Two girls sat across from each other, in a small metal cell, bouncing a small red ball back and forth between them. The two were silent. They didn't have anything to say to each other. They were too bored for useless words. And talking just wasted oxygen.
The two girls were complete opposites. Lottie was the tall black-haired girl, with fierce features and an army jacket. Jessica was the short dirty blond headed girl with soft curls and dainty flower necklace. Lottie was outspoken with violent tendencies, while Jessica was quiet with wicked thoughts running through her head. Jessica was the calm, and Lottie was the storm.
The door to the small cell opened, causing the two girls to lose their concentration on the small red ball, as their focus turned to the three guard members entering.
"Prisoners 275 and 307 please stand." The first guard stated, as the second one opened a silver case, and the last one stood in the doorway with his teaser rod out and at the ready.
Jessica all but jumped to her feet, not wanting to cause any disturbances. The second guard pulled a silver bracelet out of the case and moved towards her with it, asking her to hold out her wrist.
Lottie pocketed the red ball, giving the guards a sharp glare as she slowly got to her feet. "Wait, Jessica, what's that bracelet?" She said towards the first guard who spoke.
At the sound of Lottie's question, Jessica jerked her hand back to her torso, before the guard could secure the bracelet, cradling it as though she had been burned.
"It tracks your vitals, now comply or we will take drastic measures." The guard said the last part towards Jessica. The shorter girl looked over towards the taller, who nodded her head.
After the bracelets had been secured onto the wrists of the girls, they were led out of the cell with nothing but the order of "Follow me."
The girls didn't say too much, sure they were scared, confused, and panicking. But they knew that causing a disturbance wouldn't do them any good. They knew that something major was going down. Lottie knew from her last cellmate that they didn't give you a bracelet to track your vitals before floating you. No, that would be a waste of resources.
Jessica looked over at the girl who had come to be a close companion to her, during her 7-month stay in the sky box. She could see her friend, whose posture was perfect, whose walk flowed with confidence, and whose eyes while steeled in front of her were scared behind her mask.
It seemed that every kid over the age of 13 was being taken by the guards. All of them having the same steel bracelet that matched hers. Was this a mass floating? A mass trial? Were they being released? Jessica didn't know what was going on, and the noise of the scared kids around her wasn't helping.
They're killing you all. You are going to die, and they are taking everyone with you. This is your fault. Jessica was freaking out, the noise, the confusion, the fact that she had just lost Lottie in the crowd. The guards were pushing her, but she couldn't get her legs to work. Her breath had sped up almost to the point of hyperventilating. People were running into her. Her eyes couldn't focus on anything around her; it was all just a spinning blur of colours.
Someone had grabbed her shoulders, and it sounded like a voice was talking to her, but all she heard was the never ending cycle of This is your fault . A prick on her neck was the last thing that she felt before the voices stopped and darkness overtook her vision.
Lottie had been in front of a very pushy guard, causing her to practically speed walk her way to the drop ship. She knew that she had lost Jessica somewhere in the crowd, but she knew that they would end up at the same place eventually, so she didn't worry too much. She walked through the crowd of delinquents with her head held high, making her give off an image of superiority and imitation. Of course, the fact that there was a guard behind her, holding a lightsaber to her back may have taken away a bit of that image.
As she was pushed into the drop ship and forced up onto the second floor, she took a moment to look around. The walls were that dull grey metal that seemed to surround her whole life. Hard black chairs were placed literally everywhere that they could fit them, with red harnesses on them, there were even some standing harnesses. She prayed that she wasn't one of the unlucky bastards that got to buckle in there.
Kids and guards were scattered around the drop ship, some kids looked scared to death, while others held impassive faces, but some of the kids were carried in, like a blonde girl who was all but dead to the world thanks to a tranquilizer dart in her neck. Wannabe Luke Skywalker, or the guard behind her, pushed her up a ladder to the third level and into a seat that was up against one of the pipes. As he roughly buckled her in, she heard an all too familiar laugh come from the seat next to her. The guard left as soon as she was in.
"For fucks sake." Lottie groaned as she looked over at her neighbor.
