Chapter 2 – Prisoners Of The Ark
The first thing Clarke noticed when she woke up was a pounding headache. The second thing she noticed was the ache caused by the needles in her wrist band, which only hurt worse when she tried to adjust it.
"Ow," she said still groggy.
"You okay?" Thalia was strapped into the seat next to her.
"Yeah, I'm fine."
"Welcome back," the voice to her right brought Clarke fully alert, and she turned to face the boy sitting beside her. Wells Jaha was tall and dark skinned, handsome with a muscular build and a soldier's haircut. And the sight of him made Clarke furious. "Clarke-"
"Wells, why the hell are you here?!"
"When I found out they were sending prisoners to the ground I got myself arrested," Wells said holding up his wrist to show that he was also wearing a wristband, "I came for you."
"How sweet," a sarcastic voice commented. "Looks like the gangs all here." Clarke looked around Wells and saw her friend Emily Kane in the next seat, and on Emily's other side was her cellmate Iris, another old friend who went by her last name, Glass.
Just then the dropship shook violently, drawing gasps and a few screams from the nervous passengers.
"What was that?" Glass asked tensely.
"That was the atmosphere," Emily answered.
Monitors on the walls suddenly lit up and an image of the Ark's Chancellor appeared; a recorded message began playing. "Prisoners of the Ark, hear me now. You've been given a second chance. And as your Chancellor it is my hope that you will see this as not just a chance for you, but a chance for all of us. Indeed for mankind itself. We have no idea what is waiting for you down there. If the odds of survival were better we would have sent others. Frankly, we're sending you because your crimes have made you expendable..."
"They are so full of it," Emily said bitterly. "No offence," she added to Wells. Wells shrugged. He knew she wasn't just talking about the Chancellor.
"Your dad's a dick Wells," a boy somewhere behind them shouted.
"...If however you do survive," Chancellor Jaha's message continued, "Your crimes will be forgiven, your records wiped clean. A drop site has been chosen carefully. Before the last war Mount Weather was a military base built within a mountain. It was to be stocked with enough non-perishables to sustain 300 people for up to two years. No one ever made it there. Because we could spare you no food, water or medicine, I cannot stress strongly enough that Mount Weather is life. You must locate those supplies immediately..."
Clarke was distracted from the video message by cheering from the other side of the ship.
"Check it out!"
"Yeah, Finn!"
Clarke saw that a boy had unstrapped his harness and was floating in midair above the seats. He did a backflip which propelled him across the dropship and came to rest in front of Clarke's row.
"Spacewalker strikes again!" Emily said with a laugh.
"Check it out," the boy, Finn, said to Wells. "Your dad floated me after all."
Wells wasn't amused, "You should strap in before the parachutes deploy."
"You two, stay put if you want to live!" a black haired girl sitting in the row across from Clarke shouted to two boys who were starting to unbuckle their harnesses. When the girl glanced around, Clarke saw that she had different coloured eyes, one blue and one green.
"Hey, you're the terrorist they put in solitary for a year, the child genius," Finn said to the girl with odd eyes. "Antonia Sinclair, right?"
"And you're the idiot who wasted three months of oxygen on an illegal spacewalk," she replied harshly, not bothering to confirm her name.
"It was fun," Finn's tone implied that he thought that was reason enough to do anything. "I'm Finn," he introduced himself, reaching out his hand while still floating. Antonia ignored him.
Clarke listened to the close of the Chancellor's message. "…You have one job, one responsibility: stay alive. Finally, I'm sure you're wondering about those wristbands..."
The boys that Antonia had warned were now fully unstrapped and staring to rise above their seats. "Stay in your seats!" she warned them again.
Suddenly the entire dropship jerked hard to the side as it was pulled violently off course, and Finn and the other boys were slammed into the walls, one of them dislodging a bunch of cables that started throwing out sparks.
"That was the parachutes," said Antonia, who knew the engineering of a dropship, trying to calm those who were panicking.
"Finn, are you okay?!" Clarke shouted, trying to see where Finn had landed behind her. People started screaming as their ride got a whole lot rougher.
"We're gonna die!" someone cried hysterically. There were more screams and shouts as the loose wiring rained sparks over the prisoners and the ship felt like it was going to shake apart.
