The dropship rattled so violently it felt like the bolts holding the hull together were screaming. Heat washed through the cabin as the metal heated up, plunging them deeper into the atmosphere.
Wells strained against his harness, his eyes fixed on the blank monitors above.
"Retrorockets ought to have fired by now," he shouted over the deafening roar.
Clarke gripped her restraints, her knuckles turning white. "Okay. Everything on this ship is a hundred years old, right? Just give it a second."
Wells looked at her, his face pale, sweat beading on his forehead. The sheer terror of impending death seemed to break down his walls. "Clarke, there's something I have to tell you. I'm sorry I got your father arrested."
Clarke's head snapped toward him, the fear in her eyes instantly overridden by a cold, furious glare. "Don't you talk about my father."
"Please," Wells begged, his voice cracking. "I can't die knowing that you hate me."
"They didn't arrest my father, Wells," Clarke spat, the words venomous. "They executed him. I do hate you."
"Enough."
Aleksander's voice didn't just cut through the noise; it commanded the space around them. His tone was chillingly calm, completely devoid of the panic swallowing the rest of the cabin. He looked between the two of them, his glamoured brown eyes flashing with a fleeting, dangerous hint of green.
"Shut up, both of you. You want to hash out Ark politics, do it if we survive the next thirty seconds. Right now, lock your jaws, brace your necks, and focus."
A split second later, the retrorockets finally roared to life with a bone-jarring blast. The sudden deceleration slammed them back into their seats just as the ground rushed up to meet them.
CRASH.
The dropship slammed into the earth. Metal shrieked, sparks showered from the overhead wiring, and the violent impact sent a shockwave through the cabin that rattled teeth and bruised ribs. The ship bounced, groaned terribly, and finally slid to a grinding, shuddering halt.
Then, absolute silence.
The emergency lights flickered, casting long shadows across the dust hanging thick in the air.
"Listen," a boy—Monty—said from a few rows up, his voice hushed with disbelief. "No machine hum."
Beside him, Jasper unbuckled his harness with trembling hands. "Whoa. That's a first."
The spell broke. The frantic clicking of harnesses echoed through the cabin as a hundred teenagers unbuckled and practically fell out of their seats. The zero-gravity sickness and the brutal landing left half of them stumbling, but the sheer adrenaline pushed them forward.
Clarke was out of her seat in an instant, dropping to her knees next to the two unnamed boys who had unbuckled early and been thrown against the bulkhead. Finn was already crouching beside them, wincing as he rubbed his own bruised ribs.
"Finn, is he breathing?" Clarke asked urgently, reaching for the nearest boy.
Before Finn could answer, Aleksander was there. He moved with a quiet, fluid grace that stood in stark contrast to the chaotic stumbling of the other delinquents. He knelt beside Clarke and gently but firmly pushed her hands away from the boy's chest.
He didn't bother with a frantic visual check. Aleksander simply pressed two fingers against the first boy's carotid artery, his glowing green eyes hidden behind his glamoured brown irises. He extended his Dark Fey empathy outward, searching for the low, rhythmic thrum of a heartbeat or the lingering spark of a soul.
Nothing. Just cold, vacant silence.
He shifted seamlessly to the second boy, checking his pulse point. The angle of the boy's neck was entirely wrong, twisted at a sickening degree. Again, absolute silence.
"Don't bother with compressions, Clarke," Aleksander said, his voice flat, clinical, and completely detached. He stood up, wiping a streak of blood off his thumb. "They're gone. Internal hemorrhaging and massive cervical fractures. It was instantaneous."
Clarke stared at the bodies, horror washing over her face, but she didn't have time to process it. A shout came from the back of the crowd.
"The outer door is on the lower level!" a boy yelled, pointing to the ladder hatch. "Let's go!"
A stampede formed instantly. Desperate, claustrophobic teenagers surged toward the hatch, ready to pry the doors open and spill out into the unknown.
