"How long has Shumway known?" Bellamy asks, strait ahead as though into a void instead of to me.
The silence of the room is all engulfing. It seems to crawl up my body like a physical presence and wrap around my neck like a demon coming to strangle me. I gasp, unable to force words out...unsure what words possibly could come.
"Bellamy, where is your mother?" I finally ask, reality outside from the icy panic and sense of despair only beginning to return to me moments later. I'm still naked other than the towel, but I only remember it when I'm finally in control of myself enough to ask. It does very little to cover me and it's scratchy, the low quality of the factory station issued everything once again reminding me of the ark outside of this room.
Bellamy doesn't answer, though I know he heard me. "Your mom, when she got the message about Shumway defying her order, she had him called in. He told me that, if he goes down, he's taking us with him. I went to find my mom. She was in his quarters cleaning. She didn't give me time to explain. She just heard that Abby Griffin was dragging Shumway into the council and she went running. I didn't even realize that she'd taken my shock baton as she passed until she was gone."
My eyes go wide at that.
"Bellamy, where is mom?" Octavia quickly says from underneath us, forcefully and with an edge of panic that hadn't been present in her voice before, as she begins pushing the floor up from her side and I scramble to move the desk out of the way before it topples over.
Not waiting to hear the answer, I quickly grab up my clothes and pull them on, too distracted to care who saw me. If either sibling did, they gave no indication, too wrapped up in their own horror. This is my fault. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck
"I'll go to the council and try to pull my mom. I'll-" What will I do? I think to myself. What can I possibly hope to do...assuming that it isn't already too late anyway. Aurora Blake could be dead right now. Shumway might've told them. They could be on their way now. I turn back to Bellamy, being sure to make eye contact with him before continuing.
"She's fifteen." I tell him, my tone low and serious. "That's as young as she'll pass without question." Her birth isn't documented. They have no way to know for sure. If they both keep the same date, that'll be what they go on. It'll buy her another couple years of life before being floated, even if it would be spent in the skybox. I don't stop to say goodbye to them before I leave, grabbing up my medical tablet and running out the door.
I run into my dad on my way, coincidentally working on something behind a wall along with some much younger mechanic. The metal wall was opened, revealing more space than I would have thought to contain a complicated puzzle of wires and metal ducts with the girl clipping a wire from a contorted position inside while my dad gave her instructions and asked questions, his face grim. She couldn't be much older than me, with shiny black hair pulled into a high ponytail and a beautiful hispanic complexion.
"Woah, hold up, kiddo. Where's the fire?" Dad jokes, looking up at me in question. "Didn't your mom say you were in quarantine for a tummy virus?" At this, the young mechanic stops working and looks up at me, pulling up her hand to cover her nose and scrunching her face a bit at having a sick person too close.
"I don't have time to explain. I need to get to mom. Now." To my relief, Daddy nods and stands up straiter, reaching for my shoulder, as he nods to the young woman.
"Raven, you've got this better than I do anyway. I'll need a full report of the extent of the issue as soon as you're finished."
She nods, eyes already back on her work. "Sure thing, boss."
Then we're walking in the right direction, at least, if still much slower than I need to be. "Dad, I promise I'll explain what I can later, but I have to get to mom. It's a matter of literal life an death." I rush out as my feet speed up to a power walk and he quickens his pace to match.
"Okay. What can I do to help?" He asks, accepting my vague explanation without issue and moving along with me. I know I'm lucky in the parent department. My mom spends most of her days teaching me everything she knows and my dad is plain awesome. He never pushes me and is so accepting. When I told him I didn't want to marry Wells, he was the only one who didn't get mad or try to talk me into it anyway. He just gets me. I love him so much for that.
"Shumway...I can't explain it right now, but he's done something awful."
We round another corner and Daddy pulls open the doors to the council room, where, thankfully, no other councilmen are there yet. Shumway is though...and mom...and Aurora Blake, who's still clutching Bellamy's shock baton close to her thigh with white knuckles, as though she's expecting to have to use it at any second. The betrayal in her eyes when she sees me come in with Dad in tow is nothing short of vicious, but she stays silent.