Of course, he was there, the annoying shit was always around, even on a fucking drop ship full of criminals she had ended up next to him. She didn't know that he had been confined. It made sense that he was a criminal though, honestly, she would have thought that he would have been arrested before she was.
"Nice to see you too, Cupcake."
Murphy, fucking Jonathan Murphy.
Lottie's childhood neighbor, and one of the only constant things in her life (not that she wanted him to be there). No matter where she went, it seemed that Murphy was always there.
After growing up living next to each other, sitting next to each other in school, running in similar social circles, and even being neighbors in the skybox, it seemed that the two were destined to be there for one another, whether they liked it or not.
"Go away, Murphs." Lottie said with a groan, moving her body as far away from them as she could, while being strapped in.
Murphy rolled his eyes and gave the girl next to him a hard look, "I'm strapped to a chair on a drop ship. Sorry to disappoint, but I'm not going anywhere."
Lottie just let out a loud, exaggerated sigh and slammed her head back against the seat, "Ouch."
The screen on the wall was on, showing the image of the Ark's Chancellor Jaha. "You have been given an unprecedented opportunity to put the past behind you," The Chancellor was saying, it was streaming to the second and third level of the dropship, but from the background it was clear that he was at the entrance to the ship, "The mission on which you are embarking is dangerous, as your crimes have made you expendable, but your bravery will be rewarded. If you succeed, your infractions will be forgiven, and you will be able to start new lives on Earth."
Most of the kids, on Lottie's level at least, had drowned out the Chancellor's voice, not a single one of them gave two flying fucks as to what he was saying. "We will be monitoring your progress very closely, in order to keep you safe."
"I wonder if Jaha shits in the toilet as much as he does in his speeches?" Murphy said with a chuckle, nudging Lottie with his elbow.
"I haven't even been next to you for ten minutes, and you are already bringing out the shitty jokes? God, I wish I was back in confinement."
"You love my shitty jokes, just like I adore your shitty puns."
The Chancellor's voice boomed over the small talk that the delinquents were carrying on. He still held himself like a soldier, but his years on the Council had give him a politician's gloss. "No one on the Ark knows what you are about to do, but if you succeed, we will all owe you our lives. I know that you will do your very best on behalf of yourselves, your families, everyone aboard this ship: the entire human race.
"The drop site for the mission has been carefully selected. Mount Weather once was a military stronghold that had the ability to sustain three hundred people for an entire year though a nuclear war. There you will find rations and supplies. Good luck and Godspeed."
The screen cut to black after a few seconds, before numbers flashed on screen. The countdown has begun. In three minutes they would no longer be on the Ark. They would no longer be in the place that humanity called their home for the past three hundred years. They would be free.
Jessica awoke in a strange place to the sound of a gunshot. She didn't know where she was, as the last thing she remembered was losing it after she lost Lottie in the crowd. With quick glances at her surroundings she knew that she was on a ship of some sort, strapped to a chair, and between two young teens around her age who were freaking out as much as she was, only they seemed more on edge because of the fact that the Chancellor was just shot by a guard member as the door to the ship was closing. The guard managed to push the Chancellor out the door just in time. As he slid into one of the empty chairs and strapped himself in, the ship began moving through space.
You should have been shot, not the chancellor, the voice echoed through her head in her momentary confusion, that rogue guard still has his gun, maybe he'll use it on you next.
Jessica was losing it again, she needed to calm down, but she couldn't with the voice in her head. She moved her hands to cover her ears, but that did nothing at all. She couldn't drown out the voice by herself.
"Hey, hey," She heard a voice calling out to her, though it sounded distant, she clung to the voice, hoping it could save her. " Breathe, breathe, it's not as terrible as it seems. I think."
Jessica did just that, she breathed and slowly she became aware of her surroundings again. When she felt like the voice in her head could no longer reach her she lowered her hands back down.
"There you go, you good?" She looked over to see that the voice came from a blonde boy, no older than fifteen.
Jessica could only say, "Am I good?" in disbelief that he would ask that, after witnessing her freak out.
"Right, dumb question. Anyway, I'm Connor. You?"
"Jessica." She mumbled out, just as the main thrusts roared to life, shaking any further words from her lips.
