Raven leaned against the edge of the workbench, her fingers tightly gripping a stray wire as she stared at Clarke.
She knew Jason was capable of doing horrible things. Honestly, they were all capable of horrible things now. The ground had peeled back whatever civilized layers they had brought down from the Ark, and the threat of Mount Weather, who literally looked at them as nothing more than livestock to be drained and discarded had erased the rest. But what Clarke had just recounted went beyond survival.
Finn sat on a nearby chair, his face was looking pale as he looked between Clarke and the heavy iron door. "He... he actually took the suit off? In front of the man?"
"Right in front of Emerson, yes," Clarke said, her hands trembling as she wiped a smudge from her forehead. "The radiation cooked him alive in seconds. He wanted Emerson to watch every single moment of it."
Octavia, who had been leaning against the wall sharpening a small hunting knife, merely shrugged. She didn't look up from her blade. "Well, damn. That must've been brutal on the guy."
Finn snapped his head toward her, his eyes wide with a mix of disbelief and anger. "Octavia, are you serious? He executed a defenseless prisoner by turning the atmosphere into a weapon. It's barbaric."
Octavia stopped her sharpening stone, looking up with a cold, unyielding stare that mirrored the Grounders she had been training with. "What? Finn, they want to harvest us, drain our blood, and kill every single one of us anyway. I don't understand why you guys are making this look like a big deal. They aren't soldiers; they're parasites. Jason treated them like it."
Before Finn could retort, the doors hissed open. Clarke stepped back as Jason strolled into the room, entirely unbothered, though he had at least washed the heavy crimson stains from his hands.
"You shouldn't have done that, Jason," Clarke said immediately, turning on him the second the doors sealed. "It was reckless. It's going to create massive problems with my mother and Kane, not to mention what it does to our moral standing."
Jason let out a soft, tired sigh, adjusting his posture and stretching out to loosen his muscles. He looked past Clarke, his eyes scanning Raven, Finn, and Octavia.
"Tell me," Jason murmured with a smooth and deceptively light voice. "Do the rest of you also share the Chancellor's sudden bout of righteous indignation? Do you truly believe I went out of line?"
The room fell into a heavy silence. Raven looked down at her hands, then up at Jason, her jaw set. "We didn't think you'd go that far," she admitted, her voice was steady despite the tension. "But... I get why you did it. You wanted to shatter Emerson. You wanted to show him that his military rank and his little metal mountain don't mean a damn thing out here. You gave him a clock."
Octavia let out a short, sharp scoff as a knowing smirk playing on her lips as she stepped away from the wall.
"It's not just about breaking Emerson," Octavia said, her eyes locking onto Jason's. "You didn't just do that for the Mountain Man's benefit. You did it to prove a point to the Grounders, too. Didn't you?"
Jason tilted his head, a faint, curious hum escaping his throat as he invited her to continue.
"I saw the way Indra looked at you after the ridge, and I know how she thinks," Octavia explained, stepping closer. "The Grounders respect strength, but they also respect brutality. They think we're soft because we cry over our dead and argue about rules. By cooking that guard alive right in front of Indra, you drew a line in the dirt. You showed them that the 'Butcher' isn't a title just there for the dramatics, it's a promise. It was an indirect warning to the entire coalition: 'Do not cross us, because we can be colder than you ever dreamed.'
Jason stared at Octavia for a long, quiet beat, the silence stretching tight enough to snap. Then, his face split into a slow, brilliant, and chillingly genuine smile.
"My word, Octavia," Jason whispered, bowing his head slightly in appreciation. "You truly are adapting to the local culture beautifully. It's almost a pity the rest of our people are too blind to see the battlefield for what it actually is."
A slow, razor-sharp smirk spread across Jason's face after that. Finn adjusted his weight against the supply crate, his brow furrowing deeply as he watched him. "Why are you smiling? You just admitted to butchering a man to make a point, and you're smiling."
Jason turned his gaze from Finn, letting it rest on Clarke with an eerie, composed stillness. "We have an alliance, Clarke. Yes, the Grounders stand beside us on paper," Jason murmured, gesturing elegantly with one hand. "And yet, despite our shared enemy, the vast majority of them still treat us like fragile children. They look at our clothes, our technology, our grief, and they mistake our civility for weakness. They underestimate us. They view the Sky People as a temporary infestation that will break the moment the wind changes."
