Casey King had exactly four hours until she was eighteen. Another twelve until the Guard would come into her cell and take her away. She tapped eight times against the metal wall beside her, echoing into the room. The Guard had taken Matthison, her previous cellmate, a month before. She hadn't had a cellmate since.
Well, that was until earlier that day. Wells Jaha had been escorted into her room when breakfast was scheduled to arrive. He would be with her for her last day, and he hadn't said a word. Wells curled on his cot and fell asleep after two hours of tossing and turning. He then woke up. Casey knew this because his snoring was non-existent, but he hadn't moved from where he faced the wall.
Wells Jaha, the Chancellor's son. The same man she would go before in her trial the following day, be denied her life and floated for her crimes. Eight more taps on the wall.
The oxygen in her lungs would be ripped out the moment the airlocks were released. Tap, tap, tap, tap. Her mother would watch behind the glass as her lungs ruptured from the pressure. Tap, tap, tap, tap. Tears would flow down her cheeks as the oxygen in the rest of her body would expand, tap, tap, tap, tap, ballooning her to twice her size, but she'd stay intact. Tap, tap, tap, tap. Any exposed liquid would vaporize simultaneously, her tongue and eyes boiling. Tap, tap, tap, tap.
In fifteen seconds, she'd pass out.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
In ninety, she'd be dead.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap—
"Could you stop?"
Casey turned her head, hitting one last tap on the metal. It echoed through the room twice as much as the others. It ended up making the number of taps on the wall twelve for her last thought and a total of fifty-six times since she had thought about it again.
She had gotten used to being alone in the room without a cellmate, and even when Matthison had been there, she hadn't commented on the repetitive noises. In the quiet, she had forgotten Wells was even there.
"Sorry," Casey muttered, turning on her side to face the wall. She rested her head on her right arm, her left hand raised to tap the numbers along her forearm until morning.
The door to their cell squeaked on its hinges, the boots of the two Guard members alerting the teens. Casey felt like no time had passed since Wells said his first words to her, and the Guard came to take her away. She stared at the wall for a moment longer, a tear falling down her cheek as she closed her eyes tight and took a stabilizing breath.
"Prisoner 275 and Prisoner 325, against the wall," Miller, a Guard her mother had been friends with, announced to the teenagers. His tone held no sound of comfort, keeping them cold.
Casey was calm, standing to her feet with her hands raised to signal she was complying. Wells followed suit, following the commands with ease.
"Your arm," Miller requested, standing beside her with his hand held out. Scott stood by the door, whipping his arm out to show the shock baton crackling with electricity. This was not a request but a demand.
Casey nodded, holding her arm out, ready for the cuffs. Although, Miller had only one thick wristband in his hand and clamped it down tight on her wrist. Casey hissed as the spikes lining the inside sunk into her skin.
Miller stepped over to Wells, asking the same of him, and Casey watched with furrowed brows as Miller clasped a wristband on him as well.
Scott turned his shock baton off and set it back into his belt, walking stiffly across the room and standing behind Casey, his hand tight on her shoulder as he took both wrists behind her back. He led her out of the cell, with Miller and Wells behind them.
Outside, Casey could see that the entire Sky Box was being emptied, and in the far recesses of her mind, she thought maybe they had come to the point of killing them all. Her left hand tapped four times against her hand, brushing against Scott's. Although, if he noticed, he didn't mention it.
"Are they killing... everyone?" Casey asked, unable to leave her thoughts unanswered.
Wells turned to look at her as much as he could with a frown.
"No," he stated, his tone solemn as Miller and Scott moved them. "We're getting sent to Earth."
Casey didn't know how to respond to that or even believe Wells. Maybe he was trying to ease her mind until they were inevitably floated. Maybe he didn't even know what he was saying, hoping for something better than all of them dying. Or maybe he meant in the spiritual sense that their souls would return to the ground after they were floated.
They were positioned in line with the other delinquents and waited until every kid was accounted for. Then, they walked down the empty halls of B Dock that had been evacuated. No one was there except for a couple Casey didn't recognize, watching them walk down the hall. They tried to keep their faces expressionless, but as Casey caught the man's eyes, she could see weariness just beyond the thin coating of nothing.
They stopped at the east end of Prison Station, where the emergency dropships had been set up for when the Earth was still habitable. One of the Guards explained vaguely that the teenagers were to enter the dropship, first filling in the second level and then the third.
The Guard stepped aside, standing just outside the door as they filed in, saying 'good luck to them with a curt nod, but no one responded. None of them knew what exactly was happening, but there was a vague idea in all of their minds.
Four Guards had entered before the teenagers, two in the middle and two at the top, directing them to where they needed to sit and ensuring that their seat belts were secure.
