The loud metallic clanking of their cell doors being opened startled both Rachel and Harper awake. As their eyes adjusted to the sudden bright light coming in from the hall, they could just make out the shapes of two guards entering the room. These weren't the guards who had been escorting them to the Earth Skills classes the past two weeks, besides, it was too early for that. One of the men, a huge brute, stayed in the doorframe, enormous arms crossed. The other, a middle aged man named Carsen, approached Harper, grabbing her wrist to pull her towards him, before clamping something around the opposite wrist. She yelped in pain.

As the guard dropped her arms to walk back across the room, more prisoner's screams and raised voices came into the room from the other cells. Rachel crawled backwards on her bed until she was pressed against the corner. "Carsen, what's going on?" she demanded, glancing across the room at her friend who cradled her now braceleted hand.

The guard stretched his arm towards her, "Give me your wrist, Rachel, I need to put this on." He took the second metal bracelet off his belt, presenting it to her. The silver metal was about half an inch thick, with several sharp needles sticking out from the bottom, the reason why Harper had yelled. But Rachel pulled her arm closer to her, fear and confusion not letting her obey the order of one of her father's close friends.

"Hurry up, sir," the large man in the door grumbled, "We need to get them on board."

Carsen turned to him, "Take her," he gestured to Harper, "I'll be out in a minute." Grunting his compliance, the man stalked across the room and grabbed Harper's arm to drag her from the cell, ignoring her calls back to her cellmate.

Once her cries were indistinguishable from the other delinquent's voices from the hall, Carsen turned back to Rachel, "I'm not the one who can explain this to you, Rachel. To be honest, I don't entirely understand it myself, but you need to give me your wrist." When she still only stared back at him, Carsen continued more sternly, "Rachel, you need to cooperate. We've been given orders to use force if you don't."

The dark, pitying look in his brown eyes convinced her more than his threats, but Rachel still offered her wrist. After recovering from the sharp sting of the needles, Carsen helped her off the cot, and escorted her out into the hall, where she joined the line of frightened delinquents headed out of the skybox.

Everyone was silent as they were marched down the empty hallways. The expressions of the delinquents all looked the same, a mix of fear, confusion, and hurt that made them all look as if they were walking towards their death. For all they knew, they were.

Rachel rubbed anxiously at the heavy bracelet now on her wrist, her skin still stinging from the needles. She tried to scan the faces of the people in line around her. The only one she saw that she really knew was John Murphy, none of the people around her were her friends. No Nate. No Harper. No Monroe or Sterling. No Jasper or Monty. Despite the fact that she seemed to be facing her imminent death, what made her the most afraid was the fact that she was alone.

But when they reached the end of the hallway and entered a large room, her dad was there. He and Abby Griffin casually surveyed the delinquents ahead of her. No concern for what know would happen to them soon. Rachel couldn't control the sob that came out of her, nor could she control the tears that has started to pour as she launched herself out of the line and into her father's arms. Pleas and words of anger spilled from her mouth incoherently, but she was too scared and too mad at him to care.

Her father waved away the guards that moved to pull her off of him, before doing so himself. He held her at arm's length, his large hands gripping her shoulders hard to keep her upright. "Rachel," he pleaded, his dark eyes showing nothing that looked like concern, just something hidden behind layers and layers of his calm façade "you have to get on the dropship."

"Dropship?" anger began to overpower Rachel's fear. She shook off Kane's hands and stood as tall as she could, "Why are you doing this to us? Is this our punishment? Is this some sort of mass floating? None of the people here are eighteen yet!" She waved her bracelet arm at the line, still moving slowly, and saw a small girl that didn't even look like a teenager yet. She turned back to Kane. "How can you do this to us? To me?" she lowered her voice, "You said Nate and would be pardoned when we turned 18."

Kane grabbed her shoulders again, harder this time, his grip so strong that it hurt her. "Rachel, you're not getting floated. You're all being sent down to Earth."

All of Rachel's emotions floated away. Her mind was suddenly encased in a thick fog. She stopped hearing what he was saying, only a few hushed words drifted in, a concern about oxygen or something. She didn't even register the gurney that briefly stopped beside her. Earth was a fantasy, but one that didn't last long before Rachel's senses returned. Earth was still a wasteland. Was still soaked in radiation. None of them could survive on it. Could they?

