Chapter 65

One week after Connor and Myles had died, they had a memorial for them. Clarke and Commander Lexa had arrived the day before and Clarke had gone to their graves and mourned them with the Commander by her side. One of the Arkers had built a memorial wall and had inscribed their names on a plaque and screwed it to the wall. To symbolise their status as part of the hundred, after their names '100' was inscribed on the plaque.

When everyone had gathered in the main square, Adara got up on a stool and started to speak.

"We are here today to remember Connor and Myles. Both these boys became men down here. Age does not mean anything other than when you were born. Both men worked hard and hardly ever complained." Adara waited until the chuckles of the hundred died down.

"Myles was 14 when he came down. He was serious about working together to make sure that the mountain men did not get us. Even though he was a friendly guy, he was also shy and quiet, but I could count on him to do the job he was given. He did it with the knowledge that we were fighting a war with the mountain men that we never knew existed. He was a gentle soul that was plunged into a terrifying run for our lives. He helped the others along the way. He was a man of extraordinary courage and I'll miss him. He became a brother to me, as did all of the hundred. They are all my family." Adara stopped and took a drink of water before carrying on.

"Connor was a warrior before his time. He knew that if he didn't step up and volunteer for the job, then someone who didn't want to fight, would be asked to. He was a serious boy, troubled by his time on the Ark and in lockup. All he ever wanted was to find a place to call home. He found it with us - the hundred. He was accepted for himself and not for what he did. Most of the hundred have come to realise that. Connor was one of the first and his acceptance of that lightened his shoulders. We could all see it, that lift of his chin - not in defiance, but in pride. Pride for the faith we put in him, pride for a job well done, proud of the people who trusted him. Connor became a man the minute he stepped up and volunteered to become one of my warriors. Both men were proud young men, given the chance to prove themselves and they did that with aplomb. I could not have asked for better brothers. I will miss them for the rest of my life, may they rest in peace. May we meet again." Adara bowed her head as a tear fell from her eye and onto the ground. She looked up and cleared her throat as the rest of the people repeated the last sentence.

"Now. I'll let anyone else who knew them speak. I will not let anyone up here if I think they are going to say anything bad about them. Up on the Ark, they paid the price for their crimes, down here is what counts now. They served me well. They will be remembered with kindness and fondness." With that, she got off the stool and made way for others. Monty stepped on the stool.

"I remember when I went to lockup and saw this seriously pissed off dude looking at me. It scared the shit out of me." Everyone of the hundred laughed. "That was Connor. Up there, he was angry and defensive all the time I knew him, but down here? He was someone you could count on to have your back. He was a friend when you needed it - and an idiot when you didn't. Declan, remember when we first came across this area and all of us here were exploring the area in more detail?"

"I remember," laughed Declan.

"Remember when we came across the small lake to the south of the village and Connor tried to stand on that small mound of grass, only to find that it was actually the top of an animal burrow and he fell into the mud? He came up covered in the stuff and looked like a slimy bog monster." Everyone was laughing now, imagining Connor covered in mud.

"Yeah, Declan and I looked at each other and then pushed him into the lake to clean off. We were laughing our heads off and holding our sides because they ached so much." Monty's laughter died as he continued. "He was a friend and I'll miss him."

Several more of the hundred got up and talked about the two young men. Murphy talked about Connor's dedication to his duty and how he would help anyone who needed it. Octavia talked about Myles' aversion to killing animals, but he was one of the best foragers she had. She talked about his ability to sniff out plants that were edible - even when they had no smell! Atom talked about how he watched Connor, an angry boy, become a man who was a steadying influence on some of the younger members of Skaikru. He talked about a conversation he had with Myles about becoming Skaikru. That Myles had said that being known as Skaikru instead of from the Ark made Myles feel like he had a home. He had felt like he had finally come home.

Raven was the last one to talk about them.

"I knew Myles a little bit on the Ark. His father was one of Jake's engineers, so I would see him around occasionally. He seemed like a nice kid, a bit quiet, but hey, not everyone's a loudmouth like me." That drew a few catcalls and jeers as they agreed with her. "Anyway, one day I was walking down the corridor towards the lounge in Mecha C when I heard this almighty clatter. I looked around and there in the doorway to the lounge was Myles - with a bucket on his head! Some kids had played a prank and put an empty bucket on top of the door and then waited until someone walked in. He took the bucket off his head and looked at the kids and then they all ran as he chased after them. All of them, Myles included, were laughing their heads off. I knew then that Myles would fit in with us. He could take a joke and hold his own. I look back on that day fondly. He was the annoying little brother you loved anyway." Raven stopped and looked at Octavia.

"Hey, O? You can't say you're the only one with a brother now, we're all each other's brothers and sisters!"

"Hell, yeah!" several Skaikru shouted, including Octavia.

