Come Back Home - Chapter 7 - Final
The first thing that entered everyone's mind was, 'what will Fawn think of this illusion?'
But when they all looked at where Fawn had last stood, she was gone. The girl sprinted across to Newt and flung her arms around him, Newt meeting her halfway and grasping her close in a tight hug.
"Im here." he whispered into her hair. "I'm here now."
"I missed you so much," Fawn sniffled, hastily wiping the tears from her eyes as she let Newt's ribs relax from the squeeze she gave them.
She saw that Minho, Frypan, Gally and Thomas had approached and were eyeing Newt skeptically, not sure if he was a ghost or not. Minho who had handed the twins off to Grace and Brenda, touched Newt on the arm as if checking to see if he was real and they could see the color drain from his face, only to return as tears appeared in his eyes. He didnt have to say anything as Newt pulled him into a hug.
"How is this possible?" Gally whispered, "You were dead! Okay now that I think about it you guys also thought I was dead.... but you were dead in the bottom of a destroyed city!"
"Death is only as real as you make it out to be," Fawn said, smiling at Newt.
Minho glanced from Newt to Fawn then back before he screeched. "Bloody hell! You fucking knew about this Fawn!?"
"MINHO!" Grace and Brenda scolded from afar, covering the twins' ears.
Fawn just smiled at Newt and that was when Gally had enough, throwing his arms up in the air. "Okay you know what? We aren't doing anything. ANYTHING until you two explain yourselves. Grace, you and Brenda watch the twins. We will be in the meeting house."
"WE should probably bring caliber and my buddy along." Newt said, pointing towards the stranger who had arrived with him who had sunny blond hair and a mask over his face.
Gally seemed wary of the tall stranger but sighed and nodded after a moment, leading the group to the Meeting House. Once everyone was sat around the table, or rather Minho, Thomas and Gally were sat and the others were standing like kids being sent to the principal's office. Frypan, Caliber and the stranger were standing off to the side like spectators.
Gally sighed as he looked between Fawn and Newt, "I get the feeling that there is more to this than I think but to start off, how are you not dead!?"
Newt turned to Caliber who handed him a bag which Newt placed on the table between him and the others. He reached in and withdrew something that made everyone gape.... it was Thomas's knife that had stabbed Newt to death in the Lost City.
"It wasnt by chance that you stabbed me with the knife that Caliber gave you." Newt explained. "That was on purpose."
Thomas's brow creased in confusion. "Explanation?"
"The legend that Fawn would always talk about, how our ancestors used a special plant to make their weapons and how the Assassins had carried on the tradition," Newt explained. "She never specified but the specific plant used in the making of the weapons is called Sol Defensor. English translation is Sun Defender.... or as Fawn always called it: Bubbles."
"You've got to be shitting me," Gally groaned. "So you're saying, the plant that is used in the Sting cure is also used in the creation of these weapons?"
Newt nodded. "That's why Caliber gave Thomas the knife. And it is also why when Thomas and I were struggling, I purposely grabbed his knife so that when I got stabbed, it would be by the Ancient weapon."
"So the knife works as like a cure injection?" Minho asked. "That's how you survived the flare?"
"Precisely," was Newt's response. "The knife did do a number on me but it was not deep enough to kill me. Not when I got help immediately. One other thing about Sol Defensor is that one of it's healing properties is sped up healing."
Frypan held up his hands, coming to join the conversation. "Hold up.... you said that it was the reason Caliber gave Thomas the knife.... but at the time no one knew that you had the flare, and how could you be sure that Thomas would be around you when you went crank crazy?"
There was no response, silence filling the meeting room and soon all eyes gradually turned to Fawn. "Im guessing this is where you came in?" Gally asked.
Fawn nodded. "Let's just say this will make a whole lot more sense if we start from the beginning."
Frypan leapt forward and pulled out several seats, essentially telling the others to sit which they did.
