ONE DAY LATE BUT ITS HERE AND LONGER THAN NORMAL TO MAKE UP FOR IT!! So, without further ado.. enjoy! It's a special chapter ;)

Mara didn’t know where Teresa had gone, or if she really had gone. All she could do was scream. Her head felt as if it was being clawed at and pulled apart, but it was the image of Newt that pained her the most.

Her brother hadn’t told her which of her friends a crank, like she was. What if Newt was the other crank? He couldn’t be, Mara wasn’t going to let him end up like one of them, like her. It would only be a matter of time before it took her, and she couldn’t watch him go through what she was going to go through; torture.

Still that was all she saw; him.

His voice pulled apart her brain, bouncing around her head as he cried out in pain. Where was he? Mara wanted to find Newt, to know that he was okay and that everything she had heard was false. That he was actually okay.

All she could tell herself was that nothing was right. Everything that could have gone wrong for Mara had; her life had been turned upside down. Had she ever had a normal life? From what she had learned, she already knew the answer to her own question; no.

Everything inside her body ignited into flames, forcing her to squeeze out every inch of breath she had into sharp and gruesome shrieks. Was she ever going to stop feeling an aching pain? Mara could only hope.

Minutes passed, dragging and blurring into one clump of time. How long had she been there howling in the dark? It wouldn’t stop, it just got more intense as time went on. Mara felt as if her brain was being cooked and fried, melting into a thin nothing of oblivion. The thought of someday finding the tiniest incline of hope stuck to her, even though the chances of that as her outcome were the smallest she could ever imagine.

After a lifetime of waiting, a booming rumble distorted her thoughts and finally silenced the girl’s lungs. She looked up towards the familiar echoing crunch through tear stained eyes as she rubbed her cheeks dry.

Teresa had opened the door in half the time it took for Mara to rid herself of tears, and she immediately darted towards the other side of the corner. She had left the door hanging open and exposing the sunlight into the room, but Mara didn’t bother shading her eyes from the brightness.

She couldn’t hold herself back; she tried to tackle the girl as she passed her, but the memory of her hardening wounds sprang into realisation just as her stomach smashed into the cold and lifeless floor beneath her. An angrily recognisable stinging jolted her body away from the floor and Mara pushed herself against the wall, clutching herself in a brace position. But the pain wasn’t going to stop her fury and pain.

“You’re a bitch!” She spat, tearing her head from its position and towards Teresa, who had walked so far into the room she was no longer visible. “When I lay my hands on you I swear I’m gonna-“

“Be quiet.” The girl shushed her, but not in a violent way. The way she spoke took Mara back slightly. Her voice was full of softness but sadness, a strange combination for the girl who had been physically and mentally destroying her.

“Teresa?”

Mara took a sharp inhale of breath in shock. Another voice was speaking, one that didn’t belong to Teresa or herself. It was high for a boy’s voice and slightly tired, but certainly not a voice she could forget. Everything she had felt had disappeared; melting away at the sound of her friend’s voice.

“Tommy?” She muttered in disbelief, finally bringing her eyes up to see the boy. He stood in the doorframe of the building, blocking most of the sunlight from Mara’s eyes.

Almost immediately Thomas ran over to her body and fell to his knees in front of Mara, his eyes analysing her broken body and face. Lastly, his eyes fell to Mara’s stomach, widening in shock at what he saw.

“What happened to you Mara?” He asked as he scrambled to his feet. Before Mara could say reply he was out of sight. “Is there anything around here to help?”

“Don’t you think I woulda thought about that Tommy?” Mara chuckled. She actually cracked a smile. The slight amount of happiness felt strange, almost unreal. In the pit on her stomach Mara could still feel the knots twisting and turning inside her body, but she was okay. It didn’t hurt anymore.

Out of the darkness, Thomas came rushing back to Mara’s side holding a rather large green box of equipment with the words ‘First Aid’ written across it in white capital letters. Why hadn’t Mara seen that before? Had Teresa brought it into the room un-noticed?

The boy began to unhinge the box, but Mara reached out and pushed his hands away, sending his eyes upwards, meeting hers.

“What are you-“

“You don’t have to help me,” She began with a light smile and a nod of her head. “Are the other Gladers outside?” Tommy nodded. “I’ll take the first aid box and get one of the Med-Jacks to patch me up. I know you want to talk to Teresa, I can tell. Just remember, something’s seriously messed up in her head. She did this to me.”

