ACT II SCENE XXXII
INO

   CASSANDRA TOOK a step forward; unable to believe her own eyes, thinking what she had seen was just a figment of her imagination. But the sudden jolt through her body sent her heart hammering and her gut instinct told her that she was right.

"Teresa?" she whispered into the still air.

"Is that really her?" Newt stepped up to them.

"Don't know..." Thomas answered.

"You think she was the one screaming?" Frypan asked. "It stopped right when she walked out."

"Huh," Minho grunted. "Better bet is she was the one torturing somebody. Probably killed her and put her out of her misery when she saw us coming." He clapped his hands. "Okay, who wants to go meet this nice young lady?"

"I'll go," Thomas volunteered a little too eagerly.

"I was kidding, shuck-face. We'll all go. She could have an army of psycho girl ninjas in that shack of hers."

"Psycho girl ninjas?" Newt exchanged an exasperated glance with Cassandra.

"Wait, no!" Thomas suddenly shot forward a few steps ahead of them. "No. You guys stay here—I'll go talk to her. Maybe it's a trap or something. We'd be idiots to all go over there and fall right into it."

"Thomas, what does your freaking tattoo say again?" Cassandra hissed at him. "They should have called you the shuck suicide boy."

"We can't just walk on by without checking it out," he told them. "If something happens or gets suspicious, I'll call for help."

She opened her mouth to retort but Minho cut her off. "Okay, go. Our brave little shank." He went over and whacked Thomas on the back, making the boy wince.

"This is bloody stupid," Newt said. "I'll go with him."

"No!" Thomas insisted. "Just let me do this. We need to be careful. If I cry like a baby, come save me."

"You better be bawling your eyes out," Cassandra snapped irritably at him.

Without a second glance in their direction, he took off and ran towards the small building in the distance. Cassandra clenched her teeth and turned to the others, trying to fight down the urge to go after him—to find out what was wrong.

"You sure about this?" Newt glanced at Minho.

"He wants to talk to his shuck girlfriend," he responded simply. "We'll just keep an eye out, make sure no one tries to drag him off."

The town in the distance continued to twinkle back at them, the light from tiny flames dancing amidst the darkness like ghost-lights. Gladers milled about as they waited, sitting on the ground or going about their own business. Cassandra wondered what was happening in the building, why Teresa wasn't rushing towards them. Her foot kicked a piece of stone across the cracked ground and she looked up at a sudden gust of wind. It swirled around them, blowing her hair about her face and she reached up to push the stray tendrils from her eyes.

"Run!" Teresa's voice suddenly screamed in her mind. "Don't look back! Just run!"

Cassandra doubled over, as if she'd just been punched in the gut, and gasped for breath. Her knees and palms hit the hard dirt beneath her as pain shot through her head. Minho and Newt rushed to her side as she groaned in agony.

"What's wrong?" Minho asked. "What's happening?"

"We need...to...." She panted heavily from the mental strain. "Shuck."

"What?" Newt looked at her with terrified eyes. "We need to what?"

"We need to—"

"Run!" Thomas yelled, sprinting towards them from the building. Minho quickly pulled her back onto her feet. "We need to go right now! As fast as possible, I'll explain later! We're in danger. We need to go! Now!" He rambled all that at the top of his lungs and, without waiting for them, took off in the direction of the town.

"Tommy!" Newt yelled after the boy. "Hey, slow down! Wait for us, ya bloody shank!"

Cassandra looked back at the building one more time, knew that Teresa was inside there, and believing that she had to do what her friend had told her. Taking hold of Minho's hand, she pulled him along with her.

"Go! Just go!" she called to the others.

Footsteps started across the ground behind her, dust swirled back into the air as their boots stomped across the arid land. Frypan was yelling a million questions per second at her back but she kept her eyes trained on Thomas' figure in the distance.

"Cassie!" Minho yelled at her side. "What the shuck is goin' on?!"

"Teresa!" she yelled back. "She was screaming in my head! Told me to run and not look back!"

"Why?" Newt shouted.

"I don't know!" she replied. "Somethin' ain't right!"

They ran for ages, maybe even hours, and she was actually surprised that the others had managed to keep up with them for as long as they did. Minho and her were in the lead, a good distance from the rest of the group as their bodies were used to the mechanical movements.

After what felt like forever, Thomas finally stopped and plonked down on the ground. Minho and Cassandra reached him ahead of the rest. She stopped, hands on her hips, while Minho circled the boy three times in speechless anger.

"What...why...what kind of shuck idiot are you, Thomas?" he finally managed to ask.

The boy didn't answer, just sat there and stared at the ground like he was waiting for it to open up to swallow him whole. Minho knelt down next to him.

"How could you just take off like that? Without explaining anything? Since when is that how we do things? You slinthead." He fell onto the earth in exhaustion.

"Sorry," Thomas muttered. "It was kinda traumatising."

"Traumatising?" Minho repeated just as the rest of the Gladers caught up with them. Newt doubled over next to Cassandra, beads of sweat rolling down his forehead and staining the dirt beneath.

