Chapter Text
The drone of the helicopter engine endured without beginning or end, a ceaseless vibration lodged beneath the base of Newt's skull until it seemed impossible to tell where the machine finished, and the rhythm of his own pulse began. Thomas rested against his side, the warmth of his body lingering with stubborn persistence amidst a world that had surrendered every gentler comfort. Fatigue settled over Newt's limbs, drawing the borders of his consciousness ever inward, yet he resisted its invitation with the weary obstinacy that had carried him this far. Beneath the lingering numbness, his leg protested, each dull ache reminding him that survival had not spared him from consequence, only postponed the reckoning.
Silence had settled amongst the others. It was not peace that held them captive, but exhaustion worn so deeply into bone that even speech had become an extravagance beyond their means. Conversation had withered hours before, leaving only the low mechanical murmur surrounding them and the subdued cadence of breathing that rose and fell as though every soul aboard feared that one breath taken too loudly might awaken whatever horror had merely paused to watch them flee.
His eyelids descended.
Not sleep, not yet, but that strange country lying between surrender and resistance, where thought loosened its hold upon the world and reality began dissolving around its edges—
"Thomas! Newt!"
Minho's voice tore through the stillness with such force that the darkness itself appeared to fracture beneath it.
Newt lurched upright before understanding why he had moved, his breath catching painfully as his mind struggled to assemble a world that had shattered into disconnected fragments. For one disorienting instant there existed only movement—the relentless vibration beneath his feet, the metallic groan of the helicopter's frame, the intermittent wash of crimson emergency lights that appeared and vanished with the indifferent rhythm of a failing heartbeat. Beyond the narrow windows there was nothing at all, only an immeasurable expanse of blackness pressing against the glass as though the night itself had substance enough to swallow them whole.
Beside him, Thomas stirred with the same bewildered vacancy clouding Newt's own thoughts, suspended between whatever dream had held him and the harsher reality demanding his return.
Newt blinked against the lingering haze, dragging one unsteady breath into his lungs as memory assembled itself piece by reluctant piece.
The first certainty to emerge from the confusion was the pressure against his hand.
His fingers remained entwined with Thomas', their grip never having loosened.
Another pulse of crimson swept across the cabin, and Minho emerged from the darkness, his features carved into hard lines by urgency and the restless glare of the emergency lights. His hand closed around Newt's shoulder with enough force to leave no room for hesitation.
"Wake up! We gotta go! Come on!"
Before Newt could gather more than a single bewildered breath, Thomas was wrenched from his side, seized by two masked figures and carried towards the yawning mouth of the helicopter. The warmth that had anchored him vanished so abruptly that the absence itself became a presence, colder than the desert wind that rushed through the open hatch.
"No!"
The cry scarcely left him before he lurched after Thomas, forcing himself upright, his injured leg protesting beneath him. His palm struck the vibrating metal floor, and beneath it something small met his hand with unexpected solidity, its worn edges unmistakable.
Wood.
Chuck's figurine.
It must have slipped from Thomas' grasp whilst sleep still held him captive. Without thinking, Newt closed his fingers around it and thrust it deep into his pocket, instinct moving more swiftly than thought, before another pair of hands descended to haul him towards the waiting darkness beyond the aircraft.
He did not resist.
There was no time.
He tore himself forward instead, half crawling, half stumbling, dragging his ruined leg behind him until his knee struck the ground with enough force to send white pain exploding through his body.
The world was all sand and shadows. Sweeping beams carved pale wounds across the dunes before vanishing again, revealing only fractured impressions—a figure running, another falling, shadows bending into impossible shapes before the darkness reclaimed them. Around him, voices collided into meaningless fragments, urgent commands swallowed by the relentless thunder of rotor blades, whilst somewhere beyond them came the unmistakable crack of gunfire, each report cutting across the night with uncompromising force.
"Move! Let's go!" one of the masked figures shouted, shoving him onwards. "We gotta go!"
But Thomas had twisted free.
He fought like a cornered animal, wrenching himself from the man's grasp before breaking into a desperate sprint back towards the helicopter.
“Wait—wait, wait!” he shouted, frantic.
"Where are you going?" someone bellowed after him. "We don't have time!"
"Tommy!"
Newt's voice disappeared almost as soon as it escaped him, consumed by wind and steel and the terrible machinery of the night.
Pain became irrelevant.
He followed, limping as quickly as his body would allow, ignoring the hands reaching to restrain him, the shouted protests fading into little more than distant echoes. The world contracted until nothing remained beyond Thomas' retreating figure and the carved piece of wood striking softly against his thigh with every uneven step, its steady rhythm recalling a boy whose laughter had once seemed capable of surviving anything.
