Kass Morgan - Day 21

“What did you find?” Wells asked, squeezing her hand.

“I had no…” Clarke trailed off with a sigh as sleep overtook her.

Wells stood up, grabbed a blanket from one of the other cots, and spread it gently over Clarke. Bellamy was still standing stiffly behind him, his eyes fixed on the curled figure of the girl who, despite her immense strength, always looked younger—and somehow more fragile—when she slept.

Wells cleared his throat. “Thank you,” he said, extending his hand. “For bringing her back.”

Bellamy nodded slowly, still in shock. “I was so worried. I thought…” He ran a hand through his hair, then slid to the ground and sat with his back against Clarke’s cot.

Wells bristled at the possessive gesture, but he found that he couldn’t say anything. He was grateful to Bellamy for bringing Clarke back to the camp, but it hurt to think about what they might’ve been doing for the past two days.

Wells lowered himself to the ground with a sigh. “I guess this means you didn’t find Octavia.”

“No. We found a trail, but it was… weird.” He spoke without looking up, and his voice was strangely flat. “The prints didn’t look like she ran off. It looked like she was dragged .”

“Dragged?” Wells repeated as the pieces of information clicked together, forming an even more troubling picture. “I can’t believe it. They took her.”

“They?” Bellamy’s head shot up. “Who?”

Wells told him about everything that had happened since Bellamy and Clarke left camp—the surprise attack, Asher’s death, the undeniable fact that there were other people on Earth.

When Bellamy finally spoke, his jaw was tight with anger. “And you think these people took Octavia during the fire?” Wells nodded. “Who are they? How did they survive the Cataclysm? And what the hell do these—these Earthborns want with my sister?”

“I don’t know. They might be defending their territory. Maybe they took her as a warning, and then when we didn’t show any signs of leaving, they killed Asher to make a stronger point.”

Bellamy stared at him for a long moment. “So you think they’re coming back?”

Wells opened his mouth to repeat the same vague response he’d been giving to the others in his attempt to prevent widespread panic. But when he met Bellamy’s eyes, the canned reassurances fell away. “Yes. They’ll be back.” He told Bellamy about Graham’s growing obsession with building an army, a move that would certainly lead to more deaths.

“It sounds like it hasn’t been a walk in the park here either,” Bellamy said with a snort. He glanced over his shoulder to check on Clarke, who still hadn’t stirred, though her face was peaceful and her breath was steady. “You should get some rest. I’ll keep an eye on Sleeping Beauty here, and let you know if there’s any change.”

Something in Bellamy’s tone rankled Wells. “I’m fine,” he said. “I have to stay up for guard duty, anyway. But you should definitely go to bed. You look exhausted.”

The boys stared at each other wordlessly until Bellamy raised his arms over his head and stretched his legs out with a groan. “I guess we’re both in it for the long haul, then.”

They sat in silence, each avoiding the other’s eyes, moving only to look at Clarke the few times she rolled over, or sighed in her sleep. As the night wore on, a handful of people tried to come back inside the infirmary cabin, but Wells shooed them away. It was slightly unfair to make people sleep outside when there was space indoors, but he couldn’t risk anything disturbing Clarke. Not after what she’d been through.

Wells wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but light was streaming between the logs when a loud thud jolted him from his doze, sending him jumping to his feet. Bellamy’s head snapped up. “What’s going on?” he asked, drowsily. Without waiting to respond, Wells hurried outside.

The clearing was quiet and still. The people he’d kicked out of the infirmary cabin had joined the others around the fire pit. Everyone seemed to still be asleep.

Wells had started to turn back when a flash of movement near the tree line caught his eye. Something darted from behind a tree and ran deeper into the woods—a short, wiry figure dressed in black.

Without thinking, Wells started sprinting across the tree line, his feet flying over the uneven, root-tangled ground. He closed in on the intruder, lunging forward to tackle him with a shout. Wells grunted as a knee jabbed him in the stomach, but it didn’t stop him from rolling over and pinning the stranger to the damp ground. He had one of them—an Earthborn.

Wells’s blood was pumping so swiftly through his veins, it took him a moment to get a clear look at the person whose wrists he’d clamped, the owner of the green eyes staring furiously up at him.

It was a girl.

Bellamy didn’t care that the Earthborn was a girl. She was a spy. She was the enemy. She was one of the people who had killed Asher and taken his sister.

Fear flashed in her eyes, and her black hair flew across her face as she thrashed in the dirt, trying to wrench herself free. But Bellamy, kneeling next to Wells, only tightened his hold. They couldn’t let her escape, not before she told them where Octavia was.

He helped Wells pull the girl to her feet and yanked her sharply forward. “Where the hell is she?” he shouted. His face was so close to hers, his breath sent wisps of her hair flying. “Where’d you take my sister?”

The girl winced but said nothing.

Bellamy twisted her arm behind her back, just like he used to do to the boys in the care center he caught teasing Octavia. “You’d better tell me right now , or you’ll wish you never crawled out of whatever cave you came from!”

“ Bellamy ,” Wells said sharply. “Calm down. We don’t know anything yet. She might have nothing to do with—”

“Like hell she doesn’t,” Bellamy said, cutting him off. He reached over and yanked on the girl’s hair, bringing her face up to his. “You tell me right now, or this is going to get really unpleasant, really fast.”

“ Knock it off ,” Wells shouted. “For all we know, she doesn’t speak English. Before we do anything, we need to—”

Wells was cut off once again, this time by a thunderstorm of shouts and footsteps as the rest of the group, drawn by the noise, came to investigate. “You caught one,” Graham said, shoving his way to the front. His voice was tinged with something close to admiration.

“So she’s from Earth?” asked a Walden girl, awestruck.

“Can she talk?” another asked.

“She’s probably a mutant. You might catch radiation poisoning just by touching her,” a tall Arcadian boy said, craning his neck for a better look.

Bellamy didn’t care if the girl was radioactive, or if she had goddamn wings . All he cared about was finding out where she and her friends had taken his sister.

“What are we going to do with her?” a girl asked as she shifted her spear from one hand to the other.

“We kill her,” Graham said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “And then we put her head on a spike to let the others know how we deal with people who threaten us.”

“Not before she and I have a little conversation,” Bellamy growled. The girl’s eyes narrowed as Bellamy stepped forward, and she raised her knee in an attempt to jab him, but he danced aside.

“Bellamy, back off ,” Wells ordered, struggling to hold her still.

Graham scoffed. “Want to have a little fun with her first? I can’t say I’ve ever understood your taste in girls, mini-Chancellor, but I guess we all have needs.”