FOREVER. newt

two. all the time in the world

I honestly thought that she would be dead by now.

But here she was, healthy and strong. One might even dare say that she was in a really good place mentally and physically (of course, I knew about that) but Brenda was unnaturally healthy for someone who I've thought would turn into a Crank any time soon.

In fact, she was even healthier than me.

"I don't understand," I mumble, turning the flashlight off as I removed the gloves that we've managed to salvage two months ago after WICKED had last attacked us. "Maybe your symptoms from two months ago were from a different disease? Because you seem like you're immune to me." I mumble, creasing my eyebrows together. One of the major memories WICKED took from me was my understanding of the Flare, and as a Doctor, it would really help if I knew a lot about our current situation at the moment.

I tried to ask Vince, but he told me that the citizens only had the general idea of the Flare Virus and that WICKED had hogged and kept all the information they could get. I tried sleeping more— but the flashes rarely came and the only flashes that would appear in my mind were of Newt.

God knows how much I love him, but I couldn't help but feel a bit annoyed that my brain only gave me information that was useless. It's not like I could work on a cure of my own with a vision of me and Newt eating a bunch of sandwiches at thirteen while we talked about how weird Janson looked like.

The room slammed open, and coming in was Maya, who held a water bottle in hand. I try to offer the girl a smile, but she only grimaces, taking a seat on a char as Brenda looks at her with a confused expression. "You done with the checkups? 'Cause Vince said to go fetch you and Xio. He said he's gonna teach you something."

My eyes trail off to Xio, who was at the other side of the room. He said that he would be here to see if his sister was fine, but she seemed okay, so I wasn't really sure why he stayed back even after the additional checkups I needed to do.

"Did he say why?"

"I don't know," Maya replies in a deadpan voice— the same one she had ever since Sonya and Aris got separated from us. "He just told me to go get Nini and Xio and meet him at the dock in five minutes. I talked with Harriet for two minutes. We've been talking for two minutes. We've got one minute to go or else Vince is gonna kick all our asses."

At the mention of the time limit, I shove Brenda away and walk out of the makeshift room. There was no need to walk over towards the dock, because Vince stood at the doorway, waiting for the three of us to come out.

I wasn't nervous at all. Even though Vince was a tough man who took a whole month for me to convince him that I was safe and wasn't a mutt, he was pretty normal. However, he was holding tons of shotguns and what looked like a timer in his hand.

If I said something out of line, I'm getting my brains blown out.

"What the hell do you want?" Xio, who was now beside me, asked the weapon-clad man. Unlike me, the boy was never afraid to address him.

"We need to teach her," he points at me, "A lesson."

"You can't shoot me!" I exclaim, slight confusion dripping my tone. Why were they gonna kill me? I've been nothing but helpful towards them, and if it weren't for me, Thomas and Vince wouldn't have planned out the first phase of their plan.

"I'm not going to kill you, you idiot," Vince mumbles, placing a hand on his temples in annoyance. "Thomas, Newt, and Frypan finalized phase one. To do that, we need you. If there's one thing I know about you, is that you can't run for shit. That's why I called Maya and Xio over."