The trees were closer now. She could see the bark, the twisted branches, the canopy of leaves. After spending her whole life staring at one solitary tree, it was startling to see so many all together, like turning a corner and facing a dozen clones of your best friend.
Glass turned to glance at one particularly large tree and gasped. A boy with curly hair was slumped against the trunk.
A boy in a guard’s uniform.
“Luke!” Glass shouted, breaking into a jerky run. As she got closer, she saw that his eyes were closed. Was he unconscious or…
“Luke!” she cried again before the thought could gain traction.
Glass’s limbs felt both clumsy and electrified, like a reanimated corpse. She tried to speed up, but the ground seemed to be pulling her down. Even from a dozen meters away, she could tell: It was Luke. His eyes were closed, his body slack, but he was breathing. He was alive.
Glass fell to her knees by his side and fought the urge to throw herself across him. She didn’t want to hurt him any further. “Luke,” she whispered. “Can you hear me?”
He was pale, and over his eye there was a deep cut, which oozed blood down the bridge of his nose. Glass pulled her sleeve down over her hand and pressed it against the cut. Luke moaned slightly but didn’t move. She pressed a little harder, hoping to staunch the bleeding, and looked down to survey the rest of him. His left wrist was purple and swollen, but apart from that, he looked okay. Tears of relief and gratitude sprang to her eyes, and she let them slide down her cheeks. After a few minutes, she took her sleeve away and examined the wound again. It looked like the bleeding had stopped.
Glass put a hand on his chest. “Luke,” she said gently. She ran her fingers lightly over his collarbone. “Luke. It’s me. Wake up.”
Luke stirred at the sound of her voice, and Glass let out a mangled sound that was part laugh, part sob. He groaned, his eyelids fluttering open and sinking closed again. “Luke, wake up,” Glass repeated, then brought her mouth to his ear, just like she used to do on mornings when he was in danger of missing check-in at work. “You’re going to be late,” she said with a small smile.
His eyes opened again, slowly, and fixed on her. He tried to speak, but no sound came out. Instead he smiled back.
“Hey there,” Glass said, feeling her fear and sorrow melt away for a moment. “It’s okay. You’re okay. We’re here, Luke. We made it. Welcome to Earth.”
CHAPTER 2
Wells
“You look exhausted,” Sasha said, tilting her head to the side so her long black hair spilled across her shoulder. “Why don’t you go to bed?”
“I’d rather be here with you.” Wells suppressed a yawn by turning it into a grin. It wasn’t hard. Every time he looked at Sasha, he noticed something that made him smile. The way her green eyes glowed in the flickering light of the campfire. How the smattering of freckles on her sharp cheekbones could be as fascinating to him as the nighttime constellations were to her. She was staring at them now, her chin pointed upward as she gazed in wonder at the sky.
“I can’t believe you lived up there,” she said quietly before lowering her eyes to meet Wells’s. “Don’t you miss it? Being surrounded by stars?”
“It’s even more beautiful down here.” He raised his hand, placed a finger on Sasha’s cheek, then gently traced a path from one freckle to another. “I could stare at your face all night. I couldn’t do that with the Big Dipper.”
“I’d be surprised if you lasted five more minutes. You can barely keep your eyes open.”
“It’s been a long day.”
Sasha raised an eyebrow, and Wells smiled. They both knew that was a bit of an understatement. Over the past few hours, Wells had been kicked out of the camp for helping Sasha—the hundred’s former prisoner—escape. That was before he ran into Clarke and Bellamy, who had just rescued Bellamy’s sister, Octavia, thereby proving that Sasha’s people, the Earthborns, weren’t the enemy they’d once appeared to be. That alone would’ve been a lot to explain to the rest of the camp members, most of whom were still a little uneasy around Sasha, but it was only the beginning. Just that evening, Bellamy and Wells had made a shocking discovery. Although Wells, the son of the Chancellor, had grown up privileged on Phoenix, while Bellamy, an orphan, had scraped by on Walden, they were in fact half brothers.
It was all too much to process. And while Wells was mostly happy, the shock and confusion kept the full weight of the news from sinking in. That, and the fact that he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in ages. Over the past few weeks, he’d become the de facto leader of the camp. It wasn’t a position he’d necessarily sought, but his officer training combined with his lifelong fascination with Earth had given him a certain set of skills. Yet, while he was glad to be able to help, and grateful for the group’s trust, the position came with an enormous amount of responsibility.
“Maybe I’ll rest for a minute,” he said, lowering his elbows to the ground, then lying back so he could rest his head in Sasha’s lap. Although he and Sasha were sitting apart from the rest of the group gathered around the campfire, the crackle of the flames didn’t fully mask the sound of the typical evening arguments. It was just a matter of time before someone came rushing over to complain that someone else had taken her cot, or to get Wells to settle a dispute about water duty, or to ask what they were meant to do with the scraps from that day’s hunt.