Casey and Wells were escorted to a row of three, taking the end seat. One of the Guards climbed the ladder after they were seated and entered with a girl thrown over his shoulder. He moved over to where Wells and Casey were sitting and buckled her beside them. Casey heard Wells let out a nervous breath.
The Guards walked through the dropship, ensuring each seat belt was buckled. Like when videos of people riding roller coasters on Earth had to be checked so they wouldn't fly halfway through the ride. They met at the hatch and moved down the ladder quickly, slamming the door closed and leaving the teenagers in silence.
The doors on the first level hissed closed, barely heard by the teenagers on the third level. The dropship was fully powered on, the engines humming awake. Ten minutes later, Casey felt like her insides were shaking and the dropship fully detached from the Ark.
The dropship rocked unsteadily. Casey clenched her eyes shut, her hands sweating and her heart racing. Casey's hands gripped tightly in the fabric of her pants, knuckles turning white as she counted out every agonizing second of their descent.
Casey realized Wells was right and that she wished he hadn't been.
On the screens, moments after they had broken into Earth's atmosphere, the dropship shaking against the air resistance, Chancellor Jaha appeared on the screen. His shoulders were square, and a kind smile lit across his face as if he weren't sending children to die.
"Prisoners of the Ark, hear me now. You've been given a second chance, and as your Chancellor, it is my hope that you see this not as just a chance for you but a chance for all of us. Indeed, for mankind itself. We have no idea what is waiting for you down there. If the odds of survival were better, we would've sent others. Frankly, we're sending you because your crimes have made you expendable."
Casey realized at his morbid explanation that she would die young, no matter what happened. Maybe she wouldn't be floated, watching her mother cry, but she was being sent to Earth to die. To become the foundation of the New World, the sacrifice for others' survival.
She only hoped that her death would be peaceful.
"Your dad's a dick, Wells!" one delinquent shouted across the room, causing some of the other teens who weren't terrified out of their minds to laugh.
"Those crimes will be forgiven. Your records wiped clean. The drop site has been chosen carefully. Before the last war, Mount Weather was a military base built within a mountain. It was to be stocked with enough non-perishables to sustain three hundred people for up to two years."
"We're all going to die, aren't we?" Casey muttered softly, her eyes unable to move from the screen where Jaha stared at her, his pleasant smile making her skin itch.
"As long as we get to Mount Weather, we'll be fine," Wells said from beside her.
Casey turned to look at him, and he looked back at her, a small smile twitching at the edges of his lips. He was trying to be comforting. It was sweet, but anxiety still coursed through Casey's veins.
"Check it out," a boy called, out of his seat and floating towards Casey and Wells with a stupid grin crossing his face. "Your dad floated me, after all."
"You should strap in before the parachutes deploy," Wells told him, ignoring the boy's comment.
"Hey, you two!" the girl who had been passed out in her seat suddenly shouted across the dropship to two other boys who were also unbuckling. "Stay put if you want to live."
"Mount Weather is life," Jaha told her. "You must locate those supplies immediately."
"Hey," the boy greeted, floating toward the girl. "You're the traitor who's been in solitary for a year."
"You're the idiot who wasted a month of oxygen on an illegal spacewalk," the girl snapped back, unlike Wells not having his rude comments.
"But it was fun," he shrugged, his smile widening. "I'm Finn."
"Your one responsibility is to stay alive."
"Stay in your seats!" the girl shouted again, and something uncomfortable churned in Casey's stomach as they neared closer and closer to Earth.
The dropship swung violently, most likely releasing the parachutes and firing the retrorockets. The teenagers were caught by their seatbelts while the boys floating had flung into pipes at the back of the room, except for Finn. He flew into the wall behind Casey, Wells, and the other girl.
Everyone was screaming. It was loud and terrifying. Casey wasn't sure if she was screaming or if her heart was still beating.
Then, the dropship impacted with the ground, making all the teenagers rattle so that the blood in their toes reached the top of their heads in a second flat. Then, all was still, the power cut with a low hum, and then, nothing.
The emergency lights turned on almost immediately, nauseously dim and blinking rapidly, but they were disconnected.
Casey sat stoically in her seat, an indistinct murmur of voices sounding around her, but she wasn't listening. Instead, she stared ahead at the pipes where the boys had flung into them. She tapped her arm four, eight, twelve, sixteen, and twenty times. Then again, and again, and again.
Someone walked up to the boy's body, then someone else to the other. There were only two when there had been three in the air, somewhat reassuring Casey that at least someone had lived.
Casey felt sick but could pull herself out of her daze for a moment. She looked down at her harness, tapping the buckle eight times before releasing it.
