Day 21

by Kass Morgan

  Wells couldn’t imagine what his father was doing there. The only times Wells could recall him visiting the wall were during official ceremonies, honoring Council members who had died. As far as Wells knew, he’d never come here alone.

  Then the Chancellor reached up and traced the outline of one of the names. His shoulders slumped, radiating a sadness Wells had never seen.

  Wells’s cheeks began to burn. He didn’t belong here, intruding on what was clearly a private moment. But as he started to turn around, taking care to move as quietly as possible, his father spoke up. “I know you’re there, Wells.”

  Wells froze, his breath catching in his throat. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I never should’ve followed you.”

  The Chancellor turned to look at him, but to Wells’s surprise, he didn’t look angry, or even disappointed. “It’s okay,” he said with a sigh. “It’s time I told you the truth, anyway.”

  A chill passed over Wells. “The truth about what?”

  “This isn’t easy for me to say,” his father began, a slight tremor in his voice. He cleared his throat. “A long time ago, before you were born, before I’d even met your mother, I fell in love… with a woman from Walden.”

  Wells stared at him, stunned. He wasn’t sure he’d ever heard his father even use the word “love.” He was so unemotional, so devoted to his job—it didn’t make sense. And yet, the pain in his father’s eyes was enough to convince Wells that he was serious.

  In a halting voice, the Chancellor explained that he’d met her as a young guard, during one of his patrols. They’d started seeing each other and had fallen in love, although he’d kept the whole thing a secret from his friends and family, who would’ve been horrified to learn about his feelings for a Walden girl. “Eventually, I realized that it was foolish,” his father said. “If we married, we would only cause our families pain. And by that point, there was already talk of me joining the Council. I had responsibilities to people besides myself, and so I decided to end things then.” He sighed. “She would have hated this life, being married to the Chancellor. It was the right thing to do.” Wells said nothing, waiting for his father to continue. “And then, a few months later, I met your mother and realized that she was the partner I needed. Someone who would help me become the leader the Colony needed.”

  “Did you keep seeing her?” Wells asked, surprised by the harsh note of accusation in his voice. “That… that Walden woman?”

  “No.” His father shook his head vehemently. “Absolutely not. Your mother is everything to me.” He cleared his throat. “You and your mother are everything to me,” he amended.

  “What happened to her? The woman from Walden? Did she ever find someone else?”

  “She died,” the Chancellor said simply. “Occasionally, I come here to pay my respects. And that is all. Now you know everything.”

  “Why does it need to be a secret?” Wells pressed. “Why did you act like you didn’t want anyone to see you?”

  His father’s face hardened. “There are things about being a leader that you couldn’t possibly understand at your age.” He turned on his heel, heading back toward Phoenix. “Now, this conversation is over.”

  Wells watched in silence as his father strode off, knowing full well that when they sat down together at dinner that night, they would both act like nothing had happened.

  He turned back to the wall, to look at the name his father had touched so tenderly. Melinda. He tried to make out her last name, but it was too scratched-over for him to read. As close as he could tell, it started with a B.

  Melinda B. The dead woman his father had once loved, whose memory brought him back to the wall over and over again. The woman who, if things had been different, could have been Wells’s mother.

  Wells reached down and rebuttoned his jacket, then turned back toward Phoenix, leaving the ghosts of his father’s past behind him.

  “Chancellor Junior was completely out of line,” Graham was saying. “And who the hell knows what he’ll do next?”

  “I don’t know,” Lila was saying, “we can’t just—”

  “It’s fine,” Wells said, interrupting them. “I’ll make it easy for you. I’ll leave.”

  “What?” Kendall said, startled. “No, Wells, that’s not what we want.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Graham snapped. “It’s exactly what I want. I say we’re better off without him.”

  Wells wondered if Graham was right. Had he done the same thing that his father did long ago, and made an error in judgment because of a girl? What would the Chancellor say, if he were here right now?

