by Kass Morgan
Wells wiped sweat from his forehead. “What are you saying?”
“You know what I’m saying, Jaha, don’t be obtuse.”
“There’s another way—” Wells’s breaths came short, frantic. “I’ll fire at the tree. Give you a chance to run, say I missed.”
“They’ll kill you for missing.”
“I’ll dig a hole and say I buried you, I’ll—”
“They’ll want to see a body, Wells, think!” Graham’s whisper rose into a shout. He sucked his voice back in, shaking his head, his eyes growing distant. “All those things you said in there…”
Wells’s mouth went dry, though he kept his gun trained on Graham so Oak wouldn’t get suspicious. “Graham. I didn’t—”
“They were true.” His eyes rose to meet Wells’s, wide and clear. “I am not a good person. I’m not. Never have been, not for my entire life. But you are.” Graham snorted. “I think it’s what’s always bugged me the most about you.”
“I…” Wells’s head slumped. Graham was wrong—it had been a very long time since he’d considered himself a good person by any definition of the word. But this, what they were asking him to do, was a new level of monstrous. “I won’t do this. I can’t.”
“Sure you can,” Graham said, a slight tremor in his whisper betraying the fear underneath it. “I’m giving you permission. Your conscience is totally clear.”
Wells’s hands were slick with sweat against the cold metal of the gun. He glanced down at it, and then back up at the other boy. Graham’s cheeks were wet with tears.
“I never told you what I did back on the ship, did I?” Graham asked, his whisper cracking like a bad radio signal. “What they confined me for?”
Wells watched wordlessly as Graham raised his eyebrows and fell to his knees, until he was peering up at Wells through the darkness, his jaw set and eyes streaming.
“I’ve done bad things, Jaha. You don’t even know how many bad things. Let me do this one noble thing now. Please. Please just let me.”
Wells could hardly look at Graham, his longtime enemy’s forehead contorted with pain as he pleaded… not for his life, but for his own death. There was no trace here of the smirking, strutting Phoenician boy Wells knew. That Graham was already gone.
But this one was well worth saving.
“No,” Wells said, certainty cementing in his muscles. “We’ll find another wa—”
Graham’s hand darted out for Wells’s trigger before he could so much as blink. The blast rang out through the forest, through the air, through Wells’s head and heart and bones.
He stared at the smoking barrel, and then at the spot where Graham had been kneeling, and then, last and longest, at Graham’s lifeless crumpled body, his blood pouring in rivulets over the blanket of leaves beneath him.
Thoughts broke through the cloud of horror surrounding Wells.
Graham could have run. He could have been selfish. Anybody would have in his position.
He died to save us.
Minutes, hours, days passed, Wells hardly knew… and then a hand gripped his shoulder. Wells flinched, closed his eyes, and turned to see Oak staring at him with solemn pride.
“You’ve learned,” the Protector said. “Well done, son. Let’s go home.”
CHAPTER 25
Bellamy
It felt amazing to be roaming through the woods again. Jumping lightly over fallen logs, taking care to stay in the shadows of the trees, Bellamy could almost pretend he was out on another hunting trip. Even Luke’s presence next to him felt familiar. As his leg started to heal, he’d begun to join Bellamy on some of his outings. Normally, Bellamy resented having someone with him—most people moved slowly, or loudly, or felt the need to fill the silence with mindless chatter. Yet Luke was content to spend hours in the woods barely exchanging a word, communicating with just the odd nod or hand gesture when one of them spotted a target.
But he and Luke weren’t looking for a deer to bring back to camp. They were about to sneak into a fortress full of weird, white-clad murderers and steal their bombs.
“We’re getting close, right?” Luke asked quietly, finally breaking the silence. “This all looks a little different to me in the dark.”
“Yes. The entrance Felix and I found is just through those trees.” He pointed to a spot where the trees thinned out, revealing glimpses of a crumbling concrete wall.
