Newt crouched low behind the jagged husk of what used to be a roadside kiosk, his lungs dragging in air that tasted of ash and metal. The concrete was hot beneath his palms, peppered with shrapnel and old blood. Gunfire cracked like lightning overhead. A bullet thudded into the brick just inches from his face, flinging up grit that stung his eyes.

“Bloody hell…” he whispered, pressing a trembling hand to his temple. His knuckles came away red—just a graze, but the pain sharpened his focus.

Thomas had veered left to draw fire. Minho was circling the flank. Which left Newt alone, pinned in no-man’s-land with nothing but his knife and a prayer. They hadn’t come here looking for a war—but WCKD never gave them choices, only corners to die in.

He shifted onto one knee, angling his body behind the blackened frame of a support beam. Two soldiers were fanning out ahead, scanning the debris with methodical, inhuman precision. Their rifles were up, heads locked in that visor-glow stare. Newt gritted his teeth, weighing whether he had time to run or if he’d have to bleed to buy it.

Then the air changed.

Not gradually. Not like the shift of weather or the tightening of a trap. It hit all at once—an electric silence that prickled his skin and turned the world mute. Newt froze. The edges of his vision blurred, smeared like wet paint across glass. The sound of the battlefield dulled to a low hum, like breath underwater. Time didn’t just slow—it unraveled.

He staggered back, instincts howling, heart pounding against a chest that no longer felt entirely his. The heat, the scent of smoke, the vibration of gunfire—they all fell away.

Then the world snapped.

And he was somewhere else.

Gone was the scorched wasteland, the skeletal skyline of the Scorch. In its place stood a room—utterly mundane and impossibly foreign. Clean, colorful, too still. Posters lined the walls, glossy and untouched. A desk cluttered with unfamiliar trinkets and metallic devices rested nearby. The smell was wrong too. No sweat or cordite—just lemon cleaner and the faintest trace of laundry detergent.

“Bloody hell,” he breathed out, his voice more uneven than he’d liked.

A window stood behind him. Light filtered in soft and amber, casting the shadows of tree branches against the floor like gentle bars. Somewhere beyond the walls, a bird sang.

He pivoted slowly, adrenaline still pumping through his veins, knife raised defensively. But there were no soldiers, no guns, no Thomas or Minho. Nothing that even remotely resembled the hellscape he had just been in. Just the sound of his own breathing.

Something was wrong with time. Or memory. Or both.

But whatever had happened… he wasn’t in the war anymore.

And he wasn’t sure if that terrified him more.