The 100 (The 100 Series) (5 page)

For the first ten minutes, the prisoners were too rattled by the shooting to notice that they were floating through space, the only humans to leave the Colony in almost three hundred years. The rogue guard had gotten what he wanted. He’d pushed the Chancellor’s limp body forward just as the dropship door was closing, and then stumbled into a seat. But from the shocked expression on his pale face, Clarke gathered that gunfire had never been part of the plan.

Yet for Clarke, watching the Chancellor get shot was less alarming than what she’d seen in the moments beforehand.

Wells was on the dropship.

When he’d first appeared in the door, she’d been sure it
was a hallucination. The chance of her losing her mind in solitary was infinitely higher than the chance of the Chancellor’s son ending up in Confinement. She’d been shocked enough when, a month after her own sentencing, Wells’s best friend, Glass, had appeared in the cell down the row from her. And now Wells, too? It seemed impossible, but there was no denying it. She’d watched him jump to his feet during the standoff, then crumple back into his seat as the real guard’s gun went off and the imposter burst through the door, covered in blood. For a moment, an old instinct gave her the urge to run over and comfort Wells. But something much heavier than her harness kept her feet rooted to the floor. Because of him, she’d watched her parents be dragged off to the execution chamber. Whatever pain he was feeling was no less than he deserved.

“
Clarke
.”

She glanced to the side and saw Thalia grinning at her from a few rows ahead. Her old cell mate twisted in her seat, the only person in the dropship not staring at the guard. Despite the grim circumstances, Clarke couldn’t help smiling back. Thalia had that effect. In the days after Clarke’s arrest and her parents’ execution, when her grief felt so heavy it was difficult to breathe, Thalia had actually made Clarke laugh with her impression of the cocky guard whose shuffle turned into a strut whenever he thought the girls were looking at him.

“
Is that him?
” Thalia mouthed now, tilting her head toward Wells. Thalia was the only person who knew everything—not just about Clarke’s parents, but the unspeakable thing that Clarke had done.

Clarke shook her head to signal that now wasn’t the time to talk about it. Thalia motioned again. Clarke started to tell her to knock it off when the main thrusters roared to life, shaking the words from her lips.

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.