Him || The Scorch Trials

Three

It was the same that night too, but this time Teresa bore a look of hurt and agony. She left not long after that, cutting her time with Mara short. But there was one thing Mara noticed through her hazed state she hadn't noticed before; the tattoo that laced across the back of Teresa's neck, only just visible to see, but visible enough for Mara to know what it said.

In thick black letters, the words etched onto her back read:

Property of WICKED. Group A, Subject A1. The Betrayer. 

What did that mean? The betrayer, that made sense to her. Teresa was supposed to be seen as someone who had turned against everyone, she had told Mara that herself. It was the 'group A' part that worried Mara. If Teresa- and the rest off the Gladers- were in what WICKED called group A, were there more groups? There must be, more groups, more experiments, more innocent lives lost to WICKED's evil game.

But then another question sparked inside Mara's mind; what if she had one too? What if Mara somehow had her own tattoo printed across her neck? What if every one of her friends- everyone she cared about- had one each?

Even if she tried to look for the tattoo, it was out of sight- hidden from her line of vision-, and she was too weak to attempt anything. Still, she longed to know what they had called her; the problem? That was all they had seemed to see her as, just a fluctuation in their system.

Mara could ask Teresa to check the back of her neck, to see if she had a tattoo like hers. Or, she could ask Newt, Minho or Tommy, any of her friends. Except they weren’t there, and Mara didn’t know how long she had to wait to see them again.

She wanted to see them all that very moment; to talk and run beside them, just to see their faces again. They gave her hope when she needed it, and now she needed it.

Yet waiting for that hope seemed so stupid, when she could find a way out and track it down herself. And then, she knew what she had to do.

The pain in her stomach- which had flared and seized her entire body- had numbed, but it was still there, threatening to return when it felt like it. That was the first thing she had to take care of. If she could find something to keep herself from bleeding to death, or to stitch herself back up, it would have made everything easier. But there was nothing there; there was too little light to even try to stitch her body back into one piece. She would just have to risk it.

Mara steadily got to her feet, using her upper body strength to pull herself up the wall and standing in a balanced position. She held out her hands to help maintain that balance as she dawdled towards the door Teresa had so often walked in and out of.

Every footstep echoed through the room, and each time Mara would stop herself, hoping no one heard her movement. But who was there to hear her except the ghosts of others who had probably died in the very spot she stood in?

Still, she had to keep going; she had to get away everything in that room. So she did just that, and made her way to the other side of the room, closing the gap between herself and the door.

Once she reached it, she held out her hands and placed them on the dimly lit steel handle. Then she pushed.

A blinding light struck her eyes, forcing her to slam the door shut and shield her eyes from the un-expected ball of flames. A gust of hot air had joined the blaring light; brushing against Mara’s skin in contrast to the cool and damp room she had been in since her ‘death’.

Mara didn’t have to question what the light had been, she already knew. She remembered what she had told the Gladers and what her brother and step mother had told her; the sun scorched the world. The door didn’t lead to another part of WICKED’s facility, the room standing lonesome in the middle of somewhere, hopefully far away from WICKED’s grasp.

With a deep breath and her left arm still pressed against her forehead, she used her free hand to push open the door once more, this time expecting to be faced with brightness and extreme heat.

Together, the two elements of the sun combined to blind Mara’s vision and sense of direction; where was she going? How was she supposed to find her way around an area she couldn’t even look at, let alone find her friends in the world she had been put in? She didn’t know where they were, or how far away they were. All she knew was that they were out there, somewhere, but so were WICKED, and the Maze and the Grievers.

Staggering about, Mara pushed her way through the door frame and into the place the building stood in. The ground below her softened, but that was the only change that wasn’t drastic.

Almost immediately, a burning heat threw itself down onto Mara, tensing up her skin. There was no way she could walk through it without getting serious burns on her skin, so she retreated backwards slightly, just enough to be shaded by the door. Her mouth had dried up and Mara’s body felt as if it was going to shrivel, her lungs couldn’t quite pick up enough air to use to breath.

Reluctantly, Mara pulled back and slammed the door shut, and suddenly the darkness of that room relaxed her. It took some time, but Mara steadily regained her breaths and her skin cooled rapidly.

That was her only chance of escape, but how was she supposed to find her friends if she couldn’t even stand outside the door for a few seconds? How could Teresa just walk through that heat? Maybe she had something to protect herself with, but Mara hadn’t seen anything special she could have used.

Mara turned her back to the door, and then pressed it against the steel door. She sank to the floor, holding her head in her hands and listening only to the sound of her lungs filling and falling.

She had failed; she couldn’t even escape a small hut with an unlocked door. What had she become? Newt would have told her that running was a better idea, and it was. Why was she letting WIKED decide her fate? Why was she letting WICKED choose when she saw her friends, why did she let them manipulate her to pretend to kill herself? She could have done something, saved the Gladers and gone with them too, but she settled for the easy option; obey.

Well, she didn’t want to obey. She didn’t want to do anything they said, and she definitely didn’t want to continue allowing them to control her.

Mara had to do something; she had to become herself again.