"I've got it!" Newt cried, but the helicopter’s roar tore his words to shreds, flinging them into the sky. Thomas didn’t react.
"Thomas!"
This time he turned.
The wind drove sand across his face, his expression drawn tight with confusion, his lips forming a silent What?
Newt drew the figurine from his pocket and held it aloft.
Newt watched recognition find Thomas, relief following so swiftly that the two became impossible to separate.
"Chuck..."
The name escaped Newt as little more than breath, weighted with everything it could never restore.
Thomas approached as though each step demanded permission from some unseen force reluctant to let him close. Newt placed the carving into his waiting hand, and for the briefest instant their fingers remained clasped around the worn wood together, neither willing to become the first to let go.
Above them the blades screamed against the darkness, hurling torrents of sand into the air, yet the world lingered upon that solitary moment, suspended between one life already buried and another whose shape remained hidden beyond the night.
Then the stillness broke.
A figure staggered out of the darkness.
Its movements possessed the awful uncertainty of something no longer governed by reason, whilst the face emerging beneath the sweeping searchlights appeared less like flesh than the memory of it, hanging in ragged strips across protruding bone. Newt's thoughts reached instinctively for old names—crazies, madmen—yet neither belonged to the thing advancing towards them.
A masked rescuer seized both him and Thomas before either could move, wrenching them clear of the helicopter's looming shadow and dragging them towards the harsh brilliance waiting beyond it.
“Cranks! We got Cranks!” voices rang out, shouted warnings followed by more gunshots.
Shapes erupted from the darkness on every side.
Not people.
Not any longer.
They came in impossible numbers, their movements broken and ravenous, silhouettes flung through the sweeping searchlights before vanishing again into the storm of sand and shadow.
Newt faltered—limbs leaden, heart heavier still—yet his hand found Thomas' sleeve with instinctive certainty, fastening upon him with desperate resolve.
More masked figures rushed past them, weapons raised, their bodies becoming a living barricade between the boys and the horrors descending upon the landing site.
"Come on! Move!”
“Get out of here!”
Hands seized Newt once more, urging him onwards until the metal beneath his feet disappeared, replaced by cold sand shifting treacherously beneath every uneven step.
"Go!"
"We gotta move!"
"Swarm the flank!"
Voices collided without faces. Sand lashed against Newt's skin with enough force to draw tears from his eyes and blur his vision. He surrendered himself to the hands directing him forwards, no longer certain whether he was running of his own accord or simply being carried by the momentum of everyone else.
Ahead, a solitary building emerged from the darkness; looming like a fortress, a beacon in the desolation. Salvation or trap, Newt couldn’t tell.
“Keep moving! Keep moving!”
A shape burst from the storm barely an arm's length away.
Its mouth hung impossibly wide beneath strips of ruined flesh, its eyes catching the searchlights with the dull gleam of something no longer touched by human thought. For one suspended instant, Newt's mind refused to name what it saw.
He tore his gaze away.
Thomas was still ahead.
That alone mattered.
"Tell him to take off! We're clear!"
The cry disappeared behind them, swallowed by wind and engines until it became another ghost amongst the countless noises chasing them through the night.
The Gladers stumbled into the building like the final grains slipping through an hourglass, spent beyond measure, carrying the desert with them in their clothes, their lungs, their eyes, until the last of them crossed the threshold and the gates groaned shut behind them. Metal ground against metal in a long, shuddering protest before the sound collapsed into a deafening finality that seemed to reverberate through Newt's very bones. It was a sound he knew too well—a sound that reached into memory and found the Maze, where the Doors had closed each night with the cruel pretence of sanctuary whilst offering only captivity.
He stood frozen for a beat, heart thudding, breath shallow. The instinct to run—useless now—rose all the same. The suspicion that they had escaped one prison only to stumble blindly into another. He kept that thought to himself, but the feeling lodged deep, clinging to him like sweat, like blood-soaked cloth.
Trapped. That’s how he felt. All over again.
The hangar rose around them in ribbed tiers and skeletal catwalks, a cavern washed in yellow and grey. The air was stale, heavy with the acrid bite of oil and the cold stink of machinery.
Overhead, faulty fluorescents buzzed and flickered, casting fractured light across the vast space. Now and then, sparks spat from exposed wires, sharp bursts that made the Gladers flinch—nerves too frayed for surprise, but not yet dulled to fear.
Forklifts zipped past in brief, noisy blurs, rattling the floor beneath their boots. Rows of battered boxes slouched against labelled barrels, while distant voices crackled over unseen comms, distorted by static and urgency.
Newt kept close to the others, who clustered near the gate, tense and quiet.
