Day 21 by Kass Morgan

“What did you find?” Wells asked, squeezing her hand.

  “I had no…” Clarke trailed off with a sigh as sleep overtook her.

  Wells stood up, grabbed a blanket from one of the other cots, and spread it gently over Clarke. Bellamy was still standing stiffly behind him, his eyes fixed on the curled figure of the girl who, despite her immense strength, always looked younger—and somehow more fragile—when she slept.

  Wells cleared his throat. “Thank you,” he said, extending his hand. “For bringing her back.”

  Bellamy nodded slowly, still in shock. “I was so worried. I thought…” He ran a hand through his hair, then slid to the ground and sat with his back against Clarke’s cot.

  Wells bristled at the possessive gesture, but he found that he couldn’t say anything. He was grateful to Bellamy for bringing Clarke back to the camp, but it hurt to think about what they might’ve been doing for the past two days.

  Wells lowered himself to the ground with a sigh. “I guess this means you didn’t find Octavia.”

  “No. We found a trail, but it was… weird.” He spoke without looking up, and his voice was strangely flat. “The prints didn’t look like she ran off. It looked like she was dragged.”

  “Dragged?” Wells repeated as the pieces of information clicked together, forming an even more troubling picture. “I can’t believe it. They took her.”

  “They?” Bellamy’s head shot up. “Who?”

  Wells told him about everything that had happened since Bellamy and Clarke left camp—the surprise attack, Asher’s death, the undeniable fact that there were other people on Earth.

  When Bellamy finally spoke, his jaw was tight with anger. “And you think these people took Octavia during the fire?” Wells nodded. “Who are they? How did they survive the Cataclysm? And what the hell do these—these Earthborns want with my sister?”

  “I don’t know. They might be defending their territory. Maybe they took her as a warning, and then when we didn’t show any signs of leaving, they killed Asher to make a stronger point.”

  Bellamy stared at him for a long moment. “So you think they’re coming back?”

  Wells opened his mouth to repeat the same vague response he’d been giving to the others in his attempt to prevent widespread panic. But when he met Bellamy’s eyes, the canned reassurances fell away. “Yes. They’ll be back.” He told Bellamy about Graham’s growing obsession with building an army, a move that would certainly lead to more deaths.

  “It sounds like it hasn’t been a walk in the park here either,” Bellamy said with a snort. He glanced over his shoulder to check on Clarke, who still hadn’t stirred, though her face was peaceful and her breath was steady. “You should get some rest. I’ll keep an eye on Sleeping Beauty here, and let you know if there’s any change.”

  Something in Bellamy’s tone rankled Wells. “I’m fine,” he said. “I have to stay up for guard duty, anyway. But you should definitely go to bed. You look exhausted.”

  The boys stared at each other wordlessly until Bellamy raised his arms over his head and stretched his legs out with a groan. “I guess we’re both in it for the long haul, then.”

  They sat in silence, each avoiding the other’s eyes, moving only to look at Clarke the few times she rolled over, or sighed in her sleep. As the night wore on, a handful of people tried to come back inside the infirmary cabin, but Wells shooed them away. It was slightly unfair to make people sleep outside when there was space indoors, but he couldn’t risk anything disturbing Clarke. Not after what she’d been through.

  Wells wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but light was streaming between the logs when a loud thud jolted him from his doze, sending him jumping to his feet. Bellamy’s head snapped up. “What’s going on?” he asked, drowsily. Without waiting to respond, Wells hurried outside.

  The clearing was quiet and still. The people he’d kicked out of the infirmary cabin had joined the others around the fire pit. Everyone seemed to still be asleep.

  Wells had started to turn back when a flash of movement near the tree line caught his eye. Something darted from behind a tree and ran deeper into the woods—a short, wiry figure dressed in black.

  Without thinking, Wells started sprinting across the tree line, his feet flying over the uneven, root-tangled ground. He closed in on the intruder, lunging forward to tackle him with a shout. Wells grunted as a knee jabbed him in the stomach, but it didn’t stop him from rolling over and pinning the stranger to the damp ground. He had one of them—an Earthborn.

