She groaned as she opened her eyes, squinting initially in an attempt to adjust her vision to her surroundings. Wherever she was appeared to be very dimly lit but, thanks to the abundance of noise that felt like nails being hammered into her skull from every possible direction, she had a hard time comprehending what was going on. She felt groggy, confused and - worse of all - nauseous, as if she had been sedated... because she had been.
"Hey, you're up."
Straining her neck, she rubbed her eyes before turning towards her source of concern, blinking hard and quick a couple of times to focus on the person seated near to her. A boy not older than 18 with goggles sitting atop the head of his lanky frame grinned at her from beside another shorter boy who was seated in between her and the boy that had spoken to her. She furrowed her eyebrows and slowly turned her head to look around, taking in her surroundings as she tried to remember where she was and how she had gotten there.
As she observed the dozens of kids strapped into their seats along the perimeter of where-ever-they-hell-they-were, her memory flooded back into her head. She remembered sitting on the bed in her cell when the guards had rushed in, demanding her to stand with her front against the nearest wall and hands raised and clasped behind her head; she remembered how one of them had grabbed a hold of her wrist and clasped a silver wristband onto it, its needles sinking into her skin, which she noticed she still had on; she remembered standing calm and still through it all, even when they had turned her around and injected a substance into her neck, one that she had later realised to be a sedative as she struggled against its affects, the guards dragging her relapsing body out of the cell; and, last of all, she remembered the last words she'd heard before blacking out in one of the Ark's corridors: "Enjoy the dead Earth, darlin'."
Lost in her thoughts, she didn't notice the drop ship - now aware that she had been put in one - had come to a halt and everyone was pulling off their seat-belts and making their way to the lower level. The two boys next to her had also left, making her unstrap herself and head down the ladder beyond the trapdoor. Everyone crowded around the ground-floor of the drop ship, and she found that she did not have the effort nor did she care enough to rummage through that many people and see what was happening. She heard people talking and could make out the words 'Octavia' and 'brother' over the commotion, but remained clueless as to what the topic of discussion was towards the front.
Soon enough, the door of the drop ship opened - or was opened by someone deliberately, she didn't notice. Once people realised no one had dropped dead due to exposure, meaning the air wasn't toxic, they rushed out, shouting and cheering as they did. She waited for everyone to clear out before exiting, slowly walking down the ramp as she absorbed the miracle around her. Trees shades of green she didn't know existed, reaching heights she wasn't sure were possible to reach, surrounded the small clearing the ship had landed onto. The grass-covered ground felt foreign beneath her boots, even more so when she bent down to take them off, having the urge to feel the earth beneath her bare skin and nothing in between.
This was the home of her ancestors, this was where they belonged. Not because of the twisted ideas of national identity and ownership through birth-right that she was aware had started the Nuclear War and ended the world in the first place, but because the human race - inclusive of her ancestors and the ancestors of every single human being that existed, both on the ground and on the Ark and even elsewhere if there were any - belonged on earth, and were native to it and nowhere else; not the Ark, not bloody Jupiter. There was no denying it. All accounts of the creation and preservation of mankind led to the confirmation of this one fact. Whether it was to be looked at religiously — where all major religions of the world such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and so many more all believed that God created Earth with perfect conditions for the human race — or scientifically — with empirical evidence that claimed that, through evolution, the earth's conditions gave birth to the human race, making it inhabitable, adaptable and survivable by them.
Feeling the grass beneath her feet as she walked around, boots held in one hand, she felt the corners of her mouth turn up in the slightest of manners as she gazed around, relishing the first feeling of joy she'd felt since she could remember. It was short-lived, however, as she found herself bumping into someone's back, startling her as she stumbled back slightly. The figure turned around, and she took the time to study his face. He stood tall, with chocolate brown eyes that hooded under furrowed eyebrows. His nose was thin and crowded with freckles that spread to his cheeks, with lips so straight they seemed pursed, except for then when they turned into a scowl.
"Watch where you're going, will you?" His scowl deepened as he spoke. She noticed his eyes scan her from head to toe and, when they returned with no sign of recognition, he turned, his slicked-back black hair bouncing slightly as he began to walk away. She furrowed her eyebrows as he did so, but decided against saying anything; it wasn't worth it.
Shifting her eyes away from his direction, she was about to head back towards the drop-ship when a girl approached her, unaware that she had just witnessed the entire incident. She came to a halt before her, her straight brown hair fiercely glistening in the sunlight while her doe-eyes seemed apologetic. "Hey," she spoke softly, smiling with her eyes. "I'm sorry about Bellamy. Please excuse my brother, he has a stick up his ass." Brother? No one from the Ark was allowed to have siblings.
She arched an eyebrow but decided to keep her question to herself, nodding slightly. "It's cool, no worries."
The girl before her beamed, holding out her hand. "Octavia Blake."
She looked Octavia's hand with her eyebrow still arched, regarding it closely. The girl seemed genuine for the most part, she just wasn't used to interacting with people, let alone friendly interactions. Regardless, she forwarded her own hand and shook hers. "Zella."
