ACT II SCENE XXXIII
BELLEROPHON

   HER DREAMS that night were swirls of chaos and confusion. She was running, but she had no idea from what. There was just a cold sick feeling of urgency in her gut as her feet tore against the ground. A black cloud shrouded her, following her, and she reached out to grab an outstretched hand.

"Run! Don't look back! Just run!" Teresa's voice shouted in the distance.

She grabbed hold of the hand but couldn't see a face through the darkness. Then a poisonous voice hissed in her mind, familiar and malicious.

"You should have died. Why didn't you die?!"

There was a glint of light and a knife flashed through the air. She felt pain ripping through her throat.

"I'll kill you too!"

Cassandra shot up from the ground and her eyelids flew open just in time to catch her sheet from floating away. Gales of wind blustered around them and the sky hung darkly overhead. She looked around in bewilderment, momentarily lost in blind panic, and found that she was the only one to have woken up. Her hair whipped all around her face, fluttering in a wild frenzy about her head.

Dust and loose dirt billowed about in puffs of solid smoke, making her squint and shield her eyes with an arm. Her heart thudded against her chest as she remembered a fact about desert storms and flash floods. She leaned over to shake Minho awake.

He opened his eyes immediately and stared up at her in alarm. A layer of grime covered half his face and he rubbed it away with his sleeve. He sat up and looked around with the same bewilderment that she did before, then towards the town in the distance.

The squall seemed to have picked up its pace at finding them awake and she had to grip the sheet tightly in her hands to keep it from escaping. It roared against her ears, making it difficult to make any other sounds out.

"I think we need to go!" she shouted to him and he nodded.

"Let's get them up!" he yelled back. "Have something quick to eat!"

Cassandra stood up and tied her sheet tightly around her waist then rummaged through her pack. She had gotten Frypan to rearrange the supplies again and most of the quick perishables had been consumed. There were only two apples left with all the granola bars and biscuits.

She handed a bar to Minho and quickly wedged one between her teeth as she jogged over to wake Newt. They went around, trying to get the others to rise and she quickly handed food to them to save time shouting out instructions.

Thomas was the last to get up, rubbing his dirt-encrusted face, and Minho headed over to him. Cassandra picked up her spear and stayed next to Newt as he finished up his meagre breakfast. When everyone was ready to go, they set off for the town that was finally within their reach.

A couple of miles before the first buildings, they spotted an old withered man wrapped up in blankets lying on the ground. She thought he must be a Crank, sores and scabs decorated his dark cracked skin. But he was staring emptily up at the sky as if waiting for some kind of deliverance and she gripped her spear tightly in her hand.

"Hey! Old man!" Minho shouted once they got near enough. "What're you doing out here?"

It didn't seem like he had heard him, or even noticed their group's approach. Cassandra frowned agitatedly. "You think this was the old man the Cranks were warning us about earlier? Doesn't look that mean to me."

Thomas nudged past them and went down on his knees next to the man. He waved his hand in front of the guy's face and there was a slow blinking response.

"This guy's a bloody gold mine if we can get him to tell us stuff about the city," Newt said loudly as he knelt down next to Thomas. "Looks harmless, probably knows what to expect when we go in there."

"Yeah, but he doesn't seem to be able to hear us." Thomas gestured. "Much less have a conversation."

"Keep trying," Minho told him. "You're officially our foreign ambassador, Thomas. Get the dude to open up and tell us about the good ol' days."

Thomas moved closer and bent down close to the man's head. "Sir? We really need your help. We need you to tell us if it's safe to go inside the city. We can carry you if you need help yourself. Sir? Sir!"

Cassandra crossed her arms and tapped her foot impatiently. "Look, I don't think he's even lucid enough to give us anything," she said.

Then the man's eyes slowly shifted to the side, soulless pits latching onto Thomas' face. He opened his mouth and a small cough grounded out. The boy started hopefully. "My name is Thomas! These are my friends. We've been walking through the desert for a couple of days now, and we need water and food. What do you—"

The old man's eyes started to flick back and forth between them with slight panic.

"It's okay, we won't hurt you," Thomas quickly said as soothingly as he could. "We're the good guys. But we'd really appreciate it if—"

Suddenly, a wrinkled hand shot out from underneath the blankets and clenched tightly around the boy's arm. Cassandra pointed the tip of her spear down in a knee-jerk reaction and Minho grabbed her before she could accidentally pierce the man's face.

"Whoa, Cassie, hold on!" he exclaimed in surprise.

"Hey! Let go of me!" Thomas yelled, struggling to free his arm, but it was like the man was holding him with an iron brace. His mouth opened again and there was a rasping sound like sandpaper grinding against each other as he tried to speak.

"What'd you say?" Thomas shouted, leaning in once more as he relaxed. Again, the man tried to tell them something. "One more time!"

Then the man shot up from the ground, eyes opening wide with dilated pupils. His body started swaying back and forth like he was possessed, shouting a single word repeatedly with an incredibly frightening fervour.

"Storm! Storm! Storm!"

