Crank palace re-adapted

14. Mixed feeling

Newt faced the wall, his back to the departing guards, to the front entrance, to his new posse, to the world. He fumed as silently as possible, aware that the spectacular anger he felt was beyond irrational, but still unable to do anything about it. Every breath hurt his chest, only filled half his lungs. The decision he'd made to leave his friends and the Berg had been almost impossible, unbearable. But the right one.
How could they place this burden on him, forcing him to make that same decision again? He shook with rage, cradled the launcher in his arms like a baby, considered turning it on himself to snap him out of these spiralling thoughts. It wouldn't kill him, after all. But it sure would wake him up.

"Newt, you okay?" Jonesy. How had Newt chosen to cast his lot with someone like Jonesy, instead of relying on his best friends on the planet? He really was losing his mind.
No, he berated himself. He'd done the only thing he could, having the Flare was bad enough. Having Tommy and the others around to remind him of just how sad that was, he couldn't take it. He simply couldn't. There was no going back.

"Newt?" Jonesy again.

"I'm fine!" Newt yelled. He turned his head to look at the sallow face of his bodyguard, framed by that ridiculous greasy black hair. "Just leave me alone."
Jonesy's girlfriend, Newt couldn't remember her name and was pretty sure he never would, lay flat on the ground just a few feet away, groaning after a dose of the Bliss. Newt had never wanted to take the medication so badly as he did in that moment. But his head was muddled enough. He couldn't risk lapsing even further and making a decision he might regret. What could be worse than going back with his friends and then deciding to leave again?
He turned back to the wall, lowered his head, closed his eyes, tried to suppress the anger that welled up in him like a surge of acid, like gasoline lit with a spark, burning and burning.
Why had they come back? Why?
Some time passed, his entire body feeling suspended in space, floating in a bubble of hot rage. It might've been an hour. It might've been five minutes. He didn't know. But it took every ounce of his willpower just to keep himself from erupting at anyone within a hundred feet of him. More than once he had to push down the urge to shoot someone else with a launcher just to make himself feel better.

"Newt?" Jonesy whispered from a few feet away. The harsh kind of breathy whisper that anyone nearby could hear. "The Munie guards brought those people back here. The ones you ran away from."
Newt's head snapped around. He looked at the front entrance of the bowling alley, just as Minho walked into the building, his face shadowed by the outside light behind him. But there was no mistake. And then Tommy entered, right behind him, holding Brenda's hand like a child.
Newt turned back to the wall so quickly that a dizzy spell buzzed his head. He caught a glimpse of Jorge right before he'd swivelled.
They'd come for him anyway. Despite everything. Despite the note he'd written Tommy. Despite the note he'd left in the Berg. Despite the message he'd sent back with that stupid Munie guard. They'd come.
A fury came over him that was like a fog of poison gas. On the inside, on the outside, prickling his skin. He shook with it, couldn't stop it. His heart hurt so badly. What was happening to him? Was this what it was like to push past that final barrier of the Flare into the mad world of the Gone?

"They're almost over here," Jonesy whispered fiercely, panicked for the first time since Newt had met him several days ago. He probably didn't want to lose his new prized possession to its prior owners.
Newt sensed his friends. He heard Minho's breathing, heard the pattern of Tommy's footsteps. He knew these people better than anyone. And for some reason, he wanted to yell at them and beat them to a pulp.
I really, truly am slipping, he thought. At least I don't have to dread it anymore.
It finally spilled out. Newt screamed when he spoke, trying to remember the odd words they'd used in the Glade like a badge of rebellion against their captors.

"I told you bloody shanks to get lost!"

His pulse took on a life of its own, thumping almost unnaturally in his temples, and his neck, and his wrists, and his chest. He could hear it. He swore he could hear it.
Thump, thump, thump.
A pounding in his ears, in his brain.