It had really happened. For the first time in centuries, humans had left The Ark. Jessica quickly glanced around at the other passengers, they had all gone quiet. Call it a spontaneous moment of silence for the world they were leaving behind.
But the solemnity didn't last long. For the next twenty minutes, the dropship was filled with the nervous, overexcited chatter of a hundred teens, who until a few hours ago had never cared enough to even think about going to Earth.
"So Jessica, excited to not be locked up?" Connor asked the quiet girl next to him.
As everyone noticed one of the kids one the other side of the first level of the dropship exit his safety belts and floated through the ship.
Jessica nodded slightly, as she ignored the cheers around the level. "Yeah, I mean I do wish that I was back on the Ark, and not heading to my death." Even if I do deserve it.
"It can't be that bad." Connor said. looking over as two more kids followed the space walker out of their harnesses.
"Earth has been simmering in radiation for almost three hundred years, the atmosphere has probably been burnt away and little to zero oxygen is left on Earth. So we will either die as soon as the door is opened, due to the lack of oxygen and overdose of radiation, or we will be slowly die over a few days." Jessica said quickly, "Probably." She tacked on to the end, as to not sound like too much of a nerd or a masochist.
Connor looked at her in disbelief, he hadn't even thought of that. "I think I'd rather drop dead right away then spend a few days slowly dying."
The lower level of the dropship had a handful of windows, which had caught Jessica's attention, as they were filling with hazy grey clouds. The dropship jerked suddenly, and the cheers no longer sounded, all buzz of conversation gave way to gasps.
The three that were floating through the air dropped suddenly, Jessica couldn't see what had happened to them, and honestly she was more concerned with her own life than theirs right now. It's happening, are you ready to die yet?
The voice was back, and the shaking increased, followed by a strange hum. Jessica's harness dug into her stomach as her body lurched from side to side, then up and down, and then side to side again. You should have taken off your harness, because who knows if you will survive with it, you would have surely died without it.
The hum had become a piercing wail, punctuated by a sickening crunch. With a glance at the windows, Jessica saw that they were cracking and no longer grey.
They were full of flames.
Jessica felt a grip on her hand. Connor had reached out and taken a hold of her hand. The dropship shook even harder, and with a roar, part of the wall tore off. Bits of white-hot metal began raining down. Jessica pulled her hand free of Connor's and raised her arms to protect her head, but she could still feel debris scorching her neck.
There was a deafening crash followed by a thud followed by a thud that sent ripples of pain through every bone in her body.
As suddenly as it began, it was all over.
"Holy fucking shit!" Murphy gasped out as the dropship jerked suddenly, and all of the conversations around seceded into screams.
Lottie clenched her fists as the dropship shook with turbulence, causing her harness to dig into her stomach. She felt Murphy, of all people, put his hand over her fist and give her a quick squeeze. It was nice to know that at least she wasn't dying alone.
Any semblance of a moment was quickly ruined as a rancid odor filled Lottie's nose, causing her to gag. Looking up she realized that the small blonde girl that sat across from her had vomited. Lottie squeezed her eyes shut, hoping that it would all be over soon.
A piercing wail followed by a sickening crunch sounded as bits of white hot metal had begun to rain down on them. Lottie and Murphy seemed to crouch towards each other and in on themselves as they desperately tried to cover themselves from the hot metal bits that began to scorch their skin.
The dropship shook even harder, if that was even possible, and with a roar a part of the roof ripped off. There was a deafening crash followed by a thud that sent ripples of pain through every bone in her body.
And just like that it was all over. The cabin was dark and silent. Smoke billowed out of a hole where the control panel had been, and the air grew thick with the smell of melting metal, sweat, and blood.
After an exhale or two people seemed to realize that the dropship had most likely landed. With a quick look around, Lottie noticed that on the far side of the ship, near the hole in the ceiling that there are several empty seats. Lottie's heart sped up as she realized that some of the other kids must have been thrown from the ship.
Murphy had already left his seat and was making his way down to a lower level along with most of the other kids, at least the ones who weren't hurt in the crash. Unhooking her harness, Lottie shakily rose to her feet, holding on to her scorched seat for balance. She limped along with the rest of the kids, gritting her teeth as pain was shooting up her leg with every step.