She launched from her seat and down to the lower level, where the teenagers crowded, excited to be released. One of the Guard that had stayed behind to join them down to their doom assured everyone that he'd open the door soon enough once they gave him some space. His hand resting on the lever was all Casey could see of him before a girl behind her shrieked, "Stop!"
Everyone turned to look at the blonde that had sat beside Wells. She pushed her way through the crowd and stood defiantly at the front where Casey could no longer see her, only hear what she had to say.
"The air could be toxic!" she claimed.
The Guard, about to open the door, stood away from the lever and stated, "If the air is toxic, we're all dead, anyway."
"Bellamy?" a soft voice interrupted from the opposite ladder Casey stood near.
Bellamy, Bellamy, Bellamy, Bellamy.
Casey watched the girl with dark hair and sharp features push herself to the front like the blonde had. Everyone was chattering, getting rowdy once Bellamy said something of interest, but Casey wasn't listening. She was too focused on Bellamy. Then, finally, a glare settled on the young man she had caught an image of through the crowd.
Casey could feel her skin burning as he talked, the deep gravel that haunted her nightmares. Her arms crossed, tapping out a rhythm of fours against her skin. She couldn't believe that Bellamy was down here, reenlisted as a member of the Guard after everything that had happened the year before. Not even her mom had been reenlisted. She could feel a scowl form on her lips, so repulsed and stuck in her thoughts of being stuck with him on the ground for the rest of her life that she didn't even notice the doors open.
"We've dropped to Earth, the doors are wide open, and yet you're still standing inside?" that voice scraped against the sides of her brain like nails on a chalkboard, forcing her from her angry rage boiling inside her. "Why is that?" he asked, and as she turned to glare at him, a charismatic smile sure to pull her frown into a grin sat staring back at her.
Casey didn't respond, and the scowl on her face seemed to affect Bellamy as the edges of his lips seemed to turn down just a hair.
"I'm Bellamy," he continued to try, his lips forcing up again.
Casey walked past Bellamy, saying simply, "Alright."
She stood at the edge of the drop ship door, taking in the bright green trees and the excited chatter of her other peers, when she noticed a familiar face in the crowd. A face she thought she'd never see again and smiled, her heart skipping a beat.
Casey lightly jogged across the camp, away from Bellamy and the drop ship, to jump onto her best friend's back. Someone she had grown up with and considered a brother. She hadn't seen him in at least two weeks since Pike's class started and was considered by the Guard 'destructive together'.
"John!" she crowed into his ear, her arms tight around his neck and legs wrapped around his hips.
"Case?" he whispered, voice breaking.
The 'friends' Murphy had gained in his time in the Sky Box surrounded them, and all chuckled at the sight. They had known Casey for a short time until she was put on the B schedule to separate the two teenagers. She could only see John on Visitation Days when her mom visited them.
Casey unwrapped herself from Murphy so that she could look at him. Still, she could barely take in his sharp nose or drowsy eyes before he pulled her into a back-breaking hug, one hand in her hair. The other wrapped fully around her waist as he held her closer. His breath shuttered against her skin, and she could feel a slight dampness against her cheek.
"You were... I thought you'd be floated by now," Murphy whispered, his voice heart-breaking.
The teenagers that swarmed them had broken off as the conversation became too intimate for them to enjoy.
Casey laughed, looking up at the clear blue sky, and said, "Happy birthday to me, right?" she whispered, pulling back.
A frown came to her face as she took in a bruise on the hairline of Murphy's forehead. Her hand reached up and dabbed the injury with the tips of her fingers. Murphy flinched, then laughed when realizing what she had noticed.
"What happened?" she demanded.
"Pike went psycho during Earth Skills yesterday," Murphy explained, rolling his eyes. "I always knew he had it out for me."
Casey's frown deepened, the edges of her brows creasing in the middle. Finally, she lowered her hands and asked, "Do you think he knew?"
"Knew what?"
"That we were coming down here," Casey stated, staring at Murphy like he was stupid.
"Nah," Murphy laughed, waving his hand. He then turned to look at her from the corner of his eyes. "I mean, no, right?"
"He beat you up."
"He's been wanting to do that since we've been in his class," Murphy brushed him off.
"Yeah," Casey agreed, rolling her eyes. "But he actually did it."
"Case, does it really matter right now?" Murphy asked her with a sigh. "Come on, let's just worry about us being down here for now."
Author's Note
Season 1, Episode 1: Pilot
Thank you for reading! Please leave a comment if you'd like. However, this is an all kind of reader safe space. So even if you ghost read or comment every chapter, I hope you know it means the world to me that you've come into this fic I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and until the next one.