Ticking Time Bomb [THE SCORCH TRIALS]

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"If he made it out?" Ingrid and Thomas sounded in unison, sharing a glance with each other before averting their eyes back to Brenda. She sighed annoyingly, glaring up at the two before her. Ingrid was worried, anxious that the group of people she had grown to want to protect, might be unsafe. It wasn't as if it was unforeseen, surely there must have been a setback when they were jumping off roofs just to escape from WCKD. But Ingrid didn't want to ponder the possibilities any longer, otherwise she felt nauseous.

"You know what, you two ask a lot of questions. Can you just come over here and, gee, I don't know, help me with this?" Brenda gestured towards a metal grate that seemed to be emitting cold air. The two rushed to aid Brenda, not even bothering to mutter an apology towards her. Ingrid reached over, lifting up the edge of the grate as Thomas held it in place, Brenda grunting as she struggled to fully remove it. After two failed attempts of weaving it out, Ingrid sighed and moved back, allowing Thomas to fully step in and rip it off its hinges. Brenda shined her light over the empty space, a 10 foot landing made out of cement being revealed. The pack shared another brief glimpse of each other's frightened eyes before Thomas finally broke the silence.

"Well, that doesn't sound good."

"You think?" Ingrid rolled her eyes, trying to decipher the darkness more than she could. Thomas ignored her snarky comment, pushing it aside even though it had bothered him more than she knew. She was acting different; quieter, sarcastic towards him, and at first he had deemed it as her normal attitude, but he was beginning to wonder if it was all because of him. "Let's just go," Ingrid was the first to jump down into the tiny hole, soon followed by Brenda who seemed to be the only other one who could give less of a donkey's ass what happened to her. Ingrid shined her flashlight towards a tunnel, littered with graffiti and words she couldn't make out of her stygian surroundings. Brenda pushed past her, leading the two as if they were little children.

Thomas stayed behind, staring at Ingrid once more. Ingrid needed to know what his problem was; was he suddenly not attracted to her sense of leadership, or her unwavering sense of morality? She snapped, lowing her flashlight and whipping around to face him, "Is there a problem? You've been staring at me like I'm fucking insane. If you have something to say Thomas, say it right now. No one else is gonna hear it."

"I will!" Brenda shouted.

"No, no, nothing wrong. You've just been acting weird after you saw- I mean, heard Janson. I just want to make sure you're okay. You seemed shocked, Ingrid. I mean you literally asked someone to shoot you. I don't know what the hell that was, "Thomas kept rambling on, and Ingrid kicked a rock angrily as they continued to walk through the musty tunnels. She didn't want him to understand because he wouldn't. There was nothing simple about what she had said. She had asked someone to kill her, practically put a bullet through her skull. Of course, she was not okay. She was not fine. But instead of telling Thomas, the one person she trusted more than herself, she repeated the mantra she had rehearsed in her head previously. "I'm fine."

"Why can't you just tell me? If you want to say something, stop holding it back from me as if I'm going to hurt you. I am trying to keep you safe, but you keep putting yourself in danger. And what am I going to do if I can't protect you? What if when someone has a gun to your face next time, you say shoot me and they do? What happens then, Ingrid?" He was seeing red. He was blind with rage, upset over everything in his life. He had never felt the burning fire he had felt for Ingrid before, not for anyone or anything. And he sure as hell didn't want to lose her.

"Stop it, Thomas. I am fine. What do I have to do to convince you that it is okay? That I'm not going to get myself shot? That I just did it to protect you?" Ingrid almost dropped her flashlight in between constantly jabbing him in the chest with her pointer finger. It was as if each jab was a knife to his heart, and it stabbed with each one. "Obviously we both have the same agenda to protect each other. So why can't you just let me do my part?"