  “I hope you will be,” Wells told them, surprised by the amount of sincerity, and lack of resentment, in his voice.

  Then without meeting anyone’s eye, he spun on his heel and went off to pack his bag for the last time.

  CHAPTER 25

  Bellamy

  The stairs led down to an enormous metal door embedded in a rock wall. It had a huge, impenetrable-looking circular lock, but the door itself was ajar.

  “Sort of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?” Bellamy pointed to the gap between the heavy door and the rock.

  “Not really,” Clarke said, slipping past him for a better look. “Until recently, they were the only human beings on the entire planet. There was no one to keep out.”

  “Can you see anything?” he asked, trying his best to keep the concern out of his voice. He’d been hoping to catch the Earthborns who’d taken Octavia out in the open. Desperate as he was to find his sister, even Bellamy knew better than to waltz right into an enemy compound in the middle of the night. But once Clarke got an idea in her head, there was no stopping her, and he had no intention of letting her go at it alone.

  “Not yet.” She spun around, and her face softened as she saw the worried look in his eyes. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “For doing this. For being here with me.”

  Bellamy just nodded.

  “Are you okay?” Clarke asked.

  “It’s just Jim Dandy.”

  Clarke reached over and squeezed his hand. “Aren’t you excited? You’re finally going to meet people who understand your weird, old-man Earth slang.”

  He managed a smile, but when he spoke, his voice was serious. “So, do you think they’re expecting us?”

  “No, not expecting us, exactly. But Sasha said they’d be happy to help us.”

  Bellamy nodded, hiding his fear. He knew that if something bad happened to Clarke and himself tonight, they’d never be seen again.

  “Let’s do it, then.”

  Clarke pulled open the door, flinching as the creak of rusty hinges rang out through the silent night air. Then she slipped in between the gap and motioned for Bellamy to follow.

  It was dark inside, but not pitch-black. There was a strange ambient light, but Bellamy couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

  Clarke took Bellamy’s hand, and they crept along what seemed to be a tunnel through the rock. After a few steps, the ground began to slope down sharply, and they had to slow their pace to keep from losing their balance and tumbling to the bottom. The air was much cooler here than it’d been outside, and it smelled different as well—damp and mineral, instead of woodsy and crisp.

  He forced himself to take a deep breath and keep his steps slow. The weeks he’d spent hunting had changed the way he moved, his feet seeming to float soundlessly above the ground. Clarke seemed to do it naturally.

  But then she stumbled, gasping, and he pulled her close to his chest. “Are you okay?” Bellamy’s heart was pounding so fast, it seemed like it was trying to betray him to the Earthborns.

  “I’m fine,” Clarke whispered, but she didn’t let go of him yet. “It’s just… it drops off here.” The stone floor had given way to steep metal stairs.

  They made their way down slowly, following the stairs as they twisted sharply downward. It was hard to tell in the dim light, but it seemed like they were spiraling into an enormous cavern. The walls were damp and
made of stone, and the farther they went, the colder the air became.

  As they descended the stairs, Bellamy thought about what Clarke had told him about Mount Weather. He tried to imagine what it would’ve been like, running blindly for the safety of an underground bunker, saying good-bye to the sun and sky and the world you knew as you hurried into the darkness. What had gone through the minds of the first people who clambered down these steps? Were they overcome with relief at their good fortune, or sorrow for all those they’d left behind?

  “Do they have to go up and down these stairs every time they leave?” Clarke whispered.

  “There might be another entrance,” Bellamy said. “Otherwise, why haven’t we seen anyone yet?” As they reached the bottom, Clarke and Bellamy fell silent, the lonely echo of their footsteps far more eloquent than any chatter.

  The stairs ended in a vast, empty space that seemed more like a cave than somewhere humans could’ve lived for centuries. Bellamy froze and grabbed Clarke’s arm as an echo bounced through the darkness. “What was that?” he whispered, jerking his head from side to side. “Is someone coming?”

