English Ext 1 TMR:TDC Rewrite

Newt's Death Scene

A disembodied voice calling out echoes through the chaos surrounding me. As I stand there at peace with the disarray facing me, similar to what is present in my mind each day, a distorted figure emerges from the fumes of the war. "Newt! Newt!" My unfocused eyes zero in on the indistinct body stumbling through the growing flames and rubble towards me, realising it's Thomas my thoughts begin to run rampant in my head, each competing for first place in the race to gain my attention. He left me outside the city for dead. He left me to succumb to the flare by myself, allowing himself freedom rather than watching the virus eat away at me. He saved himself, not me. He didn't even try. But this is the same Thomas from the Glade, the one who I knew -or thought- I would follow anywhere after he ran into the maze for the first time. This is the same Tommy who I sat by at the last bonfire we had in the Glade, sharing Gally's secret recipe for the first time. This is my Tommy, the one who cried over Winston and Chuck when they passed after the maze. How much of it was real? There was no discernable quality between the memories that were sweet, now turned bitter, and the ones that originated more recently in our times of constant turmoil, each with a murky red haze surrounding them, fuelling my madness. The haze seemingly slightly clearer around the memories from the Glade, missing the glossed over absence felt when thinking through the motions of what occurred. Clarity sinks in temporarily, allowing me some sense of relief and comfort driven by the familiar face in an unfamiliar, yet eerily comforting circumstance I find myself in.
The detonation of an explosive sending rubble cascading towards our bodies, crumbling infrastructure surrounding us, framing our most recent interactions in an oddly beautiful mirage of hope, distrust, and destruction. Rocks, once part of the mass structure lining the clearing in which we stand, hit my shins and fall to the tips of my toes. The carnage continues to unfold around us almost as if we have a force field protecting us from the exterior conflict, coercing us into dealing with our own, head on with no room for disruption. As the dust settles, the fire blazes over the horizon, growing larger with every passing second, creeping closer to our haven of temporary serenity. Shots ring out, and rebel yells roar louder and louder advancing on the falling city centre to claim the prize their efforts of destruction have brought upon them. Bullets whizzing by our heads, by some miracle missing both of us, leaving fatal indents in the metal walls past our standoff, breaking our trance of longing and confusion. With my mind still desperately reeling to catch up to the current scenario I am faced with, varieties of inaudible thoughts, each screaming out over one another render themselves  to me. Among the chaos one thought cries out louder than the rest. Tommy left me. My gaze hardens, a snarl of insanity forcing its way on my face at the mere thought of him, all of the once positive memories I have of him now being poisoned by the same virus we were meant to cure.

"Newt..?" Thomas trails off, a prevalent tone of confusion mixed with desperation takes my attention off my own thoughts as I sink into reality. "Newt. Newt, okay. Okay, I'm going to get you out of here, okay? Just... Just come with me, look, we're going to the safe haven."

My ears perk up, tilting my head to the side slightly, muttering the syllables testing how my brain will react to the promise of order that I once possessed, when we were trapped in those concrete walls left with nothing but routine fashions of working to survive. "Safe haven?"

Hearing the sound of my rigid voice he brightens up instantly, a look of relief washing over his crestfallen face, as he gains hope in his once seemingly lost friend. "Yes! Yes Newt, we'll get the cure for you, you won't be sick anymore. You can be how you were in the Glade." His tone lifting in excitement, pleading with me to consider his offer and join him.

He looked taken aback at my intervening statement, eyes squinting inquisitively. "I don't want to go back to how I was in the Glade. It wasn't much better than how I am now. Tommy, did I ever tell you how I broke my leg? I ran through the maze trying to find the tallest wall." My hands shaking, recalling the events that unfolded when I was at my lowest.