19
Black
CLARKE
"Welcome, Mr. Bauer." Raven gasped, jumped, and spun on the spot at the sound of ALIE's greeting.
"It's OK." Clarke tried not to laugh. "She's not here. Sorry... I should've warned you."
"I thought I'd only ever have to hear that bitch's voice again in my damn nightmares." Raven grumbled, clutching at her chest.
"Me too." Clarke sighed. "But hey... What do you think of the lab? Not too shabby, huh?"
"Wow..." Raven gasped in a reverent whisper as if she had just stepped foot onto holy ground. Clarke half expected her to start removing her shoes and wrapping a covering around her head. "It's beautiful."
Raven made a slow sweep of the room, lightly dragging her fingertips over the equipment as if checking to make sure it was solid and real, and not just a figment of her dreams, constantly making exclamations like: "An atomic absorption spectrophotometer!" or "A dry blood spot processor... that will be useful!" and "Look at the size of this autoclave and this HPL Chromatographer!" She started fiddling with the chromatographer and Clarke had to seize her by the wrist to get her attention.
"Before you have playtime with the equipment..." Clarke pulled her hand away from the complicated machine and yanked her towards the shelf of dusty journals. "I'm afraid you have some reading to do."
...
"This is fascinating!" Raven said for the fourth or fifth time. Clarke just rolled her eyes and went back to playing with a micropipette, arranging neat rows of minuscule water droplets on the lab countertop. "The science they were doing back then..." Raven continued. "Well... To say they were ahead of their time..."
"Forget fascinating." Clarke interrupted, adding another droplet to her design. "Have you found anything actually USEFUL yet?"
"No." Raven answered. "Not in regards to making nightblood. But I've only gone through two of the notebooks so far." She said, closing one and tossing it aside. "Maybe the next one, right? When Monty finally gets here, we'll have him go through the computers' databases too. No telling what kind of information Chris might have stored on them."
"Good idea." Clarke said, distractedly, adding another drop. Monty had taken the trawler. Who knew when his group would finally arrive.
"Welcome, Mr. Bauer." ALIE's voice made Clarke jump and smear a line of droplets. She looked up to see her mother frantically scanning the room, her eyes wide with panic.
"It's OK, Abby." Raven reassured her. "She's not here."
"God, I hate that creepy voice." Abby breathed a sigh of relief. Then, looking around the room, did a perfect re-enactment of Raven's entrance. "Wow!" She whispered. "This lab is incredible! Raven did you see the integrated mineral analyzer?"
"That's nothing." Raven replied. "Check out the size of this X-Ray Diffractometer!"
"Raven, stay focused." Clarke scolded her. "Mom, quit distracting her."
"Yes, ma'am." Raven mumbled sarcastically with a laugh, plunging her nose back into the journal.
Abby meandered up to Clarke and peered over her shoulder. "A butterfly." She said. "No... Bird's wings?"
"Huh?" Clarke replied, confused. She pulled her eyes from her work to see that Abby was looking down at her droplet design. Clarke glanced down at it, surprised. She had only been absentmindedly pipetting. She had had no intention of creating an actual design. Yet, she definitely had. And it wasn't a butterfly. It wasn't a bird's wings. She recognized it immediately. It was Lexa's warpaint. Blushing, she quickly smeared her arm across the design, scattering the beads of water until they coated her sleeve and trickled to the floor.
"It's nothing." She answered. "I was just playing around. You get the first batch of kids settled in?" She asked, changing the subject.
"Yeah." Abby answered. "They chose the sports arena in the basement... Go figure. I had to hide all the alcohol."
"Go into any of the bathrooms yet?" Clarke chuckled, thinking of the magazine racks.
"No..." Abby answered worriedly. "Why?"
"Guys!" Raven's sudden shout cut between them. "Guys! Guys... I found it!"
...
