Oh. My. Gosh. Okay, so not only are the names different from the books and tv show, but the entire layout of the Ark. The main setting for this story. So I had to go back and look it up. It even required notes. But I can finally say, I have the book and show separated. Everything included in this fanfiction is based off the show. Not the book. And it will pick up if it seems slow because no on's really talking yet, grrrr. But it's coming, Guys. It's coming.
Clarke didn't pause to catch her breath. She didn't stop or even spare a glance back. She pictured Soren in her mind, looming just behind her with curled fingers reaching out. She thought she felt the tips of them brush against her spine, but the corridors were quiet, save for the sound of her own footsteps echoing around her.
Clarke took sharp turns, moving through the Ark as if it were a labyrinth, hoping to lose whatever trail she may have laid. She wanted someplace safe, someplace far away from guards and cells and broken lead. But she was on a ship. The area of it was pitifully finite and she was no more a needle in the haystack than she was a black stain on a white sheet.
A noise sounded from the end of her corridor and Clarke backtracked, just enough to dip down a different one branching south. But no direction seemed welcoming to her and she was overcome by a sudden feeling of entrapment, like some terrified, helpless creature lying in wait of the hunter.
Every part of Clarke ached for her home; for her small bedroom; for her desk that held a paltry supply of pencils, hidden in the top drawer. But Clarke wasn't stupid, and she'd learned from her past recklessness. Her living quarters were marked, and she knew it would be the first place guards would show up to. Clarke had already gotten her father floated. She wasn't about to send her mother to the stars, too.
Clarke's legs burned but she kept going, passing the gate that separated this Station from the Factory Station. It was a poorer sector and a tangible heaviness clung to the air, somber if not a little oppressive. And this time, Clarke couldn't avoid the approaching people and she slowed her gait, feigning nonchalance as if she weren't a convict. As if she weren't seeking refuge in a very cage itself.
She felt a bead of sweat trickle down her back, and she could have sworn that the passerby could hear her heart, beating wildly against her chest. Almost instinctively, Clarke pulled her sleeve down over the wristband and moved a bit faster, nearly pushing passed a mousy-haired woman. Their shoulders brushed.
Only an hour ago that moment of contact with another human being had given Clarke comfort. Now it felt threatening, as if these people would see who she was, by just one touch, by just one glance into her eyes.
Clarke moved away from them and her gaze swept over the closest doors, searching for someplace vacant. There was the packaging room, stuffing protein powder into small white bags, being carried away by a conveyor belt. There was a cleaning room, and a sorting chamber, and Clarke suddenly felt disoriented, swallowing down her panic before pushing forward. She hadn't spent much time in the Factory Station. The only other Station she spent most of her time at outside her own was Government and Science that housed the medical bay. And for good reason.
Not many people besides the Council wandered through the twelve Stations freely, and though it wasn't illegal, it drew unwanted attention, from both the Council and the probing eyes of the Ark.
Clarke wanted to stop and catch her breathe, but the image of Soren flashed through her mind again and she felt desperation claw inside her. Clarke gritted her teeth, and peered into one windowed door after another.
Not empty. She caught the blurring movement of people beyond them as more people swept by beside her, their current slowing her pace and it took her every ounce of willpower not to shout at them.
A noise shattered from overhead and Clarke flinched, feeling her heart clamor into her throat as something painted her vision red, bathing the corridor is the color of blood. It screamed in her ears and her hands shook violently, clenching them until her nails broke the skin.
The alarms. They'd been raised.
She looked back at the corridor, now a crimson path extending before her., calloused with a few stricken workers. But just beyond them, Clarke glimpsed a pair of men, their movements strong and synchronized, the alarms turning their otherwise black gear a dark maroon.
The sweat that had gathered on her back suddenly felt ice cold, it's chill cutting to the bone.
Her eyes fixed on the two guards coming toward her, guns holstered, their gazes flat and apathetic, faces awash in the reddish hue. Already Clarke could picture their hands on her, could feel their nails digging into her arms as they pulled her down the corridor and shoved her into a chamber, leaving her alone, and to the vastness of space.
No. She wouldn't go back. She would not.
Clarke didn't hesitate; she darted to the closest door, no longer caring that people saw her or what room she barreled inside. It didn't matter; what mattered were those two guards, getting closer by the second. If they caught her, Clarke wouldn't get her answers. She wouldn't help her people. She'd die not just a few minutes after escape, her freedom as ephemeral as the shooting stars passing somewhere overhead.
The door opened and Clarke forced her way inside. She closed it behind her, careful not to slam it until she felt the metal lock beneath her hands. She dropped down from the window, keeping far away from it as she pressed her back into the wall, the alarms still wailing beyond the door tantamount to her rising panic that she grappled to gain control of.
Focus, Clarke told herself. I have to focus.
She moved farther into the room, and blinked at the sudden presence of dust that stung her eyes. It was a recycling room. The ceiling rose high above her head and the floor unfurled into a wide, square expanse, filled with machines and the steady pulse of their activity.
Clarke suddenly became aware of the few people, scuttling back and forth between them and she dropped her head, trying to disappear into her surroundings. She cast a glance at the door, ensuring no guard was barging through, before she ducked behind one of the machines.
