Several days later they still hadn't heard from Becca.
"Are you sure she believed you?" Bellamy asked Clarke for the third or fourth time. "That she really understood the danger?"
It was one of their late-night conversations, the ones they had after Madi settled herself on the couch and they retreated to the bedroom. The conversations had become a necessity for Bellamy, an effective distraction from the fact that he and Clarke were lying in the same bed.
Right from the start, he'd found the bedroom situation stressful, but his stress level had increased tenfold since their encounter in the bathroom on the night the others had arrived from Sanctum.
It had been tough enough to lie in the dark with Clarke beside him when he could only wonder what it might be like to kiss her, to crush her breasts to his chest and feel the heat of her pressed against his hard length. But now that it had actually happened he no longer needed his imagination, and the memory kept replaying over and over inside his head.
Since then, he'd kept his distance. They hadn't really talked about it, but Bellamy knew instinctively this wasn't the best moment to try and pursue any kind of personal relationship. Instead, he tried to refocus his energy on the mission. But even there he was thwarted, as things seemed to be at a standstill.
Worry began to invade his peace of mind, especially at night when he was trying to sleep. But if he couldn't be with Clarke in all the ways he wanted, at least she was still his partner, still able to reassure him with words that could allay the anxiety that sometimes kept him awake.
Becca had believed them, they'd hear from her soon, and this impasse wouldn't last forever.
His mind would quiet then and he could sleep.
So that was how Bellamy's nights went.
His days were spent familiarizing himself with 21st-century American geography, economics, and culture. All subjects he'd studied in school but which felt entirely different now that he was actually living with them. His favorite subject had always been history, so there was some irony in suddenly find himself plunked down in the middle of the past.
But he was determined that the mission would be successful, and that this was where — and when — he would live out his days. So he knew he'd have to figure out how to blend in, how to make a life for himself.
They all would.
Raven had been spending her time learning about "current" technology, which she hastened to inform them was seriously deficient.
"I really didn't think we'd made much progress on the Ark, even though some of the greatest minds in the world were in space when everything went to crap down here. I mean, it's not like we had a hell of a lot to work with up there. But I guess we must have done something right, because from what I can see, I could hack into just about any computer program around. Well… probably not Becca's stuff, at least not without a lot of trouble. But pretty much anything else."
The sentiment was vintage Raven, and had been delivered in her usual no-nonsense fashion one night while they were all dining at Rosa's. But what surprised Bellamy wasn't her overabundant confidence, but the fact that her words hadn't been accompanied by the expected disdainful glances at Clarke or snide references to his own lack of tech skills.
He was puzzled by what seemed like a complete attitude adjustment Where before they'd gotten blank looks interspersed with barely-hidden barbs, Raven was suddenly her old self around them, still sharp-edged and prickly, but no longer hostile.
The change certainly wasn't thanks to anything he'd done, because he'd been ignoring Raven's gibes since before they left Sanctum. And since she paid scant attention to anything Octavia had to say, he figured it must have been Clarke who somehow worked this miracle.
He asked her about it in bed that night, another good topic for conversational distraction.
"The change in Raven?" From the opposite edge of the bed, Clarke huffed a laugh. "It wasn't me, it was Madi."
"Madi?" It was the last thing he'd expected.
"Yeah. Raven… said something to me and I tried to tell her… uh…" she paused, her eyes suddenly flitting here and there but never quite looking at him, "um, she didn't seem to think that I cared for you, Bellamy, and wouldn't believe me when I said I did. But… Madi convinced her otherwise."
She shrugged. "Ever since then she's been… more like her old self."
"And… that was it?"
"Yeah, pretty much," she said, her eyes still shifting from side to side.
Bellamy only nodded, but inside he was jubilant. It may have been roundabout, but he was pretty sure Clarke had just told him she cared for him. Madi had said so, way back before cryo, before Sanctum, but Clarke had only ever said that he was important to her.
So this was new, and welcome, information.
"Clarke," he said softly, stretching his arm across the width of the bed to stroke her cheek.
He heard the sharp intake of breath as her eyes finally locked on his. She gave him a small smile and then grasped his hand, turning it to plant a soft kiss on the palm before replacing it on the sheet-covered chasm between them.
