I own nothing.
Clarke opened her eyes and felt the heavy weight of reality hang from every single humming cell in her body. The freshness of her artificial self from the City of Light fell away, as if it were a dreamy memory of simpler, sweeter times. Every true pain came to her then, screaming in wretched agony; replacing the relief and hope she had just experienced after pulling the kill switch, with an aching, primative need for healing and attention. The two stings in her chest from where her mother had stabbed her with a surgical scalple throbbed dully, swollen and most likely infected. Nausea squeezed at her stomach, twisting it into knots; an early sign of transfusion rejection. Her skin was sweat soaked and ashen, and dark circles hung from her eyes revealing the haunting and sleepless nights of the past week.
While her body cried out in its misery, the people in the room around her moaned too; feeling the pains of battle that A.L.I.E had denied from them for the sake of her benign human salvation. Her mother was by her side then, examing her vitals and caressing her in a timid, motherly way. It would be some time before Abby could touch Clarke again without the shaking guilt of her daughter's torture at her hands.
Murphy called for some attention, his hand still pumping Ontari's black heart. Clarke leaned forward and spoke the archaic code to dislodge the Flame from her nervous system. It hurt to feel tendrils of the Flame retract from the ends of her consciousness, as if she were letting go of the hand of a dearly beloved friend. But she and the Flame were not meant to be, and so she was left with only one souvenir for her time with the Flame and the CIty of Light; a bleeding hole on the nape of her neck.
The Flame, however, was 1.76 grams of unfeeling fiberglass and silicon, and experienced no joy, pain, or sorrow at the loss of connection betweein its host. It, instead, returned to an electronic hybernation state until it was powered on again to bond with a new 'night blood'. Despite its creator's best, albeit rushed, updated programming from the original A.L.I.E. code, the Flame's design to interpret and process the emotions and needs of its host never manifested a proper understanding of the feeling of loss. For the Flame never truly lost its host. After input was permanently lost from one commander, their data would be saved, and a new commander, and thus a new connection and input, would take their place.
And so, while the battle weary Wanheda of the real world stood up stiffly to relay her apocolyptic news of global radiation to Bellamy Blake; Clarke Griffin, the most recent and most short lived commander the Flame had ever bonded with, stood freshly showered and well rested before Becca Primeheda in the Polaris space laboratry, 23,000 miles about the Earth.
Clarke's eyes scanned the room. Her obvious questions racing across her face with a creasing of the brow and a deepening of a frown. Becca, unable to stop from smiling proudly at the young girl, took a moment to feel absolved of her responsibility at having created the devastatingly destructive A.I. that was A.L.I.E 1.0, a relief nearly 100 years in the making.
"Why am I still here?" Clarke asked, huskily. Her heart was beating wildly in her chest, fear at the possibility of her failure to flip the kill switch in time or maybe her death in the real world or some other unknown horror, filled her imagination.
"Don't be afraid." Becca said, almost automatically. "Your spirit will live on within the Flame." Clarke furrowed her brow at the woman. She shifted her weight to another foot, and felt that the boots that had once rubbed her feet raw were now seemingly a second, protective skin. The blisters had hidden themselves, or perhaps had disappeared as well.
Becca squared her shoulders and straightened her spine.
"I know that you were raised in space, Clarke Griffin, and I know that you were educated in science, history, medicine, and technology in a way that no other commander has had in nearly a century." Becca's eyes softened at the young girl, feeling a connection with the high level of scientific understanding that Clarke possessed.
"An imprint of your neurological input has been saved to the drive of Version 2.0 of A.L.I.E.," Clarke pressed her lips, expressing her most concerning question with the thinning line of her mouth.
"The You in reality has continued on. Hopefully, You will be able to find a way to either stop the nuclear power plants from melting or maybe You will secure a safety zone away from the incoming radiation. If Version 2.0 is placed into the body of another commander, we might be able to see how far along You are getting, or maybe how You have succeeded in saving the human race entirely." Becca smiled and paused briefly as she omitted the option of failure to do either of these tasks.
