AN: I'd still LOVE a beta, you know, hint hint, just saying.

Thanks to EBB – Sonnet 43, pwrmom2, emlah, and of course, Jo Hamel for reviews on chapter 6! I definitely intend to finish, though I know I am slow with updates.

Chapter 7

I See Fire

85 days till the end

Hundred Camp

Zoe Monroe hadn't quite volunteered. It was more that she informed Atom that she would be taking the midnight watch shift, permanently. With the ice nation clearly an enemy of the coalition they found themselves within, the watch was bumped back up to the pre-fall of Mt. Weather priority level. The first night she'd showed up for the 10pm shift change, Atom had assigned her the platform beside the gate- effectively designating her the shift's leader.

Really, the shift wasn't too bad. Atom had to scramble, and threaten, to fill the ranks for the shift, as everyone wanted the late morning, mid-day, or afternoon shifts. It meant she mostly had under her charge either the most dedicated, or the most in trouble. Either way, it meant they didn't bother messing with Monroe. She even liked the midnight shift, truthfully. That was at least partially because she got to listen as camp shut down each night, and silence grudgingly fell. Then she could listen to the hooting of owls, somehow swooping just overhead, and the scurrying racket of little nocturnal beasts. Otherwise, she liked it because of how little she saw of Bellamy since she took it on. Thanks to the mad genius mechanic, the clock in the dropship ran off the solar panels on the roof, and alarms went off every four hours for the watch schedule. The watch was the only thing anybody used the clock for anymore. Somehow marking time by the light of the day was easier. Jasper and Atom were both alright, and they were the two who traded off getting up at the 2am alarm to rouse the early morning shift. Whichever of the two's turn it was took over the gate tower from her, and she was just glad that Bellamy only ever took the late morning or midday shifts.

The number on shift varied, by how many people could be dragged onto duty in the middle of the night, but Atom always tried to have at least 5 per shift since the summit. Mostly, people didn't see how the faraway incident would translate to their little camp in the forest, so it was harder than it ought to be. Sometimes Atom ended up taking three, or even four shifts a day to keep them all covered. Monroe might be willing to endure an extra shift, except that with the afternoon hunting, and the midnight watch, she slept hard all morning even with all the noise of the hundred that began at dawn. The midnight shift was frigid, and up on the tower, she didn't get to pace around to keep warm and stretched out. So by 2am, she was sore and stiff enough that she just wanted to sleep.

Burning through the night with careful tending, the torch hoisted on the metal rail of the tower offered a little heat at least. Once the camp hid away in the cabin and dropship, the main fire was let to burn low, under the watchers care, till morning. With the heavy fog tonight, she couldn't even see the low fire very well, much less feel any warmth from it so far away.

Around the camp, the trees were thick, so she couldn't see much of the stars except just above her. They didn't look like home anymore anyway. Into the silence of the night, Monroe coughed. The fog was thickening, and it had been a dry dusty night, with the wind howling in her ears to begin with. Usually, the cold, dry nights felt bracing- as if it was easier to stay awake in the crisp, cold air that kept her lungs aware of every inhale, but tonight, Monroe didn't even notice as she became more sluggish. Her head ached. The watcher rubbed at her stings. Dust must have gotten into them from the wind. Huffing out a breathe, she leaned upon the tower's rail. It held her weight, and she closed her stinging eyes.

Tucked into the dropship, the dozen or so occupants rolled and trembled, snuffling in their troubled sleep. Their restlessness building. The thick dropship door lay open upon the ground. The parachute curtains blew inwards.

The sole cabin in the camp held the mostly quiet, slumbering masses. It was a dry night following a dry week or more, so the tarps, made from old parachutes, had been tied up out of the way to let in fresh air. Even as awkwardly set as the rough, but thick door, and the slated, barred windows they offered more protection. In tight huddled rows, the dozens of teenagers slept. This early into the night, nightmares had yet to wake any of them. Mumbles and groans, hinted at a growing unease.

Eyes still closed, drifting somewhere between sleep and muddled consciousness, Zoe sniffled. She still leaned wearily upon the scrap metal rail. Her chest heaved, and a whimper escaped, startling her a bit closer to awake. But her eyes were still burning and heavy, and she let them close again. Then jerked awake, nearly going head first over the rail despite how high it was compared to her. Something had woken her, but what? Something..

Someone.

Yelling.

Coughing thickly, her chest heaved in pain. Tried to remember what she'd heard. Her nose was running, she realized. A lazy swipe with her sleeve. The fog was just too thick, she thought. Another sound.

Someone was yelling, she was right.

Monroe turned to look around to figure out where it came from, and her foot slipped.

