Day 21

by Kass Morgan

  Silently, Sasha cut the rope tying Priya to the tree, and lowered her carefully down. “Do you think… did she do this to herself?” Wells asked, turning away as Clarke felt the bruised neck for a pulse they all knew she wouldn’t find. Quiet, helpful, steadfast Priya. Why would she have done something like this? Was it terrible homesickness? Or had she sensed the hundred were beyond saving? Threads of guilt began to wind their way through his horror. Could he have done more to make her feel safe?

  “No,” Sasha said, her voice shaking. She’d climbed down from the tree and was now standing a few meters behind Wells.

  “I’m not sure yet,” Clarke said without taking her eyes from Priya. “I’d have to think more about the marks on her neck, the position of the rope…” She trailed off. Wells knew she didn’t relish the role of coroner.

  “She didn’t kill herself,” Sasha said, more firmly this time.

  “And how do you know?” Clarke asked, finally tearing her eyes from Priya to face Sasha. Wells couldn’t tell whether Clarke disliked having her medical authority questioned, or if she resented the outsider’s intrusion into their private pain.

  “Her feet,” Sasha said softly, pointing.

  Until this moment, Wells hadn’t realized that Priya was barefoot. He stepped forward and squinted in an attempt to see what Sasha was talking about. There were marks on her soles that, at first, looked like streaks of dirt. But as he got closer, Wells realized they were cuts—cuts in the shapes of letters.

  “Oh my god,” Clarke gasped.

  There was a message carved into Priya’s flesh. One word on the sole of each small foot.

  Go. Home.

  He didn’t have to worry about returning Sasha to the cabin. Once the sound of footsteps and muffled shouts made it clear that people were coming to investigate Clarke’s cries, Wells sent Sasha back into the woods with instructions to sneak back into the clearing when the coast was clear. As word about Priya spread, the clearing would fill with enough commotion that no one would notice the Earthborn girl had gone missing.

  About ten minutes later, Eric and an Arcadian girl were carrying Priya’s body back down the hill, while Antonio escorted the wide-eyed, shaking Clarke. Wells wished he could help her himself—especially considering how upset she’d been about Bellamy earlier—but someone needed to investigate the crime scene, such as it was, before the sun set.

  He watched as the others trailed after the body. Once the impromptu funeral procession had disappeared behind the trees, he began scanning the ground, trying to determine whether Priya had been seized in the forest, or dragged from another location. Wells tried not to think about how terrified she must’ve been, or what the Earthborns had done to keep her from screaming. He tried not to think about whether she’d felt the knife digging into the soles of her feet, or if they’d waited until she was already dead to carve her flesh.

  He climbed up onto the branch to examine the frayed pieces of rope. It turned out to be one of the thin, nylon cords that had secured the supply containers in the dropship. That meant that the Earthborns had been in their camp.

  As more grim thoughts began to overpower his resolve, another scream echoed through the trees, making his heart lurch in his chest.

  Sasha.

  In one smooth movement, he dropped from the branch and broke into a sprint.

  The scream came again, louder this time. Wells sped up, cursing every time he skidded on a patch of mud or tripped over a hidden stone. He tore past the path that had been formed by frequent trips to the stream, following the sound deeper into the woods.

  When he crashed through a clump of bushes and saw Sasha with Bellamy, his first reaction was relief. Bellamy had heard the screams too and come running. But then two details of the scene clicked into focus—the fear in Sasha’s face, and the glint of metal at her throat.

  Bellamy had his arm wrapped around Sasha’s neck from behind, and was pressing something sharp and silver to her skin. “Tell me where your friends took my sister,” he was saying, his eyes wild. “Where do your people live? What are they doing with her?”

  Sasha gasped and whispered something Wells couldn’t hear. With a shout, he hurtled forward and knocked Bellamy to the ground.

  “Are you crazy?” Wells shouted, kicking the piece of metal—a twisted remnant of the dropship—out of Bellamy’s hand. He turned to Sasha, who had her arms wrapped around her sides, trembling. “Are you okay?” he asked, more gently.