"What's going on here, Abby?" Dad asks, keeping his voice casual on purpose as he tries to get a read on the situation he knows absolutely nothing about.
"Commander Shumway was just explaining to me why he felt the need to override a medical quarantine." She turns to look at me and raises her eyebrows. "Which is something I'm also wondering what you're doing out of, Clarke."
I feel Daddy put a hand on my shoulder from his place beside me. I ignore the question, hoping neither parent presses me further until I know what is going to happen. "I was just coming to get Ms. Blake. I couldn't get her on her tablet and she was exposed too. I thought she should go home and rest with Bellamy. He looks terrible, especially after being ordered out of bed and into work like that, on his feet."
Shumway glares at me viciously. "Well you can go back and rest now, Clarke. Commander Shumway has been reminded of how things work and his place within that. I'm sure Bellamy and any other sick person under quarantine won't be taken out prematurely again, right Commander?" Abby asked, openly daring him to try to defy her again.
He sucks in a big breath, clearing enraged and fuming, his jaw clenched, even as he forces his lips into a disturbing smile and nods. There is no way that he is going to let this go. I don't know what he'll do, but it's bound to have serious repercussions. My mom turns to face Aurora then, acknowledging her as though for the first time. "Can I help you?"
Aurora looks like a deer in headlights. I move beside her, pressing my body in close to cover up the baton she's still clutching and gently take it from her, tucking it into my pants pocket and hoping my dad didn't notice from his position nearer to the door. "Mom, this is Aurora Blake, my boyfriend's mom. She probably should be getting home too. She's definitely been exposed."
My mom raises her eyebrows, a little confused at my odd behavior, but thankfully not choosing to question any of it in front of Shumway. Hidden, in between our close bodies, Aurora's hand grasps onto mine, squeezing hard enough to hurt. I can feel her anxiety through the grip in her sweaty hand and it doesn't surprise me even if, from my mom's perspective she looks cool as a cucumber.
Out of my periphery, I notice my dad walk forward, coming around to face Aurora and reaching a hand out to shake. "It's nice to meet you. Handsome young fella you've got. Clarke's told us all about him."
Reluctantly, Aurora returns the handshake, smiling at dad. "Thank you. We've really enjoyed having your daughter visit. She's the first girl Bellamy has ever brought home."
Both of my parents pay attention to that, probably wondering if we're getting serious then. Mom half glares at the woman, a little taken aback, but dad smiles. "As long as he's treating my little girl right, he's alright by me. Let's get you two back though before I'm forced to write up my own daughter for breaking quarantine." His hand is on my shoulder then, turning me around and guiding both me and Aurora back out through the door and towards factory station. Shumway is still loitering outside, probably hoping to catch Aurora alone afterwards to intimidate some more. Daddy walks both of us right past him and doesn't stop to acknowledge the shorter man at all.
He steers us away from the direction of Factory Station after we are out of Shumway's sight though, and instead walks us straight through Alpha Station until we get home. As soon as we're inside, I relax a little, all but falling into the comfy white leather couch in relief. Aurora stays hovering next to the door as dad closes it though, unmoving, as dad looks at me with his raised eyebrows.
"Okay, Clarke, explain." His voice is gentle, no anger lacing his patient, yet insistent tone as he comes to sit across from me and leans forward with his elbows balanced on his knees. My eyes shoot to Aurora, unsure what to say without it being a betrayal, but knowing we need help if we're going to all get out of this.
"Shumway has done something awful. I can't tell you what it is or someone else would pay for it too. Someone who doesn't deserve it."
Dad nods, letting out a breath and flicking his gaze over to Aurora and then back to me. "I assume this has to do with you or Bellamy?" He asks her.
She doesn't respond, seemingly frozen in place. I reach my hand out to his to re-focus his attention. "Daddy, we can't tell you. It's bad though. It's really, really bad. Shumway is taking advantage of his position to hurt someone. Someone who can't do anything about it. The council can't know."