Grabbing the rail, she was barely hanging on as she fell. Gasping for breathe, she scrambled back up onto the platform again. Someone was yelling. More than one person? She couldn't figure it out- the words sounded muffled.

Her watchers, Zoe understood, finally.

Hollering their names, she stuttered after the first two. Who else was on duty with her tonight? Monroe jumped down from the tower. Though she'd done it hundreds of times, her knees buckled and she hit the ground. First crying out in pain and surprise, she then lay there, coughing. Her feet didn't feel like obeying. She struggled up, and tried to shake the ringing out of her ears. Her watchers were screaming, and getting louder No, closer. Coming in from the back perimeter. Her throat burning, Monroe yelled back to them, still not able to make out their words. She ran to try to find them. Any of them. Coughing hit again.

Behind the dropship, she found two of the four. The fog was so thick it was hard to see them till she nearly tripped over something.

Still yelling hoarsely, one of the youngest watchers, Cade, was on his knees. The boy was shaking the body slumped down on the hard, dry dirt. Monroe grabbed at the fallen watcher, and helped Cade haul him up. Sterling struggled to lift his head, and mumbled something, low, and thick. Cade was muttering something, trying to tell her something as they pulled Sterling forward. Monroe kept trying to understand. Her head throbbed, and Sterling's mouth moved with no sound, Cade was coughing again. When they made it to the corner of the dropship, and she tried to drag Sterling around it, Cade planted his feet. He let go of the other boy's shoulder. Sterling fell upon Monroe. With the weight of the taller kid solely upon her, she went sideways. The dropship wall braced her up at least. Cade pointed back. Monroe grappled with her grip on Sterling. The younger boy reached over, and smacked clumsily at her shoulder. When she looked upon, she saw Cade pointing, back from where he'd come. With her hands full as she tried to keep Sterling upright, her stinging eyes and running nose wet her face. Craning her neck, Monroe finally looked out over the back wall. The younger watcher's words finally hit her.

"I see fire!"

Through the bare trees, and sparse evergreens, she saw hell in the distance. Glowing orange and red, lighting up the forest, terrifying close.

There was no fog tonight.

It was smoke.

And it was already choking them.

"We've got to get everyone into the dropship!" she cried, her burning throat making her hoarse, forcing the words out anyway.

Cade grabbed Sterling's collar, and began dragging him around the corner.

Through the dropship's entryway, and into the corner set aside as a medbay, they dropped Sterling onto the metal floor. On some level, Monroe registered that he didn't even make a sound. She tried yelling to wake the restlessly sleeping row- Bellamy, Atom, Collette, and Jasper... and Monroe couldn't remember who else, nor make out their identities from the row of furs and blankets. Her throat ached, and the air in here was thick- contaminated with the curtain blowing in. Monroe pulled a knife from her boot, and slammed it's blunter side into the metal table. The sound of metal on metal clanged, and echoed through the lower level of the ship. She did it again. Another, till Bellamy was grumbling, and rising from his spot on the end of the sleeping row. He shook the shoulder of the guy at his side, Atom, Monroe realized a heartbeat later, when the other watcher stumbled to his feet even he even really opened his eyes.

"Fire," croaked Cade, and Monroe nodded, watching to see that Bellamy understood, before she ran back out into the smoke. The cabin had to be woken. So intent upon this, she didn't even realize when the sound of Cade, then Bellamy, and Atom's, and others still, more slowly, followed after her.

At the cabin's front door, she paused, coughing, bent over, trying to fight it and losing the battle. Tears streamed from her eyes, and her throat... the pain scorched. Large hands gripped her shoulders. Monroe flinched, but let herself be pulled upright as the fit eased. Her eyes stung too much to open, till she felt cloth pressing onto her face. Blinking quickly, she found Bellamy leaning in close, and wrapping soft cloth, torn from a shirt, around her mouth, and nose. His hands brushed her cheeks, and then she felt the tug as he tied it behind her head.

"Thanks," she muttered, before ducking around him to throw open the heavy door. She let it slam into the wall behind it, knowing that would at least start the process of waking everyone.

Evacuating the cabin was faster than she'd feared. Few of the dozens of kids here seemed as muddled as the watch shift, or even the dropship residents. They grabbed food, and weapons, and their own furs, and blankets, and packs, carrying everything they within reach into the ship as they scurried.

Bellamy waited till everyone was up, before heading back to the dropship, calling out orders for water, and meat, to be brought in by anyone who could handle another trip out into the thickening smoke. Three trips out was all he could do, and as Atom began to cough up blood, Bellamy waited at the door for the inward flow to cease. He counted to ten, and again, and when no one else appeared into sight from the layers of smoke, he threw the lever. As the door slowly rose, and thudded shut with a finality, Bellamy whispered a prayer that he hadn't left anyone outside. With the smoke burning their throats, and the noise of everyone moving about inside the echoing dropship, it'd been a hard bet if they'd hear someone from outside if they called out.