  Clarke gently shook his hand off and took a step forward. “No…” Her voice contained more wonder than fear. “It’s water. Look at the stalactites,” she said, pointing at the craggy rocks above them. “The condensation collects on the rock and then drips down into some kind of reservoir. I guess that’s where they got their drinking water during the nuclear winter.”

  “Let’s keep moving,” Bellamy said, grabbing hold of her hand. He pulled Clarke through an opening in the rock and into a hallway with dull metallic walls, similar to the old corridors on Walden. Long strips of lights ran along the ceiling, wires spilling out from cracks in the plastic cover.

  “Bellamy,” Clarke said breathlessly. “Look.”

  There was a plastic case on the wall, similar to the locked boxes on the Colony that housed control panels. But instead of a screen or buttons, there was a sign. At the very top was an eagle inside a circle, holding a plant in one claw and a bunch of arrows in the other. The words ORDER OF SUCCESSION ran above it in two columns. The column on the left contained a long list of titles: President of the United States, Vice President of the United States, Speaker of the House, and so on.

  Next to each title were the words SECURE, MISSING… and DEAD.

  Someone had circled the word dead in black ink for the first six titles. Secretary of the Interior had been marked as SECURE at first, but then someone had crossed that out and circled DEAD in blue ink.

  “You think someone might’ve taken this down by now,” Bellamy said, tracing a finger across the plastic case.

  Clarke turned to him. “Would you have taken this down?” she asked quietly.

  Bellamy shook his head with a sigh. “No. I wouldn’t have.”

  They continued down the hall in silence until they reached an intersection. There was another large sign, except that this one had no plastic cover.

  → HOSPITAL

  ← SEWAGE TREATMENT

  ← COMMUNICATIONS

  → CABINET ROOM

  → GENERATORS

  → CREMATORIUM

  “Crematorium?” Bellamy read aloud, suppressing a shudder.

  “I guess it makes sense. You can’t float people on Earth, and you certainly can’t bury them in solid rock.”

  “But where do they live?” Bellamy asked. “How come we haven’t seen anyone yet?”

  “Maybe they’re all sleeping?”

  “Where? The crematorium?”

  “Let’s keep moving,” Clarke said, ignoring his quip.

  To the right, a red light began flashing. “That’s probably not good,” Bellamy said, tightening his grip around Clarke’s hand, ready to pull her into a run.

  “It’s fine,” Clarke said, though she’d already begun to move away from the light. “I bet it’s on a timer or something.”

  The sound of echoing footsteps made them both freeze. “I think someone’s coming,” Clarke said, her eyes darting from Bellamy to the end of the long hall.

  He pulled Clarke behind him, slid his bow off his shoulder, and reached for one of his arrows.

  “Stop it,” Clarke hissed, stepping to the side. “We need to make it clear that we’ve come peacefully.”

  The footsteps grew louder. “I’m not taking any chances,” Bellamy said, stepping in front of her again.

  Four figures appeared at the end of the hall. Two men, and two women. They were dressed similarly to Sasha, all in black and gray, except that they weren’t wearing fur.

  And they were holding guns.

  For one excruciatingly long moment, they stared at Clarke and Bellamy, seemingly bewildered.

  Then they shouted something and began running toward them.

  “Clarke, go,” Bellamy ordered as he drew back the bow and took aim. “I’ll hold them off.”

  “No!” she gasped. “You can’t. Don’t shoot at them!”

  “Clarke! Move it!” Bellamy shouted, trying to give her a shove with his shoulder.

  “Bellamy, drop the bow.” Her voice was frantic now. “Please. You need to trust me.”

  He hesitated, just long enough for Clarke to slip under his arm and stand in front of him, her hands raised in the air. “We have a message from Sasha,” Clarke shouted. Her voice was loud and firm, though her whole body was trembling. “She sent us here.”

  There wasn’t even time to see whether the name registered on the Earthborns’ faces. A strange whooshing sound filled the air, and Bellamy felt something sting his upper arm.