"We really should go to sleep now, Bellamy," she murmured. "Lots to do tomorrow at the beach house."
"Right," he agreed, returning her smile, watching her roll over to face in the other direction.
And somehow, even though it was another night of not touching Clarke, not kissing Clarke, not being with Clarke, Bellamy was content.
She wanted him, yes. Her actions had already told him that. But now he knew she also cared for him, and that was… everything.
XXXXXXXXXX
They'd all been spending a lot of time making sure the beach house would be ready when the rest of the crew arrived. He and Clarke had tried to tell Rosa not to fuss, that they'd often lived in such wretched conditions that the house would seem like a palace to them. But Rosa insisted they should all be made as comfortable as possible, and it seemed pointless to argue since they had little else to do anyway.
Even the curtains were taken down and washed, and when that resulted in a few frayed seams and unraveled hems, Rosa sighed and said she'd have to buy new ones.
But thrifty Ark-raised Bellamy had a different idea.
"Do you have a needle and thread, Rosa? Because Octavia and I can fix those curtains right up."
Rosa gaped at them when Octavia nodded in agreement, but nevertheless produced the required sewing supplies. And was even more astonished when everything came back perfectly repaired.
"I honestly don't know what to make of you all, sometimes. If I'd ever imagined time-travelers — which I really hadn't — they wouldn't people who scrubbed floors and repaired curtains."
Bellamy laughed. "Our mother was a seamstress and… we had to help her."
She frowned. "You helped your mother with her work? Didn't you have school, or… or play?"
"School, yes. Or at least I did," Bellamy said, leaving it to Octavia to choose how much she wanted to explain about herself.
He began to understand just how fond of Rosa his sister had become when she put her arm around the older woman and said, "Why don't we take a break? I'll make us some tea and we can… have a talk."
Bellamy smiled to himself, happy to think Octavia was willing to start talking about her past. He knew from his own experience that keeping everything inside wasn't healthy. He was lucky he had Clarke to talk to, and he'd missed her like hell when he was on the ring and thought she was dead. The first time.
He'd learned the hard way that a convenient physical relationship was no substitute for the kind of deep connection he'd always felt with Clarke. For them, getting physical — when they finally managed to get around to it — would just add another layer to their already unbreakable bond.
As it turned out, sprucing up the beach house had been timely, because when they got back to Arlington that night they found Miller and Jackson camped out on Rosa's doorstep.
"Well," Rosa said, frowning, after the greetings were finished and the introductions had been made, "I suppose we'll have to sort out the bedrooms, at least for tonight. Because this house only has four."
"Nope, Raven and I can both keep our rooms," Octavia said, smirking. "That leaves one bedroom, and that's all Miller and Jackson need."
"Oh," Rosa said, brightening, "how convenient."
Miller looked a little puzzled. "What about Bellamy and Clarke?"
"They have their own place across town," Raven told him casually. "It's called a condo, right?" she asked, sending the question in Clarke's general direction but not waiting for an answer. "They've got Madi with them."
"Oh, yeah, okay," was all Miller said, but somehow Bellamy knew he'd hear about it later.
And he was right. As they were getting ready to leave, Miller pulled Bellamy aside to ask a question, but it wasn't the one he'd been expecting.
"So what's with Raven not giving you shit anymore? When the hell did she become so agreeable?"
Bellamy chuckled. "Believe it or not, Clarke told me it was something Madi said to her."
"No shit! Well, thank fuck, because that crap from Raven was gettin' old." He shook his head in admiration. "Madi, huh? That kid is really somethin'."
"Hey, that's not the half of it. Octavia and I weren't there that day because we were exploring the bunker, but I heard Madi was the one who finally convinced Becca that everything we'd been telling her was for real."
"Yeah? So the whole ALIE problem's been solved, then?"
Bellamy sighed. "I wish. We've been waiting all week to hear back from Becca, but nothing so far."
Miller shrugged. "It'll happen. If there's one thing I know it's when you and Clarke work together shit gets done. She'll call."
"You sound like Clarke."
