SONDER (IV): tmr thomas

For those we lost to WICKED

Leo short

Thomas does the talking. I force myself to listen even though it proves increasingly difficult with every passing second. My knees are jolting beneath me. When I fell on the concrete, I ripped through the thin material of the pants and skinned them. I can't distract myself by biting my cheek anymore, since I've gnawed the skin raw, so I fiddle with the bottom of my shirt.

"How many of you are there?" the man they call Vince asks.

I blink away tears. I can feel them running down my face, but I don't let myself look away from Vince. For those of us that are left, I must be strong.

Gally turns his back to us when Vince asks the question.

"Other than us?" Thomas swallows. "Two more. One's got the Flare. About six more back where you guys are keeping Immunes."

Vince nods. He begins to explain the plan to us. I focus on its details, but occasionally I miss his words. I can hear the sound of the gun. I can hear her body hit the ground.

"All their weapons run on electricity," Vince says. "Pistols, launchers, grenades. All of it. We have an in with the manufacturer. She'll be able to block the electrical impulse on all of their weapons, including ours."

"We have a gun that doesn't use electricity," I pipe in, but my voice is quiet.

Vince furrows his brow. "They haven't made those in decades. How many bullets does it have?"

I have no idea, so I shrug. I'll have to ask Dawn about it later tonight. Having her around is both my greatest weakness and my only strength.

Vince continues to explain the plan. They are going to send Thomas in, because WICKED wants him. He will plant the device to ruin the weapons, and the Right Arm will move in.

"What about the other Immunes WICKED has been capturing?" I ask, sniffing lightly. "Where are they?"

Vince glance over to me. I can't bare the eye contact anymore, so I look down at the ground. "Sorry."

"Don't apologize," he corrects. Vince crosses in front of his desk to size me up. Finally I look up at him. He breathes in lightly. "Are you Daisy?"

No. As I shake my head back and forth, I wipe away the hairs that cling to my sweaty forehead. "No. She... Michelle died a few hours ago."

Vince's chest tightens. He leans back against the desk, muttering to himself. "Shit."

I don't ask him what the stranger word means, because I don't care. Instead, I force myself to press forward. "Do you know what WICKED has been doing with them?"

"We'll find out," Vince tells me. The desks creaks under his weight.

I'm not entirely convinced by his answer.

Dawn short

My body is burning. The room is spinning around me. I try to turn with it, try to follow it around in circle after circle. Every wall here is an identical grey. It isn't like the school I once was in. Where I told Minho about something. Where I told someone about the baby. It must've been decades ago. I have been alive forever. I know because I've been running with the moving walls for at least a year.

"Dawn." Someone is talking to me, but it is difficult to see him. He blurs into the walls.

"Where's Minho?" I ask as I continue to run.

Finally, I stop for a second, my chest heaving up and down. Everything is pounding. It's reverberating in my chest, ticking faster and faster like a bomb about to blow. I can feel myself dying, and the only way to stop it is to keep moving.

"I'm Minho," he answers.

Oh. I collapse on to the ground. He runs over to me, his hands hovering over my skin. As if I am so far past the gone that I've become contagious to the immune. It's not fair. It's not fair that they got me involved in this when I am susceptible to the disease. They risked my life to test the brains of others. They took away my birth name, and then my second name, and now I am about to lose my third for nothing. There is no cure. There is no hope. There is no end to this all. The only thing I have left is spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning and-

"Where's Leo?" I stand up and begin to do jumping-jacks. The gesture knocks him backwards slightly, but I don't have time to get my eyes to focus on him. He is blurry, but so is everything. I need glasses.

"She's coming," he answers.

"Where's Michelle?" I ask.

Minho sucks his breathe in. I stop jumping and begin to punch the ghosts in the air. I still can't focus, but now everything is steadier. I can hear him breathing.

The worst part is that I know I am crazy. My heart feels like it is skyrocketing closer and closer to death. The closest I can get to keeping my mind from clawing itself to death is to distract it by forcing my body to move. Over the days, each movement has been getting weaker and weaker. Even though I am working out, I can feel my muscles decaying. Maybe it's because I am no longer clinging desperately to life, but life is clinging desperately to me.

"Michelle... Dawn... Dawn, she died."

I feel myself charging for the man. Not now, but then. Michelle's body hit the ground, and I went charging for the man who killed her. Minho and the man rolled on the floor. I pined one of the man's hands and Minho grabbed the gun. He shot the man in the chest twice and tossed the gun onto the ground. Though I keep the man pined down, I could feel him dying beneath me. He wasn't as dead as I am.

While Minho was distracted, I picked up the gun.

"Dawn," Minho cups my face, pulling me closer to him. I can feel my cheeks squishing together.

I look up at him. From this angle, I can feel the gun digging into my back. There are two shots left.

"Where's Leo?" I ask him, tilting my head to the side. I know where she is, but I am compelled to ask it. As I try to resist, my face begins to shake. The voice in my throat threatens to shout, so I try to speak. Just spit it out. Spit it out Dawn! "Where's Michelle?"

Ella short

The seizure medication isn't working. I've tried to administer myself a dose, but it hasn't been working. I fail at that.

Climbing the walls does not work either. I can't see a way out of here. The higher I move, the more my mind tricks me into wanting to climb down. It's WICKED releasing a hormone in my brain, and unfortunately it works.

I find Sonya and I scream at her. I scream until I give her my voice and my brain loses all of the words it knows. I scream and scream and scream. I desperately try to find answers.

There are none.