ataraxion | first trial

[ the transmission comes on to reveal a teenager with blonde hair, leaning forward a little too close into the video before he pulls back, muttering a low-- ] Bloody hell. [ before he actually goes to address the network at large. ]

Sorry bout being a proper greenie bout this, but--my name's Newt. Would rather go by a name than a number. [ even if it's not his real name, but. newt at least sounds friendly, if a little exasperated by his entire situation--then again, what else is new? he still offers the camera a little bit of a smile, brown eyes twinkling. ] I just jumped through a flat trans and ended up in bloody space. I guess this place ain't WICKED--nobody seems to know a shucking thing about it, 'sides me, so I guess I just had a question for you. Two, actually.

First off-- [ newt holds up a finger ] Do any of you live anything like this back home? And I don't mean in a bloody spaceship, I mean like--like life's some kinda trial, buncha different things gettin thrown at you for you to try and live through. [ his lips purse for a second, a little resigned. ] I was so sure this piece-of-klunk situation was just another bloody WICKED experiment... I'm still not sure if it isn't.

[ the second of his points is a little less dark, and he puts up two fingers before dropping them, making a little bit of a face; one eye squints up, almost like he's exasperated, if affectionately so. ] Second, for the love of everything good and shucky, have you seen my friend Tommy? Goes by Thomas, I guess. Brown hair, 'bout yay high, [ he gestures at his shoulder ] probably runnin around askin a lot of questions and stickin his nose into things he shouldn't be.

Thanks proper. [ he waves, then there's a little fidgeting before the feed finally goes out. ]

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[And finally, Johanna starts laughing.

Which, maybe that's not the right thing to do, and probably it's going to piss Newt off, but that's whatever.]

You're kidding.

[She manages that, at last, after she's recovered a little from laughing.]

Wow. Wait, was it a game, or an experiment? What was the experiment?

[ newt's eyebrows slowly raise on his end of things--to hear someone just sort of laughing at their lives kind of stings, but not enough for him to react too much. newt thought it was a big bloody joke too, to be honest. (this girl reminds him more and more of minho every second they talk.) ]

They were tryin' to find a cure for a virus called the Flare. Attacks the brain, turns people into bloody crazy cannibals. All of us in there were immune, I guess. So WICKED--the group watching us--was trying to see if the stress of the maze'd make our resistance fade, I guess. I don't really know. [ it's all still a blur--the flare, the "cranks", all of it. newt doesn't know anything about it.

yet, anyway. ] Virus happened before we were sent to the Maze, but none of us know about it. They took all our memories, too.

[So, different, but still similar enough to be funny. Who knew that there were so many places desperate to throw kids into deadly situations just for the hell of it? Sport or entertainment or experiments--doesn't matter why, just that it went on. Give people the basics and watch them go.]

That sucks. [She says it almost cheerfully, but the white-knuckle kind of cheer, like: yeah, that sucks, I've been there. She hasn't, really, not so completely. But she gets it.] If they took your memories, how'd you know about the virus at all? How'd you know about this WICKED?

And why didn't someone tell them to change their name?

When we got out, we learned a couple things. This shank called Rat-man showed up and told us a little bout the maze, said it was just a trial. Crazy enough, lived there for two years and it was just somebody's game. And we only knew 'bout WICKED because it was printed on all of our supplies.

[ newt's still not sure what all of it's about. everything rat man told them about the flare and the scorch--it sounded like a bloody dream. and since he hadn't been dragged out to the actual scorch yet, since he ended up in space, he's got no back up to the information he was told. after all, he could have been lying. (but he doubted "leave or die" meant they were going to a spa or something.) ]

Now I've got a bloody tattoo of it, so I'm not forgettin' it anytime soon. It stands for--[ newt scratches the back of his neck, thinking about it, absently. ] "World in Catastrophe Killzone Education Department." Think they're right clever, or sommat.

And you get a new Tranquility tattoo now too. Congratulations. That's just numbers, unless you're stupid enough to join a department--but even then, it doesn't spell anything interesting.

[Mazes and supplies and tricks. Maybe President Snow has a brother, she thinks, idly. On her end, Johanna rubs at her own TQ tattoo, her thumb working against the 71.]

So how'd you escape?

Oughta join some kinda bloody biker gang, at this point. [ not that newt should even really know what that is--one of those weird pseudo-memories. maybe he was in a biker gang before he came to WICKED.

that thought is so utterly ridiculous newt's going to ignore it, and he glances down at his wrist where the 005 rests. it's the same one he has on the back of his neck, which was part of what made him think the tranquility and the maze weren't all that different. ] Departments--like jobs, huh? Think I saw people talking about that on the network.

Oh--Tommy did it. Or, well, he started it, I guess. Turns out the Maze changed every day, and we'd been making real careful maps of the thing. Every time it changed, it spelled out a letter, which ended up being-- float, catch, death, stiff, and push. After that, he and Minho--one of the other Runners--found a place in the maze where all the Grievers came from. We fought past a whole bunch of the shanks and lost a lot of people, but we jumped into the hole, and killed the maze with the passwords we found. Everyone who was left got out.

Mostly. [ except for chuck. and alby, but that's an entirely painful pandora's box that newt's not going to open up right now. ]

Yeah, like jobs. And they're going to try to get you to join up. Want some advice? Don't. It's such a waste of time. Start your little biker gang instead.

[Not that she really knows the nuances of the phrase 'biker gang', but, like with everything, Johanna just puts together what she can and steamrolls over her own ignorance. That's the best way to deal with not knowing stuff.]

And of course your maze changed every day, and of course it was spelling out words. That's so typical, isn't it? You just gotta love the minds that come up with this shit. [So sharp it's obvious she's being sarcastic, but in case he didn't get that--] Oh, wait. No you don't.

So where'd you get out to?

first trial | video.

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