Miller grinned. "I doubt that very much!"
"Yeah, maybe not," he agreed, laughing, then added casually, "So that's all you wanted to ask me? About Raven?"
"Yeah, that's all," Miller said, quirking a brow at Bellamy. "What? Did you expect me to ask why you and Clarke have your own private place? Like that was ever in doubt. Remember, I was the one standing next to you back on Sanctum when you figured out she was still alive. And Bellamy, my friend, you have never looked back."
Bellamy shrugged lightly. "Hey, the condo isn't really private. We have Madi with us and the place is pretty small."
Miller smirked. "I have no doubt you'll make it work."
XXXXXXXXXX
They got to bed late that night but were still up early the next day because Bellamy had promised Rosa he'd help her sort out buying a car for the group that would eventually live at the beach house.
But all that had to be put on hold.
They'd barely arrived at Rosa's when Clarke's phone began to ring. They were all in the living room, catching up with Miller and Jackson, but conversation ground to a halt as Clarke hurriedly pulled her phone from her backpack. She glanced down at the screen, and her tiny nod let everyone know that it was indeed Becca Franko who was calling.
"Hi, Becca," she said, picking up the call. "I'm going to put you on speaker because there are a lot of people in the room with me, and they've all been waiting to hear from you."
"That's… fine," Becca said, her voice so quiet it was barely above a whisper. "I'm not in the lab. I'm calling from the house," she paused. "I'm not sure if you…"
"Yes, we're familiar with your house, Becca. It's beautiful."
"Yeah, he, uh, he threw the house in when he funded the lab."
Clarke nodded even though Becca couldn't see her. "Bill Cadogan."
"Yes. He paid for everything, Clarke, and now he says… I owe him."
Becca sighed, and there was tension in that sigh.
"I'd been trying to get in touch with Cadogan for days and he finally came out here yesterday. He wanted to know about my progress, about when I'd be done. And that's when I told him I was quitting, that I wasn't going to finish the program."
Clarke told herself she should feel relieved because… wasn't that their goal? Becca had agreed. But there was something about her tone, something about the whispering and the little hesitations, that had the hairs rising on the back of Clarke's neck.
"So… what did he say?" she asked, trying hard to keep her anxiety at bay.
"Yeah, well I might as well have been talking to the wall. He just gave me this… this smile and said maybe I was tired, and that of course I'd be finishing the program. That that was our agreement."
She paused, and Clarke had the feeling she was choosing her next words with care, that she wanted to convey exactly what had happened.
"So then I said I'd changed my mind," Becca continued slowly. "That I realized the whole thing wasn't such a good idea after all. And he just stared at me with that… smile and said he'd built the lab based on my promises and now he expected me to deliver."
Even through the phone, they could hear Becca's heavy swallow
"But there was something about the way he said it, Clarke. He never threatened me, or said anything bad would happen if I didn't finish the program, but the whole conversation still scared the shit out of me."
"Becca," Bellamy spoke up from his seat next to Clarke, "this is Bellamy. What if you kept working on the program but just… I don't know… made it so it didn't work?"
"The problem is that it's mostly done, Bellamy, although Bill doesn't know that. I've just been testing it out, looking for bugs, things like that. Being my own beta, but without real data. But if I tried to blow it up, it would immediately be obvious to any competent programmer that I'd subverted the solution. And I assume he's got at least a few of those on his staff. No one who could write the code but a lot of people who could read it."
Shit! This was worse than Clarke had thought.
"What about the fail-safes you put in place, Becca? All those redundancies?"
"Yeah, I was saving that for last, Clarke."
When Becca sighed, Clarke wondered what the next piece of bad news might be.
"I was up half the night trying to figure out what to do about Cadogan, but then first thing this morning I decided to check out the fail safes. And they were all gone! Every single one of them. I actually fixed the first one I came to, thinking I must have just… screwed up the coding myself. Then I realized it was all of them, every one was turned off, and there's no way in hell I made that many errors. But they'd been reprogrammed so cleverly that you'd have to look hard to realize they wouldn't do the job anymore. Honestly, if I weren't looking for them, if you hadn't made me doubt them, I don't think I ever would have noticed."
