11

Directions

CLARKE

"I knew it!" Raven exclaimed, excitedly turning to Clarke. "Stop fiddling with that before you break it," she scolded. "And come take a look at this."

Clarke carefully set the injecting device back into its designated compartment in the padded briefcase, where it glinted silver next to the three vials of black remaining in the row of empty vials. She stepped up behind Raven's chair and hunched over her shoulder to read from the old, faded journal sprawled open in her lap.

Raven's finger pointed to a scribble in the middle of the page. "Pyrolusite!" She said, practically leaping out of her chair. "I knew it! She used pyrolusite!"

But Clarke wasn't listening. Her eyes were busy reading over the sentences just above Raven's fingers.

"Day two," She read aloud. "The vomiting has stopped?! And my vision is slowly returning? I've regained mobility in my left arm, though the numbness still remains, traversing the length of my forearm, emanating from the injection site to my fingertips? What?!" Clarke asked.

"There were a few side-effects of the blood." Raven shrugged.

"Side-effects?" Murphy blurted out from his position, lying on Raven's cot with his arm draped over his eyes. He rolled onto his side to glare at Raven. "Side effects are drowsiness and dry-mouth and difficulty getting an erection." He stated. "Not fucking blindness and paralysis! I'm not injecting some shit you two cooked up in a lab into my blood if the next day I go blind and my dick falls off."

"Don't worry." Raven replied, rolling her eyes. "She addresses the side-effects and makes modifications." She paused to read another excerpt. "'I'm attributing the temporary paralysis to trace amounts of barium found in my blood, most likely originating from particles of psilomelane I failed to remove from the pyrolusite during purification. I am optimistic that in future trials these side-effects can be reduced or eliminated by removing all psilomelane contaminants from the pyrolusite ore prior to extracting the manganese...' See?" Raven paused to look back up at their blank faces. "She figures it out. It's a lot more likely that your dick will fall off from radiation if you DON'T take the blood, Murphy. But if you're scared, no one's going to force you. After all, no one here cares if your dick falls off. We'd probably like you better that way anyway, seeing as the rest of you is such a dick already."

Clarke knew that there was still bad blood between Murphy and Raven and for a tense second she nervously watched the two of them, preparing to jump between them if things escalated. But Murphy just let out a bark of laughter. Raven's mouth was as smart-ass as his own, and it seemed he enjoyed having a worthy opponent to banter with.

"Raven, YOU might like me better without a dick." He laughed. "But Emori likes playing with my pecker even more than I do and her happiness means more to me than yours."

"You're disgusting, Murph." Clarke said, now rolling her own eyes at him.

"Poor Emori." Raven commented. "I don't get it... The girl seems so smart."

"I don't get it either." Murphy admitted, flopping back onto his back and returning his arm to his face. "I know she's way too good for me. I guess I should just be glad not every girl is as smart as you."

Raven went back to flipping through Becca's notes as Clarke flopped tiredly down onto the floor in front of her and leaned back against Raven's shins. Just as Clarke felt her eyelids drooping, Raven's excited voice caught her attention again.

"Listen to this, Clarke..." She paused to clear her throat before reading. "'It has been sixteen days since my third and final injection of the Nightserum. Blood tests indicate that mineral levels, including those of iron, selenium, zinc, and manganese, have stablilized... See diagram sixteen C. Moreover, the concentration of diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid has ceased to decline and appears to be consistently increasing... See diagram sixteen D...' It only took her three injections before her body kicked into gear and started producing the acid on its own!" Raven explained. "She was targeting the loci of genes EJT3 and ADC19 normally latent in human beings, using high concentrations of zinc to alter gene expression." She paused to explain, "Zinc is active in reading and translating DNA during protein synthesis..."

Raven was rambling on in her nerdy science speak again, but Clarke was only half listening because one thing Raven had said was replaying over and over again in her mind. Three injections. It had taken Becca three injections to successfully become a Nightblood. And Clarke couldn't help but think of the three remaining vials tucked away in the briefcase. And it was all she could do to keep herself from getting up, right then and there, loading a vial, and taking a hit.

But the rational part of herself was telling the rest of her to be patient. Raven might need those vials to run tests or to use as a primer in order to create more. And though she longed for it more than anyone else, Clarke was not the only one in need of Nightserum. So she told herself to be patient and she kept her butt seated beneath her, even when it began to tingle and go numb.

...

"Clarke..." A voice drifted to Clarke from somewhere far away. She struggled to make sense of it, confused as to why her arm was shaking. "Clarke, wake up."

Clarke opened her eyes to realize Raven was pulling at her arm. She was lying on the cold floor of Raven's room. She didn't remember falling asleep.

"What is it?" She asked, groggily, rubbing the sleep from her burning eyes. "Did you finish reading the journal?"

"Yes." Raven answered. And Clarke's stomach dropped at the look of disappointment on Raven's face.

"What?" She asked nervously. "What is it?"