"God help the idiot who tried to take one of us on, 'cos we'll close ranks and they'll have to deal with all of us!" A roar sounded from every throat of the hundred. It served as notice for the Arkers and the Trikru that they would fight and, if necessary, die for each other. Raven got down and Adara got back up.

"Alright, everyone, let's eat!" They all moved off towards the buffet style foods they had made. Several cookbooks had been found in the library and the kitchen staff had been putting recipes to the test. They had to experiment because certain ingredients were no longer available, but on the whole, they found something new to make each week. They had recently started making pasta from scratch. They had even made ravioli one day and it was a success. One of the young men had been experimenting making pizza dough from one of the books. He now made several small pizzas a day and with only four slices per pizza, they decided that it would be a once in a while treat for everyone. They were a big hit and he had shown a couple of the Arkers how to make them, to his amusement.

They had even made bread! It was sort of flattish, but it was bread and they made loads of it each day. The Skaikru kitchen staff were becoming the teachers to the Arkers who made meals too. The Arkers were not too keen on having to learn from kids, but as Adara had told them in the beginning, they were the kids down here and they had to learn from those who had already been through it. So they buckled down and learned from kids. It was bizarre but they did see now that the kids were able to use their brains and not just be sent off to play because the adults knew better. It was a sobering lesson and had most parents wondering how things had gotten so screwed up on the Ark that they didn't see the potential in their kids.

Monty's Moonshine also made an appearance and the memorial swung into top gear. Toasts were made to Myles and Connor and anyone else they could think of. Connor and Myles would not be forgotten and they were a reminder of the resilience of children forced to grow up too soon. These kids could and did do things without adult supervision because they had learned the hard way that adults didn't always know right from wrong. The Arkers were learning, slowly, but they were learning.

xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx

Two weeks later, Adara called a meeting with Raven, Monty, Murphy and Octavia. Adara told them the meeting would be in the bunker and they would meet the next morning to go there. Once in the bunker, Adara took them to the top conference room and locked the door. Set out on the tables were a stack of writing pads and pens along with water and some snacks.

"Okay, today I want to know everything you know about ALIE." Each of them was stunned. "I know you don't want to remember about this, but we need to make sure that she doesn't do anything. We've dealt with the mountain, Pike and Jaha, made peace with the Trikru and the other clans except Azgeda. I want you to write down everything you can remember about her and the machinery she used or inhabited. Murphy, your perspective will be crucial as you are the only one who went to her island when she was there. I want to know what you saw, how you interacted with anything, your feelings about her, your thoughts on what she would do etc." Adara turned to Raven and Monty.

"You two are my computer techs and engineers. Anything you did for her or the computers and machines built for her, I want to know. I want to know if you thought of any way to stop her. Any way to shut down that City of Light. Anything, no matter how small or how inconsequential you think it may be, write it down." Next she turned to Octavia.

"O, you were on the outside of this, but you interacted with several people inside. I need your thoughts on what you saw, how Pike reacted and therefore his people. Did they do anything about it or did they just leave the chipped ones alone? Did Pike know what was happening or not? Same with Bellamy, too. Anything you can think of that might help, please."

They looked at her unhappily. None of them wanted to relive that part of the past life because it was a dark chapter in their lives. Raven was chipped, Monty got chipped when they discovered him trying to destroy ALIE, Murphy nearly killed himself in that bunker on her island and Octavia lost her soulmate during it, not to mention Adara herself was killed then, too.

"I'm going to write down my memories about it too. Don't forget, I was killed during that time." They looked shamed for living through it when so many didn't. Adara looked at each of them and told them to start writing.

It took several hours to write down their experiences and at the end, they were emotionally drained. Adara told everyone to take a nap in the bunker and in the late afternoon, they would return to the village they were calling Lake Town until they could decide what to call it. A formal meeting would be called in the winter months and names were to be put forward. A vote would be called if there were more than 10 names and the ones with the lowest votes would be eliminated from the list. Two weeks later, a full vote would be called and the most votes would win.

When the rest had gone to the dormitory to sleep, Adara wandered around the bunker, eventually ending up in the command centre. She turned on the outside cameras that were still operating and watched the Trikru go about their hunting. She watched as Fio brought down a bear with bow and then sword, she watched Indra stalking a panther and she saw Artigas take down a deer with a bow. All three then field-dressed their prizes, skinned them and then got some other warriors to carry them back to Tondc.

