Hmmm. No-one seems to want to talk to me about how the story is so far. I'll give you one more chapter to see if that helps you. If I get people reviewing or at least commenting on it, I'll do a third chapter for you. Samdagger.

Chapter 2

Erin stepped into her new quarters in Factory Station and the guard left. She looked around at the home she had last seen 18 months ago just before she had been discovered and arrested. She walked into her parents bedroom and went straight to the secret compartment that her engineering father had built into the floor under the bed. As the bed was bolted to the floor, no-one looked there for secret compartments so he was relatively sure they wouldn't search it. Erin knelt down and squirmed her way under the bed until she was next to the far wall. She opened the compartment and felt around inside it. She came up with an envelope and nothing else. She took it back out and opened it.

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Dear Erin,

I am so sorry that I have to write this. I have no idea if we'll ever see each other again, but when Jaha and Kane came to me with this offer, I had to take it. It was the only way to make sure you'd be free and not killed on your 18th birthday. Don't be sad, Erin, I'd do it again and again if it meant you'd be free.

Listen, there's something I need to tell you. Our ancestor was one of the army personnel that built underground bunkers in the eastern USA. He left his diary and maps and some of the riddles he used to keep people from finding them. I'm taking them with me. I don't want Jaha or Kane or any of the guards up there getting their hands on it. We were going to tell you about it once you'd turned 17 - the age I was when I was told. I'm going to find them, Erin, for us and for the remainder of the Ark. This Earth is where we came from and now I'm going home - to Earth.

I love you Erin.

love, Sol.

P.S. read the rest of the papers and then destroy them.

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Erin looked in the envelope and pulled out two sheets of paper. She sat and read them, her eyes growing wide as she read. When she was finished, she re-read them again. Her family had all been blessed with very good memory's so it didn't take long for her to memorise them. She read about all the things her great-great-great-grandfather had done to provide for his family and for future generations.

She shredded the letter and the info sheets and then flushed them down the toilet and out into space. There was a knock at the door and she went to answer it. She opened the door and it was pushed hard from the other side and it smacked her in the face. Guards rushed in and she was arrested and taken back to lockup. They threw her into a new cell and left her there. Erin was up and banging on the door yelling about the promise Jaha and Kane had made and that they'd broken it.

"You think you're special?" said a voice behind her. Erin spun around to see a dark-haired girl sitting on a bed.

"Who are you?" Erin asked.

"Octavia Blake," the girl said.

"I'm Erin Armstrong."

"What did you do?" asked Octavia.

"I was born. That was enough as far as Jaha was concerned," Erin said.

"Second child?" guessed Octavia.

"Yeah."

"Me too," said Octavia.

"Really?"

"Yep. What did you mean that Jaha broke his promise?"

"My sister was offered a deal by Jaha and Kane. Go to the ground and I'd be set free. They took me out as my sister watched and they took me back to my family's quarters. I was there for a total of one hour - if that - before the guards came and arrested me again. Jaha promised I would be free."

"Technically you were. Bet they never said that they wouldn't re-arrest you once your sister was off the Ark, did they?" Erin stopped and stared.

"Those double-crossing fucking bastards!"

"Welcome to the real world," said Octavia.

"I've already spent a year in this hellhole, Octavia. I was promised that I could take Sol's place on the Ark. That was the deal."

"Yeah, but Jaha is very good at breaking promises. My mother bargained for my life too. She'd go straight to the floating chamber instead of a trial if I was left to be raised by my brother. Jaha agreed and as soon as she was floated, I was put in here."

"Huh, seems like we both have a beef with him."

"Yeah."

"So what happens now? My sister is on the ground and I have no idea where she is. I don't even know if I'll ever see her again."

"Maybe we should become each other's honorary sister," said Octavia. "That way you can have a brother too, though Bellamy probably won't like it."

"Yeah, better ask him first, Octavia. Don't want to dump this on him."

