❝keeping nothing for yourself like a stone cold killer❞

"OVER HERE! COME ON!" TERESA CALLED AS THEY RAN THROUGH THE SAND. She was running a couple of yards in front of them, and she disappeared behind a hill of sand. They followed her to see that she had stumbled against what looked like a half-buried building.

Iris held up her hand to block her eyes from the sand that was flying everywhere because of the storm. They ran down the hill as well to meet Teresa as she found an opening in the window where it had broken. She had already started down when Thomas yelled to her, "Teresa, wait! No, don't go in there!"

Minho looked around after they all got down the hill of sand, shining his flashlight and observing everything carefully to make sure that there were no signs of life or anything that could possibly be dangerous to them. "Where the hell are we?"

"We gotta go," Thomas told them, and he started in a direction that could lead them who knows where.

"No. Thomas, stop!" Teresa yelled because no one had told her anything about what was happening. Jem remembered that she also did not have any shoes, and it would not be a fun journey for her if they did not find her some soon. From what the curly-haired girl had seen, there was glass and rocks everywhere buried in the sand. "Tell me what's going on."

Thomas sighed and turned around to look at her to explain. He had also not told the others the full story, so he needed to tell them as well. "It's WICKED. It's WICKED. They lied to us. We never escaped. Me and Aris, we found bodies. Too many to count."

"What do you mean? Dead bodies?" Newt questioned with furrowed eyebrows as everyone else nodded along to the boy's story. That explains why they were so freaked out. Iris bet that the people that were going to the 'farm' were the bodies in the room, and they were going to be next if they did not get out of there.

Jem stared at him like he was an idiot. "What do you think, dumbass?"

"No, but they weren't alive either," Thomas answered Newt, causing him to shoot a sarcastic smile at Jem because she was kind of wrong. "They had them strung up. With tubes coming out of them. They were being drained. There's something inside of us that WICKED wants. Something in our blood. So we have to get as far away from them as possible."

"Okay. So, what's the plan? You do have a plan, right?" the former second-in-command questioned when he saw the hesitant look on his friend's face after he asked the question the first time.

Thomas breathed out, and that made Iris really nervous. No wonder Thomas tried to be confident and put together all of the time. People tended to freak out when he wasn't. "Yeah. I don't know."

"Well, we followed you out here, Thomas... and now you're saying that you have no idea where we're going... or what we're doing," the blonde boy scoffed out, throwing his hands up in the air as they all stared at Thomas in disbelief. Iris felt kind of bad because she knew that he had gotten them away from WICKED, which was enough for now.

"Wait," Aris said after a moment, causing all of the heads to turn toward him. "Janson said something about people hiding in the mountains. Some kind of resistance or army."

Thomas nodded like he remembered something about that, and his eyes widened as an idea came to his head. He added, "The Right Arm. The Right Arm. If they're really against WICKED, maybe they can help us."

"People. In the mountains. Mountain people. That's your plan?" Newt quizzed incredulously. The blonde girl had to admit that that seemed a little suspicious. It sounded more like some sort of myth than something real that could actually help them.

The other boy shrugged. "It's the only chance we have."

"Hey, guys. Check this out. Minho, give me a light!" Winston called to them, and they all walked over to where he was crouching and staring at the ground. Minho shined his flashlight to where the boy was pointing, revealing footsteps in the sand that led deeper into the building. "Someone's been down here."

They ventured further into the building, and Iris tried to figure out what it was. There was supplies for living everywhere, but the place was massive. There was no way that people lived there, right? Maybe it was built for a lot of people to live in. Minho brought his light up so that he could look into one of the windows before calling them over to help him open the door. "Come on. Open up." They stepped inside once that was done, and they spread out in the room to examine everything inside. "Looks like people lived here."

"Where are they now?" Newt questioned as he searched through a bin and found a few flashlights. He tossed one to Jem, Iris, and Winston and continued to look through the many bags on the ground.