Dad nods again, the gears in his mind clearly turning quickly. "This person, are they threatening you or-"
"No. It's nothing like that. I just have to protect them. Shumway has some dirt on this person and is using it against her and he's trying to blackmail Bellamy too. That's why he pulled him out of quarantine. I can't tell you anything else, but neither of them have hurt anyone... you always told me to do the right thing. This is one of those times when doing the right thing is to not say anything else."
"How mixed up in this are you, Clarke?" Dad asks me seriously, worry lacing every one of his features.
"I did the right thing, but you'd have to float me for it if I told you." I say, my tone as low and serious as my words.
Daddy's eyes grow wider for a moment and he takes in another big breath, collecting himself as he pushes back his hair and glances at Aurora's frozen figure again.
"Okay." He finally says, nodding. "Don't tell your mother."
I nod. We both know she's a stickler for rules. "We'll just have to come up with something then-"
There's a sudden knocking at the door. I'm about to tell daddy not to open it when and two other guards come busting in, using their keycards to open the door on their own. "What is going on here?" Dad demands, rising up from the chair to step in front of me as three guards rush into the room fully. Shumway is leading them.
"Aurora Blake, you are under arrest for theft from an officer." Shumway is pulling out his shock baton as he says this, but Aurora is faster and actually grabs it instead and shocks him in the face, holding it down and then re-pressing the shock button as the other officers stand frozen at the horrifying turn of events in surprise before getting it together enough to move and try to grab her off of him. The closest one grabs her with no trouble from behind, but she doesn't budge as she shocks him a third time and then actually bludgeons him on the head with the stick.
When they get her away from him and secure her hands behind her back, he's on the floor unconscious with a body head wound. Knowing that I only have a small opening, I rush forward. "I'll get him to medical." I announce to the confused guards. "I'm a doctor. Go."
Aurora stops struggling as they half drag her out the door for just long enough to make eye contact with me, begging me with her eyes to end him. Just barely, so no one notices it but her, I nod.
As soon as they are through, Daddy shuts the door quickly. "Is he alive?" He asks, as I crouch down, feeling for a pulse and unhappily finding a good, strong one.
I suck in a breath and pull out Bellamy's shock baton still hidden in my pocket. Quickly, before Daddy could try to stop me, I reach forward and shove it into his neck and shock him again.
"Baby, stop!" A strong hand grabs my forearm from behind and wrestles the baton away from me.
"You don't understand Daddy!" I cry, terrified at the thought of Shumway getting Bellamy and Octavia killed too. There's probably no way to even try to save their mother now. This is all my fault.
"No, I don't." Daddy says, not calm exactly, but certainly clearheaded and grave. "But I know my daughter and I understand enough."
And then the shock baton is stuck to the unconscious body again in a blow similar to the one Aurora had struck, but much much harder. Blood pools on the ground under Shumway's head. For a long moment, we both just sit there, staring in silence and morbid fascination as the the clean floor becomes a red puddle. Finally, I reach forward again.
This time there is no pulse.
Daddy never says a word as he picks up the bloody end of Shumway's body and gestures for me to open the door up. Outside, onlookers freeze, shocked by the scene of a council member dragging the bloody body of a high commander out of his living quarters with his head half smashed in. Another guard comes rushing over to help, probably having been sent by the two that arrested Aurora Blake. It's a good thing we didn't hesitate or we wouldn't have had a chance to kill him at all with the speed everything is happening.
"Already dead." I inform the wide eyed middle aged guard. "There was nothing I could do."
By the time I make it to the council room, half of them are already lining up to float Ms. Blake. I beg them to wait, grabbing my mother's medical tablet and pulling up the dead man's file containing the pictures of what he'd done to Octavia. I never put any pictures of her face or typed in her name. Her mother and her share the same body type. This should work. I show them. Every picture projected up onto the wall of the bruises and the stitches. I explain how he had been using his position to intimidate Aurora Blake into silence about it all, weaving together a story of what he'd done to Octavia into something that happened to Aurora instead...likely it isn't far from the truth anyway. He had used her and intimidated her into whatever he wanted. I just left out anything about Octavia.
By the time I was done, I was sure they'd excuse her crime. He'd been a rapist for God's sake. Aurora never said a word, either in protest or in her defense. She just stood there, staring at the pictures, with a numb look on her face, silent.
