A/N: Thanks for the reviews lovelies - I really do appreciate the comments, even the slightly weird ones ;-) and, so as not to reveal spoilers to those of you who might not have watched last week's episode, I will just say this...WTF. If you've watched it then you know exactly how I'm feeling right now!

Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I do not own the characters, events and world of The 100 – that honour goes to Kass Morgan and the writers for the (amazing) TV show. This story, though, is all mine baby!

Chapter Eleven

Miller

Kids were dropping like flies all over camp – spewing crimson blood from pale mouths and turning bleary, pleading eyes in his direction. He herded them into the drop ship with an apologetic shrug and a guilty expression. Miller could feel the discord thrumming through the air like it was alive and electric. He'd never regretted being left in charge so much as he did right now. Bellamy and Clarke made those hard decisions seem…maybe not easy, but near enough in his mind. He, on the other hand, was close to losing his legendary cool. There was a not-so-quiet voice in the back of his mind that pointed out the loss of his calm might have more to do with the deteriorating state of a certain sassy mechanic than the state of the camp on the whole. But he was solidly ignoring that voice. Blanking it out. Overriding it. Completely.

Raven wandered out of the drop ship on shaky legs and his stomach dropped perceptively.

"What are you doing?" He hurried over to her side. "Did you miss the part in English Lit where they explained the meaning of words…like contagious and quarantine? Work is not a synonym for rest."

"It's not controlled." She said what he'd already been thinking. "I've got bodies piling up in there and Monty's doing the best he can, but he's not Clarke. I've lost track of who's dead, who's dying and who might still make it." Raven wiped away a trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth and sighed. "I just needed some air."

Miller watched her and gritted his teeth against the rush of concern. "Alright." He conceded. "I can understand wanting to share my little pocket of air. Besides, I'm beginning to think I'm one of the naturally immune."

Raven rolled her eyes and slumped back against the side of the drop ship. "Naturally immune?"

"Here." He dragged a salvaged drop ship seat over to her feet. "Take a load off while you enjoy it, why don't you. Otherwise I'll lose my reputation as a gentleman."

Raven sank into the seat gratefully. "If anyone's got natural immunity, it's me to your charms."

He knelt down beside her and peered into her eyes. They were eerily bloodshot in her wan face. "At least you finally recognise that I'm charming."

They smiled at each other in playfulness. "You were saying?" Raven prompted.

"Nyko. He was the grounder at the gate - said he wanted to give us forewarning out of respect to Lincoln. Bit late for that in some respects, but appreciated none the less." Miller shook his head ruefully.

"It's a tactic they employ before their army attacks, weeds out the weak, but supposedly some people are naturally immune. You know, the brawniest of us." He wiggled his eyebrows at Raven, trying to bring a little light-heartedness to the situation, but she only rolled her eyes in response. It was becoming a bit of a game for him – just how many times could he invoke that cute frustrated response?

"So that's what the grounder wanted." Raven frowned in thought. "What are we going to do?"

Miller got serious. "We have 24 hours at best before they're breathing down our necks. We either lock ourselves in the drop ship and hope that's enough of a deterrent for now, or we try to leave early."

Just then a commotion broke out behind them and they turned as a unit to watch Dax limp heavily into camp. Healthy kids grouped in worried clusters moved out of his way hurriedly, afraid his bedraggled appearance meant he was one of the sick. Raven tried to stand but Miller pressed down on her shoulder to prevent her and beckoned the boy over. He took note of the bloody makeshift bandage on one calf, very inexpertly done, and the harried look in Dax's eyes.

"Why are you alone?"

"Where are the others?" He and Raven simultaneously demanded.

Dax looked blankly between the two of them, his eyes not showing a hint of emotion. "Gone."

"Gone where?" Miller tempered his immediate irritation. He'd heard people described as cold fish before, but hearing about it and dealing with it in a time of crisis was something else altogether.

"No...I mean, they're gone. Dead - gone." Dax heaved a deep breath and blew it out slowly. "There were these wild dogs - they attacked us as a pack out in the open in this apple grove. We didn't stand a chance."

Raven gasped at his side and he moved his hand back to her shoulder for support. Whether he was supporting her or himself he couldn't say. His insides, previously flushed with warmth, now felt like frozen slush. They couldn't all be gone, it was impossible. No way. Oh God.

"Where are the bodies?" He growled.

"You think I could have carried seven bodies back with me? I'm not on steroids." Dax threw him a dirty look. "I swiped this off Sterling's body when the dust settled and got a bite in the calf for my trouble."

