Day 21

CHAPTER 11 Wells

“Wells?” Someone was prodding his arm. “Hey, Wells?”

Wells’s eyes snapped open, draining the last droplets of a dream from his mind. He’d been floating down a canal in Venice. No, wait, he’d been riding a horse into battle alongside Napoleon.

Kendall was standing over him, but Wells ignored her as he scrambled to his feet. The Earthborn—Sasha—was just where he’d left her; she hadn’t moved all night. Not that there was much opportunity for her to move with her ankles bound together. She was still sitting up against the tree, staring off into the distance with an inscrutable expression on her face, as if she’d trained herself not to betray her thoughts.

In the end, his only option had been to spend the night outside with the prisoner. The three cabins were packed with the nearly one hundred people who’d sprinted for safety in the chaos after the second attack. There was barely room for everyone to sit down, let alone sleep.

Wells and Bellamy had carried the sobbing but lucid Tamsin to the infirmary cabin, followed by Clarke, who’d shoved people out of the way to make room for her newest patient. Luckily, the wound hadn’t been life threatening, and even with a dozen terrified people surrounding her, Clarke had managed to stitch up and bandage Tamsin’s leg. But when Eric and Graham had come in, dragging Sasha between them, the cabin had erupted in a frenzy of angry shouts.

“I say we kill her now,” Graham had bellowed, transforming a number of the shouts into cheers.

“Absolutely not,” Bellamy growled. “Not before she tells us where to find my sister.”

Graham’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but they’ve probably killed Octavia by now. Our only shot at justice is cutting this little bitch’s head off and leaving it in the woods for her friends to find.”

There’d been no chance at a peaceful solution, not when everyone was half-crazed with fear and adrenaline. And so Wells had volunteered to spend the night outside with the prisoner—keeping her safe but separate from the group until they figured out what to do with her.

A few people had objected to that plan as well, saying that it was too dangerous for Wells to be in the clearing by himself, but when they realized it was either that or keep Sasha inside with them, they’d fallen silent.

Wells knew he should’ve been terrified after seeing what had happened to Asher and Tamsin, but as he settled against a tree a few meters away from Sasha, curiosity soon swept his fear aside. He couldn’t quite believe he was looking at someone born on Earth, someone who’d be able to answer all the questions that had kept him up late into the night as a kid. What did snow feel like? Had she ever seen a bear? Were there still cities standing? What was left of New York? Chicago? But he must’ve lulled himself to sleep with his questions, and turned them into the stuff of dreams.

“Um, Wells?” Kendall said again. “Are you okay?”

Wells turned to her and rubbed his eyes. “Yes, fine. What’s going on?”

“I said I’d come ask you about breakfast. What are the rations today?”

Wells sighed. “No breakfast today, I’m afraid.” Bellamy’s rabbits and Graham’s raccoon were long gone, and they had to be extremely careful with their protein packets—no more than one per person per day.

“Oh, that’s a shame,” Kendall said. “I’ve been up since dawn carving Asher’s name into his marker. It looks pretty good. Want to come see?”

“Maybe later,” Wells said. “And, um, thanks.”

When it became clear that Kendall wasn’t going to leave on her own, he asked for her help spreading the bad news about breakfast. She seemed disappointed that Wells didn’t want to come see her handiwork, but set off with a smile, pleased at being useful to Wells.

After Kendall had trudged back to the cabin to relay the bad news, Wells reached into his pocket for the crumpled protein packet left over from the day before. He glanced at Sasha. Her skin was paler than it’d been when they’d captured her the day before, though Wells wasn’t sure whether that was from stress or hunger. Still, they couldn’t let her starve. She’d done nothing wrong, and it was cruel to treat her like a prisoner of war.

“Hey,” Wells said cautiously, holding out the protein packet. “Do you want some of this? You must be pretty hungry by now.”

Sasha stared at it for a moment, then looked up at Wells. “What is it?” she asked hoarsely.

“It’s protein paste. Haven’t you seen it before?” She shook her head. “Try it,” he insisted. “Hold out your hand.” He squeezed the rest of the paste into Sasha’s palm, then smiled as she dipped a finger into the paste and brought it to her mouth, wrinkling her nose.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” she admitted, taking another dab. She finished the protein paste, then wiped her hands together. “But I know where you can find food—real food.”

