Текст книги "The 100 / The Hundred"

Автор книги: Кэсс Морган

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

Clarke stared at him, searching his eyes, and then gave him a small, trembling smile that vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared. “Thank you.”

She returned her head to Wells’s chest, and he wrapped his arm around her. “I love you,” he whispered.

An hour later, after he’d walked Clarke home, Wells headed back along the observation deck alone. He needed to do something. If something didn’t change soon, the guilt would destroy her, and he refused to stand by and watch.

Wells had never broken a promise before. It was something his father had impressed upon him from an early age—a leader never goes back on his word. But then he thought of Clarke’s tears, and knew he didn’t have a choice.

He turned around and begaros, and knean walking toward his father’s office.

They filled the water jug at the stream and started to make their way back to the camp. After giving enough one-word answers, Wells had gotten Octavia to stop asking about Clarke, but now she was walking along sullenly, and he felt guilty. She was a sweet girl, and he knew she meant well. How had she wound up here?

“So,” Wells said, breaking the silence, “what could you have possibly done to end up in Confinement?”

Octavia looked at him in surprise. “Haven’t you heard my brother talking about it?” She gave him a tight smile. “He loves telling people about how I was caught stealing food for the younger kids in the care center—the little ones who are always bullied into giving up their rations—and how the monsters on the Council Confined me without batting an eye.”

Something in Octavia’s voice gave him pause. “Is that really how it happened?”

“Does it matter?” she asked with a weariness that suddenly made her seem older than fourteen. “We’re all going to think what we want about each other. If that’s the story Bellamy needs to believe, then I’m not going to stop him.”

Wells stopped to rearrange the heavy water jug. Somehow, they’d ended up in a different part of the woods. The trees grew even closer together here, and he could see far enough ahead to tell how far they’d strayed.

“Are we lost?” Octavia glanced from side to side, and even in the dim light he could see the panic flash across her face.

“We’ll be fine. I just need to—” He stopped as a sound shuddered through the air.

“What was that?” Octavia asked. “Are we—”

Wells cut her off with a shush and took a step forward. It sounded like a twig snapping, which meant that something was moving just behind the trees. He kicked himself for not bringing a weapon. It would’ve been nice to bring back his own kill, to show that Bellamy wasn’t the only one who could learn how to hunt. The sound came again, and Wells’s frustration turned to fear. Forget catching dinner—if he wasn’t careful, he and Octavia might become dinner themselves.

He was about to grab her hand and run away when something caught his eye. A glint of reddish gold. Wells lowered the water jug and took a few steps forward. “Stay here,” he whispered.

Just ahead, he could see an open space beyond the trees. Some kind of clearing. He was about to shout the name hovering on his lips when he froze, skidding to a stop.

Clarke was standing in the grass, locked in an embrace with none other than Bellamy. As she brought her lips up to the Waldenite, fury tore through Wells. Heat shot up through his chest to settle in his racing heart.

Somehow, he managed to wrench his eyes away and stagger back into the trees before a wave of nausea sent his head spinning. He grabbed on to a branch for balance, gasping as he tried to force air into his lungs. The girl he’d risked his life to protect wasn’t just kissing someone else—she was kissing the hothead who may have gotten his father killed.

“Whoa.” Octavia’s voice came from beside him. “Their walk looks a lot more fun than ours.”

But Wells had already turned and begun walking in the other direction. He was vaguely aware of Octavia scampering after him, asking something about a medicine chest, but her voice was drowned out by the pulsing y t to brinof blood in his head. He didn’t care whether they’d found the missing medicine. There was no drug strong enough to repair a broken heart.

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CHAPTER 18

Clarke

By the time Clarke and Bellamy returned to camp with the medicine, darkness had fallen. She’d only been in the woods for a few hours, but as they stepped through the tree line into the clearing, it felt like she’d left a lifetime ago.

They’d spent most of the walk back in silence, but every time Clarke’s arm accidentally brushed against Bellamy’s, electricity seemed to dance across her skin. She’d been mortified after their kiss, and had spent the next five minutes stammering an apology while he grinned. Eventually, he cut her off with a laugh and told her not to worry about it. “I know you’re not the type of girl to make out with random guys in the woods,” he’d said with a mischievous grin, “but maybe you should be.”