As they got closer, they both grew quieter, until they were moving silently across the damp leaf-covered forest floor. He motioned for Luke to take cover behind one of the trees nearest the wall, and he did the same. For a long moment, they stood there, straining their ears for any sign of activity. But nothing came.
Bellamy crept forward, taking a few steps onto the grass path that formed a narrow perimeter around the five-sided fortress. He turned from side to side, and when he was sure the coast was clear, he beckoned for Luke to join him.
The air buzzed with an electricity Bellamy couldn’t quite identify, as if, at any moment, a sea of white-clad men with shaved heads would flood out of a hidden door, bullets flying. Yet as they hurried along the wall, nothing disturbed the silence except the sound of their own breath.
A few moments later, he found it—the hole in the ground that led straight down into their armory, or whatever the hell those cretins called it. After he and Felix had discovered it the other night, they’d covered the hole up with some debris—planks and rocks that were strewn about the field—to keep light from streaming inside. That was probably why none of their guards had noticed it. It never would’ve escaped Bellamy’s eye, though. He never overlooked any detail that could possibly signal danger. He couldn’t help it. It was in his DNA. It’s what kept him and his sister alive all those years they were in hiding. That’s why he’d noticed the strange pile of leaves, the one Clarke had dismissed.
If only she’d listened to him. If only he’d trusted himself enough to make her listen.
Gently, Bellamy picked up some of the planks and pushed them aside. Then he got down on his knees and put his ear to the ground. There were no sounds coming from below; the armory was empty. He lowered himself into the cellar. Then he blinked, trying to force his eyes to adjust to the dim light as quickly as possible.
By the time Luke was scrambling to his feet next to him, the shadowy shapes were coming into focus. There was the cart that he’d spotted the other night, still full of weapons. Guns, knives… and grenades.
“You ready?” Bellamy asked Luke. Luke nodded solemnly.
They’d planned this out in advance. There was one cart’s worth of supplies, and if they worked quickly, they could take it all. Bellamy and Luke had brought empty sacks with them from their campsite and carefully filled them up. Then they pulled themselves out of the hole in the ground and ran quietly back to the woods.
In the forest, they emptied out the sacks, hiding the weapons underneath the brush, then hurried back to the armory for more. They did this four times, as stealthily as they could in order to avoid detection, until there were only a few weapons left.
On their last trip in, as they loaded up their bags, a faint, melodic sound drifted toward them. Both Luke and Bellamy froze, like the deer sometimes did when they spotted Bellamy with his bow drawn, arrow locked in place. Someone was singing.
Let’s go, Luke mouthed, starting to inch back toward the opening.
But Bellamy felt himself being pulled the other way, toward the warped metal door that was too bent to close properly, light streaming through the gaps. Silently, he crept up to the door and peered out.
Two girls with braided hair and white tunics were walking down a hallway, singing while they carried a large silver platter between them.
When Earth was just a maiden fair
A goddess with white clouds for hair
She wished upon the stars above
For a child She could fill with love
Their strangely blank expressions and oddly harmonious voices sent chills down Bellamy’s
spine. What the hell was going on here? But as the girls came closer, his uneasiness turned to alarm. He knew one of them. It was Lina, the Earthborn girl from Max’s village. One of the people who’d been taken.
He willed her to glance at the door so he could motion to her. If he could only catch her attention, he could get her out of there. But she continued to stare straight ahead, her eyes wide and unfocused.
As they drifted past, a short, scowling man stormed into the corridor. “What took you so long? The Protectors are waiting for their dinner,” he snapped.
The second girl smiled. “The kitchen is far from the barracks,” she said dreamily.
“Well, try to speed it up next time.”
“If Earth wills it,” the girl said.
“If Earth wills it,” Lina echoed.
What the…
Bellamy turned away, scooped up his bag, then nodded at Luke and crawled back through the hole. When he stood up, blinking in the moonlight, he found that he was shaking.
“What happened?” Luke asked. “What did you see in there?”