Wells eyed her suspiciously. “Really?”

Sasha nodded. “I’ll take you there, if you’ll let me out of your camp.”

He paused. Strategically, they needed to keep her prisoner until they got Octavia back. Even if she was telling the truth about the rogue Earthborns, Sasha could turn out to be an important bargaining tool. He couldn’t risk losing her by falling into a trap. “What’s to keep you from running away?” Wells asked.

“You can tie my hands again, if it’ll make you feel better,” she said. “Listen, I’m only trying to help. And eat,” she added. Her stomach growled loudly in agreement.

“Okay,” Wells said slowly, surveying her face for any sign of treachery. “I’m just going to round up a few people to come with us.”

“No!” She locked eyes with Wells. “It’s not going to be a free-for-all. I’m trusting you to take only what you need, and just this one time. Deal?”

Wells hesitated. The others would be furious if they knew he’d let Sasha leave the camp, even if it was to help them find food. But then again, being a leader sometimes meant doing what you knew was right, even if it made you unpopular. That was one lesson his father had never let him forget.

“Okay,” Wells said, nodding at Sasha. “But if it’s just the two of us, I’ll need to tie you to me, so you can’t bolt once we’re in the woods.”

“Fine.” She stood up and extended her hands.

Wells winced when he saw the red sores on her wrist where the rope had rubbed her skin away. “I’ll use the metal cuffs this time. They’ll be less irritating.” He fetched the cuffs from the supply tent, then took some bandages, which he wrapped around Sasha’s right wrist before locking one of the cuffs to it. He paused a moment, then snapped the other cuff to his own left wrist, taking care to tuck the key deep inside his pocket. “Ready?” he asked. She nodded, and after glancing around the clearing to make sure no one was watching, he led her across the tree line, shortening his step when the bite of the metal let him know he was moving too quickly.

Walking together became trickier once they were in the woods. While Wells had to slow down to navigate exposed roots and moss-covered rocks, Sasha sped up, springing lightly over the same obstacles. Wells couldn’t take a step without making a noise, but Sasha moved as gracefully and silently as a deer. This was clearly land she had crossed many times. He wondered what it was like to know a section of forest as intimately as you knew another person, lifting your foot over a fallen log as naturally as you might take someone’s hand.

Soon, she was leading Wells down a hill he’d never seen before, where the trees were thinner and the grass grew higher, almost up to their knees. Her long braid had come loose, and her dark hair rippled down her back.

“Do you think they’re worried about you?” he said finally.

At first, he wasn’t sure Sasha had heard him, because she didn’t turn around or break stride. But the chain connecting them trembled slightly. “Worried… and furious,” she said. “We were ordered to stay away from you, but I had to see for myself.” Wells lengthened his step so they were walking side by side for the first time. “I’ve spent my whole life imagining what it was like in space, what you were all like. I didn’t really get to know the people in the first group. I barely got to talk to any of them. So then when you all came down, I wasn’t going to miss my chance.”

Wells laughed, then winced as the chain went taut. Sasha had stopped in her tracks and was glowering at him. “What’s so funny?” she asked.

“Nothing. It’s just crazy to think about you imagining us when I’ve spent my whole life wondering about Earth.”

Sasha gave him a strange look but started walking again. “Really? So what do you want to know?”

Wells barely missed a beat. “How many people survived the Cataclysm? Are there still cities standing? What kinds of animals are there? Have you ever seen the ocean? What happens when…” He trailed off when he saw Sasha grinning at him. “What?”

“Why don’t we do one at time?”

“Okay,” Wells said with a smile. “The first one, then. Who survived? What happened after the bombs fell?”

“We’re not sure,” Sasha admitted. “Our ancestors made it to a self-sustaining bomb shelter deep underground, where the limestone kept them safe from radiation. It was only about fifty years ago that they emerged to the surface again. There’s been no other sign of human life—to the best of our knowledge, we’re the only ones who survived. But who knows? There may be others around the world.”

“And where are we exactly?” Wells asked.

“Really?” She furrowed her brows as though wondering if he were joking. “We’re in North America, in what used to be called Virginia. Did they really not tell you where they were sending you? Why all the secrecy?”