  Wells’s blood was pumping so swiftly through his veins, it took him a moment to get a clear look at the person whose wrists he’d clamped, the owner of the green eyes staring furiously up at him.

  It was a girl.

  CHAPTER 5

  Bellamy

  Bellamy didn’t care that the Earthborn was a girl. She was a spy. She was the enemy. She was one of the people who had killed Asher and taken his sister.

  Fear flashed in her eyes, and her black hair flew across her face as she thrashed in the dirt, trying to wrench herself free. But Bellamy, kneeling next to Wells, only tightened his hold. They couldn’t let her escape, not before she told them where Octavia was.

  He helped Wells pull the girl to her feet and yanked her sharply forward. “Where the hell is she?” he shouted. His face was so close to hers, his breath sent wisps of her hair flying. “Where’d you take my sister?”

  The girl winced but said nothing.

  Bellamy twisted her arm behind her back, just like he used to do to the boys in the care center he caught teasing Octavia. “You’d better tell me right now, or you’ll wish you never crawled out of whatever cave you came from!”

  “Bellamy,” Wells said sharply. “Calm down. We don’t know anything yet. She might have nothing to do with—”

  “Like hell she doesn’t,” Bellamy said, cutting him off. He reached over and yanked on the girl’s hair, bringing her face up to his. “You tell me right now, or this is going to get really unpleasant, really fast.”

  “Knock it off,” Wells shouted. “For all we know, she doesn’t speak English. Before we do anything, we need to—”

  Wells was cut off once again, this time by a thunderstorm of shouts and footsteps as the rest of the group, drawn by the noise, came to investigate. “You caught one,” Graham said, shoving his way to the front. His voice was tinged with something close to admiration.

  “So she’s from Earth?” asked a Walden girl, awestruck.

  “Can she talk?” another asked.

  “She’s probably a mutant. You might catch radiation poisoning just by touching her,” a tall Arcadian boy said, craning his neck for a better look.

  Bellamy didn’t care if the girl was radioactive, or if she had goddamn wings. All he cared about was finding out where she and her friends had taken his sister.

  “What are we going to do with her?” a girl asked as she shifted her spear from one hand to the other.

  “We kill her,” Graham said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “And then we put her head on a spike to let the others know how we deal with people who threaten us.”

  “Not before she and I have a little conversation,” Bellamy growled. The girl’s eyes narrowed as Bellamy stepped forward, and she raised her knee in an attempt to jab him, but he danced aside.

  “Bellamy, back off,” Wells ordered, struggling to hold her still.

  Graham scoffed. “Want to have a little fun with her first? I can’t say I’ve ever understood your taste in girls, mini-Chancellor, but I guess we all have needs.”

  Wells ignored Graham, and turned to ask a Walden boy for rope. “We’ll tie her up and keep her in the infirmary until we figure out what to do with her.”

  Bellamy glared at Wells as rage bubbled up from his stomach into his chest. That wasn’t good enough. The longer they stood here, the farther away her people could be dragging Octavia. “She needs to tell us where to find my sister,” he snapped, daring Wells to chall
enge him. As if it were his decision to make. Bellamy hadn’t really cared when the others started deferring to Wells. Better him than Graham. But that didn’t mean Wells got to decide what to do about this girl—the only link to Bellamy’s sister.

  The Walden boy came running over with the rope. Wells bound the girl’s hands behind her back, then deftly tied her feet together so she could only take short, shuffling steps. His smooth, practiced moves reminded Bellamy that Wells wasn’t just a spoiled Phoenician. Before his arrest, he’d been training as a guard. As an officer, in fact. Bellamy’s hands tightened into fists at his side.

  “Clear a path,” Wells shouted, escorting his prisoner toward the cabin. Her long black hair had fallen away from her face, and Bellamy was able to really look at her for the first time. She was young, maybe Octavia’s age, with almond-shaped green eyes. Her furry black top wasn’t even the strangest thing about her. It was something about her skin, Bellamy realized. The Colonists’ skin came in a wide array of shades, but the hundred had all burned their first week on Earth, before Clarke started urging people to limit their sun exposure. But the captive’s skin had a sort of glow, and a smattering of freckles across her high cheekbones. Unlike the rest of them, she had grown up in the sunlight.