She stopped for a moment, as if collecting herself. "But… here's the weirdest part. An hour later, just for the hell of it, I checked the one I'd fixed… and the coding has been changed back again! And that's just… it's impossible! The computer in my lab is self-contained. On a closed circuit. It was built to my own specifications, and no one was in the lab but me."
"What about your, uh, your security?" Bellamy asked.
"Those morons? They're lucky if they can figure out how to use the toaster, never mind writing code…"
"Look, Becca," Clarke broke in, "I think it's clear that we're not going to be able to solve this over the phone. We need to talk face to face. Can you get back to the place where we met the last time?"
"You mean now?"
"If not now then as soon as possible," Clarke told her, trying very hard not to let her anxiety bleed into her voice.
"Yeah, I… guess I could tell them I have a doctor's appointment or something."
"Becca, are you a prisoner there?" Bellamy broke in again. "Because if so…"
Clarke saw him exchange a glance with Miller.
Becca sighed. "I wouldn't have thought so. But before you showed up in my lab I hardly thought about anything except the program I was working on. Bill said those guys were here for my protection because I was alone on the island. But now I'm thinking…"
"They're there to keep you in and everyone else out." Bellamy finished the thought for her.
"Yeah, I think you're right. But they've never tried to stop me the couple of times I left, and when I walked Cadogan back to his boat yesterday he didn't stop to talk to Bennett, who's the moron in charge. Besides… I just don't see Cadogan ever thinking that someone might actually defy his expectations."
From the sounds of the man, Clarke thought that Becca was probably right.
"But still…" they could almost hear her thinking it out as she spoke, "maybe it'd be better if I waited until tomorrow. That's Bennett's day off and the others would never have the nerve to question me about my movements. And that will give me today to look through the program, document the fail-safe errors, and see if anything else has been changed."
"Okay," Bellamy said, "we'll give you until tomorrow night to get here, Becca. But if you don't show, we'll have to assume you're being held on the island and we'll come and get you ourselves after dark. I don't think we should wait any longer than that."
"That's actually… reassuring," Becca said, "but I'll get there tomorrow if I have to swim."
The room was silent when Clarke ended the call a moment later, so she said what she knew they all must be thinking.
"I think it's pretty clear that it was Cadogan, or someone who works for him, who removed all the fail safes in Becca's program. I can't begin to imagine why he'd do such a thing, but right now we don't really have time to worry about the whys."
When she turned to Bellamy, he shrugged and nodded.
"The only thing that matters now," he said, "is finding a way to stop him."
XXXXXXXXXX
With nothing else to be done for the moment, they decided to carry on with their original plans for the day. Bellamy and Miller went off with Rosa to buy a car to provide transportation for everyone who'd eventually be living at the beach house. The rest of them remained at Rosa's, and Jackson insisted it would be the perfect time to give them all thorough physicals.
"Our bodies have been traumatized over and over again," he told them. "Living on the Ark with minimal oxygen, dropping back down to Earth, then years spent in either the bunker or back in space and finally more than a century of cryo sleep. And now time travel through a wormhole. There are only a few of us left, but it's a miracle any of us survived at all. I just want to make sure our bodies are…" he shrugged, "as okay as they can be."
Octavia volunteered to be first, telling him, "You forgot to say grew up under the floor. That must have given my body a little extra zing."
Jackson sighed. "I'm sorry that happened to you, Octavia. I don't know how you survived it, let alone can joke about it."
"I'm not sure if that was actually worse than the bunker, Doc, but at this point if I couldn't make fun of myself a little I'd probably lose my mind. But then… look at us now," she said, waving her hand around Rosa's comfortable house. "It's like… we've gone all the way back to the beginning, and it feels like maybe it's a… a second chance. I want so bad for it to be."
She smirked up at him.
"So please tell me my body has survived or adapted or whatever the hell it needs to do so that I can actually have a life."
Jackson smiled.
"Then enter my exam room," he said, ushering her into the office that Rosa had told him he could use for his exams, while Raven, Madi, and Clarke waited in the living room.
