Ruby Red

''I'm with you 'till the end of the line''

"Now, I'm sure you're very angry and very confused about this whole situation, but-"

"I'm not confused." I interrupt. "I just want answers."

"We have something in common then." He replies with a small smile. I don't return it. Instead, a feeling of physical sickness fills my stomach. Before I can say anything, however, Janson's opened his mouth once again, his sickly calm voice filling the silence in the room. "Do you remember anything about WICKED since the last time we talked?"

I shake my head, brushing the strands of greasy hair that had fallen in front of my face away. He purses his lips for a moment.

"You haven't had any dreams?"

"Nothing significant." I look down at my hands, picking at a piece of loose skin by my nail beds, a small bubble of blood pooling in the area. It's such a different color from the dark red of the dried blood already on my hands. It's bright. Too bright.

I look up to see Janson watching me. "Do you remember anything about your mother?" He asks. I feel my heart stop as I look up, my eyes widening slightly. I blink and it's Marcus I see sitting before me. He'd asked me that same question. His face swollen and bloodied from Jorge, his teeth bloody, lips twisted up in that sinister smile.

I think back to the other two things he'd asked me about. What did he mean when he asked me about the Grievers? How did he even know what a Griever was? And what did he mean when he asked about my half-brother? Was he telling the truth, or did he just want a reaction out of me? 

Another blink and he's gone, Janson replacing him. He's smiling, but his teeth aren't bloody. His face isn't swollen.

I shake my head, my voice caught in my throat. My fingers fiddle with each other as I try not to think about Marcus. The man I killed.

"Nothing at all?" He asks, cocking an eyebrow. I shake my head again. He lets out a loud sigh, trying to mask his frustration with a blank smile. "Do you know where the Right Arm is?"

I meet his gaze once again, my hands shaking uncontrollably. "No." I reply shortly.

"You don't know where they are?" He questions again. "They didn't give you any information before we found you? No hints about where their next location might be?" I shake my head again, looking back down at my hands. My fingers fiddle with each other as silence fills the room. I look up and Janson's watching me again. Studying me once again. That smile is back, just as sickening as it always is. "See, I don't believe you." He says, his voice calm. Too calm. I furrow my eyebrows in confusion. Surely, he couldn't think that I might actually know where they are. Surely, he can't be that stupid. 

But there was something else; an undertone of something in his voice. Excitement? It couldn't have been. That wouldn't make sense.

He doesn't elaborate. Instead, he stands up and turns to the guard, muttering things that I can't hear to him. I catch a few words. Sedate. Murdered. Violent.  I try to listen in on their conversation, but my headache is too strong. I can't focus. They've lowered their voices. It's as if Janson's caught on to the fact that I'd heard a snippet of their conversation. 

I watch Janson hand the guard something. It looks like a vile of some kind of strange, blue liquid. And then, he's gone. Janson's walking out of the room and leaving me with the guard without giving me a second glance. I watch him leave, my eyebrows drawing together. He's gone before I can even process what just happened.

The guard stands right in front of me, towering above my body. When did that happen? When did he walk up to me? 

He grabs onto my arm and yanks me to my feet. I make a weak attempt to fight back, but my body is too fragile. I don't have any strength. Before I can say anything, I feel something prick my neck. 

Within moments, the effects of the drugs have begun to take over my body. My limbs become heavy, weighing down the rest of my body, so much so that the guard has to hold me upright so that I don't fall over. I can feel myself becoming drowsy. My eyes become heavy, but my head still pounds behind my eyelids. I'm physically tired, but I don't want to sleep. I have no energy to fight off the drug. 

The guard picks me up, throws me over his shoulder. I can't fight back. My legs are too heavy. There's nothing I can do. I'm too tired. My body is too paralyzed. 

My head pounds harder behind my eyelids. My body feels heavy. Too heavy. I try to reach up to take hold of my necklace, but I can't move my arms.

Is this it? Am I dying? WICKED locked me up in a cell just to have me killed eighty seven days later? They knew I wouldn't talk, that I'd use every last bit of strength I could find to fight back, so they just injected me with some sort of poison before I could? Get rid of the problem before it can fully develop. 

A face begins forming behind my too-heavy eyelids. The all-too-familiar face of a boy, millions of faint freckles sprinkled across his nose and cheeks. He offers me a lopsided smile as my eyelids droop further and further down, too heavy to hold up anymore. 

"Maybe in another life," he'd said before his eyes had become too heavy to keep open. Could this be it? Could this be the other life he was talking about? Will Ben be standing beside him, Bark held tightly in his arms when I join him? Will Winston be there offering me that warm, toothy smile he so often adorned back in the Glade? Will Logan and Chuck be there too, that familiar, mischievous glint in their eyes as they plot some kind of prank? Will Alby be there smiling that small, barely-there smile that he sometimes offered us when he was feeling nice? Will Clint and Jeff be there bickering back and forth like an old married couple like they used to?

Maybe this isn't so bad, if that's what it's like. Most of my friends there to greet me. Gally there with that big, lopsided grin on his face he wore every time we were together. Maybe then things can go back to how they used to be.

When I was young and innocent. When I was telling jokes around a bonfire with my friends as we wondered what the world would be like when we escaped, no knowledge of the true horrors that would be waiting for us when we finally did. When I was just a girl in love with a boy who was still alive. A boy I hadn't watched die right in front of me. When there was no blood on my hands. When I hadn't killed a man. No, not just one. Multiple. When I wasn't wondering why pulling the trigger comes so easily for me now. Had I ever held a gun in my hands before then? Did I ever pull the trigger before then?

The thought of seeing them again stays with me as my eyes fully close, a lonely kind of darkness surrounding me. And yet, it isn't lonely for long. 

"I'm with you 'till the end of the line." His voice says. I can feel the gentle pressure of his hand gripping mine. The soft motion of his thumb as he rubs small circles on the back of my hand, just like he used to. And as I fall into unconsciousness, I know I'm not alone, because he's with me. He always has been. Even after his death, he never truly left my side, and that comforts me as I slip away from reality.