"What did Teresa say?" Cassandra asked. "I know she was there, she was screaming in my head."

Thomas looked at her with a pained expression, something like affirmation in his dark eyes. He sighed and started to tell them everything that happened inside the building. "Teresa was there. She was warning me to stay away...acting like...like how Gally was before he killed Chuck."

"Wait, what?" Cassandra looked at him sharply. A jolt struck her heart. "What did you just say?"

He opened his mouth and snapped it shut again as he looked at her with wide alarmed eyes. "Oh, crap..."

"Shuck." Minho shook his head. "Cassie..."

"What?" She stood back up and all eyes were suddenly on her. She raised her voice shrilly. "What?"

"Cas." Newt reached out to her but she jerked away from him. His brown eyes tightened sadly at her silent rebuff. "We couldn't..."

"Shut up," she snapped, her eyes turning back to Minho and she held a hand up to her temple. Flashes of static and blurred faces went past her mind and her brain ached. Then she started to back away from them, over the flat barren ground. The Runner stood up, his eyes watching her in a mixture of helplessness and concern. She didn't understand what was happening but the memories that were trying to return were agonising. It was like they were fighting for dominance in her own head, wrestling with some unknown force that was trying to eradicate them.

Cassandra turned her back on them and walked another good distance away. Her hands started to tremble and she clenched them into tight fists until her knuckles turned white. She tried to control her breathing, felt something rise inside her and she fell onto the ground to heave dryly.

"Cassie!" Minho was on her in the next second.

"Get away from me!" she shrieked, lashing out and pulling away. Tremors continued to ravage her hands until it ran up her arms and she tried to clasp them together. She fell to her knees again, her entire body now quivering uncontrollably. Her lungs couldn't take in enough oxygen, as if they were drowning underwater, and she felt like she was suffocating on the dusty air.

Then everything came crashing back to her.

And she screamed.

   The Gladers watched in shock as the girl collapsed onto the dirt and started convulsing violently. Thomas and Newt ran forwards to help Minho get her under control. Her skin burned feverishly under their touch. Thomas grabbed her legs, holding them down under his entire weight as the two other boys pinned her arms against the ground.

"Put her on her side!" Aris ran up to them. "Put her on her side, you'll hurt her like that!"

Minho looked at him, panic evident in his eyes, and it took a full moment for him to register what the boy had just said. He rolled Cassandra onto her side and hoped to God that her seizure would stop soon.

"What's happening to her?" Aris asked. "Why is she doing that? Is it the Flare?"

Minho's eyes widened with fear. "Shuck, no...it can't be..."

"Slim it," Newt said then threw an angry glance at Aris. "She's just having another one of her episodes like back in the Glade."

"Not like this, dude, it's never been like this," Minho told him.

"What do we do?" Thomas asked helplessly.

"We just have to wait it out," Aris said. "Seizures can last a few minutes."

"She's burning up," Newt said. Then all of a sudden, Cassandra stopped moving and Minho was turning her onto her back again. Her lips had gone deathly pale, a bluish tinge underneath the chapped skin. They all felt the wave of dread as the colour completely seeped out of her face. "Now she's ice cold."

"Shuck!" Minho yelled, grabbing hold of her shoulders and leaned his head against her chest. "She's not breathing!"

"CPR! You gotta give her CPR!" Aris was shouting as he dropped onto the ground next to them. "Minho, pinch her nose and breathe into her mouth, then pump her chest. Try to get her blood circulating again."

"When the hell did you become a freaking Med-jack?" Minho shot back angrily in his panic.

"Minho, just do what he says," Newt yelled. "We gotta save her!"

The boy was already doing what Aris had told him, tilting her head back and pressing his mouth against her cold lifeless lips. He blew twice and her chest expanded with air before he straightened up, pressing down against her sternum with the heel of his hand.

"C'mon, Cassie," he grunted.

He started another round of pumping and Thomas collapsed backwards, staring wordlessly in shock. Two more minutes passed as Minho continued his chest compressions on the girl and it felt like all the hope in the world had abandoned them.

"Cassie. Cassie, please," he started to beg.

"Minho..." Newt started, his voice soft.

"It's been five minutes," Thomas said numbly.

"Shut the hell up, Thomas," Minho snapped before leaning down to blow more air into the girl's mouth.

Aris suddenly cried out just as Minho pulled away, pointing at where he had seen her fingers twitch. Cassandra gasped, her eyes flying wide open as she took in a deep rasping breath of air. She shot up from the ground, spots erupting in her vision for a couple of seconds, before she looked around in bewilderment. Minho was already grabbing her, pulling her against his chest, squeezing her tightly in his arms.

"Thank God," he breathed out in relief.

She reached up weakly, her fingers catching onto his jacket before falling back down to the ground limply. Aris toppled backwards, as if he'd just come back to life himself, and Newt buried his face in his hands in silent thanks.

Cassandra blinked several times and pushed herself away, looking up at Minho's still distraught face. She stared at him for a long moment then, as if the past ten excruciating minutes had never existed, she opened her mouth to ask hoarsely, "What happened?"

"You died."