"Wow, this procedure is complicated!" Raven commented. But she sounded more excited by the challenge than overwhelmed. "Especially when you add all of Becca's modifications to it."
"Can you replicate it?" Clarke asked, teetering the fine edge between nervousness and excitement. "Please tell me that you can replicate it."
"Of course I can replicate it." Raven said with a cocky roll of her eyes. "That is... If we have all of the ingredients."
"Read 'em off." Abby said, moving to the shelves of endless bottles of liquids and jars of colorful powders.
Raven hobbled over and Clarke joined them for moral support more than anything else. She had no idea what any of this stuff was and frankly, she was afraid to touch anything in case it burned her skin off or spontaneously burst into flame.
Raven started down the list. "Hydrochloric acid..."
"HCL, check." Abby echoed, pulling a gigantic jug of clear liquid off the shelf.
"Acetone..."
"Plenty of that."
"Ferric nitrate, check."
"We're going to need more sodium hydroxide." Raven noted. "But we've got a bunch of that back in the Ark's lab. And more ethanol. We'll have to raid Jasper and Monty's homemade supply. We'll just have to distill it and concentrate it, first. No more moonshine for a while."
"We're good on potassium iodide." Abby chimed in. "But we have a problem... There's barely any pyrolusite."
"The procedure calls for ten grams of pyrolusite per one liter yield of serum." Raven replied. "Where the hell are we going to get that much pyrolusite?"
Clarke tried to remember what Raven had so excitedly told her about pyrolusite the other day. As was usually the case when Raven went into science-geek mode, Clarke had only been half listening at the time. "You said it's a rock, right?" She asked. "Can we find it in the soil, or maybe in the rocks in the mountains?"
"No." Raven answered. "It's actually found in wet areas like bogs, lakes, or flood plains. It's usually found running through sandstone."
"What does it look like?" Clarke asked.
"It's black." Raven answered. "It's..."
"It looks exactly like this." Abby interrupted. She handed Clarke a jar of a fine black powder.
Clarke uncapped it and dipped her finger into it. It was so fine that it smudged the tip of her finger black like the charcoal she had once used to draw Lexa. And the answer was so obvious.
"I know where we can find more." She smiled as Abby and Raven exchanged a look of confusion. The answer had been staring her right in the face. The answer was still dripping down her sleeve. She had seen this powder before. Whenever she closed her eyes and let the memories in, she still saw it. And it wasn't on a butterfly. It wasn't on a bird's wings. It was in the black around Lexa's eyes.
...
"It makes perfect sense!" Clarke exclaimed. "Becca wasn't just the first commander, she was the first leader of Trikru. Of all of the clans, Trikru's line has the most ties to Becca. If Becca used pyrolusite to create nightblood, of course it would have special significance to Trikru. I never thought to wonder why Trikru chose black for their warpaint markings. Azgeda paints their faces white. I've heard Sangedakru paints theirs yellow-brown and Boudalan silver-gray. If I'd actually thought about it, I would have thought it would make more sense for Trikru to use green or brown. But I never questioned it. Now it makes perfect sense!" She repeated.
"Raven..." Clarke turned excitedly to Raven as she reluctantly pried her eyes from the pages of Bauer's journal. "If I get you the pyrolusite, how soon can you have the serum ready?"
"Well..." Raven paused, examining the procedure. "We have to purify the pyrolusite to remove any contaminants... You know, to prevent paralysis or temporary blindness, stuff like that. We have to extract the zinc, combine it with the ferric sulfate, run it through a sodium hydroxide bath..."
"Raven..." Clarke interrupted with an impatient sigh. "I don't need the whole procedure, just a time frame."
"Well..." Raven said again. "An hour to purify and extract..." She mumbled, doing the math. "3 hours in the sodium hydroxide bath. Two more in the dessicator... I'd say from start to finish I could maybe have it ready in fourteen hours. It will take days to make enough for everyone though. Maybe weeks."
