Finally, she scooped the medicine back into the chest and placed it in the corner of the tent. Tomorrow, she’d find a place to lock it up, but for now, Clarke felt like she could finally rest. If someone was indeed monitoring their body count up in space, she was going to make damn sure they didn’t drop below ninety-five.
She took a few shaky steps and collapsed on her cot without even bothering to take off her shoes.
“Is she going to be okay?” Octavia asked. Her voice sounded far away.
Clarke murmured yes. She could barely open her eyelids.
“What other medicine was in there?”
“Everything,” Clarke said. Or at least, she tried to say it. By the time the word reached her lips, exhaustion had numbed her brain. The laste it wn a thing she remembered was hearing Octavia rise from her cot before falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.
When Clarke awoke the next morning, Octavia was gone, and bright light was streaming in through the tent flap.
Thalia lay on her side, still asleep. Clarke rose with a groan, her muscles stiff from their hike yesterday. But it was a good kind of pain; she’d walked through a forest that hadn’t been seen by a single human being in three hundred years. Her stomach squirmed as she thought about another distinction she’d inadvertently earned—the first girl to kiss a boy on Earth since the Cataclysm.
Clarke smiled as she hurried over to Thalia. She couldn’t wait until she was well enough to hear all about it. She pressed the back of her hand against her friend’s forehead and was relieved to feel that it was cooler than it had been last night. She gently pulled back the blanket to look at Thalia’s stomach. Her skin still showed signs of an infection, but it hadn’t spread any farther. As long as Thalia had a full course of antibiotics, she’d make a full recovery.
It was hard to know exactly, but based on the strength of the light, she guessed that at least eight hours had passed since Thalia’s last dose. She turned and walked over to the corner where she’d stashed the medicine chest, frowning slightly as she realized it was open. Clarke crouched down and inhaled sharply, blinking to make sure her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her.
The chest was empty.
All the antibiotics, the painkillers, even the syringes—they were all gone. “No,” Clarke whispered. There was nothing. “No,” she said again, scrambling to her feet. She ran over to the nearest cot and started to throw the bedding aside, then did the same with her own.
Her eyes landed on Octavia’s cot, and her panic momentarily hardened into suspicion. She hurried over and began rummaging through the pile of blankets. “Come on,” she muttered to herself, but her hands came up empty.
“No.” She kicked the ground. The medicine wasn’t in the tent, that much was clear. But whoever had taken it couldn’t have gone far. There were fewer than a hundred human beings on the planet, and Clarke wasn’t going to rest until she found the thief who was jeopardizing Thalia’s life. She probably wouldn’t have to look very far.
After a quick search of the flat to make sure her parents weren’t home, Clarke hurried to the lab and entered the code. She kept expecting her parents to change the password, but either they didn’t know how often she visited the kids, or they didn’t want to stop her. Perhaps they liked knowing that Clarke was keeping them company.
As she made her way toward Lilly, Clarke smiled at the others, though her chest tightened when she saw how few were awake. Most were growing sicker, and there were more empty beds than there’d been the last time.
She tried to force this thought out of her head as she approached Lilly, but as her eyes locked on her friend, her hands began to tremble.
Lilly was dying. Her eyes barely fluttered open when Clarke whispered her name, and even when her lips moved, she didn’t have the strength to turn the shapes into words.
There were more flaky red patches on her skin, although fewer of them were bleeding, as Lilly no longer had the energy to scratch them. Clarke sat there, fighting a wave of nausea as she watched the irregular rise and fall of her friend’s chest. The worst part was that she knew this was only the beginning. The other subjects had lingered on for weeks, their symptoms growing increasingly gruesome as the radiation poisoning progressed through their bodies.
For a moment, Clarke imagined carrying Lilly to the medical center, where they could at least put her on high-intensity pain medication even if it was too late to save her. But that would be tantamount to asking the Vice Chancellor to execute her parents. Then he’d just find someone else to finish what her mother and father had started. All Clarke hoped was that their research proved conclusive so that the experiments could stop, so that these test subjects wouldn’t have suffered in vain.
Lilly’s translucent eyelids fluttered open. “Hey, Clarke,” she croaked, the beginnings of a smile flickering on her face before a new wave of pain washed them away.
Clarke reached over and grasped Lilly’s hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Hey,” she whispered. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” Lilly lied, wincing as she struggled to sit up.
“It’s okay.” Clarke placed a hand on her shoulder. “You don’t need to sit.”
“No, I want to.” The girl’s voice was strained.
Clarke gently helped her sit, then adjusted the pillows behind her. She suppressed a shudder as her fingers brushed against Lilly’s back. She could feel every vertebra poking out from her sallow skin.
“How did you like the Dickens anthology?” Clarke asked, glancing under Lilly’s bed, where they kept the books Clarke had stolen from the library.
“I only read the first story, the one about Oliver Twist.” Lilly gave Clarke a weak smile. “My vision is…” She trailed off. They both knew that once the subjects had trouble seeing, the end wasn’t far. “But I didn’t like it, anyway. It reminded me too much of the care center.”
