IT STARTED WITH A MAZE - Newt x Reader (F)

- THE WRONG PIECE -

We brought the train car back to the Right Arm's base.

The journey was short but heavy - none of us spoke much. The hum of the Berg faded into silence as we approached what used to be a port town, cradled by jagged mountains on one side and a vast, dead body of water on the other. It's no place for a victory parade. The buildings are bones now - shells of concrete and rebar, collapsed roofs, fractured windows, sun-bleached signs rusted into unreadable ghosts. The wind here smells like salt and fire, laced with decay.

The coastline that touches the base is littered with the carcasses of cargo ships, toppled and rotting where the water used to run deeper. Their massive hulls now lean like drowned beasts, half-buried in sand and sludge, corroded into jagged metal silhouettes. Ropes, chains, cranes - everything lies tangled, rusted, abandoned. Out past the shoreline, the water is black and still. It doesn't move. It just sits there, lifeless. Endless. But we all know what lies past that horizon.

The Right Arm made this place theirs. Tents are pitched between broken hangars and shattered walls. Makeshift scaffolding clings to buildings still standing. Generators hum in the distance. There's a perimeter fence made of scrap metal, old street signs, and sharpened poles, all fused into a wall. It feels more like a bunker than a home.

"This doesn't feel like home, because it isn't our home, and never will be," Newt said to me one of our first nights here.

"Do you think we'll ever find a place that feels like home?" I questioned him. He shrugged his shoulders and said he didn't think such a place existed anymore. Yet his eyes held mine as if he did know of one.

As we descend with the train car still swinging from the Berg, people are already gathering.

They must have seen us coming. The whole main square begins to fill with movement - soldiers, medics, mechanics, all running toward us, arms waving, voices rising. The moment we land, we're met with wide eyes and anxious faces. But Vince steps in front of the group, his voice like a razor over the noise: "Back. Give them space."

Everyone stops. They listen. He knows what this means to us. No one argues.

A blacksmith - broad, sleeveless, scarred - steps forward. He's already revving up a laser cutter, its narrow red beam hissing as it slices the lock from the train car's massive door. Sparks spit from the seam, the metal whining in protest.

Then the doors groan and open.

And I run in.

The scent hits me first - blood, sweat, iron, old fear. I almost trip on the step up the train floor. It's dim inside, the overhead lights barely functional, flickering as if stunned by what they've seen.

I stop cold.

Sitting at one of the isle seats, on the right side of the car, is Aris.

He's slouched, head tipped sideways. Sonya's beside him, her shoulder pressed against his. They look up in tandem when they hear me, and my heart folds in on itself. "Aris," I breathe.

He tries to smile, but confusion is the emotion that takes over. "(Y/n)?"

But they both look like something the storm spat out. Their eyes are sunken, the skin beneath them hollow, bruised dark and sick. Their lips are cracked and split, stained with dried blood. Their clothes are torn, shredded, caked with crusted red and streaks of dirt. Blood - fresh and old - spatters every inch of them like it belonged to more than just one person. I crouch beside him. "Are you okay?"

He nods slowly. "We're with you now," he says. "That's something, right?"

I want to say more. But there's too much behind his words. So I just place my hand on his knee and stand again.