"Brenda." I shout over the blaring alarms, stripping off my coat. "We won't get far without more weapons. She laughs a little, glancing back at everyone following us.
"Where do you think I'm headed?"
"The long way around." I mutter as we barrel around a corner.
"Well if we take the quickest route, guards will intercept us quicker." She had a point. Besides, this part of the facility had the most rooms with multiple doors to escape through. Someone yanked on my arm and I skid to a halt.
"What the hell is going on?" Minho demanded. Brenda stopped, just before rounding a corner, seeing as I was pulled away from her and everyone else had paused in the hallway to hear my answer.
"Honestly, I have no fuckin idea. I just copied Brenda, like she told me to." Everyone looked up towards the dark haired girl who was rolling her eyes a little.
"Yes and you copied me brilliantly Malls, now let's go. Jorge can pilot a berg to get us the hell out of here."
"Why should we follow you anywhere. How do we know this isn't a variable?" Thomas demanded.
"I know we haven't given you guys much incentive to trust us recently." I said, pulling my arm out of Minho's grasp and straightening out my shirt. "But trust us about this, we don't want to stay here anymore than you do." The hall was quiet, except for the blaring alarm. Raven stepped forward.
"Good enough for me. Let's get the hell out of this dump."
"There they are!" Someone shouted. I heard the unmistakable sound of a Launcher being fired and I slammed into Raven, knocking her to the ground. The silvery grenade hit the wall, releasing electricity and rolled away harmlessly. "Run!" Brenda shouted, firing her own launcher at the two guards who had found us. The three of us scrambled up and took off around the corner that Brenda was standing at.
I zipped around corners and down hallways but I couldn't hear the guards chasing after us so I slowed our pace a little as Brenda ran to catch up with me. "We're going the wrong way." I shake my head.
"No, this is a shortcut! I know these halls better than you do, I grew up here." She hesitated a little but gave in.
"Fine but if we get caught.."
"We won't." And the miraculous thing is, we didn't. The alarms suddenly shut off, five minutes after we escaped the two guards and when they did, Brenda the rest of the group and I, cautiously made our way around the halls of W.I.C.K.E.D. "If someone is waiting for us around one of these corners, we can't just run into them, we have to be smart about this." I hissed to Aris who asked why we were moving so slow all of a sudden.
"But what if they run into us?" Ashoka asked.
"Then hopefully we catch them by surprise." I swiped my keycard into the panel, surprised that it still worked. W.I.C.K.E.D should have known by now that we were trying to escape so why didn't they block my access card? Brenda had swiped Jansen's card in case ours did fail but so far, nothing.
"I don't like this." Newt complained as our footsteps echoed down the quiet hallway. "Nobody's come after us. Where is the rest of the security?" Everyone looked to Brenda and I for answers.
"This better not be a trick." Minho said with a frown.
"It's not." Brenda said, shaking her head. "I have no idea what's going on right now."
"Why did they shut off the alarm?" Ashoka asked.
"Maybe cause they were sick of hearing it." I replied, though my joking manner didn't seem to ease the tension in their shoulders. After fifteen minutes, we reached the weapons cache. Brenda and I eyed the racks carefully as the rest of the group fanned out, shoving guns into the waistbands of their jeans and grabbing up Launchers. They didn't seem to notice it but Brenda and I did, a lot of the racks were empty.
"Why are you two just standing there?" Newt asked as he grabbed a box of ammunition.
"Look." I said slowly, wiping my hand over the dust on the racks and pointing at the newly empty row of launchers. "There are weapons missing."
"So? Maybe the guards came around and picked up some new ones." Brenda and I give each other worried looks as Raven said this.
"The guards only pick up new weapons from here if there's malfunctions and they're always supposed to leave their old guns behind." There were no weapons lying around on tables, looking out of place. The only thing missing in this room were about two dozen launchers and another two dozen guns.
"This is a setup." Ashoka murmured, eyeing us suspiciously.
"We're not in on it if it is." Brenda says earnestly.
"You have our word." I added.
"Yeah, well your word doesn't mean much." Minho grumbled. I sighed slowly.
"Lets.. Lets just get out of here."
"Hang on, I need to do something." Newt said, making everyone pause.
"What you need a buggin bathroom break?" Minho asked with a roll of his eyes. Newt said nothing and Minho scoffed.
"It's fine, we can wait in here." Brenda said, nodding to me to go help Newt find a bathroom.
"Come on, there's one in the other room." Newt and I stepped out, glancing both ways down the hallway first before heading to a different door a couple feet down the hall. I unlocked it for him and looked around the lab slowly. There was nobody in sight. "It's right over there." I tell him, pointing at the door at the other end of the room.
"I don't need to use the bathroom." He says, brushing past me and into the room. He starts pulling open drawers and looking through cabinets, trying to find something as I watch him, perplexed.
"What are you.. What do you need to do?"
"Is there any paper in here?"