  She nodded, but when she reached up to touch her neck, her hand came away smeared with blood. “Let me see.” Wells pushed back her hair to get a closer look—there was a small puncture wound at the base of her throat, but just a scratch. She would be fine. Wells didn’t want to think about what would’ve happened if he’d arrived any later.

  “What the hell?” he spat, turning to Bellamy, who was rising shakily to his feet. When Bellamy caught sight of the blood on Sasha’s neck, he seemed to pale slightly, but his tone was indignant.

  “I was doing what I had to do, to get Octavia back. It’s clear that I’m the only one who still cares what happens to her.” Bellamy glanced at Sasha. “I wasn’t going to hurt her. I just wanted to show her that this isn’t a game. It’s my sister’s life.”

  “You need to stay the hell away from her,” Wells said, stepping in front of Sasha.

  Bellamy’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “Are you serious? Whose side are you on, Wells? Every day that passes, my chances of finding Octavia alive grow smaller. What do you think she’s doing, having a tea party with the Earthborns? They could be torturing her for all we know.” The pain in his voice unlocked something inside Wells’s chest. He knew how Bellamy felt, terror and desperation pushing him to the brink—because it was exactly how he’d felt when he learned that Clarke was going to be executed, back on the Colony.

  “I know,” Wells said, struggling to keep his voice level. “But no more trying to hurt anyone, okay? That’s not how we do things.”

  “Please,” Bellamy shot back. “If I was actually trying to hurt her, there would be a pool of her Earthborn blood on the ground right now.”

  “That’s enough!” Wells shouted, his voice raw. “I’m taking Sasha back to camp. I suggest you stay here until you’re ready to have a rational discussion.”

  Wells grabbed Sasha by the wrist and began leading her back toward the clearing. “Traitor,” he heard Bellamy mutter under his breath. Wells tried to ignore him, but he couldn’t help wondering if Bellamy was right. Was he foolish to trust Sasha? He glanced over at her face, which was completely closed off, her eyes looking straight ahead. His brain flashed, unbidden, to an image of Priya’s hanging body. They’d been inside the camp. They’d used the hundred’s own rope to kill her.

  “I’m sorry about what happened back there,” Wells said quietly. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, I’m fine.” But her voice was still shaky, and he could feel her trembling against him. Then her forearm shifted in his wrist, and she slipped her palm into his, still looking straight ahead and revealing nothing.

  Wells was silent as they walked back toward camp, hand in hand.

  CHAPTER 17

  Glass

  “Don’t look,” Luke said as he pulled Glass away from the body on the ground. She averted her eyes before she had a chance to see whether it was a guard or a civilian. She didn’t even know if it was a man or a woman.

  Glass wasn’t sure what she’d expected. Had she really thought the skybridge would open, and all the Waldenites and Arcadians would file onto Phoenix in a calm and orderly fashion, bidding polite hellos to the people who’d left them all to die?

  No, she’d known it wouldn’t be simple, or organized. But she hadn’t expected the noise that filled the skybridge when the barrier raised—an earsplitting chorus of sobs and shouts and cheers and screams.

  She hadn’t expected a male voice to come blasting out of the speakers. For the past seventeen years, Phoenix’s PA system had been used for inane, prerecorded anno
uncements read by the same slightly robotic-sounding woman. “Please remember to abide by all curfew restrictions” and “All signs of illness must be reported to a health monitor.”

  But as the first wave of people surged across the skybridge, a very different voice rang out over the chaotic clamor. “All residents of Walden and Arcadia must return to their own ships immediately. This is your only warning. All trespassers will be shot.”

  Hearing a man’s voice coming out of the speakers was as disconcerting as seeing the skybridge closed, almost as if the ship had been possessed. But even that wasn’t as troubling as the sight of a dozen guards marching toward the bridge, guns raised.

  Even then, Glass hadn’t expected them to actually shoot anyone.

  She was wrong.

