A/N: I'm not a science person, remember? Just go with it. :)
Clarke awoke to the sound of Raven's voice.
"Come on, you jackasses. Shake the hangovers off. We've got work to do."
Clarke sat up, eyes bleary and forehead furrowed. She glanced around.
Apparently everyone had fallen asleep where they were last night except for Harper, who was currently walking out of the Ark with Monty.
Clarke looked down, surprised to find a blanket over her. She definitely didn't get up to get it, and she couldn't remember who put it on her.
Glancing beside her, she noticed Octavia was also staring confusedly at a blanket covering her.
Clarke's eyes darted up, connecting with the man across from her who was currently shaking sleep from his head, his hand running through the mess of unruly curls on top of his head.
Clarke raised an eyebrow minutely, knowing the answer before she even asked the question.
Bellamy shrugged, his gaze sheepish.
A corner of Clarke's mouth turned up.
Octavia seemed to come to the same conclusion Clarke had, because she sighed and pulled the blanket off dramatically before looking up at Raven. "What did you guys figure out? Are we gonna…kaboom?" She asked, in her usual abrupt manner.
"Yup."
Everyone's gaze darted to her.
"The bitch was right," she said, referring to ALIE. "But we're working on a plan now. We need you two," she gestured to Clarke and Bellamy.
They both stood up, following her inside and grabbing Monty on the way.
When they got to the room, they discovered Abby and Kane already inside. The rest of the group was beyond eclectic; there were a dozen or so people, ranging from 15 to 70 and covering almost every walk of life.
Raven jumped in. "We found maps of the old nuclear power stations. We ran simulations to test for deterioration and temperature build-up and everything else these guys could think of. Turns out, we have around six months before everything blows sky high."
Clarke sighed. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she'd known this is what they would find. "So what can we do?"
"We've run some more simulations, seeing home much of the Earth will be inhabitable. We came up with around 4%, and most of that is on an ice shelf in the middle of an ocean."
"Antarctica," replied an older woman.
Clarke vaguely recognized her as one of the teachers on the Ark.
Raven nodded. "Yeah, Antarctica. Anyway…we can't live there, and even if we could, we wouldn't be able to get anything to grow…not to mention I have no clue how we would even get there."
Wick cleared his throat.
Raven sent him a glare before continuing. "So then we ran more tests, seeing if we could lessen the impact if we somehow turned some of the nuclear reactors off and stopped them from exploding."
Raven turned to an older man with a black eye. A quick glance at Bellamy made Clarke realize that this was the science teacher he'd been talking about.
Before the man spoke, he gave a slight nod to Abby, and Clarke suddenly remembered him as one of her dad's friends. He'd been by their apartment occasionally when she was younger. If she remembered correctly, he'd once held the Lead Scientist position on the Ark before he'd semi-retired and gone into teaching.
He started speaking knowledgeably. "We factored in as many variables as we could: size of the nuclear reactors, blast radius, landscapes, weather patterns…"
Bellamy gave an impatient sigh.
The man glanced up, frowning at his former student. "The point is, if we can shut down enough of them, we should be able to dramatically increase the inhabitable land that's left."
"And how do we do that?" Kane asked.
Wick stepped away from the chalkboard full of numbers and symbols he'd been working on. "We think we can disable the nuclear reactors…but we'll have to do it in person."
"How many?" Bellamy asked, tersely.
Clarke's 9th grade math teacher stepped forward. "There's not a specific number we need. It's more a case of, the more we shut down, the better our chances."
Jasper spoke for the first time. "Even with all of our simulations…there's still some unpredictability. We're going off weather patterns and air currents that existed 100 years ago. Things could have changed by now."
Bellamy let out a harsh breath. "The more, the better."
Raven nodded, grabbing a rolled up map off the table and tacking it to the wall. "These are all the nuclear reactors in the US."
Clarke groaned. The map seemed to be covered in little red dots.
Raven glanced at her sympathetically. "I know. But…a good majority of them are on the Eastern seaboard, pretty close to us. Now, if we do nothing about it, that's a bad thing, because the fallout here will be quick and totally devastating. But…it also means that we're only a few hundred miles away from a lot of them."
Bellamy was frowning, but nodding. "We can get to them. Shut them off."
Clarke was studying the map. "Half of us will go North, half will go South. We'll chart out a course to get to as many of them as we can as fast as we can."