Miller looked at the blood soaked rag that used to be a t-shirt. Chunks of something pink and red fell to the floor when Dax shook it out and he resisted the urge to throw up. There's no way the owner of the clothing was alive, and he could see evidence of Dax's wound for himself. Wild dogs! As if they didn't have enough to contend with.

"How did you survive?" Miller questioned.

"Got myself up a tree in time – got no woman to protect so my only concern was myself." Dax shrugged.

"Get Monty to patch you up." He choked out, waving his hand in the direction of the drop ship.

Dax limped off and when he looked over at Raven his heart turned over in his chest. Silent tears ran down her cheeks and pooled in the hollows above her collar bones.

"I can't believe it." Raven sniffed. "How can they all be gone, just like that? What are we supposed to do?"

She sounded desperate. They were desperate. Neither of them was leader material. They were cogs who helped keep things moving but didn't give the machine the shove it needed to get started. Didn't give it the direction their leaders could.

Monty came running out of the drop ship moments after Dax entered and skidded to a stop at their side. Behind him Murphy followed at a leisurely pace. Miller absently noted that the boy looked much healthier than he had when they first found him, though it would probably be a while before the haunted look left his face. Torture would do that to a man.

"Tell me it's not true!" Monty pleaded in a quiet voice that shook with emotion.

"Oh, Monty." Raven whispered.

"I don't believe it." Monty gasped in denial. "Jasper can't be gone, I'd know."

Miller leant into Raven more as she reached out to grip the tormented boy's hand.

Murphy rounded his shoulders and sank his hands into his pockets. "They're not dead."

"Since when do you care?" The words nearly stuck in his throat. God, Miller hated how emotional the day was becoming. Hated it.

"I don't. Not really." Murphy shook his head. "But the princess is our best chance at survival and you know it. No way did she get taken down by a fricking dog, of all things."

"He's right. Sort of." Raven wiped her face, took in a shuddering breath and he let go of her shoulder. Her expression turned resolute. Determined. "Lincoln's too smart for that, and there's no way he'd let anything happen to Clarke."

"Who's Lincoln?" Murphy looked confused.

"Clarke's grounder." At Murphy's astonished look Miller held up a hand in protest to stop further questions. "It's a long story, don't ask." He turned to Raven. "But you might be on to something – Dax said he survived because he didn't have a 'woman' to look out for, but Bellamy wouldn't let anything happen to Octavia either. At the very least, the girls would be protected. They'd be alive."

"So what…" Raven queried. "Dax is lying to us? What for?"

Miller shook his head, feeling even more frustrated. "We can't spare anyone to go check on them, and we can't let him know we think he lied until we know for sure he did. Not with things the way they are."

"I'll go." Murphy volunteered. "I'm better now, and the others don't need me here – not like they'd accept my help if I offered."

Miller eyed the boy in trepidation. "Why should we trust that you won't just run away? You've got a history of it, Murphy."

Murphy shrugged and offered him a placid smirk. "That's the nature of the beast – you've got to give it up and hope for the best."

He went to protest but Raven struggled to her feet and his attention immediately switched to her. He grasped her elbow to help her stay standing when she swayed again. If anything, her skin was taking on a grey tinge, lightly sheened with sweat. She definitely needed to rest.

"Let him go." She declared.

"Raven…"

"No." Monty agreed. "It's our only choice if we don't want to incite further panic."

"Fine." Miller knew they were right. Just another thing to hate about the way the day was turning out. "Raven will show you where to go to find them, but you're not to tell anyone what you're doing."

Murphy nodded and held out an elbow for Raven in mock gallantry. "Lead the way."

Miller watched them enter the drop ship together with Monty at his side. "Fix Dax up, will you, and see if you can get him to talk."

Monty nodded, looking determined, and left Miller standing alone. He put his hands on his hips and raised his face to the swiftly darkening sky, just as the heavens opened in a torrent of rain.

"Fantastic."

Clarke

"Good boy, Savage!" Clarke cooed. She petted the top of his fluffy ebony head and he nuzzled her palm excitedly before leaping into her lap, straining to lick her face. Clarke laughed, feeling both amused and affectionate.

They'd been awake for an hour now, and after a delicious breakfast of some kind of fish, caught and cooked by her man because they'd all been stumped by the lack of a fishing pole, she was teaching her pup to sit on his little toosh for more than two seconds at a time and rewarding him with leftovers. It wasn't exactly working, but then he was only a baby and it was working as a distraction from her unhappier thoughts.

