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He had ruined it all, he told Agustus and Mr. Flux of all his lies, if anything he should feel better and not worse then from when he decided to do it.
It had all been so perfect, he had the perfect plan and it worked, everything fell right into place and no one, absolutely no one had any suspicions in his involvement with it all. He really hadn’t meant for it all to go south, but how could he not have taken such a golden opportunity, it was practically handed to him with how easy it was. He would have been stupid not to take it, if anyone else knew of his plan, of the opportunities and riches they could have gotten doing what he did, they would have taken his place in a heartbeat.
It really wasn’t his fault, Sure he might have lied to most people there, if not all of them, but he didn't hurt anyone nor did he actively kill anyone. The people who died and suffered in this god forsaken city had mostly been awful, completely terrible people, Woggie and his supporters for example, wasn’t it for the best that they died here, that they couldn’t unleash their evil upon others and he hadn’t put any of the hostel members in danger so it was fine.
This wasn’t his fault, he is a completely normal person who may have happened to make the wrong decision. Sure he’ll admit that siphoning the bus’s wasn’t the best decision to make, but he did and there was nothing he could do about it now. Honestly he should have kept quiet about his crime to Augustus and Mr. Flux, if he did maybe they wouldn’t have been mad at him, they wouldn’t leave him.
He regretted it so much, he would let the guilt eat him alive for the rest of eternity if it meant that he could atone for his sins, to make sure that the hostel was safe and that no one could try and leave him again. However he couldn’t just leave empty handed, that would mean everything he had done was for nothing, that every risk and calculated move he took was meaningless.
Call him selfish as much as you’d like, but was it really a crime for him to follow his goals, for him to want to live a comfortable life where he didn’t need to worry about some stupid infection that turned people into zombies. Is it so wrong to wish for a peaceful life, a life without any fear or suffering. Could you even call that selfishness or greediness?
Mr. Flux said that harming someone was fine as long as it led to more good than harm, he was insistent on it and that Thomas should understand it before he had to learn it the hard way, but wasn’t this the exact same thing with a different scenario?
Maybe, just maybe withdrawing most of the oil and stranding them in Paradise city was wrong of him and led to others doom, but if he found the cure and introduced it to the rest of the world that would outweigh whatever mistakes and decisions he made. So why was he being shunned for it? Mr. Flux said it was fine so why doesn’t he trust Thomas anymore, why is he leaving him.
Mr. Flux and Augustus don't even have a place to go to, Mr. Flux willingly came to the city because he had nothing left, so what did he plan for and Augustus was from Paradise city, he had spent his whole life there, his entire family was based there.
None of them had anywhere to go, yet they refuse to trust him, to come with him to his place after he found the cure. There should be no reason for them to refuse, yet they keep doing it.
Everything had gone so well, he had played his role of a naive college kid perfectly, the Thomas they liked was a web of lies built upon lies and everything was good, Thomas was fine with them not truly knowing him or that they would all blame him later on, but he hoped and wished that they would understand, this was for the better.
However the one time the guilt was too much for him to handle, the singular moment where he wanted to be truthful with them, to abandon his entire plan for his friends, his family it all fell apart. Everything came crashing down, leaving him alone and miserable simply because he didn’t want to lie anymore.
He cursed whatever made him follow through with the rash decision to come clean with it all. If he kept quiet maybe they would still be here with him and they could’ve found the cure and they would heal Magic and find Stella’s sister so they could leave together, they would introduce the cure to the rest of the world and they would make bank, get super rich and they would all happily live together.
Now that fantasy was nothing but a naive delusion hanging on its last thread and didn't that fit him just perfectly. He had played the fool, fronting himself as a naive, hopeful schoolboy, yet now that it was over, everything he had worked so hard for had crashed down. He had truly lost it all, there was little to no point for anything anymore, yet he still found himself hopeful, wanting to delude himself that it wasn't his fault, that he could still fix this and that everything would be fine.
He still had Magic and Stella for the time being, Magic would probably succumb to the infection soon and Mr. Flux seems to have given up, adamant to leave, he probably— hopefully won’t tell Stella of his up and coming absence and of Thomas doing, meaning he still had time. He could at the very least be with Stella, she was the most reluctant to leave and with her sister trying to find the cure would mean that she would stay in Paradise no matter what.
If he played his cards correctly, he and Stella could help her sister— Lyra was it? To find the cure, hopefully it wasn’t Magic’s time just yet and they could give it to her and she would get better, but that meant he couldn’t mess this up again, couldn’t let Augustus or Mr. Flux get to Stella before him. If they do, it really was all for nothing.
High risk, high reward. That’s all that this was, no more and no less. The faster he could ‘help’ Stella and her sister, the faster he could get out of here and reap the rewards he had worked so hard for. Once he got out of here the world would be none the wiser of what happened around paradise city, but at that point it wouldn’t matter what he had done, he helped find the cure and that would be enough for the world to not dig any deeper.
If he was lucky maybe he could reconcile with Augustus and Mr. Flux, if he found them that is or if they would let him.