Arriving in the camp full of Wonkru wounded was something of a blur. The sleepless nights on cave floors and the stress of the past few days caught up with me all at once. I stumbled out of the rover and into Harper's arms. The next thing I knew I was waking up in a tent the following morning with Bellamy at my side.
The tent flap was pulled open and Murphy's head appeared in the doorway. His mouth was open, but the words didn't come. Instead he looked between the two of us and shook his head. "It's like the two of you don't realize we're all about to die."
I gave him the finger. "What do you want Murphy?"
"Your boyfriend is here." He side eyed the still sleeping Bellamy, and then glanced back at me. "The other one."
I was up before he'd finished the sentence, pushing past him to get out of the tent. Behind me I heard a thump, followed by, "Get up, we're all about to die. Again."
I shook my head, and picked up the pace, jogging across camp. It wasn't hard to find the Shadows. They'd been sequestered at the edge of camp, under guard by soldiers from Madi's new army. Cal met me at the perimeter, and the guards let me pass.
"What the hell are you doing here?" I asked, as I fell into his arms.
Over his shoulder, Ella muttered, "I've been asking myself the same question." Kenna shot her a look, and Gav shifted uncomfortably. But it was the clench of Alex's jaw that surprised me the most.
"Can't let you die thinking I don't care enough to fight for you, now can I?" Cal whispered. I leaned back to look at him, a soft smile on my lips. "We're here to help. Whatever your people need, we have your back."
I stepped back to address the rest of the group. "Perfect timing, I was on my way to kill Paxton McCreary." I didn't miss Ella's hand twitch near her empty holster. "But I guess I could be persuaded to let someone else take the shot."
OoOoO
I glanced at Kenna over my shoulder. "Look, it's not that I don't trust Clarke. It's just that I prefer to have a backup plan." I shrugged one shoulder. "Or six." Kenna laughed quietly.
The six of us moved through the woods toward the eastern entrance. Kenna had singlehandedly taken on the job of diffusing the tension between us. The eastern pass was where Peter had been killed. It was also the easiest way to get into the valley. With Wonkru camped right outside the gorge, all Paxton's men had been diverted there.
"I feel like…" Kenna trailed off for a moment and then finished, "I'd hate her."
Cal smirked. I had the feeling Kenna's opinions on non-Shadows were directly proportionate to the way Cal felt about them. In this case, Cal only knew how much trouble Clarke had caused me. "Look I'm not saying I don't understand why she is the way she is, I'm just saying we've had very different lives."
"If I had a kid to worry about, I'd probably be fucking crazy too," Alex muttered. Ella glanced up at him, as if betrayed he would even join our conversation.
"No one said we had to get along with everyone," Kenna went on, keeping pace with me as I picked up my speed to outdistance Ella. "Especially when that person isn't one of us."
I could almost feel Ella's eyes burning into the back of my head. "What does one of us mean these days?" She asked. "Because it used to mean you had a stiletto knife tattooed on your arm. It used to mean you were family. Nowadays it seems like one of us is whoever Cal wants on his dick."
Cal took a breath, ready to respond, but Kenna beat him to it. "One of us is who we trust," She snapped. Kenna stopped walking and turned toward Ella. "It's who has our backs. It's who leaves their people for us, because they know we can get the job done. It's the people we take care of because we can't imagine a world where we didn't."
"You're right, Kenna," Ella said, flatly. "Shadows take care of their own. But who took care of Peter?" I turned to look at her; she'd already drawn her gun. "You threw him to the sharks!"
"We all made that choice, together," I said, quietly. "Peter wanted to do it, it was his idea."
"Any other day, if I had said no, he would've listened. But you stepped in and changed everything. You killed him." Ella pointed her gun at me. I took a deep breath, surprised at how calm I felt. I was at peace with dying. If Ella pulled the trigger, maybe I deserved it. Maybe there was a world beyond this one where I would find all the people I'd lost.
"She's no one to us," Ella said coldly.
"Ella," Gavril cautioned, stepping forward, hands outstretched toward her. "Put the gun down. We can still fix this."
"No, we can't, Gav." Her voice was steely calm. "This is for Peter." Ella pulled the trigger and everything snapped into warp speed. I barely even registered the second gunshot.
I hit the ground hard, rocks and twigs scraping the heels of my hands were the only pain I felt. But then I realized why. Cal was on top of me. He took a deep ragged breath. "No," I whispered, afraid to move.
"I supposed the pain of parting will be red and loud," Cal said, his voice low. I knew the quote; it was from Invitation to a Beheading. One side of his mouth quirked up in a smirk. I wanted to smack him.