"So, the beginning?" Gally asked, arms crossed. "Where will that take us?"
"Back to when we were in the Glade," Fawn replied, instantly making the boys freeze, obviously having not expected it to go that far back.
"Fawn's unconscious!" Minho cried. "She got stung!"
Newt and Thomas didnt waste time in rushing to help the boy pick the girl up and support her between them. They quickly rushed through the door and didnt even bother to look at their surroundings as they lowered her to the ground.
"Where the hell are we?" Chuck whispered as he looked around at what appears to be a lab of some sort full of computers and screens.
"Not now Chuck!" Newt interrupted. "Fawn's seizing!"
The kids all crowded around the girl as she began to violently shake in her unconscious state. What they didnt see as they were busy worrying over Fawn was that Drake inched towards one laptop in particular, a small red light emitting from the screen as it scanned the dog and then it disappeared, just as Fawn began to slowly open her eyes.
"I have so many questions," Minho said, rubbing his temples. "First off, when you passed out from being stung.... was that fake?"
"Partially?" Fawn said, shrugging. "I did get stung which was kind of intentional because I knew that the sting of the Griever would reverse the blinding effects. I did faint because let's face it, that hurts like hell! But I actually woke up right before you guys laid me down but I kept faking my unconsciousness.... and the seizing was on purpose."
"So that is why Drake's collar is different," Gally muttered mostly to himself. "What exactly did the scanner do though?"
"It transmitted a message," Fawn explained. "His collar was specifically designed to relay messages between him and the mole that had been planted in Wicked."
She jabbed her thumb in the direction of the tall blond stranger. "He had found out that Teresa was going to be sent to the Maze so he sent Drake in first. When we reached the lab and he was able to upload a message to Drake's transmitter, that was the point when I found out that Teresa had never been memory wiped and was a spy."
Thomas's jaw dropped open slightly more than it had been. "You knew the whole time and you didnt tell anyone?"
"EEER!" Fawn replied, making a loud noise to cut him off. "Correction, I did tell Newt right away but I knew that if I told too many more people then it might accidentally leak to either Teresa or to Thomas and I'm sorry Thomas but I never trusted you to keep a secret from Teresa."
Thomas slumped in his seat but didnt argue, knowing that the girl had a point.
"Okay so how are we going to stop her from killing us?" Newt whispered as he and Fawn had taken a walk in the middle of the night so that they had privacy from the others who were sound asleep several feet away in the dark dunes of the desert.
"I have that taken care of," Fawn whispered. "I have friends who are watching Wicked's every move and they will inform us if Teresa contacts them. But there's something I need to tell you. I know what the cure is."
Newt's eyes widened, "The cure for the Flare!? How?"
"Long story short, I knew I was going to get my memory wiped so I memorized the formula in a way that I wouldn't forget it and I planted the formula in the maze. But the thing is we cannot make the cure without Wicked. We dont have the resources or the supplies to make it."
"Okay so what's the plan?" Newt whispered.
"We need to infiltrate Wicked. Once we get everyone to a safe place where Wicked cannot get to us, you know well enough that we're going to mount an attack on Wicked."
"That's to be expected." Newt agreed. "So do we infiltrate Wicked before or after?"
"After," Fawn whispered. "I have always found that faking your death is the best way to throw people off. When I infiltrated Wicked before I went under the guise of someone named Jade Cross, someone I made up. When it was time for me to enter the maze as Fawn, I staged Jade Cross's death."
A smile crept onto Newt's face. "So you're telling me you have an alternate identity that you can use to get into Wicked?"
Fawn nodded, "But because of Jade Cross's death, I cannot use that identity unless it is temporary because Wicked will immediately know something is up if a dead person enters Wicked."
"So what are we going to do?"
"We're going to fake your death," Fawn whispered.
"Just to make one thing straight...." Gally interrupted. "At what point did Newt contract the flare?"