Mara watched as a shocked and depressing sigh escaped Tommy’s parted lips as his head turned to the back of the room where Teresa still stood out of sight. The boy was distraught; perhaps the two of them had been friends, maybe Thomas had become one of Teresa’s friends after Mara was forced to leave. If so, he was in for a shock. She had betrayed them, all of them. From Teresa’s point of view, Mara could see that she was just trying to protect her friends, but there was a lot she could have done to prove she was on their side. Teresa could have found her way around WICKED’s threat, she could have done something- anything- to help the Gladers, her friends. If they were her friends.

Without another look back to Teresa, Mara clambered up the wall to stand on her feet, this time with more ease than she had before. Still, Thomas being the gentleman he was, he wrapped his arm around her waist and escorted her to the door. As they approached the opening the light got brighter and brighter, blinding and dotting Mara’s vision. But to see her friends, it was worth it.

“Thank you.” Mara smiled, slowly untying her body from the boy’s arm. She turned back to him and smiled once more, but this time her lips were thinner and straighter. “Good luck.”

He nodded and paused briefly before turning and stepping forward into the blackness. Mara took two steps backwards and then turned her body into the sun, giving Thomas the privacy he wanted with Teresa. She could only wish what she said wasn’t too harsh.

In haste, she stepped into the barren wasteland, filled with complete emptiness. The land was shrivelled and lifeless without a single form of nature protruding through the ground. There was only a glow of oddly shaped rocks and dust skimming her damaged trainers with an extremely pale and cloudless blue sky to soften into.

Mara’s body melted into the blaze, her skin burning and boiling all over. A searing bolt of heat pulsed across her flesh and warmed her body in drastic contrast to the damp nature of the small building she had just stepped out of. Her throat was dry and allowed no moisture into its path but it didn’t matter, she had to find the Gladers, she had to find her friends.

Her eyes laid upon a group of boys not far from where she stood. They were walking towards her, unaware of her presence. It was them; the Gladers. There were less of them than Mara had expected; more than half of them were missing. Some people were missing, some that she knew well, but that was out of her mind when her eyes fell upon him.

He stood there with his golden hair growing slightly above his eyes, complemented by the light surrounding him. The boy looked a mess as himself and her favourite Asian walked side by side, covering their aching bodies with a thin white blanket, just like the other Gladers did. They all carried something similar to a basket in their sheet-free hand, but one fell to the floor.

Mara found herself looking at the Glader that had dropped his bag, and his eyes were digging back into hers. He stood completely still, causing the boy next to him to turn and see what was wrong.

One by one each boy stopped, almost like slow motion in Mara’s mind. They did the same thing; look around, see Mara, freeze up and turn white- or as white as they could get in the heat. Minho and Newt had turned backwards to the boys behind them, and one Glader nodded ahead, directly at Mara. With a quick turn of the head, both boys fell completely still and silent.

Newt’s eyes were the first she met, and they were exactly how she had remembered them but filled with sorrow. They lit up when they laid upon her, and the boy didn’t hesitate.

He dropped everything he held and began to move forward, causing the sheet to fly over Minho and engulf his body as he scrambled for an escape. Mara’s lips cracked open into a massive grin and she laughed at the boy, but the whole time she kept her gaze with the boy, who was now running at full pace. His limp stood out like a saw thumb, somehow stronger than the last time she had noticed it, but in the moment she didn’t care.

Mara tried to run, stumbling over her body as she began but it was too much too soon, and her body came crashing to the ground- or, she thought it would have.

She was in his arms again at last, and he was really there. Newt was there, and as cheesy as it felt, she couldn’t have been any happier. Mara felt her eyes well up with tears, but no tears came; they had dried up due to the heat almost immediately.

“M-Mara?” The boy choked on his own words, trying to find the right thing to say. “You’re alive?”

“Resurrecting seems to be my thing.” She gently shrugged her shoulders and Newt let out a laugh, separated with a cry. Mara swiped her hand through the boy’s mane of hair. It was still glorious and welcoming, reminding her of their first acquaintance. “I love you so much Newt.”

“I love you too, M. I love you so bloody much.”