Water was drank from buckets, and waterskins, and jugs, passed around. The coughing didn't end, but at least, Bellamy hoped, it wouldn't get worse.

Collette yelled for everyone to sit down, and sit still, for a headcount. She went around, counting out loud, slow, and low. Once she was sure, she returned to Bellamy, still standing beside the door's control, and repeated the headcount anxiously. Squinting against the growing headache, Bellamy slowly, carefully, recalled the numbers of those away, and then repeated their names, slowly... Octavia, Clarke, Wells, Miller, Raven, Wick, Monty, Harper...

"Yeah, not counting them, that's everyone," decided Bellamy. Collette's shoulders dropped in relief, and she left Bellamy alone, going back to where she'd counted Mary, in the medbay corner, between Jasper and Bree.

Bellamy dropped to the floor to sit underneath the lever. Everyone was accounted for. Someone pushed a twisted, ugly metal cup of cool water into his hand. Automatically, he drank. The water stung, but then, it soothed. He needed to call Polis. In a minute.

Azgeda

The night was clear, and the stars were bright. Bright enough, with the nearly full moon, in fact, to travel by. Sunset had passed them by some six hours or so ago. None of his companions had dared do more than grumble too low for him to make out the words. The darkness hadn't been the only reason for their slow pace, anyway. It had been three years since he'd been free to walk this land, and the place he sought was purposefully... out of the way, to begin with. It had taken time, and wrong paths, to find it. There were many blackened, ivy covered massive relics here, a city from before, lain to waste, and the air was heavy with ghosts. Roan held up a hand, and called out for a halt. Answering groans greeted the reprieve, but he was certain they did not yet know where they were.

After a couple hours rest as they'd ate from their packs, Roan had pushed his procession half through the night to put as much distance between himself, and Fron Tenac, as they could. Home, he thought, bitterness creeping in. Within his grasp, and gone again, just that swiftly.

Here though, he dismounted. Eyed the thick brush before him. The overgrowth was promising. With a sharp tug upon the bridle, and a steady heave upon the leads, he pulled his reluctant horse into it.

"Roan, is this-" began the healer, muted by exhaustion, and distrust, but she broke off.

Seiku was already following the prince.

Behind them, Roan heard machetes being drawn, and whacking, in the dark, to clear a path. He hadn't bothered to do so, and wasn't quite happy about it being done. It would drawn too much notice to forbid such however. He let it go. It was not as if there was a current need for stealth. Not when he traveled with royal guards in his retinue. No commoners would trouble him. Truthfully, Roan thought, if he was to die tonight, or on this procession, it'd more likely be poison in his cup. A slit throat while he slept. An ax buried into his spine under the cover of darkness. At his mother's orders.

In the darkness, it had been difficult to make out one ivy covered hulking ruin from another, but when they made it through the brush, to see the great, arched opening, wide enough for four horses, and tall enough for a man three times over... Roan knew he'd found it.

The walls rose greyish and blackened, four stories high, and blanketed with winding, prickly ivy. There was no roof, much less covered windows or doorways. If a floor remained, it was buried under so many layers of dirt, leaves, and moss that there was no sign of it. He continued inside anyway, hesitating long enough for the few men who carried torches to catch up, and took one from them. The massive open space could have sat hundreds of men in close ranks.

Only a few feet inside the hall, all the way to left wall, sat a rusty, long, iron rack. There Roan tied his horse, at the farthest point from the yawning archway. Tack loosened, he left the gelding there and moved away to allow the others to follow his example.

Striding confidently towards the back of the great hall, he wondered if this place had been disturbed in the years he'd been gone. No sign of it appeared. Yet that could have been by design.

Long before it had been an outpost for his grandfather's army, this place had been something grand, but all that had survived was the name. Notredame.

The pair of towers offered only higher walls, with gaping holes, and the shadows of greatness passed.

A narrow gap of a space, where two walls seemed to meet, but didn't, offering a shadowed hall, and a handful of small rooms, that even a degree of their ceilings left. All the way down the hall, till he now stood at the far corner from where he'd entered the back chamber, Roan turned into the last of the doors. The last time he'd been here, he hadn't known he'd been gone three years.

Roan smirked at the sight.

Looking untouched, chest, and deer skinned wrapped bundles lined the walls. The lot was protected not just by the half of a ceiling that remained. Thinking ahead, he'd covered the floor in here with skins atop the thick moss. Then rigged up tents to cover most of the room, just high enough for him to walk beneath. The coverings were rotting by now, he knew by the smell. It appeared that they'd done their job long enough for him to return. Crossing the doorway, Roan bent to check the heavy, iron locks upon each chest, and laughed, low, and deep in his chest. Intact. The key weighed little, but he felt it's presence around his neck anyway. All made to accept the same key, by his order.

