Chapter 26 ━━ The Rescue

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It's been six months since RightArm was attacked by WICKED, six months since Teresa betrayed them, six months since Katharine's friends were taken away from her, six months since she's working hard on the plans to retrieve other Immunes. 

Katherine is sitting on the seashore, watching the shining stars in the pitch-black sky when a voice interrupts her. 

"Can't sleep?" 

"Nope." Katherine says as the blond boy plops beside her. Newt gave her space after the incident of WCKD and they barely talked to each other within the last few months. 

"Me too." Newt pauses and sighs. "I'm sorry." 

She turns to face him, a wave of shock spreading through her face. "Sorry for what?" 

He looks at his hands, shamefully. "For punching Chris and being cold to you." 

Katherine nods. "I'm sorry too." 

This is the time for Newt to look at her with a shocked expression. "For?" 

Katherine bites her cheek, ashamed of her sin. "I kissed a woman at the party." 

"You were drunk. It's not your fault." Newt says calmly, his eyes still on her. 

Katherine chuckles, shaking her head. "You are supposed to blame me for cheating, you know?" 

"How about we forgive each other and move on?" He suggests after a small smile on his handsome face. 

Her face perks up at it. "I like that idea." 

"Let's start from a kiss. Shall we?" He grins. 

"You don't have to ask." Katherine remarks. His cold lips brush against hers as he tugs her closer, the kiss deeper, more passionate. The melody of the sea waves hitting the shore uplifts their intimate moment to a whole new level. 

"You don't have any idea how hard it is to stay away from you." Newt breathes out as he pulls away. 

"Trust me. I do." She whispers before crawling into his lap and pressing their mouths together in a long, passionate kiss. She draws her tongue over his teeth and swallows his groan of pleasure as they slide closer to each other, no visible gap between them. 

"Oh god, this is disgusting." Thomas's dramatic shriek echoes in the air, leading the couple to break their moment and face the boy. "Now I have to work on cleaning the image of my twin sister shoving her tongue down my best friend's throat from my mind." 

"You better be careful walking into us, Tommo. Next time, it can be more than disgusting for your opinion." Katherine tells and Newt chuckles in response. 

The disgusting expression on Thomas's face deepens at that. "Gosh. I don't even want to think about it. I'm out, man! I'm out!" 

He turns to leave and the couple burst into laughter. The laughter dies after a short period and they both fall into a dreamless sleep finding the warmth in each other's embrace. 

~~~

Katherine and Newt are currently hiding in their spot waiting for their signal to go into action. 

The ground begins to tremble as the thundering sound of a train moves closer to them. 

"They're here." Katherine announces as Katherine loads her gun, leaning against the boulder. She notices a familiar truck driving parallel to the train as another truck tries to catch the tail of the train behind. 

Brenda, from the first truck, shoots at the driver's window of the train when Thomas and Vince from the other truck disappear into the last carriage of the train. 

Suddenly, a berg flies into the view and starts to fire the truck with Brenda and Jorge making them head away from the scene with the Berg following behind them. 

An explosion takes place and the back half of the train slows down into a halt, a few meters away from the boulder Katherine and Newt hiding with a loud groaning. 

"Let's go!" Newt tells and both the couple make it to the train. 

The front half of the train halts away at a fair distance as guards jump out of it and begin to rush towards them with guns. 

"Oh, shit! It's gonna be close." Katherine concludes, watching the distance between the guards and them growing shorter. 

"This one. This one!" Thomas smacks the metal wall of the compartment. 

Newt immediately takes out his pair of goggles from his backpack and pulls it over his head to cover his eyes as a mask is covering his face, beginning to cut the lock that keeps the compartment on the track. 

In the meantime, Katherine climbs up the train roof along with Thomas as Vince stays on the ground, shooting the guards and securing Newt. 

"Newt, how you doing?" Thomas yells from the above, dodging the bullets flying towards him. 

"Don't rush me." Newt replies, continuing to perform his task. 

The no. of guards increases as the RightArm members try to cover up for Newt, shooting and turning down as much as possible. 

"Shit! Newt, get up here." Katherine shouts as her bullets begin to count down. 

"Almost there." Newt yells back. 

Katherine helps Newt up to the rooftop as he completes his part before the group keep shooting the soldiers marching towards them. 

"Where the hell are they?" Newt shouts over the bullets whizzing past him, glancing around with worry lacing in his eyes. 

"I don't know!" Thomas yells back. 

A whirring of a berg comes to the view and hovers above the compartment and a metal hook lowers to their level. 

"Get it done, Tommo!" Katherine yells, covering her brother as Thomas jumps in and grabs the hook before connecting it to the train roof. 

"Go!" Thomas shouts up at the berg and it flies higher into the air, pulling the carriage along with it. "Okay, we're going up." 

"Vince, get up here! Now, Vince!" Katherine yells over at the blond man. 

Vince leaps and jumps to the ladder just in time through the firing of the soldiers below. The group helps him up when the Berg rises in the sky higher, reaching the end of their mission. 

"Yeah!" 

"Whoo!" 

The group cheers as the moment fills with the happiness of victory. 

