MARCUS'S PLACE
DAY 856 AFTER SOLAR FLARES
12:09 HOURS
Buck
He is kicking and screaming and hitting me as I tried to pull him out of the closet. He was starving, thirsty, and he soiled his pants after the bathroom wasn't an option for him for hours. It wasn't his fault, and I felt horrible. He tried to push me away but I wasn't going to let him rot inside this fucking closet anymore than he had to. I was going to have to clean it too.
"Joey, stop baby boy."
"GO AWAY!" He screamed in my face. "GO AWAY!"
He's backed himself completely into the closet and I didn't want to force him out after the hell he's already been through. I put my arms down and looked at my brother with my blurry vision and my pounding headache.
"Joey, come on out here, okay?" I begged but he shook his head.
"YOU LEFT ME!" Joey screamed at me and I tried to shush him in fear that my mother would hear and come back for another round of beatings. "YOU LEFT ME IN THERE FOREVER!"
"I'm so sorry baby, I am so so sorry." I told him but he shook his head and crumbled into a ball and cried. "Come here Joey."
I outstretched my arms and this time he fell into me. I had to change and wash myself off anyway so I didn't care that he was soaked in his own pee. I shushed his shaking tear stricken body, stroking his hair softly.
"I'm so sorry baby boy."
"I thought you were dead." He cried harder. "I thought you were dead."
"I know, I'm sorry."
When me and Joey were both showered and clean, I took him for a ride in my father's impala, letting the roads take us anywhere but home. Today was a beautiful day, super hot, but the sky was bright and the clouds lefts splotches of shade. Joey picked the music today, and of course he started with Queen. He looked like he had completely forgotten the horrible hours he had spent in that closet with his new clothes on and his loud singing voice projecting out to the world.
But I remembered.
I couldn't forget.
And it made me realize that the next time she threatened him...
I was going to have to kill her.
THE LAST CITY
DAY 186 BACK IN THE SCORCH
19:37 HOURS
B u c k
Thomas was on my ass constantly since what happened with the train, even though he tried to make it look like he wasn't. I always caught him staring staring staring staring s t a r i n g at me. Gally too, but not as often as Thomas. We were inside the walls of the city now, walking through a dark dank hallway with a lit up door in the distance. I was still out of breath from the running, coughing heavily and feeling my arms shake. It was an odd feeling that I wish I was able to stop, but instead I chose to ignore it.
ignoreignoreignoreignore
itswhatimgoodat
ignore.
Gally was the first to get to the door, his big hand wrapping around the door handle before turning to look at me and Thomas. Our outfits were not ideal considering we were walking into a city where being clean is very important. We were covered in dirt and our clothes were tattered and old, but we could pull off being engineers. That was the only way I saw this working.
"Your quiet, your calm, no fighting, and do not draw anymore attention to yourself then you already will when you walk in." Gally told us and we nodded.
He took that and opened the door, allowing light to fill the tunnel, stinging my eyes because it was brightbrightbrightb r i g h t t t t. Thomas walked through first, glaring at Gally before walking through to the other side, getting mixed around in the group of people engulfing him. I started to walk through too, but I suddenly felt Gally grab my shoulder and force me to look at him.
"Don't do anything stupid." He whispered harshly at me but I glared at him, attempting to rip myself away from his grip but he just tightened it. "I mean in."
"Touch me like that again, and I'll rip your throat out." I growled. "I've killed you once, you know I'll do it again."
"Yeah, I know what your capable of." He said harshly back in return, finally releasing my shoulder and walking forward to meet up with Thomas. I did the same, ignoring whatever the hell that iteraction was.
The first thing I noticed when I walked out was that there were somanysomanysomany people here in a large crowd. The trains zoomed by on their tracks, leaving nothing but a gust of wind in it's wake. I looked around at the crowd, my eyes scanning their faces and my ears picking up every little sound. The clacking of shoes against concrete, people muttering to each other or themselves, the screeching screeching
s c r e e c h i n g of trains braking to a stop. It was almost too much.
I felt like I was losing my mind.
Half the people wore masks, the other half felt perfectly fine walking through the streets unprotected. Gally lead the way while me and Thomas stuck together behind him, but we didn't look at each other. Well, I didn't look at him, that is. Thomas couldn't seem to keep his eyes off of me, and he almost ran into multiple people because of this. I think he was worried about me, he was always worried for me. That's what I hated about him. He worried about me.