"He'll get over it and in the end, he'll probably like having another sister - unless we gang up on him," she said, grinning.

That sealed the start of a good friendship.

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Abby Griffin stood in her quarters looking around at the empty spaces where her husband and daughter should be. She looked at Clarke's homework, still out and opened where it was when the guards came and arrested her. Abby was at a loss how everything happened. One minute she was telling her friend Thelonious Jaha - the Ark's Chancellor - about her fears about what would happen if Jake released the information about the air supply running out to the people. The next minute she was watching Jake being arrested and sent straight to floating. She wasn't even told that it was going to happen so she never saw him before he was floated. Then the guards arrested Clarke, just because she knew about the plan. Jaha had told her that he couldn't take the risk of Clarke telling everyone, so he put her into solitary confinement in the Ark's prison. She could only see her daughter once a month under supervision and any medical needs she had would be attended to by Jackson, her mother's right hand man in the med bay.

She thought she could trust her friend, but it seems like she couldn't. Jaha hadn't even talked to Jake first. She thought Jaha could talk Jake out of going public with the information, but instead he betrayed her trust in him and killed her husband and imprisoned her child. Clarke would be floated on her 18th birthday, which was only a little over a year away. 13 months for her daughter to live, 13 more visits, only 13 more times to see and talk to her daughter. It wasn't fair! She'd only meant for her husband to see that he was doing the wrong thing, not get him floated!

Abby sat down and thought about what she needed to do. She couldn't go public with it either. How could she get this information into the right hands without them finding out it was her. She couldn't leave Clarke as an orphan, so anything she did, would have to be covert. Problem was she had no idea how to do that, she'd never had to do anything like that at all, she was a doctor, for God's sake!

She got up and went to her bedroom and looked at the bed, all nice and neatly made. For all that she was a doctor and had order in her medbay, at home, she often left the bedsheets wherever they lay when she threw them back to get up. Jake was the neat freak in their quarters, always making the bed - even if he'd gotten up first, he'd go back and tidy up after Abby got up. She loved him for that. It was one of the little things that he did for her without complaint that showed that he loved her. It was always the little things. Oh, he told her often that he loved her and he was always giving her a kiss and a cuddle whenever he could, but it was those little details that she cherished the most. Now she made the bed when she got up. The first time she didn't and it brought it all back that Jake was dead. From then on, she made the bed and alway thanked Jake for making the bed again. It was her way of coping without him.

She lay down on the bed and started to cry. She cried for her daughter who was in prison, she cried for her now dead husband and she cried for the injustice of the Ark, part of which she herself was responsible for. Abby cried herself to sleep, hopefully in the morning she could start planning for whatever they were going to do next.

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Bellamy was mopping a corridor. After his mother had been floated and his sister locked up, they'd dismissed him from the guards and the only job he could get now was as a maintenance worker - basically he was a cleaner, a scrubber and mopper of floors and walls. Often the guards would call on him to do those jobs that were horrible, like when someone had puked on the floor, or when they'd had to take someone down and they didn't go quietly. Getting blood from the one or two precious rugs that had been brought up before the war was hard. Because they were a hundred years old or so, they were a little bit brittle and scrubbing too hard could cause them to be damaged. It would take him several days to get it cleaned and the guards knew it. Bellamy hated his job, but he hated himself even more.

It was on his watch - literally - that his sister was discovered and arrested. She'd begged him to go to a party but Bellamy had said no. When she told him it was a masquerade party and everyone would be wearing masks, he relented. With a mask on, she would be concealed enough that she wouldn't be identified as a stranger. He watched with horror as Shumway had announced that everyone had to get to a safe area and he had started checking ID's. When Octavia had tried to sneak past him, Shumway called for her ID. She was a second child and didn't have any. Bellamy knew that if he couldn't persuade Shumway to let her go, she'd be arrested and floated on her 18th birthday. He'd tried and tried and begged and pleaded, but to no avail. Shumway arrested her and stripped him of his guards uniform and dismissed him from their ranks.

