³ 𝒕𝒉𝒓𝒆𝒆.
⁰⁰ ▇ ¨. ༢ ͎۪۫ 𝒕𝒉𝒓𝒆𝒆 ... ❜
━━ ❛ 𝒕𝒓𝒚 𝒕𝒐 𝒓𝒆𝒍𝒂𝒙. ❜ ‧˖˚. ☄︎ ͎۪۫ ◞⁺.
❪ part 03. location: unknown.
©kiiizones, all rights reserved ❫.
"𝑾𝑯𝑬𝑹𝑬 𝑨𝑹𝑬 𝑻𝑯𝑬𝒀 taking her?" Newt tried to raise his voice over the loud, crashing din of machinery and construction work, but it came out hoarse and exhausted anyway.
The man━Janson━had gotten to his feet. He shot him an unreadable look as he brushed his hands down the front of his jacket. "She'll be alright." He said, "We've only a little insight as to what WICKED have actually done to her. We need to assess her threat level before letting her out into the━"
"Will she be alright? Will she be safe?" Newt cut him off. "They're not going to hurt her, are they?"
"I can assure you." Janson said, somewhat exasperatedly. "Your friend will be fine."
"She's not our 'friend'." Frypan sounded bitter. "She's shuck family."
"Good that." Minho said, coming forwards. "She's like a sister to us━most of us." He corrected himself hastily, as he glanced at Newt; the other boy wasn't paying attention to him, though. His eyes were still glued to Emis.
She was in the arms of a tall, burly-looking man who hadn't taken off his mask. Newt felt a twinge in his chest as her dark hair fanned out across her face. The man hoisted her up to gather his strength and the twinge in his chest turned to faint nausea as her limbs bounced around as if she were nothing but a broken doll.
"What are they going to do to her?" He asked, unable to help himself. Janson's face hardened only slightly.
"I can assure you," he repeated, "they're just running some tests. No harm will come to her. She'll be back with you before you even notice she's gone."
"And where are you taking us?" Ed stepped in. "What's going to happen to us?"
"Yeah," Minho caught on. "Why're you helping us, anyway?"
Janson sighed, but his face melted into an oddly satisfied expression, as if Minho had finally asked the question he'd been waiting for. "Let's just say the world out there is in a rather precarious situation, and we're all hanging on by a very thin thread."
He turned on his heel to continue walking from where they had left off; clearly inconvenienced by Emis's interruption. He didn't bother to check if they were following him. There was something about him that Newt couldn't put his finger on; something unsettling. The roughness of his voice, the odd glint in his eyes, the small twitch in the corner of his mouth that gave light to the fact that this man was obviously not as calm and collected as he made himself out to be. He only hoped that this dubiousness was a result of what Emis had been going on about earlier.
Newt cast one last anxious look at her over his shoulder; the burly man was speaking in a low voice into the intercom attached to his uniform. A chunk of her hair fell away from her face, and he felt his heart rise up into his throat. She looked so uncharacteristically still and peaceful that she could have been sleeping. Or dead, said an annoying, though vaguely familiar voice in the back of his head. He shook himself out of it, and turned to hurry after the others.
"The fact that you kids can survive the Flare virus," Janson went on, as Newt caught up, "makes you the best chance of humanity's continued survival." He turned to glance at them over his shoulder. "Unfortunately, it also makes you a target, as no doubt by now you've noticed." Something distant and unreadable flashed behind his black-beetle eyes, but it was gone before Newt had gotten a chance to properly register it.
Janson had led them through the construction area to a wide, strong metal-panelled door, grated over like the door of a garage. Newt couldn't remember ever being inside a garage, but he knew, distantly, that he must've been. At some point in his life. There was a huge sign plastered to the wall next to it, with 'MAIN ACCESS' stamped onto it in bold lettering.
"Beyond this door lies the beginning of your new lives." Janson said, and with a little flourish as he slid his card through the slot in the keypad that was built into the wall.
There was a sharp, trill beeping sound, and it began to reel open, folding up along the way. With a shuddering groan of hinges and metal, it disappeared up into an open slot inside the ceiling with a screeching thud. Behind it, stretched a long, white-painted hallway, flooded with cold fluorescent light.
"First things first." He turned to face them with a grin. "Let's do something about that smell."
"𝑰𝑭 you could have anything, right now." Alby had said. "What would it be?"
The sun had only just set, the sky a watercolour canvas of deep lilacs and blues and burnt orange. The air had carried its warm, familiar scent of fire and earth and greenness. Alby had been sat next to him, up against a fallen log next to the dying coals of a campfire. For the first time in a long time, it had been peaceful.