  His anger turned to nausea as he thought about how her people might be treating Octavia. Did they have her tied up? Locked in a cave somewhere? She hated small places. Was she terrified? Was she crying for him? At that moment, he would’ve taken the ax and chopped off his hand if he thought it would help his sister.

  Bellamy followed Wells and the Earthborn into the infirmary cabin, which was now empty except for the still-sleeping Clarke. He watched as Wells directed the girl to sit on the other cot, checked that her hands were tied securely behind her, then took a step back, surveying her with an expression he must have picked up during officer training.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  She glowered and tried to rise to her feet, but her bound hands threw her off-balance. It was easy for Wells to push her back on the cot. “Do you understand what I’m saying?” he continued.

  A troubling thought took shape amid Bellamy’s haze of fury. What if she didn’t speak English? They might’ve landed in North America, but that didn’t mean the Earthborns spoke the same language as they had three hundred years ago.

  Wells crouched down so he was eye level with the girl. “We didn’t know anyone was still living here. If we’ve done something to offend you, we’re sorry. But—”

  “Sorry?” Bellamy spat. “They took my sister and killed Asher. We’re not apologizing for anything.”

  Wells shot him a warning look, then turned back to the Earthborn. “We need to know where you took our friend. And you’re going to stay here until you give us some useful information.”

  She turned to Wells, but instead of responding, she simply pressed her lips together and glared.

  Wells rose to his feet, rubbed his head in frustration, then started to turn away.

  “That’s it? That’s your idea of questioning her?” Bellamy said, torn between fury and bewilderment. “Do you know what your father and his Council friends do when they need information from someone?”

  “That’s not how we’re doing things here,” Wells said with infuriating self-righteousness, as if half the people in camp hadn’t been interrogated by his father’s guards at some point. He walked over to Clarke’s cot, adjusted her blanket, then headed toward the door.

  “You’re just going to leave her there?” Bellamy asked incredulously, his eyes darting between the prisoner and Wells.

  “We’re going to have people guarding the cabin round the clock. Don’t worry, she’s not going to escape.”

  Bellamy took a step forward. “Yeah, she’s sure as hell not going to escape because I’m staying in here with her. With both of them.” He tipped his head toward the sleeping Clarke. “You think it’s a good idea to leave her in here with a killer?”

  Wells leveled his gaze at Bellamy. “She’s tied up. She’s not going to hurt anyone.”

  The condescension in his voice was enough to make Bellamy’s blood boil. “We don’t know anything about these people!” he shot back. “What kind of mutations they’ve undergone. Remember the two-headed deer?”

  Wells shook his head. “She’s a human being, Bellamy, not some kind of monster.”

  Bellamy snorted and turned to the girl. She was staring at them, wide-eyed, her gaze flitting back and forth between Wells and Bellamy. “Well, I’d still feel more comfortable if I kept an eye on her personally,” he said, trying to sound relaxed. He knew Wells wouldn’t let him stay in here if he thought he was going to hurt her.

  “Fine.” Wells shot one final look at Clarke before turning back to Bellamy. “But leave her alone for now. I’ll be back in a little bit.”

  When Wells left, Bellamy walked to the other side of the cabin and lowered himself to the ground next to Clarke. The Earthborn girl had shifted on her cot so she was facing the other wall, but Bellamy could tell from the tension in her shoulders that she was aware of his every move.

  Good, he thought. Let her worry about what he might do next. The more terrified she became, the better the chances she’d tell them where to find Octavia. Bellamy was going to rescue his sister, no matter what it took. He’d spent the past fifteen years risking his life to keep her safe, and he had no intention of stopping now.

  Bellamy loved Remembrance Day. Not because he particularly enjoyed listening to the care center tutors drone on about how lucky they all were that their ancestors had made it off Earth. If Bellamy’s great-great-grandfather had known that his descendants would have the privilege of cleaning bathrooms in a floating can filled with recirculated air, he probably would have been like, “You know what, guys, I’m good here.” No, Bellamy looked forward to Remembrance Day because the storage decks were nearly empty, which made it an ideal time for scavenging.