But as they approached the clearing, all thoughts of the kiss were pushed aside by the shadowy outline of the infirmary tent. Clarke took off with the medicine tucked under her arm.

The tent was empty except for a delirious, feverish Thalia, and to Clarke’s surprise, Octavia, who was just settling back in her old cot. “The other tent is just so small,” Octavia was saying, but Clarke couldn’t do more than nod.

She flung the medicine chest onto the floor, filled a syringe, and plunged the needle into Thalia’s arm. Then Clarke turned back to the box, searching for painkillers. She quickly gave Thalia a dose and smiled as her friend’s face relaxed in sleep.

Clarke knelt next to Thalia for a few more minutes, breathing a deep sigh of relief at her steady pulse. For a moment, she looked down at the bracelet on her wrist and wondered if, somewhere up in the sky, someone was monitoring her own heart rate. Dr. Lahiri, perhaps, or another of the Colony’s top doctors, reading the hundred’s vital signs like the day’s news. Surely they had seen that five people had died already.… She wondered if they’d chalk the deaths up to radiation poisoning and rethink their colonization efforts, or if they’d be smart enough to realize they’d been killed because of the rough landing. She wasn’t sure which scenario she preferred. She certainly wasn’t ready for the Council to extend its jurisdiction to Earth. And yet her mother and father had devoted their lives to helping humanity return home. A permanent settlement would mean, in a way, that her parents had succeeded too. That they hadn’t died for nothing.

Finally, she scooped the medicine back into the chest and placed it in the corner of the tent. Tomorrow, she’d find a place to lock it up, but for now, Clarke felt like she could finally rest. If someone was indeed monitoring their body count up in space, she was going to make damn sure they didn’t drop below ninety-five.

She took a few shaky steps and collapsed on her cot without even bothering to take off her shoes.

“Is she going to be okay?” Octavia asked. Her voice sounded far away.

Clarke murmured yes. She could barely open her eyelids.

“What other medicine was in there?”

“Everything,” Clarke said. Or at least, she tried to say it. By the time the word reached her lips, exhaustion had numbed her brain. The laste it wn a thing she remembered was hearing Octavia rise from her cot before falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.

When Clarke awoke the next morning, Octavia was gone, and bright light was streaming in through the tent flap.

Thalia lay on her side, still asleep. Clarke rose with a groan, her muscles stiff from their hike yesterday. But it was a good kind of pain; she’d walked through a forest that hadn’t been seen by a single human being in three hundred years. Her stomach squirmed as she thought about another distinction she’d inadvertently earned—the first girl to kiss a boy on Earth since the Cataclysm.

Clarke smiled as she hurried over to Thalia. She couldn’t wait until she was well enough to hear all about it. She pressed the back of her hand against her friend’s forehead and was relieved to feel that it was cooler than it had been last night. She gently pulled back the blanket to look at Thalia’s stomach. Her skin still showed signs of an infection, but it hadn’t spread any farther. As long as Thalia had a full course of antibiotics, she’d make a full recovery.

It was hard to know exactly, but based on the strength of the light, she guessed that at least eight hours had passed since Thalia’s last dose. She turned and walked over to the corner where she’d stashed the medicine chest, frowning slightly as she realized it was open. Clarke crouched down and inhaled sharply, blinking to make sure her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her.

The chest was empty.

All the antibiotics, the painkillers, even the syringes—they were all gone. “No,” Clarke whispered. There was nothing. “No,” she said again, scrambling to her feet. She ran over to the nearest cot and started to throw the bedding aside, then did the same with her own.

Her eyes landed on Octavia’s cot, and her panic momentarily hardened into suspicion. She hurried over and began rummaging through the pile of blankets. “Come on,” she muttered to herself, but her hands came up empty.

“ No.” She kicked the ground. The medicine wasn’t in the tent, that much was clear. But whoever had taken it couldn’t have gone far. There were fewer than a hundred human beings on the planet, and Clarke wasn’t going to rest until she found the thief who was jeopardizing Thalia’s life. She probably wouldn’t have to look very far.