  The guards had opened fire on the first wave of Waldenites who crossed the bridge, but even that wasn’t enough to deter the crowds who rushed forward to overpower the guards and take their weapons. Within minutes, Phoenix was filled with Waldenites and Arcadians. At first, most had just seemed relieved to be able to breathe, taking huge gasps of oxygen-rich air. But then they began to spread out throughout Phoenix, carrying whatever they could find as weapons and breaking down doors to steal from the Phoenicians. It had rapidly gotten violent and out of hand.

  Luke pulled Glass to the side as two men ran past, each holding an enormous container of protein packets. Then another pair of Waldenites turned the corner, but these weren’t carrying supplies—they were dragging an unconscious guard.

  Glass covered her mouth in horror as she watched the young guard’s head roll from side to side. There was a deep purple bruise on his cheek, and he was bleeding from a gash in his shoulder, leaving a trail of blood behind him. She could feel Luke tense next to her, and she grabbed his arm to restrain him. “Don’t,” she whispered. “Let them go.”

  Luke watched the Waldenites drag the guard around a corner and disappear, although they could still hear their laughter echoing in the corridor. “I could have taken them,” he said with a huff.

  In another situation, Glass might’ve smiled at Luke’s indignation, but she felt only a growing panic. All she could think about was finding her mother and heading to the launch deck. She could only hope that her mother was safe at home, that she’d known better than to venture out into the chaos.

  Glass loved her mother, but she had never been particularly good in a crisis. Over the years, Glass had realized that there were some battles Sonja simply couldn’t face.

  And so Glass had learned how to fight for both of them.

  It felt odd walking back from the Exchange by herself, without Cora or Huxley next to her chattering about their purchases, or scheming of ways to keep their parents from discovering how many points they’d spent. Their absence made Glass all the more aware of the lightness of her pocket. Just minutes ago, it had held her mother’s last necklace.

  Huxley’s mother had appeared at the jewelry booth just as Glass began haggling with the vendor about how many points the necklace was worth. “It’s a lovely piece, dear,” she murmured, giving Glass a pitying smile before leaning over to say something to a woman Glass didn’t recognize. Glass had flushed, but kept arguing. She and her mom needed those ration points.

  Moving through the Exchange, Glass had felt everyone’s eyes on her. Phoenix was in a state of delighted shock at the scandal surrounding her family. Affairs were nothing new, but moving out was a drastic step given the housing shortage. And according to regulations, two people couldn’t occupy a flat meant for three, which meant that Glass and Sonja had been forced to move to a smaller unit on an inconvenient deck. Now, without her father’s seemingly endless supply of ration points, they’d had to sell practically everything they owned at the Exchange just to keep from living on water and protein paste.

  Glass turned down their hallway and sighed with relief when she saw that it was empty. The one benefit of living in such an undesirable location was that she wouldn’t run into people she knew. Or, used to know. It had been weeks since Cora had done more than give her a curt nod in the corridor, grabbing Huxley’s elbow when she smiled at Glass. Wells was the only one of her friends who acted like nothing had changed—but he’d recently started officer training, which kept him so busy, he barely had time to visit his mother in the hospital, let alone hang out with Glass.

  She pressed her hand against the door’s sensor and stepped inside, wrinkling her nose. Their old flat had always smelled like a combination of expensive greenhouse fruit and her mother’s perfume, and she still hadn’t gotten used to the stale, stuffy scent that choked the smaller unit.

  It was dark inside, so Sonja couldn’t be home. The lights were connected to motion sensors. But when Glass stepped inside, they didn’t turn on. That was strange. She waved her hand up and down, but still nothing happened. She groaned. Now she would have to send a maintenance request, which always took forever. In the past, her father simply would’ve messaged his friend Jessamyn—the head of the repairs unit—and it would be fixed right away. But Glass couldn’t stomach the thought of asking for any favors from her father.

  “Glass? Is that you?” Sonja rose from the couch, an amorphous shape in the dim light. She started to walk toward Glass, but yelped as she bumped into something that clanked to the floor.

