Admit Defeat (TMR fic 2)

Chapter 37

(song~) 

Jorge reaches me with the light a second after I crash into the figure. As soon as I can see the Crank clambering to his feet, I lash out with my knife. He twists, the blow glancing across shoulder. Then he tightly grabs my hand, forcing me to drop the knife.

"Go tell the others that we've found Jack some noses," he hisses, and the other Crank hobbles away, chuckling to himself.

"Get back!" Minho shouts, and there's a thud as he chucks his brick at the woman still crawling towards us. Newt is picking up the knife I dropped, but there's no time.

The Crank in front of me reaches out with surprising speed and grabs my throat. He's strong for being half dead.

His eyes catch on the Crank Minho is trying to force back with Newt's piece of wood, and he smiles at her.

"Hello, Rose." Then he swings my weight to the side, my hands still slipping on his wrist as I try to pry his fingers from my neck.

My body slams into the wall. I'm stunned for a moment by the blow. My vision is sparking, unable to see Jorge's swinging flashlight beam through the lack of oxygen.

Then the hand releases and I manage to catch myself on legs that instantly start to buckle. Jorge grabs my arms and supports me, shining the flashlight ahead of us. I blink the remaining flickering lights away and realize what I'm looking at.

There's something animalistic about the way Newt is standing. He's twisted into a visceral pose, his every muscle working together to force his strength upward. The Crank is twitching, impaled on the knife that Newt is lifting, twisting further into its gut.

I have never seen him so cold, so deadly.

For some reason, that inhuman stance frightens me more than the darkness.

Minho had managed to kill the other Crank it seems, her whimpers having died out entirely, but that doesn't bother me. He's panting against the wall, looking more than slightly sickened as Jorge checks on him with the light.

Newt, though, is pure stone. He killed for me, and he would kill again. What's so different between that and my pledge of revenge? I'd kill all of WICKED if I could.

Then I understand why it scares me. It's not the death, or the unfeeling enactment of judgement. It's the fact that Newt was better than the rest of us. He was gentle, and kind, and not as blackhearted. But because of me, because of how WICKED twisted him, he is willing to kill.

They destroyed everything innocent and good about him.

They broke him.

"We should go," I say, dragging my eyes away from Newt as he pulls the blood-slicked knife from the corpse. "More are coming."

"Let's head back, then," Jorge says, walking back the way we came.

I frown. "No. That's the direction the other Crank went in to gather others. We need to head away from where they'll be. We can find a corner to hide in until they give up on looking for us. There are some smaller areas that should work."

It looks like Jorge wants to object, but he looks up the tunnel before him and shudders. "If you say so. You had better be right."

I don't know if I'm right, but I don't want to run into a group of Cranks, and I'm still worried about Thomas. So, darkness or not, I lead them further into the city's tunnels.