APHRODITE ( frypan. )

CHAPTER FOUR

･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ.

"Where the hell are we?" Minho asked the group of teens. Everyone stayed quiet, looking around the abandoned building, trying to catch their breath. Pants echoed off the walls as they looked at the pieces of broken wood and glass were piled across the ground, some lied over on top of the sand while some pieces stood out from underneath it.

"We gotta go," Thomas demanded immediately. He turned around and began walking deeper into the building, waving his hands to encourage the others to follow.

"No-"

"Come on."

"Stop."

"Let's go."

"Thomas, stop!"

The dark-haired boy stopped in shock, looking over to the girl who had yelled his name. He stared at her with confusion, startled that she had been so aggressive to the fact that they needed to get away from the people chasing them. Aphie looked at her curiously, she had no idea who Teresa was and couldn't seem to get a read on her.

"Tell me what's going on." She demanded stubbornly.

"Uh, yeah. I'd like to know that too." Vanessa whispered under her breath, Aphie being the only one to hear her.

"It's WCKD," Thomas stated quietly. "They lied to us. We never escaped."

Thomas radiated anxiety, shifting in place, clearly not being able to stay still with all the worried eyes on him. He casted a look towards Aphie and Aris, gesturing towards them. "We found bodies. Too many to count."

"What do you mean? Dead bodies?" Minho inquired.

"No. But they weren't alive either." Thomas explained as everyone stayed silent. "They had them strung up. Tubes coming out of them. They were being... being drained. There's something inside of us that WCKD wants. Something in our blood."

"A cure," Aphie spoke up for the first time, and the whole group of strangers shifted their gazes from Thomas to her, looking at the girl expectantly. "Janson. He said something about the result. How they were promising. What if a cure is in our blood? For the flare?"

Thomas nodded in agreement. "That's why we need to get as far away from them as possible."

"Okay." The blonde boy said simply from beside Aphie, seemingly trusting the boy fully. "So, what's the plan? You do have a plan, right?"

"Yeah." He barley said above his breath, shrugging his shoulders at the same time. Clearly, he didn't have a plan. Thomas began squirming under the other boy's furious stare as he looked at the ground uncomfortably.

"Well, we followed you out here, Thomas. And now you're saying that you have no idea where we're going or what we're doing." The boy scolded in disbelief, his voice cracking as he did so. Thomas shook his head, not knowing what to say.

"Wait." Aris chimed in, taking the attention off of Thomas causing everyone to turn to him. "Janson said something about people hiding in the mountains. Like some kind of resistance or army."

"The Right Arm," Thomas confirmed under his breath. "The Right Arm. If they're really against WCKD, maybe they can help us."

Thomas looked straight ahead at the blonde boy as if he were asking for his approval on the plan. The rest of the group followed the gaze and waited expectantly for his input.

"People. In the mountains. Mountain people. That's your plan?" He spat out as if it were a joke.

Thomas took a few steps closer to the other boy, the tension between them rising while everyone else just stood and watched. "It's the only chance we have."