Chapter 13
Clarke wasn’t sure where she was going until she reached the end of the hallway. There were no more turns to make. A closet door on the left, and a key card door to the right. Apparently the bedraggled woman she and Miller had “accidentally” accosted in the hallway was someone rather high up, because the key card let her in whatever door she needed. She was surprised it hadn’t been reported lost or stolen yet.
Either way, there’s nothing left to lose, she already made herself an enemy of Dante Wallace, so she might as well find out everything she could. So she moved to the locked door and swiped the key.
Three blinking red lights, a green light, and then the click of the lock. Clarke was in.
Inside there wasn’t much to see. Some lab equipment, sterile, but scattered across the room as if the person who used it last was harried and scatterbrained. Usually only the hospital wing on the Ark was this carefully disorganized.
Another door in the back looked interesting, so Clarke meandered over, stopping to take apart an IV stand. She may be up against guns and gas grenades, but at least she had something resembling a weapon.
The door swung open soundlessly, but there was a slight shuffle from somewhere inside the room. Clarke held her bat at the ready and flipped the light switch.
Clarke stopped short so quickly that her sneakers squeaked on the linoleum floors and her bat fell to the floor with an echoing clang. “Lexa?”
The girl was stone faced, staring defiantly up at the lights, strapped to a metal cot without a mattress or blanket, cotton swabs taped up and down her forearms. She was nearly naked, plain white underclothes keeping her modest, but the tattoo on her bicep danced with the flexing of her muscles. She was strained, but not struggling.
Clarke moved slowly and carefully as she stepped into view of the other girl. Lexa’s eyes glanced down and over Clarke’s healthier form, she said nothing. “Lexa, hold on, I’m going to cut you free.”
Clarke ran back to the other room and threw open several drawers before finally finding a scalpel. She rushed back to the Commander’s side. Several minutes later, Lexa’s left foot was free, and another few minutes had her other foot flexing and popping as she moved her stiff joints.
Another ten minutes and Clarke had cut through the last fibers holding back Lexa’s right hand. “There you-“
She hadn’t so much as blinked before she was slammed to the ground, scalpel scattering across the floor and Lexa’s hands tight around her throat. “Yu natrona!” She snarled. “You lied to me!”
The hands on her neck squeezed so tightly she felt bruises already begin to form, and black spots swarmed her vision. Lexa’s face blurred in and out of focus, but her breathing was heavy, far heavier than it should have been. Clarke desperately clawed at the hands choking her to death, drawing black blood and ripping the cotton swabs from her forearms to reveal needle punctures mottling her skin.
Lexa stumbled backwards as if she had been knocked from her place straddling Clarke, breathing rapidly in a quickly developing panic attack. She rubbed and clawed at her own throat as Clarke gasped for breath and curled in on herself, cradling her stinging hands and wrists. “You-“
“Jok!” Lexa was panicking. Absolutely panicking, Clarke could tell, and somehow, for some reason, it comforted her to see the stoic Commander losing her mind. But that was her only source of comfort because her hands were stinging too and that was not a coincidence. It couldn’t have been. Not when her forearms have been aching with pinpricks and not when her own chest was screaming with the need to breathe long after she’d had her fill of air, not when she could feel stinging marks running down her hands and wrists exactly where she’d scratched them on the other girl. “Jok!” Lexa yelped, still heaving, but not quite as badly as before. “Jok.” She whimpered before leaning against the cot she had once been strapped to. “Jok.”
Clarke rolled to her stomach, pushing herself up to her hands and knees so that she could prop herself against the wall across from her. “I didn’t lie to you.” She whispered. That’s all she could manage, the older girl had nearly crushed her throat and no sound would come out above a hoarse mumble.
“You said you were not friends with the Maunon.” Lexa bit back.
Clarke shook her head. “We were captured too. We hadn’t made contact with them until they took us. We’re hostages too.”
“Hostages? They’re not draining you of your blood!” Lexa could barely keep her voice below yelling. “My people are nothing but hogs to them!”
“They want us for breeding stock!” Clarke hissed back. “They want to integrate us, force us to intermingle with them, to become their military, and their farmers. They want us to do to you what they’ve been doing to you, only faster, more frequently, more efficiently.”
“Jok.”
“We’re soulmates.”
Lexa moved to her feet, unsteady but putting a brave front up. “Is that what you people call it? It doesn’t matter. My people need me.”
“You can’t just walk out of here. You’re not bulletproof.”
“Then what do you suggest?” Lexa raised her voice, whirling back around to glare at Clarke. “You cut the straps, now I either get my people and get out or we both die.”
Clarke felt her heart rate spike dramatically considering the possibility. She only needed the small spark of adrenaline to send her mind whirring. “We get out of here now. We go through the way you came in. The hospital wing is probably the general area where they keep your people. If they don’t want to remind the citizens here about what’s going on, then they’ll have a way in and out that is out of sight back there.”