He could only see his sister twice a week at the moment and he was lucky to get that. Kane took a little mercy on him and allowed standard visitation rights for him and his sister. Now he needed to figure out a way to keep her safe. It wasn't going to be easy, he knew that, but this was his sister, the only family he had left and he was going to do whatever it took to keep his sister safe - even if he had to resort to murder.

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Monty walked into engineering, he wanted to talk to Raven about the radio he'd built. Both of them were trying to build a radio that could not be detected by the Ark. Raven called it an exercise in getting one over the establishment, but Monty saw it as a way to communicate without anyone else knowing. Before he got really into his electronics, Monty was a tunnel kid. He'd walk through the ducts and airways of the Ark to get to whatever destination he wanted to go. With the Ark's kill-to-save-air policy that masqueraded as captial crimes, Monty knew that they needed a way to communicate without the guards or the council knowing about it. Jasper's parents had been killed just because they got drunk on their illicit moonshine and the gards had caught them. Moonshine was illegal because it took resources needed to keep people alive. Monty had no doubt that what that really meant was 'I need nice food and I don't want to share it with the masses.' The ruling body on the Ark, the privileged, seemed to have no problem getting the right food needed to keep the body healthy, while everyone else was struggling with their meagre rations. No, what was needed was a regime change, but he didn't know how to do that, so he did the only thing he was good at - electronics. He was helping Raven build the radios and so far, it had been a success!

He looked around for Raven but couldn't see her. When he asked about her, he was told that she'd been floated. He was surprised because Raven was not a risk taker. She had a steady and good job, had a boyfriend, but he cheated on her so she broke up with him, but she did have a boyfriend at one point. She was also touted as the next Jake Griffin and would more than likely end up as their Chief Engineer in a decade or so. For Raven to be floated didn't sit right with him. He went back to his quarters and thought about it. Why would they float Raven? What did they get her for? The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became about what happened to her. If they had really floated her, then they lied about what she'd done. If they hadn't floated her, then where was she? She was 18 so she was legally an adult. They wouldn't have put her in the Skybox, that was only for under 18's as a holding tank until they became adults legally and then they were floated. Was she being held somewhere else? Monty knew he needed to find the answers and so he planned. He planned to go to those places he knew that Raven went to, he planned for what to do if he found her or anything she left behind to tell him where she went. He planned for anything he could, limited only by the thought of getting caught, but he knew he needed to do this.

xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx

Harper was crying. She was crying because her best friend had just been floated. How was she supposed to tell Erin that her sister was dead? How was she herself supposed to carry on as if nothing had happened? Something wasn't right about all this, something else was going on. Sol wouldn't do anything to leave Erin alone in the world, so Harper knew that Sol had to have been falsely accused of whatever crime they used to get her arrested.

She remembered the first time she'd met Sol. It was at school and the resident bully decided that he'd pick on the new girl, Harper. Blaine was standing over Harper - towering over her actually - telling her to hand over anything she had that wasn't school related. He knew that if a kid didn't have the right school equipment, it meant that someone had taken it off them and he didn't want to be caught. Harper was only five and terrified of the bad boy above her. Blaine was just starting another tirade when Harper watched as he was suddenly pulled away from her. She watched as a girl of no more than seven, pushed the bully down and told him that if she caught him bullying that kid again, she'd make him wish his parents had never met! Harper was awed by the tiny girl going up against the bigger bully. The boy started to yell at the girl, but she ignored it and walked over to Harper and asked if she was okay. Harper nodded, but added that she didn't like the bully. The girl had said she didn't either. She introduced herself as Sol and Harper told Sol her name as well. Blaine had had enough of being ignored and he pulled the girl back and turned her around and then punched her in the face. Blood spurted from Sol's nose, but she didn't cry. She stood there, ready to defend herself if he tried that again. Unfortunately for him, one of the guards came round the corner just as he pulled Sol around and punched her. The boy was hauled off and because he was technically underage to be put in the Skybox, he was made to do community service and pay restitution to Sol. Blaine's father was beside himself and he ranted and raved in his kid's face about the importance of being seen to be nice. His father was one of the councilmen and was embarrassed that his son had been caught bullying other kids. No-one knew if he was ashamed of his son's actions or the fact that he'd gotten caught doing it. The one good thing to come out of that incident was the life-long friend she'd made in Sol.

