by Kass Morgan
It had really happened. For the first time in centuries, humans had left the Colony. She glanced at the other passengers and saw asithat they had all gone quiet as well, a spontaneous moment of silence for the world they were leaving behind.
But the solemnity didn’t last long. For the next twenty minutes, the dropship was filled with the nervous, overexcited chatter of a hundred people who, until a few hours ago, had never even thought about going to Earth. Thalia tried to shout something to Clarke, but her words were lost in the din.
The only conversation Clarke could follow was that of the two girls in front of her, who were arguing over the likelihood of the air on Earth being breathable. “I’d rather drop dead right away than spend days being slowly poisoned,” one said grimly.
Clarke sort of agreed, but she kept her mouth shut. There was no point in speculating. The trip to Earth would be short—in just a few more minutes, they’d know their fate.
Clarke looked out the windows, which were now filling with hazy gray clouds. The dropship jerked suddenly, and the buzz of conversation gave way to a flurry of gasps.
“It’s okay,” Wells shouted, speaking for the first time since the doors closed. “There’s supposed to be turbulence when we enter Earth’s atmosphere.” But his words were overpowered by the shrieks filling the cabin.
The shaking increased, followed by a strange hum. Clarke’s harness dug into her stomach as her body lurched from side to side, then up and down, then side to side again. She gagged as a rancid odor filled her nose, and she realized that the girl in front of her had vomited. Clarke squeezed her eyes shut and tried to stay calm. Everything was fine. It’d all be over in a minute.
The hum became a piercing wail, punctuated by a sickening crush. Clarke opened her eyes and saw that the windows had cracked and were no longer full of gray.
They were full of flames.
Bits of white-hot metal began raining down on them. Clarke raised her arms to protect her head, but she could still feel the debris scorching her neck.
The dropship shook even harder, and with a roar, part of the ceiling tore off. There was a deafening crash followed by a thud that sent ripples of pain through every bone in her body.
As suddenly as it began, it was all over.
The cabin was dark and silent. Smoke billowed out of a hole where the control panel had been, and the air grew thick with the smell of melting metal, sweat, and blood.
Clarke winced as she wiggled her fingers and toes. It hurt, but nothing seemed to be broken. She unhooked her harness and rose shakily to her feet, holding on to the scorched seat for balance.
Most people were still strapped in, but a few were slumped over the sides or sprawled on the floor. Clarke squinted as she scanned the rows for Thalia, her heart speeding up each time her eyes landed on another empty seat. A terrifying realization cut through the confusion in Clarke’s mind. Some of the passengers had been thrown outside during the crash.
Clarke limped forward, gritting her teeth at the pain that shot up her leg. She reached the door and pulled as hard as she could. She took a deep breath and slipped through the opening.
For a moment, she was aware of only colors, not shapes. Stripes of blue, green, and brown so vibrant her brain couldn’t process them. A gust of wind passed over her, making her skin tingle and flooding her nose with scents Clarke couldn’t begin to identify. At first, all she could see were the trees. There were hundreds of themhitreds of, as if every tree on the planet had come to welcome them back to Earth. Their enormous branches were lifted in celebration toward the sky, which was a joyful blue. The ground stretched out in all directions—ten times farther than the longest deck on the ship. The amount of space was almost inconceivable, and Clarke suddenly felt light-headed, as if she were about to float away.
She became vaguely aware of voices behind her and turned to see a few of the others emerge from the dropship. “It’s beautiful,” a dark-skinned girl whispered as she reached down to run her trembling hand along the shiny green blades of grass.
A short, stocky boy took a few shaky steps forward. The gravitational pull on the Colony was meant to mimic Earth’s, but faced with the real thing it was clear they hadn’t gotten it quite right. “Everything’s fine,” the boy said, his voice a mixture of relief and confusion. “We could’ve come back ages ago.”
“You don’t know that,” the girl replied. “Just because we can breathe now, doesn’t mean the air isn’t toxic.” She twisted around to face him and held her wrist up, gesturing with her bracelet. “The Council didn’t give us these as jewelry. They want to see what happens to us.”
A smaller girl hovering next to the dropship whimpered as she pulled her jacket up over her mouth.
“You can breathe normally,” Clarke told her, looking around to see if Thalia had emerged yet. She wished she had something more reassuring to say, but there was no way to tell how much radiation was still in the atmosphere. All they could do was wait and hope.
“We’ll be back soon,” her father said as he slipped his long arms into a suit jacket Clarke had never seen before. He walked over to the couch where she was curled up with her tablet and ruffled her hair. “Don’t stay out too late. They’ve been strict about curfew lately. Some trouble on Walden, I think.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Clarke said, gesturing toward her bare feet and the surgical pants she wore to sleep. For the most famous scientist in the Colony, her father’s deductive reasoning left something to be desired. Although he spent so much time wrapped up in his research, it was unlikely he’d even know that scrubs weren’t currently considered high fashion among sixteen-year-old girls.
“Either way, it’d be best if you stayed out of the lab,” he said with calculated carelessness, as if the thought had only just crossed his mind. In fact, he’d said this about five times a day since they’d moved into their new flat. The Council had approved their request for a customized private laboratory, as her parents’ new project required them to monitor experiments throughout the night.
