Chapter 13 : THE DEMAGOGUE
[Dropship Camp — Day 6, Morning]
Murphy started his campaign before breakfast.
Ethan was checking the north wall's crossbracing—a joint had loosened overnight, the green wood shifting as it dried—when the first wave of noise reached him from the fire pit. Not the usual morning grumble of hungry teenagers or the clatter of Charlotte's wood-stacking routine. This was a voice, pitched to carry, riding the frequency of fear.
"They took Octavia right off our doorstep. Carried her past their little skull fence like we're nothing. And what did our leadership do? They stood at the border and waited."
Murphy stood on the same debris pile Bellamy had used for his "whatever the hell we want" speech on Day 1. Full circle. Same podium, different demagogue. His crew flanked the base—five loyalists who'd been eating stolen rations and nursing resentment for six days. But the audience was bigger than five. Fifteen teenagers sat or stood in the loose semicircle of the morning crowd, and their expressions weren't hostile so much as frightened.
Fear was Murphy's raw material, and he worked it with the instinct of someone who'd been surviving on manipulation since before the Skybox.
"Walls won't save us. Hiding won't save us. You know what saves us? Showing those savages that we fight back."
Ethan set down his repair tools and walked toward the fire pit. Not rushing. The man who ran to confront looked defensive. The man who arrived at a normal pace looked unconcerned.
Wells materialized at his left shoulder. Quiet. Present. The library alliance from six days ago—from another world, practically—still holding in the morning light of this one.
"How long?" Ethan murmured.
"Ten minutes. He started while you were at the wall."
"Numbers?"
"His five, plus maybe ten who are just scared."
Ten. Not a faction—a mood. People who'd heard about Grounders with skull-decorated borders and a man who could carry an unconscious girl through the forest without leaving tracks. That kind of information bred fear, and fear bred followers for anyone who sounded certain.
Murphy saw Ethan approaching. His eyes lit up—not with anger, but with the particular satisfaction of a trap that had found its quarry.
"Speaking of our great leader. Tell them, Cole. Tell them how you stood at the border while a Grounder had Bellamy's sister and did nothing."
"That's not what happened."
"Isn't it? You held your little meeting. You waited your little hour. While Octavia was—"
"Being treated by a healer who set her ankle and carried her back unharmed."
Murphy's jaw tightened. The narrative he'd been building—helpless victims, savage captors, cowardly leadership—didn't accommodate a peaceful return. He pivoted with the fluidity of a born manipulator.
"So they give her back once. What about next time? What about when they take someone who isn't Bellamy's sister? You think they'll be so generous?"
A murmur from the crowd. The logic was simple, primal, and effective. Murphy didn't need to be right—he needed to be loud and frightening. The scared kids in the semicircle weren't evaluating evidence. They were looking for someone who'd tell them the terror in their chests was justified and that there was something violent they could do about it.
"I say we take the fight to them." Murphy's voice climbed. "Burn their skull fences. Show them we're not prey."
"And when they kill us?"
Ethan's voice was level. No podium, no elevation. Ground level, eye to eye. The way briefings worked—not performances.
"They've survived down here for a hundred years. Built a civilization. They know this forest the way we know the Ark's corridors. We've been here a week. We have one gun, six spears, and a wall that's ten percent finished." He looked at the crowd, not at Murphy. "You want to fight? We'll fight. Eventually. When we have walls, weapons, training, and knowledge. Not now. Not blind. Not stupid."
"Coward."
The word dropped like a stone. The crowd held its breath.
Ethan didn't flinch. He'd been called worse by drill sergeants in a life nobody here knew about, and Murphy's contempt landed with all the force of a teenager trying on authority like an oversized jacket.
"Being smart about when you fight isn't cowardice. It's how you win instead of die."
Murphy stepped off the debris pile. Closer. The physical challenge—the invasion of space that preceded every prison fight Ethan had observed in the Skybox common room. Close enough that Ethan could smell the stale rations on his breath.
"You're not in charge, Cole. Nobody voted for you. Nobody asked for your walls or your schedules or your little food parties. You showed up and started giving orders like you own the place."
"I showed up and started solving problems. If that looks like leadership, maybe that says something about the problems."
Murphy's fist clenched. The crowd tensed. Ethan tracked the fist in his peripheral vision—Perception 12 gave him just enough edge to see the shift in Murphy's shoulder before it translated to his arm.
Bellamy's voice cut through like a blade.