~~~

The disappointment is the emotion swirling through the Gladers' heads the moment they found out that either Minho or Vera aren't in the compartment. 

"Here, drink this." Thomas offers a glass of the elder twin of group B. 

Aris chugs down the water eagerly and smiles in satisfaction at the end. He wipes his mouth with his sleeve before placing the empty glass on the table. "Took you guys long enough to rescue us." 

"It's good to see you, too, bud." A smile traces on Thomas's face as he kneels in front of the bruised boy. "So what happened?" 

"I fought back." Aris sighs. "Tried to, anyway." 

"Yeah, if it wasn't for me, that bulk guy would beat my bravo of a brother to death." Chris states, earning a smack on his head from Katherine. 

"Ow!" He rubs his head and others chuckles. 

"You're lucky you found us at all." Sonya reveals. "They had us on the move a lot. It felt like something big was happening." 

"Any idea where they were heading?" Newt asks this time. 

"All I know is they kept talking about a city." Chris talks, running his hand through his curls. "They never said anything clearly." 

Thomas looks at Harriet who shakes her head in response. "I didn't think there were any cities left." 

"That's because there aren't." Brenda states, crossing her arms over her chest. "Not still standing, anyway." 

"Okay, wait." Thomas pauses in confusion. "What about Minho? Why wasn't he on the train?" 

"Sorry, Thomas." Aris apologizes with a sympathetic look. "He was." 

"You guys hijacked the wrong carriage." Chris adds. 

"What about Vera?" Katherine inquires. 

"She's with Minho."

That night, Thomas calls upon a meeting after the rescued immunes are headed to rest. 

Katherine is standing between Newt and Brenda as Frypan is leaning into the table next to Vince. 

"There, that's it." Thomas taps his finger on a point of the map laying on the previous table. "It's a few hundred miles. Based on the railways, everything that Aris told us, that's gotta be where they're headed. That's where they're taking Minho." 

"We take everyone who can fight. Follow the roads where we can. We can make it back within a week." He adds. 

"A week? It took us six months to get here." Vince asks in disbelief at Thomas's plan. "We got over 100 kids here now. We can't just hang out here forever after what we just pulled. You wanna wander off to some random point on the map. You don't even know what's there." 

"I do." Jorge interrupts the conversation, gaining the attention to him. "It's been a few years, but I've been there. The Last City. That's what WICKED called it. It was their whole base of operations. If that city is still standing, that's the last place you wanna go, hermano. That's the lion's den." 

"It's nothing we haven't done before." Thomas says confidently, leaning against the table. 

