[Dropship Upper Level — Day 27, Morning]
Blood on the floor. Not much — a thin trail from Lincoln's jaw to the metal decking, the kind that came from a cut placed to hurt rather than damage. Bellamy stood over the prisoner with a hull-plate knife identical to Cal's, his knuckles white around the grip, his breathing too fast for a man who was supposed to be in control.
Lincoln hung from the pipe. His face was swollen on the left side where Bellamy had hit him before the blade came out — a closed fist, two or three times, the sound carrying through the floor to where Cal sat on the ladder, listening.
Cal climbed the last three rungs and stepped into the upper level.
The scene was worse than the sound. Lincoln's shirt had been cut open, and a shallow line ran from his collarbone to his sternum — surgical in placement, ragged in execution. Bellamy's hands weren't surgeon's hands. The cut was wide enough to bleed freely but shallow enough to avoid anything critical. Textbook intimidation, delivered by someone who'd learned it from instinct rather than training.
Lincoln's expression hadn't changed. The warrior's mask — flat, controlled, unyielding — was locked in place with the same professional discipline Cal had seen from the observation posts. Trikru trained their people to endure. Bellamy was cutting a man who'd been prepared for this since childhood.
"He won't talk." Bellamy didn't look at Cal. His voice was strained — the pitch of a man performing violence he didn't enjoy and couldn't stop because stopping meant admitting the violence was pointless. "Three hours. He won't say a word."
Cal leaned against the wall. His arms crossed. The combat instinct registered everything — Lincoln's heart rate (elevated but controlled), Bellamy's (elevated and climbing), the angle of the knife (wrong for interrogation, optimized for the interrogator's emotional relief rather than the subject's compliance).
"He's trained to resist pain," Cal said. "Trikru warriors undergo endurance conditioning from childhood. Cutting him is confirming that we're the enemy he was told we are."
Bellamy turned. The knife was still in his hand. Blood — Lincoln's — tracked across his fingers.
"Then what do you suggest? Ask nicely? We tried that. Twelve hours of Clarke's humanitarian approach and he gave us nothing."
"He gave me fragments. Army size, attack window."
"Fragments aren't a defense plan."
"And torture isn't producing anything better." Cal pushed off the wall. Kept his voice level — not challenging, not sympathetic. Practical. The register that Bellamy responded to when his emotional state was too hot for anything else. "You're wasting time and an asset. He has information we need, and every cut makes him less likely to share it."
Bellamy's jaw worked. The knife trembled in his grip — not from cold, from the specific exhaustion of sustained cruelty performed by someone who wasn't built for it. Bellamy Blake was many things — manipulative, frightened, fiercely protective — but he wasn't a torturer. He was a brother pretending to be a soldier, and the pretense was eating him alive.
"Thirty minutes," Cal said. "Let me talk to him alone. No blades. If I get nothing, you can try again."
"And what are you going to do that I haven't?"
"Speak his language."
The words landed differently than Cal intended. Bellamy's eyes narrowed — the suspicion that had been building since Cal had known about the Jaha shooting, since the bridge, since the fog, adding another line to the growing ledger of impossible things.
"You speak Grounder."
"Three phrases. Badly. But it's more than anyone else in this camp has tried."
Clarke appeared at the ladder. She'd been waiting below — Cal had heard her footsteps pacing for the last hour, the restless circuit of someone who opposed what was happening but hadn't found the leverage to stop it.
"Let him try," Clarke said. Her voice was controlled but brittle. She'd seen the blood on the floor. "Bellamy, this isn't working. Let Cal try."
Bellamy looked between them. Clarke and Cal — the two people in camp who most consistently undermined his authority while simultaneously being the two people he couldn't afford to lose. The calculation was visible, painful, and final.
He set the knife on the floor. Walked to the ladder. Climbed down without speaking.
---
Cal waited until Bellamy's footsteps faded. Then he picked up the knife, wiped the blade on his pants, and set it on the far side of the room. Out of reach. Out of sight.
