by Kass Morgan
“I think the radiation must’ve finally scrambled your brain.”
Clarke twisted around and saw Bellamy looking at her with a combination of surprise and amusement. His familiar smirk had returned.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and ducked under the surface, popping up a second later with a laugh as water streamed down her face. “It’s fine.”
Bellamy stepped forward. “So your keen scientific mind knew instinctively that the water was safe?”
Clarke shook her head. “No.” She lifted a hand into the air and made a show of examining it. “I could be growing flippers and gills as we speak.”
Bellamy nodded with mock solemnity. “Well, if you grow flippers, I promise not to shun you.”
“Oh, trust me. I’m not going to be the only mutant.”
Bellamy raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
Clarke cupped her hands, filled them with water, and splashed it at Bellamy with a laugh. “Now you’ll grow flippers too.”
“You really shouldn’t have done that.” Bellamy’s voice was low and menacing, and for a moment, Clarke thought she might’ve actually upset him. But then he grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head in one swift motion.
The moon was so large and bright that there was no mistaking the grin on Bellamy’s face as he reached down to undo the button on his pants, tossing them aside like they weren’t the only pair he had on the planet. His long, well-muscled legs were pale in his gray shorts. Clarke blushed but didn’t look away.
Bellamy plunged into the lake and closed the distance between them with a few powerful strokes. He’d boasted about teaching himself to swim during his treks to the stream, and for once, he hadn’t been exaggerating.
He disappeared under the water, just long enough for Clarke to feel a flicker of worry. Then his hand grasped her wrist, and she squealed as he spun her around, expecting him to splash her in retaliation. But Bellamy just stared at her for a moment before raising a hand and running his finger along her neck. “No gills yet,” he said softly.
Clarke shivered as she looked up at him. His hair was slicked back away from his face, and water droplets clung to the stubble along his jawline. His dark eyes burned with an intensity that was worlds away from his usual playful grin. It seemed hard to believe he was the same boy she’d carelessly flung her arms around in the woods.
Something shifted in his gaze, and she closed her eyes, sure that he was about to kiss her. But then a crack sounded from the trees, and Bellamy’s head whipped around. “What was that?” he asked. Without waiting for Clarke to respond, he took off for the shore, leaving her alone in the water.
Clarke watched Bellamy grab his bow and disappear into the shadows. She sighed, then silently chastised herself for her foolishness. If it’d been her family they were seeking, she wouldn’t waste time playing in the water either. She tilted her head back, sending drops of water trickling off her face as she stared up at the sky and thought about the two bodies drifting among those very stars. What would her parents say if they could see her now, here on the planet they had always dreamed of calling home?
“Can we play the atlas game?” Clarke asked, leaning over her father to peer at his tablet. It was covered with complicated-looking equations that Clarke didn’t recognize. But she would someday soon; even though she was only eight, she’d recently started algebra. When Cora and Glass heard about it, they’d rolled their eyes and whispered loudly about how math was pointless. Clarke had tried to explain that without math, there would be no doctors, and no engineers, which meant that they’d all die of preventable diseases… if the Colony didn’t burst into flames first. But Cora and Glass had only laughed and then spent the rest of the day giggling every time Clarke walked past.
“In a minute,” her father said. He frowned slightly as he swiped the screen, rearranging the order of the equations. “I just need to finish this first.”
Clarke brought her face closer to the tablet. “Can I help? If you explain it to me, I bet I can figure the hard part out.”
He laughed and ruffled her hair. “I’m sure you could. But you’re helping me just by sitting here. You remind me why our research is so important.” He smiled, closed the program he was working on, and opened the atlas. A holographic globe appeared in the air just above the couch.
Clarke swiped her finger through the air and the globe rotated. “What’s this one?” she asked, pointing to the outline of a large country.
Her father squinted. “Let’s see… that’s Saudi Arabia.”
Clarke pressed her finger against the shape. It turned blue and the words New Mecca appeared.
“Ah, that’s right,” her father said. “That one changed its name a number of times before the Cataclysm.” He rotated the sphere and pointed to a long, narrow country on the other side of the globe. “What about that one?”
“Chile,” Clarke said confidently.
“Really? I think it feels pretty warm in here.”
Clarke rolled her eyes. “Daddy, are you going to make that joke every time we play?”
“Every. Single. Time.” He smiled and pulled Clarke onto his lap. “At least, until we’re actually in Chile. Then it might get old.”
“David,” Clarke’s mom warned from the kitchen, where she was tearing open protein packets and mixing them in with the greenhouse kale. She didn’t like it when Clarke’s father made jokes about going to Earth. According to her research, it was going to be at least another hundred years until the planet was safe.
“What about the people?” Clarke asked.
Her father cocked his head to the side. “What do you mean?”
“I want to see where all the people lived. Why aren’t any apartments on the map?”
Her father smiled. “I’m afraid we don’t have anything that detailed. But people lived everywhere.” He traced his finger along one of the squiggly lines. “They lived by the ocean… they lived in the mountains… the desert… along the rivers.”
“How come they didn’t do anything when they knew the Cataclysm was coming?”
