Clarke had very quickly grown tired of Reigna's incessant pacing back and forth in front of their shared bunk bed, having tugged on the older girl's long ponytail and forced her to climb up onto Clarke's top bunk to sit instead of pace. No words were exchanged but Reigna resided to watch Clarke write notes and scribble out things on her map of mount weather. Eventually Jasper wandered over to the two enemies turned allies and glanced down at Clarke's "art".
"It's not bad. Maybe they'll hang it on the walls one day." Jasper attempted to lighten the mood. After Clarke and Reigna's talk with President Dante, Reigna had basically gone ballistic. Despite the fact that the inside of Mount Weather was incredibly large, Reigna hadn't felt this confined since she was in solitary. She had the earth in her grasp. Felt the grass, smelt the air, just to have it ripped away from her and held like a carrot on a stick.
"Clarke ignored Jasper's comment before glancing up momentarily. Reigna watched as her eyes widened in shock and she moved to hop on the bunk. Reigna glanced up as well seeing a freshly dressed Miller walking into the room.
"Miller, you're okay." Clarke said with a tone of relief.
"Yeah, only took like… three surgeries?" Miller joked, glancing over to Maya as he spoke. Reigna hadn't noticed her presence despite the fact she had walked Miller into the room. Maya passed Miller a bottle of medicine before walking away to talk to Jasper. Reigna's upper lip twitched as she watched them walk. Tearing her eyes away, she hopped over the railing, landing safely on her feet, and made her way quickly to Miller.
"Nice to see you're okay." Reigna said with a slight nod.
"Reigna. Look i'm sorry about the dropship-"
"It's fine." Reigna cut him off harshly, "Please don't talk about it. You did technically keep me alive I guess."
Before Miller could respond to Reigna's half hearted thank you, a loud blaring noise began to ring out throughout the compound. Reigna and Clarke both looked to each other quickly before, seemingly reading eachothers minds, looking to Maya who was beginning to walk away from Jasper.
"Hey!" Reigna sprinted in front of Clarke, grabbing Maya's arm, "Whats going on?" Reigna asked as Clarke caught up to her.
"That signal means the surface patrol is back and someone needs medical attention. I have to go to quarantine." Maya explained quickly before pulling her arm out of Reigna's grasp and darting off down the hallway. Both Reigna and Clarke made moves to follow after her but Jasper stopped them.
"What are you doing? Where are you going?" Jasper asked over the sound of the blaring alarms.
"To quarantine?" Reigna said like it was obvious.
"What if they found survivors. If our people are hurt up there we have a right to know." Clarke elaborated. Reigna nodded once before turning and quickly making her way down the hall, Clarke close behind her.
"Hey, guys, I really don't think we should be just wandering around." Jasper tried to reason, but Reigna had already tuned him out. Glancing at the walls as she ran, she followed the clearly placed signs pointing to Quarantine. Once she spotted Maya with other men stepping into hazmat suits, she broke into a run. As they approached, she didn't hear much of what was said but she did hear the word attacked.
"Attacked? Attacked by what?" Reigna asked as she looked between Maya and the man in front of her.
"What are you doing here?" He asked, squinting his eyes as her. Clarke ignored him and snatched a keycard off the shirt of another man standing behind Reigna and pushed past everyone towards the door.
"Hey, it's not safe!" The same man called out to them.
"It is for us," Reigna responded casually, following Clarke into the door. Beyond the rusty door were white hallways lined with different paintings plastered at random intervals and large busts of what Reigna assumed were historical figures. While Clarke was stopped at a fork in the path, Reigna's eyes lingered on a painting of a cluster of red flowers in a white vase. She was vaguely able to identify the flowers as poppies before Clarke began pulling her along. In her mind she wondered if she would ever be able to see those in person.
"Clarke. Reigna. You guys need to slow down," Jasper's voice brought her back to reality, "Stop pushing so hard. These people are-"
"Filthy liars." Reigna interrupted him as they burst into a room with a man in a clear body bag. Clarke pressed the bag down against the bloody surface of the man's skin and the signs were clear.
"That's a bullet wound. Grounder's don't use bullets." Reigna crossed her arms over her chest, turning her back away from the corpse.