"Dead probably," Jemanswered, and everyone shot him a look like he was not helping the optimism of the group. Iris, on the other hand, let out a small snort at the retort, and Jem looked upp at her with a small smile. He defended, "What? It's true."

Thomas grabbed a jacket from a shelf and then scooped up one of the backpacks so that he could start loading stuff inside. "Let's pack some of this stuff up. Anything you think you might need. We'll split up, see what else we can find. Meet back here."

Iris went into some room that she assumed used to be a store, and she looked up when she heard someone follow her. Jem was standing there, looking around at the clothes and acting like he had not come in there to talk to her. After a moment, he informed her. "I don't like that Aris kid."

"DIdn't he help us escape?" she asked, grinning as she found a backpack that she could use to throw stuff into. Aris seemed normal enough, and Thomas liked him. Who was she to judge when she hadn't spoken to him or anything?

"Yeah, but I still don't like him," he responded, and he wasn't even pretending to look anymore. He was glaring at the boy that he was talking about, following his gaze to Iris. He did not like that this random kid that they didn't know had his eyes on her. What gave him that right? "He keeps looking at you."

She shrugged, not thinking that it meant anything. "I mean, we're kind of a small group. He's bound to look at me at some point."

Jem rolled his eyes, wondering why she had to think that everyone had the best intentions all the time. This kid could be serious trouble, and she didn't even seem to care. "I mean that he keeps looking right at you, like all the time."

"I don't think it's that big of a deal," she sighed. She then turned toward the corner of the room so that no one could see her, and she pulled her sticky tank top over her head. Jem's eyes widened, and his eyes trailed along her bare back for just a moment before he forced himself to turn around. His blood began to boil when he noticed that Aris was staring, and he moved so that he was blocking the boy's view of the girl. He then picked up a bat on the ground and spun it in his hand threateningly.

Iris pulled on a sports bra and a clean clean tank top and a light jacket that would hopefully help with the sand. She figured that her jeans would do, but she knew that she was going to get hot. She threw some shorts in her bag just in case.

Jem slowly turned back around when he heard snipping, and his eyes widened when he saw her with scissors in her hand, looking in a mirror as long chunks of hair fell to the ground. "What are you doing?"

"We're in the desert. I don't have a hair tie. It's hot," she explained. The haircut definitely didn't look great, but it was a hell of a lot better than dying in the heat and dealing with her tangled hair. She turned around once she was done. "What do you think?"

"That was hot," he blurted out, and he was shocked that he had said that out loud. He was kind of scared of how she would react, but she just rolled her eyes and went searching for more supplies. She threw some more clothes in her bag, but she needed to save space for food and water.

She joined Newt and Frypan where they were trying to fill some canisters with ancient bottles of water. They glanced up at her but had to do a double take when they saw that her hair was almost the same length as Newt's. The cook furrowed his eyebrows. "I'm not crazy. You had hair when you went back there, right?"

"Great observation, Fry," she answered. Once she filled up her canister, she went to join Winston and help him sort through things that could be useful

After she and Winston had finished with that and gotten some supplies like rope from the shelves, everyone met back in the middle where Thomas had told them to meet back. The only people missing were Thomas and Minho. The question of where they were was quickly answered by yelling in the distance. They all looked toward the sound and saw the two boys running toward them. Jem's eyes widened when he saw the figures behind them.

They were being chased.

"Shit!" Newt exclaimed, and they all started to slowly move backwards as their friends sprinted toward them. Jem's hand shot to Iris's wrist, pulling her the other way because no one else was moving.

"Hey! Go! Get outta here! Run!" the two yelled, and when they got close enough, Aris threw Thomas's backpack at him. The boy pulled it onto his back as they began to sprint away from the creatures, and Iris got a glimpse of them as one stumbled into the light of her flashlight. She was terrified. They looked like people except for the fact that there was black liquid pouring from every hole in their faces. "Come on! Let's go, go, go! Let's go!"

