The forest was a cathedral of damp rot and shadows. Lincoln moved with a silent, fluid grace, his eyes scanning the undergrowth until he found what he was looking for: a fresh deer carcass, likely taken down by a panther and left half-eaten.
Without a word, Lincoln knelt by the animal. He drew his blade, slicing into the cooling meat to collect the thick, dark blood. He began to smear it across his own chest and face, then gestured for Bellamy to do the same.
"Disguise," Lincoln grunted. "To the guards at the door, we need to look like we've been living in the filth. Like Reapers."
Bellamy followed suit, the copper tang of the blood making his stomach churn. He looked at Lincoln, his brow furrowed. "Okay, so let's say we make it to the intake door without any of the real Reapers seeing us. What happens then?"
Lincoln looked at him, his gaze chillingly pragmatic. "I kill everyone. And you slip inside."
He held out a blood-stained hand. "Limestone."
Bellamy reached into his pack and passed a small pouch to the Grounder. Lincoln crushed the chalky white rock and rubbed the powder over his face, creating the ghastly, pallid mask of a man who hadn't seen the sun in years. He stood up, the transformation nearly complete. "Let's go. We've got a lot of ground to cover before dark."
"Hey," Bellamy called out, stopping him. "I need to know what happens beyond that door. What did they do to you?"
Lincoln's shoulders tensed. He stared into the trees, his voice dropping to a hollow whisper. "They remove your clothes. They blast you with warm water and douse you with something that burns even worse. Then we were sorted. The others were tagged Harvest. I was tagged Cerberus... and turned into a monster."
Bellamy's eyes widened slightly. "Cerberus. The three-headed dog who guards the gates of the underworld. My mom read mythology to us all the time on the Ark. Octavia loved it." He paused, looking at Lincoln with a newfound respect. "You're good for her, Lincoln. You made her strong."
"She was already strong," Lincoln replied simply.
Bellamy hesitated, then asked the question that had been gnawing at him since their first encounter in that damp cave. "Hey, I need to ask you something. You protected my sister before you even knew her. Why?"
Lincoln was silent for a long moment. "When I was a boy, I saw a ship fall from the sky, like Raven's. The man inside was hurt. His body was broken. I couldn't get him out."
"Suicide by Earth," Bellamy murmured. "I heard the stories when I was in the Guard. I just didn't know they were true."
"I brought him food and water," Lincoln continued. "I couldn't speak the enemy's language yet, so I couldn't understand him, but I wanted to. On the third day, I told my father." His jaw tightened. "He made me kill him. The war has been trying to turn me into a monster for as long as I can remember. I just keep moving."
Lincoln looked at Bellamy, his eyes softening slightly. "Jason... he is a good leader for your people. He understands the monster, but he does not let it consume him."
Bellamy smiled, a rare moment of genuine warmth breaking through the grime on his face. "Yeah, he is. We've survived this long mainly because of him. Every time we were an inch away from being wiped out, he was the one holding the line. We got to this point, this alliance because of him."
Lincoln nodded. "A man who can walk in both worlds is a rare thing. I am sure he will handle the other leaders of the Twelve Clans well. He has the tongue of a diplomat and the heart of a wolf."
Back in Tondc, the "heart of the wolf" was currently contemplating a different kind of slaughter.
Jason stood near a communal fire, his arms crossed, staring at a man named Quint with an expression of profound, soul-deep exhaustion. Quint was a high-ranking warrior from the Tondc, and he had been shouting for the last ten minutes.
"This argument is useless!" Quint bellowed, gesturing wildly toward the mountain. "If they cannot breathe our air, then why not simply open the door and let them burn? Why do we waste time on 'insiders' and 'radios' when we could just crack the shell and let the sun kill the maggot?"
Jason felt a headache blooming behind his eyes. He sighed, a long, weary sound that most people would take for boredom, but those who knew him recognized as the final warning before a volcanic eruption.
'I really cannot deal with this nonsense,' Jason thought. 'I'm surrounded by people whose primary tactical solution to every problem is 'stab it until it stops moving.'
"Quint," Jason said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "If we 'crack the shell,' we kill our own people inside. It's called a hostage situation. Do they not have those in your 'Twelve Clans,' or do you just consider collateral damage a fun afternoon activity?"