Not that anyone could exit the dropship, it seemed that a family reunion between the Blake siblings was taking place right in front of the only way off the ship. It wasn't until Bellamy Blake in all his glory, guards uniform and all, pulled the lever to the dropship door, that the crowd was able to start moving. Octavia Blake was the first of them all on the ground, and with her yell of, "We're back, bitches." The floodgates were released and everyone made their way off of the ship.
Lottie's first image of earth was colors, not shapes. Stripes of blues, greens, and browns that were so vibrant that her brain couldn't process them. A gust of wind passed over her, making her skin tingle and flooding her nose with scents that Lottie couldn't identify.
At first, all she could make out were trees, hundreds of them. The ground seemed to stretch out in all directions ten times further than the longest deck back on the Ark. The amount of space was ridiculous, and Lottie suddenly felt light-headed, as though she might float away.
She became vaguely aware of voices behind her and turned to see a dark skinned guy, Nathan Miller. "It's beautiful." He said as he reached down and ran his trembling hand along the shiny green blades of grass.
A short, stocky girl, Zoe Monroe, took a few shaky steps forward. The gravitational pull on the Ark was meant to mimic Earth's, but faced with the real thing it was clear that they hadn't gotten it quite right. "Everything's fine," Monroe said, her voice a mixture of relief and confusion. "We could've come back ages ago."
Lottie saw Clarke Griffin, someone that she had known before the Skybox, stalk over to the group. "You don't know that," Clarke shot off. "Just because we can breathe now, doesn't mean that the air isn't toxic." Clark faced Monroe and held her wrist up, gesturing to the silver bracelet. "We weren't given these for jewelry. They want to see what happens to us."
A smaller girl named Charlotte hovering next to the dropship whimpered as she pulled her jacket up over her mouth.
"You can breathe normally," Clarke told her.
Lottie wasn't sure how much that was true, there was no way to tell how much radiation was still in the atmosphere. All they could do was wait and hope.
Back on the Ark, before Lottie had been locked up in the Skybox, she had been going someplace. At fifteen she had been shortlisted into a nurse training program, that was where she had met Clarke. Clarke was there to get her basics down before getting put into the doctorate training.
The two girls hadn't been close, in fact the only ever talked if necessary, Lottie wasn't from Alpha Station, no she was a poorer girl from Tesla Station, and Clarke really only talked with people from Alpha Station. Clarke only really talked to Lottie during their Earth Skills training, which also happened to be the only time Clarke was let out of solitary.
Of course, now that they were on the ground it seemed that Clarke had decided that Lottie was to be one of her second in command. Meaning that since Lottie had medical knowledge and a good, good-ish, head on her shoulders Lottie got to try and get some of the injured kids taken care of while Clarke worked out how to find this mystical Mount Weather.
Only two kids had died in the landing, the two that had stupidly followed Finn out of their harnesses, and there weren't many serious injuries, but there were enough to keep Lottie busy. For nearly an hour, she used torn shirt sleeves and pant legs as makeshift tourniquets, and ordered a few people with broken bones to lie still till she could find a way to fashion splints. their supplies were scattered across the grass, but although she had sent multiple people to search for the medicine chest, it hadn't been recovered.
The battered dropship was at the short end of the L- shaped clearing and for the first fifteen minutes, the passengers had clustered around the smoking wreckage, too scared and stunned to move more than a few shaky steps. But now they had started milling around. Lottie hadn't seen Jessica, so she guessed that the younger girl hadn't been hurt on re-entry, but she would find her later and make sure that she really was okay.
Lottie had set up the med-station just inside the dropship on the first level. Clark had suggested it, and Clarke was the closest thing that they had to an actual doctor so Lottie listened. Plus she was able to sort together a makeshift surgery table that she could work on really injured kids on. The fact that she, a half-trained, seventeen-year-old nurse, was working on injured kids would have been laughable, if their health and life hadn't been thrusted into her hands while Clarke was busy looking at a dumb map.
