Bound | Newt Love Story

29 | Dynasty

The sound of exhaustion from a pipe fills my ears as I squint my eyes to make anything out in the darkness. I can't see anything or anyone, but I can still feel Newt's arm wrapped around my torso. 

And then a door opens, letting light spill out. 

Teresa's the first one to move. She walks forward and pushes the door open more. The door gives out a loud creak. We all follow her out. We're in some kind of dimly lit hallway. Pipes align the walls and a sudden clicking sound echoes throughout the hallway. I turn around and see the lights starting to flicker on, one by one, approaching us. The lights pass over our head and then continue on down the hallway, igniting the entire area. 

We walk down the hallway as a unit. No one is leading and no one is lagging. Our hesitance in so expressive you can almost taste it. 

A metal door is at the end of the hallway, causing all of us to stop in our tracks. A green EXIT sign hangs on the top of it. 

"Seriously?" Frypan asks, looking up at it. 

Thomas walks forward and hesitantly grabs the metal doorknob. He turns it and shoves the door open. We walk into another narrow hallway. Four dead men are laying on the floor, blood spilling from them. A yellow hazard light is circling the room as a low alarm blares through the speakers. We walk through the hallway, the lights flickering slightly. There's a glass window to my right. I look through it and see two bodies lying on cots, their stomachs bleeding profusely and bullet holes break the glass. Newt grabs my arm and ushers me forward, not wanting me to look at it any longer and probably partially because he didn't want to look at it any longer either. 

"What happened here?" Winston asks as we pass over a dead guy with a hand gun in his hand. Minho kicks the gun out of reach of the guy. 

We turn into a room that has sparks flying on the left side of it. It seems to be some kind of control room. Desks and chairs align it with charts and maps hanging everywhere. Diagrams of the human brain are plastered on the walls and on the screens. More dead people lie everywhere you look. 

We pile into the room, everyone looking a different direction as we examine our new surroundings. I follow Newt over to a computer screen that has different angles of the Glade. 

"So they were watching us." Newt sighs. "This whole time."

Thomas walks over and touches some red button. Immediately a screen with a woman pops up in the middle of the room.

"Hello." The woman says. She has bright blonde hair pulled back into a tight bun. We all walk over to the screen, watching it intently. "My name is Doctor Ava Paige. I'm Director of Operations of the World Catastrophe Killzone Department. If you're watching this then that means you have successfully completed the Maze Trials. I wish I could be there in person to congratulate you, but circumstances seem to have prevented it. I'm sure by now you must all be very confused...angry...frightened. I can only assure you that everything that's happened to you...everything we've done to you...it was all done for a reason. You won't remember...but the sun has scorched our world." A picture of a bright yellow/orange globe appears, sinking down into the earth. "Billions of lives lost to fire." The screen switches to large fires burning buildings, cars, homes. "Famine. Suffering...on global scale. The fallout was unimaginable." The screen switches to thousands of dead bodies stacked on top of each other. "But what came after was worse. We called it The Flare." The screen switches again to parasite attacking a scan of the human brain. "A deadly virus that attacks the brain. It is violent," The screen shows a man with purplish veins running throughout his body and two doctors holding him down as he resists them, pulling away form the like crazy. "...unpredictable...incurable. Or so we thought." The screen switches back to the woman. "In time, a new generation emerged that could survive the virus. Suddenly, there was a reason to hope for a cure. But finding it would not be easy. The young would have to be tested, even sacrificed, inside harsh environments, where their brain activity could be studied. All in an effort to understand what makes them different...what makes you different. You may not realize it, but you're very important. Unfortunately your trials have only just begun. As you'll no doubt soon discover, not everyone agrees with our methods. Progress is slow, people are scared. It may be too late for us..." In the background of the woman, two masked shooters arrive, shooting all the people inside the control room behind her. "...for me. But not for you. The outside world awaits. Remember," The woman reaches in her back pocket and pulls out a gun, placing it at her temple. "Wicked is good." The woman inhales deeply, before pulling the trigger.