"Yeah, with months of planning, and reliable information, the element of surprise, none of which we have now." Vince reasons all the non-possibilities of the victory of the mission, trying to prove his point. 

"Vince, I've thought this through. Would you just hear me out?" 

The last time we went off half-cocked… I lost everything. You remember that?!" Vince reminds him as the anger takes place. He sighs and looks back at Thomas with a calm expression. "Look, I know it's Minho. All right? But you can't ask me to put those kids on the line for one man. I won't do it." 

"Vince has a point. We can't let others' lives fall into danger for one person, Tommo." Katherine points out. 

Thomas stares at her twin sister, searching for the hidden message behind her words. As soon as he recognises it, a buzz from the radio behind Newt gathers the attention of the group. 

"Searching the grid now. A is completed. Scanning B-sector now." 

A whirring echoes in the calm air and moves closer to their hiding place. Bergs. 

Thomas's eyes widen. "Shit." 

"Hit the lights!" Vince yells and Jorge pulls down the lever to the power. All the lights in the building go off one by one as the entire RightArm base fills with darkness and is abandoned. 

Stepping out of the now deserted looking building, Katherine glances up at the sky to notice the searchlights of WICKED Bergs moving through section B to catch a glimpse of life. 

"Jeez, they're getting close." Vince mutters behind her. 

"You're right." Thomas shares a look with his sister and continues. "We can't stay here." 

"We better go in and talk about this in the morning." Vince states and leaves. 

"So… when are we leaving?" Katherine asks as both the twins watch Vince's figure disappearing into the building. 

"Midnight." Thomas replies, shortly. 

"Okie Dokie." 

~~~ 

Katherine slowly untangles herself from Newt's arms, trying her best not to wake him in the process. 

Without a noise, she pulls in her jacket and slides into her shoes when a voice startles her. 

"What are you doing?" 

Katherine turns around to see Newt rubbing his eyes, blinking sleepily. She wanders in her mind to search for a lie in a panic. "Ahm. Just going for a midnight snack." 

Newt raises an eyebrow, his eyes lacing with suspicion but let it go in the next second without an argument. "Okay." 

"Go to sleep. I'll be back." She smiles and presses a kiss on his lips. "I love you." 

He yawns with a tired smile. "I love you too." 

After Newt goes back to sleep, Katherine hurries to the storeroom to see Thomas already storing useful stuff into a backpack. 

"Ready?" He asks, closing the backpack. 

"As long as you're up for a piggyback ride." Katherine remarks with a grin. 

The end of Thomas's lips tugs up with amusement. He throws the backpack at the girl as he bends down with his back to her and his head looking at her over his shoulder. "Hope on." 

With an enthusiastic cheer, she tosses the bag over her shoulders and jumps onto his back and wraps her arms around his neck. He holds onto her legs making sure he wouldn't drop as they walk through the path. 

"You think we'll find Minho and Vera?" Katherine asks as Thomas begins to walk. 

"I hope so." He shrugs as they make it to the pitch-black garage and suddenly a light turns on, making the twins squeak in surprise. 

"And where do you think you two going?" Newt asks. 

"Newt…" Thomas trails off as Katherine jumps off his back. 

"Don't be a twat about it. I'm already in." The blond boy states. 

"Come on. No. No, not this time. Look, even if we find Minho, there's no guarantee we'll make it back from this." 

"Well, you'll need all the help you can get then, won't you?" Newt says and the light of the keep turns on, revealing Frypan with a huge smile. "Well, we started this together. May as well end it that way, too." 

"Okay. Let's go get him back." Thomas nods with a smile before getting into the jeep, leaving the couple. 

"I see, you brought a bag of midnight snacks, love." Newt gestures at the backpack sarcastically. 

Katherine bites her lips in both guilt and shame. "I'm sorry, Newt." 

"Shuck it." He mutters, pulling her into his arms and placing a small kiss on her neck. "You owe me a bloody good time, Kat." 

"That, I do." She giggles.