Murphy had been one of the first people that she had sent off to try and find some medical supplies. It was suffice to say that he had met up with some of his friends from the Skybox, or maybe even from Tesla Station. But either way he had ditched her and wouldn't be back.
Murphy's voice rang out, as annoying as ever, drawing Lottie's attention from the dropship. "Hey hands off. He's with us."
At the sound of Murphy undoubtedly about to find himself in a shitload of trouble, she decided to head out and see exactly what he had got himself into. Walking onto the dropship's lowered door, she saw Clarke standing over the dumb Mount Weather map, Well Jaha facing off with Murphy, Jasper Jordan and Monty Green over to the side of the fight looking shook as hell, and a crowd for delinquents forming around them.
Wells Jaha, the most hated member of the hundred, put his hands up as the group of boys that Murphy had befriended moved in closer on Wells. "Relax, we are just trying to figure out where we are."
Bellamy and Octavia Blake had made their way to the front of the crowd, led more by Octavia, who really just wanted to be in the middle of everything.
"We're on the ground, is that not good enough for you?" Bellamy said.
"We need to find Mount Weather." Wells looked like he was getting irritated as hell, as he turned to face the ever forming crowd. "You heard my father's message, that has to be our first priority."
Bellamy and Wells seemed to get along like gasoline to fire, and Lottie couldn't wait to watch it burn.
"Screw your father. You think that you're in charge here, you and your little Princess?" Octavia asked with hatred sounding in her voice.
Lottie moved over to Murphy's group, as Clarke and Wells moved their attention over towards Octavia, Bellamy, and the rest of the hundred. "You really have never laid low in your entire life have you?"
All Murphy could think of to respond with was a rough laugh.
Clarke was getting fed up more and more by the minute. "Do you think we care who's in charge here we need to find Mount Weather. Not because the Chancellor said so, but because the longer we wait, the hungrier we will get, and the harder it will be. How long do you think we will last without those supplies?"
Lottie had to hand it to Clarke, she really knew how to give a speech. Clarke wasn't stopping, "We are looking at a 20 mile trek, okay? So, if we want to get there before dark we need to leave... now."
Bellamy interrupted, "I got an idea how about you two go. Find it for us. Let the privileged do the hard work for a change.
Cheers and sounds of approval go around the crowd, Lottie joins in the cheer as well. She always learned it was best to follow the course and just go with everyone else. She wasn't like Clarke.
"You aren't listening. We all need to go!" Wells spoke with a raised voice before he was interrupted, and pushed roughly.
Of course Murphy would feel the need to get in the middle of things. "Look at this, everybody. Chancellor of the Earth."
Wells rounded on Murphy, "You think that's funny?"
Without even a pause, Murphy's leg swept Wells to the ground. Lottie quickly moved forward to grab onto Clarke, as Clark called out to Wells. Lottie didn't need Clarke getting into a fight with Murphy. The crowd circled around, ready to watch Wells get the shit beat out of him.
"No, but that was." Murphy circled Wells.
Wells managed to stumble back to his feet, with an obvious limp. Something that Lottie was going to have to deal with after the fight, Lottie let out a sigh as she tightened her arms around Clarke, keeping her in place.
"Alright, come on." Murphy baited, but before the fight could really get started, Finn the spacewalker jumped down from nowhere, and into the middle of the fight.
Lottie had let go of Clarke in shock, but everyone else was in shock too. Clarke didn't even try to move towards the fight.
"Kid's got one leg. How about you wait till it's a fair fight?" Lottie moved to grab a hold of Murphy's arm and drag him back to his friends, as Octavia walks up to Finn, the crowd watching,
"Hey spacewalker, rescue me next." While Octavia managed to disperse all the tension and get a laugh out of the crowd, Murphy had angrily stormed off with his friends following along behind him.
Lottie just let out a soft, "Really," at the boy and shook her head before moving back towards the dropship.
While Clarke had put Lottie in charge while she was gone, at least of the injured, and of keeping Wells in line, Bellamy had named Murphy his second, and neither Murphy nor Lottie knew if it was a blessing or a curse.