"Brace yourselves!" Antonia shouted, "Retro rockets are next, in 3…"
"Clarke, there's something I have to tell you," Wells said urgently. "I'm sorry I got your father arrested."
"Don't you talk about my father!" said Clarke.
"…2…"
"Please! I can't die knowing that you hate me," Wells said desperately.
"They didn't arrest my father, Wells, they executed him!" Clarke shouted at him, her fury overtaking her fear. "I do hate you!"
"…1!"
The dropship gave another violent lurch that elicited more screams as the retro rockets finally fired, slowing their descent. Passengers clutched at their seats and their neighbors' hands in the long minutes that followed before the ship hit the ground, shook, shuddered, and finally was still.
XXXXX
On The Ark: Government & Science Station – Earth Monitoring
Officer Callie "Cece" Kane stood facing a crown of people all demanding answers she wasn't authorized to give.
"I saw a ship launch, not more than twenty minutes ago!"
"Who was on it?"
"Was it the prisoners? They're just kids!"
"Are they going to Earth?" a woman pushing her way to the front of the crowd asked. "Did something change?"
Cece addressed the crowd, "Folks, as I said, at this time we cannot confirm or deny anything." Then she turned away and walked down the hall, leaving the guards to restrain the crowd as they kept on hurling questions at her back.
"Come on lady!"
"What's going on?"
"Is my son on that ship?!"
Cece kept walking until she reached the Earth Monitoring Control Room. She walked in and headed towards her husband, Vice Chancellor Marcus Kane, second in command on the Ark, to give him a report on the situation outside.
"Not now," he said as he walked passed her to speak to the Engineering Chief, Mr. Jacapo Sinclair.
"Total system failure," Sinclair said, "that's what we're looking at. All we know for sure is that they were off course when we lost contact so..."
"Tell me about communications," Kane interrupted.
"Other than the telemetry from those wristbands, we've got nothing. No audio, no video, no computer link; everything that we programmed in to help them is gone," Sinclair explained urgently. "They're on their own now."
XXXXX
Silence – that was the first thing that registered as the dropship's passengers came out of their state of shock. One boy spoke up in an awed voice, "Listen, no machine hum."
"Whoa. That's a first," his friend sitting next to him said.
"We're on the ground…" Glass whispered to herself shakily.
"Iris, retract the claws please," Emily said calmly.
Glass looked to where her hand was clutching Emily's arm, her nails digging in hard enough to leave a mark, and she quickly let go. "Sorry."
The ship gave one final shudder as everything settled into place. The sound of a seatbelt being unbuckled snapped them out of it, and then they were all unstrapping themselves and looking for a way out. Clarke unstrapped herself and put a hand on Thalia's arm. Thalia had her eyes closed and was taking deep breaths. She looked pale. Clarke knew that this was the beginning of a crash she went into right after a high adrenaline rush.
"Hey, look at me," Clarke said. Thalia opened her eyes and focused on Clarke. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," Thalia said unstrapping herself.
Clarke looked around and saw that Finn was already moving. He was kneeling next to one of the boys who had been unstrapped when the ship landed. Clarke rushed over to the other boy. She checked for a pulse but found none.
"Finn is he breathing?" she asked. Finn looked at her and shook his head.
"The outer door is on the lower level. Let's go!" someone shouted.
"No, we can't just open the doors!" Clarke said urgently moving towards the hatch that led to the lower level. Thalia got up and followed right behind her. As they climbed down the ladder to the first level of the dropship, the heard a crowd already formed pushing towards the door.
"Hey, just back it up guys," someone said. Thalia looked down and saw a tall, older boy with dark, slicked back hair motioning the people to step back while he reached for the lever that would release the door. She didn't recognize him.
"Stop!" Clarke shouted over the crowd, already at the bottom of the ladder. She pushed her way to the front of the crowd. "The air could be toxic!"
"If the air's toxic, we're all dead anyway," the boy said reaching for the lever.
.
I'm waking up to ash and dust. I wipe my brow and I sweat my rust
I'm breathing in the chemicals…Ahhh
.
"Bellamy?" A soft voice near the back of the room stopped him.