Adara then changed to the cameras inside the mountain. Nothing moved. No-one was in the mountain at the moment. They hadn't decided what to do with it, so for now, it was closed up. Jasper had gone to Corda to be with Maya. After discussions with the civilians, they had named Maya and Jasper as their new leaders. Jasper would help them come to terms with the betrayal by their leaders and he would also help them to farm. Luna's people had shown them which seafoods were safe to eat and how to catch them. They had also decided to call themselves the Corda clan. They were leaving the mountain in the past. It was also decided that any children born to clanswomen, but given to women in the mountain to raise, would stay with them. Those children were innocent of their conception and had no idea that their families weren't their biological ones. The clanswomen who still had babies with them had decided to keep them. These babies would grow up in their clans. Several had biological siblings among the Corda clan and one day they might even meet.

Adara then pulled up any records she could find on the early days of Mount Weather. She was looking for the reasons why they took the outsiders. She found nothing to show how they knew that clan blood would keep them alive. There was one small sentence that said that clan and mountain were friendly in the beginning because the mountain men could not leave the mountain, they were not a threat to the clans almost 100 years ago.

She then pulled up records from just after the war. She was looking to see if the bunker was used as shelter during or just after the war. She found that a squad of soldiers had made it to the bunker and were trying to contact other bases. Only one base returned the calls - one in Idaho. It was the same base that had tried for twenty years to make contact - a place called Mountain Home. She read the transcripts of the conversations and found that the President of the United States of America had actually made it to the base but had been wounded. He lived fourteen more years after the war and his son from his new marriage, who was eleven when his father died, was named as the new President and was placed under the tutelage of a regent until he came of age. The boy had been the one who was trying to contact the White House all those years. The old President's first child, a daughter, was still alive after the war and was reported as helping to rebuild civilization. Adara couldn't help but speculate if the boy wasn't trying to find his half-sister. For what reason, she didn't know, but to try for twenty years spoke of dedication. She only wished that she had that sibling connection when she was growing up on the Ark. Now, though, she had 97 other brothers and sisters to call on when she needed comfort. She was very lucky in that regard. Nothing would take that feeling of family away from her - she wouldn't let it.

xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx

She read the papers during the night and the next morning and realised that she needed help to sort it out. She decided to call Clarke on the field radio. She had taken it to Polis with her. Monty had said that the range to Polis from Lake Town wasn't a problem for the radios. She waited until night time when Clarke and the Commander would be in their room.

"Clarke, come in," Adara said into the receiver. She waited a few seconds. "Clarke, come in, this is Adara."

"Clarke here, Adara,"

"Hey, Clarke. I need to see you about ALIE."

"Why?" asked Clarke, confused.

"We need to figure out what to do about her." Clarke was silent for a moment.

"Where do you want to meet?"

"The bunker?"

"Okay. When?"

"When can you get here?"

"Hang on, I'll ask Lexa." There was silence for a few seconds. "We can be at the bunker in four days, is that okay?"

"Yeah, that works. We'll meet just after noon and we'll provide food."

"Okay. Who's 'we'?"

"Me, O, Murphy, Monty and Raven."

Alright, see you then."

"Yep. Night Clarke. See you soon."

"Night." Adara put the receiver down and blew out a breath. Now to get some much needed sleep.

xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx

Adara's house was also the council offices, complete with a conference room. She decided to leave the papers in the bunker, locked in her filing cabinet in her office as she didn't want any of those who hadn't been woken up to find them, it would raise a lot of questions Adara didn't want to answer.

Once they'd reached Lake Town, they heard yelling from the town square. They rushed over to find out what was going on. There they saw several dozen people yelling at Kane with several guards and Murphy's sentries trying to keep the mob back. All four of them pushed through the crowd and up to the small stage area that had been erected for public speaking.

"What's going on, Kane?" Adara asked.

"They're not happy about having to work every day."

"What are their demands?"

"They only want to work when they want to. They think because they're on earth, that they don't have to keep a space station working anymore, then they don't have to work all the time." Adara was stunned and then furious. She turned that furious face on the crowd.

"SHUT UP!" she yelled. Everyone was silent as they looked at the angry woman.

"If you don't want to work, then you don't have to. We'll exile you to Bermuda and you can do what the hell you like there. I'm not letting my village be disrupted by malcontents like you. You don't work, you don't eat, it's that simple. You will not be able to leave the village either. You will wait here until I have arranged for Heda Luna of the Floukru to pick you all up and she will drop you off in Bermuda. The ground is not a picnic, people! You will be exiled instead of floated." There was uproar as several people started yelling that they didn't want to be exiled. Murphy got up and let out a loud whistle that stopped everyone.

"You either buckle down and work here, or you get exiled. Which is it?" The crowd looked at each other before one man spoke.

"I don't recognise you as our leader. You killed Jaha and I heard you killed Coulton. You were imprisoned on the Ark for killing Shumway. You're a killer and I won't follow a killer."