Winston asked as they ran up some stairs, "Thomas, Minho, what the hell are those things?"

"I don't know. Just keep going! Come on, keep moving!" They reached the top, but more of the creatures were coming from almost every direction. Jem had been running for a while before he remembered that he had a bat in his hand. He leaned down and slammed the weapon into the man's knees. "Jem, no! No!"

Somehow, they got split into two groups. Thomas and Teresa were on another set of stairs, and the rest of them were running a different way. Minho breathed out as he ran next to Iris. He glanced at her twice before shouting, "What the hell happened to your hair?"

"Go! Faster, faster!" Aris shrieked as the girl scanned the place for an exit or something else that they could use to get away from the creatures. It seemed like whatever way they turned, there was always more of them running at them.

All of a sudden, a yell from behind them caught their attention. Iris turned her head to see Newt on the ground with one of the things on top of him. He was yelling, and she paused and yelled, "Newt! Newt!" Thomas came out of nowhere and kicked the creature off of his friend, causing it to roll through a glass railing and fall down to the loewe story.

"Newt, you good?" the boy questioned, helping him off the ground.

The blonde nodded at him as they stared incredulously at the thing that just got back up to its feet below them after falling twenty feet, and the rest of them felt safe to keep running. "Yeah. Thanks, Tommy."

"Keep going!" Minho yelled as Teresa also rejoined them. He ran toward a door and opened it for all of them. Iris entered right after Thomas, and she saw that they were in some sort of hallway. "Through here, through here! Let's go! They're coming!"

"Guys, where are we going?" Newt questioned, but no one answered. Jem did not really care where they went as long as they got away from the freaking zombie-like things.

Minho sighed as he, Thomas, and Iris reached the end of the hallway. There was nothing there but a wall and a door with a massive lock on it. The girl whipped around as the others caught up with them to see that the creatures were doing the same. "It's a dead end!"

"This one!" Thomas shouted, and she realized that he had found another door that was kind of open and had a smaller lock on it. He and Minho started ramming their shoulders into it in an attempt to break it open, but nothing was happening.

"I'll hold them back!" Winston informed them as he whipped out the gun that he had stolen from that guard and started firing at them. Jem joined his side, gripping the bat tightly so that he was ready to swing. He doubted that they would be much help, but it was better than nothing. "Get that door open!"

After a second of that, Frypan yelled to them, "Come on! It's open! Everyone through! Come on! Come on!" The two turned around, and Winston pushed Jem through the door first so that he was the only one left in the room. He whipped around after a couple of seconds when she saw that he was not behind her.

"Winston!" Iris screamed when she saw him on the ground, holding onto the door as the creatures tried to pull him away. Jem was next to her first. The rest of the group joined her, some of them trying to pull him out while the others pushed the door so that it would close as soon as they got him out.

"Help me! Help! Please! Please!" he begged, and he cried out in pain as one of them dug its sharp fingernails into his stomach, creating deep cuts in his torso and tearing that part of his shirt off. "Oh, my God!"

Iris was panicking, but she remembered the knife in her hand. She swung at the thing that had its hand in Winston's stomach, and the hand came straight off, falling to the ground. Her eyes widened when she realized that it worked, and she started doing the same to the other hands grabbing at his arms and ankles. Finally, the boys and Teresa were able to pull him out as Minho and Thomas tried to hold the door closed. "Go, go, go!"

They ran away, the other two joining them quickly. Winston's arm was around Frypan and Jem, and they were hauling him away because he was losing a lot of blood. Aris and Teresa found a hole in the wall away from everything and called them over. Fry and Jem dragged the boy over to it and laid him down as the other four waved Minho and Thomas over. The blonde girl exhaled deeply as she sat down next to her injured friend and leaned her head against the wall, breathing heavily.

What the hell are those things?