Now Sol was gone, floated for something that Harper knew she wouldn't do. Harper had no idea what the crime was supposed to be, but she did know Sol and she knew Erin was the only thing she'd commit a crime for. She also knew that Sol wouldn't commit a crime, her sister was already in lockup. Harper wanted to investigate this anomaly but she had no idea how to go about it. She'd have to think about this some more.

xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx

Monty was crawling around in the tunnels trying to get to a sector that Raven had said she'd go to when she wanted peace and quiet. It was an abandoned section of the Ark and rarely used for anything other than getting from one part of the Ark to the other. It had originally been housing, but with heavy foot traffic 24 hours a day, they decided to move everyone to other parts of the Ark. The rooms were supposed to be converted into other uses, but with fewer and fewer people on the Ark, they remained unused. Monty passed the empty housing and carried on up the tunnel, turning off only when he'd reached his destination - an unused and abandoned engineering module that had originally been the science station for this particular station before they joined the Ark.

He opened the hatch and slowly crawled in. He looked around and saw nothing of use in the immediate area. He blindly searched for the flashlight he knew Raven kept here. The lights were no longer automatic so he was in the dark - literally - about what was in the room. Once he found it and switched it on, he shone it around and marvelled at the amount of stuff that was here. He surmised that Raven had probably pinched half of the things here, and most of them wouldn't be missed other than missing inventory. He saw scrap metal, broken bits of tables and chairs, workbenches and other stuff that had seen better days, but were still usable - with a little bit of ingenuity.

Monty made his way over to the low workbench and sat on the floor to look at what was on it. He had to sit on the floor because the workbench no longer had legs. Raven had modified two broken chairs and rested the workbench on them. It was very low, hence sitting on the floor.

He looked over a myriad of small items. He recognised some of them as electrical and some of them as mechanical. Several had been fitted together and looked like something Raven was working on, but Monty couldn't figure out what it was. He moved on to the small radio that Raven had built and was the twin to the one Monty had used when testing them out. The radios themselves had been easy to build, the difficult part had been masking the signals and airwaves. The radio frequencies had been easier to deal with, they'd just made their radios more powerful and able to go beyond the range of the Ark or guard radios. If the Ark's radio only used a small range of frequencies, Monty and Raven made their radios use more, they broadened the number of frequencies. They used one of those frequencies and so far as they knew, no-one had heard them.

The next item Monty picked up was a piece of metal with some numbers etched into it. 7, 42, 12, 19. Monty struggled to make sense of it. With only Raven and Monty working on these radios, he had a fair idea that it was meant to mean something to either Raven or Monty himself. He turned the numbers over in his head, but couldn't think of what they could be for. He shook his head and put it down. He flashed the light around to see what else was in the room. He scanned the wall to the left of him, and the wall to the right of him, but nothing seemed to jump out at him as being different. He flashed the light to the wall in front of him which was the same wall that had the hatch in it. Nothing- wait! There! On the far wall there was a small triangle that seemed out of place. Monty went over to it and touched it. Nothing happened. He tried to get his finger behind it and pull but it was too narrow. He looked around for a tool to use and saw a screwdriver sitting on top of a pipe that ran along the floor. He picked it up and pried the small triangle off the wall. Under it was a small hole. Monty shone his light into it and was amazed to see blinking lights!

