Someone groaned, and he rushed inside to find his mother on the floor, lying in a sticky puddle of blood. A knife lay beside her.
He gasped and hurried over, shaking her shoulder frantically. “Mom,” he shouted. “Wake up. Mom.” But all she did was flutter her eyelids and let out another faint groan. Bellamy leapt to his feet, gasping as he realized the knees of his pants were soaked with blood. He had to find someone. He had to get help.
He dashed back into the main room and was about to go run for a guard when a noise brought him skidding to a halt. His eyes fell on the closet, which was slightly open, a sliver of shadow creeping out of the gap between the door and the wall. He took a few steps toward it as a tiny tearstained face peeked out.
“Are you okay?” he whispered to his sister, reaching for her hand. “Come on.” But she shrank back into the darkness, trembling. Bellamy’s fear for his mother slid away as he stared at the little girl she’d made terrified to come into the light. “Come on, Octavia,” he coaxed, and slowly, tentatively, she poked her head out again.
Finally, she toddled out of the closet, looking around the room with wide eyes. “Here,” Bellamy said, picking up the red ribbon he’d given her from the floor of the closet. He tied it around her dark curls in his best approximation of a bow. “You look beautiful.” He grabbed her hand, feeling his heart swell as her little fingers wrapped around his. He led her to their mother’s bedroom, lifted her onto the bed, then curled up next to her, praying that he wouldn’t hear any other noises from the kitchen.
They sat there together on the bed, waiting quietly, until finally their mother’s moans stopped and there was only silence.
“It’s okay, O,” he said, holding his little sister tight to his chest. “It’s okay. You’ll never have to hide again.” As the comet’s trail faded into blackness, Bellamy hurried back down the slope, eager to get back before Octavia woke up and realized he’d gone. But as he came around the bend, searching for the familiar collection of tents, all he could see were flames.
The entire camp was on fire.
Bellamy skidded to a stop, gasping as his lungs took their first breath of smoke-filled air. For a moment, his vision was filled with flames and shadows, but then shapes began to emerge. Figures were sprinting in every direction, some pouring out of the burning tents while others rushed toward the trees.
Only one thought consumed him as he jogged over to their blankets, his eyes searching the darkness for his sister ’s sleeping form. The knot of dread in his stomach told him what he already knew. Octavia wasn’t there.
He called her name, jerking his head from side to side, praying that she’d call to him from the edge of the clearing, from someplace safe.
“Octavia!” he yelled again, looking wildly in all directions, squinting to see through the smoke. Don’t panic, he told himself, but it was no use. The flames tore through the darkneughin, lookinss and Octavia was nowhere to be found.
Bellamy had come down from scanning the heavens only to find himself in the depths of hell.
30
Clarke
For some period of time—minutes, hours, Clarke wasn’t sure—all she could hear was the sound of their hearts, the whisper of their mingled breaths. But then a scream clawed its way out from the clearing, dragging them apart. Clarke and Wells jumped to their feet, Clarke holding on to Wells’s arm for balance as the world slid back into terrifying focus.
He grabbed her hand and they ran back into the clearing. She heard more screams, but none were as frightening as the roar and crackle that made every nerve in her body stand at attention.
Flames rose up from the tents, some of which had already collapsed into smoldering heaps, like corpses on an a nc i e nt battlefield. Shadowy figures sprinted for the safety of the forest, pursued by tendrils of hungry flames.
Thalia, Clarke thought in horror, and started to run. She was too weak to make it out of the infirmary tent on her own.
“No!” Wells shouted, forcing his voice over the chaos of screams. “Clarke, it’s not safe!”
But his words slid off her like a spray of ash. She made a beeline for the tent, smoke filling her lungs, blinking to see in the smoldering air.
His arm wrapped around her waist like a steel band, pulling her forcibly into the shelter of the trees. “Let me go,” she shrieked, thrashing with all her might. But Wells held her tight, forcing her to watch helplessly as fire engulfed the infirmary fewer than a hundred meters away. The entire side of the tent was up in flames. The plastic tarp on top was melting, and smoke filtered out of the gap between the front flaps.
“Get off.” She sobbed, twisting again as she tried to wrestle free.
He slid his arm under her and began dragging her backward. “No,” she shrieked, feeling the sound tear her throat, pounding at him helplessly with her fists. “I need to get her out.” She dug her heels into the grass, but Wells was stronger, and she couldn’t hold her ground. “Thalia!”
“Clarke, I’m so sorry,” Wells whispered in her ear. She could tell he was crying, but she didn’t care. “You’ll die if you go in there. I can’t let you.”
The word die ignited a reserve of power that exploded through her. Clarke gritted her teeth and lunged forward, momentarily escaping Wells’s hold. Her entire being had reduced to a single, desperate thought—saving the only friend she had left in the universe.
She screamed as her arm was wrenched behind her back. “Let me go.” This time, it was more of a plea than an order. “I’m begging you. Let me go.”
“I can’t,” he said, wrapping his arms around her again. His voice was shaking. “I can’t.”
The clearing was empty now. Everyone had made it into the woods, taking whatever supplies they could carry. But no one had thought to grab the frail girl who was now being burned alive just a few meters away.
“Help,” Clarke cried. “Someone, please help.” But there was no answer Mom?e gexcept for the roar and crackle of the fire.
The flames on the top of the infirmary tent rose higher, the sides collapsing toward each other, as if the fire were inhaling the tent and everything inside of it. “No.”
There was a crack, and the flames shot up even higher. Clarke shrieked with horror as the entire tent collapsed into a storm of fire, then slowly crumbled into ash.
It was over. As she walked away from the medical center, Clarke could almost feel the vial pulsing in her pocket, like the heart in the old story Wells had discovered at the library the other day. He’d offered to read it to her, but she’d flatly refused. The last thing she needed right now was to hear creepy pre-Cataclysm literature. She had enough scenes of horror playing out in her real life.
The vial Clarke carried in her pocket could never have a heartbeat, she knew; just the opposite. The toxic cocktail of drugs inside was designed to stop a heart for good.
When Clarke got home, her parents weren’t there. Although they both spent most of the day in their lab, over the past few weeks, they’d conveniently found excuses to leave right before Clarke returned from her training and rarely came back until just before she went to sleep. It was probably for the best. As Lilly grew sicker, Clarke could barely look at her parents without feeling a surge of rage. She knew she wasn’t being fair—the moment anyone protested, the Vice Chancellor would have her parents executed and Clarke Confined within days. But that didn’t make it any easier for her to meet their eyes.