The fog around her mind lifted, and she heard what Kane was still saying. "Down there, they'll need someone like you. You're a leader, a fighter, and you're so smart. They'll need someone like you to be in charge." Rachel bit her lips so that she wouldn't spit back what he was leaving out, if you survive.

Kane pulled at her shoulders to bring her in for a hug, but she yanked herself away from him. He was killing all of these people. All of these kids, her friends, and her, his own daughter. There was nothing she could say that would do justice to the storm of emotions in her, so she just looked away from him and let the guards push her back into the line. She followed the delinquents in front of her again until she reached the door of the dropship, and that storm of emotions reached a peak.

She froze. Tears still spilling down her cheek. She couldn't move. The guard in the door motioned for her to move, but she couldn't. She tried, but her feet wouldn't budge. Her heartbeat began so rapidly rise, her stomach started to churn, and her breathing became harder and faster. She felt like she was going to die before she even reached Earth.

Then a hand grabbed her arm, dragging her forward. A gruff voice whispered to her, "let's go," and then she was on the dropship.

A ladder was directly in front of her, three guards standing around it to push delinquents up. But the hand around her arm yanked her to the right of it, behind a tall metal wall that divided the ship in two. She took note of who she passed before she was pulled to a far, dark corner of the ship with all empty seats. Nate was there, and Monroe and Sterling. But from the seat the guard has put her in, she couldn't see their faces. Only when the tan hands of the guards moved to buckle her in, did she snap out of her trance and look at his face.

He wasn't a guard. She knew all the guards. But something about him seemed familiar. While he strapped her shoulders in, she carefully studied his handsome features, until it clicked.

"Blake."

He froze, fingers in the air above the final buckle of her seat. As Rachel felt a surge of triumph at discovering him, she noticed that the panic that had overtaken her at the ships door had stopped. But her heart once again sped up as she watched his eyes at last move to her face.

Shit. Shit shit shit, Bellamy thought as the cold green eyes of Rachel Kane bore into him. Of course the random girl he picked to help him sneak onto the ship would be the only one who could recognize him, out him, and ruin his plan. He could try to knock her out to keep her quiet, but he wasn't sure he could do it without attracting attention from either the guards, or the other kids on the ship.

"What are you doing here? You were dishonorably discharged a year ago," her cool calculating voice, so similar to how her father spoke, cut into his thoughts. Still holding her gaze, Bellamy finished fastening her buckles and made his move. Bracing one arm on the wall behind her head, blocking her view of the other prisoners, Bellamy hardened his expression and tried to stare her down.

"Don't make a sound," he ordered, his voice not as threatening as he wanted it to be, "I'm not here to hurt you, I'm not here to hurt any of you."

"Where'd you get the uniform?" she demanded. Of course she'd be unafraid of him, even after the panic attack she almost had that Bellamy had briefly hoped would make her a little easier to deal with. That was a question he couldn't answer, if she knew how he'd acquired the uniform, what he had done to get onboard this ship…he just couldn't answer that.

He sighed, partly from frustration, and partly from nerves, and started again. "I'm not here to hurt you, I'm here to help…someone." Her eyebrows raised, he had her attention now. "My sister."

Realization spread over her fine features, "Octavia."

Relief washed over Bellamy, and he dropped his hand from the wall. "Yes, do you know her?" Rachel nodded slightly. "Where is she?" his heart started to race. After a year, after their mom floated, after he'd lost everything, he was finally going to be with Octavia again.

But Rachel shook her head, "I haven't seen her today," Bellamy turned away from her, running a hand along the back of his head. A grunt and the sound of shuffling clothes from the front of the ship tore him from his thoughts. He craned his neck to see to the front of the dropship, only a handful of delinquents remained at the door. None of them Octavia.

Turning back behind the wall, Bellamy again spoke to Rachel, who was significantly calmer, "She's been with this group, right? In the same section, in the earth skills classes?" she nodded, her light brown hair falling from behind her ears. "She must be on the second level," but I can't go up there, they'll notice me.

"All loaded, final check!" a guard called from the front of the ship. Knowing he'd be discovered soon, and entirely out of options, Bellamy turned back to the girl he had brought onto the ship, and crouched in front of her.

"Help me."

Rachel stared at Bellamy's pleading face. He was just trying to do for his sister what her father had refused to do her. If Octavia was on the upper level, he couldn't go up there. If the guards discovered him, he'd be floated. He didn't deserve that. She looked around them, some of the seats near her had started to be filled, but not all of the seats would be.