Wells hesitated, unsure how much to reveal about the mission. Admitting that they’d all committed crimes and been sentenced to die on their eighteenth birthdays probably wasn’t the best way to seem trustworthy. “The dropships don’t have the most sophisticated navigation systems. We weren’t entirely sure where we were going to end up.”

Sasha looked skeptical. “Yet you landed within ten miles of the other dropship. You must have been sent to this area for a reason. You were probably meant to find us, right?”

The thought gave Wells chills. No one on the Colony could have known about the existence of Sasha’s people—could they? “If we’re in Virginia, are we near Washington, D.C.?” he asked, eager to change the subject. “Did any of the buildings survive?” His heart sped up as he thought about exploring the remains of the White House, or better yet, a museum. There had been famous ones in Washington, he recalled.

Disappointment swept through him as Sasha shook her head. “No, the city was razed. Just a few buildings are still standing, and only parts of them. Here, watch your head,” she said, ducking under a branch.

She led him over a small stream and then into a grove where the trees grew so close together, the branches almost knit into a roof overhead. Wells suddenly felt foolish, letting her take him in a direction the hundred hadn’t really gone before. What if it was a trap?

Something sticky and soft brushed against the back of his neck, and he let out a shout, swatting at it. Strands of a gossamer-like material broke apart in his fingers. “What is this?” he said, trying to wipe it away.

“Relax.” Sasha laughed, and Wells couldn’t help smiling, realizing how foolish he probably looked. “It’s just a spiderweb. See?”

She pointed, and Wells looked up to see that one of the trees was draped in finely woven, glistening threads that stretched across the branches, creating a sort of net.

Sasha started to tug him forward, but Wells couldn’t pull his eyes away. The web was unexpectedly captivating, its geometric shapes oddly beautiful against the wild tangle of branches and leaves. “I thought spiders were tiny.”

“Sometimes. But the ones that live in the woods are bigger.” She held up her arm. “Their legs can be this long.”

Wells suppressed a shudder and sped up to walk next to Sasha. They were quiet as they continued through the grove, the leaves on the ground absorbing the sound of their footsteps. Something about the silence and shadows made Wells hesitant to disrupt the stillness. It had been the same back on the ship: People lowered their voices whenever they set foot in Eden Hall, a gathering space on Phoenix dominated by what they’d all believed to be the only tree left in the universe, brought onto Phoenix as Earth burned. That is, until Wells set fire to it, seeking arrest in order to be sent to Earth with Clarke.

After another ten minutes, the forest thinned out again, and Sasha led him up a steep slope. When they reached the crest of the hill, she stopped and raised her hand. “Here we go,” she said, pointing to a group of trees up ahead.

At first, Wells didn’t notice anything remarkable about them. But then he squinted and realized that there was something solid hanging from the branches.

Sasha led him toward the closest tree. The boughs were sagging under the weight of dozens of long, green, oblong pods. She rose onto the balls of her feet and stretched her arm above her head, but her fingers only barely grazed the lowest pod.

“Allow me.” Wells extended his own arm and just managed to grab the one she’d been reaching for. He snapped it off the branch and handed it to Sasha, marveling at the bumpy texture.

With expert movements, she began peeling away the outer layer, revealing bright pink seeds. “What is that?” Wells asked.

“You don’t have corn up in space?”

“We grow some vegetables in the solar fields, but nothing like that.” He paused. “Doesn’t corn grow out of the ground?”

Sasha shrugged. “Maybe it used to, but it grows on trees now. Just watch out for the blue ones. They’re really spicy.” She raised her cuffed hand. “If you undo these, we can climb up and pick as much as we can carry.”

Wells paused. He wanted to trust her, and somehow felt he could trust her, but it could also be a monumentally stupid risk.

Finally, he reached into his pocket and removed the key. “Okay. I’ll undo the cuffs, but if you run off, you know we’ll all come after you.”

Sasha was quiet for a moment, then raised her shackled wrist. Wordlessly, Wells inserted the key into the lock and turned it until her cuff sprang open. She clenched and unclenched her fingers, then shook her hand and smiled. “Thanks.”

In a flash, she’d scrambled up the trunk and was pulling herself onto a branch. She made it look easy, but when Wells tried to follow, he found it difficult to get a good hold. The bark was rough, but the moss covering it was slippery, and it took him a few tries before he got enough leverage to get off the ground.

