M A I A

Bellamy and I searched the compound, Murphy and the remaining Shadows on our heels. It was Gav who spotted the broken keypad, pried off the wall. "Like father like son," Bellamy quipped.

I paused, remembering Monty and Shauna doing much the same to a keypad in Mount Weather. It felt like eons had passed since then. In a way, it had.

I pushed open the door and stepped into a dark, cavernous room. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim light and I gasped. I took an involuntary step backward and ran right into Murphy. He put a hand on my arm to steady me, before he took in the sight himself.

Skeletons filled the room. They were lined up in rows and labeled with plaques like a macabre museum. "What the fuck?" Gav muttered as the others came into the room.

"Took the words right out of my mouth," Murphy agreed. He called toward the other end of the room. "Jordan come on, what are you doing in here?"

Jordan stepped between the skeletons with a grim expression. "Looking for answers."

The door closed behind us, and I jumped. Gaia weaved her way between us and started inspecting the skeletons. "They worship nightbloods, we need to know why."

"Weneedto leave," Murphy cut in.

Jordan scanned the room while Gaia searched. "They all have the mark of the Flame," she said softly. The door swung open again, and this time Murphy caught my shoulder in time to stop me from leaping out of my skin. It was only Clarke, she started in on the danger we were putting ourselves in by snooping, and I tuned her out.

"You good?" Murphy asked, moving me away from the skeletons. I didn't have time to answer before Jordan was pushing open a hidden door and stepping through it.

"It's an operating room!" He called. We all followed.

"We really shouldn't be here," Clarke said. "If Russell finds out–"

I turned to look at her. "Where was that concern whenyourcuriosity got me stranded in Mount Weather with forty kids I couldn't protect?" Clarke drew back a little and didn't reply. Murphy gave me a questioning look, but I ignored him.

"Let's find out what's really going on here," Jordan said. He logged into the computer and began pulling up files. For a moment I was back in Dante's office looking over Monty's shoulder.

Then the video began playing and I was snapped back to reality.

On screen, a girl was strapped to the operating table, struggling against her restraints. A man stood in front of the camera recording his experience, but all I could see was the girl. My palms grew sweaty. I closed my eyes fighting back all the memories I thought I'd finally forgotten.

"Maia–" Murphy took a step toward me, but Cal beat him to it. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and led me to the door into the sunlight. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes as if I could physically push the images out of my head.

"You're okay, you're safe now. You left that mountain a long time ago," Cal reminded me. "Things are different this time."

A manic laugh bubbled up in my throat. "Same shit, different planet."

I leaned forward on the table nursing a drink Cal had brought me. Learning the full story behind the video hadn't made it any better. The Primes were just that, the first settlers on Alpha. They'd found a way to use the mind drives that Becca had given them to prolong their lives indefinitely, even if it meant ending someone else's. They'd made themselves gods to save themselves.

Our group sat at a table in the tavern, discussing our next moves. Bellamy was more adamant than ever that we build our own compound and get the hell out of Sanctum, but Murphy was unconvinced. To everyone's shock, Clarke took his side, despite Madi and Gaia's protests.

Only Gav, Cal, and Alex had remained quiet. I could tell Cal and Gav were just as shaken by the revelation as I was, but Alex was harder to read. "I don't know what our next move is, but we can't be okay with this," I said finally. "I've watched too many people die. I won't be complicit in the deaths of more."

"So, we get out of here as soon as possible," Cal hedged. "No matter what that takes."

"Raven and Emori will figure out everything we need to know," Bellamy repeated. "We'll figure it out."

Alex looked unconvinced but followed Cal's lead. Gav looked up from the glass he was holding tightly in both hands. "And what, we just leave these people to keep doing what they're doing?"

"What choice do we have?" Alex asked. "It isn't our place."

Gavril stared him down for a moment. "Maybe I'm tired of staying in my place." He pushed his chair back from the table and stood up, heading for the door. Alex threw his hands up in annoyance.

Bellamy squeezed my shoulder. "I'm going to talk to Clarke." I put my hand on top of his and nodded.

As I lowered my arm, I traced my knife tattoo with my fingers. I looked between Cal and Alex and sighed. "Gav's right and we all know it. Shadows may take care of our own, but we were created to take care of everyone else first."