Clarke hadn’t asked any questions about Lilly’s life before this. She’d gotten the sense that Lilly didn’t want to talk about it. “Was it really that bad?” she said carefully.
Lilly shrugged. “We all looked out for one another. We didn’t have anyone else. Well, except this one girl. She had a brother, a real-life older brother.” She looked down, suddenly blushing. “He was… nice. He used to bring her things—extra food, pieces of ribbon…”
“Really?” Clarke asked, pretending to believe the comment about a girl with a brother as she brushed a lock of hair off Lilly’s damp forehead. Even this far along in her sickness, Lilly had a flair for the dramatic.
“He sounds nice,” Clarke said vaguely as her eyes flitted toward the bald patches on Lilly’s head, which were becoming difficult to ignore.1">“Hnt>
“Anyway,” Lilly said, her voice strained, “I want to hear about your birthday. What are you going to wear?”
Clarke had almost forgotten that her birthday was next week. She didn’t feel much like celebrating. “Oh, you know, my best scrubs,” she said lightly. “I’d rather hang out here with you than go to some silly party, anyway.”
“Oh, Clarke,” Lilly groaned in mock exasperation. “You have to do something. You’re starting to be seriously boring. Besides, I want to hear about your birthday dress.” She winced suddenly, doubling over in pain.
“Are you okay?” Clarke asked, her hand on Lilly’s fragile arm.
“It hurts,” Lilly gasped.
“Can I get you anything? Do you want some water?”
Lilly opened her eyes, which were now pleading. “You can make it stop, Clarke.” She was cut off by a groan. “Please make it stop. It’s only a matter of time.…”
Clarke turned her head to the side so Lilly wouldn’t see her tears. “It’ll be okay,” she whispered, forcing a fake smile. “I promise.”
Lilly whimpered before falling silent again, then leaned back and closed her eyes.
Clarke pulled the blankets up over her friend’s chest, trying to ignore the demon that was clawing its way to the front of her mind. She knew what Lilly was asking for. And it wouldn’t be difficult. She was so frail at this point, it would take just a few well-combined painkillers to ease her into a coma. She’d slip away painlessly.
What am I thinking? Clarke asked herself, drawing back in horror. The blood on her parents’ hands had spread to her own. This whole nightmare had infected her, turned her into a monster. Or maybe it wasn’t her parents’ fault. Maybe she’d always had this darkness inside of her, waiting to rise to the surface.
Just as she was about to leave, Lilly spoke again. “Please,” she begged. “If you love me, please.” Her voice was quiet but contained an edge of desperation that terrified Clarke. “Just make it all stop.”
Bellamy was chopping wood on the far side of the clearing. Although the morning was cool, his T-shirt was already soaked through with sweat. Clarke tried not to notice how it clung to his muscular chest. When he saw her running toward him, he lowered his ax to the ground and turned to face her with a grin.
“Well, hello there,” he said as she came to a stop and paused to catch her breath. “Couldn’t stay away, could you?” He stepped forward and placed his hand on her waist, but Clarke swatted his arm away.
“Where’s your sister?” she asked. “I can’t find her anywhere.”
“Why?” Urgency shoved the playfulness out of his voice. “What’s wrong?”
“The medicine we found is missing.” Clarke took a deep breath, bracing herself for her next words. “And I think Octavia took it.”
“What?” His eyes narrowed.
“She was the only other person in the tent last night, and she seemed really fixated on the drugs—”
“No,” Bellamy snapped, cutting her off. “Of all the criminals on this goddamn planet, you think my sister is the thief?” He stared at her, his eyes burning with anger. But when he spoke again, his voice was quiet. “I thought you were different. But I was wrong. You’re just another stupid Phoenix bitch who thinks she knows better than everyone else.”
He kicked the handle of the ax, then pushed past her without another word.
For a moment, Clarke stood rooted to the ground, too stunned by Bellamy’s words to move. But then she felt something inside her tear, and suddenly she was running toward the trees, staggering into the shade of the forest canopy. Her throat raw, she slumped onto the ground, wrapping her arms around her knees to keep the anguish from flowing out of her chest.
Alone in the shadows, Clarke did something else on Earth for the first time. She cried.
CHAPTER 19
Bellamy
Bellamy paused to adjust the bird that he’d slung over his shoulder. The confrontation with Clarke had left him so agitated that he’d grabbed his bow and stormed off into the woods without a second thought. Only after shooting this bird near the stream had he started to calm down. It was a good kill—his first bird, much harder than animals on the ground—and its feathers would be perfect for the new arrows he’d been working on, to take with them when he and Octavia headed out on their own. As he stepped back into camp, he realized that he hadn’t seen Octavia since early that morning, and felt a twinge of concern. He should have checked on her before he left.
The fire was already built up, and a dozen faces turned to look at Bellamy as he approached. But no one was smiling. He shifted the bird over to his other shoulder to give them a better view of his kill. Why the hell were they staring at him like that?
An angry shout pulled his attention to a group at the far end of the clearing, near the wreckage of the dropship. They were clustered in a circle around something on the ground. He inhaled sharply as the shape on the ground moved.