"We suspect that I got it when we were attacked by Cranks in the mall but I didnt start to show signs until we had been rescued by the Snipers." Newt explained. "The original plan was for one of the Snipers to disguise himself as someone from Wicked once we attacked the Lost City, and shoot me with a blank to stimulate my fake death. When I contracted the flare, we thought of a better way to stage my death."
"By having Caliber cleverly give me the cure and Newt purposely stab himself in a crank rage," Thomas added, starting to figure out the plan.
"Precisely." Fawn responded. "The plan to fake Newt's death was to give him an easy in into the Wicked facility, disguising himself as a Wicked surgeon. That way he could easily have access to all the information I had stored at Wicked and he could send out all those orders for the materials."
"So Newt and your mole here," Gally said, nodding at the stranger. "have been working together for 18 months to create the cure and depleting Wicked's supplies?"
Fawn nodded. "everything was going according to plan but we weren't expecting Wicked to arrive as fast as they did when Teresa showed her true colors.... which was why the Snipers didnt arrive in time to stop them from taking Minho. So I sent a message to my friend in Wicked to ensure that Minho wasn't harmed."
"I was wondering why your eyes were familiar!" Minho gasped. "You were the guy in the doctor's mask that would always appear out of nowhere and say that you would "take over" the interrogation but you always just sent me back to my room rather than hurting me. I was always praying that you would turn up because you always showed up right before they started hurting me."
The eyes of the stranger crinkled, smiling behind his mask.
Minho grinned before looking at Fawn. "I do have a question. When we were escaping Wicked.... and we were stuck behind that one door and the key card wouldn't work.... was it you who got it to work when we weren't looking?"
Fawn smiled. "Actually it wasnt me." She said looking at the stranger. "It was him."
"It's not getting worse," Newt whispered to Fawn as the two dressed and prepared for their infiltration of Wicked. "They won't believe it if I dont crank out on them. You feeding me those berries every day has kept the spread at bay but I need my crank out to be believable."
Fawn nodded. "I suspected that would happen. Here, I had Mace work up this inducer. It will induce the side effects of the flare, the drooling, the bulging veins and so forth but it will prevent the cure from reaching your brain. That way you can stay sane and know what you're doing."
"Perfect!" Newt sighed, placing the small vial in his pocket. "But we dont have activator. When Thomas 'stabs' me with the knife, I will get the cure but I need the activator."
"That is why I convinced Gally to let me go with him to break into the vaults. Not only will Jade Cross's access give us an easy in if Teresa get suspicious but I'm going to break into one of the vaults where Jade Cross happened to store her supply of activator what she made during her life."
"So that's why you were so adamant about coming with me," Gally said, "You used Jade Cross's one time access to open the vault and retrieve some of the activator. But we never saw Newt take it."
"I applied it to him," Fawn explained. "The activator only has to touch your skin right? So I applied some to my mouth and that was why I kissed his cheek before he and Thomas bolted."
"OOOOOOOH," Thomas gasped. "That makes sense cuz you two were never big on PDA."
"Is there anything else that we need to know?" Gally asked.
"This is not good," Newt whispered. "I know Minho is being protected in Wicked as we speak but we weren't counting on Gally being alive! Now everyone knows that Wicked has a supply of the cure! If they get their hands on the cure and somehow inject it into me before I can "die" our plan is fried."
"We're going to have to work around it," Fawn replied. "The vaults are thick so there is a slim chance Gally will be able to open the vault before you and Thomas turn up. No matter what Gally and Thomas say, dont stay with us and go with Thomas to get Minho. I'll make sure that we happen to leave the cure with Brenda and Grace rather than bring some with us."
"You know Thomas or Minho will run to get the cure though," Newt pointed out. "And they are both fast runners. I dont know if it is enough time for me to stab myself while Thomas is trying to not kill me."