"Unless they got the guns from us." Jasper reasoned and Reigna shook her head.
"Lincoln told me, they don't use weapons like that. It's like a bad omen. Grounder's didn't kill that man." Reigna hissed, her face twisting in anger, "Our people are alive out there and they won't let us leave."
A beat of silence passed as Reigna looked to Clarke. She seemed to be following her line of thinking. People were alive, they were out there and they were looking for them.
"Hey! Get them out of here!" A woman's voice yelled, catching all of their attention as a group of people in hazmat suits helped a man with severe sores and boils limp into the room. All the three could do before they were escorted out was stare in shock and horror.
-0-
Reigna was pacing back and forth in the hallway like a wild animal. Clarke had separated from her quickly after the three were forced out of quarantine without saying another word, leaving the older girl to her own thoughts for the time being. Being underground and with no way to let herself was slowly draining Reigna's sanity in the worst way possible. Suddenly, Reigna feels a hand on her shoulder, and a determined Clarke enters her vision. She mutters a firm 'come on' before striding into the dining hall and directly at Dante, Reigna hot on her heels.
"We need to talk," Clarke initiates with an uninterested looking Dante who is picking up food from the table before him. He looks over at the two girls and gives them both tentative smiles.
"Of course, let's talk over breakfast," he offers, motioning over to an empty table to his right. Clarke doesn't move, but stands her ground, looking Dante right in the eyes.
"Who shot that soldier." It wasn't posed as a question when she spoke, she was expecting an answer.
Dante fumbled for a moment, casting his gaze to two girls across the table who looked mildly disturbed by Clarke's question. He sighed, placing a careful hand on Clarke's shoulder and beginning to lead her away. Clarke grabbed Reigna's wrist and pulled her along. Once they were far enough away from the group, Dante stopped and turned to face the two.
"The patrol that was looking for your people was attacked by what you call grounders." Dante explained but Reigna was quick to interrupt.
"I know them and I've fought them. Grounders don't use guns." She frowned.
"I never mentioned guns," Dante said in a condescending tone, "Sergeant Shaw was shot by an arrow."
"No," Reigna immediately replied, "We saw the wound, and that wasn't an arrow wound."
"Sometimes, we feel so strongly about our people we see things that aren't there," Dante said, directing his statement towards Reigna. She faltered, hardening her gaze before looking away.
"We'd like to see the body." Clarke stated, squaring her shoulders. After a moment of silence, Dante replied.
"Of course," He said, moving away to set down his plate of food before returning, "Come with me,"
-0-
For the past ten minutes, all Reigna could hear was the rapid, anxious tapping of her foot against the pristine white floors. Clarke, Dante and herself were waiting in a room for Dr. Tsing to bring in Sergeant Shaw's body. Reigna didn't know if Dante had done this to spite her, but from where she was standing, Reigna had a perfect view of the hallway and a painting hanging across from their room. Bright blue flowers sprouting from the ground in front of smaller delicate yellow flowers. 'Irises,' Reigna thought, 'Those were mom's favorite,'
Reigna's thoughts were interrupted by Dr. Tsing's head popping into her line of sight, rolling Sergeant Shaw's corpse into the room.
"Sorry to keep you waiting. We had to finish decontamination." She explained.
"Thank you, Dr. Tsing." Dante gave the shorter woman a courteous nod.
"The man with the burns," Clarke interjected, "How is he?"
"He's… Improving," Tsing replied, catching Reigna's attention as she hesitated with her words.
"Can we talk to him?" Reigna asked, crossing her arms over her chest. Tsing looked at Dante hesitantly.
"Only patients are allowed in medical," The woman started.
"We can arrange that," Dante continued afterwards, seemingly as to not aggravate Reigna. Reigna glanced over to Clarke and the two shared a short nod as Dr. Tsing began to pull down the sheet covering the man's torso. Reigna's brows furrowed as she noticed a piece of metal protruding out of the man's chest.
"What's that?" Clarke asked, motioning to the cylinder.
"It's a dialysis shunt," Dr. Tsing explained, "We all have them in case of exposure,"
Reigna glanced up at Dante out of the corner of her eye then back to Clarke, her expression unreadable as Dr. Tsing positioned her hands on the deceased man's arm.