"No, you don't get to do that. You don't get to die." I looked toward the others. They stood frozen. "Help him!" I shouted.
Kenna was the first to move, dropping down beside me, checking Cal's wound. That was when I realized what the other two were staring at. Ella was on the ground, blood blooming on her shirt. Gavril and Alexander looked down at her. Alex was holding a gun loosely in his hand. Gav dropped to his knees, pulling Ella's body into his lap. I turned away.
Alex joined Kenna by my side. "I've got him. Keep pressure on the wound." Together they lifted Cal off me. Alex stood up, barely supporting Cal's weight. But Kenna was there to keep them steady, and then I was up too. Alex didn't need my help, but I grabbed Cal's hand anyway. "You're going to be okay," I whispered. "You can't leave us."
"You're not dying on me today, Malikov," Alex swore. The four of us lurched forward, toward the Gagarin. I didn't know what we were going to do when we got there, McCreary's men would still shoot us on sight. But I couldn't give up. I couldn't let Cal die.
Before we could take another step, a siren sounded from up ahead. "What the fuck is that?"
"Evacuation siren," Gav said quietly. "It means get your ass on the ship."
Alex's arms tightened around Cal. "This is going to hurt, boss." We ran, Alex carrying Cal. Kenna kept me from tipping over a stone, and I steered her away from running into a tree. Gav trailed behind us, gun raised, as if someone was going to jump out of the trees to finish what Ella had started.
I nearly collided with Monty, who had Murphy by the arms, about to throw him over his shoulders. Emori was prepared to help. "What the fuck is going on?" I shouted.
"The world's ending," Murphy choked out. "Again."
Gavril put his hand on Monty's shoulder, and Monty stopped long enough for Gav to get one of Murphy's arms around his neck. Together the two continued forward with Murphy between them. Emori slowed to help, but I grabbed her and Kenna by the elbows and shoved them forward. "We have to go." Emori and Kenna both looked like they wanted to argue with leaving Murphy and Cal behind with the boys. "We're going to make it. All of us." I looked at Emori. "You said you trusted me, right?"
Emori nodded once, and we sped up, running toward the ship. It came into view past the trees. Bellamy was waiting out front. He ran toward me, but I pointed him toward Alex. "Cal and Murphy are hurt, we've got to hurry."
Together we pulled our injured friends into the ship, just in time. Clarke closed the door behind us and before it was even sealed, the Gagarin was in the air.
OoOoO
Jackson stepped out into the hall. The four of us nearly tackled him for information. He held up one hand. "The surgery went well, he got lucky. The bullet went through clean; it was bloody but not nearly as bad as it looked. He'll be out for a while, but you can go in and see him now."
Kenna hardly waited for Jackson to finish before rushing into the room. Gav took the seat next to the bed, collapsing into it as if he physically couldn't stand a moment longer. Alex and I hung back, by the door, unsure what to say to each other or anyone else in the room for that matter.
Cal looked so peaceful. If it weren't for the IV in his arm, he would've looked as if he were asleep. "He's stable," Kenna said, as if she hadn't quite trusted Jackson's assessment. "He's going to be okay."
Alex glanced over at me. "You should go check on your friend. Make sure everyone else is alright." I looked at him for a moment, and then nodded. It was easy to read the room. I wasn't a Shadow, and this was a moment for family.
I took a step toward the door, but Kenna nearly slammed it in my face. "Wait, hold on." She fished around in her bag for a moment before pulling out a marker. Without asking, she took my arm and began drawing. "We'll make it permanent when we get back up top."
I looked at the shakily drawn stiletto knife for a moment, then up at Kenna. "You're one of us," she said quietly. I glanced up at the others. Gavril still looked pale and shaken from seeing his sister shot down in front of him, but he nodded once.
Alex put a hand on Gav's shoulder, and looked at Cal for a moment. Then he turned toward me. "Shadows take care of their own."
OoOoO
Eligius IV was packed. It no longer mattered what faction you were fighting for on the ground, up here we were all survivors. I passed the huddled, sleeping bodies on my way to the command room. I rubbed the bandage on my right arm, though Kenna had told me not to.
My friends had already gathered around the window overlooking what was left of Earth. I looked out over the wasteland that had been my home for a short time. We'd spent so long trying to save the planet, only to be responsible for it's destruction in the end. Part of me wondered if it was worth it. Destroying Mount Weather, Jaha's City of Light, the Conclave that had led Wonkru into the bunker. Had all those deaths really mattered in the end?
