“Lilly was a friend of mine, back on the ship,” Clarke said slowly. Did the Earthborns even know about the Colony? A million questions jostled for dominance in Clarke’s brain, one rising to the surface quicker than the others. She decided to start small. “How many of you are there?”
The girl looked thoughtful. “Right now, three hundred and fifty-four. Maybe three hundred and fifty-five if Delphine had her baby. She’s due any day.”
A baby. Would it be born in a hospital? Was it possible they had any functioning equipment from before the Cataclysm? Had the Earthborns rebuilt any of the major cities? “Where do you live?” Clarke asked eagerly.
The girl’s face darkened, and Clarke regretted her lack of tact. She was being kept prisoner; of course she didn’t want to tell Clarke where her friends and family were. “What’s your name?” she asked instead.
“Sasha.”
“I’m Clarke,” she replied, though she had a feeling the girl already knew that. She smiled and rose slowly to her feet. “This is insane. I can’t believe I’m talking to someone from Earth.” Clarke walked across the cabin and sat down next to Sasha. “Did you know there were people living in space? What did you think when you saw us?”
Sasha stared at Clarke for a long moment, as if unsure whether she was being serious. “Well, I didn’t expect you to be so young,” she finally said. “The last ones were much older.”
The words knocked the breath out of Clarke’s chest. The last ones? It couldn’t be. She must have misunderstood. “What do you mean?” she asked. “Are you saying you’ve already met people from the Colony?”
Sasha nodded, sending Clarke’s heart into overdrive. “A group came down about a year ago. We’d always known that people were living in space, but it was still a shock, meeting them face-to-face. Their ship landed badly, just like yours did.” She paused, apparently debating how much to share with Clarke. “The first time, we didn’t know any better, and we tried to help them. We brought them into our—we let them stay with us. We gave them food and shelter, even though their ancestors left ours behind during the Forsakening. My people were willing to put the past behind us in the name of peace and friendship.” An edge had crept into her voice, and she raised her chin slightly, as if defying Clarke to challenge her.
Clarke fought the urge to defend the Colonists, or to ask more questions. In this case, the best way to gain the girl’s trust was probably to remain silent. Sure enough, after a long pause, Sasha continued. “We were foolish to trust them. There was… an incident.” Her face contorted in pain at the memory.
“What happened?” Clarke asked softly.
“It doesn’t matter,” Sasha snapped. “They’re all gone now.”
Clarke sat back, struggling to sort through the staggering information.
Could there really have been a mission to Earth last year? She thought of the debris she had found, the TG logo, and it suddenly seemed possible. But who were these older Colonists on the mission? Why had they sent the hundred, if another mission had already gone before them?
“Do you know… do you know anything about them?” Clarke asked, doing her best to keep her voice neutral. “Did they volunteer to come, or were they forced to?”
“I have no idea,” Sasha said dismissively. “We weren’t exactly spending a lot of time having personal conversations. Not after they…” She trailed off.
Clarke frowned as her brain raced to fill in the rest of the sentence. She couldn’t imagine what the Colonists had done to offend the Earthborns so badly. But it didn’t sound like Sasha was going to tell her much more, and she couldn’t keep this news to herself for another minute.
“I’ll be back,” Clarke said, rising to her feet. “Don’t go anywhere.”
Sasha lifted an eyebrow, extending her legs so that Clarke could see her bound ankles.
Clarke’s cheeks burned with shame. She hurried over to Sasha, knelt down, and began untying the rope. Wells had made the knot extremely complicated—something he’d learned in officer training, no doubt—but she’d spent enough time tying off stitches to figure it out. Sasha flinched when Clarke’s hand first brushed against her, but she didn’t protest.
Clarke unwrapped the final loop and threw it to the ground. “Come on,” she said, offering her hand to Sasha. “Come with me. They’ll never believe me otherwise.”
Sasha stared at Clarke’s hand warily, then stood up unaided. She shook one foot, then the other, wincing as the circulation returned to her feet.
“Let’s go,” Clarke said as she took Sasha’s elbow and guided her outside.
CHAPTER 10
Bellamy
It had only been ten minutes since he’d returned with the rabbits, and they were already roasting over the fire. The tantalizing smells had brought most of the camp running toward the campfire, where they now stood waiting, their eyes wide and hungry.
They reminded Bellamy of the youngest kids at the care center, who had approached him every time he returned from one of his foraging trips, hoping he’d found them something to eat. But he’d never been able to feed all of them, just as he wasn’t able to feed all of them now.
“You only brought two?” Lila asked, trying to exchange a disdainful look with her friend Tamsin, a reedy blond girl who struck Bellamy as a quieter, and somehow even stupider, version of Lila. A week ago, they, along with a few of the other girls, had cut their standard-issue gray pants into shorts of varying lengths, ignoring Clarke’s warning that they’d regret it once the weather changed.
And now they did. They were both shivering, though Lila was doing her best to hide it. Tamsin just looked miserable.
“Good counting, Lila,” Bellamy said slowly, as if praising an accomplished toddler. “You’ll make it all the way to ten soon.”
Lila narrowed her eyes and folded her arms across her chest. “You’re an asshole, Bellamy.”
“Ever hear the saying ‘Don’t bite the hand that feeds you’?” he shot back with a grin. “Or, why don’t I put it to you this way? There are two rabbits, as you so astutely pointed out, and there are way more than two of us.” Ninety-three to be exact, though no one needed to be reminded of the fact that they had already lost so many members of their group. “Not everyone is going to get a bite. And you just made that decision a little easier for me. So, thank you.” He extended his hand as if offering it to Lila to shake. “I’m very grateful for your help.”
She smacked his hand away and spun on her heel, tugging on the uneven edges of her shorts as she strode away. Typical Wal-ditz, Bellamy thought, using the term Octavia had coined for the girls on Walden who purposefully acted like airheaded Phoenicians. But the thought of Octavia banished his smile, unlocking the ache he’d been trying to contain in his chest. God only knew what kind of suffering she was enduring right now, while Lila and the rest of her friends flounced around the camp in their short shorts.
Two Arcadian boys had taken charge of roasting the rabbits, which Eric and Priya had skinned. Bellamy was eager to get back to the infirmary and check on Clarke, but he knew that if he left now, the meat would have vanished by the time he returned. He didn’t need any for himself, but he wanted to make sure Clarke got a few bites. “There’s not nearly enough for everyone,” Priya was saying to Wells, who’d just returned from a trip to the stream. “How many protein packets do we have left?”
Wells frowned and shook his head, then leaned over to whisper something to Priya. They were obviously trying to be discreet, but at least twenty people were watching them nervously.
Bellamy thought of the days after they first landed, when the group was full of explosive, almost dangerous energy. Now exhaustion and hunger had made them far less talkative. Even the chatty faux-Phoenix girl, Kendall, was quiet as she stared at Wells and Priya, although the small smile on her face made her seem more amused than suspicious.
For a few minutes, the only sounds in the clearing were the crackle of the logs and the thud of wooden spears as they bounced off tree trunks and landed on the grass. The people Graham had recruited to his “security force” had been practicing all day, and even Bellamy had to admit some of them were getting pretty good. If they were as focused on hunting dinner as they were on imaginary Earthborns, then there was a chance the Colonists wouldn’t starve after all.