Chapter 25
Everything was hazy now, like a gauze curtain had been draped across her line of vision. Sometimes she reached out to try and bat it away, but her hand passed through the air and returned to her side and by then she had already forgotten what she was doing.
That happened a lot, the forgetting. Pieces fell away and she was left with vague impressions of shadows and images and places that she might have visited. But maybe she hadn't, and she couldn't remember that either.
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She didn't go to class anymore. There was no point, no reason or logic dictating her movements. She knew she should go, following the small stream of students, but then she would drift away, hiding in hallways and rooms until everyone was gone and it was quiet again.
She followed Tiri one day, followed her to English class. Not the actual person of course, Tiri had left her alone long ago and far away. No, she just followed the echoes left behind.
She had paused outside the door, listened to the teacher speak, but she couldn't make sense of the words, of the lesson. Maybe she was regressing, River thought. She wondered if maybe she should feel worried, but she just walked away from the door, the classroom, the nonsensical words that fell in neat orderly rows like ants from the teacher's mouth.
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She wondered as she wandered, or maybe it was she wandered as she wondered? Time was linear, point A to point B to point C. Not her time. Her time came in jerks and starts, in fuzzy almost-sleeps and equally fuzzy walks. Sometimes there was clarity, and in those moments she analyzed and thought in perfect little crystals that she strung on strands of iron.
She thought sometimes that maybe the missed classes and meals and the hours of walking weren't real, that her time was manipulated and distorted and blown out of proportion. But then the curtain fell back and her walls rose again; and though she grasped for the bright little thoughts that she had thought she had thought when she was lucid the strands broke and the diamonds skittered away.
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There were needle marks on her arms, silver-white knots on snow-white skin, and sometimes she counted them, tried to calculate how much time had passed, how many days she missed.
But sometimes there were four, or fourteen, or forty. She wasn't sure anymore, the numbers slipped through her fingers like water when she was done counting and she was never sure if there were more or less than the last time or the time before that.
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She was lying on the floor, cheek pressed against cool marble. The room was large and empty and white, and there was a window where the thin, watery sunlight came through and offered her fragile warmth.
Her body was trembling, and she was unsure whether that was because she was cold, or because she hadn't eaten or slept in days past. Or had it been weeks? Months? Years? Fog filled her mind and she thought maybe she was going insane. Another part of her told her she already was.
Footsteps echoed and hands encased in blue latex caught her arms and pulled her upright, their fingers digging into her arms and leaving bruises.
She screamed and thrashed and kicked, catching one under the jaw with her foot and throwing him backwards, twisting violently away from the other. And then she was running, feet flying as she darted through the halls, whipping around corners. There was an airshaft, and a landing pad, and a boat, and she was going up up up. Then there was cold and a box and voices and she opened her eyes and-
she was being dragged down the corridor, her body limp and unresisting. There was one on either side of her, skin unmarked, unbruised, unbroken. It wasn't real, of course it wasn't real. Mind fog parted and she knew she couldn't fight them, but the answer to why eluded her. Programming, mind whispered before it went silent.
"Why not?" she asked, twisting her head so she could look at the shorter one, the one who talked more and sometimes (if she was a good girl and did what she was told) might answer one of her questions. But he didn't blink or twitch or acknowledge her, and it took her a while to realize she hadn't opened her mouth.
Dug her fingernails into her palms, felt the sting that made her remember she was still a living breathing thing, even if she didn't feel like it.
Then she realizes that the sting, while there, doesn't register. She knows she should feel it, does feel it in fact, but it doesn't compute. She can ignore it, doesn't mind or care or, if she wanted to she knows, even feel it except for a little prickle at the edges of her brain, reminding her that it hurts.
She's just beginning to wonder why when she blinks and the air is colder (but not the air she knows, the feel and taste and essence of the air) and she is in Dr. Mathias's office in the hard orange chair in front of the brown wooden desk with blue hands on her shoulders, preventing escape into the white halls. (She finds it's easier to think in colors, makes it easier to organize).
Dr. Mathias asks a question, but the words don't make sense. She thinks it's something like 'River, why are you not in class?' but she's not sure. Besides, she has been missing class for days weeks months years now, and he hasn't noticed. She wonders why that is though, and she wants to ask, because she knows Dr. Mathias will answer her questions, even though she is unsure how she knows what she knows.
She tries to open her mouth, find the words, but the normal clear streams that run through her head are all dried up and even though she digs deep all she finds is a handful of dirt.
"All the rivers have dried up and left behind only dirt," she tries to tell him. She thinks her mouth may have opened this time because there are more words, these ones blurred and indistinct, flying around her.
Reaction, impaired cognitive ability, inability to recognize the passage of time, first one to achieve this level, move up, next phase, increased lucidity, double the dosage.
She thinks that once she would have understood the words, but now they are meaningless to her. She thinks now she should be afraid, but she is unable to summon the correct emotion.
Blue hands pull her upright and she is moving again, shunted along through more corridors and rooms, past more people.
In the back of her mind, she wonders if the sunlight was real or imagined. Either way, she wishes she could find her way back.