Survival's a Bitch

Chapter 1: You were a criminal, so what?

This might be one of the few instances in which curiosity had killed the cat.

All things considered, you thought they might have overreacted a little bit. So you got a little curious and a little sleep-deprived and broke into the mainframe to look at the specs on Earth. I mean, was that honestly a good reason to put you in lock-up? You didn't think so. And you certainly had not considered it as a possible outcome when you made the impulsive decision to hack into the mainframe.

You hadn't really considered the idea of getting caught at all. I mean, you never had before? And with a track record like yours, it shouldn't have been that difficult. Get in, take a look, jot some numbers, print some pictures, get the fuck out before anyone was the wiser. You got too cocky, though, and you knew it. You should have known not to click on the [TOP SECRET] file, logged behind several parent folders. You really should have known it would raise some alarms. (Quite literally, as luck would have it.)

You had had enough information a long time ago. Considerably more than anyone else could have hoped for. Dying and waking up in a popular fantasy world will do that to you. (It would have been a lot more exciting if you hadn't spent the first several YEARS just trying to get your tongue to function enough to get out a full sentence, but beggars couldn't be choosers. You were dead, but only kind of, and you would take it.) You had had a lot of time after the age of five to pick shit up rather than worrying about mentally maturing. You had done that the first time around. Box checked.

And hence, your new-found career in hacking. You had tried your hand at several hobbies very early on, and although mechanics had been very appealing at first, hacking usually didn't have the potential consequence of electrocution. Unfortunately, it did have the potential consequence of lockup. Where you had currently landed yourself. And you knew that Clarke was scraping away at the metal as some kind of artistic coping mechanism, but if she didn't stop soon you would scrape right through the right wall of your cell like Andy Dufresne and choke the living shit out of her. You really needed to sleep. Lack of it had gotten you into this situation, and you had a feeling it was not going to get you out.

Lucky you, you now got to go down to Earth early with a bunch of borderline and not-so-borderline criminals. You knew it would be soon now. Pike had started holding Earth Skills again. It wouldn't be long now. Honestly, you felt bad that no one was really paying attention to him. It was obviously stressing him out... but you didn't feel bad enough to pay attention yourself. After all, you had paid attention the first time around, fully aware the skills would be required eventually. You did however feel bad enough to stay back after lessons and probe him with hypotheticals. Earth skills had been your best subject and you had gone as far as to do an independent study in it, but still you stayed late to ask him questions. It got you talking to.a real person that actually deigned to respond, unlike the guards guarding your cell in solitary, plus it made Pike feel useful and it got you away from Clarke's scraping. God with her scraping. You knew she was coping, she'd been in solitary a month, while you'd only been here a year. Still, it had been driving you insane for 30 whole days.

You had been counting down the days for a while now, and you weren't positive (mostly because counting past 12 was hard and you were having trouble remembering the date you got put in here), but you were pretty sure that you were gonna be out of here soon. If not from your probably problematic counting, then from the fact that the scraping had moved from the wall you shared with Clarke's cell to what you could only guess was her cell floor. (Thank God. She was really not helping your sleep disorder.)

You probably should have devised a plan as soon as you realized you had landed yourself in a dystopian society, but aside from some not-so-light, slightly encoded journaling you had done chicken shit. (It wasn't really as much that you wrote in code, as that you discovered at age 6 that you somehow knew Greek. You really wanted to know more about what you'd done with that in your past life.)

That wasn't entirely true, you supposed. You had planned, somewhat extensively, for later Arcs. You had devised several potential plans to deal with ALIE and the death-wave, as those seemed the most immediate threats. But you had never planned on actually being one of the 100. You had always assumed you would find yourself on Alpha station and be sent down with the rest of the Arc. Everything prior to your arrival wasn't anything you could control, or wanted to. That was too many variables.

Yet here you were. One of the 100. You were just THRILLED to be a part of the shitshow from the very beginning. How were

Your procrastination had gotten the best of you again, and you thought this might be the worst time. You had been internally ranking your worst procrastination fuck-ups, out of what you could recall from both lives, when you got a visitor.

"How's it going, cybergeek?"

"Not your best, Raven."

"I know. Maybe if you hadn't moved in next to Finn, I'd have more time to brainstorm."

"What can I say? We'd been neighbors so long. I guess I just didn't' want to let impending death break the streak. You sure you don't wanna join us? All three of us in one place, just like old times? I've already got some ideas if you needed?"

Raven laughed at that. She really shouldn't be allowed in or around your cell, and she definitely should not be let in unsupervised, but that was exactly why this was going to work. Perks of knowing people. And sympathy for getting killed off on your next birthday, you supposed.

"So, you got it?"

"Of course I do, who do you take me for? But, Pike, really? That was a sketchy way to send a message."
Raven really needed to cut you some slack. You didn't exactly have a lot of options, limited contact and all. Still, she unzipped her jacket, and revealed one of the several journals you had kept for years. Well-loved was a very nice way of describing it. You had had to sew in one of those strings into the binding that wrapped around it just to keep it half closed. The pages were worn to hell and back, by grease and oil stains and just enough water damage to make the pages flare without becoming completely illegible.

"Fuck. Thanks so much for this."

"Of course. I mean, worst case scenario, we're neighbors again, right?" You both knew that was NOT worse case scenario for her anymore, and hadn't been for about a month. Had it really been that long? You both still liked to pretend she wasn't an adult and any slight stepping out of line wasn't punishable by execution.

There was a knock on the door, and Raven turned to go. You knew you shouldn't lie, but you couldn't help yourself before asking, "See you soon?"

"See you soon," she responded with a grin, like it was a given.

You knew it wasn't.

A/N: Honestly, y'all, I don't know what has compelled me to pull this from my ass. But I've written over 6k words in the last 2 days (and now I've edited), which as far as I've ever gotten on one fic. We'll see how long it lasts. Title and cover aren't permanent if I keep this up. Leave suggestions in the comments if you want and def let me know if there are any grammar or punctuation errors or if something doesn't really flow right because the only time I ever seem to write at is between the hours of 1 and 6 AM.