The voice came from a pretty brunette girl who was just coming down one of the ladders from the second level. She came to the bottom of the ladder and moved through the crowd until she stood in front of the older boy, Bellamy. The look on her face said that this was someone she thought she would never see again. This girl was someone that Thalia recognized, and hearing her say the boy's name Thalia stared, realizing who he was. She'd never spoken to the girl – never had a reason to – but her story was one that everyone knew, at least in part.
"That's the girl they hid under the floor," someone whispered loudly.
"My God, look how big you are," said Bellamy. She hugged him, and then pulled back to get a good look at him back.
"What the hell are you wearing? A guard's uniform?" she asked.
"I borrowed it, to get on the dropship. Someone's got to keep an eye on you," he said smiling, and then he hugged her again.
"Where's your wristband?" Clarke asked, seeing that he wasn't wearing one.
"Do you mind?" the girl said turning to Clarke, annoyed. "I haven't seen my brother in a year!"
"No one has a brother!" a boy in the crowd exclaimed.
"You're Octavia Blake! The girl they found hidden in the floor," said a girl with grey eyes and honey blond hair standing near the front of the crowd.
Octavia looked at her, and lunged forward looking ready to claw her eyes out. The blonde girl didn't flinch, just looked at Octavia sizing her up and decided she wasn't a threat either way.
"Octavia, no!" Bellamy said, holding her back. "Let's give them something else to remember you by."
"Yeah, like what?" Octavia asked, still angry.
The girl she tried to attack stepped forward before Bellamy could answer, "Like being the first person on the ground in a hundred years."
Octavia looked at her, and then turned back to Bellamy, smiling too. He nodded and reached again for the lever, pulling it down. There was a hiss of air as the door released, and then bright light as it opened before them making a ramp to the ground.
.
I breaking in, shaping up, and checking out on the prison bus.
This is it, the apocalypse…Whoa!
.
Octavia blinked, letting her eyes adjust, and stared in wonder at what was in front of them. Beautiful woodland filled up the space they could see from inside the ship. Trees everywhere, with moss growing on the bark, grass carpeting the ground; everything was so green and bright, so alive. Octavia took her first steps forward, drawing in a deep breath of fresh air for the first time. Even the air felt alive! She reached the bottom of the ramp and paused before taking the last step, onto the ground. She looked back at Bellamy, who was holding his arm out to stop others from following her just yet and smiling at the look of sheer joy on his little sister's face. Everyone else was frozen, watching her. This moment was hers.
. Octavia walked a few feet from the dropship and looked around. There were trees all around them for as far as she could see. She looked up to see the sunlight streaming through the tree tops and felt the kind of warmth that no one on the Ark had ever felt before. She raised her hands toward the sun and shouted as loud as she could, "We're Back Bitches!"
.
I'm waking up! I feel it in my bones, enough to make my systems blow!
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
.
With that, the spell was broken. Everyone surged forward through the door of the ship like a river let loose, shouting, cheering and running in every direction, avoiding the smoking trees that had been felled by their landing. Bellamy came up to Octavia and gave her a one armed hug before being swept away by the flow of 100 prisoners rushing to freedom. Before she could follow him she felt a hand on her arm and turned to see the girl she almost had a confrontation with earlier.
"Nice announcement," she said with a laugh. "I'm Annabeth. Come on, let's check this place out." And she and Octavia went running off to the trees, their hostilities from a few moments ago forgotten.
Clarke jumper off the side of the ramp and stared at what was around her in awe. Her friends Emily and Glass came out after her, as intoxicated as everyone else.
"Clarke, we made it! We're here!" Emily said bouncing on her feet as though she couldn't stay still, more animated than Clarke had seen her in a long time. Emily took Glass's hand and led her off to the trees. Glass' flowing blond hair was flying in every direction as she kept turning her head, trying to take in everything at once.
.
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
.
Their excitement was infectious, but Clarke held back from following them. Instead she turned to check on Thalia who had come out and was leaning against the side of the dropship looking around in wonder, but making no move to join the celebrations.
"You sure you're okay?" Clarke asked. Thalia nodded, but Clarke was still worried. "You should sit down for a minute. I'll be right back."
XX
"Emily!" Glass called out, trying to keep up with her friend. "Emily, wait!"