  Then everything went black.

  CHAPTER 26

  Glass

  Hundreds of bodies were packed onto the launch deck, with hundreds more pushing against them from the ramp. In total, there were more than a thousand people shoved into the bottom of the ship, filling the air with a choking mix of sweat, blood, and fear.

  Glass and Sonja had made it onto the deck, but just barely. They were standing all the way in the back, pressed up against the ramp. Sonja couldn’t put any weight on her ankle, so Glass had her arm around her, although it was hardly necessary. The crowd was so dense, Sonja could lose her balance and she still wouldn’t fall.

  Every few moments, the sea of bodies would surge in one direction or the other until the anxious Phoenicians, Arcadians, and Waldenites seemed like nothing more than a tide of flesh.

  Rising up onto her toes, Glass could see people trying to force their way into one of the six remaining dropships. They were already crammed far beyond capacity, and bodies kept spilling back out.

  Glass tried to blink away the tears obscuring her vision to count again. Six. There were supposed to be seven dropships. The one she’d escaped from, that had supposedly carried Wells and the other prisoners to Earth, was gone, of course. But what had happened to the seventh?

  Even if there were a dozen dropships, Glass and her mother wouldn’t make it off the Colony unless they kept pushing their way toward the front. But Glass felt weak and immobile. Every time she moved, pain ripped through her as she thought of the look of disgust on Luke’s face, and the pieces of her heart she was trying so hard to hold together would slip from her grasp.

  But as she turned to look at her mother, Glass knew she had no choice. She couldn’t think about what had happened with Luke, not now. Sonja’s own heart had cracked long ago, but the difference was that she hadn’t bothered to catch the pieces. Glass had done it for her. Without Glass, her mom wouldn’t fight for a spot on the dropship, and Glass wasn’t going to let that happen.

  She tightened her hold around her mother’s waist. “Come on. Let’s keep moving. One step at a time.” There was nowhere to move, yet somehow, Glass and Sonja managed to wedge themselves between shoulder blades and around elbows.

  Glass gasped but didn’t look down when she stepped on something fleshy. She kept her eyes fixed on the front of the launch deck, and gripped her mother’s hand tightly as they carved a path through the wall
of bodies.

  They slid alongside a woman whose dress was damp with blood. From the way she clutched her arm, Glass guessed she’d been hit by one of the guards’ bullets. Her face was pale and she was swaying back and forth, although there was no room for her to fall.

  Keep moving.

  Glass swallowed a cry as she shoved past the woman and felt her bloody sleeve brush against Glass’s bare arm.

  Keep moving.

  A man was holding a little girl in one arm and a bundle of clothes in the other, rendering him too bulky to navigate through the crowd. Drop the bag, Glass wanted to tell him. But she said nothing. Her only job was getting her mother on the dropship. That was all she could afford to care about.

  Keep moving.

  A young boy, hardly older than a toddler, sat on the ground, too shocked and scared to do more than whimper and wave his chubby arms in the air. Had he been jostled out of his parent’s grasp? Or had he been abandoned in a moment of panic?

  She felt a tug deep inside her chest, a jolt of pain in the empty space behind her heart that never fully healed. Glass tightened her grip on Sonja, and extended her other arm toward the little boy. But right before her fingertips brushed against his outstretched hand, there was another surge, and Glass found herself being swept in the other direction.

  She let out a gasp, and scrambled to find her footing. When she turned back to look for the boy, he’d disappeared behind a wave of bodies.

  Keep moving.

  By the time they made it to the center of the launch deck, the nearest dropship was overflowing with bodies, far more than it was meant to accommodate. People were standing in every centimeter of available space, packed as tightly together as they could fit around the seats. Glass knew that jamming people in like that was extremely dangerous—anyone who wasn’t strapped in would be thrown violently against the walls during the descent. They’d certainly die, and would probably end up killing some of the seated passengers as well. But no one was stopping them, or forcing the extra passengers off the dropship. No one was in charge.