Newt remembered shrugging. "No bloody clue." He had said. "God, I can think of a thousand things. And each one seems further and further away from being a possibility."
Alby had laughed. The memory of that sharp, impenetrable happiness spread a cold grief through his chest. "That's not what I meant. Just, if you could have anything at all. In the whole world, right now. Even if it sounds impossible. What would it be?"
He had given a long, drawn-out sigh. A flood of things had rushed up to the front of his mind; but they had all seemed insignificant and pathetic. There had been an odd sheepishness at the thought of telling Alby that what he had wanted the most in the world in that moment was a clean pair of socks, or a tube of actual toothpaste, or a pillow that wasn't lumpy and flat. He had shrugged again. "I don't know." He had said. "What about you? What would you have?"
Alby had leaned his head back against the log as if it had been a feather-down pillow instead of hard, flaking wood. "Man," he had said, with a small smile. "It sounds ridiculous. But I want a shower. A nice, long hot one, with foam soap and a towel and enough elbow-room so that it doesn't feel like I'm half drowning in a coffin." He had laughed at Newt's bewildered expression. "Don't give me that look. I know it sounds weird, I just..." He had trailed off with a sigh. "I miss the smaller things. You could offer me a treasure trove and a bubble bath, call me a shank, but I'd take the bubble bath any day."
In that moment, Newt remembered feeling an odd, warm happiness settle in his bones. That even Alby, stone-cold and brittle when he had needed to be, had missed something as minor and seemingly insignificant as a nice hot shower.
And he had never gotten it.
Perhaps, Newt wondered, that was why he felt so uncomfortable and strung up when the hot water his his skin. As if he were doing something that he wasn't supposed to be.
The air was heavy and thick with warm steam as it rose from the tiled floors; Newt could hear the hoots and calls of his friends vocalising their contentment from the other cubicles. There came the sound of something slipping, suddenly, and then a body thudding heavily against the cubicle wall. There was a roar of laughter.
"Minho, when I get out of here, I swear I'm going to kill you━" Ed's voice came floating up in amongst the rush of water from the shower heads. He was cut off by another peal of laughter.
Newt turned to the soap dispenser attached to the wall in front of him. There was a cold, guilty feeling beginning to grip onto his stomach, and the thought of being able to enjoy all of this without Alby being there felt like tiny knives were piercing into his skin instead of water droplets.
Admittedly, though, he knew that Alby wouldn't have wanted him to waste it. He imagined what he would say to him now, something meaningful but sarcastic and only slightly degrading, like, "Wow. You'd hold off a shower for a dead shank? Thanks, Newt, but don't be a slinthead." The thought of it brought the uncontrollable quirk of a smile to the corner of his mouth.
With an inward sigh, knowing that, realistically, it would be counterproductive to waste a hot shower, he reached forwards to take some of the soap into his hands. He lathered them together until the soap had bubbled up into a thick, heavy foam, and then scrubbed himself down with the little plastic-polyester brush until his skin felt bristly and raw. It appeared that his rushed attempts at rinsing off in the Glade had left behind a layer of dust and dirt ingrained into his skin, and it took a lot of work to clean it out.
When he shut the water off, however, he was feeling much better. Clean, stinging, a little, but actually clean. He tried to ruffle his hands through his hair to prevent it from going flat; wrapping a towel around his waist, he went out to join the others.
The shower room led into a smaller, warmer room. It smelled like antiseptic and paint and sweat, but it was spotlessly clean, and there was a row of benches lined up against the wall with clothes folded up all across it in different sizes and styles and colours.
Newt had never really cared much about how he looked or what he wore, but there was something so gratifying about getting into soft, clean clothes that made him want to choose his outfit with a little less abandonment.
He opted for a blue shirt and cargo trousers, and a pair of lace-up boots that were a little sore at first, but he knew that eventually that would go away as his feet moulded to them. It was the first change in footwear he had worn it what felt like forever.
But very slowly, the tiny nagging in the back of his head had started to come back. And he had a feeling that it wasn't entirely to do with Alby, either.
Once fully dressed, and after Minho had said something sarcastic about the shirt Newt had chosen bringing out his eyes, they had been led out of the changing room and through a heavy steel door into what appeared to be a hospital ward. There were beds lined up against the far wall, and a row of heavy, industrial-looking treadmills. Teresa had already finished her shower and changed into clean clothes; she was sitting silently at the foot of one of the hospital beds with her legs swinging out in front of her.