"Would you like to see the exit wound?" She asked and the two responded with nods. Dr. Tsing moved to lift the man's arm, lifting his torso along with it, slowly revealing his back to the girls. Reigna and Clarke bent over slightly to get a better look and hesitated when his would was fully revealed to them.
"Sergeant Langston was forced to push the arrow out in the field." Dr. Tsing explained, nodding in thanks to Dante as she laid the man back down. "We have the arrow right here." She turned and walked the few steps to what Reigna assumed was a decontamination chamber behind her, opening the hatch and pulling out a bag with a label and an arrow head in it. Returning to the table, Tsing turns and shows them the bag.
"May i?" Reigna asks, reaching forward. Tsing nods and hands her the bag. Reigna turns it over in her hands, inspecting the shape, brows twitching once before handing it back and turning on her heel.
-0-
Reigna stormed into the bunk rooms, anger written on her face and Clarke hot on her heels.
"What did President Wallace say?" Jasper asked, Reigna ignored him and made a beeline to her bed, throwing herself onto the mattress and shoving her face into the pillow before letting out a guttural scream.
"He showed us Shaw's body," Clarke responded to him, leaning against her bunk above Reigna's, "It looked like an arrow wound," Clarke finished as Reigna finally sat up and ran her fingers through her messy hair she only realized at that moment was completely down.
"Well maybe because it is an arrow wound," Jasper replied like it was obvious, making reigna laugh once as she ripped the bottom of one of her sleeves to use as a makeshift hair tie, not wanting to ask any of the others or the mountain men if they had regular elastic ones.
"Or that's just what they want us to think," Reigna quickly replied parting her hair at the tip of her ears and twisting the length to create a makeshift bun on the top of her head, using the fabric to tighten it in place, "They just don't want us asking any questions about our people on the outside. For all we know they could have doctored that wound!" Reigna exclaimed in anger, crawling out from her bunk to stand beside Clarke who nodded in agreement with her.
"Are you serious? You sound like crazy people. Do you want to ruin this for us?"
"This?" Reigna gestured around them, "Is a cage," She huffed.
"We don't know what this even is," Clarke elaborated.
"This is safe." Jasper sighed, "This is food, a real bed, clothes, and my personal favorite, not getting speared by grounders." Reigna rolled her eyes.
"This is entrapment and withholding information. They have no reason not to let us make a choice for ourselves. I don't understand why that's not an option!" Reigna yelled, throwing her arms up in the air, "If you want to stay then great that's your choice but I'm not going to live the rest of my life in a cell, never being able to see the sky or the sun again. I would one hundred times over rather sleep in a tree or in the dirt by my own choice than be forced to sleep in a bed underground," Reigna ranted, taking one last quick glance around the room before shoving past Jasper and out into the hall, comforted only by the sounds of Clarke's quick steps following behind her.
-0-
Reigna's leg bounced incessantly against the chair she was sitting in, eyes darting around the room at all the laughing obnoxious delinquents and mountain men.
"Can you cut that out? Everyone's gonna think you're feral," Clarke huffed, propping her fist against her temple.
"I am," Regina replied shortly, glaring off into space. Clarke had been looking and relooking over the map and the book of rules and regulations the mountain men had given them, finding no loopholes and still no ways out, or at least no listed ways out. Time was starting to grate on Reigna, she had no windows and no sunlight, no way of telling whether it was day or night, no way of knowing if the people she cared for were out there without her. Reigna's foot began to tap on the floor from how hard her leg was bouncing, causing Clarke to lean across the small table between them and press her palm into Reigna's thigh, halting her movements.
"We're gonna figure something out okay? We won't be stuck here forever,"
"Can we make some kind of suicide pact or something, you know, just in case?" Reigna joked as Clarke rolled her eyes, balling up the copy of her map and tossing it into a bin between them. Reigna opened her mouth to make another smart comment but the words died in her throat, crossing the hall was the man Clarke and herself get carted in covered in radiation burns. But now, all of a sudden, most of those burns were gone. Left only with minor scarring and a few blisters on his extremities. Clarke and Reigna both sat up in their seats as he passed, glancing at each other once before standing and quietly following after him. The two watched silently as he scanned his card and got on the elevator.