Clarke waited for one of the workers to make her known. To call out to the guards, but they didn't.
It was only then, sitting on the cold, grimy floor that Clarke finally let herself breathe. She drew in lungfuls of air but it quickly turned into a fit of gasps, as the full weight of her reality dropped like a stone on her shoulders.
It took her a second to grasp it, at the entirety of the circumstances. For her to come to terms with the fact that she wasn't on the drop ship. She wasn't hurdling towards Earth with ninety-nine other kids. That she'd stayed on the Ark. As a convict. As a fugitive.
Clarke wrapped her hands around her knees and pulled them tightly to her. Thousands of miles beneath her feet, the dropship was probably landing, touching down on the earth. The ninety-nine must just be watching the door lift, staring out into the newness, eagerly stepping out to greet it. Clarke imagined shoes pressing into the dirt. She imagined the sunlight kissing human skin for the first time in ninety seven years.
Or maybe they hadn't even made it that far.
Maybe, like her, they were already dead.
There was an abandoned chamber that was beneath the storage in Agro Station. Over a decade ago, debris had made impact with its exterior, and the Council deemed the chamber insecure. But warnings were like wire fences to children; they always managed to worm their way through.
And that's precisely what Clarke had done; She'd sneaked over to it with Wells who'd wanted to see the result of the first collision their ship had encountered in nearly forty years. He was the one who had shared it with her.
That was the advantage to growing up with the Chancellor's son; you became intimate with the secrets of the Ark.
They managed to sneak through security to the chamber and sure enough, there it was, the wall dividing the Ark from space bloated and mangled. They'd only glimpsed it for a moment before Wells had been spotted. He'd shoved her to the side to keep her out of sight and though his father had called it a minor infraction, it would've been worse for Clarke.
She could remember sitting in the dark room, eyes trained on that wall, waiting for it to explode and for the blackness to suck her out.
It wasn't a place Clarke exactly felt comfortable in, but she remembered how to get there after her ten-year-old version had found her way back out. It was the only relatively safe place she could think of going and if it hadn't collapsed now, it probably wouldn't. Unless they struck something else. Then it was just another threat of death on her ever-growing list.
Before Clarke made her move, she waited for the alarms to die down, but it took almost hours. She spent it all cramped between the machines, hiding herself from any passerby, and watching that door like she had that wall. As if the guards would come through at any moment.
Maybe they'll shoot me instead, she thought and Clarke decided right then that that would've been her preferred way to die. At least it wouldn't hurt for long.
But I'm not dead yet, she added, and when the alarms finally ceased their crying, Clarke pulled herself out of her hiding spot and towards the door.
Beyond it, the red lights had disappeared but the corridor was nearly vacant, making the sound of her breath seem very very loud. She drew up a map in her head, trying to find the easiest route to the chamber. She still had to go through three different Stations and avoid the evening patrol. Clarke wondered if they'd raised the curfew in light of the danger she presented to the Ark, as if she were the actual threat to it.
Clarke moved down the corridor, quickly, silently, with nothing but the sound of her heartbeat and the shuffle of the metal grates under her. The circadian lights above flickered and Clarke felt everything inside her still, until she remembered again that she was in the Factory Station. They had restrictions, on something even as basic as light. But this place had children, too. Were they all forced to fall asleep in the dark?
Clarke took another step forward, just as the lights blinked out and she was left in the shadows, with nothing but the spectral glow of tivoli tubes marking the edges of the corridor. She made it one yard. Two. She tripped and stumbled forward, one knee hitting the floor.
She hissed out a breath and made to get up. But when another noise drifted to her, Clarke was suddenly grateful for the darkness, that made her go unnoticed when another pair of guards came around and Clarke scurried to the sides, pressing herself into a small recess of space.
The guards grew louder and this time, Clarke could distinguish words, spoken low in the darkness.
"If he's smart, he'll know to stay away from here," one of them chimed, in a voice surprisingly deep that Clarke didn't recognize. "We should be looking in Hydra. Or Sci Gov. He's injured, after all."
"Then we'll just wait for nature to take its course," the other answered, but this one was more familiar. "Until he bleeds out. Or dies of infection."
The sound of it tugged at Clarke's memory, itching like a scab until a face rose to mind and it hit her. The voice belonged to Commander Shumway.
Clarke felt suddenly confused. Who was he talking about? It clearly wasn't about her, unless they'd messed up the facts that for one, she wasn't a man, and that she hadn't sustained injuries. No, this was about someone else. Someone who had done something else.
"Hope its the latter," the first languished, his words dripping with sincerity. "The least he can do is die a slow death. Pain is a better payment than just floating him."
Clarke pushed herself harder against the wall as they bother drew nearer, just feet away from passing her refuge.
"If that bullet doesn't kill him, he will be," Shumway replied.
They walked past her unseeing, and she half expected them to feel her fear, for it to reach over and coax their eyes to her. But they kept walking and Shumway's voice wafted back to her, with a hardness, a finality in it that made her shiver.
"We'll find him soon enough," he said. "There's only so many places he can go on a ship before stepping out into space. And when we do, I'll be the one to oblige him that."