Alex muttered something in Russian that I couldn't make out. But Cal had given me a history lesson, I knew my stuff. The Shadows had worked outside the system to build another path, one they thought was better. A path that took care of the people the system took advantage of. Family drama and the occasional murder aside, it wasn't so different from what I'd done as Robin Hood.

Cal sighed. "We'll figure it out."

A

Octavia and I trekked through the woods behind Diyoza, as she tracked Xavier. We were both caked in muck from head to toe, but at least we were still alive. "Why'd you do that?" Octavia asked quietly. "You could've run, saved yourself."

"Funny way of saying thank you," I muttered.

"That's not–" She broke off and shook her head. "Never mind."

Diyoza turned to look at us, with a finger to her lips. Xavier's trail lead up to a cave. The walls glowed with some sort of bioluminescence. It was beautiful. I turned to Octavia, but she was grimacing in pain.

Diyoza had disappeared up ahead. I put an arm around Octavia, just before she collapsed. "Diyoza! Can we get some help back here!"

A moment later, she emerged holding Xavier at gunpoint. He took Octavia from me and looked her over. When we pulled back her sleeve, we all gasped. Her hand was withered and bone-thin. "It's spreading," Octavia moaned.

"Her hand must have been too close to the surface when she went under." Xavier placed her hand down delicately, as if afraid it might crumble to dust.

I carefully pulled her sleeve back down to cover her hand and tucked it against her chest. "Can you help her?" I asked.

Xavier nodded. "There's medicine, but we'll need to go back for it. We need to move quick; I'd say she has about three hours left before the time dilation reaches her brain."

I looked between Xavier and Diyoza. "Well, what are you waiting for?"

I absentmindedly doodled spirals on my arm while we waited for Diyoza and Xavier to come back with the medicine. "Planning another tattoo?" Octavia asked. I looked down at the pattern, it wasn't half bad. But unlike the rest of my ink, it didn't mean anything.

"It's because you remind me of a friend," I said after a moment.

"What?"

"You asked why I saved you," I reminded her.

"Let me guess, I remind you of the psychopath who tried to kill Maia."

"Ella had her reasons, just as I'm sure you had yours. Not everyone is so black and white, and revenge can get the best of us all."

Octavia looked down for a moment, reliving something from her past. "Yeah, well, I don't need you to save me." I rolled my eyes, but she wasn't done. "But thank you for doing it anyway."

It wasn't long before Diyoza and Xavier returned with the medicine. Tree sap that could supposedly speed up healing, though it didn't seem to do much for Octavia's arm. "It seems to have stopped spreading for now. But it won't last forever."

"Then cut it off," Octavia said, shoving her arm toward him. Her hand continued to shake, and Xavier watched it for a moment.

He grabbed a rock and pressed it into her hand. "Let's try something. Just drag it on the floor, don't try to control the movement." The three of us watched as Octavia's hand drew a perfect spiral.

I put a hand over my arm, self-consciously. "What does it mean?"

Xavier didn't look up from the drawing. "It's the symbol of the Anomaly, it's a message."

I pushed back my sleeve, just as Diyoza opened her notebook. The pages were filled with the same spirals I'd been drawing on my arm. "Then we better go see what it wants."

M A I A

I returned to the tavern to find Cal filling everyone else in on Jordan's discovery. "We have to be smart about this, if we rush into something, we risk everything."

"Not to mention, we need to know what they know if we want to survive on this planet," I added, leaning on the back of Cal's chair.

"The sooner we're out of here, the better," Raven said shaking her head. "Hopefully Bell finds a good place out there for us." I frowned, not understanding.

"He went out with a foraging party," Clarke said. "They'll be gone a few days."

"Last I heard, he was going to talk to you. He didn't say anything about a foraging party."

She shrugged. "Probably because you have a constantshadow."

I rolled my eyes. "They haven't been gone long. Echo and I can head out after them."

"I'll come too," Cal said, starting to get up.

"No,youneed to heal." I pushed him back into his seat, gently. "You won't be worth anything to anyone if you tear your stitches." He groaned but didn't try to get up again.

As Echo and I passed the bar, she nodded toward Alex. "Might not hurt to grab him. Just in case something goes wrong." I sighed. She was right, we could use the extra muscle. There was no telling what we'd run into outside the shields.

"We gonna talk about what happened at the party?" I asked, leaning in conspiratorially.

Echo shook her head and pushed me away before Alex saw us. "No, we are not."

I smacked Alex on the back and nodded toward the door. "Come on, Ivanov. We're going on an adventure."