"No!" Clarke shouted, shaking off the shock of the dead boys. She scrambled to her feet and pushed her way into the crowd. "We can't just open the doors!"
The mob ignored her, shoving past her toward the lower deck. They were animals in a cage, and they finally saw an exit. But as the crowd bottlenecked near the ladder, a commanding figure stepped out of the shadows of the lower deck, raising a heavy assault rifle.
"Hey, just back it up, guys."
The crowd froze. The sight of an Ark guard uniform immediately triggered years of ingrained fear.
Clarke pushed to the front. "Stop. The air could be toxic."
The man in the uniform lowered the weapon slightly. He was young, maybe early twenties, with dark, curly hair and a hardened jawline. "If the air is toxic, we're all dead anyway."
From the middle of the crowd, a girl pushed her way forward. Her dark hair was wildly unkempt, and her eyes were wide with shock. "Bellamy?"
The fake guard's stern expression instantly melted into absolute relief. "My God, look how big you are."
"What the hell are you wearing, a guard's uniform?" Octavia asked, throwing her arms around his neck.
Bellamy held her tight, burying his face in her shoulder. "I borrowed it to get on the dropship. Someone has got to keep an eye on you." He let out a breathless, disbelieving laugh.
Clarke, however, wasn't moved by the reunion. Her eyes darted to Bellamy's bare wrist. "Where's your wristband?"
Octavia turned, glaring at Clarke. "Do you mind? I haven't seen my brother in a year."
"No one has a brother," a male delinquent muttered, thoroughly confused.
"That's Octavia Blake," a girl whispered loudly. "The girl they found hidden in the floor."
Standing a few feet back, leaning casually against a scorched metal strut near the two dead bodies, Aleksander was quietly observing the entire scene. His hyper-advanced mind cataloged every detail with terrifying precision.
Bellamy Blake wasn't a guard. The uniform was slightly too large across the shoulders, and the boots weren't laced to regulation standard. He held the rifle with confidence, but his knuckles were white, and his eyes kept darting to the shadows, tracking threats that weren't there. He was strung tight, carrying the heavy, frantic energy of a man who had done something highly illegal—and likely violent—to get that uniform and board this ship.
But beneath his clinical analysis, Aleksander felt a sudden, profound shift in the air.
His ability of empathy washed over him again. As Bellamy held Octavia, Aleksander felt the emotion radiating off the older boy. It wasn't the frantic panic of a criminal on the run. It was a suffocating, fiercely protective love. It was raw and overwhelming, a desperate devotion that had driven Bellamy to cross impossible lines just to stand between his sister and the unknown world outside.
It was genuine. And to Aleksander, that made Bellamy dangerous, but predictable.
"Octavia, Octavia, no," Bellamy said gently, pulling back from the embrace. He looked toward the heavy lever of the dropship door. "Let's give them something else to remember you by."
Octavia wiped a tear from her cheek, a wicked smirk starting to form. "Yeah? Like what?"
"Like being the first person on the ground in a hundred years."
Bellamy pulled the heavy release lever. The hydraulics groaned, and the massive metal ramp slowly lowered, groaning against the rust of a century. Searing, bright natural sunlight flooded the dim cabin, blinding them for a moment. Beyond the ramp lay a lush, overgrown forest, violently green and bursting with life.
Octavia stepped forward, standing at the very edge of the ramp. She closed her eyes, taking a deep, shuddering breath of air that didn't taste like recycled metal and ozone.
She let out a long exhale, opened her eyes, and leaped off the metal ramp, her boots hitting the soft soil of Earth.
She threw her arms up, turning back to the dropship with a wild, victorious grin. "We're back, bitches!"
The cabin erupted into deafening cheers. The delinquents surged forward, flooding down the ramp and out into the sunlight.
Aleksander stayed near the back, his fingers tracing the glamoured rings on his forearms, fully prepared for whatever this new, wild world was about to throw at them.