The Inventor

Chapter Twenty Three; "Traitor"

If you knew how to find the right channels on the old radio you made, you could find blips of the outside world, mumbles of words, music, commercials, conversations. The real work was out there beyond your little bubble of a glade. But, other than that, it was just the dull hum of static.

     That is what this felt like but there was nothing comforting about anything beyond the static.

     The world was out of focus, fuzzy around the edges just like the voices seamed, sometimes you were unable to make anything out. You would scream, whimper, cry as your hands gripped the nooks in the hiding space by the cliff. There was no wall to protect you this time, just the cave. Something wasn't right in your head, your body was becoming immobile with griever stings.

     You pushed down at a gash in your side, felt the blood leak between your fingertips and onto your clothes. One leg lost all feeling and you couldn't relax your muscles because a pain was shooting up your spine and making you sob.

     You wouldn't let them take you, pounded at grievers with stones. You refused to die, your mind wouldn't fully shut off, your body would stop at nothing to keep your heart pumping.

     You remember dragging yourself by your arms, skidding your flesh against hard rough stone and leaving a red trail of blood and griever goop. Hunger ate away at your muscles, thirst made you break out in cold sweats. You begged for someone to find you but nobody came.

     There were moments when you were ready for death to come, feeling it not too far out of reach and you laid on your back, staring at the sun. But somehow, someway, your tattered mind would remember something that would force you to go on. You couldn't die, not this way.

     Sometimes the world would have a blurred out frame and you would curl yourself into a wall while the griever venom slithered snakes into your ears and shoved horrible things into your head. It tore up your reality, made you shriek and plead to be released.

     You found yourself always moving, though, in some instinct, some motive that you couldn't place between the shattered reality. Maybe it was Newt, Newt who in the times of just blissful nothing came up a lot. It was his voice that would speak when you laid on your back, making you smile through pain because briefly you felt so close to death that nothing hurt. Or Minho's voice that brought the pain crashing back, betrayal and anger clawing at your throat, making you hurl. At the thought of him you would snap, scrapping your skin raw on the raw floor as you dragged yourself to the rabid, drilling anger. You wanted him dead, such an unreasonable thing but you clung to it for survival, the adrenaline keeping you alive.

     There was no relief, however, when you found your way back to the doors. You had no strength and stared at them in the early morning light, laying on your stomach with your leg in a turnacet. Air came harsh on the way out, sounding gurgled but you couldn't cough it away.

     The stone felt cool under your cheek and you closed your eyes, laying at the end of the corridor. Your teeth rattled together when the ground trembled, the doors opening somewhere in front of you. But it was the same ache in your head that followed you every second in this maze, not room for much else as the world began to blip in and out.

     Footsteps vibrated against your skin, pounding against the ground and inside your head until you were turned on your back.

     The sky looked such a nice pale blue that you couldn't believe your ragged body was sitting under it. Your eyes focused on the boy knelt over you and felt that nag, that nag that came with even just the thought of Minho.