Murphy and his friend Mbege had been making their way around the camp removing the wristbands of those willing, thanks to the orders of Bellamy. Murphy knew that Lottie wouldn't remove her wristband mainly just to spite Murphy, so he had pushed her back inside the dropship with the promise of leaving her alone. It worked.
Lottie herself had even made a friend, a leggy brunette named Roma, who Lottie had discovered was fairly good at scavenging. So Roma, who talked way more than Lottie had hoped, was sent to go find supplies for Lottie to start making splints with.
Splints for broken bones were all she had left to deal with, and she really had saved the hardest for last. Lottie wished Clarke was here for the splints.
Lottie wasn't that good with splints. Not like Clarke was at least, and if Lottie had her way Clarke would have been the one to stay at the dropship and take care of all the injuries instead of playing leader.
The dull grey walls of the dropship were easy on Lottie's eyes, they reminded her of the Ark. The only bits of color were where some of the boys had hung up part of the orange parachute over the door.
"I see you didn't head with the others to Mount Weather." Wells Jaha's annoying voice interrupted her mindless thinking as he pushed his way through the curtain and into the dropship.
Lottie glanced over at the boy as he limped into the dropship. "Yeah well, Princess Clark all but demanded I stay and take care of the landing injuries."
Wells ignored her comment about Clarke, but continued on. "What about non landing injuries?"
"Get up here and I'll take a look." Lottie said, patting at her makeshift examination table, having Wells lift himself up onto it.
"You know that you have a massive target on your back, right?" Lottie spoke after a beat of silence.
"Because I'm Privileged." Wells retorted in a mocking tone, but also in a voice that was akin to Murphey's.
Lottie rotated his ankle making the boy flinch, "No. Because your dad was the one who put every kid here, and those kids can't take their feelings out on your dad, but you? You're fair game." Lottie grabbed some of the extra cloth that Roma had found her and began wrapping his ankle into a better position. "You need to stand up for yourself and fight back, because if you don't these dumbasses will see you as weak. Honestly at this rate, you may as well me dead by the end of the week. Now stay off that ankle, and get out of my dropship."
Jessica shivered in the late afternoon chill. In the few hours since they had landed, the air had grown colder. She moved closer to the bonfire, it was warm. Jessica had never been this close to a real fire, most kids hadn't. Most people on the Ark didn't even know how to even start a fire. Jessica wasn't sure who had started the fire, but she was sure that she probably wouldn't have known who they were if she did.
One person that she actually knew of was, John Murphy, he was one of the people that Lottie would talk to on occasion. Murphy was seated next to Jessica, although he had paid her no attention, he was more preoccupied with the large crowd that was forming around him. It made her anxious just to be sitting next to the boy, mainly because of the type of crowd that he drew, and as with every wristband that he would pop off someone's wrist and toss into the fire, his crowd of onlookers would cheer, causing Jessica to shrink even more into herself.
Connor had sat himself on Jessica's other side, having stuck close to the quiet girl since the landing. She had been zoned out for a bit, just staring at Connor's wristband. She was kind of curious about how he felt about them, as while he was still wearing his, he was cheering with the rest of the crowd, but Jessica couldn't bring herself to ask. She was never really one to start conversations, nor speak up about anything really.
Soon enough Jessica was pulled out of her head as she heard the cheers that had surrounded them turn into grumbling as Wells Jaha crashed everyone's bonfire party.
"What the hell do you think you're doing" Wells yelled out, mainly towards Murphy, of course it also made Jessica feel as though he was yelling at her, causing her to shrink into Connor. Connor threw his arm around her shoulder, as Wells killed the crowd's buzz. Jessica, herself wasn't having much fun to begin with, but the fun that everyone else was having seemed to simmer out as Mbege moved towards Wells.
"We're liberating ourselves. What does it look like?" Bellamy Blake, the gunman from the dropship had been standing towards the back of the crowd, just watching the fire, said in a soft yet strong voice, as he moved to pull Mbege back.
"Oh, this will be good." Connor said, as he shot Jessica a look that she couldn't decipher. Was Conner being sarcastic, or serious. It was hard for her to tell with him sometimes. Maybe that's why Jessica had stuck with him, because Connor was a lot like Lottie in that aspect, and it was familiar to her.