“I saw Lina,” Bellamy said breathlessly as they both hurried back into the safety of the woods. “You know, the Earthborn girl.”
Luke’s eyes widened. “Was she okay? Was anyone else with her? Did you see any sign of Glass?”
“She was with another girl I didn’t recognize, but, Luke, there is something really, really strange going on there. I think…” He paused, not wanting to say the words aloud, afraid of what it’d mean for Octavia and the others. “I think they’ve been brainwashed.”
He explained what he’d seen, watching Luke’s jaw tighten and his eyes narrow.
“Thank goodness they’re alive, though. We’ll get them out of there,” Luke said quietly. “No matter what it takes.” He clenched and unclenched his fists. “Did you get any sense of the layout?”
“I’m pretty sure the armory is next to the guards’ barracks. The girls were bringing food in from the kitchen, which they said was far away.”
“Okay… okay… that’s good,” Luke said. “We know what area to hit if we need to.” He let out a long breath, as if he’d been holding it for a while. “Should we go tell the others?”
Bellamy hoisted his grenade-filled bag over his shoulder. Suddenly, confronting Clarke and Paul seemed like child’s play compared to what they would have to do afterward. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 26
Clarke
The forest was so quiet, it felt as though it was holding its breath.
It had only been an hour since Clarke had relieved Felix and taken his place at the lookout point. But each minute was piling onto the next like a weight bearing down on her, heavier and heavier. Cooper should’ve been back by now. It shouldn’t have taken the whole day for him to talk to the raiders.
She didn’t want to think about the possibility, but maybe it had all gone wrong.
Clarke stretched as best she could, without creeping too far out of position, trying to wring the thick worry out of her limbs. There was no sense in panicking. She would just have to wait and hope.
A twig cracked behind her. Clarke glanced quickly back. There was no one there. She took a deep breath, trying to quiet her racing heart. She wasn’t doing anyone any good by waiting here. It would make more sense for her to go look for Cooper, in case he needed backup. Whatever that meant in this case.
She crept toward the edge of the forest that bordered the fortress, wondering whether to ignore the prickle on the back of her neck. Bellamy had had feelings like that, and his instincts turned out to be right. But Clarke wasn’t like that. Her whole life had been about learning to trust her brain instead of her heart. That’s what they’d taught her during her medical training. That’s what her parents had impressed on her when she’d confronted them about their gruesome experiments. She had to think in terms of the “big picture” and the “larger good,” even when her gut was shouting something far different.
It grew brighter as she approached the edge of the forest, and the trees cast long, strange shadows in the moonlight. A shape emerged, the silhouette of a person. Clarke’s breath caught in her chest and she froze, unsure whether to dash for a tree or stay perfectly still.
She waited. She didn’t breathe.
The figure didn’t move.
Her heart was beating so fast, she was sure whoever was out there could hear. Still the figure didn’t move. But whoever it was had to have spotted her. There was no point in trying to hide.
“Cooper,” she called hoarsely. “Is that you?” Once the echo of her voice faded, there was only silence.
Slowly, she walked forward. “Cooper?” she tried again. “Are you okay?”
As she moved closer, Clarke realized that it wasn’t Cooper. It wasn’t anyone, really. She squinted, wondering if her eyes were deceiving her. But, no… she could see it clearly—the loose clothes stuffed with straw, the crude human features on the gourd head—it was a scarecrow, a thing she’d once read about.
Normally, encountering pre-Cataclysm artifacts filled her with excitement and wonder, but not this time. Something was wrong. They were too far from any crops for this to be a new scarecrow, and there was no way an old one could’ve survived the Cataclysm.
A few meters away, Clarke froze. No… she blinked… it had to be a trick of the light.
“No,” she breathed. “No, please.”
It wasn’t a scarecrow. Not entirely. Because, while the loose clothes were indeed filled with straw, the head wasn’t made from a gourd like she’d first thought.
It was a real human head.