After a quick search of the flat to make sure her parents weren’t home, Clarke hurried to the lab and entered the code. She kept expecting her parents to change the password, but either they didn’t know how often she visited the kids, or they didn’t want to stop her. Perhaps they liked knowing that Clarke was keeping them company.

As she made her way toward Lilly, Clarke smiled at the others, though her chest tightened when she saw how few were awake. Most were growing sicker, and there were more empty beds than there’d been the last time.

She tried to force this thought out of her head as she approached Lilly, but as her eyes locked on her friend, her hands began to tremble.

Lilly was dying. Her eyes barely fluttered open when Clarke whispered her name, and even when her lips moved, she didn’t have the strength to turn the shapes into words.

There were more flaky red patches on her skin, although fewer of them were bleeding, as Lilly no longer had the energy to scratch them. Clarke sat there, fighting a wave of nausea as she watched the irregular rise and fall of her friend’s chest. The worst part was that she knew this was only the beginning. The other subjects had lingered on for weeks, their symptoms growing increasingly gruesome as the radiation poisoning progressed through their bodies.

For a moment, Clarke imagined carrying Lilly to the medical center, where they could at least put her on high-intensity pain medication even if it was too late to save her. But that would be tantamount to asking the Vice Chancellor to execute her parents. Then he’d just find someone else to finish what her mother and father had started. All Clarke hoped was that their research proved conclusive so that the experiments could stop, so that these test subjects wouldn’t have suffered in vain.

Lilly’s translucent eyelids fluttered open. “Hey, Clarke,” she croaked, the beginnings of a smile flickering on her face before a new wave of pain washed them away.

Clarke reached over and grasped Lilly’s hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Hey,” she whispered. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” Lilly lied, wincing as she struggled to sit up.

“It’s okay.” Clarke placed a hand on her shoulder. “You don’t need to sit.”

“No, I want to.” The girl’s voice was strained.

Clarke gently helped her sit, then adjusted the pillows behind her. She suppressed a shudder as her fingers brushed against Lilly’s back. She could feel every vertebra poking out from her sallow skin.

“How did you like the Dickens anthology?” Clarke asked, glancing under Lilly’s bed, where they kept the books Clarke had stolen from the library.

“I only read the first story, the one about Oliver Twist.” Lilly gave Clarke a weak smile. “My vision is…” She trailed off. They both knew that once the subjects had trouble seeing, the end wasn’t far. “But I didn’t like it, anyway. It reminded me too much of the care center.”

Clarke hadn’t asked any questions about Lilly’s life before this. She’d gotten the sense that Lilly didn’t want to talk about it. “Was it really that bad?” she said carefully.

Lilly shrugged. “We all looked out for one another. We didn’t have anyone else. Well, except this one girl. She had a brother, a real-life older brother.” She looked down, suddenly blushing. “He was… nice. He used to bring her things—extra food, pieces of ribbon…”

“Really?” Clarke asked, pretending to believe the comment about a girl with a brother as she brushed a lock of hair off Lilly’s damp forehead. Even this far along in her sickness, Lilly had a flair for the dramatic.

“He sounds nice,” Clarke said vaguely as her eyes flitted toward the bald patches on Lilly’s head, which were becoming difficult to ignore.1"> “Hnt>

“Anyway,” Lilly said, her voice strained, “I want to hear about your birthday. What are you going to wear?”

Clarke had almost forgotten that her birthday was next week. She didn’t feel much like celebrating. “Oh, you know, my best scrubs,” she said lightly. “I’d rather hang out here with you than go to some silly party, anyway.”

“Oh, Clarke,” Lilly groaned in mock exasperation. “You have to do something. You’re starting to be seriously boring. Besides, I want to hear about your birthday dress.” She winced suddenly, doubling over in pain.

“Are you okay?” Clarke asked, her hand on Lilly’s fragile arm.

“It hurts,” Lilly gasped.

“Can I get you anything? Do you want some water?”

