Thalia closed her eyes and sighed, ignoring the question. “You need to let yourself be happy. Or else, what’s the point of anything?”
Clarke opened her mouth to launch a retort, but the words disappeared as she watched Thalia lean over, suddenly coughing. “It’ll be okay,” Clarke whispered, running her hand through her friend’s sweat-dampened hair. “You’ll be okay.”
This time, the words weren’t a prayer but a declaration. Clarke refused to let Thalia die, and nothing was going to stop her. She wouldn’t let her best friend join the chorus of ghosts in her head.
CHAPTER 13
Wells
Wells looked up at the star-filled sky. He never imagined how homesick it would make him to stare at the familiar scene from hundreds of kilometers away. It was unsettling to see the moon so tiny and featureless, like waking up to find that your family’s faces had been erased.
Sitting at the campfire around him, the others were grumbling. They’d been on Earth less than a week, and already their rations were dwindling. The fact that they had no medicine was troubling, but right now the bigger concern was the food supply. Either the Colony miscalculated their provisions, or Graham and his friends had been hoarding more than he’d realized. Either way, the effects were already beginning to show. It wasn’t just the hollows forming under their cheekbones—there was a hunger in their eyes that terrified Wells. He could never let himself forget that they’d all been Confined for a reason, that everyone surrounding him had done something to endanger the Colony.
Wells most of all.
Just then, Clarke emerged from the infirmary tent and walked toward the campfire, her eyes skimming the circle as she searched for a spot. There was an empty space next to Wells, but her gaze skipped right over him. She sat beside Octavia, who was perched on a log, her injured leg stretched out in front of her.
Wells sighed as he turned to look around the clearing, the flames flickering on the dark forms of the three tents they’d finally built—the infirmary, a structure to hold supplies, and Wells’s personal favorite, a ditch for collecting water, in case it ever rained. At least their camp wasn’t turning out to be a complete failure. His father would be impressed when he joined them on Earth.
If he joined them. It was becoming harder and harder to convince himself that his father was fine, that the bullet wound was only superficial. His chest tightened painfully as he thought of his father clinging to life in a hospital bed, or worse, his body floating somewhere through space. His father’s words still rang in his ears: If anyone can make this mission a success, it’s you. After a lifetime of urging Wells to work harder and do better, he wondered if the Chancellor might have given his last order to his son.
A strange noise came from the trees. Wells sat up straighter, all his senses on the alert. There was a cracking sound, followed by a rustling. The murmurs by the fire turned to gasps as a strange shape materialized out of the shadows, part human, part animal, like something from the ancient myths.
Wells leapt to his feet. But then the creature moved past the tree line and into the light.
Bellamy stood with an animal carcass draped over his shoulders, a trail of blood in his wake.
A deer. Wells’s eyes traveled over the lifeless animal, taking in its soft brown fur, spindly legs, delicately tapered ears. As Bellamy moved toward them, the deer’s head swayed back and forth from its limp neck—but it never made a full arc, because each time it swung back, it knocked against something else.
It was another head, swinging from another slender neck. The deer had two heads.
Wells froze as everyone around the fire scrambled to their feet, some of them inching forward for a better look, others backing up in terror. “Is it safe?” one girl asked.
“It’s safe.” Clarke’s voice came from the shadows, and then she stepped into the light. “The radiation might have mutated the { mu ranggenetic material hundreds of years ago, but there wouldn’t be any trace of it now.”
Everyone fell silent as Clarke stretched out her hand to stroke the creature’s fur. Standing in a pool of moonlight, she never looked so beautiful.
Clarke turned to Bellamy with a smile that made Wells’s stomach twist. “We’re not going to starve.” Then she said something Wells couldn’t hear, and Bellamy nodded.
Wells exhaled, willing his resentment to drain away. He took another deep breath before walking toward Bellamy and Clarke. She stiffened as he approached, but Wells forced himself to keep his eyes on Bellamy. “Thank you,” Wells said. “This will feed a lot of people.”
Bellamy stared at him questioningly as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“I mean it,” Wells said. “Thanks.”
Finally, Bellamy nodded. Wells went back to his place by the fire, leaving Bellamy and Clarke to talk quietly, their heads bowed together.
The observation deck was completely empty. Staring out into the immeasurably vast sea of stars, Wells could easily imagine that they were the only two living things in the entire universe. He tightened his arm around Clarke. She pressed her head against his chest and exhaled, sinking closer to him as the air left her body. As if she was happy to let him breathe for them both.
“How’d it go today?” she murmured.
“Fine,” Wells said, not sure why he was bothering to lie when Clarke was pressed against his chest. She could read his heartbeat like it was Morse code.
“What happened?” she asked, concern flickering in her large green eyes.
His officer training entailed periodic trips to Walden and Arcadia to monitor the guards. Today, he’d observed them seize a woman who’d gotten pregnant with an unregistered child. There’d be no chance at lenience. She would be Confined until she gave birth, the child would be placed in the Council’s care, and the mother would be executed. The law was harsh but necessary. The ship could only support a certain number of lives, and allowing anyone to disrupt the delicate balance would jeopardize the entire race. But the look of panic in the woman’s eyes as the guards had dragged her away was burned into Wells’s brain.
