The Deadliest Generation: The Maze Of Monsters

Drugs and Blades

River bowed his head, tears staining his shirt, his cheeks, skin clammy with sweat, and his eyes were empty, despondent.

Thomas just stared at him in pure shock. The fact that River had had to remember this and relive it was terrifying. It had been so traumatic that it had broken through the strongest memory block that Thomas thought probably had ever existed. 

"Wait, wait, River..." Newt spoke up, his voice gentle and slightly sad, and Thomas glanced at him to see that Newt looked appalled at what River had said. "Wha... so did all the other kids try to kill themselves?" Newt's eyes darkened when he mentioned death, and Thomas twitched. Why did he do that?

"Yeah." River choked out, and took a shaky breath, "I woke up with my wrists healed, but feeling solid when I touched them in the areas that were fatal to cut. It was the same around my chest and neck. I also woke up with a watch on. This watch."

He held up his wrist and Thomas looked at the watch. It was ordinary, with a face and digits ticking around on it, no alarm setting, no fancy things on there, there were a few scratches on the metal, the strap and the face. 

"That's a normal watch, Riv," Chuck said gently, "how do you know it's from the Spiral thingy?"

River smiled at Chuck and said, "This isn't a part of my fevered imagination, Chuck, don't worry. As soon as we got the watches, I undid mine at the time and it said on the inside, B eleven. I don't know why, or how, but that meant me. Alec's said D nine. But that's not important."

"You guys know that I said that there were wristbands on our wrists, detecting our heartbeat and stuff? Yeah, well, they also did other stuff. We weren't aware of it. You couldn't take them off, some of the kids tried and they recieved electric shocks from the shucking things."

River sighed and rolled his head back. "Me and Alec just sat in our room after the second task, getting fed every meal time, and Alec started to use the stuff in the room to figure things out. He got out notebooks and wrote his ideas down, he stuck them to the wall with Blu-Tack - there was loads of Blu-Tack for some reason - and Alec would use thread to pin them all together. He didn't get too far, all his brainstorming usually would end in a slump, and when he went back to his notes he barely understood what he'd been on about."

The boy chuckled a little. "Thank god for Luna and Rachel."

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Alec was asleep when Luna arrived, at around three o'clock.

They'd been forced into an uncomfortable pattern, continuously waking up, being fed at meal times, then, at quarter past two on their wristwatches, Alec was dragged out of the room by a guard. As soon as he came back around 50 minutes later after being placed through a gruelling set of medical, physical and mental testing that left him weak, shaky, and wincing in agony, River had ten minutes to comfort and console him before he was dragged out too, and River was glad that he couldn't remember the testing in much detail other than feeling like he'd been swimming in an ocean, feeling more and more isolated, more watched.

Then he was chased by various different sea creatures.

Massive sharks, mainly.

River had hauled him into his bed, because Alec had an unhealthy habit of falling asleep in chairs, and the boy was sound asleep.

River watched him for a moment, not creepily, simply checking on him, almost scanning in a way. Alec's hair was too long, clearly needing to be trimmed at some point, which made River self-consciously touch his hairline, where they'd practically ripped the strands out with nail scissors. A small cut was just underneath the hairline from the amount of times River had cut his hair brutally with some kitchen scissors or something.