He looked around for a way to get to them. He looked in the hole again and followed a wire to a point only about three feet to the left of him. Problem was that the wall was only two feet to his left. He looked for any kind of maintenance hatch to that area but couldn't find one. He stopped at a sudden thought. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Try next door, Monty, ya moron! He castigated himself. He got up and crawled back into the tunnel and moved further down to the next hatch. He opened the hatch and crawled in. This time, he saw lights of all colours all around him. He was in an electronic hub! He stopped to think about that, the Ark didn't have this level of sophistication in it's electronic guts. Raven must have built it from scratch! Oh wow! He was a little jealous. He thought he had more electronic knowledge than Raven, but looking at all this, he realised that she was just as knowledgeable as he was.

He looked around and saw a numeric pad beside a monitor. Now what were those numbers again? Crap, he couldn't remember. He crawled out of the server room, back into Raven's lair and got the code, crawled back out and into the server room. Monty just hoped that no-one was around to hear him crawling around. He inputted the code and the monitor came to life. He saw Raven moving back from what he presumed was a camera. Raven sat down and began to speak.

"Hey, Monty, yeah I guessed you'd come looking for me. I'm going to the ground, Monty. Several people are being sent down to see if the ground is survivable. Listen up, this is serious. Jaha and Kane have been breaking their promises left and right. Several people who were supposed to be floated are being sent down. I don't know who is going yet, but at least three others are going. I've been told that they'd be ejected from the Ark in a deadfall. That means no pilot and no idea if they'll survive re-entry and landing. I have to go to keep them safe. I've left some information for you in a folder that's behind this monitor. Make sure that no-one else gets hold of it and make sure that no-one else ever gets to know what's on it." Monty paused the recording to take it all in. Raven had not once cracked a smile or joked around, she was deadly serious. He unpaused the recording and continued to watch.

"I suspect - but don't know for sure - that Jake Griffin may be one of those sent down. He was arrested and supposedly taken to the floating chamber. Neither Abby nor Clarke Griffin was there when it happened, so I don't know if it did. Jake is one of the best engineers we've ever had and I can't see them floating him so quickly if they needed him. I have no idea who the others are, but without me piloting that craft, they'll die on re-entry.

"I was able to find some footage of Jake being taken to an unused room and held there. I have no idea what happened after that, but the fact that he DIDN'T go straight to the floating chamber is suspect. I've found some other footage of others being moved to the same room, but I have no idea who they are. It's all on this monitor, Monty. One of the people being moved was actually someone our age or thereabouts. She's young, Monty, I doubt she's even 18. If she'd been arrested, she'd be sent to lockup. I don't know what's happening, but you need to watch yourself and those around you. Keep an eye on the ones in charge too. When I get to the ground, I'll try to find some old equipment that I can modify into another radio. I'll make sure we use the same frequency we did up here, okay? Make sure that the radio you have is kept knocked off. We need to keep these communications secret. I don't know how long it would take to find the parts and make a radio, but I'll be in touch as soon as I can. After that, we need to schedule a time each week we can talk." Raven stopped and took a drink.

"I hope nothing bad happens, but the fact they are being sent down in less than half the time frame they gave us for the world to be safe again, means that something is going on. Why would we need to find out if Earth is survivable well before the time it should be? What's happening up here that requires us to leave the Ark? It has to be something substantial and with Jake Griffin being arrested, I'd bet it has something to do with the maintenance of the Ark. Something catastrophic." Monty paused it again as he thought about it all. Raven was right, something really bad had to be happening and if Jaha and the council were not telling the people, that meant they wanted to save themselves first and the rest if they could. That didn't sit right with him.

The rest of the message was just Raven saying goodbye and to reiterate the need to keep things secret. Monty sat there for several minutes before he reached back behind the monitor and pulled out an envelope. He read everything in there and his eyebrows rose several times at what he read. He next went back to the monitor and watched the recordings Raven had made of Jake being moved through the Ark. The recording was at a distance, but it was definitely a handcuffed Jake Griffin being led around. Monty didn't know what was going on, but he knew he had to follow through with what Raven had found. If Jaha and Kane were really going to make sure they and theirs were looked after and basically ignore the others, he was going to need help in figuring out what to do.