Glass got no response and slowed to a stop, unable to keep up with Emily – and not wanting to go too far from the ship – as her friend ran on ahead showing no sign of stopping.
"Glass, what happened?" Wells came running up behind her, hearing her shouting. "Where's Emily?"
"I don't know," Glass said, running a hand through her hair. "She just took off running."
Wells didn't bother asking why; it seemed like something Emily would do. "Which way did she go?"
"That way," said Glass, pointing out the direction that Emily had gone in.
"Stay here, I'll get her," Wells said and started running in the direction that Glass indicated.
"Good luck," Glass said laughing softly. He'd need it to catch Emily if she didn't want to stop.
Wells wasn't really worried about Emily; she could take care of herself. But she could also be reckless, and down here there was nobody to stop her if she got carried away. So he ran after her. Emily was fast but so was he, and he could already see her up ahead.
Emily loved the feeling of being able to run, of being able to do something, anything physical after being in a cell for ten long months. Her mind took in every sensation as she moved, as Glass' voice and the noise of the other prisoners fell away behind her. The woods closed around her and she felt the air rushing over her face and through her hair as it trailed behind her, heard the rustling of the bushes she brushed past, and felt the leaves, twigs and stones that crunched and clattered under her boots.
More than that, she felt her blood pumping, her breath moving easily through her lungs, her muscles working, not the least bit fatigued; she hadn't lost her edge. When she'd done exercises in their cell to stay in shape, like holding a difficult position for hours, Glass had asked her before how she had the patience for it. Emily could be very patient. She knew how to wait and be still and quiet, but honestly, she really didn't like to. She wanted to be moving. Being in the Skybox without access to any of the activities that were her usual outlet, Emily had a lot of tension to run off and she fully intended to.
But apparently she wouldn't get to right now as she heard someone coming up behind her. A quick glance over her shoulder confirmed that it was Wells, though she could have guessed that. He was the only one who would have come after her and was fast enough to. Emily was tempted to quicken her pace to see if she could outrun him – she and Wells had often been competitive with each other growing up – but maybe now wasn't the time. Wells caught up to her and grabbed her arm, pulling her to a stop.
"What?!" Emily exclaimed, spinning around to face him. Her irritation didn't last though, "Wells, can you believe that this is actually happening?"
"You should be careful," said Wells, predictably trying to be the responsible one. "We don't know this place, it could be dangerous. We could get lost."
"Wells, stop being such a kill joy," she said, brushing off his concern. "After 97 years, we are the first to come down from the Ark. Look around," she said, spreading her arms to take in the whole forest. "This, us being here, is amazing. Not to mention the fact that we survived the trip down to begin with." She looked at him knowingly; they'd always dreamed of coming to Earth, never believing that they actually would. "Don't tell me you're not excited."
.
I raise my flags, don my clothes, It's a revolution I suppose
We'll paint it red to fit right in…Whoa!
.
Wells took a moment to look around. It was beautiful here. And Emily was right, just the fact that they were here, alive on Earth, was amazing. "Okay, you're right, it is exciting," Wells said nodding, unable to contain a grin; Emily laughed. "But could we please be excited back in that direction?" he asked pointing back the way they had come, towards the dropship.
"Fine," said Emily, smiling impishly, "I'll race you back." And she took off running with Wells close behind her, eager to see who would win.
XX
Clarke walked away from the dropship, but instead of joining the festive atmosphere under the trees, she walked towards a ravine that gave her a view of the landscape. She unrolled a map that she found in the dropship and compared it to what she saw now.
Mount Weather was marked on the map in red and if Clarke was reading the map correctly, they weren't on it.
"Why so serious, Princess?" Finn said, coming up behind her. "It's not like we died in a fiery explosion."
"Try telling that to the two guys who tried to follow you out of their seats," Clarke said, still reading the map.
"You don't like to be called 'Princess', do you Princess?"
"You see that peak over there?" Clarke asked impatiently, pointing to a mountain in the distance on the other side of the ridge.
"Yeah?"
"Mount Weather," Clarke explained. "There's a radiation soaked forest between us and our next meal. They dropped us on the wrong damn mountain!"
.
Woaaahh…Woaaahh…I'm Radioactive, Radioactive!
.
Author's Note: The song lyrics in this chapter are from Radioactive by Imagine Dragon