He took a slow step forward, his posture radiating absolute certainty. "I forced Indra to bring that guard to me. I made her stand there and watch as I stripped away his armor and sentenced him to the air. Why? Because the Grounders do not negotiate with virtue, Clarke. They negotiate with power. By showing her that we are capable of a calculated, uncompromising brutality, I altered the mathematics of this alliance. I let her know that we can be just as cold, just as absolute, and just as devastating as the world they survived. They needed to see that our hands are capable of tearing down everything they build if they ever decide to betray us."
Clarke stared at him, her chest heaving as she processed the cold logic of his words. "It wasn't necessary, Jason. We could have found another way without becoming monsters."
"Oh, it was entirely necessary," Octavia interjected, her voice coming in as sharp as steel. She stepped forward, looking directly at Clarke. "You're trying to play diplomat in a world that only respects the size of your blade. The Grounders don't care about our morality, Clarke. They care about survival. Right now, Jason is the only symbol of absolute strength we have that makes them think twice before stepping over us. If they think he's the standard for our people, they'll think twice about crossing any of us."
Raven let out a long, weary sigh, running a hand over her face. "I hate to admit it, but she's right. Fear keeps people in line when respect fails. It's ugly, but it works."
"And what happens when it backfires?" Clarke countered, her voice rising with frustration. "Emerson isn't talking. The secondary guard is dead. We have no intel on their internal defenses, and we still don't know how to get into that mountain. We have an army outside and absolutely no way to use it—"
Before she could finish her sentence, the main radio console on the workbench burst to life. Static hissed through the speakers, cutting through the argument like a knife, followed by a voice that made everyone freeze in their tracks.
"Camp Jaha, this is Mount Weather. Can anyone read me? I repeat, "Camp Jaha, do you copy?"
Jason's smirk widened, his eyes gleaming with a wicked amusement. He leaned back against the desk and held up his hands. "Well, et voilà. Ask and the universe provides."
"Bellamy," Octavia breathed, virtually lunging across the room toward the microphone.
"Holy crap," Raven whispered, her hands dropping from her tools.
Finn looked completely stunned, his mouth slightly open as the static cleared and the voice came through again, clearer this time.
"Camp Jaha, this is Mount Weather. Can anyone read me?"
"Bellamy! Omygod, Bellamy, is that you?" Octavia cried into the transmitter, her fingers gripping the metal casing so tightly her knuckles turned white.
"O? O, is that you?" Bellamy's voice cracked through the receiver with a profound sense of relief bleeding through the static. *"I'm here. I'm through the intake."
"Yes! Yes, it's me!" Octavia laughed with a radiant, emotional smile breaking through her hardened expression. "You're alive. Thank god, you're alive."
"I'm okay, O. I'm still breathing," Bellamy reassured her.
Jason stepped up to the console, leaning over Octavia's shoulder and spoke with his voice dripping with a lazy, sarcastic charm. "Well, well brother, I must say, you certainly took your sweet time. I was just about to negotiate a lease on your tent. Good to know you haven't let the subterranean hospitality soften you up."
A brief, ragged chuckle came over the airwaves. "Still kicking, Jason. Don't touch my stuff."
"Damn straight," Jason murmured with a smirk.
Clarke pushed her way to the front to speak, "Bellamy"
"Clarke? It's good to hear your voice. Is everyone okay?"
"We're all here," Finn called out, stepping closer to the mic as well
There was a brief pause on the other end. "Finn? You're awake? Glad to hear it, man."
"Yeah, thanks to you and the others," Finn said quietly. "I owe you one."
"I'll accept that as a drink the next time we meet," Bellamy replied before his tone turned sharp and serious. "Clarke, listen to me. We have to talk fast. Something has changed inside here. The old man is out, and his son, Cage, is running the show now. Jasper, Monty, everyone… they just locked them all in the dorms."
Clarke's heart dropped. "But they're alive? All of them?"
"I think so, for now. But Maya says they're already using their blood, and things are going to get ugly in here real fast. They're accelerating the harvest."
"Maya is still with you?" Clarke asked.
"She helped me escape a sweep. If not for her, I'd be dead. But Clarke... there are families in here. Kids. Civilized people who have nothing to do with what the guards are doing to our people. We need a plan that doesn't involve killing everyone inside this hill. Please tell me we have one."