"But the you that is standing here now is the last input Version 2.0 recieved from your neurological transmission." Becca stepped forward sympathetically.
"This you isn't real, Clarke," she said lowly, "You will not age, and you will contract disease. You can still feel pain, but it is only pain that you have experienced previously in your life. You can be hurt, but that hurt is limited to only what your mind feels it to be."
Clarke searched Becca's eyes, absorbing the information of what she would now have to percieve as her new reality.
Becca glanced at her transparent montitors fixed on the opposite wall and held a hand out to the circular door with a white raven painted on it. Side by side the first and the latest commander walked to the door.
"Everywhere you go in here is formed from the memories of the commanders before you. Everything your senses percieve will be how the commanders percieved those things." Becca stopped and stared pitingly into Clarke's eyes. "The burden every commander must bear is the eternity they must spend here. We can advise the newest commander when they are still living, but aside from that advice, we have no contact with the outside reality. We are here until Version 2.0 is no longer needed and thusly, destroyed."
Becca's eyes pressed into Clarke's. "A good analogy for this place would be purgatory, as described in the story of the nine levels of hell in Dante's Inferno."
Clarke felt a deepening pit of dread forming in her stomach. Fear was creeping into her thoughts, fear for her friends, her mother, for the human race; and yet she was stuck in purgatory, unable to help anyone or do anything.
"There is some good news though," Becca continued. "Travel between the interpretations of the previous commander's minds is freely accessable, as well as communication with the imprints of those commanders."
Clarke's heart swelled painfully in her chest.
"And it seems that the 'City of light' that A.L.I.E. 1.0 created is still functioning. You can visit there if you choose. And my readings say that some of Lexa kom Trikru's imprinted code is still running."
Clarkes' mouth and throat went dry.
A thousands hopes and fears clashed together in Clarke's chest as she processed Becca's words.
"What do you mean 'some of Lexa's code'?" Clarke said, swallowing the images her brain was creating of 'some of Lexa'.
"During her battle of those minds 'chipped' by A.L.I.E., Commander Lexa kom Trikru sustained deletion from her code." Becca's voice become monotonous as she began reviewing the information she needed to relay to Clarke. Her assistants from the past called this Becca's 'professor' voice.
"When you find her, she will appear damaged. But this can be repaired by revisiting the location of where her last input was recieved. In that location there will be a ghost file that has the original code, which can replace the deleted portions of Lexa's code." Becca gestured to Raven's door.
"It seems that this will always be a door to the City of Light and to here." Becca smiled at Clarke, "Lexa's imprint should still be through here."
Clarke wanted nothing more than to run through Raven's door and discover if what Becca was saying was true. But she hesitated, still swaying from the information of her new reality.
"Why don't you come with me, and tell me where to find her?" She asked suspiciously
Becca waved the question aside.
"I need to stay here. I need to calculate numbers and conjure up scenarios that can help the human race win against the melting nuclear power plants, in case a new commander ascends and comes here seeking our advice. I need to help them if they come. If I can help them, then maybe l..." Becca trailed off, haunted by the failings of her past self, and of the limitations of her current self.
Clarke felt empathy for the guilt that this woman must feel. Guilt was a burden that nearly everyone seemed to carry alone. She held out her arm.
"When I find Lexa, we'll come back to help you." She promised sincerely.
Becca hesitatnly took Clarke's arm and squeezed the young commander's arm gently, unused to contact with another person. "I'll send you clues along the way." She promised in return.
As Clarke turned to go through Raven's door, Becca gripped Clarke's arm more urgently.
"Remember that this is like purgatory, Clarke Griffin. Your perceptions of what will happen, and your feelings you percieve aren't real now. They WERE real, what you felt before the disconnection of yourself and Version 2.0 are the only feelings you can experience here."
Memories of every poingnant emotion she'd every had flashed through Clarke's mind and a smile spread slowly across her face.
"It's okay." She said squeezing Becca's arm back. "It's more than enough."
With that being said, Clarke released the Primeheda's arm and pulled open Raven's door to reveal the starless night and wet streets of the City of Light.