Quint stepped into Jason's personal space, his breath smelling of fermented berries. "A few lives to end the Mountain men? It is a small price."
Jason tilted his head, a dark, dangerous spark entering his eyes. "Tell you what. You go up there, knock on the front door, and ask them to let you in so you can open the vents. If you survive the first thirty seconds, I'll consider your plan. Until then, move back before I decide you're 'collateral damage.'"
Quint backed off a step, but his retreat didn't silence the crowd. A low chant began to rise from the gathered warriors, a dark hum that vibrated through the floorboards of the longhouse.
"Let them burn," a voice called out.
"Let them burn!" others joined in, the sentiment spreading like a wildfire.
Jason didn't shout. He didn't even raise his voice. He simply waited until the noise reached a fever pitch, then spoke with an icy calm that sliced through the chanting like a scalpel.
"I know most of you weren't exactly attending engineering seminars while you were learning how to throw spears," Jason began, his eyes scanning the room. "But those people up in that mountain aren't living in a wicker basket. You don't build a doomsday bunker for a nuclear aftermath without installing containment systems. They have scrubbers, filtration units, and emergency seals for toxic radiation and bio-hazards. You 'crack the shell,' and all you do is trigger a lockdown. So, please... think before you speak. It saves everyone a lot of time."
Clarke stepped up beside him, "He's right. There are multiple airlocks, just like we had on the Ark. If we attack the doors, they just seal the inner sectors. Our inside man is the only one who can bypass those protocols."
"If he gets inside," Quint spat, his eyes darting between Clarke and the silent, terrifying man standing next to her.
Jason looked at Quint, but he didn't offer a rebuttal. He didn't need to. His silence was enough for the man. Lexa, who had been studying the map of the surrounding territory, traced a finger along a blue line. "What if we shut it down from the outside?" she asked, her voice thoughtful. "You say the dam gives them power. We take that power away, the Mountain goes dark."
Jason almost snorted. He shifted his weight, looking at the Commander with a mix of pity and exhaustion. "Heda, that dam has survived a nuclear war and a century of neglect. It's a literal fortress of concrete and steel. Unless you have a suitcase nuke hidden under that cape, you aren't scratching it."
"He's right," Clarke added. "The structural integrity is beyond anything we can breach from the outside."
"All they offer is 'no,'" Quint growled, his frustration boiling over. He took a sudden, aggressive step toward the Clarke.
Jason didn't move his whole body. He just shifted his gaze, his eyes locking onto Quint's with a predatory stillness. "Our people may be allies now, Quint," Jason said a soft voice. "But take one single step closer, and I will make you regret the day you learned you had legs."
The room went deathly quiet. it was a promise. The warriors of Tondc knew the stories of the Butcher, they knew he didn't make idle threats and that he was a monster to face off against. Quint froze, his foot hovering inches from the floor, the sweat beginning to bead on his forehead.
"Quint," Lexa said, her voice a warning.
Quint slowly lowered his foot and bowed his head. "Apologies, Commander. But the biggest army we've ever assembled waits for us to give it a mission. The longer we wait for a 'signal,' the more of our people die inside that mountain."
"It's the same for us," Clarke insisted.
Quint snorted, looking at Clarke and then catching Jason watching him from the corner of his eye. "We've lost thousands to that mountain over the years. How many have you lost? You say you have a plan. I say waiting for one man to slip through a vent is not a plan."
"I agree with Quint!" another Grounder shouted. "Blood cries for blood, not for radios!"
Jason let out a short, sharp chuckle. It was a dark, mirthless sound that drew every eye in the room.
"What is funny, Butcher?" Lexa asked, her eyes narrowing.
Jason gestured loosely to the room, a mocking sweep of his hand. "This. All of this. It's just so... disappointing."
He began to pace, moving around the table like a wolf circling a flock of particularly dim-witted sheep. "All this doubting, all this refuting. Tell me, Quint... what is your brilliant alternative? Do you plan to lead your men to the front door, screaming about victory and glory? And then what? Perhaps after a few hours of dying in heaps, you somehow find a way to break a hinge."
He stopped and leaned over the table, staring directly into the faces of the dissenting warriors. "Tell me, what will you do against their guns? I've seen them. They are much more powerful than the toys we brought from the Ark. What will you do against the acid fog that melts the skin off your bones before you can even scream? Or tell me... what will you do when you encounter something else capable of wiping you all out in a single heartbeat?"
