, but both Newt and Minho showed skills of leadership as well. "Me and Aris, we found bodies. Too many to count."
"What do you mean?" Teresa frowns. "Dead bodies?"
"No, but they weren't alive either." Thomas repeats what he had told them earlier. "They had them strung up. With tubes coming out of them. They were being... they were being drained." Juno feels her heart skip a beat. She already knew this, but the reminder, that Hally was hanging up in that laboratory made her feel lightheaded. "There's something inside of us that WICKED wants. Something in our blood. So we have to get as far away from them as possible."
"Okay. So, what's the plan?" Newt says, seemingly the only person thinking strait. "You do have a plan, right?"
"Yeah. I don't know."
Juno felt a rush of anger through her veins. She had followed Thomas, a random stranger, out the facility where they kept them away from the outside danger, just to learn he had no plan.
"Well, we followed you out here, Thomas... and now you're saying that you have no idea where we're going... or what we're doing." Newt exclaims.
"Wait. Janson said something about people hiding in the mountains." Aris says slowly. "Some kind of resistance or army." Finally, someone thinking things through.
"The Right Arm." Thomas confirms. "The Right Arm. If they're really against WICKED, maybe they can help us."
"People. In the mountains. Mountain people. That's your plan?" Newt questions, unconvinced.