"Uhh..." I pause before nodded my head. "Yeah it's just, right over here." I grab up a clipboard and pull off the medical documents, exposing clean, lined paper underneath. I rummage through the correct drawer and find a pen and hand both of these things to him. "What are you.."
"I'd appreciate if you didn't ask questions and if you didn't tell anyone about this." I shut my mouth when I see how serious he looks.
"Okay." I say softly. Newt writes for several seconds, I can hear the scratch of the pen in paper before he pulls it free from the clipboard, folds it up and then looks around a little confused. "Need something else?" I ask him.
"Tape." I open several drawers before I find medical tape and hand it to him. He folds up the piece of paper some more, writes out one word on the froth and then tapes two of the edges down. The name on the front is Thomas. "Newt.." I say slowly.
"I don't want to talk about it."
"No Newt." I say, catching his arm as he begins to move to the door. "I'm.. I'm so sorry. I didn't know." I whisper out, not knowing if he'll believe me or not. Newt glances back at me and I realize I'm on the verge of tears. Newt. I always admired him. He was a good leader and an even better friend. He was faithful, loyal and a strong soothing presence. I couldn't imagine a world without him
"Nothing we can do about it now is there? There's no cure for this."
"I wish there was."
"It doesn't matter anymore." He pulls his arm back and marches out the door. Taking a deep breath, I follow him. Everyone piles out into the hallway as we come back. Newt seems to be hiding the note in his hand.
"Come on, let's get to the hanger." Brenda says, gesturing down. I nod for everyone to follow her but let Newt and Thomas hang back. They talk quietly as I get to the corner of the hallway, watching Brenda and everyone else disappear down another.
"Come on you two." I tell them. Newt and Thomas run towards me as I duck around the corner. They're quiet, not speaking to each other as we catch up to the rest of the group. Minho and Aris give me confused looks but I just run up ahead towards Brenda. "Jorge will willingly fly us out of here?" I ask her.
"He should.." Brenda replies softly "But honestly, I don't know."
"Aren't we going back for the others?" Raven asked, coming to a stop.
"The others?" I questioned. She frowns.
"The Gladers, the Field girls. We're not leaving them." Brenda and I gave each other an anxious look.
"It would be easier to escape if.."
"No. To hell with easy." Aris snapped. "Those are our friends. We can't leave them here."
"I'm not leaving without Teresa." Thomas said adamantly. I cursed under my breath. I really hoped nobody would bring up the others.
"Fine. We'll double back for them but if we get caught..." I grumbled. But, it was as if nobody was even on duty. We searched the mess hall and the dorms with no problem before checking all other possible places a large group of kids might be kept. But so far, nothing. We couldn't even find a damn guard on duty.
"This isn't right!" Minho shouted in frustration. "Where the hell is everybody?"
"You're asking the wrong people." Brenda muttered.
"Let's just head to the hanger okay? The long way. If we can't find them then.." I paused. Then I didn't know what to think. Where could they have gone? Where was W.I.C.K.E.D keeping them? This whole thing felt off.
"Are their secret rooms here? Hidden ones?" Aris asked as we ran through the cafeteria again. Brenda and I laughed.
"What? Like we're fricken spies or something? There aren't hidden rooms." Brenda said, rolling her eyes.
"How about rooms you can't access? That you don't have clearance to or whatever?" Ashoka questioned. She's a smart girl, never misses a thing. I shake my head slowly.
"Maybe Brenda can't access certain rooms but.. I have free reign of this building. Perks of being W.I.C.K.E.D's daughter I guess." Nobody argued with us or asked any more question and eventually, as we were running past one of the large labs in the facility, we heard a loud groan.
Pausing, everyone turned to the door. The groan came again and I made everyone back away from the door so I could open it. "On three, I open the door. If we don't like what we see, we give them everything we got." Everyone held their launchers at ready as I counted down on my fingers.
Throwing the door open, I found that the lab was bathed in low light, large objects scattered all over the ground in heaps. "What the.." Newt said, flipping on the light switch.
"Well, I guess we found the security detail." Aris said as we looked over all the bound and gagged people.
"Who did this? Raven asked but since everyone in the room was gagged, no one answered.
"I don't know but I don't like it. Let's keep moving." I said. There were muffled protests but we quickly slammed the door shut and took off down the hallway. When we got to the hanger, it was also completely void of life.
"Where's Jorge?" Thomas asked.
"I don't.. I don't know." We looked around the room carefully.
"Well, can either of you fly one of those damn things?" Raven asks. Brenda and I shake our heads no when we hear another loud moan coming from behind some of the crates in front of a berg. We all rush over to find, Jorge, sitting up and clutching his head.
"What happened?" Brenda asks, falling to her knees to examine his head. Everyone else has their guns raised, wary of Jorge.
"The others came in here. They somehow took control of the facility, took out all the guards, grabbed a pilot and flew away in a berg. I tried to stop them, and now I'm really wishing I hadn't." He groans again and clutches his temples.
"Who came in here? Aris demands.
"Teresa and all those other damn kids. They flew away and apparently left you idiots behind."