Lincoln, meanwhile, was busy attempting to teach Octavia and Jasper the right way to fish – with an impromptu handmade spear of course. Jasper had looked a little dubious at first, but if the crowing he'd been doing for the past ten minutes was anything to go by then Lincoln was going a long way towards removing his hesitations. The horrors of the day before felt a million miles away, and she didn't think she was the only one reluctant to move on.

"You named him Savage?!" Bellamy, returning from a perimeter check, turned towards Lincoln with an incredulous expression across his face. "Don't you find that at all offensive?"

Lincoln spared him a small glance. "No."

Clarke laughed aloud and nuzzled Savage when he took the noise as an invitation to jump all over her again. "Calm down, boy."

Bellamy shook his head. "If his name turns out to be a premonition for his personality then I want you to remember this moment."

Clarke scratched Savage behind the ears. "Aww, is the big bad Bellamy afraid of a little ball of fluff?"

Bellamy mimicked her babyish tone. "Little balls of fluff grow into big balls of fluff with teeth and claws that rip into human flesh."

Savage's floppy ears perked up and he yipped a happy greeting at Bellamy before bounding towards him. Bellamy looked a little lost when the puppy plopped down on his boot, panting with excitement, looking for all the world like he was waiting for his treat for such good behaviour.

Octavia looked over and burst out laughing. "Bellamy's made a new friend."

Bellamy scowled at his sister and tried to kick the puppy off of his boot, but even from where she was sitting she could see he was being gentle. Savage stepped off of Bellamy's left boot, circled around like he was chasing his tail, and settled on his right boot.

"Seriously?" Bellamy exclaimed.

Even Lincoln joined the laughter that time and Clarke met his eyes, feeling a whole boat load of warm emotions. Emotions she wasn't quite ready to talk about, but she could enjoy how they made her feel.

"Guys!" Harper called animatedly from somewhere out of sight in the forest. "I think I've found something."

Clarke had almost forgotten about the other girl because she'd been so quiet that morning. She walked over and scooped Savage into her arms, giving Bellamy a taste of his own medicine and smirking, before heading towards the origin of Harper's voice. At the sight of the mud slide she'd taken the previous evening she cuddled the puppy closer for comfort. In the daylight the hole she'd fallen into didn't look as sinister as it had felt, and she reminded herself that something good had come from it – she'd gotten Savage, and the threat of the alpha was removed. She just didn't want to feel that vulnerable again if she could help it.

"Over here." Harper stood at the edge of a secondary hole a few metres away, pointing into it's depths.

There was clearly a sandstone cavern system below the forest floor, the kind that had been there for a very long time, with smooth walls and curved openings that almost looked manmade but obviously weren't. Maybe the trees themselves were a more recent development of the past hundred years – with the abnormal growth pattern of plants on a radiation soaked planet it was entirely possible.

They approached as a unit and peered at the strangely well preserved vessels revealed by the shifting forest floor.

"Canoes!" Jasper voiced.

"Do you think they're useable?" Harper looked to Clarke for an answer.

Clarke shrugged. "Let's get one of them out and see."

The girls stepped back to watch as the boys worked out a pulley system with some rope and after a little finagling, a ruby red fiberglass canoe was laid out before them. It was large enough to fit three people, and had a circular black logo on the side pronouncing it as belonging to 'Bill's River Adventures'.

"I've not seen ones like this." Lincoln muttered, running his hands carefully along the hull. "It's perfectly intact – we can use it to travel down river and cut our journey time down to a fraction."

"Let's get a move on then." Bellamy drawled, already making efforts to pull another craft from the pit with Harper's aid.

When the camp was packed away and the two craft were settled at the side of the river, Lincoln approached her with four improvised paddles. He'd lashed the flat plates of aluminium they'd used at breakfast to three large branches in what looked like a cross between an elongated pitch fork and a crude torch. He handed one to her and another to both Bellamy and Jasper.

He approached the closest canoe, shifted it so it was held firmly half way in the water and helped her perch in the front with Savage. Her pup whined a little at the rumble of the fast moving water, attempting to crawl into Clarke's lap, but when that proved unsteady he settled in between her feet. Harper took up position in the middle and she arranged the backpacks Lincoln passed her securely by her feet. In the vessel next to them Jasper took up position at the front with Octavia behind him, and Bellamy getting ready to take the rear. He looked to Lincoln, as though unsure what to do.

Lincoln grinned and pushed at the boat with all his might, leaping lithely into the craft as it was caught by the current. Clarke looked back to see Bellamy follow suit, though apparently getting a little wetter in the process, and then took stock of their surroundings. The forest sailed past them at a good speed, a mass of deep green that remained eerily quiet despite the roar of the water running through it. Both canoes stayed in close proximity, with their paddles guiding them safely away from random scatterings of rocks submerged in the tide.