"It's incomplete." Raven frowned. "She has all of her findings, which are incredible by the way... Revolutionary science... I thought ALIE was impressive, but what's she's done with genomics..." she paused at Clarke's annoyed glare. "Right... Anyway, it's all of her results and alterations and hypotheses for future improvements, but it's missing the procedure for creating the original serum. I can probably deduce most of the recipe from the changes she's made, and by analyzing the little that's left, but it will be difficult and a lot of guesswork."

"She didn't include the original procedure?" Clarke repeated, unable to believe it. "How could she leave that out?"

"Well..." Raven answered. "This journal begins with her already making modifications and improvements on the serum. It practically begins with her first human clinical trial, which she conducted on herself. But there are mentions and comparisons throughout of earlier results, indicating she had already conducted multiple trials on rats during the development of the original serum. This journal appears to be the second..."

"Are you saying..." Both girls jumped at the sound of Murphy's groan from atop Raven's cot. They had assumed he was asleep. "There's ANOTHER fucking journal we have to find?"

"I'm not sure." Raven replied. "Even if we find the results of her earlier trials, it may not include the original procedure. The way she refers to the original serum, I think it may have been developed by someone else. A colleague maybe. She calls her final product Nightserum. But she mentions making modifications to Bauer's Serum."

Murphy propped himself onto an elbow. "Bauer as in CHRIS Bauer?" He asked with a frown.

Raven and Clarke just stared blankly. Murphy flopped back onto the cot, this time throwing both forearms over his face with a long sigh. "Fuck... my... life."

...

"I spent three godforsaken months in that hell-hole." Murphy protested. He was now perched on the edge of the cot, hunched with his elbows on his knees and head in his hands. "Longest three months of my damn life. Made me long for my homey cell back on the Ark. At least in lock-up I had assholes like Atom and Mbege to fuck around with. I almost went crazy in that bunker with no one to talk to. Came THIS close to blowing my brains out all over that ugly-ass leather sofa just like Bauer did."

"Alright." Clarke compromised. "You don't have to come with me. I'll go on my own. Just... Can you tell me how to get there? Draw me a map or something?"

"Oh yeah... Sure." Murphy's words dripped with sarcasm. "It's just over the river and through the woods. Lets see... Directions... You head out the gates and take a right at the sign that says 'City of Light, 100 fucking miles this way...'" He started, signaling dramatically with his hands. "Then you walk through the forest until the trees turn to sand. Like three days. Then you climb up and down the endless sand dunes for another three to five days, depending on how many times you have to stop for violent sandstorms or violent bandits... Oh... And assuming you don't get lost in the shifting dunes and waste your time wandering in circles. But don't worry, once you get to the random mine field sitting in the middle of fucking nowhere, you're almost out of the dead zone. If you don't get blown to pieces like Harris did, you take a left at the even more random field of solar panels and keep going straight until you hit water. Once you get across the water, you're there!" He finished with a cheer, throwing his hands up in mock excitement.

"Oh..." He added as an afterthought. "I should probably warn you as you cross the water to keep your limbs in the boat at all times, as there is a high probability of being eaten alive by the random giant fucking Loch Ness monster. But after that, the bunker's right on the bank. And the mansion's just over the hill." He finished cheerfully.

Clarke frowned at him. As was often the case with Murphy, she had no idea of how much he said was serious and how much was facetious.

"Right..." She said. "So... Are you going to draw me a map? Or should I go down to lock-up and ask Jaha to do it for me?"

"Did you not hear the part about the mine field?" Murphy asked frowning at her like he thought she was crazy and might start foaming at the mouth any second. "Or the part about the sea monster? Did I mention it swallowed Craig and Richards whole?"

He turned to Raven. "She still wants to go. Did I tell it wrong?"

Raven shrugged. "What can I say? She's a stubborn woman on a mission... An unstoppable force. It's Newton's First Law: a stubborn woman in motion stays in motion. You think a sea monster is going to be able to stop her?"

"Damn right, Raven!" Clarke cheered. Raven was right... She was on a mission. And neither of them even knew the half of it. No man, no mine, no monster was going to stop her.

"Solidarity, sister!" Raven cheered back and extended a hand for a high-five.

Murphy looked from one grinning girl to the other, shaking his head like a tired, grumpy old man surrounded by children. "Alright," He sighed. "Truth is that is the way to the mansion if you want to follow crazy-ass Jaha's spiritual pilgrimage. But Emori knows the shortcut and how to get a bigger boat. I'll get her to take us under one condition..."

"Name it." Clarke answered excitedly.

"After you find what you need, Raven lets me blow the shit out of that bunker."

"Uhhh..." Raven said with a laugh. "You know I'm never opposed to blowing shit up, Murphy. But I think, by definition, bunkers are built to withstand explosions. It's kind of part of their design."

"OK." Murphy replied, quickly revising his demands. "I get to set fire to everything in the bunker. And then we blow the shit out of the mansion instead."

"Sounds like a plan." Clarke grinned, now extending her raised palm to Murphy. When Murphy ignored it, she turned it to Raven again. Unable to resist, Raven accepted the high-five with her own grin as Murphy just went back to shaking his head at the pair of them.