Surprisingly, it’d been his father who helped Wells make sense of what he’d seen. That night at dinner, he’d sensed something was wrong, and Wells had told him about the incident, trying to sound soldierly and detached. But his father had seen through the act and, in a rare gesture, put his hand over Wells’s across the table. “What we do isn’t easy,” he’d told his son, “but it’s crucial. We can’t afford to let our feelings keep us from doing our duty—keeping the human race alive.”
“Let me guess,” Clarke said, interrupting his thoughts. “You arrested some criminal mastermind for stealing books from the library.”
“Nope.” He swept a piece of hair behind her ear. “She’s still at large. They’re forming a special task force as we speak.”
She smiled, and the flecks of gold in her eyes {d igotten pre seemed to sparkle. He couldn’t imagine a prettier color.
Wells turned his attention back to the enormous window. Tonight, the clouds covering Earth didn’t remind him of a shroud—they were merely a blanket. The planet hadn’t died, it’d only slipped into an enchanted sleep until the time came for it to welcome humanity home.
“What are you thinking about?” Clarke asked. “Is it your mom?”
“No,” he said slowly. “Not really.” Wells reached out and absentmindedly wrapped a lock of Clarke’s hair around his finger, then let it fall back to her shoulder. “Though I guess, in a way, I’m always thinking about her.” It was hard to believe that she was really gone.
“I just want to make sure she’s proud of me, wherever she is,” Wells continued, a chill passing over him as he glanced toward the stars.
Clarke squeezed his hand, transferring her warmth to him. “Of course she’s proud of you. Any mother would be proud of a son like you.”
Wells turned back to Clarke with a grin. “Just mothers?”
“I imagine you’re a hit with grandparents, too.” She nodded gravely, but then giggled when Wells playfully smacked her shoulder.
“There’s someone else I want to make proud.”
Clarke raised an eyebrow. “She’d better watch her back,” she said, reaching out to wrap her hands behind Wells’s head. “Because I’m not very good at sharing.”
Wells grinned as he leaned forward and closed his eyes, brushing his lips against hers for a teasing kiss before moving down to her neck. “Neither am I,” he whispered into her ear, feeling her shiver as his breath tickled her skin. She pulled him closer, her touch melting away the tension until he forgot about his day, forgot that he’d have to repeat it all tomorrow and the day after that. All that mattered was the girl in his arms.
The smell of the roasting deer was foreign and intoxicating. There was no meat on the Colony, not even on Phoenix. All the livestock had been eliminated in the middle of the first century.
“How do we know when it’s done?” an Arcadian girl named Darcy asked Wells.
“When the outside starts to crisp and the inside turns pink,” Bellamy called without turning his head.
Graham snorted, but Wells nodded. “I think you’re right.” After the meat cooled, they chopped it into smaller pieces and began passing it around the fire. Wells carried some to the other side of the circle, distributing it to the crowd.
He handed a piece to Octavia, who held it in front of her as she looked up at Wells. “Have you tried it yet?” Wells shook his head. “Not yet.”
“Well, that’s not fair.” She raised her eyebrows. “What if it turns out to be disgusting?”
He glanced around the circle. “Everyone else seems to be okay with it.”
Octavia pursed her lips together. “I’m not like everyone else.” She looked a { Sh/fontt him for a moment, as if waiting for him to speak, then smiled and pushed her piece toward him. “Here, you take the first bite and tell me what you think.”
“I’m okay, thanks,” Wells said. “I want to make sure everyone else—”
“Come on.” She giggled as she tried to slip it into his mouth. “Take a bite.”
Wells snuck a quick glance around the circle to make sure Clarke hadn’t been watching. She wasn’t—she was caught up in conversation with Bellamy.
Wells turned back to Octavia. “Okay,” he said, taking the piece of meat from her hands. She looked disappointed not to feed it to him, but Wells didn’t care. He took a bite. The outside was tough, but as his teeth sank in, the meat released a flood of flavor unlike anything Wells had tasted before, simultaneously salty and smoky and faintly sweet. He chewed some more and then swallowed, bracing for his stomach to reject the alien substance. But all he felt was warmth.
The kids who’d eaten first had risen from the fire and begun milling around the clearing, and for a few minutes, the soft hum of their conversation merged with the crackling of the flames. But then the sound of confused murmurs began to rise to the surface, making the skin on the back of Wells’s neck prickle. He rose to his feet and walked over to where a group was standing near the tree line.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Look.” One of the girls pointed to something in the trees.
“What?” Wells squinted into the darkness.
“There,” another girl said. “Did you see it?”
For a moment, Wells thought they were playing a trick on him, but then something caught his eye. A flash of light, so brief that he might have imagined it. There was another flash a few feet away, then another, this one a little higher up. He took a step toward the edge of the clearing, which was now ablaze with glowing lights, as if invisible hands had decorated it for a party. His eyes landed on the closest orb, a ball of light hanging from the lowest branch of a nearby tree.