Hey guys, hope you enjoy this next chapter. Please review and tell me what you think so far. Also if you have any ideas or suggestions I'm open to them! Thank you!
The brown hair girl, who introduced herself as Octavia, did not allow her any time to take in the earth. The smells, the colors, the textures were all too overwhelming. She began to cry, to sob as her head and heart pounded at alarming rates. Her mind skipped between visions of her dead family to the beauty of the sun kissed trees. Guilt washed over her in a flood too strong to swim through. She had survived and they had perished. She got to experience the Ground, while they would be buried beneath it.
"We don't have time for this." Octavia huffed as she urged Marcelina to move forward. "Come on, let's go Marcella!" Her anger seeped through her voice.
"Marcelina." She corrected her. "Or just Lina." At last, she had gained enough control to stifle her sobs and speak in coherent sentences.
"Okay, well I'm sorry in advance, Lina." Octavia gave her a small apologetic smile before she thrust the butt end of her gun into the side of Lina's temple.
She woke up lying on something cold and hard. Before opening her eyes, she did a silent inventory of her body. Besides a splitting headache, nothing seemed to be injured. She could see the bright light through her eyelids and made sure to open her eyes slowly so the light wouldn't make her headache worse.
Once her vision came into focus, she found that her uncomfortable bed was a metal table in the middle of a fairly empty room. The walls, floors, and ceiling all seemed to be made from the same slate gray metal as the table. The room was cold and caused a shiver to run through her body. The only other piece of furniture was a smaller table laden with all sorts of medical tools. She sat up but her head spun so wildly that she fell back on her shoulders.
A swooshing noise came suddenly from behind her. Lina struggled to turn over so she could get a better view. She discovered a large automatic sliding door that took up almost the entire length of the back wall. A petite middle aged woman strode through, followed by two men. The younger man was wearing a uniform that she instantly recognized as one of a Mount Weather guard. Everyone knew everyone inside the mountain, but this man wasn't one of her people. She felt rage bubble in her blood at the idea of him disgracing the uniform. The second man was about the same age as the woman, and a good foot taller.
"You might not want to sit up just yet." The woman said softly as she came towards the table. Lina scrambled to get her feet on the ground. That's when she noticed the paper gown she was wearing. They had changed her out of her clothes? She felt utterly violated by the idea.
"Don't come any closer." she tried to say, but her voice was dry and hoarse from crying. The woman stopped and put her hands up in front of her, palms facing Lina, in a show of innocence.
"No one wants to hurt you." She said slowly. "My name is Abby. Octavia told us your name is Marcelina." She was wearing a slight smile.
"Just Lina." She corrected, positioning herself so that the table was between them. "Octavia knocked me out." She said thinking of the last image she remembered before waking up. It was of the end of a long assault rifle.
"She had to. You were out of control." Said the man in the guard uniform. Lina shot him a threatening look and to her surprise, so did Abby.
"Octavia's actions were completely unsanctioned and she had been punished." Abby assured her. But Lina didn't care if Octavia received a punishment or a cookie; she only cared about one thing.
"Are they all dead?" She asked hastily. The three of them seemed to understand who she was referring to and they all looked at one another. In the end, it was the older man who stepped forward.
"You were the only one to survive. I'm so sorry." The man kept his dark eyes on her, as though waiting for her to react. Was he expecting her to lash out at them? Was he waiting for her attack in a moment of grief?
And then it hit her.
He wasn't expressing sorrow for her loss, he was apologizing for it.
"You did it, didn't you?" the accusation hung in a heavy silence for a moment before the man spoke again.
"We needed to ensure the survival of our people…" he began, but Lina cut him off.
"Your people are on the ground, my people could never get to them!" her voice was gaining more strength with each word. "What threat could have possibly posed to you?"
"You were killing us one by one." This time the younger man took a step forward.
"We fed, clothed, and sheltered your people! Our guards saved their lives by bringing them to the mountain!"
"Your guards were stringing our people up and draining them of every ounce of their blood!" He shouted back.
"There were children in that mountain. Babies and toddlers, and you killed them all!" she screamed at him. Her words must have struck a nerve. He took a long step in her direction, but the older man put his arm across his chest and stopped him mid stride.
"Bellamy, go." He hissed. The younger man seemed to be weighing his options. He looked back between Lina and the other man before finally turning on his heels and exiting the room.
"Marcelina, please just listen to what we have to say." Abby was begging. She had stepped in front of the man again. It was hard to tell which one was the leader. They seemed to either share the title or were fighting for it.
"It's just Lina." She insisted. "And nothing you tell me will…"
"Not us," the man interrupted "but there is someone you might listen to." He gave Abby a meaningful nod and she hurried out of the room. "Your leader was keeping a very dark secret from all of you." He continued. Lina suddenly became very aware of the measly paper gown she was wearing. It barely skimmed the top of her thighs. But his eyes stayed locked onto hers and they made no effort to wonder over the rest of her body.
"President Wallace is a good man, he would never…"
"Not your president, his son." He had a habit of interrupting her. "I know it must be difficult for you to believe us, but perhaps Mr. Jordan can convince you." As the words left his mouth, Abby returned, with Jasper in toe.
"Jasper!" Lina exclaimed as she ran to him and captured him in a hard hug. His long arms wrapped around her body.
"Hey Lina." He whispered. She stepped back to look at him and noticed right away that something was wrong. His usually cheerful face was now carrying something darker just under the surface. There was no doubt in her mind that she could trust Jasper. She and her friends had spent a lot of time with him once he and Maya became close. He would spend hours telling them stories of the Arc and the Ground, some of which she was sure he fabricated. Like being impaled by warrior grounders during his first few days on Earth. But Jasper was a kind soul; she could feel it in her heart. So when he confirmed what Abby and the men had been saying, she did not doubt him.
She cried. She cried for a long time after jasper left. The feelings of isolation and betrayal began to seep into her slowly as she grasped the gravity of the situation. Cage and his team had been killing off the Sky People and the Grounders, draining them of their blood and bone marrow in order to create a cure for his own people. That cure would allow the residents of Mount Weather to walk above the ground without feeling the effects of the radiation. He was willing to kill in order to save his people; and so were the Sky People.
The Sky People had won and now Lina was alone. She was the last of the "Mountain Men" as Jasper had referred to her people. They had no idea how she had survived the radiation. Abby had asked her multiple times if she had been treated with the bone marrow of one the Sky People, but she hadn't been. Hell, she had only been to the medical wing once in her entire life, and it was after she got into a fight a boy in school. He'd hit her across the mouth and she'd needed stitches to stop the bleeding. The boy had also needed stitches, as well as some ice for the black eye she had given him.
Abby's best guess was that Lina's body was one of the first and only to begin to adapt to the radiation. Although the walls of the mountain had blocked the radiation from entering the inside atmosphere, small traces of it still seeped in through the walls and any objects brought in from the world above. That explained why most of the people of Mount Weather were frequent flyers at the medical wing. Their immune systems were constantly in a state for weakness due to the small amounts of radiation they were being exposed to without even knowing it. Lina's body must have evolved to filter out the radiation, in a way similar to the Sky People. It was just a theory, but Abby wanted to run a few tests to determine exactly what was so special about her.
Lina did argue or put up a fight. She was too tired to do anything more than nod when she thought it was appropriate. Incredibly, she did not hate the Sky People for what they had done because she knew that if it had been her people being systematically slaughtered, she would have done the same. But the truth did not make her loss any less real and painful. When she had cried out all of her body's tears, she lay in a ball on the metal table and whimpered herself to sleep.