  “Why are you sitting in the dark?” Glass demanded. “Did you send a message to maintenance?” Sonja didn’t answer. “I’ll do it myself,” Glass said, annoyed.

  “No, don’t. That won’t work.” Sonja sounded weary.

  “What are you talking about?” Glass snapped. She knew she should try harder to be patient with her mother, but she’d been so infuriating lately.

  “The sensor isn’t broken. We went over our power quota, and I don’t have the ration points to cover it.”

  “What?” Glass said. “That’s ridiculous. They can’t do this to us.”

  “We don’t have a choice. We’ll just have to wait until—”

  “We’re not waiting,” Glass said indignantly.

  She spun on her heel and strode out of the dark flat.

  Cora’s father’s office was at the end of a long corridor where most of the department heads worked. The hall wasn’t particularly busy—from her experience, most of the Council-appointed heads spent very little time in their offices—but her stomach still twisted at the thought of running into one of her dad’s friends.

  Mr. Drake’s assistant, a young man Glass didn’t recognize, was sitting at a desk, fiddling with some numbers in a holograph. He looked up and raised an eyebrow. “Can I help you?”

  “I need to talk to Mr. Drake.”

  “I’m afraid the Resources Chief is busy at the moment. Why don’t I take a message and I’ll let him know—”

  “It’s okay. I’ll let him know.” Glass gave the boy a patronizing smile and swept past him into the office.

  Cora’s father looked up from behind his desk when Glass walked in. For a second, he just stared at her in surprise, but then his face broke out into a big, insincere smile. “Glass! What a nice surprise. What can I do for you, sweetheart?”

  “You can turn my lights back on,” she said. “I’m sure it was just a mistake, of course. You would never knowingly let me and my mother spend the next month sitting in the dark.”

  Mr. Drake frowned as he tapped on his desk, opening a file on the screen. “Well, you went over your quota, so unless you have points to transfer to your account, I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do.”

  “We both know that’s a lie. You’re the Resources Chief—you can do whatever you want.”

  He gave Glass a cold, appraising look. “I have the well-being of the entire Colony to consider. If someone takes more than their fair share, it would be irresponsible of me to make exceptions.”

  Glass tilted her head to the side. “So bribing your way into the greenhouse and selling fruit on the black market doesn’t count as an exception?” she said with feigned innocence.

  Mr. Dra
ke’s cheeks grew red. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Sorry. I must’ve misunderstood Cora. I’ll have to get my friend Wells to explain it to me. He knows much more about all this than I do, since he’s the Chancellor’s son and all.”

  Mr. Drake was silent for a moment before clearing his throat. “I suppose I can make an allowance this one time. Now, you should be on your way. I have a meeting.”

  Glass flashed him a too-bright smile. “Thank you so much for your help,” she said, then swept out of the office, pausing only to nod at the glaring assistant.

  When she arrived home, the lights were already back on. “Did you do this?” Sonja asked, gesturing to the lights in amazement.

  “I just cleared up a little misunderstanding,” Glass said, going to the kitchen to assess their options for dinner.

  “Thank you, Glass. I’m very proud of you.”

  Glass felt a thrill of satisfaction, but as she turned around to smile at Sonja, she realized her mother had already disappeared back into her bedroom.

  Glass’s smile faded as she stared at the spot where Sonja had been standing. She’d spent her whole life believing that she’d never be as beautiful as her mother, never be as charming. But perhaps Glass could succeed where her mother had failed. She would figure out how to get what she wanted—what she needed—even when her long lashes failed to convince, when her body was no longer young and beautiful.

  She’d be more than pretty. She’d be strong.

  Glass’s hallway was startlingly quiet. Glass wasn’t sure whether this was a good or a bad sign. Her heart racing, she walked up to their door and pressed her thumb to the scanner, Luke placing a hand on her shoulder in silent reassurance. But before the machine had even read her print, the door flew outward.

  “Oh my god, Glass!” In a flash, her mother’s arms were around her. “How did you get back? The skybridge is closed…” She trailed off as she caught sight of Luke.