The strong arms were gone. In their place fell the soft pelts of fur. I was on a bed. The smell of burning wood hung heavy on the air, oak and spice and something that smelled old.
"She's waking up," someone noted. This one was female, but I knew it wasn't ALIE. I thought it was Octavia.
"Give her another dose," Bellamy said, to Jasper, I assumed.
"That was the last one."
"It's hurting her."
"I could've left her behind. But I got her out of there," Jasper hissed, his words coated in that contempt. Contempt for me, I realized. "As far as I'm concerned, I don't owe her or you anything."
Bellamy gave no reply.
"How's Sinclair doing on the wristband?" that feminine voice sounded. Definitely Octavia.
"We left him in the other room," said Bellamy, not bothering to elaborate.
A few minutes elapsed in silence, and I spent them trying to force my way back under the waves. Into the blackness. Because I knew, without even opening my eyes, that she was close by. Waiting.
And then, just like that, the last bits of the darkness evaporated. I didn't want to open my eyes. Didn't want to see her standing close enough to touch me.
As if I'd called her, something warm fell over my hand and I flinched. But then the hold tightened. Fingers gripped my own. "Clarke?" Bellamy's voice came, just above a whisper.
"I told you already that they won't be able to help you," she said, and I could feel her on the opposite side of Bellamy.
My hand latched onto his, fear washing through me like ice water. My eyes snapped open again and there was ALIE on my left. Dutiful. Punctual. Deadly.
No, no, no, no.
"What is it?" Bellamy demanded, the edge in his voice sharpened to a brilliant point.
"I am the only one who can end your pain," she said.
"No," I managed, forgetting Bellamy's words. Forgetting everything except the woman standing beside me.
"Clarke." Bellamy's other hand went under my chin and he forced my eyes to him. "You have to tell me what's happening," he said slowly.
I opened my mouth to do exactly that. To tell him about the AI. To beg him to get this thing out of my head.
But I was cut short by the world erupting around me.
Blood. So much blood. It didn't touch any part of me except my hands. They were drenched in it.
Bellamy saw the change and stood abruptly, leaning over me. "Clarke? Tell me what she's doing!"
"She's . . ." My body felt like lead, each breath harder to take than the last. "She's making me remember."
Bellamy shook his head in confusion, eyes wide, hand still bound around mine. "Remember what?"
Everything.
I saw my dad, the once-warped image of him now crystallized. I watched again as he stepped into the airlock chamber and was sent out into space. I recalled the rawness of my throat as I screamed after him.
"You know it wasn't your mother who cost your father his life," ALIE drawled, fingers laced together. Her head was positioned in that perpetual tilt. "It was you. You could have done more. You could have saved him."
"Shut up," I ground, squeezing my eyes shut. I opened them.
"And Charlotte," continued ALIE, glancing away as if she were picturing the little girl that had murdered my best friend. "She was lost." ALIE's eyes met mine again. "And you could not save her, either. How could you, when you failed to recognize the signs of her instability?"
My breathing grew sporadic as my heart broke inside my chest. Over and over again, as everything I did, the person I was, was uncovered piece by piece.
"And Finn," said ALIE. "You did kill him. Tell me, what did it feel like to have the blood of the boy you loved coating your hands?"
That memory flashed across my vision, like I was reliving it. I stood before Finn again, the small blade clenched in my hand, sliding between his ribs.
"They would've tortured him," I said, but it came out as a whimper. I didn't want to remember this. I didn't want to be this.
ALIE took a seat on the bed, so close to me my skin crawled. "And what about the mountain?"
I flinched again as my vision was consumed by the memories. I saw the Mess Hall, filled with bleeding bodies. "What is your excuse for this?"
My eyes stung. "I didn't have a choice!"
From somewhere far away, I heard Bellamy yelling at the others to go and find something to help.
But they wouldn't find anything. It was entirely possible that I wasn't someone salvageable. Maybe I didn't want to be.
"You chose to save your people by wiping out theirs," murmured ALIE. "That burden . . . must be quite heavy."
More images. That tidal wave grew to something otherworldly. I saw Jasper's face as he clung to Maya. I felt the pressure of the lever branding my palm as I pulled it down. I heard the screams that followed just moments after.