She leaned towards Bellamy, "you have two options. One, take off the guard jacket and hide it somewhere, strap yourself into a seat and pretend you're one of us, and the rest of the guards may just ignore you."

Bellamy stood, rubbing a hand over his eyes and through his dark hair. It was very nice hair, Rachel noticed before he spoke, "No, they've been guarding all of you specifically for months, they know all of your faces."

"Okay," Rachel said, she looked to the back of the small crevice they were in, to a metal door, a closet, "then go in there, hide until you hear the doors close, then come strap yourself in."

Bellamy looked at the closet, then back at her. She could see it click, and he smiled. A broad, warm, almost infectious smile. Shaking off her own urge to smile, Rachel motioned towards the closet door, "hurry, they'll be coming back here soon."

As she watched the metal door click shut behind him, Rachel realized, whether he had meant to or not, that Bellamy had saved her from her own fear.

Rachel smiled a little as Bellamy buckled himself in next to her, murmuring quick thanks to her as he did. Their plan has gone perfectly. Even though the doors had only just closed, the dropship was already shaking violently as it was released from its clamps. He looked to his right, and saw Rachel's pale fingers wrapped tight around her belts, her eyes shut tight, and her lips moving ever so slightly. He felt a twinge of concern, despite his own nervousness, asked her "Rachel, are you gonna be okay?"

She nodded tightly, "I think so," the ship jumped, rattling everything on it. With a forced smile, she laughed unconvincingly, "I hope so."

Then the shaking stopped.

Bellamy looked around, everything was still and everyone was quiet.

"And we're off," Rachel heard Miller's joke from the other side of the dropship, and despite herself, smiled a little. She turned toward his voice, and found Bellamy, smiling at her.

"This isn't too bad aft- "

A loud, metallic screech interrupted him as the dropship lurched, and began to shake again. At the same moment, screens on the dropship's walls came on, and Chancellor Jaha stared them all down.

"Prisoners of the Ark, hear me now," Bellamy face drained as he looked at the screen, and listened to the words Jaha spoke. "You've been given a second chance, and as your Chancellor, it is my hope that you see this as not just a chance for you, but a chance for all of us-"

Bellamy let out a pitiful laugh, and looked away from the screen. Rachel thought to ask what was wrong, but instead remained focused on Jaha.

"-indeed for mankind itself. We have no idea what is waiting for you down there. If the odds of survival were better, we would have sent other. Frankly, we're sending you because your crimes have made you…expendable."

Then why am I here? Rachel thought, her attention drawn to the second level, where a voice that sounded like Jasper called "Your dad's a dick Wells!"

"But if, however, you do survive, those crimes will be forgiven, your records wiped clean."

Wells? Is Wells here too? Growing chatter from the rest of the prisoners tore Rachel's attention away from the screens, from what the Chancellor was saying. She turned back to Bellamy, "Jaha wouldn't really have put his own son on here, would he?"

Bellamy looked back at her, and shrugged, "your dad put you here."

He was right. Knowing that caused Rachel eyes to sting, and she turned back away, only faintly hearing Jaha's instructions for how to survive -if they even could survive. Several cheers came from the second level, and Rachel blinked back her tears, "He wouldn't have put me here unless he knew that- "

The ship jerked again, as if it had hit something, but it continued to drop. Screams echoed all around the ship, and a crash sounded from the upper levels. Rachel squeezed her eyes, and held onto her straps as hard as she could. Jaha's voice had stopped, but now Bellamy was frantically whispering to her.

"That was just the parachutes deploying, to slow us down so that we can land." She could tell from his voice he was talking to keep himself calm as much as he was to help her, but she was still grateful. "In a second, the retrorockets will fire, and we'll slow down even more, so our landing will be soft."

He stopped, waiting. Rachel kept her eyes closed, focusing on slowing her breathing, and listening for the rockets to start. She heard nothing.

"Bellamy?"

"Yeah?"

"It's been more than a second."

"Yeah."

Kane's screens went dark. Two monitors, showed only static. The middle screen, which showed Rachel's vitals, started glowing red, the line showing her heart rate sharply rose. He stood so quickly his chair spun back into the wall, but he didn't care. He stalked across the control room, towards Sinclair. Callie burst in towards him, he waved her away with a gesture and a brisk "not now."

Sinclair faced him, clearly upset, but in the way a scientist is when his experiment doesn't go as planned. Kane was a father who had just lost all contact with his daughter, who could be dead soon.