Twenty minutes later, Clarke was relieved to hear from Octavia that she'd been pronounced "still going strong," although she doubted out loud that Eric Jackson had used those exact words.
Octavia shrugged. "Close enough."
Madi went next, and her exam was quick because Jackson had already been keeping a close eye on her health back on Sanctum. She skipped outside to lie in the sun then while Raven took her place in the makeshift exam room.
"Your turn next," Octavia told Clarke. "You can get a clean bill of health so Bell will be relieved to hear you're in perfect shape. Not that he doesn't already think so," she added, smirking.
Clarke groaned. "Octavia…"
"Oh, can it, Clarke. Come on! You're not going to try and tell me you and my brother don't have feelings for each other. That ship has sailed."
"It's just… maybe there's something there, but…"
Octavia frowned. "But what?"
"But Bellamy was just in a relationship, Octavia. A long-term one, although he's never talked about it or said exactly how long he and… and Echo were together. But that has to count for something…"
"Right. But I think maybe you should remember that when he got up to the ring he thought you were dead, Clarke. Dead. As in… unavailable to be with…"
Clarke shrugged. Maybe Octavia was right and they would have been together all those years ago if only she'd made it back to Becca's lab in time.
She knew Bellamy was physically attracted to her, of course. That had been… pretty evident. And he cared about her for sure. He was her best friend and she supposed she was probably his. But that didn't mean he wanted a relationship with her when he just got out of another one.
Besides… she was the one who'd kissed him first, and since then he'd never tried to kiss her again. Not once.
Clarke frowned to herself. Of course, he had said he wanted to talk to her about what happened, but it never seemed to be the right time for a discussion. And… what if she said the wrong thing? Bellamy was so important to her, meant so much to her, that she was afraid of not reading the situation exactly right and saying something stupid.
What if, for instance, she told him that… she loved him? That after they'd completed the mission all she really wanted to do was find a way to make a life with him. How would she deal with it if he didn't want that, too? What if…
"Where did you go?" Octavia said suddenly.
"Huh?"
"You're inside your head somewhere, aren't you? Trying to talk yourself out of being in love with Bellamy. That's exactly what you were doing, wasn't it?"
"I… don't know what you mean…
"Yes, you do! Clarke," Octavia's eyes slammed shut and she sighed heavily, "you know what? I still think about Lincoln, even after all this time. I think about what a good man he was, about how much he loved me. Oh, I've stopped blaming people for his death. Especially Bellamy. I finally realized it wasn't his fault, and that sometimes bad shit just happens. But if I could have Lincoln beside me here today, when it looks like we're going to get a second chance at life…"
She shook her head and reached over to squeeze Clarke's shoulder as she looked her square in the eye.
"So, please, don't waste this chance by being afraid," Octavia said softly. "Not when you feel so much, and when he's right here…"
Octavia was interrupted by a sudden soft clearing of the throat, and they looked up to find Raven in the doorway.
"Uh, I'm done, so if you want to go now, Clarke…"
"Right."
Oh, god, how much had Raven heard?
She knew it was too late to worry about that now, so she rose unhurriedly and smiled at Raven as she walked past her toward the office.
Clarke wasn't sure she really wanted or needed to be examined, but she knew Jackson would continue to bug her about it, so she figured she might as well get it over with.
"You okay?" Jackson asked when she walked through the door. "You look like you think I'm about to torture you."
Her smile was wry. "As a former medical apprentice, I'm aware of all the things that could be wrong with me. And my body has been through a lot."
"It has," he agreed. "That's why we're doing this."
Fifteen minutes later, Jackson sat back, stunned.
"I can't find anything wrong, Clarke. Not that I should, because you're barely 25 years old. But still, for all you've been through, you're in amazingly good health. Maybe," he frowned, "maybe it's the blood enhancement…"
"Whatever happened with that, Eric?" she suddenly wondered. "Did everyone get made nightbloods after we left?"
"Nate and I did because…" He sighed, clearly reluctant to say the words. "Look, Clarke, we know you and Bellamy will do whatever you need to do to make sure this plan works. But we've seen first-hand that sometimes things just… happen, no matter how hard we try to prevent them. So for us, it was a… precaution." He gave her a wry look. "As for the others… you'll have to ask them yourself."