“They see me at all and we die.”
“Welcome to the club, Lexa.” Clarke hissed. “There’s a closet across the hall. Maybe it will have a change of clothes.”
Clarke led the way as they moved from Lexa’s holding cell. Clarke stopped to grab her bat from the floor and Lexa collected whatever scalpels she could find. Three in total, Clarke had a feeling the girl could do incredible damage with just those three scalpels.
Clarke checked down the hall before dragging Lexa through the closet a few feet away. “Ah! Perfect, scrub pants and a lab coat. This will do.”
“It is easy to grab a hold of.” Lexa grumbled as she pulled the pants over her bruised and cut legs. “These make no sense in battle.”
“They weren’t made for battle. They were made for research.”
“All clothes should be ready for battle in a moment’s notice.” Lexa harped. “It is dangerous to be easily manipulated.”
“Well, take it up with Dante.” Clarke grumbled as she rummaged about looking for anything else useful. “They usually start pricking you early in the morning. How often do they usually check on you?”
Lexa shrugged. “Every few hours? After the first few days Tsing left me alone a majority of the time. I don’t know how long it has been.”
“A couple of days.” Clarke answered, eyeing Lexa up and down. “That should be good enough. We’ll avoid as much contact as possible but those should keep you from looking immediately suspicious from a distance.”
Lexa nodded. “You know the way?”
“More or less.”
“Jok,”
“The bunker has tunnels leading through and underneath. There’s a dam just here that powers their electricity.” Raven pointed towards a large shape on the hastily drawn map Lincoln had made based on the image transmitted at the last minute from the Ark before they lost communications for the final time. The Ark was due down in hours, and Anya had managed to get Gustus to send along orders to Titus to invoke Heda’s declaration of war. Hundreds of nearby troops would arrive soon to fight off any Maunonkru when they tried to swarm the wreckage. The plan isn’t to win over the Skaikru, but to do as much damage to the Maunon as possible. “First, if we can get to the dam and damage it, they lose their power. We should do this during our final strike. They’ll realize we know more about them than they thought the moment we go for their power source. Abby said they have a mutated gene that makes the air out here poisonous. If we shut off the air filters, every Mountain Man should get sick and die. I guarantee you they have backup generators that will keep them running until major repairs to the dam could be done. So we wait until our final attack for this. The big one.” Raven explained. “The bunker doors are meant to protect against any and all attempted, unauthorized entry. So there’s no point trying to attack it from there. The best we can try is the -what was the word?- Ripa entry. They have contact with the mountain somehow. Obviously they’ve made some sort of entry here in the back.” Raven ran a finger down the map following a tunnel trail going directly beneath the bunker. “My guess is there’s a door here that the Ripa come in and out of.”
“Sha.” Anya murmured. “Lincoln, you know the tunnels best. You and I will go through and scout this entry. Octavia and Raven will stay here.”
“My brother is in there, and I’m going wherever Lincoln is going.” Octavia argued.
“This is war, girl.” Indra growled from beside Octavia. “Children do not belong on missions like this.”
Lincoln shook his head. “It is best you stay. The Ripa are very dangerous. They will kill and eat you if you get caught by them.”
“And that should comfort me how? You’re going down there!”
Lincoln smiled. “I have been there many times, and I will have Anya. She is esteemed for her skill in a fight. I’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure I like being left here either.” Raven furrowed her brows. “Besides, you won’t know what to look for.”
“Lincoln can draw.”
“There’s only so much a drawing can depict, Anya.” Raven retorted. “I need to feel the metal and see the bolts in the faults. You think I’m stupid but you don’t know jack shit about this bunker!”
Indra lashed out, slapping the back of Raven’s head with an open hand. The thump echoed around the room, not that Anya heard much of it. It took quite a bit of self-restraint to hold back the wince and ignore the ache building in the back of her skull. “Enough, Indra. She’s no use with a concussion.”
“Fuck you,” Raven groaned, rubbing the back of her head and glaring at Indra from the corners of her eyes.
“You’re not coming with us.” Anya asserted, folding her arms and daring the younger girl to object.
Object she does. “I’d like you to tell me how you know if a key card machine can be hacked or not. Tell me exactly where the chinks in a metal sheet are. Tell me how you can tell the difference between a stripped bolt from overuse and a stripped bolt from natural wear and tear. Tell me exactly how much gun powder it will take to blow a door without alerting our presence depending on the placement of the powder, the door, and all of the factors listed above. Exactly. You don’t know, but I do. So yeah, I’m going.”
“Bants, everyone. Now.”
Raven grinded her teeth so hard that Anya could feel the ache in her own jaw. After everyone had left, Anya let her frustration show. “You are foolish.”
“And you’re an idiot.”
“Those tunnels are dangerous and-“
“Why do you give a shit?” Raven rolled her eyes. “Not a week ago you were plotting our complete extermination and now you’re trying to keep me safe?”