Ghosts might waft through the air of the forgotten cities, as the stories of the ice nation claimed, but that was protection in it's own ways. All the protection his hoard had needed. If war came, he had the coin, and the gold, and the jewels to buy some loyalty for himself. With a smirk lingering, he turned on his heel.

Outside, into the main hall, he eyed the company- Remy tending to the horses, and Seiku watching silently as the rest laid out bedrolls throughout the hall.

"Rest, till I wake," barked Roan. The hall fell still. "Remy, we're sleeping back here. Now," he added.

Hesitating, Remy her pack up from the ground beside the horses, and glanced over at the sight of the royal guards leering.

"Seiku, at the back," ordered Roan, his eyes not own the captain, but the rest.

Stiffening, her shoulders, she crossed the length of the hall, ignoring them all. Seiku grabbed his own, and the prince's, packs. Behind the healer, he carried them towards Roan. Half-way across the long, wide hall, he took a torch from one of the sentries.

Remy slid around the prince's wide shoulders, with a sharp glare at his smug face, to venture into the darkness. Roan lingered long enough to accept his pack from Seiku, and watch the warrior lay out his, directly beside the narrow opening that led to the back corridor. The space was quite effectively blocked. With nods between them, Roan left to follow the healer, who'd only made it a few steps down the hallway without light.

"All the wall to the other end," he prompted her.

She didn't turn to face him, but with the torchlight helping, she continued on. The corridor was long, and narrow, musty, and half-covered by a sagging ceiling. An unpleasant crunch beneath one of her boots did not help.

At the far end, Roan grunted to point out the room, which still had half a stinking wood door hanging from one, rusted hinge. As he held the torch up in the doorway, the tiny room's contents came into sight. Remy gasped, but a sharp nudge at her shoulder quieted her. Got her moving back inside. The royal healer might listen long enough for an explanation, the prince hoped.

Hundred Camp

"What are we gonna do?"

The shout came from deep in the crowd. It was echoed desperately.

Bellamy tried the radio again. In vain. The call had ended, and he hadn't been able to get it to work again. He swallowed. Hard. Winced at the burst of pain it brought.

"We can't stay here," he announced, his eyes stung, and throat throbbed as proof.

In the dead, panicked silence that met his words, all eyes fell upon him.

But protests rose up, only seconds later. Frantic cries tore from scratchy throats, as the implication hit them.

Leave the dropship.

"The back walls are already getting hot," yelled Atom. It cost him another coughing fit, and from close at his side, Collette eyed the flecks of blood that landed on the sleeve he covered his mouth with. She rose her gaze to meet Bellamy's.

"Everybody got a look, right? A fire this big isn't just gonna stop," growled Bellamy, his voice rougher with each word. He pushed through the crush of kids towards the medbay.

Ignoring the volley of denial and protest, of terror, around him, he grabbed what he could, beginning to add to the packs he could reach. He moved to the little makeshift cabinet Clarke tended to so carefully. There was a wide, deer hide pack, empty, beside it, and Bellamy grabbed a couple handfuls of bandages to throw into the bottom of the pack. Then he began dropping the breakable contents inside, and more carefully, tucked Clarke's notebooks inside. Someone scooted past him. Bellamy looked over to see Jasper adding things to his own pack, with a crooked smile when their eyes caught.

As they strapped the packs across their shoulders, Bellamy turned away, letting Mary help Jasper.

"Pair up, and get ready to move out. We'll head for Ton DC," ordered Bellamy, above the din. He had to repeat himself twice before they all heard.

"But there's fire that way!" yelled someone faceless in the crowd.

"There's fire in every direction!" another cut in.

"Like it's encircling us, on purpose!"

"Shut up!" hollered Monroe. Her head was still pounding, and the yelling was making it worse.

"Yeah. It is all around us. That's why we can't stay here!"

Bellamy's words didn't calm the frenzy at all. Someone broke from the crowd, pushing others of their way, and scurried up the ladder. Another kid followed, and soon, half the crowd was jostling for position trying to get upwards.

"Heat rises!" yelped Jasper. "Heat RISES! That's worse! No, no, no, bad idea!"

"It's a dropship! Made to survive heat. We survived in it to get down here!" countered Bree, desperately, from the near the top of the ladder.

"Most of the tech's dead, and we don't have anyone to fix that!" Bellamy reminded harshly.

"It's still smarter than going out there!" yelled another of the watchers, having elbowed another kid in the gut to get up onto the ladder quicker.

"I can't drag you all, but dammit, be smart about this!" yelled Bellamy.