Why Can't I Hate You?

Treading water, I moved my wet hair off my face to see. Looking up at Janson, who was looking down at us, beside himself with fury. I stuck my middle finger up at him, then began to swim to the edge of the pool. Minho held his hand out to help me out of the water, pulling me up.

Before we even had a chance to recover from our impulsive jump, a band of wicked guards approached us with readied weapons. "Stop right there, don't move!"

"Oh, you've gotta be kidding me." Thomas looked at the guards, then moved his hand slowly down to the gun in his pants.

"Ah, ah, ah, don't even think about it." The guard ordered."Get down on your knees, with your hands in the air."

One of the guards turned to the other three, shooting each of them, one after the other. They all fell to the ground, twitching and cursing. I stood ready to bolt for it, confused about what was happening. The guard approached us, pulling his mask off to reveal his face. Gally looked up at the window, then back to us. "You guys are nuts."

Minho stared at him as if he were a zombie back from the dead. To him, he probably was. He didn't know Gally was alive until now. "Gally?"

Gally nodded in acknowledgement. "Minho."

"We'll explain later." Thomas said,"We've gotta make our way back to the berg so we can get out of this wretched city."

We had to be careful, avoiding any people in wicked uniforms, and police cars with Wicked written on the side. Stopping behind a wall, to hide from a bunch of cars that was blocking the direction we needed to go.

"What are they waiting for?" Minho asked.

An explosion answered his question. Then, people flooded in, attacking the police cars and setting fire to whatever they could find.

"Gally! What's going on? I thought they were meant to take out wicked, not the whole city!" I covered my ears from the loud noise.

"I don't know! But we've got to go!"

Thomas looked around the corner, then turned back to us. "Come on, we can go this way!"

"Wait!" I stopped him. Remembering Janson. He was still alive. "I need to go back."

"What? What are you talking about?"

I swallowed hard. This was much more difficult than I thought, but I knew I had to do it. "I'm going back to wicked. I'm gonna kill Janson."

"You can't just go back, after all the effort we went through to get Minho out."

"Thomas, I need to do this. For all of us, he won't stop looking for us. We're never going to be safe until he's dead."

He scrunched his face in protest.

"For Newt."

He looked at me for a moment, then pulled the shotgun from his pants and put it in my hand. "For Newt."

I nodded and smiled at him. Then turned to Minho. "I'll see you soon, ok?"

"You better. Don't die." He grinned, patting me on the arm.

I said my final farewells, then headed into the chaos towards wicked. Towards revenge.