Bellamy put a hand on my shoulder, and I looked up at him. I knew he was wondering the same thing as me. What had we really accomplished?
But then I looked behind him, at the rest of our friends. Somehow, despite everything, they were alive. Not all of them. So many hadn't made it, but the fact that any of us had…It had to be worth something. We had to keep fighting.
"From what we know about the half-life of hytholodium, it'll be at least ten years before that valley comes back," Shaw explained.
"Eligius IV wasn't meant for a crew this size," I interjected. "The Gagarin was built to house a few dozen, but even with that space…Four hundred people can't live in hallways for a decade. There were less than ten of us on the ring for half the time and we still nearly went insane."
"And we had our own bedrooms," Murphy muttered.
"Cryosleep is the only solution," Shaw continued. "There are 500 pods, plenty for what we need. We can go to sleep, wake up in ten years, and work up a plan from there."
Clarke glanced to Madi. "It's up to you."
The girl who'd become our Commander, nodded once. "Time to go to sleep."
OoOoO
I took my time saying goodbye to my friends, watching as one after another was put under. Cal woke up just in time to learn he was going back to sleep, but he didn't seem as upset by the idea as I thought he might be. Gav and Alex didn't say much of anything. Kenna joked that I better not roll over on my newly tattooed arm.
Saying goodbye to my space family was harder. It didn't matter that we'd all wake up in ten years feeling as if only a few minutes had passed. But even those goodbyes didn't last forever, and then there were only two.
I approached the pod as Bellamy was preparing to hit the button. "I can put her under," I called, before he could close Octavia's pod.
"You sure?"
I nodded and headed toward them. "I've gotten pretty good at it." As Bellamy passed me, our fingers brushed. "Wait for me by mine?"
"Of course."
Octavia pushed herself up on her elbows. "Let me see it." It didn't take a genius to know what she was talking about. I peeled the bandage from my arm, glad that Kenna was already asleep and couldn't get onto me for breaking her rules.
The stiletto knife looked perfect, if a little slimy from the gel Kenna had applied on it to help it heal. "Well, aren't you a badass?" Octavia remarked with a smirk. She reached out, her fingers hovering above the ink. "Constellations?"
"Our zodiacs. Yours, mine, and Bell's." Octavia glanced up at me, and then threw her arms around me. She squeezed as tightly as she could from her awkward position. "I love you, O."
"At least someone does," she whispered.
"Give him time."
She pulled back to look at me. "You don't know everything—"
"I know enough," I assured her. "You can tell me the rest in ten years." I kissed Octavia's forehead and she lay back down. "It'll feel like the blink of an eye." I pressed the button on the console and the glass covered Octavia's face.
I waited for a moment before walking to my own pod. I'd watched enough faces fall serenely into cryosleep, now it was my turn. But first, one last goodbye.
"Ten years is a long time," I murmured as I approached Bellamy.
"You won't even know it's passed," he reminded me.
We both looked down at the cryopod. "I think that's the part I don't like about it," I admitted. "Ten years while the world goes on, changes, heals." I paused before adding, "If we're lucky."
"When we were on the Ring, at least we were present. Earth kept turning below us. Each day we took a step further from the people we were down there," I continued. "It wasn't like this. It wasn't closing our eyes and losing ten years. Or, no, not losing, just…not changing. When we wake up tomorrow, Ella Garipova will have been dead for a decade. It'll feel like yesterday, but somewhere down there her body is already dust."
Bellamy threaded his fingers through mine. "You're not thinking about Ella Garipova, you're thinking about the Conclave. That tomorrow he'll have been dead for sixteen years." I took a short breath. "It's okay."
"I guess sixteen years is nothing compared to Cal's 250," I muttered.
The edge of Bellamy's mouth quirked up in a smile. "If anyone will understand, it's him. You two should talk."
I smiled softly and shook my head. "We really have changed, haven't we?"
"I'd like to think we just grew up."
"Yeah, maybe that's it." I let out a long sigh. "I guess it's time to go to sleep." Bellamy helped me into the pod, and I stretched out. It wasn't exactly comfortable, but then again, I wouldn't feel much of anything. "See you in ten years, Bell."
He leaned down and pressed his lips to mine. "Goodnight, Maia."
"The prince is supposed to kiss Sleeping Beauty awake, not knock her out," I teased.
"I never did pay much attention to the fairytales," he admitted. I laughed softly as he turned his attention to the console. Bellamy pressed the buttons to begin cryosleep. "I love you, Maia."
"I love you too," I whispered as the glass closed over me. And then the world faded out of view.