Lilly opened her eyes, which were now pleading. “You can make it stop, Clarke.” She was cut off by a groan. “Please make it stop. It’s only a matter of time.…”

Clarke turned her head to the side so Lilly wouldn’t see her tears. “It’ll be okay,” she whispered, forcing a fake smile. “I promise.”

Lilly whimpered before falling silent again, then leaned back and closed her eyes.

Clarke pulled the blankets up over her friend’s chest, trying to ignore the demon that was clawing its way to the front of her mind. She knew what Lilly was asking for. And it wouldn’t be difficult. She was so frail at this point, it would take just a few well-combined painkillers to ease her into a coma. She’d slip away painlessly.

What am I thinking? Clarke asked herself, drawing back in horror. The blood on her parents’ hands had spread to her own. This whole nightmare had infected her, turned her into a monster. Or maybe it wasn’t her parents’ fault. Maybe she’d always had this darkness inside of her, waiting to rise to the surface.

Just as she was about to leave, Lilly spoke again. “Please,” she begged. “If you love me, please.” Her voice was quiet but contained an edge of desperation that terrified Clarke. “Just make it all stop.”

Bellamy was chopping wood on the far side of the clearing. Although the morning was cool, his T-shirt was already soaked through with sweat. Clarke tried not to notice how it clung to his muscular chest. When he saw her running toward him, he lowered his ax to the ground and turned to face her with a grin.

“Well, hello there,” he said as she came to a stop and paused to catch her breath. “Couldn’t stay away, could you?” He stepped forward and placed his hand on her waist, but Clarke swatted his arm away.

“Where’s your sister?” she asked. “I can’t find her anywhere.”

“Why?” Urgency shoved the playfulness out of his voice. “What’s wrong?”

“The medicine we found is missing.” Clarke took a deep breath, bracing herself for her next words. “And I think Octavia took it.”

“ What?” His eyes narrowed.

“She was the only other person in the tent last night, and she seemed really fixated on the drugs—”

“ No,” Bellamy snapped, cutting her off. “Of all the criminals on this goddamn planet, you think my sisteris the thief?” He stared at her, his eyes burning with anger. But when he spoke again, his voice was quiet. “I thought you were different. But I was wrong. You’re just another stupid Phoenix bitch who thinks she knows better than everyone else.”

He kicked the handle of the ax, then pushed past her without another word.

For a moment, Clarke stood rooted to the ground, too stunned by Bellamy’s words to move. But then she felt something inside her tear, and suddenly she was running toward the trees, staggering into the shade of the forest canopy. Her throat raw, she slumped onto the ground, wrapping her arms around her knees to keep the anguish from flowing out of her chest.

Alone in the shadows, Clarke did something else on Earth for the first time. She cried.

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CHAPTER 19

Bellamy

Bellamy paused to adjust the bird that he’d slung over his shoulder. The confrontation with Clarke had left him so agitated that he’d grabbed his bow and stormed off into the woods without a second thought. Only after shooting this bird near the stream had he started to calm down. It was a good kill—his first bird, much harder than animals on the ground—and its feathers would be perfect for the new arrows he’d been working on, to take with them when he and Octavia headed out on their own. As he stepped back into camp, he realized that he hadn’t seen Octavia since early that morning, and felt a twinge of concern. He should have checked on her before he left.

The fire was already built up, and a dozen faces turned to look at Bellamy as he approached. But no one was smiling. He shifted the bird over to his other shoulder to give them a better view of his kill. Why the hell were they staring at him like that?

An angry shout pulled his attention to a group at the far end of the clearing, near the wreckage of the dropship. They were clustered in a circle around something on the ground. He inhaled sharply as the shape on the ground moved.

Then he saw her, and his confusion erupted into a rage unlike anything he’d ever felt.

It was Octavia.

He threw the bird on the ground and broke into a run.

“Out of my way,” Bellamy shouted as he forced his way inside the circle.

Octavia was on the ground, tears streaming down her cheeks. Graham and a few of the Arcadians stood over her, a deranged gleam in their eyes.

