“Well, doctor or no doctor, you’d better do a good job.” He wiggled his fingers in her palm. “That’s my shooting hand after all.”
Clarke pulled a bandage from her supply bag and began winding it around his wrist and hand. “It’s not broken,” she said matter-of-factly, hoping to get out of the conversation as quickly as possible. “But you’ll need to limit your use of this hand for a few days to allow the swelling to go down.” She inhaled deeply and looked him directly in the eye. “Which shouldn’t be a problem, since we hunt with spears and arrows here, not guns.”
Scott met her gaze with a glint in his eye. The skin on Clarke’s arms rippled with goose bumps. “I wasn’t talking about shooting animals,” he pronounced coolly. Before Clarke could ask him what he meant, he cocked his head to the side and surveyed her with the same expression that used to make her want to shower as quickly as possible. “So, why didn’t you finish your training?”
“I was Confined before I completed it,” Clarke said flatly, not meeting his eyes.
“Confined? You?” He paused for a moment, then snickered. “Little Miss Perfect, Confined. You know what, though? I don’t mind being treated by a convict. I kinda like knowing that, all that time, there was a bad girl hiding under those scrubs.” He lowered his voice as a woman in an officer’s uniform strode past, talking urgently with a man Clarke vaguely recognized. “I hope you brought those scrubs to Earth. I always liked the way that they made your—”
“You’re all set,” Clarke said with exaggerated cheer as she secured the bandage and gave him an extrahard pat on the wrist, ignoring his grimace of pain. “I’ll see you around.”
Without giving Scott another look, Clarke hurried away, shuddering as if to throw off the weight of his heavy, lingering gaze.
CHAPTER 4
Wells
Wells winced as he trudged up the slope toward the lake for the eighth time that day. He’d walked nearly twenty miles trekking back and forth, leading survivors to the camp and then heading back for another group.
There were more adults than kids in the clearing, a sight that seemed almost as a strange as the two-headed deer they’d spotted their first week on Earth. Their presence was made all the more conspicuous by the fact that they could do nothing more than stare in wonder and shock at their surroundings while, all around them, teens who’d been rotting away in a detention center just a few short weeks ago were barking out directions.
Wells had also been struck by the lack of happy reunions. He’d only witnessed two of them finding any relatives, and they were both Phoenicians. None of the Waldenites or Arcadians had any loved ones on the ships.
“I can’t believe I made it.” A young woman panted as she gratefully accepted Wells’s assistance climbing the steep slope.
“You had a pretty rough landing there,” he said, shortening his stride so it’d be easier for her to keep up. Although it’d been only a few weeks since his own arrival, he’d forgotten how unsteady he’d felt at first.
“Not the landing,” she said, stopping to look up at him. “On Phoenix. It was… terrifying.” She turned to glance up at the sky, then sighed and shook her head. “They don’t have much time left.”
Her words were like a fist to Wells’s gut. Before he could ask what she meant, though, Eric stepped in to lead the young woman through the woods to the camp, freeing Wells to return to the lake.
A hot coil of guilt tightened around Wells’s stomach. He didn’t need to know the details to understand that he had probably been responsible for whatever grim fate lay ahead for the people still on the Colony. He may have become a leader down here on Earth, but he was still a coldhearted murderer back on the ship. Wells could almost feel the cool metal of the airlock at his fingertips as he opened it, just a little, allowing precious oxygen to leak out of the ship. He had only been trying to speed up the inevitable so Clarke could travel to Earth before her eighteenth birthday—before her certain execution. But, he knew now, he had also hastened the demise of thousands of innocent people still trapped on the Colony.
As he got closer to the lake, he wrinkled his nose at the now-familiar smell of the crash site. Under the acrid scent of smoke and the metallic tang of blood and sweat, he sensed something else. It took him a moment to place it, but as soon as he did, his heart began to pound: It was fuel. The smashed dropships were leaking it into the grass, dirt, and water all around them. Most of the flames had started to die out, but all it would take was one spark in the wrong place to turn the whole place into an inferno.
Then, like a scene out of a nightmare, Wells saw it happen. About a hundred meters away, an enormous flame shot out the top of one of the charred dropships, hurtling chunks of flaming wreckage into the air. “Watch out!” Wells shouted, breaking into a run. “Everybody, move.”
Luckily, the injured had all been triaged in another area, but there was too much smoke in the air to confirm that the others had moved to safety. Wheezing, Wells ran forward, coughing and wiping his eyes with his sleeves as he called out for anyone who needed help.
There was a faint buzzing sound, like something flying through the air. Wells looked up but couldn’t see anything but dark gray smoke. It grew louder, but before Wells could react, he felt himself flying through the air, landing on the ground with a hard thud. He tried to roll over, but something—or someone—was on top of him. After a moment, the weight moved, and Wells looked up with a groan. Just a few meters from his head was an enormous piece of smoldering fuselage. If he hadn’t been knocked to the ground, it would’ve crushed his skull.