Clarke nodded, understanding not only his own motivation but also his reluctance to divulge the personal choices of his patients. She had every hope that their mission would be successful, but if things went wrong then she'd need to know if everyone was protected. But they had some time, and it could wait.
She left the room a few moments later, still shocked but relieved to hear that her body was still functioning well.
Rosa and the men returned a short time later and Miller waxed enthusiastic about their automotive purchase.
"Rosa bought something called a van. The thing has as much room as the rover did, but it rides as smooth as silk. So you don't end up with a numb a—, uh, backside, like the rover," he finished, giving an amused Rosa an apologetic look.
"That does sound very unpleasant," Rosa said. "The van is quite comfortable, and we didn't even have to pay full price. I'd never bought a used car before but it was very enlightening."
Bellamy smiled at her. "I haven't got a clue what anything in this century is worth, Rosa, in terms of actual cash, but if you're satisfied then that's all that counts. Now we just have to get Miller familiar with the concept of traffic."
"Geez!" Miller looked like his brain was about to explode, "I've never seen so many fu—, uh… I mean, there are lot of cars out there…"
"Yes, it can be intimidating," Rosa agreed, nodding her head in sympathy. "But I'm sure you'll catch on quickly."
"Yes, Nate's generally a quick study," Jackson said with a grin, appearing suddenly in the doorway. "But now that the car adventure is over and you're back, I need to check you over, Bellamy."
"Right," Octavia said. "Now that you're back, Bell, you can have your exam. The rest of us are done."
"What about you?" Bellamy asked, cocking a brow at Miller.
Miller rolled his eyes. "Please. You can't imagine how often Jacks does his doctor thing on me, so I'm good."
"See, Bell, it's your turn," Octavia insisted, grinning. "You'll be glad to know that I was perfect."
"Well, there's a challenge that can't go unanswered." Bellamy shook his head, his lips tugging up into a half-smile as he followed Jackson out of the room.
They were back scarcely twenty minutes later.
"I guess perfection must run in the Blake family," Bellamy said, smirking. "The doc said I should probably be dead by now but I'm doing good."
Clarke was amused as she watched the byplay between Bellamy and his sister, but it was amusement underlaid with a profound sense of relief. She was grateful that Bellamy was well, because she had no idea how she'd have coped if he hadn't been.
She knew she should have expected that he'd want to hear how her own exam turned out.
"So… Jackson said you're okay?" he asked casually, as they slid into bed that night.
Clarke reached out to turn off her bedside light, noting the anxiety in his face.
"Yeah, I am. He was actually kind of shocked, but he said I'm healthy."
"Thank god," Bellamy muttered just as the light went out.
XXXXXXXXXX
As it turned out, Becca hadn't had to swim to get to the beach house after all.
They were all gathered in the living room when she showed up at mid-morning the following day, and after being introduced to Octavia, Miller, and Jackson, she explained how shockingly easy it had been to get away. She'd said nothing at all to the goons and simply taken out her boat from the boathouse and motored across the bay to the marina/garage complex where she stored her car.
"What about when you go back?" Clarke wanted to know. "Could there be questions then?"
Becca shrugged. "Maybe. I'll just… I guess I'll tell them I had to see my doctor about 'women's problems'. It's amazing how fast that shuts most men up."
Bellamy snorted, amused, but also unable to contemplate a culture where simple bodily functions could be a source of embarrassment. He'd grown up on the Ark where they all lived cheek by jowl and nothing was ever a secret.
Except for Octavia, of course.
Becca heaved a sigh. "On the other hand, I've hardly left the island for months and now I've been gone twice in one week. So I'm not sure I could leave again without arousing at least some suspicion. Especially now that I've tried to beg off finishing the program."
From across the room, her intense gaze swung between Bellamy and Clarke. "So if we're going to make a plan it really has to be today."
Bellamy nodded. "Right. So first, I'm going to ask it again. You can't just screw up the program?"
She shook her head. "Like I told you, it's essentially done. I've mostly been reviewing and doing my own beta testing before I'm supposed to deliver it on the 30th of next month. Screwing it up completely would be too obvious and probably lead to questions that you don't want me to have to answer."