"So," Octavia began as both of them instinctively began walking towards the drop-ship. "What were you—" The sound of commotion from nearby cut her off, making both their heads snap towards where it was came from. A crowd had gathered just a couple of meters away, encircled around Bellamy and three other people, two of which seemed to be arguing. Noticing her brother, Octavia ran up to them, pushing through the crowd to make her way while Zella observed from afar.
From what Zella could hear, a blonde girl was trying to persuade everyone to head to a place called Mount Weather for supplies and a boy was backing her up. Both were being picked on by Bellamy, some other boys and — now — Octavia too. She scoffed at the sight before, crossing her arms.
"Look at this everybody," She heard one of the boys with Bellamy say as he pushed the one that had teamed up with the blonde girl. "It's the chancellor of EartH."
Upon hearing this Zella cocked her head to the side and furrowed her eyebrows. Was this Chancellor Jaha's son? She could see the resemblance, but she wasn't sure. Either way, it's not like she cared and, with that thought, she decided to walk away. Picking up two shards of metal that she guessed were part of the debris from the drop-ship's landing, she strode towards the other side of the vessel she had arrived in and sat down on the grass, leaning against the now cool surface. She began scraping and sharpening one piece of metal with the other, tuning out the noise and fuss of people around her. Zella sat their for what seemed like seconds but probably was quite a bit more considering the crowd had dispersed and some of the people that had been roaming around, including Octavia, were nowhere to be seen. She guessed that they had gone to look for 'Mount Weather', wherever that was.
"We don't like making friends on Earth?" Zella looked up to see the source of her disturbance. The boy that had pushed 'the chancellor of Earth' earlier stood before her, smirking as he stared down at her. "Name's John Murphy, and you are?"
"No one of importance." Zella went back to scraping the metal in her hands, hoping he'd get the hint and leave her alone...
... he didn't.
"We're the 100, baby, we're all important. Didn't you hear Jaha on the big screen on your way down?" John Murphy scoffed while she continued with her scraping, not bothering to look up again. Despite what it seemed, she heard and processed every word he said, finally learning that a total hundred of delinquents had been sent down inclusive of her. Zella frowned; hoheavily had she been sedated to have remained unconscious through the entire thing? "The expendables."
"Lucky us." She mumbled, hoping he'd leave her alone even though she knew he wasn't going to go away anytime soon. She knew how the minds of people like John Murphy worked: they weren't satisfied until they absolutely infuriated the living soul of their subjects of interest, and that's exactly what he was trying to do to her.
"So what were you in for, darlin'?" She could practically hear the mischief seethe in his voice. "Murder?"
Zella blinked as a spark lit up in her mind, shedding light upon memories she tried keeping in the dark most of the time, memories that flooded her thoughts every time she tried to sleep and hid themselves when she didn't have the luxury to rest. An image made its way back into her conscience: a mere child cradling the head of her frenzied mother in her lap. She could practically feel the sweat that had visibly formed on the little girl's forehead, the sounds of her mother's suppressed sobs ringing in her ear as if someone was actively whispering them into it.
"Yes," The tonality of Zella's voice did not mirror her thoughts as her gaze settled onto the ground before her. She sounded calm, unfazed and serious, just like always. One would have to notice the tiniest details in her actions and behavior to realize when, despite how she seemed, she was anything but calm and unfazed. But no one ever tried to read between the minuscule lines of her being, which is why John Murphy failed to notice how Zella had cut the inside of her finger with the shard of metal in an attempt to distract herself from her thoughts. And, for what it's worth, it had worked.
However, John Murphy — as she had predicted — was not done with her. She heard him laugh quietly, obviously amused at her response. "Hey Bell!" He called out to someone she guessed was Bellamy given the nickname, who was presumably nearby; Zella didn't bother looking up. "Looks like we have a scary murderer on the loose!"
The sound of feet bouncing off the grassy, muddy, covered-in-leaves ground approached them and she looked up to see Bellamy jog up to where she was sitting, making her sigh and stand up. She wasn't in the mood to deal with anyone's bullshit, except that's all that John Murphy had seemed to throw at her so far and Bellamy appeared enthusiastic to contribute. "Is that so?" The freckled man smirked as he came to a halt before the, raising his eyebrows in amusement. "Careful now Murphy, wouldn't want to stir the beast awake."
Zella rolled her eyes, wanting to do nothing with this conversation, and attempted to walk past them as they huddled around her. Her entire motive behind straying away from the crowd and settling on the further side of the drop-ship was that people would stay away from her, yet here she was, being verbally probed by who she assumed were the two most infamous boys of the lot so far.
Just as she brushed past them, she felt a hand grab her arm, jolting her to a halt. She turned her head and found Bellamy holding onto her, his smirk deepening into the sliest of smiles. "Did I stir it awake?"
Zella squinted her eyes, incensed at his audacity. She despised skin-on-skin contact, so much so that even the prison guards knew better than to touch her unless it was absolutely necessary. Yet here Bellamy Blake stood, gripping her bare arm as his short fingernails managed to dig holes into it. Ripping her arm away from his grasp with force that caused his own arm to jerk forward, she stared at him with a blank expression. "Don't fucking touch me ever again."