Light ➳ TST, Thomas [2] ✓

Chapter {12}

In my wake the first orange tint broke through the scattered rhythm of stars above, still it remained rather dark as the sun was nowhere to be seen on the horizon, its place taken by a distant form of a moon which shone somewhere distant, invisible to be spotted. My head lay near the window, painfully directed towards the sky above, yet I was still to lazy, too drained to move at all as whole hours I've spent here with the group of my friends, my eyes just wouldn't close— I kept thinking about Thomas, no matter the encouragement Teresa had given me, I feared with but a little part of me, maybe we wouldn't find him after all. It felt heavy, nested in the pit of my stomach a feeling of thousand weights pressuring me down and a permanent lump in my throat which I just couldn't get rid of, couldn't make it go away. Mainly it felt as if worry squeezed me.

I directed my gaze toward Teresa on my right, her head resting on a wall behind us and her soft, unbothered breathing, peacefully her being laying on the cool wood planks which went up and down the whole room, dust and sand coated beneath the cracks formed in it. I sighed involuntary, after long hours that I had spent unable to close my eyes, I felt more drained than ready to face another day in the Scorch.

At that moment Jorge waltzed back into the room, determined his brownish eyes flew to me still awake on the ground yet instantly left as he flung a backpack on his shoulder which jingled as two metal surfaces clanked together inside the fabric. "You're leaving already?" I inquired with a raspy voice, straightened my head to look him under a much better angle than the one my head had fallen into during the night.

"Yes, there's no time to waste, hermana. Wake up others." He stated rather surely, carefully evading sleeping forms of my friends laying on the floor, and uncomfortably perched on decaying carpet before disappearing through a run-down door frame, after which a silent atmosphere of barely a second stretched as then forced away by a loud screeching sound, most probably of a door of sorts. 

I pursed my lips tightly, barely being able to get to my feet as every bone felt weak and ready to break at any moment. Nevertheless I had no other option but to do as the man had said; gently I shook Teresa's shoulder, her lashes fluttering open to reveal the tiredness coated behind her crystalline eyes. "Come on, Jorge said we're leaving." I murmured lightly.

A small smile, a twinge forced her lips upward staying that way for a few seconds before falling into a frown. "Okay." I stood up, turned to Newt and Nico still on that couch right before her voice stopped me from moving between sleeping forms. "Aria, we'll find safety, okay?" Teresa eased, barely whispering.

I spun to meet her glistening eyes.  "Yeah."

•

Through the narrow hallway, webs of dust hanging upside down and following a gray slab of ceiling which covered us in a box-like room we held together in a line, even though small were the chances of getting lost, we nevertheless walked as if afraid of doing so. Air smelled rather foul, rot and heat massed into an awful combination above us as, step after step the hallway got wider and let in more faint light— I wasn't sure had the sky lightened completely or was it only by a shade lighter than some time ago when we began waking up to continue the rest of our journey and search.

The dead end of that hall neared sooner than I've expected, only a scraped carpet as a decoration to that wide room whose surface held metal shape of rusty ladder up to the upper level of presumably a building. Jorge paused tensely, rising a finger to silence the rest of us into stopping so our steps wouldn't echo to clearly as he jumped to the ladder, climbing up skillfully.

He pushed open a metal hatch above, producing loud scraping sound of rust against the fairly resiliently looking stone, and peered through carefully, hands gripping the base of unstable, shaky ladder before allowing himself to shift his gaze to us. "Coast's clear. Let's go!" His fast climbing swallowed the last of remaining ladder steps as he disappeared from the view, only to appear again as he stretched out his hand in hoping to help anyone who decided to be next.