"I have a diversion," Fawn replied, pulling out her tracker to reveal the little blinking dot. "This tracks Drake's whereabouts. It is also connected to Caliber, myself and you. Magnum is also sneaking trackers into all of the handguns that we will have in our possession so if Thomas or Gally give Minho a handgun, we can track Minho."
"So Minho will run to get the cure from Brenda and rush back to give it to me, what if they arrive just in the nick of time?" Newt whispered.
Fawn smiled as she nodded to the corner and Newt turned to see Caliber standing there, his bright orange hair reflecting the dim light of the room. "Caliber and the assassins will be assigned to make sure that Janson doesnt find us. So their presence will not be expected. If perchance they happen to be dressed as guards and happen upon whoever is racing to get the cure to you.... they will probably be able to stall them long enough for you to stab yourself."
"Why you little," Minho whispered, pointing an accusing finger at Caliber, "You were the guy who roughhoused me and Brenda!? So the Snipers coming and rescuing us was also an act?"
Caliber nodded, "Essentially. I released Drake first to slow you down long enough for us to ambush you."
"Drake," Frypan interjected. "Was Drake even missing in the first place?"
"No," Fawn replied. "Our separation at the mall was intentional because Caliber came and retrieved him. Originally we had him retrieve Drake because we were still planning Newt's death and we were going to have Drake ensure that Newt came back from the dead. But when Minho was taken and then Gally revealed that Wicked had the cure and he knew where to find it, we decided to use Drake as a diversion instead."
"Shit," Gally sighed. "You are seriously giving me grey hairs here Spitfire! Why didnt you guys just tell us that you planned on sending Newt to Wicked?"
"Well because Teresa still wasnt eliminated yet," Fawn pointed out. "And also one other thing.....We might have removed Wicked's trackers that they had placed in us when we were kidnapped.... but we aren't able to remove the trackers that Wicked put in us when we were placed in the Glade."
"WHAT!?" Frypan screeched. "There are other trackers!?"
"Not necessarily trackers but they send monthly updates to Wicked about what information was voiced to us: names, dates, places and so forth. It doesnt allow them to track us but if we ever mentioned a name or where a person is they could find that person. That was why I never told any of you other than Thorn members and Newt...."
Eyes slowly turned to Newt, "You dont have an internal tracker?"
Newt rubbed the back of his head. "Well....you see... Fawn was able to check when she infiltrated Wicked as Jade Cross.... which of us had trackers that were still active. Some trackers were disabled because of a sickness, an injury or something that caused the tracker to malfunction. When I got my limp.... I never told anyone this except Alby but.... I tried to kill myself my first year in the Maze. I jumped from the wall after having climbed up the vines halfway.... It didnt kill me but it caused my limp. Alby promised to keep it a secret if I promised to not do it again. But the fall was enough to destroy my tracker. And Fawn.... when she got stung but the Griever, hers also malfunctioned."
"And mine didnt?" Gally asked, "I got stung you know!"
"You got stung in the chest," Fawn pointed out. "The trackers are inserted into our lower abdominal cavity. That was why mine malfunctioned because I got stabbed in the stomach."
"FML," Gally groaned. "Just my luck."
"We had to keep things only between those who couldn't unintentionally alert Wicked to our plan. That was why this was only shared between myself, Newt and the Thorn members. We did have a collective agreement to not tell Grace though because with her hearing impairment, we didnt want her to accidentally say something without knowing that someone was eavesdropping."
"Reasonable," Minho said, "One final question though.... who is this guy?"
Fawn and Newt looked over at the tall blond stranger who had been silent this whole time. The boy reached up to the mask on his face and pulled it down so that it now hung around his neck, revealing his face to everyone. The silence in the room was so thick you could cut it with a knife. A single word escaped Minho's mouth which caused a thousand more questions to enter everyone's mind.
"Ben?"
*****
The blond boy smiled as he looked upon the Gladers whom he hadn't seen in over a year. "Good to see you again Minho, Frypan, Gally. You too Thomas."