"Enough."
He walked between them. Not siding with either—positioning himself as the wall between two forces. The gun sat at his hip like punctuation.
"Ethan's not a coward." Bellamy's voice carried the authority of the only person in camp who'd killed a man—or close enough to it—to protect someone he loved. "He brought my sister back without bloodshed. That took guts, and anyone who says otherwise can take it up with me."
Murphy's eyes widened. Being shut down by the camp's alpha—the one person whose violence-backed authority Murphy acknowledged—hit differently than being shut down by the logistics guy.
But Bellamy wasn't finished.
"But Murphy's right about one thing. We need to be ready to fight. Walls aren't enough if we can't defend them. So here's what we do—we finish the wall AND we train. Both things. Not one or the other."
The compromise landed precisely where it needed to—in the space between Murphy's aggression and Ethan's caution. The scared kids in the crowd relaxed. Both their fears had been acknowledged. Neither champion had been destroyed.
Murphy's jaw worked. He looked at Bellamy, at Ethan, at the crowd that was already nodding along with the compromise.
"Training." He tested the word. "Fine. But I lead the fighters."
"You lead a squad," Bellamy corrected. "I lead the fighters."
Murphy's teeth showed. Not a smile—the expression of someone who'd been given less than he wanted but more than he'd expected.
He walked away. Three of his five followed immediately. The other two lingered, glancing between Murphy and the main group before drifting after him. The ten scared kids dispersed—some to the wall, some to gathering duties, some to nothing in particular.
The demagogue's rally dissolved. Not defeated—deflected. Murphy had lost the battle and planted seeds for the next one.
[SYSTEM: Social Conflict Navigated — De-escalation. +75 EXP]
[EXP: 300/1,500]
Clarke found him by the water stores twenty minutes later. She was wrapping a new bandage around a hauler's blistered hands—the construction was chewing through their medical supplies at a rate that made her wince every time she opened the kit.
"That could have gone badly."
"It still might. Murphy isn't done."
"No. He's not." She finished the bandage and sent the hauler back to work. "He's building something. Not a wall—a following. Scared people who want someone to blame."
"Classic demagogue pattern. Find the fear. Name an enemy. Promise violence as a solution."
Clarke studied him. The look again—the one she'd been wearing since Day 1, the quiet question that lived behind her eyes: how does a food thief from cell block seven analyze social dynamics like a political science professor?
"You're more political than you look."
"I read a lot in lockup."
"You keep saying that."
"It keeps being true."
She didn't push. But the question didn't leave her eyes, and Ethan filed it in the same folder as Wells's curiosity and the slowly accumulating weight of a cover story that would eventually fail under its own implausibility.
"They're not stupid. Clarke, Wells, eventually Bellamy—they'll keep noticing. Keep wondering. I can deflect indefinitely, but deflection erodes trust, and trust is the only currency I've got."
Murphy's followers weren't all gone. Ethan made a mental list as he walked the camp perimeter: the five core loyalists, three fence-sitters who attended the rally but left uncommitted, and two new converts—a boy named Sterling who'd been terrified since the skull discovery, and a girl named Roma who'd been sleeping outside Bellamy's tent and wasn't getting the attention she wanted.
Factions. In a camp of ninety-six people, barely a week old, factions had already formed. The Ark's tribal politics, replicated in miniature on a planet that had plenty of room for everyone if they could stop fighting each other long enough to use it.
"Murphy's crew: five to eight. My... whatever this is: Clarke, Wells, Monty, Charlotte, the work crews—call it thirty. Bellamy's orbit: twenty to thirty, overlapping with mine. Unaligned: the rest. Doing nothing, waiting to see who wins."
He picked up his knife, tested the edge against his thumb, and walked back to the wall. There was a joint to fix, and joints didn't fix themselves while you worried about politics.
Author's Note / Support the Story
Your Reviews and Power Stones help the story grow! They are the best way to support the series and help new readers find us.
Want to read ahead? Get instant access to more chapters by supporting me on Patreon. Choose your tier to skip the wait:
⚔️ Noble ($7): Read 10 chapters ahead of the public.
👑 Royal ($11): Read 17 chapters ahead of the public.
🏛️ Emperor ($17): Read 24 chapters ahead of the public.
Weekly Updates: New chapters are added every week. See the pinned "Schedule" post on Patreon for the full update calendar.
👉 Join here: patreon.com/Kingdom1Building