Jason straightened up, his lip curling in a sneer. "It is staggeringly stupid to rush into a slaughterhouse without a plan. At least Clarke and I have offered a way to win without turning this valley into a mass grave. So, how about this: instead of whining about our plan, Quint, why don't you offer something that doesn't sound like a last-minute suicide mission? I'm all ears."
He leaned back, crossing his arms, and waited. The silence that followed was heavy
"If you can't reach your enemy, you can't win," Clarke added, her voice steadying as she backed Jason's logic.
Quint snapped. The thin thread of his patience finally frayed. "You are the enemy!"
Jason didn't flinch. Instead, a slow, mocking smile spread across his face, the kind of smile that made the grounders in room take a step back. Clarke moved closer, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Jason, her gaze unflinching as she looked at the Grounder warrior.
"I'm sorry," Clarke said coolly. "Have I done something to personally offend you, Quint?"
"Yes!" Quint roared, his face turning a dark shade of purple. "You burned my brother alive in a ring of fire!" He then turned his venom toward Jason, his voice trembling with a mixture of rage and genuine terror. "And you... you are the worst of all. You slaughtered hundreds of my people, and you did it with that same disgusting smile on your face."
"He shouldn't have attacked my ship," Clarke replied, her voice hard as flint.
Jason let out a soft, dramatic sigh, looking up at the ceiling as if bored by the accusation. "Now, now, let's not be dramatic, Quint. I didn't actually kill them."
The room went silent. Even Lexa looked at him with a frown of confusion. "What?" she asked, her voice low.
Jason leaned forward, his eyes dancing with a manic light. "I'm serious. I just stood there. Your people were the ones who decided to run, at high velocity, directly into the path of my weapon. Technically, it was an assisted mass suicide. I was practically a bystander."
The statement was so outrageous, so utterly devoid of remorse, that for a moment, no one knew how to react.
"You're very brave under the Commander's protection," Quint hissed, turning back to Clarke, unable to meet Jason's gaze for more than a second.
Clarke didn't blink. "It's not the Commander's protection you should be worried about," she said quietly.
Quint looked back at Jason. He saw the innocent, almost boyish smile on the man's face, but he saw it for what it truly was: a mask for the devil beneath.
"Enough!" Lexa shouted in Trigedasleng, her voice booming through the longhouse. "The debt has been paid. The alliance stands."
"I cannot be in an alliance with these people," Quint spat. He threw his cup to the ground and stormed out of the hall, his cape snapping behind him.
Lexa watched him go, then turned her focus back to the map, her expression grim. "Quint's right about one thing. Waiting for Bellamy isn't a plan, Jason. It's a prayer. One that is not likely to be answered by the gods of this world."
"Well, good thing I don't believe in gods," Jason remarked, though the humor didn't reach his eyes.
"I need some air," Clarke muttered, looking overwhelmed. She turned and walked toward the exit.
"Stay close by Clarke." Jason said with the girl already moving away.
Jason gave a sharp nod to Major Byrne, who was standing near the door. The Major understood the silent order instantly and trailed after Clarke to provide a security detail. Once they were gone, Jason turned his full attention back to the Commander.
"So, tell me the truth, Lexa," Jason said, his voice dropping to a low, serious tone. "How are the Twelve Clans really responding to you making this alliance with 'The Butcher' and the girl who brings fire?"
Lexa sighed, leaning heavily on the table. "Some are not pleased. They see it as a betrayal of our blood. Others have doubt, wondering if I have grown soft in my leadership."
Jason stared at thw exit for a moment, his expression turning distant and cold, "They see this alliance as a mistake because they are blinded by the past. But to lead is to walk in the dark so that others may see the light, even if they hate you for the path you take."
He stood up, adjusting his coat. As he reached the door, he stopped and looked back at Lexa with a sharp, chilling side-eye.
"Keep an eye on Quint," Jason warned, his voice turning into a low-frequency threat. "He has the look of a man who thinks he can settle debts on his own. If he steps out of line, if he even looks at Clarke the wrong way. I won't wait for a trial, Lexa. I'll end him before he can even draw a breath. And that's a reality you can take to the bank."
———-