Into the Maze

Chapter 4

(Ok, so I was thinking it is time for a flashback! In this chapter I'm also straying from the books and sneaking in a movie character. I am thinking about writing a couple chapters from a character's Point of View eventually, to scramble things up. Please remember that although I am giving you a glimpse into Jackie's past, she can't remember it in the Glade <3)
12 years earlier
Fire. Explosions. Screaming. All of it was muddled in her head as she took her mother's and and allowed herself to be pulled hastily away from the burning shack of sticks.
"Run, sweetheart!" The mother's voice was tense, hysterical. "Run!"
Her feet were under her now and she sprinted as fast as she could toward the cliff. She knew it was safe there. They were only four hundred yards from it when a bomb hit a mere twenty yards from them.
When she landed on the ground, there was a strange, ringing sound in her ears. She couldn't hear or see straight. Then she remembered. The cliff. She had to get to the cliff.
She again rose to her feet and stumbled toward the safety of the rocks and boulders. A new hand took her's. A smoother hand, less worn from the work in the desert. Aunt Mary.
"Come with me, sweetheart." Mary Cooper steered her niece away from the cliff.
"No." The four-year-old stopped and pulled on her aunt's hand, ignoring the fine line of blood running down her temple. "Mommy said to go to the cliff."
"Come with me, sweetie. It's for the best."
The odd ringing in her ears was forgotten in a stab of panic. "Mommy!" She screamed, remembering the explosion. Her voice was muffled as her aunt clapped a hand over her mouth.
"Shhh! We can't let them hear us, sweetheart, come with me."
"Mommy!"
"Come with me!"
"Raze!" Her mother's voice rang out clear through the dust and smoke. A few seconds later, the mother staggered out of the smoke, limping.
But her aunt was quicker. Before the mother could advance to her child, she had whipped a pistol from her belt and pointed it straight at her sister. "Don't move, Milla!"
The mother stopped dead, eyes wide in shock, as the truth sank in. "Mary, you..."
"It's for the best."
"You're with them!" Milla's hysterical scream tore at the girl's heart.
"You can't fight them, Milla! It's the best future she has!"
"No! Raze, Run!"
The girl wrenched her hand from her aunt's and turned. Through her strange tunnel of vision and the ringing in her ears, she managed to set her course straight for the cliff. She did not look back. She heard her aunt shouting her name. She heard her mother's agonized sobs. A shot. The screams of her mother were silenced.
She did not stop running. She passed the cliff, and kept going. Into the desert, where she was commanded never to go. Still, she did not look back, she did not stop.
She did not stop until the explosions and fires were mere specks in the distance. She crumpled to the ground, her back against a sand dune, staring at the distant line of deadly red fire. She did not move for a long time. Not until it was dark. Then she heard them.
A scream sounded, shrill and human, from just over the dune her back was pressed against. She slowly crawled to the top, nerves on alert. Peering over the tip of the dune and into a small valley between the two hills of sand, she saw them.
Cranks.
Three of them, staggering through the sand, clawing at their own bodies, screaming. She recognized them, but she was surprised they would come so far out into the desert.
Goaded away by their bloodcurdling screams, she staggered farther into the desert. The night had brought cold, and she rubbed her small hands together for heat. The shrieks of the half-dead zombies still pounded in her head long after she could hear them.
Morning came with a blazing sun, withering all in its path. With it came the realization of her dire need for water.
Still, she would not stop. She didn't know how far she had gotten, but she knew by the time that she reached a sharp ridge of rocks that she could go no farther. She dropped to her small knees and crawled into a small cranny. It was there that she waited for death to come.
And when the darkness overtook her, she welcomed it.
She didn't know how long she lay there, curled into a ball, but when she awoke, she knew immediately that she was not dead. For one thing, Aunt Mary was kneeling at the mouth of the crevice, her brow creased in concern. But the girl didn't care.
"Raze, we're going to go now." She didn't move.
"It'll be safe there." No response.
"We'll find water." She cracked an eyelid open.
"Trust me, sweetheart. I just want what's best for you."
She hesitated, the reached out to take her mother's killer's hand.
She barely processed that there were men in green suits outside of her cranny. She could barely lift her head enough to see that they carried her to a berg, a large plane which was considered a luxury where she was from.
She didn't realize when they lay her down in a bed, and she didn't feel the prick as they inserted a needle into her arm. After that, the world went black.
She was sitting cross-legged, a loom in front of her, full of a rich color and bright patterns. Her fingers worked nimbly, but the thin yarn knotted around her small finger anyways. And there were bigger hands, work-worn and gentle, around hers in an instant, unknotting and pulling at the thread until the pattern continued, unbroken, across the stretch of cloth. "It's going to be beautiful, Raze," came her mother's voice. "You can put it on your baby brother's bed when he comes along can't you?" Her mother's hand moved to her own belly.
"Yes, Mommy." Her voice held a note of sadness.
"Sweetheart, is something troubling you?"
"Yes, Mommy. Those men who were on the other side of the cliff today. The men that Daddy saw. Who are they? Why are they so far out in the desert?"
"They work for an organization called Wicked."
"What's that?"
"They are the reason we're hiding, sweetie. You see, they are looking for you."
"Why?"
"So many questions." Her mother smiled gently, but looked tired. "Raze, someday I will explain it all to you but for now I want you to listen very closely to what I am about to say. And no matter what happens, you must never forget it. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Mommy."
"Wicked is bad, Raze."
The dream was fading fast. Even now, she could hear the harsh voice of a man who was certainly not her father. She could see blurry, unnatural lights coming into focus over her head. She knew something was about to happen, but she would not let it go. She would never forget.
Wicked is bad.