Thomas stood a little ahead, back straight, eyes sweeping the terrain—composed, somehow, despite the blood smeared on his shirt and hands, despite the weight carved into the set of his jaw and the dark hollows beneath his eyes.
Newt’s heart swelled at the sight. Thomas—unshaken in a way that felt almost impossible. That stubborn, immovable steadiness wasn’t quite bravery. It was a kind of defiance that refused to bend, even under the crushing weight of grief.
Newt felt it like a hook buried deep in his chest. It tugged at him, made him want to stand taller, breathe deeper, pull himself together. It was the burning, aching need to rise—to match the quiet strength Thomas carried so innately. To become someone worthy of standing beside him.
They were left to themselves—no trace of the people who’d brought them here. They’d stayed behind, on the other side of the sealed gate. Left to deal with those things.... Cranks…
The thought flickered and passed. He didn’t have the space to wonder what had become of them. Not now.
The low murmur of conversation died in an instant. Newt turned, alert, eyes narrowing as a man approached with the quiet authority of someone who didn’t need to raise his voice to command attention.
His hair was short and streaked with grey, the rough stubble on his jaw adding to the hardened look. A leather jacket draped over a grey turtleneck—clean, utilitarian—yet the precision of it only made him more unsettling.
He looked like someone who’d not only adapted to danger, but might’ve come to prefer it.
“You kids doing all right?” the man called out, his voice carrying easily across the hangar. There was politeness in it, but it was razor-thin—like a blade just beneath the skin. “Sorry about all the fuss. We had ourselves a bit of a swarm.”
Thomas took initiative, placed himself between the man and the others, shoulders squared. His voice didn’t rise, but it didn’t waver either.
“Who are you?”
The man’s mouth curved—just enough to suggest both reassurance and amusement.
“I’m the reason you’re all still alive,” he said. “And it’s my intention to keep it that way.”
He turned on his heel, already walking, and motioned for them to follow. “Now, come with me. We’ll get you kids squared away.”
They hesitated. Some glanced at Thomas, waiting for his lead; others looked to each other, uncertain.
When Thomas finally moved, the rest fell in behind him—stiff-limbed, minds running on fumes.
Newt followed, limping. Every movement made his muscles ache, like his body was personally offended he was still moving and had made it its mission to file a formal complaint with every step. His leg was the worst of it, but there wasn’t much to do about that now. Minho kept pace—quiet for once—but his eyes were sharp, watchful. As they passed beneath a rattling overhead pipe, he muttered something wry about the place barely holding together.
Newt snorted despite himself.
They climbed metal walkways that spiralled upwards, winding around stacked crates and shadowed platforms. The hangar stretched into tiers, the air growing warmer the higher they went. People moved around them—workers in grease-smudged jumpsuits, barely sparing a glance at the newcomers as they carried out their strange rituals of maintenance and order.
Newt’s Runner-trained instincts catalogued every route, every blind corner, mapping it out without thinking. He knew Minho was doing the same.
“You can call me Mr. Janson,” the man said, facing ahead. “I run this place. For us, it’s a sanctuary—safe from the horrors of the outside world. You should think of it as a way station. Kind of a home between homes.”
Home.
The word snagged in Newt’s mind. It sounded wrong here, bouncing off steel walls and dusty vents.
He glanced back. Frypan, Winston, and Jack stayed close, eyes wary, heads turning, taking in every detail. Teresa walked a few steps apart, her gaze unreadable. They all wore the same hollow look, like they’d survived something that still hadn’t caught up to them. Because they had.
“Does that mean you’re taking us home?” Thomas asked.
Janson didn’t slow. “A home of sorts. Sadly, there wouldn’t be much left of wherever you came from. But we do have a place for you. A refuge. Outside the Scorch. Where WICKED will never find you again. How does that sound?”
Minho frowned. “Why are you helping us?”
The man’s smile never touched his eyes. “Let’s just say the world out there is in a rather precarious situation. We’re all hanging on by a very thin thread. The fact that you kids can survive the Flare virus…” He paused, letting the weight of his words settle. “It makes you humanity’s best hope. Unfortunately, it also makes you a target, as no doubt by now you've noticed.”
Newt exchanged a quick glance with Thomas—just a flicker of eye contact, but enough. A silent check-in: Are you buying this? I’m not sure I am.
At last, they reached a large door. Janson pulled a card from his pocket and slid it into a slot beside a keypad. A chime sounded, and the door hissed open like an exhale, revealing a corridor lined with white panels, flooded in sterile light.
“Beyond this door lies the beginning of your new lives,” Janson said, turning and clapping his hands sharply. “First things first... let’s do something about that smell.”