The air changed the moment they crossed the threshold. The warmth of the forest was swallowed by a cloying, humid chill that smelled of stagnant rot and undisturbed dust. As they descended, the grime in the air began to burn the back of Jason's throat.
His heightened senses were both a blessing and a curse; he could smell the copper and the sour musk of the Reapers that had passed through this space, but it also meant the stench of the tunnel's decay hit him with the force of a physical blow. He swallowed hard, pushing through the sensory overload. He had to find his people and for Octavia's sake, the Grounder who had risked everything for her.
To Octavia, the tunnel was a suffocating maze of shadows, a place where the darkness felt heavy enough to touch. She kept her hand white-knuckled on the hilt of her blade, her breathing shallow and jagged.
"I can't see a thing," she whispered, the sound bouncing off the stone walls in a haunting echo. "Jason, we need a light. I'm blind in here."
"No lights," Jason's voice drifted back to her, "In this hole, a light is more like painting a target on yourself. Stay close and hold onto the back of my vest if you have to, but do not stop moving."
Jason didn't need a torch. As they pressed deeper into the labyrinth, his pupils dilated until the iris was nearly gone, drinking in the microscopic traces of light reflecting off the damp quartz. To him, the tunnel wasn't a black void; it was a world of high-contrast grays and razor-sharp edges. He could see the intricate structural cracks spiderwebbing across the ceiling and the rhythmic drip of water hitting a stagnant pool fifty yards ahead.
The oppressive atmosphere triggered a flicker of memory. This felt hauntingly similar to the time he and Octavia had been trapped together during the acid fog, huddled in the dark, waiting for a silent killer to pass. The only difference now was the scale. There was more space to move and more room to breathe, but even less illumination
The deeper they ventured, the more the tunnel seemed to tighten around them. Suddenly, Octavia faltered. Her boot caught on a jagged outcrop of rock hidden in the gloom, and she stumbled, her shoulder hitting the damp wall with a muffled thud. She stilled her gait immediately, pressing her palm against the cold, slimy stone to steady herself.
Jason turned instantly, his dilated eyes cutting through the dark to look at her, "You okay?"
Octavia took a sharp breath with her heart rattling against her ribs. "Yeah. Sorry. Just... I can't see the floor, Jason."
Jason shook his head, his voice softening just a fraction. "Don't be. This place is a nightmare. It's built to disorient anything that doesn't belong here."
Clenching her jaw in a mix of frustration and fierce determination, Octavia pushed off the wall. She hated feeling like a burden, "Let's continue," she said firmly.
Jason nodded and turned back to the path. As they moved deeper, Octavia's eyes began to adjust to the oppressive blackness. She could finally make out the silhouette of Jason's shoulders and the faint glint of the sword hilt on his back and part of the pathways now, but it wasn't much help.
Octavia stopped abruptly. Jason paused a few feet ahead, looking back with a confused tilt of his head. "What is it? You hear something?"
"No," Octavia whispered, looking at the identical branching paths they had just passed, "But if we have to run, if we have to get out of here fast I wouldn't want to be a burden for you. I'll never find the entrance. It's a maze, Jason. I need an indication just in case."
Jason looked at the branching shadows. To him, every crack and mineral deposit was a landmark, a map being drawn in his mind with perfect clarity. He didn't need markers; he was the compass. But he looked at Octavia's pale face and realized she was right. Anything could happen. A cave-in, a Reaper ambush, a separation in the heat of battle. If he went down or they got split up, she was dead.
"Smart decision," Jason admitted. "We don't know what's waiting at the end of this, and I don't plan on staying for dinner. Start marking the corners."
Octavia nodded and knelt down, searching the floor until she found a handful of sharp, white quartz fragments. At the next intersection, she carefully arranged the stones into the shape of a small arrow pointing back toward the entrance. At every turn, she repeated the process, scratching symbols into the soft limestone or leaving a trail of white rocks.
To Jason, It was a small, fragile thread of hope in a place that smelled of death, but it gave her the confidence to keep walking.
While Octavia focused on her trail of white stones, Jason's ears twitched, catching the skitter of vermin behind the walls and the deep, tectonic groan of the mountain settling above them. Further off, he heard the low rasp of breathing, "Left here," he muttered, guiding her toward a narrow fissure that looked like a solid wall of rock to the naked eye.
"How do you know?" Octavia asked, her boots splashing softly in a shallow puddle.