Cooper’s.
Clarke screamed. She couldn’t stop it. Her shrieks rang up into the trees, sending two birds flapping away wildly. “Help!” she shouted. “Someone, please, help!” And then before she knew what she was doing, a name burst out of her throat. “Bellamy!”
She gasped, her head spinning, but then her initial wave of terror and revulsion receded, and her training kicked in. She staggered forward, steeling herself for what awaited. Cooper’s head had been severed and placed on a spike, on which someone had also affixed the body of a scarecrow—straw stuffed into Cooper’s clothes.
His face was round and bloated, his skin a stomach-churning blue. But the blood near the neck stem was still wet. This had happened recently. Clarke scanned the shadows for signs of movement. She took a deep breath and slowly walked around the gruesome effigy, then let out another gasp.
On the scarecrow’s back were written the words Serve or die. And they’d been written in blood.
“Oh shit,” someone whispered. Clarke spun around and saw Paul staring at the scarecrow, his face white with horror.
“I know…” Clarke said, forcing herself to breathe as tears began to fall down her cheeks. “We should look for the body. We can’t leave him like this.”
“What? No way,” Paul said, backing away.
“Okay, fine, I’ll deal with it later. But we need to figure out what to do next.”
But Paul had already turned around and was breaking into a run.
“Hey!” Clarke called. “Where are you going?”
A crashing sound made Clarke jump to the side. She grabbed a stick from the ground and raised it above her head, ready to pummel whoever emerged from the trees.
“Clarke! Are you okay? I’m coming! Clarke!”
She dropped the stick as Bellamy sprinted out of the shadows. When he saw her, his red, sweat-covered face collapsed with relief and he pulled her into a tight embrace. “I heard you scream and I thought…” His words were drowned out by a sound that was half laugh, half sob. “Thank god you’re all right.”
A few moments later, Luke emerged, moving smartly despite his limp, and dragging Paul with him.
“What’s going on?” Bellamy snarled, turning to Paul. “What did you do to her?”
“I didn’t do anything. They did that.” He gestured wildly at the scarecrow.
Bellamy spun around, seeing it
for the first time. “Oh my god,” he muttered, taking a few shaky steps backward. “Holy shit.”
“Let go of me, you idiot.” Paul groaned as he tried to free himself from Luke’s grasp. “I had nothing to do with this.”
“Then why were you running away?” Luke said through gritted teeth, tightening his hold until Paul let out a whimper.
“Because it’d be insane to stick around here. Look what they did to Cooper! We have no chance in hell of rescuing anyone. It’s time to get out.”
“You want to abandon them?” Clarke said, unable to keep the disdain out of her voice. Bellamy shot her a look of pride for standing up to Paul.
“Yes. We are out of our freaking depth here. My thoughts and prayers go out to our people on the inside, et cetera, et cetera, but we are marching home right now.”
“You can go,” Bellamy said, wrapping his arm around Clarke. “But the rest of us are staying. We have work to do.”
Bellamy and Clarke walked a little behind Luke, who was dragging along a whining, whimpering Paul. “Are you sure you’re okay?” Bellamy asked, glancing back over his shoulder. “What you saw… what they did to Cooper…”
“I’m okay,” Clarke said, though the quaver in her voice suggested otherwise. “After we tell the others, I’ll go back and tend to the…” She trailed off before she could say the word body.
Bellamy tightened his hold. “I’ll go with you. We’ll do it together.” Even with her medical training, the thought of the morbid task made her slightly woozy, and Clarke leaned against him, knowing he’d never let her fall.
“I’m so sorry,” she said softly. “I can’t believe I let Paul do that to you. I’ll never forgive myself.”
Bellamy didn’t respond, but he didn’t loosen his grip around her either. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet and measured. “I know you won’t. That’s why I’m sorry about the terrible things I said. You carry so much pain with you, Clarke. And I used that against you. I knew how to hurt you, and I went for it. Can you forgive me?”