He actually cared about me.
"Come on." Gally said, walking forward a little faster to a set of stairs, climbing up quickly while me and Thomas continued to follow.
The crowd started to disperse to their own things, some people waiting for another train, others heading off in their own directions. We climbed up to the top of the stairs, walking forward until the group of people behind us had completely gone off to their own thing. Gally turned back to look at me and Thomas one more time before looking forward, pulling our attention with him.
And I was genuinely shocked.
When I was last here, the city was a complete mess. There were broken roads, broken buildings, and broken people. Rioters would stride through the streets, people would cower in fear, and soldiers would beat the shit out of anyone who would step out of line. I was one of those soldiers, but I never beat anyone I didn't absolutely have to. There were people who raped and people who robbed, and I would deal with them with terrible wrath. But nothing compared to the people who I caught abusing their children.
The pain I dealt them is pain too horrible to explain.
For obvious reasons, I did not tolerate abuse.
But now the city seems new, as if it were just taken out of it's carefully packed box. The buildings stood above me like pillars of stone, shining of blinding blue light that forced me to squint my eyes. There were no cars out, but there were pristine roads that told me cars were here somewhere out of sight. Out on raised tracks, a train zipped its way through the buildings with no care in the world.
"Fifteen minuets until mandatory curfew." A robotic woman's voice announced over the loud speaker that projected through the city. "Please return home in an orderly fashion."
We were engulfed in buildings and light, but the dark of the night had settled across the sky, making the world easier on my newly sensitive eyes.
sobright
bright light
b e a u t i f u l
l i g h t
Me and Thomas slowly came to a stop to take the city in, breathing in the surprisingly clean air. Gally turned to look at us when he realized that we had stopped. He let out a sigh and gave us another minuet to take in the new sight before breaking the wonderous silence that made my ears sing with glee.
"We have to get off the streets." Gally told us and I nodded, shaking myself from the wonderous trance the bright lights sent me through. It was odd, I hated the lights, but somehow couldn't look away. "I know this is all new for you guys, but try to act like you've seen this before."
"I have seen it before." I said back with irritation. "It just didn't look this nice."
"Really?" Gally asked me and we made our way to the sidewalks while Thomas gawked at the city.
"I used to work here as a soldier." I told him but the statement confused the boy.
"How did you... you know..."
"The Scorch Reaper?" I asked him but he didn't say anything. "Or a soldier?"
"Sure, both." He said and I shook away whatever weird answer that was.
"My childhood was not good. I had terrible people do terrible things to me which lead me to realize that there was only one thing in life that mattered. My brother Joey." I told him and Gally listened while Thomas tuned in behind us. "He was taken by WICKED and I did everything I could to get him back."
"That's not a very detailed story." Gally reminded me while I could feel Thomas's rage fire up.
"You dont deserve to know anything about her." Thomas said darkly and I glared back at him. "Not after what you've done."
We were crossing one of the many empty streets, the white lines painted across the concrete reminding me of days before the Solar Flares when these things mattered. My father would walk me to school with his hand in mine, and we would hop on each white line as a game. You touch anything other than the white paint, you lose a point. Instinctively now, as I walked across the street, I kept my feet glued to those white lines, making sure I didn't go over.
"Stop." I said loudly, forcing Thomas to turn to me while Gally had already reached the other side of the road.
stop stop stop s t o p p p p p p
stop.
"What's up?" Thomas asked, just happy to have me talking to him.
"Your feet." I said, not looking up to him, only staring at his feet.
"My feet?" He asked me, looking down and then back up to me. "What about them?"
"Put them on the white lines." I told him, but I didn't say it in a harsh way. Thomas's confusion made it impossible for him to move, so I finally brought my eyes up to meet his.
His amber gaze was light and soft and beautiful and comforting. His face was intricate and sharp, but also calming and almost reminded me of home in some way. His confusion made me want to laugh, and I think I smiled because Thomas started to laugh lightly in an awkward kind of way as me and him stood in the middle of the road, his feet on the normal grey concrete while mine were still glued to the thick white lines.
"What the hell are you two doing?" Gally hissed at us but Thomas flipped him off while keeping his eyes on me. "You've got to be kidding me."
"What's wrong with my feet?" Thomas asked me as he ignored Gally.
"They need to be on the white lines." I told him again and he looked down, still racked with confusion. He moved his feet forward so that he was now a step closer to me, standing on the white line in front of me.