He sat on the floor three meters from Lincoln. Same position as the night before — cross-legged, hands visible, no weapon displayed. He pulled the water skin from his belt and poured a cup.
Lincoln's eyes tracked the water. His face was a ruin of bruising and shallow cuts, but his gaze was sharp — alert, assessing, the same forensic attention he'd applied to Cal's Trigedasleng the previous night.
"Woda," Cal said. Water. He set the cup between them.
Lincoln leaned forward and drank. The motion was slower today — pain from the cuts restricting his torso, the rope burns on his wrists deeper. When he settled back, his breathing was labored.
"Your friend is not very good at this," Lincoln said in English. His voice was rougher than yesterday.
"He's not my friend. He's my ally. There's a difference."
"Your allies cut people."
"My allies are scared. Three hundred warriors are coming to kill ninety teenagers. Scared people do ugly things." Cal refilled the cup. "I need to know when. Not the general window — the specific day."
Lincoln was silent for ten seconds. The lamp flickered. Shadows moved on the walls the same way they'd moved last night, and the dropship creaked with the same structural settling, and the scene was almost identical except for the blood on the floor and the cuts on Lincoln's chest and the knowledge that in the next room a man was sitting with red hands wondering if he was still the good guy.
"Two days," Lincoln said. "The passes will clear by tomorrow night. Anya will move at dawn after that."
"From which direction?"
"South and east. She'll feint south to draw your fighters, then strike east where the wall joins the dropship."
Cal absorbed this. South feint, east strike — classic pincer adapted for forest terrain. The east junction was the weakest section of the wall, where timber met metal at an angle that created a natural gap. He'd flagged it during construction and hadn't had the materials to reinforce it.
"Thank you," Cal said.
Lincoln's mouth pressed into something that wasn't quite a smile. "You'll still lose."
"Probably. But I'd rather lose knowing which direction the punch is coming from."
Lincoln studied him. The assessment had been running since the first Trigedasleng word, building a profile that didn't fit any category the Grounders had for sky people. Young but not naive. Soft-handed but competent. Speaking a language he had no business knowing.
"Maun-de," Lincoln said. The word was quiet, almost whispered. "Maun-de don ste hir. Em don gon yuj daun." The Mountain is here. It watches too.
Cal's blood went cold. Not from the information — he'd known about Mount Weather since Day Zero. From the confirmation. A Grounder warrior, chained in an enemy dropship, using his fading leverage to warn the people who'd captured him about a threat larger than their war.
"I know," Cal said.
Lincoln's eyes locked on him. The mask cracked — just a fraction, but Cal saw it. Surprise. Real, unguarded surprise.
"You know about the Mountain."
Cal caught himself. The slip — I know — was the kind of casual confirmation that unraveled cover stories. He'd admitted knowledge he shouldn't possess, spoken with the certainty of someone who'd known about Mount Weather for twenty-seven days rather than learning about it from context clues.
"The acid fog," Cal said, recovering. "I told Clarke it was deployed, not natural. Underground infrastructure. Pressurized delivery. Whatever's in that mountain has technology and the willingness to use it."
Lincoln's expression didn't fully close. The surprise had been filed — another data point in a growing catalogue of things Cal Mercer shouldn't know, shouldn't say, shouldn't be.
He caught Cal's sleeve as Cal stood to leave. The grip was weak — blood loss and dehydration had taken their toll — but the contact was deliberate.
"Maun-de don ste hir," Lincoln repeated. Then he let go and went silent.
Cal descended the ladder on legs that wanted to fold. The caloric deficit was worse today — he'd skipped breakfast to take the interrogation shift, and the earthbending practice at dawn had burned through what little reserve remained. His vision spotted at the edges. His hands trembled.
At the base of the ladder, Wells waited.
"Did he talk?"
"Two days. South feint, east strike. Three hundred warriors."
Wells processed this with the speed of someone who'd been war-gaming since the bridge. "The east junction is weak."
"I know. Get Raven. We need to reinforce it before tomorrow night."
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Your Reviews and Power Stones are the best way to show support. They help me know what you're enjoying and bring in new readers!
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