"Stop," I gasped, tears slipping out and running down my cheeks.
"Get Sinclair in here now!" Bellamy roared.
"I need your agreement first," ALIE said. "And I will do as you ask."
I ground my teeth together and yanked my fingers from Bellamy's. I clutched at my head, nails biting into my scalp. I half expected to find my hands full of shards from my shattered skull.
"Say yes, and the pain will end."
I pulled my knees into me and shook my head.
"You try to save everyone," ALIE said, leaning a bit closer, not a hint of remorse on her perfect, human face. "And in doing so, you unknowingly condemn them all. You are their doom."
"People die when they're around you." Bellamy's words rang back to me.
"One hundred and eighty two men," came Emerson's voice. "One hundred and seventy three women. Twenty six children. Two of them were mine."
"That is who you are," said ALIE. "Wanheda."
I screamed.
It was a sound that came at the edge of a precipice. On the ruins of a broken city. Before the murderer of your people, with the knowledge that you were the last of your kind.
I screamed in denial, as the images came again and again, like the lashings of a whip. I was committing those acts for a second time. All of it.
"This battery isn't charged enough," I heard someone say, but the sounds of the others were devoured by the screams ringing around me.
"Agree, Clarke," ALIE told me. "And end this."
Take it, I nearly said. Stop the pain. Stop it all. I felt the words on my tongue.
That earlier warmth appeared again, this time at my cheek. Bellamy's hand cupped my face and I looked from ALIE long enough to see his eyes. Brown and scared and haunted. Human. "We're almost there, Clarke. Just hold on."
Hold on.
Then the memories surged up, like a wall. Impenetrable. I saw a line of kids waiting in a hall. I remembered Maya's kind smile. The peace on my dad's face as he drowned in a sea of stars. I remembered Ontari, sitting on a throne before the bodies of the children she broke.
I hit my lip so hard it bled. I felt Bellamy's hand tense against my cheek.
"Say it, Clarke," ALIE repeated. "Say it and all of this will be over."
I forced my eyes to her, to see through the images that cloaked me. People hurting and bleeding and dying around me. As brilliant and fleeting as embers.
She'd wanted me to lose myself. And I'd wanted to be lost. Maybe, if this involved only me, I would take her up on that offer.
But it didn't.
"Pain is human's greatest fear, second only to death."
It was a good thing, then, that I wasn't afraid to die.
"What are you thinking, Clarke?" Asked ALIE, though I knew she could access my thoughts if she wanted. This was the last shred of free will she was giving me. Waiting for me to give it right back.
"I think," I said, in a voice that sounded like rocks grinding together. Someone burst back into the room with a metal box in hand. "That my friends are going to fry you."
"Survival may not be possible," said ALIE, looking from the others to me. "This could eliminate you."
I almost smiled. "Then I guess I'll see you on the other side."
"Now!"
A buzzing sensation ignited over my skin and wound up my neck.
And then I was burning. Burning, burning down with the rest of the world.
It broke apart and collapsed from under me. I felt myself falling, the memories wrapping around me like a cold blanket, suffocating me.
Far above, someone else was shouting, but the words were lost to the cacophony of ruin. There was just the guilt and the regret keeping me company.
For a little while.
But then came the faces. They bloomed around me, and it was like I was suddenly standing in a huge crowd. A crowd of the dead. There was my father, and Wells. I glimpsed Lincoln. And there were others, whose names I didn't know because I'd never wanted to learn them.
The noises grew, louder and louder, and it was only when all their mouths opened, that I realized they were shouting one thing. Over and over again.
"Wanheda," they screamed.
They pressed in on me and I raised my hands to ward them off.
Men, women, children. They were all shouting, so loud it rattled through my head and shook up my blood. I saw the hate in some of their eyes while I caught only simple questions in others.
Why, they all seemed to ask. Why did you kill me?
"I'm sorry," I said, choking on that one, pitiful word. "I didn't want this. I'm sorry!"
They came closer, pushing, shoving. Their faces blocked out everything else, too many to count.
This time, I didn't put up a fight. I just dropped my arms, and let them in.