"Do you have enough of everything you need to start the first batch right now?" Clarke asked excitedly.
Raven set the small tin of pyrolusite on the scale. "34 grams." She smiled, already pulling beakers off the shelf. "I have enough to make a triple batch."
"I'll start the HCL solution." Abby said, snatching her own giant flask off the shelf and setting to work at Raven's side.
Raven carefully dumped the pyrolusite onto the scale and started dividing the powder into smaller mounds. She pulled her brown eyes from the black powder and raised her brows at Clarke. "Well?" She asked. "What the hell are you waiting for? The end of the world? Go get your ass on the boat."
"I'll be back!" Clarke flashed her an excited grin and rushed from the room.
"Bring back as much ethanol and sodium hydroxide as you can scrounge up!" She heard Raven call as she jogged down the narrow hall.
...
"Jasper!" Clarke shouted, shoving her head into his room without bothering to knock.
"What?!" Jasper groaned. "I'm sleeping."
"It's almost noon." Clarke chided him. "Get your lazy ass up!"
"Do you have to shout?" Jasper whined, burrowing his face into his sheets and covering his head with his pillow. "What's the damn emergency?"
"I need all your ethanol." Clarke said, walking over to his cot, yanking the pillow off his head, and beating him across the ass with it.
"Ethanol?" Jasper replied, feigning ignorance. "I'm not sure what you're referring to Clarke." He said in a formal voice, finally rolling over to face her and raising his eyebrows innocently at her. "I hope you are not insinuating that I am brewing my own moonshine. I gave up that vile practice a long time ago. Don't you know it's not permitted in Arkadia?"
"I don't have time for your bullshit, Jasper." Clarke answered, trying not to laugh at his ridiculous holier-than-thou glare. "Cough it up. All of it." She demanded as she shoved the pillow into his chest and turned towards the door. "And then find Jackson." She added, pausing in the door frame. "Tell him I need all the sodium hydroxide he can find."
"Where are you going?" Jasper called as Clarke rushed back down the hall. "To find Kane!" She hollered back, not caring whether or not he heard.
...
"We need to go back to Ton DC." Clarke blurted out as she approached the table, not bothering to pull up a chair.
"Clarke?" Bellamy asked, surprised to see her. "I thought you were going to the mansion with Raven..."
"I did." Clarke answered. "I'm back."
"That was fast." Bellamy mumbled, looking confused.
Clarke ignored him and turned to Kane. "I need to speak with Indra."
"Indra is not there." Kane answered. "She and Octavia left two days ago."
"Left?" Clarke repeated stupidly. "What do you mean they left? Where did they go?"
"To find willing allies for Trikru." Kane explained. "Trikru means to make a stand against Azgeda. I'm afraid they insisted that they do not need Skaikru's guns by their side or anywhere near their lands. They were rather... Adamant... In their refusal of Skaikru's aid."
"Who did you speak with?" Clarke asked.
"A council of four of Ton DC's elders." Kane answered.
"Take me to them." Clarke commanded.
"When I left," Kane replied. "They gave me very specific instructions never to return or to allow any members of Skaikru within a mile of Ton DC's borders. Any Skaikru captured on their land will be held as a prisoner of war."
"Take me to them." Clarke repeated.
"The council was extremely clear..." Kane began, but Bellamy interrupted him.
"Little word of advice, Kane..." He said. "When a Griffin woman sets her jaw like this..." He pointed at Clarke's jawline as she frowned confusedly at him. "Don't bother arguing with her. You won't win. Save yourself the headache and just do what she asks."
"I'm still learning how to handle Griffin women." Kane sighed defeatedly.
"Welcome to the club." Bellamy laughed. "It's a free lifetime membership, by the way."
Clarke shot Bellamy a look of annoyance, sticking her tongue at him. But she was smiling as Kane set down his fork, pushed himself to his feet, and let Clarke lead him by the wrist out of the cafeteria.