"The air is moving through there," Jason replied, his head tilting as he tracked the subtle thermal currents. "And the scent of copper is getting stronger. They're up ahead."
Jason's history with the Reapers was brief but brutal. He'd put down a couple of the crazed, cannibalistic mutants in the forest while tracking Raven's pod, and he'd been the one to lure them out of their holes during the final battle at the dropship. He knew the signs of their presence, the smell of madness and that wasn't even an exaggeration; they seriously stink.
Suddenly, Jason flattened himself against the cold stone wall, his hand snaring Octavia's shoulder and pulling her back into a recessed alcove. He leaned in, his lips brushing her ear so his voice wouldn't carry. Just ahead, a faint, sickly orange hue began to bleed around the corner.
He edged forward, he held his breath with his knuckles turning white around the grip of his pistol, "Two of them. Thirty yards away. Standing over something," Jason whispered.
Octavia squinted, seeing only a void until a torch flared deep in the passage. The light revealed the hulking, distorted silhouettes of two Reapers who were hunched over a pile of rags on the floor, "Lincoln?" Octavia's voice was a thread of hope and terror.
Jason's vision zoomed in, cutting through the gloom. He saw the glint of a Trikru tattoo on a muscular shoulder lying limp on the stone. "It's a warrior. Might be your scout, might be the healer. I can't tell from here"
He reached behind his back, his fingers closing around the hilt of the one-eyed Grounder's heavy sword. He rounded the corner, but as he did, his eyes narrowed, and a cold weight settled in his gut. He reached back, pressing a hand against Octavia's chest to keep her still and quiet, because the horror ahead was beyond anything she'd imagined.
Human bones littered the floor like discarded husks. The air was a thick, nauseating soup of burnt hair and rotten flesh. Jason had to screw his nose up, forcing his diaphragm to stay still to keep from gagging.
At least fifteen Reapers sat around a sickly orange fire in the center of the cavern. To the side sat two massive mine carts, covered in heavy, blood-stained tarps. Jason scanned the room, his eyes darting from shadow to shadow, searching for the familiar faces of the 100.
Then, a specific scent hit him. It wasn't the rot of the Reapers or the iron of the Grounders. It was the faint, lingering smell coming from the direction of the mine carts... and it was fading fast.
His heart sank as the implications hit him like a physical blow.
'No…'
His mind raced as he looked at the two carts, 'Were they in those carts?'
'Was I too late?'
The thought was a lead weight in Jason's chest, almost too much to bear. Had he spent every waking second fighting just to find a pile of bones?
Movement broke his train of thought. One of the hulking Reapers rose from the fireplace, he began trudging toward the mine carts Jason had been eyeing. Under the corner of one blood-stained tarp, something pale and slender was poking out. Jason's stomach did a slow roll as he realized it was a human arm hanging limp and motionless, just like the grisly trophies he'd seen the first time he encountered these monsters.
Octavia gasped beside him, her hand flying to her mouth. She went pale, her eyes wide with a frantic, nauseated light.
"Octavia, stay back," Jason hissed with a low voice. He signaled for her to stay low, but moved himself into a better vantage point. He watched the Reaper move toward the carts, a dark, cold resolve settled over him. No one deserved this end, not even the Grounders who had tried to kill them, and certainly not the 100. If his people were in those carts, he would slaughter every monster in this room and find a way to burn the remains so they wouldn't be desecrated further.
Jason adjusted his grip on the heavy sword, the leather of the hilt creaking slightly. He looked back at Octavia, who was trembling. "Whatever happens next, do not move from here," he commanded.
She took several deep, shuddering breaths, forcing her terror into a small box in the back of her mind. She nodded, her eyes fixed on the Reaper reaching for the tarp.
Jason prepared to spring forward to kill, his muscles coiled for a lethal strike. The Reaper grabbed the edge of the heavy cloth and yanked. The tarp slid off with a wet slap, revealing the contents.
Jason froze as the air left his lungs, but not from horror but from a sudden, jarring spike of hope.
The carts weren't filled with the lean, space-born bodies of the 100 or the sturdy fabric of Ark uniforms. They were piled high with Grounders who were stripped naked with their skin a ghostly, sickly white, and to Jason's shock, some were barely alive and groaning with agony.
They aren't here. The thought rang in his head like a bell. If the 100 weren't in the death-pits of the Reapers, it meant the Mountain Men hadn't just disposed of them for this monsters to find and they were somewhere else.