Alex and I caught the trail of the foraging party and followed them into the woods. Echo took a short cut to the settlement site, in case Bellamy had already made it that far. It was quiet out here, almost peaceful. But I knew what kinds of things lurked out here. It made me miss Earth and the calm I'd found in the trees.

Beside me, Alex was laser focused. "So, you and Echo seem to be getting close," I tried. He shrugged and kept moving.

I sighed and tried again. "I really am sorry about Peter and Ella. I didn't mean to come in and mess everything up for you all."

"It was only a matter of time before Ella went too far. We all knew it." Alex shook his head. "I did what I had to do. Wasn't your fault." I believed him, but only because I knew it was himself he blamed. I'd been there, hell, maybe I wasstillthere.

"It's not that I don't trust you." He glanced over, finally looking at me. "My other friends, I've known them for years. We've gone through hell together. I'd do anything for them, and I know they have my back. I hope that you'll all be able to trust each other one day. But in the meantime, I just need you to trust thatItrust them."

Alex nodded. "I can do that."

"I'd also really love if you could teach me Russian."

A rare smile broke across his face. "I can do that too."

Before he could launch into my first lesson, we came across the foraging party. Bellamy wasn't with them. "Excuse me!" I called. They stopped and turned, letting me catch up. "Did one of my group leave with you this morning? A man with curly hair?"

A woman in the front shook her head. "No, I'm sorry, none of your group has been with us. Would the two of you like to join?"

"Not today, thanks." I slunk back to Alex with a groan. "Let's go meet up with Echo, maybe he went out on his own."

Alex shook his head. "That would've been stupid."

"Well, Bellamy isn't exactly known for his great decisions," I muttered.

We found Echo on the way to the settlement. She was standing over a woman who'd been tied to a tree. The woman looked terrified, which seemed a little dramatic. Sure, Echo could be tough, but at the moment she hadn't even drawn a weapon. Then I saw the ground move around the tree and realized it wasn't Echo she was scared of; it was the tree.

"She was tracking us," Echo said by way of explanation. I avoided the tree roots as I made my way toward her. "Bellamy isn't at the settlement."

I moved toward the woman, taking care of where I stepped. "Where is he?" The woman struggled against the ropes binding her arms but didn't answer. Echo handed me a knife and I leaned in, pressing the blade against the woman's throat.

Before I could draw blood, Alex was behind me, sliding the knife from my hand and taking my place. He didn't waste any time, pressing the knife in until blood welled. "He's alive!" The woman cried. "He realized Josephine is in Clarke's body, she had to lock him up."

It took a second for the full weight of her words to dawn on me. Josephine was a Prime, Russell's daughter in fact. And Clarke was a nightblood. She'd been acting strange before, but no one had considered something might be wrong. We'd all been caught up in our own shit.

"Let her go, Alex," I called. "We got what we came for."

He stepped back, cleaning the knife on his jacket. "You think she's telling the truth?"

"I think if Clarke's gone, we have a lot more to worry about."

I threw open the doors to the tavern, shocking the people near the entrance. I didn't bother to apologize as I weaved through the tables to find my friends at the bar. Bellamy was with them. But I didn't even have a moment to be relieved. When they all looked up at me, I knew it was true.

I shook my head. "No, not after everything. She can't just be gone."

Bellamy pulled me into his arms and pressed his face into my shoulder. Alex and Echo came up behind us, I knew they wouldn't need to hear the words to know. "So, what's the plan?" Alex asked.

"The plan is to survive," Bellamy said, letting me go. "We get what we need, and we make our own way here."

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that Alex was looking to me. I went to join Cal and Gavril at the bar. Cal slid me a drink and I knocked it back. "I can't sit here and watch innocent people die. This isn't what Monty meant when he saidbe better."

"We could take Sanctum for ourselves," Gav suggested. "It's what Ella would have done."

Alex glanced over at him. "What do you want to do?" Gav seemed surprised to be asked.

"What the Primes are doing is wrong. Maia's right, we can't do nothing. But if we start a war here, these people will get caught in the crossfire." Gavril motioned at the peaceful tavern. "They don't deserve that either."

"I've been thinking about that," Cal said. "Maybe there's a way to show everyone that the Primes aren't the gods they've been pretending to be. I'm not saying it'll be bloodless, but..."

"We save who we can," I finished. He nodded. "Okay, well, we have a lot of work to do if we're going to stage a coup."