OoOoO
I woke up, in my pod, feeling rested and refreshed for the first time in recent memory. I pushed myself up on my elbows and slid to the floor with a thump. That was when I realized how quiet it was.
I glanced up and down the hallway, but no one else appeared to be awake. I walked toward the command room, bare feet padding along the metal floors. "Hello?" I called. Maybe the ten years hadn't passed and something had malfunctioned. It would only take me a minute to change over to another pod.
Then I looked out the window. "Oh."
The view outside was breathtaking. The planet that stretched out below the ship was blue and cloud-covered. But it was the suns floating above it that really made me pause. There were two of them.
"Oh, shit. Sorry. There was supposed to be a big reveal. Dad would hate this."
I whirled around at the unfamiliar voice. "Who are you?"
"Uh, Jordan. Sorry. I haven't really met anyone before." The man rubbed his hands together anxiously. "Is this weird? It feels weird."
"Super weird," I confirmed. "How did you get on our ship? Where are we?"
"Crazy story, really wish I'd caught you before you got up here. Dad had it all planned out…" He trailed off. "I was born here actually. I'm Monty and Harper's son. And, um, this is Alpha."
It took me a moment to put it all together. I looked out the window at the planet below once more, before turning back to Jordan. "They didn't go to sleep." He shook his head. "How long have we been under?"
He hesitated for a moment. "125 years."
The air went out of my lungs and I pressed my eyes closed. Over a century since our drop ship had landed on Earth. Over a century since Mount Weather and the City of Light and Praimfaya. And in that time, Monty and Harper had lived an entire life. Had a child, discovered a new world.
"Mom left this for you." Jordan slid a box toward me. It was piled high with books, maybe a hundred or so. More books than I'd seen since the library burnt along with the rest of Arkadia. But it wasn't just books. My guard jacket was on top, folded so the patch faced up. I pulled it on, and hugged my arms around my chest. The one familiar thing amongst the monumental changes I was fighting to process.
Underneath it was Roan's crown. I dropped down to my knees next to the box and lifted it up. Shauna's book was below it, stacked on top of all the others. "Harper left me all this?"
"Echo gave it to her after she defected. Harper made sure it all made it back to the ship. She said you watched enough burn, she wasn't going to let you lose anything else." I sat my friends' things aside, and moved on to the other books. "Mom found those on the ship."
The book on top nearly made me laugh out loud. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood.But when I opened it, I recognized Harper's handwriting and tears sprung to my eyes. "If you're reading this, I'm already dead." There was a large space. "Ok, sorry, I've just always wanted to say something that dramatic. Maybe I'm not dead, in which case you probably just looked up and rolled your eyes."
I glanced up at Jordan with a raised eyebrow. "Yeah, I read most of those books after she got her hands on them," he said. "I know how terrible her jokes are."
"But I'm beginning to think the world isn't going to fix itself. Don't worry though, it'll be okay. Monty will figure something out, and you'll wake up with a whole future ahead of you." Another line break. "Wish I could be there for it. But, I know wouldn't trade things now for the world. These past years have been some of the happiest of my life. I can't wait for you to meet Jordan. He's such a good kid, and we're raising him on stories of all our friends."
Her message continued over onto the next page of the pastedowns. "You've probably read this one, I mean you were Robin Hood after all. You'll probably want to dig straight down to those old sci-fi novels at the bottom. They hit a little too close to home for my taste, but that doesn't mean I didn't learn anything from them. Maybe you can too. If anyone can help our people do better, I know it's you."
Across from the title page, she continued. "Don't worry that this is the last you'll see of me. All these books are covered in my wonderful jokes. I know you love me, but don't read them all at once. Save some for when you finally get to rest…I hope that day comes soon."
Right across from the title page she'd written in larger letters, "Love you to the Ring and back. Harper."
"Thanks," I mumbled to Jordan. I swiped a finger under my eyes to stop the tears that threatened to fall onto the pages. "Um, shouldn't we wake everyone else up?"
"Oh yeah, I was supposed to get Clarke and Bellamy too. That's what dad said." He paused and gave me a lopsided smile. "But mom said to give you the box first, and dad always did tell me to listen to my mother."
I laughed softly. I couldn't imagine what it had been like for the three of them. They'd been a family all alone for so many years. I had missed out on so much of their lives, on seeing my friends happy and in love, and meeting their child and watching him grow up. But I could see so much of Monty and Harper in Jordan, in a way it felt like they were still here.
I took a deep breath and stood up. "Alright, let's go welcome everyone to the new world."