Her mother walked over to join them on the couch. “It all happened very quickly,” she said after she’d sat down. “And there weren’t many places on Earth where people could hide from all that radiation. I think the Chinese were building a structure here.” She zoomed out the map and pointed to a spot on the far right side. “And there was talk of something near the seed bank, here.” She traced her finger to the top of the map.
“What about Mount Weather?” her father asked.
Clarke’s mother fiddled with the globe. “That was in what would’ve been Virginia, right?”
“What’s Mount Weather?” Clarke asked, leaning in for a better look.
“Many years before the Cataclysm, the United States government built a large underground bunker in case of nuclear war. The scenario seemed unlikely, but they had to do something to protect the President—he was like their Chancellor,” she explained. “But when the bombs finally fell, no one made it there in time, not even the President. It all happened too suddenly.”
An uncomfortable question bumped against the jumble of other thoughts in Clarke’s mind. “How many people died? Like, thousands?”
Her father sighed. “More like billions.”
“Billions?” Clarke rose to her feet and padded over to the small, round, star-filled window. “Do you think they’re all up here now?”
Her mother walked over and placed her hand on Clarke’s shoulder. “What do you mean?”
“Isn’t heaven supposed to be somewhere in space?”
Clarke’s mother gave her shoulder a squeeze. “I think heaven is wherever we imagine it to be. I’ve always thought mine would be on Earth. In a forest somewhere, full of trees.”
Clarke slipped her hand into her mother’s. “Then that’s where mine will be too.”
“And I know what song will be playing at the pearly gates,” her father said with a laugh.
Her mother spun around. “David, don’t you dare play that song again.” But it was too late. Music was already streaming out of the speakers in the walls. Clarke grinned as she heard the opening lines of “Heaven Is a Place on Earth.”
“Seriously, David?” her mother asked, raising an eyebrow.
Her father only laughed and bounded over to grab their hands, and the three of them spun around the living room, singing along to her father’s favorite song.
“Clarke!” Bellamy emerged from the tree line, breathless. It was too dark to see the expression on his face, but she could hear the urgency in his voice. “Come and see this!”
Clarke stumbled awkwardly through the water. She reached the muddy bank and, forgetting that she was barely dressed, broke into a run, ignoring the rocks under her bare feet and the sting of the chilly night air.
He was crouched on the ground, staring at something Clarke couldn’t make out.
“Bellamy!” she called. “Are you okay? What was that sound?”
“Nothing. A bird or something. But look at this. It’s a footprint.” He pointed at the ground, his smile shimmering with hope. “It’s Octavia’s, I’m sure of it. We found the trail.”
Relief coursed through Clarke as she knelt down for a better look. There seemed to be another print a few meters away, in a patch of mud. Both looked fairly recent, as if Octavia had walked by only hours earlier. But before she could reply, Bellamy stood up, pulled Clarke to her feet, and kissed her.
He was still wet from the lake, and as he wrapped his arms around her waist, her damp skin clung to his. For a moment, the world around them faded away. All that existed was Bellamy—the warmth of his breath, the taste of his lips. He moved one of his hands from her waist to her lower back and Clarke shivered, suddenly acutely aware that she and Bellamy were standing in their underwear, dripping wet.
A cold breeze shuddered through the thick canopy of leaves and danced across the nape of Clarke’s neck. She shivered again, and Bellamy slowly unlocked his lips from hers. “You must be freezing,” he said, rubbing his hands up and down her back.
She cocked her head to the side. “You’re wearing even less clothing than I am.”
Bellamy ran his finger up her arm, then tugged playfully at her damp bra strap. “We can fix that, if it bothers you.”
Clarke smiled. “I think it’s probably a good idea to put on more clothes before we head off into the woods to follow those footprints.” Even though she didn’t think the tracks would vanish overnight, she knew Bellamy wouldn’t want to stop now that he’d found the trail.
He looked at Clarke. “Thank you,” he said, leaning over to kiss her again before he took her hand and led her toward the shore.
They dressed quickly, then grabbed their packs and headed back into the shadow-filled woods. The trail was fairly easy to follow, although Bellamy kept spotting the next print long before Clarke saw anything. Had his eyes grown that sharp from hunting? Or was it the by-product of his desperation? “Forget the gills. I think you’ve developed night vision,” she called when he dashed toward yet another footprint she hadn’t noticed. She’d meant it as a joke, of course, but then she frowned. The radiation levels on Earth clearly weren’t as high as she’d once feared, but that didn’t mean they were safe yet. Low-level radiation poisoning could take weeks to present, even if their cells had already begun to deteriorate. For all she knew, that was why no more dropships had arrived. What if the Council wasn’t waiting to determine whether Earth was safe—because the hundred’s biometric data had already proved that it wasn’t?
Her heart racing, Clarke glanced down at the monitor clamped to her wrist and counted the days they’d been on Earth. She looked up at the moon, which was three-quarters full. It had been a pale sliver that first terrible night after they’d crashed. Her stomach plummeted as she remembered a pivotal moment in her parents’ research. The day most patients grew sicker. Day twenty-one.
“I’m used to looking for things in the dark,” Bellamy said ahead of her, oblivious to her anxiety. “Back on the Colony, I’d sneak into the abandoned storage areas. Most of them didn’t have electricity anymore.”