And the air bellowed around them, sending unsuspecting sheets soaring into the black sky. Cassandra's heart started to hammer inside her chest and she took a step closer to Minho, fingers reaching out to curl around his arm. All around them, the storm continued to roar with increasing ferocity and they had to lean against the gusts of wind to keep themselves grounded. Minho waved his arms in the air and pointed in the direction of the city.

They gathered, huddling together in the whirling cold. "Let's go!" he yelled loudly and started forwards in search of shelter. From behind, Cassandra could hear the old man wail towards the sky before abruptly cutting himself off.

Dust and grit pelted against her skin, scratching them raw in the melee. It was all around them now like a hurricane, even squinting her eyes did nothing to shield them from being irritated by the tiny particles. The haze enveloped them whole, making it almost impossible to make anything out except for blurs of shadows that were meant to be Gladers and the occasional flicker of flames from further within the city.

Her heart jumped up to her throat when a rat suddenly flew past her and smacked into a wall on her right. Then a piece of paper hit her in the face before being whisked away by the howling wind once more. She held her arm up and swatted at another stray piece of parchment picked up by the storm.

There was a loud crack above them and a flash of lightning overhead—too close for comfort. It streaked across the sky and singed the ground, throwing soil up in the air as it dug a small crater into the earth. Minho tightened his hold on her hand and urged her to run faster.

Thomas was in front of them, picking Newt up as the blonde stumbled to the ground, then Frypan a little while after that. The thunder and wind and crashes of lightning were deafening. Her ears were starting to ring painfully. This wasn't natural, she thought. It felt like the storm was chasing them down.

A fork of lightning had struck the ground ahead of them in front of Thomas, sending the boy flying backwards and Minho skidded to a halt in front of her. She opened her mouth to scream, inhaling a wave of dust that burned her throat and made her choke instead. Her eyes roamed the scene but it was difficult to make anything out but there was something squirming across the ground.

Minho suddenly whirled around to grab her face, turning her at the same time so that her back faced the large crater up ahead and leaned in to shout in her ear. She barely made out the words coming out of his mouth. She thought her eardrums were bleeding at that point.

"Don't look! Whatever happens, just keep your eyes on me!" He leaned back and waited for her to respond. "Cassie? Don't take your eyes off me, okay?"

She wanted to ask why but never found the opportunity to. They continued to dash forwards once more and Minho paused to pick Thomas off the ground. Cassandra kept her eyes on them, smelling copper and smoke in the air as the wind cut into her like tiny imperceptible daggers. She saw Newt running ahead of them, blonde hair darting in and out of the thick brown fog.

Then a jarring white light pierced the air, hurling her backwards in a burst of heat and pain. It took the breath completely out of her lungs and she gasped for oxygen, her head spinning as she started seeing double vision. Then she landed on something hard and another wave of pain exploded in her side. She scrambled off the ground, clutching her middle—it felt like a truck had crashed into her ribs. Her feet stumbled from side to side as she swayed with disorientation.

Tendrils of red and orange danced in front of her and she squeezed her eyes shut, rubbing with a hand to force them back into focus. It was fire. Dropping to the ground, writhing.

Thomas ran over, collapsed beside it and started scooping soil to put it out.

It was Minho, his clothes aflame.

She thought her heart had come to a jolting stop at the realisation, only to come back to life with frightening intensity. Her feet raced to him automatically, her hands already reaching for her pack and she hoped that she could find what she was looking for. The water bag had already loosened but there was still some liquid left and she threw the rest onto Minho with a yell that was drowned out by another crack of thunder. The remaining flames fizzled out and her knees hit the ground, hands reaching out for his face as he groaned in pain. Or was he wailing? She couldn't tell.

Angry red burns and welts had spread across his skin, clothes singed stiff with carbon. Horror and relief mixed together in a tight ball inside her chest, making her insides wring themselves excruciatingly.

Thomas pulled him up. "We need to go! Now!" he was yelling but she could only understand from reading his lips. They wrapped Minho's arms around their necks and ran again with only one single thought in mind.

Cassandra pushed her body to its limit and beyond, eyes set on their destination. Lightning exploded all around them like an air raid, causing the ground beneath them to tremor. Debris fell from the buildings like an avalanche of death, dust continued to sting and the clouds above darkened to a solid black ceiling.

Newt came back into her view, along with Frypan and Aris. They were ahead of everyone else. Suddenly, Minho's legs buckled and she crashed to the ground with him as she clung to his shirt. Her ribs were definitely bruised at how much it hurt to even breathe and she struggled to get Minho back to his feet. Thomas started back to help them again just as a flash shot right above their heads into the earth behind them. There was no time to take in anything; refuge was just another hundred meters away from them.

Aris was first to reach the building in front. The glass of the door had been broken and he quickly smashed the rest of the jagged edges on the sides. He waved Newt and Frypan through, along with a couple other kids, before running in himself.

Cassandra and Thomas finally reached the threshold and Newt darted out to assist them. They pulled Minho inside the dark interior of the building and laid him on the floor by the wall. She wrapped her sheet around his body and collapsed next to him.

Then the rain started to pour down outside as tears spilled over her cheeks.