Minho was unable to talk, hands covering his mouth and his body shaking violently in disbelief so Gally had to speak for his boyfriend.
"Explain yourselves now!" He ordered Fawn and Newt.
"Hey Ben," Fawn greeted as she crouched down with Drake next to the door which separated her from Ben who was making pained noises inside the pit. "I brought you some dinner."
The boy made no noise. The girl pushed the food under the door just before the boy tried to reach for her through the bars.
"Fawn get back!" Newt cried, helping pull the girl away from the bars as Ben tried to grab for her. "He's not himself anymore!"
"I just wanted to give him dinner," Fawn whispered softly as the boy and Minho led her away from Ben.
What no one saw was that after they left, Ben dug into the food that Fawn had given him, not even caring that all the food she had given him was thickly laden with dark blue berries.
"You sneaky bastard," Gally muttered, causing Fawn to suppress a laugh.
"So you sneaked him the cure when we least expected it, which meant that we put him into the maze.... him in the process of being cured?" Minho choked. "How did he get the activator though? Or did the food you give him do the trick?"
Fawn shook her head. "Once you have been infected, the berries or the cure alone wont cure you. The activator needs to be given to set the cure in motion. The reason why some people like Thomas are immune to the flare is because they ate huge quantities of the berries back when they were kids. Newt, hated the berries which was why he wasnt immune. Thomas ate more than all of us combined which is why he is so immune that his blood is considered a cure."
"So how...."
"The Snipers picked Ben up after the maze doors had been shut," Newt explained. "They gave him the activator and he was completely cured. They did however drop his clothes into the maze just in case we went looking for him."
"So Ben was the one who was the mole in Wicked, the one who found out that Teresa was a spy, the one who got us out when we were captured, the one who protected Minho and the one who has been providing us with the cure?" Minho whispered. "Can this get any weirder?"
Newt grinned sheepishly and Minho narrowed his eyes at the boy. "What now?"
"This is the last thing I promise," Newt told him, holding up his hands in surrender. "But.... the reason why no one in Wicked survived the bombing that we staged just the other day.... is because for the past year Ben and I have been giving Wicked personnel a "cure" that we told them is a prophylactic against the flare.... but it is actually a microscopic detonator."
"You little shit," Frypan gasped, making everyone gape at him in surprise, having not heard him swear in a long time. "You blew up every Wicked person?"
"Yeah?" Newt said, cringing. "It sounds terrible but it was the only way we could ensure their demise and also ensure that no one would track us through our internal trackers anymore."
********
Newt and Fawn stepped out of the meeting house together and grinned at each other.
"How long will it take?" Newt whispered.
"Give them a few hours," Fawn told him. "Let them absorb all that information and then they will be back to normal. In the mean time, there are two little people that are dying to meet you."
A huge smile lit up Newt's face as Fawn led him over to where Grace and Brenda were playing outside with the twins. When they saw the two approaching, the girls excused themselves, leaving Fawn and Newt alone with their children.
Immediately Horace scurried over to his mother and lifted his arms, requesting to be held. Fawn happily picked him up as Navi hurried over to stare up at Newt with curiosity. The boy knelt down so that he was eye level with the girl. Navi considered the boy a moment before a big smile appeared on her chubby face and she wrapped her arms around Newt's neck.
Tears sprung to the boy's eyes as he picked the girl up, holding her close. He looked over at Horace who had been watching him constantly, summing him up. When Horace saw that Newt was looking at him, he turned and extended his arms towards Newt who happily took the boy into his arms as well, holding the twins close to him.
"No fair! He never lets anyone hold him and now he lets Newt hold him?" Gally shouted from the doorway of the meeting house.
Fawn and Newt looked at each other and just chuckled. Things were back to normal now, and the future was looking bright. They had gone through so much, gone so far and come back again from the deep depths of hell, but now they were where they had wanted to be all along.
The End