Bellamy had frozen for an instant when he heard the expected delivery date.
Jesus! That was just one day before the fucking bombs had dropped!
His eyes flew to Clarke, and he knew she'd also made that connection, and that there was no longer any room for doubt.
Bill Cadogan, for some nefarious purpose that they couldn't even begin to fathom, had been the architect of the apocalypse.
But that was in another past, he reminded himself. This time they would stop him.
"No, we definitely don't want any questions asked," he agreed. "But… we still have a little time to figure it out, right?"
Knowing the delivery date at least gave them a handle on the time frame.
But then Becca hesitated.
"Oh. Yeah. So when I talked to you yesterday," she said finally, "I was so freaked out that I forgot to tell you that Cadogan mentioned moving the delivery date forward a couple of weeks. Maybe…I don't know… maybe some instinct told him he was on the verge of being found out."
Fuck! They'd come back to save the world and it looked like the only thing they'd accomplished so far was to make things worse. And then it hit Bellamy that if the date was moved up they'd also have to get Gabriel to expedite the transfer of the rest of their friends. Assuming that was even possible.
"Okay," he said, suddenly realizing that they didn't have even a second to waste. "So where do we start, Becca?"
"Well…" She seemed to consider. "I assume you want to do this without Cadogan ever figuring out who was responsible for screwing him over?"
He nodded. "Absolutely. When his plan fails, none of it should be traceable back to us. Or Rosa. Or to you, Becca."
"Agreed. Okay, then. The first thing we have to do is figure out how my computer's being hacked. And who's taken out the fail safes. And we have to do it without Cadogan or anyone else catching on."
"Who built your system, Becca?" Raven asked, speaking up for the first time that day.
"Cadogan paid for it, but the hardware setup was to my own specifications, and installed by people I've known for years and totally trust. And the system is completely closed. No wiring into any other system. No WiFi."
Raven nodded. "Okay. What about a direct wireless connection?"
Becca's eyes widened, as though she hadn't before considered that possibility.
"I suppose that's theoretically possible, but my system is huge so a direct connection would need a very powerful and totally dedicated computer system. It would also have to be pretty close by."
That was when Bellamy had a sudden flash of insight.
"What about Alexandria?" he asked. "Would that be close enough to… to hack into you? Alter your code? Get rid of the fail safes?"
Becca frowned. "I… suppose it would. But… are you thinking of the Second Dawn system, Bellamy? Because I've seen it and it's not powerful enough. They mostly use it for bookkeeping and things like that. Membership mailings. Besides, there are a lot of people in that office. Do you think all of Cadogan's low-level IT people are in on this?"
But Bellamy had a completely different idea.
"Bell…" Octavia said suddenly, her head jerking around to look at him. And he knew she'd figured it out, too.
"Not at all. He'd limit knowledge of a plan that crazy to just a few close confederates. But what if there was another computer system in that building? One you knew nothing about?" He eyed her carefully. "Have you ever been to Cadogan's personal office."
"The Inner Sanctum? No, and it's kind of a joke that no one ever gets in there. Every meeting I had with the man was in a conference room. His office is on the top floor and the security is tight, I don't see how you'd ever get in there. Or really, why you'd want to."
"I'm pretty sure Octavia and I have already been inside Cadogan's office, Becca."
Her face lit up in surprise. "How the hell did you do that? Are you people magicians, too?"
His smile was wry. "Hardly. There's a bunker beneath the Second Dawn building, and it's the place we all ended up when we came through the wormhole. Which was okay because we were familiar with it, especially Octavia, who lived in the bunker for several years… a hundred years from now. And she remembered there was a secret passageway, but she never knew where it led to because in our timeline the bunker was buried in rubble. But last week we found the passageway and explored it, and I'm pretty damn sure the place we ended up was Cadogan's private office."
Bellamy paused to make sure he had their full attention. "Cadogan's office… where we saw another computer setup with multiple screens and a lot of peripherals. Now you all know my knowledge of computers is crap, so I can't say for certain that that system is the one that's hacking into Becca. But my gut tells me it is."
