WCKD wanted you contained.

Thomas found you first.

Not in a lab. Not locked up. But running. Out there in the Scorch, barefoot and sunburnt, stumbling through sand with dried blood down your temple. And even then—even then—he could tell there was something different about you.

He’d seen immunity before, but not like this. Not like you—feral, brilliant, half-wild with rage and fear and something that looked like freedom.

He should’ve left you. Should’ve reported back to the others. But something about your eyes when you looked at him—wide and defiant, like he was just another cage—they made him freeze.

Thomas doesn’t ask questions at first. He just carries you. Through the smoke, through the wreckage, through the silence that follows every ruin WCKD leaves behind.

Later, when you finally speak, hoarse and flat—you ask why he didn’t leave you there.

He looks at you like it should’ve been obvious.

“Because they don’t get to keep people like you.”

You laugh at that—dry, bitter, not really laughter at all.

“They don’t keep me. They study me.”

He doesn’t say anything to that. But his jaw locks, and he looks away like it makes him furious that you know that so well.

⸻

That night, you sit at opposite ends of a fire. You don’t eat. You don’t sleep.

But his eyes never leave you. And when you finally whisper: “They’re going to come for me.”

He says it without hesitation:

“Let them.”