“I promise,” Clarke told them with exaggerated patience.
“It’s just that it’s dangerous to get near the radioactive materials,” her mother called out from where she stood in front of the mirror, fixing her hair. “Especially without the proper equipment.”
Clarke repeated her promise until they left and she was finally able to return to her tablet, though she couldn’t help wondering idly what Glass and her friends would say if they knew that Clarke was spending Friday night working on an essay. Clarke was normally indifferent toward her Earth Literatures tutorial, but this assignment had piquew ent haded her interest. Instead of another predictable paper on the changing view of nature in pre-Cataclysmic poetry, their tutor had asked them to compare and contrast the vampire crazes in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries.
Yet while the reading was interesting, she must have dozed off at some point, because when she sat up, the circadian lights had dimmed and the living space was a jumble of unfamiliar shadows. She stood up and was about to head to her bedroom when a strange sound pierced the silence. Clarke froze. It almost sounded like screaming. She forced herself to take a deep breath. She should have known better than to read about vampires before bed.
Clarke turned around and started walking down the hallway, but then another sound rang out—a shriek that sent shivers down her spine.
Stop it, Clarke scolded herself. She’d never make it as a doctor if she let her mind play tricks on her. She was just unsettled by the unfamiliar darkness in the new flat. In the morning, everything would be back to normal. Clarke waved her palm across the sensor on her bedroom door and was about to step inside when she heard it again—an anguished moan.
Her heart thumping, Clarke spun around and walked down the long hallway that led to the lab. Instead of a retinal scanner, there was a keypad. Clarke brushed her fingers over the panel, briefly wondering if she’d be able to guess the password, then crouched down and pressed her
ear to the door.
The door vibrated as another sound buzzed through Clarke’s ear. Her breath caught in her throat. That’s impossible. But when the sound came again, it was even clearer.
It wasn’t just a scream of anguish. It was a word.
“Please.”
Clarke’s fingers flew over the keypad as she entered the first thing that came to her head: Pangea. It was the code her mother used for her protected files. The screen beeped and an error message appeared. Next she entered Elysium, the name of the mythical underground city where, according to bedtime stories parents told their children, humans took refuge after the Cataclysm. Another error. Clarke tore through her memory, searching for words she’d filed away. Her fingers hovered above the keypad. Lucy. The name of the oldest hominid remains Earthborn archaeologists ever discovered. There was a series of low beeps, and the door slid open.
The lab was much bigger than she’d imagined, larger than their entire flat, and filled with rows of narrow beds like in the hospital.
Clarke’s eyes widened as they darted from one bed to another. Each contained a child. Most of the kids were lying there asleep, hooked up to various vital monitors and IV stands, though a few were propped up by pillows, fiddling with tablets in their laps. One little girl, hardly older than a toddler, sat on the floor next to her bed, playing with a ratty stuffed bear as clear liquid dripped from an IV bag into her arm.
Clarke’s brain raced for an explanation. These had to be sick children who required round-the-clock care. Maybe they were suffering from some rare disease that only her motherof y her m knew how to cure, or perhaps her father was close to inventing a new treatment and needed twenty-four-hour access. They must’ve known that Clarke would be curious, but since the illness was probably contagious, they’d lied to Clarke to keep her safe.
The same cry that Clarke had heard from the flat came again, this time much louder. She followed it to a bed on the other side of the lab.
A girl her own age—one of the oldest in the room, Clarke realized—was lying on her back, dark-blond hair fanned out on the pillow around her heart-shaped face. For a moment, she just stared at Clarke.
“Please,” she said. Her voice trembled. “Help me.”
Clarke glanced at the label on the girl’s vital monitor. SUBJECT 121. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“Lilly.”
Clarke stood there awkwardly, but when Lilly scooted back on her pillows, Clarke lowered herself to sit on the bed next to her. She’d just started her medical training and hadn’t interacted with patients yet, but she knew one of the most important parts of being a doctor was bedside manner. “I’m sure you’ll get to go home soon,” she offered. “Once you’re feeling better.”
The girl pulled her knees to her chest and buried her head, saying something too muffled for Clarke to make out.
“What was that?” she asked. She glanced over her shoulder, wondering why there wasn’t a nurse or a medical apprentice covering for her parents. If something happened to one of the kids, there’d be no one to help them.
The girl raised her head but looked away from Clarke. She chewed her lip as the tears in her eyes receded, leaving a haunting emptiness in their wake.
When she finally spoke, it was in a whisper. “No one ever gets better.”
Clarke suppressed a shudder. Diseases were rare on the ship; there hadn’t been any epidemics since the last outbreak they’d quarantined on Walden. Clarke looked around the lab for something to indicate what her parents were treating, and her eyes settled on an enormous screen on the far wall. Data flashed across it, forming a large graph. Subject 32. Age 7. Day 189. 3.4 Gy. Red count. White count. Respiration. Subject 33. Age 11. Day 298. 6 Gy. Red count. White count. Respiration.