"Is there a reason I'm doing this?" Thomas asked but I continued to look into his amber eyes, getting lost in them.
"My father would play this game with me." I told him, as shocked as he was that I was giving him any explanation.
It was like I forgot I was mad at him.
It almost felt like the world didn't fall apart.
It felt like the world was never burnt to a crisp.
We were just two normal people walking through the streets.
normalnormalnormalnormal
n
o r m
a l
"We would play it when he walked me to school." I told him, taking a step forward while watching my feet. "Don't step on the white, and don't step on any cracks or lines in the pavement, or you lose a point. It's very important to me."
"Ah, I see." Thomas said with a smile, taking a step forward with me, keeping an eye on his feet. "Then I will have to watch where I step then."
mylove my l ove m y l o v v v e e e e
watch where you step my love.
***
It was like an obsession. I couldn't stop staring at the floor as I walked, keeping an eye on both mine and Thomas's feet, but never once did he step on a crack or a line on the roads or sidewalks. This obsession almost got us caught several times for being up past curfew. Gally was silent, annoyed that he would have to wait for me to pick up my speed, but overall, I think there was a part of him that was concerned for me. I couldn't understand why.
Eventually, after some obstacles involving jumping across unfinished highways to get to certain pathways, the three of us were getting close to the destination that Gally had his mind set for. It was on the walls themselves, the walls that separated this beautiful clean city from the ruined old reminder of the real world outside. We climbed up staircase after staircase, going over platform over platform, my breathing labored, heavy coughs wrecking my sore throat.
When we finally made it, I realized why this spot was ideal for us to get a good look at WICKED's headquarters. From the platform we stood on now, about halfway up the wall, we were able to get a complete look of WICKED's building. There had to be at least sixty floors, if not more, and white lights illuminated it, forcing all attention to be pulled towards it in all its glory.
"Lawrence has been trying to break in for years." Gally informed us as he pulled out a telescope that he seemed to have stashed here. "The place is crawling with soldiers, they have surveillance everywhere, scanners on every floor-"
"Do you think they're fucking stupid?" I asked him, taking the boy off guard along with Thomas, who seemed to think I was in a more docile mood. "They are the smartest organization in the world with the strongest army and an endless amount of resources and fire power. We may hate them, but we can't doubt their intelligence. They'll be expecting us, escpecially now they know we're here outside their walls."
"How do they know-" Thomas tried but I whipped my head to look at him.
"Why do you think they sent the missiles down on us?" I asked him and the boy was rendered silent. "They have drones all over the place and you all have chips in your neck."
"And you don't?" Gally asked and I glared at him.
"I ripped mine out." I responded shortly, and I saw Gally about to ask another question, but I answered before he could say it. "Yes it was on my spine, and yes I know how idiotically dangerous it was, move on."
"You said you had a way in?" Thomas said, ignoring everything I just said for his own sanity.
"I might." Gally responded, but Thomas didn't like that.
"Might?" He asked, getting angrier by the second. "What do you mean 'might'?"
"Take a look." That was all Gally responded with, and both me and Thomas stared at each other before the boy slowly walked over to the telescope that sat on the railing of the platform.
He sat there for a moment, his eyes level with the telescope, looking through and moving it only slightly, trying to figure out what it was that Gally was mentioning. All I could think about was Joey... Desmond. Desmond Desmond Desmond Desmond Desmond. All I could think about was my brother being inside that building, slowly, day by day, losing hope for a rescue. Waiting and waiting, no clue that I was here to get him out. Maybe he still hates me. Maybe being with WICKED, in his eyes, is better then being with me.
Then his head whipped up. There was an anger shinning in his eyes, but also a hint of something else. He looked distraught. Thomas's head slowly turned to look back at Gally, but the boy just stood there, leaning against the wall.
"I said I had a plan," Gally said, standing up straighter and glancing at me for a split second. "I didn't say you were going to like it."
That's when I had enough of the back and forth stares between Gally and Thomas and looked through the telescope myself. Thomas tried to stop me, but I shoved him out of my way, placing my eye against the plastic exterior of the lens. The first thing that hit me was the sharp white lights of the inside of the WICKED building. I had to blink a couple of times before I was able to focus my vision and my brain because I felt so scattered.