Anya sneered. “Don’t think so highly of yourself. You’re useful because of your knowledge of tek. If you die, any chance of retrieving Lexa is gone. And our entire way of life is gone.”
“No pressure.” Raven mumbled. “I can’t do what you’re keeping me alive for if I don’t take risks.”
“There’s a difference between risk-taking and recklessness!” Anya burst out harshly. “Jok, I thought I was done having this conversation after Tris stopped picking fights. You act like a child!”
“And you’re pretending to be the Commander!” Raven snarled. “Looks like we’re both disappointed huh?”
Anya practically growled. “You are not going. It’s final.”
“Great,” Raven smirked. “I’ll pack my bag. I’m going. I’ve decided.”
Raven pranced away, ignoring Anya’s orders. “Jok!” Anya snarled, slamming a fist down on the table just over the dam circled on the map.
That girl would be the death of her.
“Okay, go, go.” Clarke whispered, ushering Lexa across another hall. “This is the door to the hospital. Pretend to lead me to a bunk in the corner, I’ll tell you what to do once we get there.”
Lexa rolled her eyes. “I know how to deceive people, Clarke.”
“I’m sorry do you know proper hospital etiquette here in the Maunon? Didn’t think so.”
“You’re insufferable.” Lexa griped, straightening her back and setting a hand between Clarke’s shoulder blades. “After you,”
“Fuck you,”
“You wouldn’t be the first.”
They walked calmly across the floor. There were few nurses tending to unconscious patients with red IV’s in their arms, but none took any interest in them. They reached the furthest bunk and pulled the privacy curtain around them and stood facing each other, arms crossed and scowls marring their faces. “The next step in your grand master plan?” Lexa snarked.
“Hold on.” Clarke muttered, moving to the edge of the curtain and peeking out. “We’re lucky as hell, Lexa. The tubes are leading over to this corner. If we do this right, we can sneak through to the other side of that wall and follow the blood to the source.”
“How do we get to the other side of the wall?”
Clarke craned her neck. “There’s a vent. Let’s go. The nurses are busy.”
The two snuck through the curtain and towards the wall, purposefully keeping themselves flat against the wall and out of sight of the rest of the room, hidden by the curtain still pulled around the last cot. Slowly, carefully, Clarke pried the vent from the wall and ducked inside, waving Lexa along behind her.
The vent was short, only a few feet long, and upon reaching the other side, Clarke’s jaw dropped. “Very good, Clarke kom Skaikru.” Lexa nodded once as she stepped forward into the room, unperturbed by the cages stacked four high with warriors, stripped and drugged, shadows of what they once were.
Another warrior hung upside down, not three feet from the vent entrance, and Clarke gagged at the sight of the blood rushing from his body, into the tubes that ran from the room into the adjacent hospital wing. “They said it was humane.” She murmured weakly.
Lexa glanced over her shoulder, an eyebrow raised. “And you believed them?”
“Well, no. But still…”
“Knowing the facts and seeing them in action are two different things, Clarke. It is something you must remember as a leader, whenever you make a decision, it may be necessary on paper, but in practice, it can be much worse.” Lexa wandered to the cage of a warrior she recognized, tugging on the lock. “How do we get them out?”
Clarke looked around. “I don’t-“
The lights went out, the locks on the doors clicked, and red strobe lights blinked, the screeching of an alarm blared over the loud speakers of the bunker. Lexa crouched, ready for battle. She looked out of place in her scrub pants and lab coat, but Clarke knew she was deadly.
“We need to go.” Clarke marched towards her, past the cages. She grabbed Lexa’s bicep and hauled her up and towards a tube sticking up out of the corner of the room.
“I’m not leaving my people.” Lexa yanked her arm from Clarke’s grasp. “I will not abandon them.”
Clarke rolled her eyes. “You are the Commander. These gona are dispensible. That’s why you send them into battle to fight and die, but without you, there is no one to organize them and deploy the tactics that will allow everyone else to survive. Sacrifice them for the greater good.” Clarke hated herself for saying it, but it needed to be said.
Lexa’s eyes burned through her skull. “No one is dispensible. These are my people and they look to me for protection and guidance. I will not leave them behind.”
“You think this mountain can fall without you there to strategize?” Clarke argued. “Now let’s go!”
Lexa turned her back, staring at the dozens of pairs of eyes, watching her pleadingly. “I will return for you. The Skaikru will be our saving grace and the key to the fall of the Maunon. Ai gona, ste yuj. Heda will not abandon you. Yu no gonplei ste odon. Jus drein jus daun!”
She didn’t have to say it a second time. Like rabid animals they slammed against their cages, rattled the bars, hissing and screaming and repeating their mantra. Clarke hadn’t the slightest clue what it meant, but it was terrifying enough. As soon as Lexa joined her, they jumped down the passage, sliding into darkness with the echoes of dozens of angry warriors following them down.