  He slipped behind an outdated generator that had been shoved carelessly against a wall. Spots like this could conceal valuable stuff for decades. Last Remembrance Day, he’d found an actual pocketknife inside a grate on C deck. Bellamy grinned as his fingers closed around something soft and pulled out a piece of pink fabric. A scarf? He shook it out, ignoring the dust motes. It was a small blanket, with a trim of darker pink. Bellamy folded it carefully and slid it inside his jacket.

  As he made his way back to the care center, Bellamy toyed with the idea of giving his find to Octavia. She’d recently been moved from the small bedroom where the five- and six-year-olds slept to the larger dorm for older girls. While she liked being thought of as a big kid, the dorm was still frightening to her, and a pretty blanket would go a long way toward making the new space feel like home.

  But as he readjusted the blanket under his arm and felt the soft wool against his skin, he knew it was too valuable to keep. Life in the care center was difficult. Although food was meant to be distributed evenly, the orphans had developed an elaborate system based on bribes and intimidation. Without him, Octavia would never get enough to eat. Bellamy was a good scavenger, and he traded everything he found for ration points, or to bribe the kitchen staff for extra food. Over the past few years, he’d done a pretty good job of making sure Octavia had enough to eat. She never got that feral, hungry glint in her eye so common in the care center.

  He slipped in through the rarely used service entrance and hid the blanket in his usual spot, a grate in the wall too low for anyone to notice. He’d come back for it tonight and trade it on the black market. The dim, narrow hallways were deserted, which meant that everyone was still shoved into the cramped gathering room for Remembrance Day, being force-fed fun facts about radiation poisoning and the Cataclysm.

  Bellamy turned the corner. To his surprise, there were noises coming from the girls’ dorm, high-pitched laughter that wasn’t quite loud enough to mask the sound of—was that crying? He picked up his speed, and burst inside without knocking. The long room was mostly
empty, but there were a few older girls standing in a circle, so absorbed with whatever they were doing that they failed to notice his arrival.

  A tall blond girl was holding something in the air, giggling as a smaller hand stretched out in a futile attempt to grab it. Octavia. Even in the dim light, Bellamy caught sight of her tearstained cheeks and huge eyes through the gaps between her tormentors’ bodies.

  They had her red ribbon, the one Octavia wore every day in her dark hair. “Give it back,” she pleaded, in a trembling voice that made Bellamy’s heart cramp.

  “Why?” one of the older girls taunted. “It makes you look like an idiot. Is that what you want?”

  “Yeah,” the third girl said. “We’re doing you a favor. Now people aren’t going to ask, ‘Who’s the weird little kid with the ugly ribbon?’ ”

  The girl holding the ornament made a show of examining it. “I don’t even think it’s a real ribbon. I bet it came off a garbage bag or something.”

  Her friend giggled. “I bet that’s why she smells like the recycling deck.”

  “And you’re going to smell like a rotting corpse when they finally find you,” Bellamy interrupted, striding forward and snatching the ribbon out of the blond girl’s hand. He shoved them out of the way and knelt down next to Octavia. “Are you okay?” He reached out to wipe away her tears.

  She nodded with a sniffle. He handed her the ribbon, which she clutched in a tiny fist, as if it was a living thing that could escape.

  Bellamy rose and, keeping a hand on his sister’s shoulder, turned to face the girls. His voice was tight. “If I hear one word about you bothering her again, you’ll wish you’d been floated.”

  Two of the girls exchanged nervous glances, but the blond only raised her eyebrows and smirked. “She’s not even supposed to be here. She’s a waste of oxygen who was only born because of your stupid slutty mother. And your sister”—she said the word like it was something disgusting—“is going to turn out just like her.”

  Bellamy’s muscles reacted before his brain did. Before he realized what he was doing, he’d grabbed the girl by the throat and shoved her against the wall. “If you ever talk to my sister again, if you do so much as look at her, I will kill you,” he hissed. He squeezed her neck tighter, overcome with a sudden and terrifying desire to shut her up for good.