Abby seemed dubious. "How do we even…we don't even know what's out there! There are probably other tribes…animals…there could be another Mount Weather…"
Clarke was having a silent conversation with Bellamy. He nodded. To her surprise, Kane caught her gaze, also nodding.
"I'll ask Roan and the Ice Nation warriors to go North with us," Clark said.
"And I'll ask Indra and the Trikru to go South with us," added Kane.
"Clarke!...Marcus!...we can't…" Abby protested.
Kane took her hands in his. "We don't have a choice, Abby."
Clarke watched as Abby and Kane had some sort of silent argument.
Finally, Abby replied, "Fine, but I'm going with you."
Kane looked like he wanted to protest for a moment before he eventually pressed his lips into a tight line. "Fine."
Clarke glanced at Bellamy out of the corner of her eye, knowing he'd seen the exchange too. "We going to have the same silent argument?"
He turned his head slightly, smirking even though it didn't quite reach his eyes. "Nope. We're better together, remember, Princess?"
Trying to ignore the way her stomach clenched at those words, she nodded.
Kane spoke to the group in front of them. "So who needs to go to shut these things off?"
They hurriedly planned out two groups, trying to divide up the necessary people as evenly as possible.
As it stood, Bellamy, Clarke, Monty, Jasper, and Harper were set to go North, along with a science teacher and one of the computer programmers from the Ark, while Kane, Abby, Wick, Raven, Miller, and Bryan were set to go South, along with a scientist from the Ark and a teenager who had been imprisoned for his impressive hacking skills.
Clarke looked over to find Monty sitting on a stool, gaze on the floor, hands fidgeting in front of him. She walked over to him. "Monty, what is it?"
Terrified eyes met hers. "I didn't even get to finish the engineering program on the Ark."
"Monty…"
"Wick is trying to explain everything to me, and I know I'll have Jasper and the science dude but… I don't know if I'm good enough. I don't know if I can do this, but I'm the closest thing to another engineer we've got."
Clarke frowned, glancing back over at the map. "How far away is the closest one? The one just to the left there."
Raven glanced at it. "Probably 10 miles or so."
"What if we all went there together? You guys can make sure you know what you're doing, make sure that we can even shut them off to begin with. That way we'll all have a clear plan and a little experience."
Raven and Wick glanced at each other, nodding.
"Works for me," Wick said.
Monty squeezed Clarke's arm gratefully.
"We need to pack provisions, chart out the courses…" Bellamy glanced at Clarke. "We need to send someone to Polis to see if Roan and Indra will even agree to go with us."
Clarke nodded, heading out to send a couple of the guards back to Polis with the messages.
A few minutes later, Bellamy found her as she emerged from the med bay, a pack with medical supplies slung over her shoulder.
His eyes touched hers before looking at the ground. "Octavia will want to go with Indra." It came out part statement, part question.
Clarke looked at him sadly. She knew Octavia wasn't ready to forgive him and probably wouldn't want to go with his group. Plus, she considered Indra a mentor. "Probably."
He nodded. "I'm afraid the groups are unbalanced now though. As far as fighters go, they have Miller, Bryan, and Octavia, while we only have me and Harper. And Harper's good with a gun, but in hand-to-hand…" He looked up at her. "Miller needs to go with them, and I'm pretty sure Octavia won't come with us, so I think we need to switch Bryan to our group."
Clarke bit her lip, picturing Miller and Bryan together. "Don't do that."
Bellamy just raised an eyebrow.
"Don't separate Miller and Bryan. If this doesn't work, they deserve to spend their last few months together."
"You're right." His gaze suddenly flew back to hers. "Shit, you should be with your mom." The wheels started turning in his head. "Their team already has a hacker, maybe you could switch with Raven." Then, he frowned. "I don't like the thought of you out there alone though…Miller's good but he's not…"
Bellamy stopped before the word popped out, but they both knew what it was. Me.
A slow, sweet smile spread across Clarke's face as a matching warmth pooled somewhere in her chest. She grabbed his hand. "Hey, I'm not switching. I'm where I'm supposed to be." Her eyes bore into his. "Together, remember?"
He swallowed, then nodded softly, his eyes searching hers.
Clarke let go of his hand and glanced over his shoulder. "And you know who you need to bring with us." She patted his shoulder as she walked around him.
Bellamy turned, his eyes landing on the person she'd been looking at a minute earlier.
He sighed. "Murphy!"