WICKED told them the Trial was over -no more tests, no more lies, but Frankie had been deceived enough to know that the statement alone could never be true.
Truthfully, she wanted to die. She wanted to leave this cruel world of being experimented an...
FRANKIE COULD BARELY breathe. She was coughing, spitting, sitting on the wooden floor of the shed where she landed.
She swore she could feel the dust and smoke in her lungs, noses, and lips.
The cut on her forehead was still sprouting blood.
Minho, Thomas, and Brenda came stumbling in after her —all in the same condition as hers. Tired, relieved, and dirty.
They had made it.
Now, they truly escaped. And WICKED's building had burnt down to the ground —they were done for good.
Minho got to her as Thomas crawled forward, but Brenda immediately stood up. She reached some buttons on a control panel and the gray plane winked out of existence, revealing the cedar planks of the wall behind it.
"You three get out," she said, an urgency in her voice, "I have to do one last thing."
Minho had gotten to his feet, and he offered his hand to help Frankie stand.
She couldn't think of anything anymore, except that her right leg was terribly weighing her down.
"My shucked brain can't spend one more second thinking. Just let her do whatever she wants," Minho walked over to Thomas and helped him stand as well, "Come on."
"Good that," Thomas said, "Hey, can you walk?"
Frankie nodded, though she was desperately clinging to Minho's arm. She wanted to say something, anything, to ease the situation, but she just couldn't muster any energy to do so.
Minho threw his arms around his friends' shoulders on his either side and, together, they stepped out of the shed.
The sight outside managed to take whatever breath she had left away.
They really were in Paradise.
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A place so lush and green and full of vibrant life. They were standing at the top of a hill above a field of tall grass and wildflowers. To her right, the hill descended into a valley of towering trees that seemed to stretched for miles, ending in a wall of rocky mountains that jutted out towards the cloudless blue sky.
The sky was real now, unlike the Glade's.
To her left, the grassy field slowly became scrub brush and then sand. And then the ocean, its waves big and dark and white-tipped as they crashed onto a beach.
It was paradise. Their safe haven.
She looked down —the three or four hundred people they had rescued from the Maze and the Right Arm had collected wandered the area. She could see some of them actually running and jumping.
She heard the door of the shed close then the whoosh of fire behind her. The three of them turned around to see Brenda —she gently pushed Thomas a few steps farther away from the structure, which was already engulfed in flames.