Raven spoke up excitedly.
"It makes sense! So… all I'd have to do is get in there and break the connection. Which I could probably do by myself, if I had to, to avoid any suspicion falling on you, Becca. After that, whoever is monitoring your program would never see any changes you made to it. Like fixing the fail safes."
"Would that work?" Clarke asked, and Bellamy could feel her mounting excitement.
Becca nodded. "Yeah, it probably would, if you could stay in the room long enough to actually get it all done. But even if the office was empty and you used your secret passageway to get in there, the problem is the security. When I was there, I noticed that while the building is in use, security thoroughly checks every room every half hour. And that's not long enough. You'd be sure to get caught."
"What about going in at night when the building's not in use?" Octavia asked. "Bell's got the key so we could enter from the back and sneak up the passageway. I could go with Raven to show her."
"Have you ever been near that building at night?" Becca asked.
Bellamy answered for all of them.
"We haven't. We all arrived during the day. Clarke was in there a couple of weeks after we got here, and Octavia and I found that passageway the afternoon you were here at the beach house. All during the day,"
"Then you won't have realized that that place is shut up tighter than Fort Knox at night. There are exterior floodlights all around the building, and the entire place is alarmed. And I've heard it isn't the police who come if someone's caught, it's Cadogan's private security force."
"The goon squad," Clarke said.
Becca nodded. "Exactly."
"Shit!" Bellamy felt his frustration begin to rise. The plan had seemed so doable. "So how the hell do we get in there when the security is so frequent during the day and the place is so heavily guarded at night. It seems… impossible."
"Or maybe not," Rosa said suddenly.
"Rosa." Bellamy looked over at her in surprise. "You have an idea?"
"Just a moment," she said, fishing around in her purse and then pulling out a heavy vellum envelope with old-fashioned calligraphic writing on the front.
"This came in the mail last week and I was so taken by the coincidence that instead of throwing it away I put it in my purse to show you. And then promptly forgot about it."
"What is it?" Clarke asked.
"It's an invitation to a gala celebration for the 10th anniversary of Second Dawn. I'm not sure why I even received it, other than being on the board of, uh, one or two organizations around here. I get these sorts of things often, but I rarely attend, because they only ever have two purposes. The first is celebrating their own importance, and the second is raising funds. Of course, in the case of Second Dawn, I imagine they'd also be looking for new members. Rich ones."
Becca nodded. "Yeah, I got one of those, too. I don't usually bother with that stuff, either, but I figured I was stuck this time because of, you know, the funding."
Bellamy was perplexed. "So… how does this help us, Rosa?"
"Well, it's a very fancy affair, Bellamy, black tie and such, and some of the wealthiest and most important people in the area are sure to attend, if only to be seen by everyone else. And I've heard Cadogan likes to show off his building to newcomers, so people are bound be milling around all over the place, inside and out." She paused. "So it's one night the floodlights and alarm system will most certainly be turned off."
"So," Octavia jumped in, "if the alarms and floodlights are off, then I could sneak Raven in the back entrance and up the passageway to the office. And since you're already in the building, Becca, you could meet us there."
"That might work," Becca said. "But even with two of us it's still going to take a lot of time to pull the plug on the connection without leaving a trace, and we'll need to be able to work uninterrupted. So what if Cadogan decides to bring one of his more favored guests to see his private office?"
"Yes," Rosa said, with a small smile. "I think this plan will definitely call for a… diversionary tactic. A distraction. Something, or someone, new and interesting enough to capture Cadogan's attention and make sure he has no time to visit his office."
"And what would that be?" Bellamy asked, puzzled.
"Well, I think perhaps I'll be attending the gala this year after all. I haven't been to one in a while and it could be interesting. And besides, I'd like to introduce Mr. Cadogan to a couple of my new friends, a very attractive — and very wealthy — couple, Bellamy Blake and Clarke Griffin."
Bellamy blinked at her in surprise. Rosa wanted them to do what?
But then he looked over at Clarke and thought… what the hell?
His face lit up with a grin.
"So what do you say, Princess? You want to go to a ball?"