Fire ➳ TDC, Thomas [3] ✓

Chapter {1}

Six months.

It was six months since we had faced the wrath and ruin of WICKED. Six months since I had lost more than just my friends and six months since Teresa had betrayed us— for our group there was no stopping, no time to loose and no reason to stand at the side when horrible things happened.

There was yet one thing we had decided and it was not to let Minho suffer under WICKED any longer.

I gripped the harder surface of a rock knuckles turning white that sent some faintly noticable tingling through the skin on my hand, yet I still felt as if there was none of it, no pain or closed off feeling of numbness coursed through me— perhaps I was too focused, in a situation too serious which only would cause that state, unable to consider what was around. Unable, with mind set to finishing off our mission.

Next to me was Newt, fidgeting with a knife whose handle made of brown, faded leather had lost all its previous shine— it only served as a reminder. A reminder of my best friend. I had asked him multiple times whether he was alright, ready to continue and he did the same for me that indeed made me realise how selfish it must've been to only think of myself then— I was not the only person to have lost him.

"Don't give up yet." I whispered to myself, dropping the grip I held over that stone and resting on its cold surface, boring into my back like waves of freezing air which flowed with occasional wind sweeping over. I looked over to Newt, eyes glued to the burned down nature around us and reeking of ash, dust above which some faint bushes began to grow.

Then I heard a whistle that perked my interest, a shout following the sound. "Newt, Aria!" Thomas shouted out to us.

"Alright, let's go! Come on!" Newt signaled other people hiding with us, pushed the knife unbelievably fast in the back pocket of his trousers and began hurrying to the train, halted in the middle of the railway and surrounded with our people.

I followed shortly after, huffing in a long, hot breath which I felt stuck in my dry throat underneath the building nervousness, nag at my lungs as every shorter one I took after came to be the source of my only hope in forgetting, in fighting against myself to finish now what we had started.

At least a mile away, between dirt and sandy ground full off yellow, fading plants WICKED guards collected in many black, moving spots slowly advancing forward, their weaponry readied and steps robotically guiding them through unwelcoming territory.

I slipped next to Vince carefully, stepping over metal railroad within the ground as my sight stayed connected on the one of approaching enemies. "We don't have much time." I concluded distressingly, fiddled with a still shaky trigger of a gun in my hand which did not weight a ton like the time in Scorch, rather it was a normal thing after six months of training for this moment— it was my job on that rescue mission to keep the wagon safe until we would be able to take off.

"No," Vince replied. "Go, you're needed there!" He pointed at the wagon, Newt on its left side working and Thomas over the edge hurrying him, for we did not have time to waste at all as I broke into a small sprint toward them. I stepped on the other side, sizzling of a tool Newt worked with to my right and faint, yet approaching voices of WICKED guards following to my ears, undetected what they said under all noise we had no other option or way of avoiding.

The first one of their heavy bullets hit the side of gray metal which made the outside of our stolen wagon, sprang off of its shiny surface before disappearing within the grass awfully close to my feet, did not make me freeze like it would have if I had not been ready for anything of that measure as I aimed the gun on the next approaching guard, the one who yet stood the closest to me and as my eye followed his robotically moving figure. After just an uncounted second I pressed tightly on the trigger, setting off a whizzing bullet of whose sounds I heard nothing but a faint scream of a guard whose leg it had hit.