But as Jason stared at the bodies, his brow furrowed. These weren't normal corpses, they were emaciated and unnaturally pale, as if every drop of life had been sucked out of them. He noticed their undergarments were strange as well, they looked more like clinical fabrics that no Grounder would ever wear by choice. Then he saw a small, circular puncture wounds near the chests and necks of the victims.
He squinted his eyes and saw what looked like tube holes. These weren't just victims of a hunt, these people had been processed. The primitive, degenerate Reapers couldn't do something this surgical. The only other option that came to him was the mountain men. This would mean that there truly is a connection between the savages and the Mountain men.
"They aren't here," Jason whispered back to Octavia, "It's Grounders in the carts. I don't see Lincoln in here, and I don't see our people."
"What now?" Octavia whispered, her voice cracking.
"We need to move," Jason began, turning to scout the exit.
But he was interrupted by a sound that would haunt his dreams. The Reaper who had removed the cloth reached into the cart, grabbed one of the emaciated Grounders by the hair, and tossed him like a sack of grain to his brethren.
Octavia's eyes widened to the size of saucers as the man began to scream as a sound that tore through the silence of the cave. The Reapers didn't wait at all and fell upon him in a frenzy and their teeth ripping flesh from bone in great, grizzly bites. Right in front of them, they were devouring him alive, right in front of them.
The wet sounds of the feast made a chill run down Octavia's spine. Vomit welled in her throat, and she had to squeeze her eyes shut to keep from screaming herself. Jason had seen war, he had seen death, but he had never seen anything this primal. He wanted to turn away, to run from the stench and the sound, but instead, his gaze remained fixed on the alpha Reaper.
The alpha Reaper didn't join the frantic, wet-sounding feast in the center of the clearing. Instead, its head snapped toward the side of the cavern, he snatched a sputtering flaming torch from a wall bracket and began to lunge down a narrow side tunnel.
Jason reached back, patting Octavia firmly on the shoulder to snap her out of her shock.
"We need to move," he hissed. "And follow him."
Octavia leaned over, finally emptying her stomach into the shadows. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, her eyes burning with a cold, newfound hatred. "Animals," she rasped, her voice trembling. "They all deserve to die. Every single one of them."
"No time for a crusade," Jason said with a low mechanical monotone, "Move."
They slipped out of the alcove, moving like ghosts. The remaining Reapers were too deep in their cannibalistic frenzy to notice two shadows skirting the edge of the firelight. Jason led the way as they plunged into the side tunnel after their target.
Jason frowned, his ears twitching slightly as he could hear something up ahead, but he couldn't pinpoint the source. They shadowed the Reaper around the jagged turns and through low-hanging stalactites.
Briefly, they passed a junction where a thin, vertical fissure in the rock allowed a sliver of actual daylight to spill into the gloom.
"Daylight," Octavia whispered, her voice hitching. "Jason, there's an exit—"
Before she could finish, the Reaper ahead skidded to a halt. It let out a guttural grunt, spinning around as if it had heard her voice. The orange glow of its torch swung wildly, illuminating the exact spot where they had been standing a second before.
Jason moved with a blur of instinct, shoving Octavia into a pitch-black corner and pinning her against the wall. He clamped a hand firmly over her mouth, his other hand reaching back to the hilt of his heavy sword. He watched the Reaper through the darkness, If the monster took two more steps toward their corner, Jason was going to take its head off before it could even scream.
The Reaper stood there, sniffing the air with its chest heaving. Just as it began to edge closer, a sharp, metallic clang echoed from further down the corridor. The sound caught the cannibal's attention instantly. It let out a frustrated huff and turned around, moving toward the noise.
Jason waited until the orange glow faded before removing his hand. "Shhh," he breathed.
He didn't wait for her to recover and immediately moved toward the source of the noise. They hurried around the final corner, and that's when Octavia stopped dead.
"Holy shit," she whispered.
Jason's eyes widened, his enhanced vision cutting through the flickering torchlight ahead. "Well, I'll be damned."
Her face was a mask of dried blood and grime, her hair a matted, golden mess. She was dressed in the rough, scavenged clothes of a Grounder, but Jason would recognize that stubborn set of the jaw anywhere.
Clarke Griffin.
Despite the darkness of the tunnel and the horror she had clearly endured, the defiance on her face was like a beacon.