At first Clarke thought nothing of the data. It made perfect sense for her parents to monitor the vitals of the sick children in their care. Except that Gy had nothing to do with vital signs. A Gray was a measure of radiation, a fact she well knew as her parents had been investigating the effects of radiation exposure for years, part of the ongoing task to determine when it’d be safe for humans to return to Earth.
Clarke’s gaze settled on Lilly’s pale face as a chilling realization slithered out of a dark place in the back of Clarke’s mind. She tried to force it back, but it coiled around her denial, suffocating all thoughts except a truth so horrifying, she almost gagged.
Her parents’ research was no longer limited to cell cultures. They’d moved onto human trials.
Her mother and father weren’t curing these children. They were killing them.
They’d landed in some kind of clearing, an L-shaped space surrounded by trees.
There weren’t many serious injuries, but there were enough to keep Clarke busy. For nearly an hour, she used torn jacket sleeves and pant legs as makeshift tourniquets, and ordered the few people with broken bones to lie still until she found a way to fashion splints. Their supplies were scattered across the grass, but although she’d sent multiple people to search for the medicine chest, it hadn’t been recovered.
The battered dropship was at the short end of the clearing, and for the first fifteen minutes, the passengers had clustered around the smoldering wreckage, too scared and stunned to move more than a few shaky steps. But now they’d started milling around. Clarke hadn’t spotted Thalia, or Wells, either, although she wasn’t sure whether that made her more anxious or relieved. Maybe he was off with Glass. Clarke hadn’t seen her on the dropship, but she had to be here somewhere.
“How does that feel?” Clarke asked, returning her attention to wrapping the swollen ankle of a pretty, wide-eyed girl with a frayed red ribbon in her dark hair.
“Better,” she said, wiping her nose with her hand, unintentionally smearing blood from the cut on her face. Clarke had to find real bandages and antiseptic. They were all being exposed to germs their bodies had never encountered, and the risk of infection was high.
“I’ll be right back.” Clarke flashed her a quick smile and rose to her feet. If the medicine chest wasn’t in the clearing, that meant it was probably still in the dropship. She hurried back to the still-smoking wreck, walking around the perimeter as she searched for the safest way to get back inside. Clarke reached the back of the ship, which was just a few meters from the tree line. She shivered. The trees grew so closely together on this side of the clearing, their leaves blocked most of the light, casting intricate shadows on the ground that scattered when the wind blew.
Her eyes narrowed as they focused on something that didn’t move. It wasn’t a shadow.
A girl was lying on the ground, nestled against the roots of a tree. She must have been thrown out of the back of the dropship during the landing. Clarke lurched forward, and felt a sob form in her throat as she recognized the girl’s short, curly hair and the smattering of freckles on the bridge of her nose. Thalia.
Clarke hurried over and knelt beside her. Blood was gushing from a wound on the side of her ribs, staining the grass beneath her dark red, as if the earth itself were bleeding. Thalia was breathing, but her gasps were labored and shallow. “It’s going to be okay,” Clarke whispered, grabbing on to her friend’s limp hand as the wind rustled above them. “I swear, Thalia, it’s all going to be okay.” It sounded more like a prayer than a reassuran
ce, although she wasn’t sure who she was praying to. Humans had abandoned Earth during its darkest hour. It wouldn’t care how many died trying to return.
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CHAPTER 6
Wells
Wells shivered in the late afternoon chill. In the few hours since they’d landed, the air had grown colder. He moved closer to the bonfire, ignoring the snide glances of the Arcadian boys on either side of him. Every night he’d spent in Confinement, he’d fallen asleep dreaming about arriving on Earth with Clarke. But instead of holding her hand while they gazed at the planet in wonder, he’d spent the day sorting through burned s
upplies and trying to forget the expression that crossed Clarke’s face when she spotted him. He hadn’t expected her to throw her arms around him, but nothing could’ve prepared him for the look of pure loathing in her eyes.
“Think your father kicked the bucket already?” a Walden boy a few years younger than Wells asked as the kids around him snickered. Wells’s chest tightened, but he forced himself to stay calm. He could take one or two of the little punks without breaking a sweat. He’d been the undisputed champion of the hand-to-hand combat course during officer training. But there was only one of him and ninety-five of them—ninety-six if you counted Clarke, who was arguably less of a Wells fan than anyone on the planet at the moment.
As they’d loaded onto the dropship, he’d been dismayed not to see Glass there. To the shock of everyone on Phoenix, Glass had been Confined not long after Clarke, though no matter how many times he pressed his father, Wells had never discovered what she’d done. He wished he knew why she hadn’t been selected for the mission. Although he tried to convince himself that she could’ve been pardoned, it was far more likely that she was still in Confinement, counting down the days until her fast-approaching eighteenth birthday. The thought made his stomach twist.
“I wonder if Chancellor Junior thinks he gets first dibs on all the food?” asked an Arcadian boy whose pockets were bulging with nutrition packs he’d collected during the mad scramble after the crash. From what Wells could see, it looked like they’d been sent down with less than a month’s worth of food, which would disappear quickly if people kept pocketing everything they found. But that couldn’t be possible—there had to be more in a container somewhere. They would come across it once they finished sorting through the wreckage.