He was out of breath by the time he pulled himself onto the third-lowest branch, where the corn grew the thickest. Sasha had climbed nearly to the end of the branch, straddling it like a bench, and was using both hands to snap off ears of corn and toss them to the ground, which suddenly looked very far away.

Wells took a deep breath and forced himself to look up. The view was breathtaking. Wells had seen innumerable photos of picturesque spots on Earth, but none of them captured the beauty of the orchard before them. The meadow stretched out below, and provided a stunning contrast to the hazy purple outlines of the mountains in the distance. He felt his skin tingle when his eyes settled on their jagged white tops. Snow.

“I’ll have to show this to my father when he gets here,” Wells said before he had time to think better of it.

Sasha whipped her head around. “Your father? There are more of you coming?”

Wells wasn’t sure why the accusation in her voice made him feel guilty. The Colonists had spent the past three hundred years figuring out how to bring the human race back home. They had just as much right to the planet as the Earthborns. “Of course,” he said. “The ships weren’t built to last forever. Eventually, everyone will come down.” And by eventually, I mean in the next few weeks, Wells thought. All thanks to me. After Clarke’s arrest, he’d been desperate to make sure she was sent to Earth instead of facing execution. He knew that the Council was considering sending Confined teenagers, and he knew the mission needed to happen before Clarke’s eighteenth birthday—so he’d done something drastic, and dangerous. He purposely worsened the existing airlock breach. Now the remaining Colonists had little time left in space, and would be forced to come to Earth. He still felt sick thinking about what he’d done—but it had saved Clarke’s life.

“Didn’t your father want to come with you?”

Wells’s chest tightened as he thought about the last time he’d seen his father, the blood staining the Chancellor’s uniform as the door to the dropship had closed. He’d spent the past few weeks trying to convince himself that the bullet wound was superficial, that his father would recover in time to come down with the next wave of Colonists. But he had no way of knowing what had really happened, or if his father was even still alive.

“He has a lot of responsibilities on the ship,” Wells said instead. “He’s the Chancellor.”

Sasha’s eyes widened. “So, he’s in charge of everybody? Is that why you’re the leader of the group that came down?”

“I’m not the leader,” Wells protested.

“They all seem to listen to you.”

“Maybe.” Wells sighed. “But I always feel like I’m letting someone down, no matter what I do.”

Sasha nodded. “I know. My father… well, he’s actually in charge down here too.”

Wells stared at her in surprise. “Really? Your father is the Chancellor?”

“We don’t use that term, but it sounds like the same kind of thing.”

“So you know what it’s like to…” He trailed off with a frown. It was strange trying to put his feelings into words, feelings that he’d spent the past sixteen years trying to ignore.

“What? To be held to a higher standard than everyone else? To have everyone assume that you know the answers, when most of the time you don’t even know what questions you’re supposed to be asking?”

Wells smiled. “Yeah. Something like that.”

Sasha tossed another ear of corn to the ground, biting her lip. “I feel bad for my dad, but honestly, I’m sick of it too. They turn everything I do into some kind of political statement.”

“What did you do?”

Sasha laughed mischievously. “Some things I shouldn’t have. Including coming here.” She caught Wells’s eye, and the playfulness disappeared from her face. “What about you? Your father must really trust you to send you to Earth on your own.”

Wells hesitated. It was best to let her believe that. Sasha would be more likely to treat the hundred with caution if she thought they were specially trained, handpicked for the mission, as opposed to useless criminals sent to possibly die.

A gust of wind swept through the tree, whipping Sasha’s wild black hair into her face.

“Hardly,” Wells said, wondering what it was about Sasha’s bright green eyes that made him feel reckless. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you the truth.”

Sasha raised an eyebrow. “Try me.”

“I was arrested a few weeks ago. For setting fire to the only tree in the Colony.”

She stared at him for a long moment, then to his surprise, laughed and slid one leg over the branch. “I guess I’d better hurry up before you take a dislike to this one.” Sasha lowered herself into the air, then let go, landing lightly on the ground. “Come on,” she called. “We have enough corn. Or are you scared?”

Wells shook his head. It didn’t matter that he had no idea how the hell to get out of the tree. For the first time since they’d landed on Earth, he didn’t feel afraid of anything.