"Total system failure," the scientist reported, looking between his clipboard and the councilman in front of him, "that's what we're looking at. All we know for sure is that they were off course when we lost contact, so…"

Kane swallowed, nearly all of his effort was going towards keeping calm. "Tell me about communications," he ordered, trying not to feel bad about how nervous he seemed to make Sinclair.

"Other than the telemetry from their wristbands," he glanced at each of his own monitors, Kane looked towards the rooms main screens, to Rachel's stats, her heart rate was still high, but not as much as it had been a few moments ago. That's my girl, Kane thought as he turned back to Sinclair, "we got nothing. No audio, no video, no computer link." He looked back up, "Everything that we programmed in to help them in gone. They're on their own."

Kane clenched the fist he didn't know he had made, and stared at the metal of Sinclair's desk. Callie set one of her hands on his shoulder, but instead of comforting him, it only heightened his nerves. He slammed his fist down on the desk hard enough for his ring to make a dent in the metal, "Dammit!"

When the rockets finally fired, the dropship shook harder than when the parachutes had opened, the light inside the dropship flickered, and screams filled the air. Bellamy forced his eyes to remain open as he took it all in. But as quickly as it had started, it stopped. The lights faded, then slowly came back on. A tense silence filled the ship.

"Listen," a soft voice said from the second level, "no machine hum."

Another responded, "Whoa, that's a first."

Bellamy glanced over at Rachel, who, underneath her tears, seem relieved. She whispered something he couldn't hear, and undid her buckles. The clicking of many more releasing, and people chattering soon filled his ears, and he quickly released his own restraints and followed Rachel to the other side of the wall. She was desperately hugging a tall guy in a beanie, so Bellamy continued forward, the delinquents seeming to part to make a path to the door for him.

The uniform, he remembered, they all thought he was a guard, someone to be respected and obeyed. If they only knew. But for now, he decided to let them believe he was in charge, he was older after all, if only by a few years. When he reached the door, more kids had filtered down from the upper levels, and started to crowd the door.

"Hey!" he called, surprised to see them all snap to attention, "Just back it up guys." He spotted Rachel near the wall, standing next to the beanie guy and two others, she smiled at him, and he smiled back slightly before turning to the door controls, but before he could pull the lever, someone yelled at him from the ladder.

"Stop!" the blonde girl called. She climbed off the ladder and pushed her way towards him, "The air could be toxic."

"If the air's toxic we're all dead anyway," he retorted, something about this girl had already rubbed him the wrong way. But again, before he could open the door, someone called to him from the ladder.

"Bellamy?"

Octavia. A wave of relief flooded him and he watched her hop off the ladder and approach him, "My God," he sighed, unable to contain his smile, "look how big you are."

She smiled back, wrapping her arms around him for the first time in months, but she pulled back, taking in his clothes with skepticism, "What the hell are you wearing, a guard's uniform?"

"I borrowed it, to get on the dropship," he explained, trying to keep his voice low so others wouldn't hear, but in the close quarters, he knew they did anyways. "Someone's gotta keep an eye on you," he pulled her in for another hug, laughing with joy that he finally had his sister back.

"Where's your wristband?"

Bellamy pulled back to see the blonde from before eyeing his wrist.

"Do you mind?" Octavia asked, "I haven't seen my brother in a year."

The crowd heard her, and people started shouting.

"No one has a brother!" one guy yelled from the second level.

A girl in the back pointed at her, "That's Octavia Blake! The girl they found hidden in the floor!"

Octavia started towards them, showing a new, angry side that Bellamy had never seen, "Octavia. Octavia no!" he had to hold her back to keep her from going after the girl. "Let's give them something else to remember you by."

She broke out of his hold, "Yeah? Like what?'

He grinned, "Like being the first person on the ground in a hundred years." She smiled, and nodded.

Rachel watched as Bellamy pulled the level, and the door burst open, sending blindingly bright light into the dropship. Nate put his hand in front of his face to block it, and whispered to no one in particular, "Holy. Shit."

They all watched in awe as Octavia Blake took her first few steps down the ramp, stretched her arms and took a deep breath of Earth air. From where she was, Rachel couldn't see much, most of the delinquents were taller than her, but she could see light and green, and it was beautiful.

Octavia walked the next few steps down the ramp, and jumped down, onto the ground. She raised her arms in triumph, and shouted with a voice so joyful Rachel could practically hear her smile, "We're back, bitches!"