River's POV
Time's passing, trickling through my fingers like water, and still no word from Simon. I sent three letters; I've given up on more. I don't think I can focus to figure the code correctly to fly under their radar. The sessions are getting longer. The hole in my head no longer hurts, leaving a clear path to my cerebrum; the pathologies associated to having the rod shoved inside my head have been less than pleasant.
Sometimes I'm catatonic, I remain stable for hours after sessions, unable to progress to the next assigned station or interview. Other times my mood verges on manic, the noise in my head wont be still and the silence around me is crushing in comparison. The dreams are worse.
Every time I am under I dream, and the dreams are filled with the fears of myself as well as those around me, monsters in my head are terrifying, the monsters in my head are beautiful. And sometimes I may cry myself to sleep as I lay here forgotten; drifting on a thousand lucid memories of things I can't begin to comprehend.
I am in hell.
And Lee and Nevva whisper about, meeting with the boys in the boathouse, but they no longer invite my presence, I frighten them. Nevva still cares, still wishes me well, and hopes about all things to free me. However she fears my cause is lost, and my brain is fragmented, my soul in broken pieces thrown to the wind.
She's not wrong.
"River! River!" I hand slaps my face. Dr. Mathias smiles down. "There you are. We were beginning to worry; you were sleep for so long."
"I don't sleep anymore," I mumble, hugging myself as I step shakily from the chair. There's a strange twitch in my shoulder that I cannot stop. "The mission is still open."
"Excuse me?" Dr. Mathias asks, squinting at me.
"I'm undirected, no one has explained what I'm to do, and the burning grows warmer."
"I see," he half smiles. "Why don't you go back to the dorm for an hour or so before your interview?"
"It's all a fools business," I mutter, walking away from him. The man is beginning to be afraid of me, he is oh so proud of the work he's done, but scared of the resulting compendium of possibilities he now must decipher.
I'm my room with no recollection of the steps that made up the journey. My bed is too big. I swear it's been growing, I have no tool to discern for certain, but it seems to be growing at .0006 percent a day. Logically I know this conclusion must be fictitious, unless…unless the bed is a challenge, they challenge us, test our strengths.
I walk to the window and punch it. It shatters and my fist comes back bloody but I am able to pull a large piece of glass from the frame. I tear the covers off my bed and begin slicing away at it, tearing at the stuffing and dropping the glass when it begins to cut me. I tear strips of the mattress off until I feel hands grabbing me from behind, tugging me from the now ruined bed.
"What the hell are you doing?" The security guard asked, pulling me away from the bed.
"It's a test, a challenge, I need to do this, don't stop me," I twist and turn trying to pull from his grasp.
"You're insane," he shakes his head, turning his head to speak into the radio. "Back up floor two." He manages to hold me till the other guard arrives and together they drag me to the med center.
An elderly nurse seals up my hand, and tsking sends me on my way to the interview. The interviewer sits quietly as I pace the room. Rat in a cage, no where to go, that's how I feel now. They're watching, always watching in here. Can't get away from them here. Judging, twisting and turning my words like a knife in my gut.
"Why did your destroy your mattress?" He finally asked.
"It was a test, a hidden test, had to smoke it out, find the bad seed and show them that the world doesn't stop spinning just because they're no longer interested in this vestibule of faith. No…no, not faith, faith denotes something older, something made true through the belief of many, this is one mans quest."
"Okay…are all the mattresses hidden tests? Should I ask that they all be locked up so you don't systematically-"
"Yes I have a system. You make an assumption because you have a system, your system, you're symptomatic, it's chronic! You think it's benign, that it has to be cut out, this system is simple. Blanket folded thus the sheet pulled taut the mattress. The mattress can't be trusted, it has to be gutted. I looked under twenty and found a pea and you wonder why I'm not sleeping?" I caught my breath talking a good look at him. Scared. Worried, the emotions played across his face, but I couldn't see him. "Are you worried that I cut up my mattress for no reason or that I had a perfectly good reason that you can't see? Can't...see...anyone. Even the orderlies wear masks."
"Why did you cut up your mattress?" He looks slightly annoyed; he can't understand me even when I am clear. No, not clear, my words are a jumble I can't set straight anymore.
"I am trying to protect my spine." God, can't he see how at their mercy I am! None of them understand, no one can see the truth like I do. Not the teachers, not Nevva. Nevva, she's still afraid of me, if only she would let me help…
"Are you worried you might be injured? Your movement trainers have given you excellent marks-"
"No one will give me a mission." I can help if they just let me.
"A mission." He jots something down.
"I have a reason. I'm...rea-son-a-ble. I have a reason."
"I'm sure you do. But there are no missions here. You're delusional."
"Delusions, images not real, but real to the one who sees them," I mutter, pacing the room.
"Exactly, you are the one seeing them. Delusions." He gives me a mild smile.
"No, no there is a mission A reason, a common goal to unite us. The Pax, they had a mission."
"Enough of that, River!" He yells, it's the first time I've seen him show any emotion. "You are a useless little child here only as a possible weapon. You are nothing." His face is red, but he's calming down.
"My movement hasn't been dictated yet but I am not here for nothing. I...am a...sti...sty. And you know I have a spine. There's something wrong...with the body politic."
"Your body is fine, River."
"No, you want. You want me to work the way they want. I disappoint, but I know. No, not that I know, I don't know, but I do and the facts remain the same. I know the facts and you want them secure. It's the Pax. I shouldn't know." That's it. I was never meant to know about the Pax, peace. But not peace, death.
"I really need you to be quiet," it's a forced calm.
"Miranda," I whisper. "What?" I glance over my shoulder; a young man is backing away from me. "You?" I reach to my back, feeling a round object on my spine. Spine, they attack the spine. "Get it out!" I yell grabbing it and trying to pull it out, but its arms dig deeper into my skin. I scream.
"This is for your own good," the interviewer smiles sadly.
"No, please!" I whimper, seeing what's going to happen. He pushes a button on the controller, and my body starts to jerk, as electric pain shoots through me, I scream again.
"They're sticking in me! It's in the mattress, and it's crawling inside me! You cut it out, you cut it out, you cut it out!" The pain stops.
"And the Pax?" He asks.
"You," I glare, face on the table where I have fallen without realizing. "You killed them, you were there, helped kill them all. Dead, so many dead." I don't even scream when the pain begins again, only lie still until the world goes blessedly dark.