“ Get away from her,” Bellamy bellowed as he charged forward. But before he could reach Octavia, an arm hooked around his neck, nearly crushing his windpipe. Bellamy wheezed and looked around frantically. Wells was standing in front of him, his expression cold and firm. “What the hell?” Bellamy sputtered. “Get out of my way.”

When Wells didn’t move, Bellamy gritted his teeth and lunged at him, but someone else had a hold on his collar and jerked him back. “Get off of me!” Bellamy spat, p wid He shooting his elbow back with enough force to make whoever was behind him grunt and let go.

Octavia was still on the ground, her eyes wide with terror as she looked from Bellamy to Graham, who was standing over her. “You better tell me what’s going on, right now,” Bellamy said through clenched teeth.

“I heard you and Clarke talking about the missing medicine earlier,” Wells said with infuriating calmness. “No one besides Octavia knew about it. She must have taken it.”

“I didn’t take anything.” Octavia sobbed. She wiped her face with the back of her hand and sniffed. “They’ve all gone crazy.” She rose shakily to her feet and started to take a step toward Bellamy.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Graham snapped, grabbing Octavia’s wrist and wrenching her back.

“Let goof her!” Bellamy bellowed. He dove for Graham, but Wells stepped in front of him, and someone else wrenched his arm behind his back. “Get off of me!” Bellamy thrashed wildly as he tried to wrench himself free, but there were too many sets of hands holding him down, locking him in place.

“Look,” Bellamy continued, trying in vain to keep his voice steady, “she’s been injured ever since we landed. Do you really think she was up to stealing medicine and dragging it off somewhere outside of camp?”

“She was up to following me into the woods yesterday,” Wells answered calmly. “We walked pretty far together.”

Bellamy thrashed against the arms holding him, unable to quell his rage as the implication of Wells’s words sank in. If he so much as laid a hand on his sister…

“Just take it easy,” Wells said. He nodded at a Walden boy, who stepped forward with a coil of rope.

“Then tell that creep to take his disgusting hands off my sister,” Bellamy spat.

Clarke suddenly appeared, pushing her way through the crowd. “What’s going on?” she asked, her eyes wide when they landed on Octavia. “Are you okay?” Octavia shook her head, tears streaming down her face.

“We just need Octavia to tell us where the medicine is,” Wells said calmly, “and then we’ll get this all sorted out.”

“I don’t have it.” Octavia’s voice had grown ragged.

“We know you’re lying,” Graham hissed. Octavia yelped as he tightened his hold on her wrist, and Bellamy struggled against the hands that held him. “You’re only making things worse.”

“So what are you going to do?” Bellamy spat at Wells. “Keep us both tied up?”

“Exactly,” Wells said, his jaw tightening. “We’ll keep Octavia locked up until she tells us where she hid the medicine, or we find evidence pointing to another suspect.”

“Lock her up?” Bellamy made a show of looking around the clearing. “And how do you propose to do that?”

Clarke stepped forward, a tense look on her face. “I spend most of the day in the infirmary tent, anyway,” she said curtly. “Octavia can stay there. I’ll keep an eye on her and make sure she doesn’t sneak off.”

“Are you serious?” Graham snorted. “She stole the medicine from under your nose, and your plan is to keep an eye on her?”

Clarke turned to Graham with a scowl. “If that’s not good enough for you, Graham, youu, , an can post a guard outside the door.”

“This is ridiculous.” Bellamy’s whole body was beginning to shake as his anger smoldered into exhaustion. “Look at her,” he said weakly. “She’s obviously not a danger to anyone. Just untie her and I promise I won’t let her out of my sight.” He scanned the crowd that had assembled around them, scouring the audience for a sympathetic face. Surely someone else saw that this whole thing was complete bullshit. But no one was willing to meet his eyes.

“You’re all insane.” His mouth curled into a snarl as he turned back to face Graham. “You set her up. Youstole those meds.”

Graham snickered and shot a look at Asher. “I told you he was going to say that.”

The sky was growing dark, the clouds weaving into a blanket of gray. Bellamy took a deep breath. “Fine. Believe whatever you want. Just untie Octavia and let us go. We’ll leave camp for good. We won’t even take any of your precious supplies.” He glanced at his sister, but she didn’t look happy at the idea; her features seemed frozen in shock. “You’ll never have to think about us again.”

