"When I was on the Ark still, I may or may not have stumbled across something that they didn't want me to find out about," Raven admitted with a small smile.
"Stumbled across?" Bellamy questioned with a raised eyebrow.
"Okay, so I might have stumbled upon it after I'd already hacked into the system," she told him. "But that's not the point."
"Then what is?" He demanded.
"We all knew that the Ark wasn't a permanent solution, right?" She questioned, seeming to be trying to choose her words carefully.
"Yeah. What's your point?" He asked her. "What does any of this have to do with me rising from the dead, or whatever the hell happened out there?"
"They needed to figure out a way to come back to Earth, but they knew that there was still probably radiation down here," Raven continued. "So, from what I can tell, they started experiments to try and design some kind of man-made evolution… They were experimenting to try and find a way that future generations would be able to withstand more and be able to survive the radiation."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Bellamy questioned. "They did this to me?"
She nodded.
"Well whatever they did made me able to withstand more than just radiation."
"I didn't understand all of it, but it looked like…" Raven paused for a moment as she tried to figure out how to break the news to him. "It seemed like they were convinced that they'd figured out a way to only strengthen the body when something that would normally be fatal occurred."
Bellamy ran a hand over his face in frustration before he asked her, "Can you just tell me what all of this means? In basic terms?"
"Alright," she agreed. "Well, to put it in the simplest terms, I think that you're immortal."
He let out a humourless laugh.
"You're joking right?" He questioned. "This is insane."
"So is getting shot dead and waking up the next morning," Raven pointed out. "There aren't really a lot of sane explanations to that either."
"So… What? I can't die?" Bellamy asked.
"No. Not easily, anyways," she told him. "…And you also won't age."
"What?" He asked in confusion. "Why wouldn't I age? I've been aging all my life. Why would I stop now?"
Raven let out a sigh. She didn't fully understand this herself and trying to explain it to Bellamy was proving to be more than a little difficult.
"Because before you got shot, you were just… pre-immortal," she explained, struggling to find a good term for it. "But now that you were technically dead for a while there, the defense mechanism that they put in your DNA was activated… If you hadn't been shot, then you would have been able to live out your life and age like a normal person… Die of old age… But now that whatever it is that they did to you has been triggered, I don't think there's any way to turn it off. It's just there, fighting off anything that could potentially kill you… Including aging."
Bellamy turned away from her as he began to pace.
"This… This is insane," he told her, repeating his earlier words.
"I know."
There was a brief silence as he paced the room before he finally stopped in his tracks and looked up at her and quietly asked, "Who else?"
"What?" Raven asked, taken off guard.
"If they were doing these experiments, then I must not be the only one, right?" He asked in a tone that came off almost pleadingly. "Or am I just going to live forever by myself while everyone else dies off in front of me?"
Raven remained silent for several long moments before she finally spoke again.
"I don't know how many others there are… The files were a bitch to try and get into. I didn't even know about you being one of them until you strolled back into camp after being shot in the chest."
"So you don't know of anyone else?" Bellamy demanded.
"I did manage to get into a few files, but not many," she admitted. "But there was one person down here whose file I saw…"
"Who?" He demanded in a cold, stern voice.
"I don't know if telling you is the best idea right now," Raven told him. "Your emotions are running a little high after everything and I don't want you going off and doing something crazy."
"I won't," Bellamy promised, forcing his voice to come out gentler. "Just tell me the name. Please."
"Fine…" Raven sighed, knowing that there was a good chance that this would come back to bite her in the ass later. "It's Clarke."
Bellamy remained concerningly still and silent for several long moments before he finally asked, "Where is she?"
"She's with the rest of the camp, figuring out what they're going to do with Finn," Raven responded. "She thought that it would be better if you weren't there. She doesn't want the camp getting any more divided, so she's trying to figure out a punishment harsh enough that no one will complain that doesn't involve leaving one of our own to die."
He paused for a moment longer before brushing past her and heading towards the opening of the tent with a gun clutched in his hand.
"Where are you going, Bellamy?" Raven demanded. "I told you not to do anything crazy."
"Am I interrupting something?" Bellamy demanded as he stormed outside and over to the camp meeting, surprising everyone. "Ironic that I found out that you were all doing this behind my back from Finn's girlfriend, of all people."
He shot his sister a quick glare. He felt betrayed that she had gone along with the plan of keeping him in the dark.
Raven would have tried to argue with the girlfriend comment, since everything was so complicated between her and Finn, if she didn't have a bigger concern at the moment.
"Bellamy, you just told me that you wouldn't do anything crazy!" She yelled at him.
"Sorry," he told her with a shrug that would have looked a lot more innocent if there wasn't still a gun waving around in his hand. "I guess my idea of crazy is a little different than yours."
"Bellamy, what are you doing?" Clarke asked angrily.
Bellamy turned to face her with a small laugh.
"It's funny, you know… Everyone sees Bellamy with a gun and instantly panics," he pointed out. "Because they know that I'll use it. But I was so sure that Finn would never pull the trigger. And we all know how that went."
With that, Bellamy grinned and aimed the gun at Finn. Two could play at the game of trying to knock some fear into the other.
"Bell, stop!" Octavia called out frantically.
"Don't worry," he said as he turned his head to look over at his sister. "I'm not going to use it… Not on him anyways. He's not worth the bullet."
With that, Bellamy shifted his aim a few feet to the side and pulled the trigger before anyone even had the chance to realize what he was doing.
"Bellamy!" Octavia shrieked out in horror as she watched Clarke fall to her knees.
Bellamy hadn't been prepared for this part. He hadn't been ready for the way that Clarke looked down at the bullet hole in her chest and then back up at him with a look of complete incomprehension before collapsing onto the ground in a heap.
"If you wanted to hurt me, then you should have shot me!" Finn screamed out angrily as he began to charge at Bellamy. "What did she ever do to deserve that?"
Meanwhile, Jasper was making a futile attempt at stopping Clarke's bleeding as she lay on the ground, breathing raggedly.
Everyone was panicking now and screaming over each other as Octavia tackled Finn, trying to defend her brother even when she herself was disgusted with him.
Bellamy rolled his eyes before raising the gun above his head and firing into the sky in order to get their attention.
"All of you calm down!" He shouted in a booming voice. "She'll be fine!"
"Really? She'll be fine?" Finn screamed back in a tone of disbelief. "Because she doesn't look like she'll be fine to me. You just shot her!"
"You shot me last night and I'm doing alright," Bellamy retorted.
"Clearly," Finn spit back sarcastically. "You're out of your mind… More than usual."
"Guys, she's not okay," Jasper spoke up as he stared down at the blood that covered his hands. "She's really not okay… She's not breathing anymore."
"Raven, do you want to explain it?" Bellamy asked in an exasperated tone.
"No, I don't," she snapped back. "This is why I didn't want to tell you that it was her in the first place. I should have known not to trust you."
"So then what should I have done?" he asked her incredulously. "Just lived forever by myself?"
"You should have not shot Clarke!" Raven yelled at him. "You should have at least given her an option!"
"What the hell are you two talking about?" Octavia demanded.
Bellamy ignored his sister as he asked Raven, "Because your lover boy gave me such a nice option?"
"Are you even listening to yourself right now?" Raven questioned. "You're making insane decisions because you're still in shock!"
"Maybe I am," he agreed in a tone that didn't sound very apologetic. "But I don't care. I want her with me, okay? I need Clarke with me."
A/N: Please read and review! A huge thanks goes out to Dark-Supernatural-Angel, XxBrokenlySweet, and BrookyV for being awesome and reviewing the first chapter! :)