Monty made his way home with a million thoughts flying through his mind. What did he need to do next? Who could he trust to keep their mouths shut about this? Was there anyone else who knew some of this? What was happening with the Ark? Why were those people really sent to the ground? A lot of questions and no answers. Monty had the feeling that it would take a while before anyone knew anything.

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On the ground

Sol stopped when she heard something in the distance. They all stopped as well and looked at her.

"I hear something," she said. They all stood still and listened. "Off that way," Sol said, pointing to her right and slightly ahead of her. She moved off and the rest followed after her. She pushed through a few bushes and stopped at the edge of a small creek. She sighed with relief. Water. Now they wouldn't die of dehydration. Raven immediately got the cups out of her pack and passed them to Sol. Sol crouched down and when she'd filled each cup, she passed them around with a warning.

"Don't gulp it down, sip it. We've been without water for a few hours and we aren't used to that. Gulping it down will make us sick." Jake agreed, saying that his wife was a doctor and she often told of the dangers of drinking too much too fast and to drink at regular intervals.

They sat down for a little while to rest and think about what was happening.

"Any idea why they lied to us?" asked Rory.

"No," said Sol, "but for some reason they wanted us off the Ark. If they really wanted to find out if the Earth was now safe, wouldn't they have sent down a probe?" Raven and Jake looked startled.

"I forgot about them!" said Raven.

"Me too," said Jake.

"I hope my kids are okay."

"Hope my sister's okay as well," replied Sol.

"Is Sol your real name?" asked Raven.

"Yes, my name's Solange, but only my mother was allowed to call me that. Everyone else calls me Sol. Is Raven your real name?"

"Yup," said Raven leaning back on both arms and leaning her head back to face the sky.

"How far do we need to go to reach Washington DC?" asked Jake. Raven looked at him.

"I've no idea. I only know that it's north east of our current position. I have no idea what we'll find when we get there, but I doubt we'll see any buildings."

"So how do we find that hidden bunker?" asked Rory. Raven shrugged and looked to Sol.

"I don't fully know either. I'm hoping that at least some of the landmarks are still identifiable."

"Like what?"

"Well, the most important one is the Lincoln Memorial. It has a huge statue of Abraham Lincoln in it. That's the starting point. If I can find that, then I have a good idea of where to go for the next clue."

"Which is?"

"The old whitehouse, I think."

"Why?"

"I think that there would have been a bunker under there, it was the home for the President, after all. I'm hoping that it joins up with the big bunker."

"And if it doesn't?" asked Rory.

"Then we'll have to do it the hard way and try to find our way about a city that's been destroyed and most likely overgrown with trees and bushes." None of them liked that idea, but realised that it was the most likely scenario.

"What time is it?" asked Rory, yawning. Jake looked at his watch.

"Ten past two," he said. Raven looked around.

"Check your watch, Jake. That's Ark time. The sun isn't quite above us and I've noticed the shadows are getting shorter which means it's still morning." Jake looked at Raven and then the shadows on the ground. He guessed from the direction they'd been heading that the east was to their right and ahead which meant the shadows he could see were morning shadows. He cursed.

"How do I adjust for a time I don't know?"

"Easy, wait until noon. The sun will be directly overhead and there won't be any shadows. After that, the shadows start to get longer," said Raven, with a shrug.

Jake nodded and waited. They all watched as the shadows got shorter and shorter until they'd disappeared. Jake quickly adjusted his watch.

"Everyone ready to move off?" asked Sol. With groans from everyone including Sol, they got up, picked up their packs, finished their drinks and then with Raven in the lead and Sol at the back, they set off again.