Daddy had to hold me back from physically trying to stop them when they just floated her anyway.
It wasn't unanimous, of course. She was killed over just one deciding vote. Daddy voted against it...mom didn't. A cold, sick feeling came over me when I realized that she had voted for this woman's death. She had seen the evidence. She had seen what he had done. She hated him just as much as everyone else and I'd just provided them all proof of why anyone in their right mind would want him dead. But mom voted to have her floated anyway.
Afterwards, Daddy walks me back to Factory Station. "Don't be angry at your mother. She was just doing what she thought was best."
I just stare at him as we keep walking. When we reach the Blake's quarters, there's no sign of Octavia. Bellamy must have hid her in a last ditch effort to keep their secret. I don't have to say anything, but it's written all over Bellamy's face the moment he realizes. I don't even know what Daddy tells him. Presumably, that his mother is dead and some comforting words meant to soften the blow somehow. I can't even think about that...too busy reeling over the fact that my mom had killed his and that my dad had killed Shumway.
Bellamy doesn't cry, just goes kind of white and bug eyes, nodding his head and then sitting down at the desk. I curl up in the bunk instead until he leaves and I can pull Octavia out of the floor. I know she can hear every word. She's down there in the dark, alone, hearing all of this, unable to move or cry or scream.
My bare, cold feet sting on the metal floor above Octavia's body...laid out under me as though buried alive in a coffin of old earth. An image, unbidden and unwanted of a drawing I'd seen once in history class bleeds into my brain of a girl, alive and screaming- clawing with her broken and bleeding fingernails at the top of her coffin in vain in a graveyard of old under six feet of packed earth. I can remember knowing that the girl had been portrayed as a blonde in the drawing...but now all I can see is Octavia under there and, instead of comforting Bellamy, I scramble to move the table and piece of flooring away to uncover her.
As no words leave Bellamy's lips, the oppressive silence feels like a noose, but as I uncover Octavia, it turns into a feeling of ice cold dread seeping away from my neck and straight into my heart instead. For the briefest of moments, she is still as a corpse and I cannot help the panic that the stillness forces through my body. I reach in and physically pull her up by the shoulders, my own panic not allowing for even the single second she would have needed to move by herself.
Bellamy stays still and doesn't move, his face drawn into cold, pale shock even as I pull Octavia out of the space and into my arms to grasp, clutching her to me as tightly as a vice. I know it's a false comfort though. No amount of holding her to me, no amount of force in my arms, could save her from the death of her mother on her brother's lips.
The time after, I barely register, a fuzzy haze settling over my brain as the three of us clutch and claw at each other in a state of shock for any sense of reality any of us could give each other. Octavia explains it to him, at some point, not surprisingly far braver than I am. I can barely even register her hesitant words...still picking and choosing bits to leave in and larger, much worse bits to leave out. Still trying to spare her brother the pain of knowing just how badly he had failed her despite dedicating every single moment of his life trying to do nothing else except for keeping her safe.
For my part I can only stay silent as he hugs her, settled into his lap as though she were still a young child he could comfort with just his larger adult presence. He held her like a parent might hold their child as he sat there and wept, wrapped up to his chest and huddled on his legs and encircling her torso with his strong arms.
Octavia doesn't cry at all. As Bellamy clutched her to him with all the intense, profound grief of a parent holding the body of their murdered child, wailing, even if silently in his grief, Octavia seemed strangely calm. Her face, if not exactly serene, was that of someone facing the terrible truth of something they had known had been coming for them their entire life. Probably because, on some level, she probably had known this was a monster that was always going to consume her. She had been a sacrifice to it from the moment she'd been born and never had any agency to expect an escape from when it inevitably came. Unlike her brother, there had been no steps to take to avoid it, no false leads or paths to some tentative safety that was always only temporary at best. While Bellamy and Aurora had raced around, spending every moment acting to prevent this, Octavia had spent those long moment and months and years lying in the dark, confined, quiet, knowing she had no future at all except for this one, inevitable moment.
She'd been expecting Bellamy or her mother to come home with this face, eventually, for her entire life.
She just hadn't thought she'd still be alive afterwards.