There were medics everywhere; at least, what Newt assumed to be medics. A wall of x-ray prints and monitors had been set up to the right. There was a huge glass-metal cabinet that housed a colourful array of pill-bottles and tiny first-aid kits. There were testing stations everywhere, and Newt was guided towards one by a tall, kind-faced man wearing a white lab coat.
"Take a seat." The man said. His badge flashed underneath the fluorescent light coming from overhead, and Newt glimpsed that his name was Fischer. He gestured towards the chair. "I'm just going to be taking a little sample of your blood, it's nothing to worry about..." He had moved towards a metal desk whose surface was an array of surgical instruments and colourful liquids in conical flasks.
The chair was stiff and made out of a hard, uncomfortable plastic. Fischer had taken out a syringe with a long, sharp needle point and was removing the sterilising plastic cap. He laid it gently to the side, and asked Newt to roll his sleeve up.
An antiseptic swab and a sharp, pinching scratch later, Newt was staring at his own blood in a coupling of bottles that Fischer had set aside on the metal table. He found it a little disconcerting, the sight of his own blood. It was thick and red and probably identical to anyone else's blood in appearance, but, still. It made him shiver inwardly.
"How's it looking?" Fischer put his pen down from where he'd been scribbling something onto a clipboard. He gestured to Newt that it was alright for him to remove the cotton cloth he had pressed against the point where the needle had drawn his blood. The tiny pinprick of red had almost entirely disappeared. Fischer smiled. "Feeling okay?"
Newt nodded. "Yeah." The word sounded dry and exhausted as it left him. A sudden, aching bone-tiredness had started to settle inside him. It felt as if he hadn't slept in weeks.
"No dizziness, or tiredness?" Fischer was scribbling something else onto his clipboard. Newt swallowed.
"A little tired." He answered honestly. Fischer smiled at him.
"I understand," he said, leaning back on his stool. He reached for a pair of blue latex gloves. "You've had a rough time. Just one more thing, and then you'll be able to get in some sleep." The gloves made a sharp snapping noise as he put them on.
Newt only nodded in response, suddenly too tired to say anything. He tried to lean back in his chair, but the back was too slippery and smooth, and he ended up swerving awkwardly in his seat.
Fischer didn't notice; he was too busy removing the cap of another syringe. The needle on this one was much longer and pointier, and the barrel was wide and filled with a thick, viscous liquid. Newt swallowed again, a sudden lump rising in his throat. He didn't have a particular issue with needles, but this one looked remarkably long. And stabby.
"Wait," he shifted in his seat. "What is that?"
Fischer leaned forwards with a gloved hand and rolled the length of his other sleeve up. The gloves smelled odd, like antiseptic and rubber. It made Newt wrinkle his nose.
Fischer's calm, professional demeanour did not shift. "Just a little cocktail," he said, "calcium, folate, vitamins A through Z. Pretty much everything you've been deprived of, out there." His voice was cold but strangely hypnotic to listen to, Newt realised. "Try to relax." He added, and Newt was complaisant as he let him push the tip of the needle underneath the surface of his skin. The sharp, achy pain came rushing back again, as well as the odd, cold sensation of something entering his bloodstream, but it didn't last long. Fischer gave him another cotton pad for his arm, and then he was removing the gloves and kicking his stool back.
"Looks like you're good to go." He smiled, rising up off the stool. He pointed to a door set in the wall at the far end of the room behind him. "If you head through that door and follow the signs, they'll lead you to the cafeteria."
"Cafeteria?" Newt could hear the weary surprise in his voice. They were only a handful; they'd managed to feast without much complaint in that tiny, dingy storage room. It seemed a bit overkill to give them a whole cafeteria. Maybe these people had been expecting more to have survived. The thought made another pang of guilt strike his chest. His voice came out croaky as he said, "You sure it'll fit all of us?" He had said it in an attempt to make a sarcastic joke, but it only came out tight and exhausted.
Fischer smiled sympathetically. "They must've forgotten to tell you. Newt," He said it carefully. "This may come as a shock to you, but your Maze wasn't the only one. In fact, you were one of many."
Newt felt the world jerk roughly to the side. He placed his hands on the back of his chair to steady himself. He shook his head, trying to rattle the exhaustion out of his ears. He couldn't have heard Fischer right. "What?" He asked hoarsely.
Fischer nodded. "You'll all be taken to a safe haven. With the amount of kids we seem to be getting in, however, we've had to slow the process down. We can only take handfuls at a time, and I know it's hard to adjust, but," his eyes flashed with something unreadable. "Soon this'll all be over."
