A/N: I changed my mind again. I'm not casting Trace and I took down that temporary story.
I came to the conclusion that everybody should have their own little picture of Trace in their head and I'm not going to distort that by supplying a specific actress to play her.
However, if you wanna make little fan arts or video edits featuring her then PLEASE DO PRETTY PRETTY PLEASE. I'll feature them here if you do <3
Anyway, enjoy some chaos....
Trace acted quickly. She braced herself and slammed down hard on the brakes, taking the others by surprise. It gave her just enough time to wriggle out of the chokehold and punch the guy holding her square in the face, simply because she felt like seizing the moment.
She had an idea. A crazy idea. Actually, crazy didn't even begin to cover it. The appropriate description of this idea would probably be...ludicrious. Yes, she had a ludicrous idea.
But, as with most ideas in ridiculous situations, it just might work.
Or it might involve in her own horrific death or torture, but there was really only one way to find out.
Trace smashed out some more of the windscreen where the brick had shattered it and climbed out onto the bonnet. She jumped down and lifted it up, entirely aware that the men were coming for her. Swiftly, she ripped a portion of her own pants and dipped it in the petrol tank.
Then she pulled out her torch. She opened the back of it and pulled out a battery. Perfect.
One of the men had climbed out one of the doors and swung at her with a bat. She ducked but it clipped her hard across the shoulder. Trace screamed as she felt it pop out of place. Another of the men tried to tackle her, but she managed to out her knife with her good arm and drive it towards him, stabbing him in the arm as he came near. The man fell to the ground in pain and shock.
The man with the bat swung at her again, but she sidestepped and stabbed him in the side with her knife.
"You shouldern't have done that," she muttered, knowing deep down that she'd just uttered one of her worst puns to date. Still, it was pretty good given the circumstances.
Then, without hesitation, she drew the knife over the top of the battery, causing it to spark. She tried again, holding the rag a little closer this time. It caught fire. Now it was really time to run. She threw the rag down on the open bonnet, near the gas tank, and ran as fast as she could manage, not even risking a quick peek behind her.
She'd only cleared a small distance when the explosion happened.
There was a split second burst of light, casting a red hue over the ground ahead of her, then gone. Like the flash of a camera, only brighter, redder, and more
Then she heard it. A deafening boom so loud that if she'd had a few seconds to respond, she would have covered her ears and dropped to the ground in fear. The sound itself was so near and so painful that Trace just assumed she'd become deaf immediately following.
Then came the impact. The shock wave from the blast, radiating out and taking no time at all to launch Trace- still running- through the air. She catapulted forward in an arc, watching the ground pass by below her. The whole sequence of events had seemed to take place as if in slow motion, and she knew that once she hit the ground that time would either stop, or speed up incredibly quickly. When she did land, she came down hard, landing on her bad shoulder -to top the whole experience off- and rolling along the rough terrain, making sure to bump into a few loose rocks on the way.
After what seemed like an endless stream of roly-polying, Trace came to a stop.
She knew she'd stopped, because the ground wasn't moving -she wasn't bumping into anything new- but the world around her continued to spin, the skyline darting in and out of her vision to tease her. She could feel the ground beneath her, sense the pain making its way into her consciousness once more, as she fumbled around, trying to gather herself.
She heard nothing over the loud ringing that just refused to stop. She couldn't work out where it was coming from or who was in charge of it, but she would have loved to have a few strong words with whoever it was, because the sound was driving her insane. So loud.
And, after a while, the spinning stopped. Trace was on her hands and knees, staring down at the ground below her, watching the blood down from somewhere she couldn't quite identify. She tried to push herself up to a kneeling position with both hands, but a hot, searing pain in her shoulder made her cry out, doubling over as she waited for it to subside.
"Why couldn't I just do the normal Scorch Trials," she said, through gritted teeth. "Who decided I'd be better off in the midst of a crank gang war?"
The pain lessened -not much, but a little- and this time she managed to sit herself up. She was facing the mountains; the heat on her back from the explosion could have told her that even without her sight. She took a shaky breath before turning back to assess the carnage she'd caused.
The burning car wasn't the first thing she noticed. Instead, she saw a body, lying outstretched behind her, the hand of which was only a metre away. He must've been right behind her when the blast hit. That, or it threw him a long way.
In the background, the car burned on, and Trace could make out the body of her other pursuer, lying halfway between herself and the car. His clothes were still on fire. The bodies of the other men she'd killed lay even further away, behind the immediate chaos.
Trace shuddered, and immediately regretted doing so, wincing as her shoulder cried out again. She'd killed nine men. Nine. And she'd done it on her own. She thought she should feel proud, like she'd really accomplished something, but right now all she wanted was to get away. She didn't want to deal with it. She didn't want to see it. She didn't even want to think about it.
Her sense of hearing still hadn't returned, and the shock of the whole scenario was definitely wearing off, so Trace wandered a few hundred metres away, grateful that the midday sun had now passed, and the heat wasn't as strong. She found an empty patch of land and lay down, resting her head on her good arm as a makeshift pillow.
"You did it," she muttered, as a pointless attempt to reassure herself. "They're gone."
YOU ARE READING
Subject A250: The Flame (COMPLETED)
Fanfiction--Book two in the Subject A250 series-- She took the Grievers down. She survived the maze. She knows the story is far from over. So, how will she fare in the Scorch?