A fleeting look of pain crossed Clarke’s face before she retreated behind her mask of steely resolve. She’ll get over it, Bellamy thought bitterly. She’d find someone else to go traipsing through the woods with her.

“I don’t think so,” Graham said, sneering. “Not until we get back the meds. We can’t let anyone else die just because your little sister’s a drug addict.”

The accusation made every nerve in Bellamy’s body sizzle until his fingers itched to close around Graham’s neck.

“Enough,” Clarke said, shaking her head at Graham and raising a hand. “I want the medicine back more than anyone, but you’re not helping.”

“Fine,” Bellamy snapped. “But I’mtaking her into the tent. And no oneis going to put their hands on her again.”

He wrenched free from his captors and strode over to Octavia, grabbing her hand as he locked eyes with Graham. “You’re going to regret this,” Bellamy said in a low, dangerous voice. He wrapped his arm around his trembling sister and led her toward the infirmary tent, a grim determination overtaking him.

He’d do whatever it took to protect her. He always had.

It was the third guard visit in the last few months. They had been coming more often that year, and Octavia was getting bigger. Bellamy tried not to think about what would happen next time, but even he knew they wouldn’t be able to hide her forever.

“I can’t believe they looked in the closet,” his mother said hoarsely, staring at Octavia, whom Bellamy had carried to the couch. “Thank god she didn’t cry.”

Bellamy looked over at his toddler sister. Everything about her was miniaturized, from her tiny sock-clad feet to her impossibly small fingers. Everything except her round cheeks and enormous eyes, which always glistened with tears she never seemed to shed. Was it normal for a two-year-old to be so quiet? Did she somehow know what would happen if someone found her?

Bellamy walked over and sat down next to Octavia, who turned her head to stare at him with her deep-blue eyes. He reached forward to touch one of her dark, glossy curls. She looked just l lo his cike that doll head he’d found while scavenging for relics in the storage room. He’d thought about taking it home to Octavia, but decided the ration points he’d get for it at the Exchange were more important. He also hadn’t been sure whether it was right to give a baby a disembodied doll’s head, no matter how pretty it was.

He grinned as Octavia grabbed his finger with her tiny fist. “Hey, give that back,” he said, pretending to wince. She smiled but didn’t giggle. He couldn’t remember ever hearing her laugh.

“It was too close,” his mother was muttering to herself as she paced back and forth. “Too close… too close… too close.”

“Mom. Are you okay?” Bellamy asked, feeling his panic return. She walked over to the sink, which was still spilling over with dishes despite the fact that this morning had been their water hour. He hadn’t been able to finish before the guards came. It would be another five days before they’d have the chance to wash them again.

There was a faint crash down the hallway, followed by a peal of laughter. His mother gasped and looked around the flat. “Get her back in the closet.”

Bellamy put his arm in front of Octavia. “It’s fine,” he said. “The guards were just here. They’re not going to be back for a while.”

His mother took a step forward. Her eyes were wide and full of terror. “Get her out of here!”

“No,” Bellamy said, sliding off the couch and standing in front of Octavia. “That wasn’t even the guards. It was just someone messing around. She doesn’t need to go back in yet.”

Octavia whimpered but fell silent as their mother fixed her with a wild-eyed stare.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no,” their mother was muttering, running her hands distractedly through her already disheveled hair. She leaned back against the wall and slid down to the floor, landing with a sharp thud.

Bellamy glanced at Octavia, then walked slowly over to his mother, kneeling carefully beside her. “Mom?” A new kind of fear welled up inside him, different from what he’d felt during the inspection. This fear was cold and seemed to be creeping out from his stomach, turning his blood to ice.

“You don’t understand,” she said faintly, staring at something just behind Bellamy’s head. “They’re going to kill me. They’re going to take you and they’re going to kill me.”

“Take me where?” Bellamy asked, his voice quivering.

“You can’t have both,” she whispered, her eyes growing even larger. “You can’t have both.” She blinked and refocused her gaze on Bellamy. “You can’t have a mother and a sister.”

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