"How will we know when we're there?" Octavia called out.

"I saw the map." Lincoln said. "There was a pattern of bends to the north of the city, I remember them. I will navigate."

"Righty ho." Octavia cheered.

"We had you all wrong!" Bellamy joked. "Forget Tarzan, I'm looking at Robinson Crusoe."

But Lincoln was right, he did have a good memory for geography. After a series of hair pin bends, they sailed in a large half moon shape and Clarke began to identify the ruins of a small city. Small mounds, rectangular or square in shape, that though completely covered in vines, were definitely hiding manmade structures beneath them. The river straightened out and Lincoln directed their craft towards a small pebbled beach area worn into the side of the river. Harper, Octavia and Jasper clambered into the shallows and helped the men pull both boats out of the current. Clarke took a firm hold of a nervous Savage and stepped ashore.

When both canoes were stored nearby, covered by ferns in the forest undergrowth as a precautionary measure, they headed in land. Out of the forest rose a huge rectangular building – it too was swamped in vines, many of the windows shattered, with a growth of trees rooted firmly in the crumbling far right wing. It would have been a modern building for it's time, Clarke guessed, but the Grecian temple front meant it was also a building of importance. Two of the giant ivory supporting pillars at the entrance were still standing, while the other two were broken in several places, parts still clinging to the structure giving the semblance of gaping, jagged teeth.

They panned out, cautiously exploring the area in front of the structure. Clarke set Savage down on the grass to explore and climbed on top of part of a broken pillar and squinted against the sunlight reflected off surviving glass panes. There was an engraving just below the triangle, where vines hung down in tangled knots obscuring her view, but she could just about make out partial words, and when she did she burst out laughing. It was kismet.

"What is so amusing, Princess?" Lincoln stood behind her, his arms wrapped around her calves in support.

She grinned down at him. "It's a high school. Sky High."

Lincoln smiled at her, more at her expense than in shared amusement she thought, but she was taking it as a good sign. Finally. Sky High for the Sky People. This would be their home.

Lincoln's arms stiffened and she grew alarmed. "What is it?"

He shushed her with his finger and gently pulled her down so she was behind him. She nabbed a frolicking Savage away from the dandelions he was attacking.

"We've been followed." He stated calmly.

"How could someone have followed us?" Clarke gasped. She hissed at the others to get their attention and they cautiously sprinted over.

"I have known for a while we were being followed. I did not sense any ill intentions, but they must be very eager if they came down the river after us."

A branch snapped at the edge of the forest and Murphy stepped out, his arms raised in surrender though his expression was anything but submissive, and directly behind him stood a young grounder male, his dagger pressed against Murphy's jugular.

Raven

The worst of the sickness had passed in the night and the death toll rose to seventeen. Raven couldn't believe they'd lost that much, but then she remembered how many of them were sick and had survived, how she had survived against all odds, and felt nothing but grateful.

She rose from the bed she'd been taking a nap in when she heard mumbled voices coming from outside the drop ship. It was early – too early for everyone to be awake yet. Besides, they'd sent most of the teenagers to the higher levels and closed the door as a safety measure, what with the threat of an impending grounder army.

Dax stood at the front gate with a backpack hitched on his shoulder and a group of roughly ten teenagers surrounded him.

"What's going on?" she asked.

A girl whose name she didn't recall stepped forward with her chin raised in defiance. "We're leaving." She stated boldly, swinging her dark hair over her shoulder. "We heard what's happening with the grounders – everyone else is too weak from the sickness and we're not staying around to be slaughtered with them."

Raven gaped at her. "We're all going to leave as a camp, just as soon as Clarke and Bellamy get back from their scouting mission." Too late she remembered that Dax still thought she believed they were dead. His face gave nothing away at her admission.

"That's a lie." The girl looked like she'd stamp her foot if she could. "They're dead, and you're not our leader."

With that she swung about and yanked the gate open, marching off without a backwards glance. The others followed her, Dax finally giving a show of emotion by saluting Raven with a cocky grin.

"Whatever." Raven grumbled. Too pissed off to try and convince them otherwise. She wasn't Clarke. If they wanted to stake their lives on that creep's say so then who was she to stop them? As long as there was still some semblance of order if…when their leaders returned then she was golden.

She turned around to head back inside and immediately came to a halt at the sight of multiple teenagers stood frozen in shock behind her.

A/N: Hit me with some love people!