Newt nodded, straightening up. His hands were clammy and cold as he wiped them against the material of his trousers. "Right." He said, and then added, "Thanks," as an afterthought. Fischer had been nice enough, although the calm, cold demeanour was beginning to turn slightly unsettling.
Fischer smiled. "Just doing my job." He said, and then nodded towards the door again. "Off you go."
The conversation was clearly over. Newt, shoving his hands into his pockets, decided to head over to the treadmills. Minho was occupying the only one running, patches and cables stringing him up to a beeping monitor that stood to the side. He was running at a speed that doubled Newt's exhaustion just by looking at it.
"Alright?" He offered, by way of greeting.
Minho released a sharp breath, reaching forwards to turn the machine off. He slowed to a walk, shaking out his legs, and disentangled himself from the monitor. "Not bad." He replied, as he stepped off of it onto the floor. He put his hands out to steady himself as if the world had suddenly tilted to the side. "Woah." He said, "I guess I forgot what stepping off one of those feels like, huh."
Newt shot him a grin. "Still running, then?"
Minho shrugged, wiping the sweat off his face with a clean towel. "They said I've gotta keep my game up. Keep running, I mean. Otherwise these guys'll stop working as good." He shook his legs out again. "And they wanted to see how fast and how long I could go for." He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.
"Oh, shut up." There was barely energy left in Newt's voice. He swallowed. At Minho's apprehensive expression, he said, "One of these blokes said there's a cafeteria somewhere."
"Neat." Minho clapped his hands together. "I'm starved."
"You just ate." Newt said pointedly. Minho raised his eyebrows in disbelief.
"That was nothing." He explained. At Newt's dubious expression, he backtracked slightly. "Okay, maybe it was something. But I'm still starved."
Newt rolled his eyes. "Clearly." He said. He glanced around, realising faintly that the room had started to empty. "I guess the others have already gone." He observed.
"Nice of them to wait." Minho said dryly. But Newt had forgotten what he was speaking about, momentarily.
Teresa had disappeared into an area that had been cut off and curtained over. Newt had assumed that it must've had something to do with the fact that she was a girl, and the rest of them weren't.
Except that wasn't true, because of Emis. That nagging, worrying feeling gave a huge lurch, and Newt was struck with the sensation not dissimilar to one experienced when missing a step on the staircase or being hurtled fifty feet towards the ground on a roller coaster. Like most things, Newt didn't remember ever going on a roller coaster. But that odd sense of tumbling vertigo had gripped onto his stomach, as if suddenly the reminder that he had no idea where she was or what was happening to her had pulled the ground out from underneath him.
"Hey." Minho's voice broke through his thoughts with a snap. Newt jumped, as if he'd been woken from a daydream. "She's going to be okay, Newt."
"What are you━"
"Cut the bullshit." Minho cut him off, his voice hardening. "I know you. And I know you're going crazy just thinking about her. But I also know Emis," he put a hand on Newt's shoulder. "Whatever they're doing to her━which I'm sure is nothing to worry about━you know damn well she'll be strong enough to fight back."
Newt glanced over his shoulder at Fischer, who was speaking in a low voice to a man all geared up and wearing a black visor-mask that covered his whole face. "She shouldn't have to fight back." He said it through his teeth. "She's been fighting her whole bloody life."
"So have we, pal." Minho said with the ghost of a smile. "But these guys know what they're doing. Things are going to start getting better from here on out, just like you said. There's nothing to worry about anymore."
The man with the black mask gave a curt nod, and said something into his intercom. He lifted his face up, and though Newt couldn't see his eyes, the air shifted as if he'd properly looked him in the eye. Newt felt a cold, unsettling wave roll up his spine. "Yeah." Newt said, his voice distant in his ears. "Nothing to worry about."
⁰⁰ ❛ 𝒂𝒖𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒓'𝒔 𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒆 . . .☄︎ ⋆࿐໋ ˖
in honour of our main man thomas brodie-sangster's 30TH BIRTHDAY, chapter three is up! please tell me what u thought of newt's pov, i spent so long researching &. i actually went ahead &. used some theatrical techniques to try and fully understand his character in depth. i hope it's come across as accurate!
i am so terribly sorry i haven't had the time to respond to all the comments you left on the last chapter but i have to stress that every single one meant the world to read! thank u so much for putting up with me ;-;
love, 𝒓𝒊𝒓𝒊. *♡・.
Bạn đang đọc truyện trên: Truyen247.Pro