"How curious," Reigna commented with a slight tilt of her head as they turned around and slowly made their way to where they would be sleeping.
"Yeah, I'm starting to wonder if those dialysis shunts Tsing said they all had could be used for anything else." Clarke said as they walked.
"Curiouser and curiouser yet," Reigna mumbled as they walked into the room full of bunk beds, sidestepping a pair of boys walking by. Reigna glanced behind them as they walked out, leaving the two of them alone in the room.
"You're having an idea. Am I going to like it or not." Reigna sighed and Clarke looked around the room.
"It involves me opening my stitches and you making yourself bleed to be involved." She responded, looking to one of the supports to the metal bunk beds.
"I'm sure i can figure something out," Reigna huffed, patting her pocket for a knife out of habit before biting the inside of her lip and looking around for something sharp. Spotting what looked like a metal letter opener across the room Reigna strode over and snatched it off the table it was resting on.
"You sure this is the only idea you have?" Reigna asked, gripping the letter opener on her right hand while glancing over at her mostly healed scar on her left arm.
"It's the only plan that won't get us caught immediately, that enough for you?" Clarke called back over to her making Reigna loudly sigh.
"Yeah i guess so," She grumbled, gripping the letter opener with white knuckles. Reigna turned her arm over to the top pressing the tip of the letter opener to her skin.
"This better be worth it," Reigna said to herself before reeling back and plunging the blade into her skin and dragging it along the top, almost blacking out from the pain before feeling Clarke's hand on her back.
"A little overkill but that works," Carke said with concern on her voice, Clarke's stitches were wide open but Reigna had done enough damage to herself. Having basically mirrored the cut Lincoln gave her from her elbow to her pinkie but this time from the bend of her elbow to her thumb.
"Nice to know," Reigna barely managed the words out of her mouth as she dropped the bloodied letter opener to the floor.
-0-
Reigna awoke to Clarke's hand on her shoulder, gently shaking her awake. She groggily blinked her eyes before looking around and slowly sitting up with the gentle guidance of Clarke's hand on her back. She put a finger over her lips before gesturing behind Reigna to a sleeping Langston. Reigna nodded and shook her head, trying to rid of some of the drowsiness. Looking down, she had been changed into a yellow robe, tied tightly around her waist. Her cut had been carefully stitched up and wrapped tightly in bandages that were already stained with her blood. The sight was almost enough to make her lightheaded at the reminder of the pain, but Reigna looked away, following closely behind Clarke, who was making her way over to Langston's bedside. Clarke shook him twice, calling his name in a hope to wake him, but to no avail. Reigna's eyes followed the tubing connected to his chest over to the wall.
"Clarke, i have a bad feeling," She whispered, to which Clarke nodded in agreement. Turning on her heel, Clarke looked around and made a beeline to the large iron door across the room. Reigna immediately knew it was no use. The door was bolted shut with no access card or key of any kind in side, but Reigna had a better idea.
"Clarke," She called, making her way over and glancing up, "Back to my roots this way," She joked before grabbing a chair nearby and stepping up, giving her just enough height to shimmy her fingers under the seam and pop the vent cover out of the wall. Carefully grasping the edge, Reigna passed the cover down to Clarke and pulled herself up into the vent as Clarke quickly followed behind her. It wasn't a long crawl, but Reigna slid down a small slope to what she assumed was the floor on the other side of the door and frimly pressed her hands against the grate until it popped out and hit the floor with a clang. Reigna pulled herself out and stood up, patting her hands on the bottom of her gown as Clarke emerged. Finally looking up the two girls were both shocked and horrified to find the room they were in was housing two grounders behind hung upside down. Connected to their bodies were the same dialysis pumps langston had but the two grounders were being drained completely. Behind her, Reigna heard a groan and turned sharply on her heel, only to be met with rows of cages.
"Oh my god," Reigna gasped, taking a step forward as Clarke finally turned and took in the sight for herself. Reigna's breath caught in her throat as she recognized a set of very specific features and rushed forward, ignoring the hands of the other grounders reaching for her. Reigna slid to a stop and dropped to her knees, peering into the cage before her.
"Anya?"