There was a girl.
girl girl girl girlg irlgi rlgir lgirlgirl
ggggggggggg g g g g g g g g girl
h a t r e d
TereseteresateresaTERESATERESATERESA
Traitor
Traitor
Traitor
T R A I T O R
T
R
A
I
T
O
R
***
The moment we got back, the others were all waiting at the top of the manhole cover, anticipating us. They all looked relived when my head poked up first, but the moment my feet hit the cement floor, I stormed out with haste and fury burning through my blood. Thomas was up next and then Gally after that, and while the others asked Thomas what the hell happened, Gally chased after me. Jorge suggested he didn't, but Gally seemed to have a death wish because he ignored it.
People stared at me in awe as I walked past them with no real clue as to were I was going, I just needed to be away from everything. I heard Gally running to catch up to me even though I was at a walking speed, and then I felt his hand brush against my shoulder, hoping to slow me down. I just snapped there, slapping his hand out of my way, kicking him in the chest so that his back slammed against a wall, and then I took my scythes and placed them dangerously close to his neck.
He knew I would do this, and I could see how hard he was trying not to panic, and he was doing a very good job at it. His stare was blank and he was almost perfectly still, but I could see his hand shake and could hear his sharp intakes of breath. He was afraid. Everyone was afraid of me.
"If you EVER touch me, I will rip out your fucking throat with my teeth." I whispered harshly at the boy, but he did not move a muscle.
"We need to talk." Gally told me, and reluctantly, I released him, allowing his body to relax.
"About your plan?" I asked him with venom in my voice, trying my best not to think about the woman who was a part of it.
Teresa was the reason that I had lost everything. My brother. My love. My ticket to happiness. Everything, because she thought that she was doing something good. Children are dying everyday because of her. Half of the Right Arm died because of her. And even after all of this, after everything she's done, she still has her grip wrapped around Thomas's throat.
ihateherihateherihateher
IHATEHERIHATEHERIHATEHER
H A T E E E E E E
dead dead d e a d de a a d
i
w a n t
h e r
DEADDEADDEADDEADDEADDEADDEAD
"Buck." Gally's sharp tone snapped me away from my thoughts, forcing my attention to return to him. "This way."
Gally turned around, taking a few steps forward and opening up a door to his left, walking inside and forcing me through it. I glared at him, walking inside while he slammed the door shut with a strong force. The room we were in was rounded, a giant table sitting in the middle with a huge map of the city covering in. Scattered atop that map was blueprints, all of the same building. The one we were just looking at. The one with Teresa. The one with Minho. The one with Desmond.
Gally gripped on to my forearm tightly, taking me by surprise and setting a deep anger into my bones. Before I was able to do anything to stop him, I watched as the boy raised the sleeve of my jacket all the way up to my elbow, forcing me to look at my tattooed skin. It was my left forearm which meant that the ink permanently drawn on my skin was the Maze. Charlie came up with the design and was way too excited to put it onto my arm. It took about five and a half hours to complete, and he liked to add in a few extra details in there every now and then.
Charlie was the only person who has seen almost every single scar on my body. Thomas has, but those memories were stolen and wiped from his brain forever, never to be returned. Charlie, from then on, began designing tattoos for me even though I never asked him to, and he didn't even know if I wanted them. But I did. Every single one of them. They were each so beautiful and intricate that you would forget that it was a little ten-year-old boy who made them. He never worked on any part of my body that made either of us uncomfortable, the back tattoo being the biggest part of my skin that he had seen.
On my right arm was Charlie's second ever design where he basically drew up a recreation of what my bones would look like under my skin and muscle. Over those bones was a huge snake constricting me, roses poking out from random spots on the design. And his creativity never held back. His next tattoo was the entirety of my back. It was a mighty oak tree with roots that crawled down the lower part of my back while the leaves at the top were made of birds, half of which were flying away. My chest tattoo was of two snakes drawn in a way that made them look like they were wrapped around my collar bones, reaching out and wrapping themselves around each other and facing up towards my neck with their mouths opened wide and their fangs sharp and ready to bite.
There were so many more.
All visible to the world except for one.
One I gave myself.
Meant for my own eyes.
But now I was looking at my Maze tattoo along with Gally, but I could feel his gaze raise to meet me, but I couldn't stop looking. It was such a perfect tattoo. The first one I had ever gotten. It reminded me of old, more peaceful, times. It also reminded me of my mistakes. Every twist and turn I could remember in that Maze was drawn into my skin. And in the middle was the Glade. The perfect little beautiful Glade.
And now it was ruined.
Ruined by the bitemark that wrapped around it.