Clarke winced as a branch scraped her leg. “What were you looking for?” she asked, shoving aside her concern. If anyone did begin presenting signs of radiation poisoning, they had some medicine that might help, albeit a paltry amount.
“Old machine parts, textiles, the odd Earthmade relic—anything worth trading at the Exchange.” His tone was casual, but she could hear a hint of strain in his voice. “Octavia didn’t always get enough to eat at the care center, so I had to find a way to get extra ration points.”
The admission pulled Clarke from her own thoughts. Her heart ached at the idea of a younger, slighter version of the boy in front of her, alone in a dark, cavernous storage area. “Bellamy,” she started, searching for the right words, then cut herself off as she caught sight of something glinting from the shadowy depths behind the trees. She knew she should keep moving; they couldn’t afford to lose any more time. Yet something about the way it shimmered brought Clarke to a stop.
“Bellamy, come look at this,” she said, turning to walk toward it.
There was something on the ground, scattered among the roots of a large tree. Clarke bent down for a closer look and saw that it was metal. She inhaled sharply and reached out to run her finger along one of the long, twisted pieces. What could it have been part of? And how had it ended up here, in the middle of the woods?
“Clarke?” Bellamy shouted. “Where did you go?”
“I’m over here,” she called back. “You need to see this.”
Bellamy materialized soundlessly next to her. “What’s going on?” He was breathing heavily, and there was an edge to his voice. “You can’t just take off like that. We need to stick together.”
“Look.” Clarke picked up a piece of metal and held it in the moonlight. “How could this have survived the Cataclysm?”
Bellamy shifted from one foot to the other. “No clue,” he said. “Now can we keep moving? I don’t want to lose the trail.”
Clarke was about to set the strange artifact back on the ground when she noticed two familiar letters carved into the metal. TG. Trillion Galactic. “Oh my god,” she murmured. “It came from the Colony.”
“What?” Bellamy crouched down next to her. “It must be part of the dropship, right?”
Clarke shook her head. “I don’t think so. We have to be at least six kilometers from camp. There’s no way this is wreckage from the crash.” At least, not our crash.
Clarke felt suddenly disoriented, as if trying to discern between a memory and a dream. “There are more pieces scattered around. Maybe they’ll be something that’ll—” She cut herself off with a cry as a jolt of pain shot through her right arm.
“Clarke? Are you okay?”
Bellamy’s arm was around her, but she couldn’t look at him. Her eyes were fixed on something on the ground.
Something long, dark, thin, and wriggling.
She tried to point the creature out to Bellamy, but found that she couldn’t move. “Clarke! What’s wrong?” he shouted.
Clarke opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Her chest was beginning to tighten. Her arm was on fire.
“Oh, shit,” she heard Bellamy say. She couldn’t see him anymore. The world around her had begun to spin. Stars and sky and trees and leaves swirled in the darkness. The searing heat that had been shooting up her arm faded away. Everything was fading. She fell back against Bellamy, then felt herself being lifted into the air. She was weightless, just like she’d been in the lake. Just like her parents were now.
“Clarke, stay with me,” Bellamy called to her from somewhere very far away. The darkness was rushing around her, wrapping her legs and arms in stars.
And then there was only silence.
CHAPTER 3
Glass
Glass lifted her head from Luke’s chest, trying not to be frightened by how much
effort it required. He smiled as she pushed herself into a sitting position and let her long legs spill over the side of the couch. Glass wasn’t sure whether the lack of oxygen was making her drowsy, or whether she was just tired from staying up most of the night. Lying in bed with Luke, the last thing she wanted to do was sleep. They didn’t know how much time they had left, so every moment was precious. She and Luke had spent the last few nights wrapped in each other’s arms: whispering their fleeting, half-formed thoughts, or just lying silently, memorizing the sound of each other’s heartbeats.
“I should probably go out and look for more supplies.” Luke spoke lightly, but they both knew the gravity of what he was proposing. Ever since the skybridge between the ships had closed, the chaos on Walden had reached a fever pitch. The Waldenites’ desperate attempts to find and hoard food had turned violent. Armed with a meager handful of protein packets, Glass and Luke had barred themselves inside Luke’s tiny flat, doing their best to ignore the sounds echoing from the corridors—the angry shouts of neighbors fighting over supplies, the frantic cries of mothers searching for lost children, the ragged wheezes of those struggling to breathe the increasingly thin air.
“It’s okay,” Glass said. “We have enough for a few days, and after that…” She cut herself off, looking away.
“You’re really too good at keeping calm under pressure. It’s a little scary. You should have been a guard.” He tapped his finger under her chin. “I’m serious,” he said in response to her look of skepticism. “I’ve always thought women make the best guards. It’s a shame girls on Phoenix never really consider it.”
Glass smiled inwardly, imagining her best friend Wells’s surprise if she’d shown up to the first day of officer training. While he probably would’ve been too shocked to speak at first, she was sure he’d have supported her. Before she met Luke, Wells was the one person who’d always treated her seriously, who believed she had talents beyond flirting and styling her hair.