"Funny that you don't see Jaha as a killer, hey? He killed more people than anyone down here. How do you think people like Shumway got away with his crimes? He was helped by Coulton and Jaha knew about it. Shumway was above the law. Jaha made sure that the law didn't apply to 'his' people. Did you know that before I killed him, Shumway told me that he had raped my mother and floated her so she wouldn't tell on him?" The crowd looked at each other uncomfortable with that revelation. "And did you know that he said he was going to do the same thing to me when I turned 18 and was due to be floated? I wasn't in lockup then, he told me he would find something to pin on me and he would be believed instead of me. I would have been locked up for something I hadn't done, then raped and floated on my 18th birthday. Between them, the council on the Ark arrested and floated innocent kids."

"Can you prove that?" Kane stepped forward.

"I can. The corridor where Shumway attacked Adara had a broken camera. What Shumway didn't know was that the camera had been replaced with a working one from an unused corridor. The whole thing was caught and recorded by that camera. The second confrontation happened in the same corridor. Sight and sound recorded for all to see. We did play those recordings when we arrested Jaha before we came down." Kane said, frowning.

"I was working then and didn't see it," admitted the man. Raven ran off to find the tablet and the solar powered charging cables. When she came back she set it up and held up the tablet so that he could see and pressed play. Those at the front watched as Shumway said and did what Kane had told them he did. Shock, horror and disgust were expressed by those who could see it. When everyone in the crowd had watched it, Raven stepped back.

"Does any of this change your minds about my leadership qualifications?" asked Adara. "I don't know about you, but I won't allow anyone to abuse their position like that. Jaha would not have floated Shumway and would have locked me up anyway and Shumway would still be free to abuse others. He had to die and I had to find a way to be put into lockup. Do I regret killing Shumway? No. Do I regret killing a person? Yes. I don't like killing, but I'll do whatever is necessary to stop people like that. I killed Coulton because he was an abuser and a paedophile. I killed Shumway to stop his abuse too. I killed Jaha and his followers because Jaha was deranged and his followers agreed with his way of doing things. They were all thugs in uniforms. They were dangerous to the fabric of our society and would eventually have declared war on our allies, the clans. I do not know how else to lead but by example. I hope that you will bear that in mind when you decide what you want to do." With that, Adara stepped back. Murphy then stepped up.

"Adara has kept us all alive. It was Adara who uncovered the plot to send us kids in lockup down to the ground so the mountain men could kill us for our bone marrow, all so they could leave the mountain and kill those who live on the surface and in exchange, the mountain would be a place for all YOU," he said pointing to the adults in the crowd, "to live there until you were comfortable enough with the ground to leave the mountain. It would also give him time to brainwash you into killing the clans as well. Is that the kind of leader you want to follow? Is Jaha's ideology the one you want to follow? Adara found out about it and she recruited others to help her do something about it. Clarke and Kane were the first and then she recruited three others. Those six planned everything out themselves, from recording the secret meetings and finding things we could use on the ground, to getting the right people into position so that we could be sent to the ground - and by that I mean getting the right people to be arrested so we could all be together when we came down."

"She saved all of us, not just those on the dropship, but all of you too. Do you really think that if they hadn't sent enough of us kids down for harvesting, that he wouldn't have sent some of you to be harvested and killed?" shouted Octavia. "Jaha was delusional. He thought he was some kind of supreme being just because he KNEW no-one was alive down here and when he did find out, he made a bargain to kill his people so he could live all nice and cozy underground. He had no right to kill us, no right at all!" Raven had stepped up and pulled Octavia to the back of the stage. Everyone saw Octavia struggling to calm herself.

"You have until nightfall to make your decisions. I'll send for Heda Luna tomorrow," said Adara.

"No need," said Luna, stepping out of the shadows.

"Heda Luna," Adara said as she bowed. All of the hundred who were there bowed too along with Kane, Jake and - reluctantly - Abby, the others didn't.

"You are welcome here anytime, Heda. What brings you by this time?"

"Commander Lexa had sent a message about where you had relocated. I thought I would come and see your village for myself and see if there were any trading opportunities. I also overheard what you said and I'll take those who wish to relocate to Berda with me."

"Come on over, Heda. We'll have a talk about our village and then Raven can give you a guided tour." Raven was nodding vigorously.

"I'd be happy to," Raven said, smiling broadly. Luna nodded and approached the stage. Adara turned back to the crowd.

"Now, if you want to stay, get back to work. If you want to leave, then pack up your stuff. As soon as Heda Luna leaves, she will drop you off at Bermuda before she goes home." The crowd slowly dispersed, some going to pack and some back to work.

"Heda," Adara began but stopped when Luna held up her hand.

"It's Luna, Adara. After all, we're both Heda of our people and therefore equals."

"Thank you, Luna. I'll give you a quick overview of our village and Raven can fill in the details as she shows you around."

"That would be lovely," said Luna looking at Raven with appreciation.