Chapter Text
I didn't struggle when they put on my wristband. It would've been pointless, and since I had no clue what was going on it seemed prudent to save my strength. Instead I kept my mouth shut and did what I was told to avoid the guards fists and tasers as I was forced to change and herded aboard the drop ship with the rest oI didn't struggle when they put on my wristband. It would've been pointless, and since I had no clue what was going on it seemed prudent to save my strength. Instead I kept my mouth shut and did what I was told to avoid the guards fists and tasers as I was forced to change and herded aboard the drop ship with the rest of my fellow delinquents.
Strapped in, I sat quietly and waited for the explanation we all hoped was forthcoming. When the Chancellor's face appeared on the screens I listened quietly to his instructions as the teenagers around me talked, screamed, jeered, or cried as they would. Some of my companions were little more than children, and a few were children. How did they expect a group like us to survive on the ground? They didn't even know if radiation had dropped to tolerable levels. No, we were being sent to die. But, on the off chance that the planet had recovered sufficiently to sustain human life, I for one was going to give it my best shot.
I held my breath through the worst of the landing, scared just as shitless as everyone else except for that dumbass, Finn. Leave it to Finn to have fun on a crashing drop ship. I heard one of the other girls yelling at him and some of the others to stay in their seats and shook my head minutely. Morons. Gritting my teeth and clinging to my restraints for dear life, I screwed my eyes shut tight and waited for it to be over. Since we never did explode into a fiery ruin in the outer atmosphere, it seemed safe to assume that we had the easy part out of the way. Now all we had to do was survive the landing, and then we could die of radiation poisoning and have an end to it. Easy peasey lemon squeezy.
When we landed safely I was, quite frankly, amazed. I didn't jump up immediately like everyone else, stopping to catch my breath and calm badly rattled nerves before unbuckling my restraints and joining the crowd by the ladder to the lower level. What I expected to find, I'm not sure. Panic maybe, or complete and utter chaos. But I didn't. Everyone had fallen quiet for the most part, afraid and unsure of what to do until that Octavia chick's older brother appeared. It seemed he had secreted himself aboard somehow. When the door finally depressurized and opened, he made sure his little sister was the first one out the door. I half expected her to catch fire where she stood, but no such thing happened. The air that came rushing in smelled and tasted like nothing any of us had ever imagined. It smelled sweet, green, wet, clean, free.
Watching as she stepped off of the ramp, I could only shake my head and sigh as the best words she could muster were "We're back, bitches!"
"Not like this is the most momentous moment in the past century of human history," I muttered to myself as I followed the flow of teenage humanity onto grounds untouched by human feet for nearly one hundred years. Wandering away from the main body of the group to find a little peace and quiet, I hiked a short distance into the woods feeling as though I might have become drunk simply from breathing that unbelievable air. That lush, green paradise was so much more than I had ever imagined it would be. I sat down in a hollow between the gnarled roots of a huge tree, just to sit and think for a moment. Without the whir and hum of mechanical components that had filled my ears my entire life, the silence was almost deafening.
The longer I listened though, the more my hearing adjusted until I realized that the forest was not silent. I could hear leaves rustling in the wind, the distant voices and movements of my shipmates, and nearer by, the rustling of the leaf litter as some small animal scurried away from our commotion. "So, there are things still alive here," I whisper with a satisfied smirk. Regaining my feet, I dusted myself off and began to root about on the ground for likely branches and sticks. Had to have weapons to catch food. Once I had found enough straight pieces to make a decent start, I headed back towards the ship. Everyone seemed to have spread out and begun forming groups by that point but that suited me just fine. I needed some time alone to think, anyway. From the wood already piled up, I wasn't the only one who had thought to begin working. I set out once again, this time in search of stones.
Fortunately for us, despite having landed on the wrong mountain as I had overheard, we were in fact still on a mountain which meant that if we could find a stony spot we (by which I mean I) could likely find some decent flint for starting fires. It took me most of the afternoon, but eventually I found enough of what I was looking for and headed back in. Discovering that someone else had already started a bonfire in the center of what could almost be called a camp, I picked a sheltered spot in the lee of the ship and started my own. Afterward, using a piece of jagged metal from the ship, I began fashioning weapons. It took me all day, but they turned out quite decent. A long, thick stabbing spear for which I painstakingly shaped a piece of razor-sharp metal from the ship which I lashed to the shaft with some cord from the parachutes. Another, lighter spear with three prongs at the tip for fishing. Along with the spears I made myself a slingshot for hunting birds and small critters. I always was an over-achiever.
If I had to survive out here, I wanted to be as well-armed as possible. I even toyed around with the idea of throwing javelins like I had read about in old books, but I left those for later. Everyone left me alone, and I ignored whatever was happening over by the main fire. The drums were giving me a headache anyway. By the time I finished it was dark and rain had been falling steadily for a couple of hours. Setting out a curved piece of metal plating outside the shelter of the ship to catch some water for later, I curled up on top of my creations by my little fire with my makeshift knife in hand (just in case anyone got too curious in the middle of the night) and got what sleep I could manage on an empty stomach.
I woke early the next morning and began practicing with my new weapons. I kept at it until my arm hurt before taking a break to listen to my stomach growling. It felt like it was glued to my spine it was so empty, and I knew the rest couldn't be much better off. We had to find food, and fast, before hypoglycemia got the better of us all. It would be stupid in the extreme to rely solely on the group that had gone looking for the supply depot at Mount Weather. Putting out my fire and gathering up my belongings, I headed toward the center of camp to see if anyone was feeling industrious enough to go with me in search of food. I heard the fight before I saw it, and I was unhappy with what I found. It was Wells and that pale kid who looked like a cross between a 1950s greaser and a reef shark. I had no problem with Wells, I liked the kid even, but it wasn't worth getting hurt to try and intervene...