24

                                    

                                          
It turned out, Berta was a car, a vintage car to be exact. J wasn't that keen on the vehicle. But her brother, who sat in the passenger seat while Jorge drove, didn't seem to have had this much fun in a long time. However, the rest had to squeeze into the remaining places. Minho, J, Teresa and Thomas sat in the back seat. Aris, Pan and Brenda found space in the trunk. 
At some point J felt movement on her thigh. Minho discreetly poked her from the side so that none of the others could see. But J didn't feel like engaging with him, so she ignored him. Minho didn't seem to like that because he actually dared to pinch her. 
"Ouch! Minho!" she hissed indignantly and slapped his hand away. Except for Teresa, who was sitting on the other side next to J, no one noticed anything. And luckily the dark-haired girl didn't react to it either. She glanced at J briefly, then at Minho's hand, but otherwise she didn't interfere. 
"So you were uncomfortable with the fact that you like me, am I right?", Minho now whispered, leaning a little towards her so that only J could really hear him. She didn't answer, just stared forward through the windshield. She had nothing to add.
"You don't have to be ashamed, you have good taste," Minho said it so carelessly that J really had to control herself. Of course, even though he might have been overwhelmed at first, Minho had to be become cocky about J's feelings. She rolls her eyes. 
"Are you not talking to me at all now?", Minho asked urgently when she didn't answer again. She looked at him with a snort. "I warned you, don't you dare get arrogant because it."
"What's going on back there?", Newt had probably pricked up his ears. Like two petulant toddlers, J and Minho crossed their arms over their chests. "Nothing at all." 
With that, the topic was off the table. For now. But it shouldn't come up again any time soon. They hadn't been driving through the mountains for too long, when Jorge stopped. The teenagers on the back rows had to lean forward, to see what was going on through the windshield. There were all sorts of rubble piled up on the street. They couldn't get through there by car. 
When they got out of the car, or rather Berta, they realized that it wasn't just them that had stopped that way. There were a lot of abandoned cars standing around here. 
J was about to ask what had happened here. But before she could even take a breath, she got her answer. Shots. Someone shot into their direction. With their hands raised, they took cover behind the abandoned vehicles. J found himself between Newt and Minho. 
"Does anyone know where those damn shots came from?", Newt shouted to the others. 
"Scream even louder, maybe the crazy people who want to kill us, will answer you," J replied and received an angry look from her brother, while Minho grinned briefly. But the grin quickly disappeared when they heard the guns crack behind them, they have been reloaded. 
"Hands up and turn around very slowly," demanded a deep, yet feminine voice. 
It wasn't just J, Minho and Newt who had been discovered. The others were also pulled away from the cars, with guns pointed at them.
"What do you want here?", the blonde, who was standing next to the one with the deep voice, asked. The two of them had covered the lower halves of their faces with scarves. But now the blonde's eyes widened. "Aris?" 
"Harriet! Sonya!", Aris squeezed through the gladers and fell into the arms of the two girls. Because that's what they were, just teenagers, no older than J and the boys. 
"We were in the labyrinth together," Aris then explained to the others and now Harriet and Sonya also nodded friendly to them. 
"Who are your new friends?", Harriet then asked. J had to admit that she was fascinated by the hair of the dark-skinned girl. Lots of long dreadlocks that she had tied back in a voluminous hairstyle.