As for Lottie, Jessica saw her old cell mate coming up behind Wells, not that she stood close enough for anyone to think that she was on the boy's side.
Of course Lottie would be in the middle of things, she was important, unlike Jessica. Lottie knew Clarke and Murphy, she would probably be a swing vote later down the road when the group's politics started to settle.
Wells stared at Bellamy dumbly for two beats, before he moved back to the crowd. "It looked like you're trying to get us all killed. The communication system is dead. These wristbands are all we've got. Take them off and the Ark will think that we are dying, that it's not safe for them to follow."
Jessica shook her head at what Wells was saying. The voices that had been quiet for hours were trying to be heard again. Take off the wristband, if you won't actually die, do the next best thing.
"That's the point, Chancellor. We can take care of ourselves," The crowd around Jessica seemed to be buzzing. Bellamy was amazing with giving speeches, she would give him that. "Can't we?" He yelled out the last part at the crowd, he had a gift for engaging the crowd more effectively that Wells could've ever hoped to. Wells, it seemed, never stood a chance.
Connor, not one to be left out, yelled, "Yeah!" causing some of the other kids around him to follow his lead. Jessica as well yelled out, abet quieter than everyone else, but enough to fit in with the crowd. Not because she agreed, but because it was always easier to go along with the crowd.
"You think this is a game. Those aren't just our friends and parents up there. Those are our farmers, our doctors, our engineers.." Jessica had a front row seat to the fight of the day, and she felt that she would rather be anywhere else than just across the fire from all the action. She could see Wells trying his best to win a failing argument, and Lottie who was waiting for the moment that someone would dive at Wells, so that she could pull him out of the way. Earlier Jessica had seen Lottie hanging around the dropship, taking care of the injured members of the 100, it was a relief for Jessica to see her, she kind of missed the girl's snarky attitude.
Lottie didn't really care about whether or not anyone else wanted to take off their wristbands, that was their decision, not anyone else's. She was just getting tired of babysitting Wells all day, she had spent most of the day trying to get Wells to leave her alone, and now she had to listen to him go off on the entire camp. She glanced around the fire with a look of annoyance, catching Bellamy's eye, and sharing a look. At least Bellamy and her held the same sentiment.
Wells continued on, with no care that none of the crowd was on his side. "...I don't care what he tells you. We won't survive here on our own. Besides if it really is safe, how could you not want the rest of our people to come down."
"My people already are down. Those people locked my people up. Those people killed my mother for the crime of having a second child. Your father did that." Bellamy said, stepping closer to Wells, as the argument got more personal.
Lottie could see Wells was visibly tensing at the mention of his father. Not that she cared enough to comfort him about it. "My father didn't write the laws."
"No he just enforced them, but not anymore, not here, here there are no laws." Bellamy said, causing more yells to be heard as the crowd took in the words being said.
Wells was looking around him at the crowd that had become entranced with the words that Bellamy had spoken, making the boy to become more and more nervous. "Here, we do whatever the hell we want, whenever the hell we want."
Lottie looked around the fire at the crowd as cheers sounded out, it was crazy to see such a massive amount of people practically vibrating with energy, Lottie's eyes locked onto Jessica who sat locked in a embrace of a young black boy, with her eyes squeezed shut and worry lines etched onto her face, Lottie would have to remember to talk to Jessica at some point soon.
"You don't have to like it Wells, you can even try to stop it or change it, kill me. You know why. Whatever the hell we want."
"Whatever the hell we want!" Murphy yelled, moving closer to the middle of the crowd, and raised his hands up. Around him the crowd joined in, echoing the words, "Whatever the hell we want!" It was loud and jostling as the crowd moved into a mob-like mentality. Lottie turned away from the scene before her to head back to the quiet of the dropship before she froze.
Something cold and wet hit Lottie on her nose. Water? She brought her hand up to whip it away. Rain? It started out slow and soft, and then all at once rain began to come down, not too hard, but enough for everyone to figure out what exactly it was. It was the first rain that any humans had ever witnessed in close to three centuries, and as Lottie turned back to go towards the dropship, she reached out her arms and did a childlike spin for the first time in what felt like forever.