"I hear you, Bellamy," Clarke said, her eyes flickering to Jason before hardening. "But we can't move the army until you disable the acid fog. It's the only thing keeping the Grounder coalition from breaching the perimeter. Raven is going to help you patch into their distribution system from there."
"Got it. Fog first. What else?"
Jason leaned into the microphone, "You need to change the math inside that mountain, Bellamy," Jason said with his voice sounding level and absolute. "The Mountain Men think they have a monopoly on violence because they have the keys to the cages. You need to take those keys. There is a literal army of Grounder prisoners locked in there and being used as biological batteries. Hundreds of them. They don't even realize they outnumber their captors."
He leaned closer to the mic as his eyes narrowed. "Turn their harvest chambers into a front line. The moment those cage doors open, the Mountain Men won't be fighting an infiltration; they'll be fighting a slave rebellion from the inside out. Give them a war on their own tile, Bellamy. Let them burn."
"A Trojan horse huh. Good plan," Bellamy's voice hummed through the radio speakers, "What does Maya think?" Clarke asked, leaning closer to the microphone. "Is it doable?"
"She says it's not a problem," Bellamy replied over the static. "But Clarke, if I'm gonna pull this off, I need you to buy me some time. It won't be long before they realize I don't belong here, and if that happens—"
"Then you'll just have to do what you do best, Bell, improvise and survive," Jason interrupted. He tapped his fingers rhythmically against the console before tilting his head. "Tell me, Bellamy... is there a highly qualified medic currently running the harvest program in there? A chief surgeon, perhaps?"
The question took everyone in the engineering bay completely off guard. Clarke and Finn exchanged a confused, wary look, and on the other end of the line, there was a brief pause.
"Yeah, there is," Bellamy said, his voice muffled for a second as he turned to whisper to someone beside him. "Maya says her name is Dr. Tsing. She's the head of their medical division. Why?"
Jason's face split into a brilliant, terrifyingly polite smile, "Oh, good. Splendid, actually. Now, tell me, Bellamy... is there an efficient, quiet way you can ensure she stops breathing permanently within the hour?"
Finn's jaw dropped, his expression twisting into pure disbelief. "Jason, what the hell?"
Jason rolled his eyes, waving a dismissive hand at Finn without breaking his gaze from the radio. "Oh, don't look so scandalized, Finn. Think about it logically. That doctor is the main brain behind their little science projects. She is the precise reason why our people are facing a painfully brief expiration date. If she is permanently removed from the equation..."
"The entire harvest grinds to a halt," Octavia completed his sentence, her eyes narrowing as she instantly grasped the strategic ruthlessness of the idea. "Without their head doctor, they won't know how to safely accelerate the plans."
"I hear you, Jason," Bellamy's voice crackled back, filled with frustration. "But I can't get to her. Maya says Tsing is practically living in the secure labs on the lower levels now, and she's heavily guarded by Cage's personal security team. If I try to break in there, the whole mountain goes on lockdown before I can even touch the fog."
Jason let out a soft, dramatic sigh, "Pity. It would have saved us so much tedious cleanup."
"Don't do anything stupid, Bellamy," Clarke commanded into the mic, casting a warning glare at Jason. "Don't force your way into the labs. We will come up with something out here to keep them occupied. Just focus on the acid fog."
"You better make it quick," Bellamy urged, the background hum of the mountain's ventilation system vibrating through the signal.
"Copy that. And, Bellamy..."
"Yeah?"
"You came through. I knew you would."
A faint smirk returned to Bellamy's face on the other side. "All I've done so far is not get killed."
"Which, considering your usual lack of impulse control, is a monumental achievement in itself," Jason chimed in with a dry chuckle. "Keep up the good work."
With a sharp pop of static, the line went completely dead, leaving the room in a heavy, sudden silence.
Jason straightened up from the console as he looked at Clarke. "Well, that's our cue for escalation. The clock is ticking, the harvest has begun, and quite frankly, we don't have the luxury of time to debate the ethics of war anymore."
"He's right," Octavia said, stepping forward and sheathing her knife. "Every second they spend looking for an intruder inside is a second Bellamy loses."
Finn looked at Clarke with his brow furrowed in deep anxiety. "So what do we do? What are you gonna do to buy him that time?"
Clarke stared at Jason who was quiet and then at the radio console for a beat, her jaw setting into a hard, determined line as she looked up at Octavia.
"We make them keep looking outside instead of in," Clarke said
———-
⛺️ Read the advance chapters on my Patreon🤌🏻