Disconnection • Newt • Maze Runner

23 - Injections & Scalpels

Major TW: Self harm, Suicide

The syringe poked through his scarred skin as the serum was injected. They had to know, had to know if he was an immune.

If he was, he would be extremely valuable, more valuable than the boy already was.

So they injected him with the Flare, and hoped to God he was immune.

Only he wasn't.

The blackened veins squirmed up his arms, and they did what they could to slow it, keep him alive as long as possible. The boy was done for, infected.

The truth was there was nothing they could do to stop the virus, that they knew of at least. They had managed to slow it, Aspen's veins had faded to a light grey colour, but he was still infected nonetheless.

He awoke with a start as he pulled against the restraints holding him to the bed. He desperately tried, and failed, to squeeze a word out, call for help, tell them to stop hurting him. But he couldn't manage it, his throat dried up, his mind the only passenger for the endless words he wished to spew from his mouth.

It felt strangely familiar, the sense of being trapped on your own mind. He'd felt that way for years, since he was taken from his family, or rather, handed off.

He hadn't a way to voice his thoughts, fears, screams. Back then or now. He was stuck in an endless cycle of waiting for the Flare to consume him, and being unable to do shit against it.

He went mute, not a word left his dry, cracked lips as over those months he was transported from room to room, place to place.

Sometimes he could physically feel the virus consuming him from the inside out. He could feel as his veins darkened and his thoughts grew darker than they already were. He would scratch and scrape anything in sight.

The remnants of who he truly was tried with all their might to come through, to fix things. They couldn't, though. He would bang his head against the wall till it bled a steady stream of scarlet liquid down his face, into his eyes and mouth.

He tried to push the virus out, cut the virus out. If he was left alone to a room with a scalpel or blade of any kind, well let's just say things would get dirty.

One particular night, while doctors frantically stomped their feet outside, he was alone in a room with a cart full of medical supplies. They'd forgotten to move it before leaving to talk outside.

Aspen grasped the scalpel in his fingers, breathing deeply and shakily as he pressed it to the skin of his wrist.

A face flashed across his mind. Newt.

He wanted to live a life with Newt, hold each other, comfort each other, merely be in each other's presence once more.

He dreamed of a life with the boy, safe from the Flare, from W.C.K.D. maybe they'd get a dog or something.

He wanted with all his heart to have Newt as his own, keep the boy safe, happy. Only in that moment he was the one who needed saving.

Though he'd love to hope that the Gladers, or whatever was left of them, would come and save him, he knew it would be false hope.

How were they supposed to do it?

He pressed down, blood pooling and dripping to the floor as he held in a cry. Suddenly he dropped the blade clattering to the ground as the doctors came back into the room, rushing to his side.

They frantically patched him up, though he hadn't needed stitches.

Every once and a while they'd inject him with some sort of cure, only it didn't cure him. It would slow down the virus for a bit, then it would pop up again and he'd try to kill a doctor.

Though trying to kill his captors wasn't always the cause of the Flare, sometimes he just got really angry, and let the intrusive thoughts win.

He never succeeded, just like he never succeeded in killing himself, but he tried, that's for fucking sure.

And he knew if he stayed in captivity for much longer, he would keep trying.

And he would succeed.