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CHAPTER 1
An explosion racked the world from it's black oblivion, and through the shatter of waking, the light streamed in. A green cloud and Clarke's face, strewn with tears faded from view.
The sound of Bellamy's voice seemed strange to him as he shot upright from the floor. The terror and bitterness of death felt heavy and sweet in his mouth.
"No," he whispered, eyes seeking faraway through the portal to Earth. Across the room, only dead bodies and the smell of the ichor greeted him, bringing him back into the present. He looked down at himself, still in the white robes of the Disciples. With numb fingers he felt the stain on the fabric where his blood had spilled, though there was no pain. When he looked up, the kind eyes of the Shepherd greeted him.
"H-how-" he started, but the Shepherd raised a hand to stop him. One of the high level Disciples stepped back from the pair, resheathing a syringe before falling into rank with the helmeted soldiers of Bardo.
"You have been blessed with a second life. You will rise to see us transcend, Bellamy."
Bellamy's eyes struggled to focus on the hand being extended to him. Finally, he took it and stood, still searching the impossibly ancient man's face for an answer. It was unreadable as it always was, filled with a sinister sort of calm.
"For all mankind," the Shepherd replied to his unspoken questions. There was an echo of his words from the remaining Disciples who stood nearby awaiting his command.
Bellamy tried to open his mouth to utter the words, but his throat felt suddenly constricted. Bile roiled in the depths of his belly. Through a slight choke he whispered, "...for all mankind."
At this acquiescence, the Shepherd nodded and stepped forward. Bellamy watched him, the conflict of hatred and awe in his gaze following the man's footsteps. The Shepherd strode toward where Sheidheda lay barely conscious amid his bindings and leaned down. "I have a proposition for you," said the Shepherd, smiling.
Sheidheda glowered up at him from under a bloodied brow. "I'm listening."
Bellamy had been briefed of the Shepherd's plan to return to Earth to retrieve the girl who carried what the Bardoans knew as the "key," the final sequence of symbols that would bring all of mankind to its final war, for conquest or extinction. The people of earth knew it as the "flame," the sacred rite of commanders passed between valiant warlords that contained the memories and souls of those before them. The 100 knew it as the A.I. created by Becka Franco that ended Earth as they knew it, ushering in more than a century of apocalyptic destruction that had put them through a thousand hardships and trials of loss that had led Bellamy here to this very moment, on a distant planet far from anything or anyone he had ever known as home. The unreality of it made his head spin. He had been left behind on Bardo in order to recover from his near fatal bullet wound given to him by his best friend, his longest ally in this surreal world, and someone he now knew he loved and had betrayed beyond all reason and recognition. The thought made him ill.
He had leaned over the bedpan for hours now, pale and sweating, trying to rid his body of the guilt and the grief though it seemed woven into the very fibers of his muscles. She was gone. They all were. And now an even more deadly predator was after them, promising yet another apocalypse, and this time out for blood.
How had he been so easily tricked….again. It seemed to him the never ending labyrinth culminating in the same jaws of the minotaur, and he was the tragic hero, just like those in the books he had read Octavia while she hid under the floor grate. He did not know how to trust himself when the universe continually asked him to answer questions and make decisions where there was no rational or sane answer to make. When he was uncertain, he became lost. The lies of many so-called leaders, somehow with more certainty than he had, wended their way into the twisting, shadowed paths of his mind and found him there, promising salvation, promising peace and righteousness. Kane, Jaha, Lexa, the Primes. Pike had killed Lincoln, been a dictator. Doucette had led him on a mission of blind faith and made him think that the bridge and the light was salvation. The Shepherd had promised him transcendence, peace, and to save all mankind from more of this senseless violence and bloodshed. Even his own sister had become a bloody tyrant when locked in the bunker underground, and forced people at gunpoint to eat the flesh of their own, had left him in the pit to face his death.
None of them had the answers. None of them were truly righteous. None of them gave the peace or the ending that his heart truly sought, and now he knew without a shadow of a doubt, that he had been a fool to believe them. The wages of sin is death. So then what is the cost of youth? Of inexperience? Of blissful ignorance and blind desperation? Of hope? His treachery should have cost him his life, and yet here he was still. Bellamy's fingers probed the charred wound where the bullet had passed through his heart and grimaced.
"Unless this is hell," he chuckled bitterly, his grin giving way to abject gloom. He could feel the tears brimming as he looked up from his seat on the bed in his chambers. The walls were cold and grey, angular, so far from the green and brown of earth, the manicured gardens of Sanctum, the peaceful loneliness of The Ring. It was a strange place. But now, with the rosy glow of delusional faith stripped away by pain, it was merely another prison, like all the others had been.
"Maybe there is no home to go to," he whispered, the warm tears spilling over his freckled cheeks. "But then where do we go?"
His questions echoed slightly in the silence.
In the ensuing hours, Bellamy heard and watched helplessly as Sheidheda and Cadogan vanished to Earth, sending an explosive device in after they had returned with the child Madi. Though Bellamy had been returned to his high rank as a Disciple alongside Levitt, he now watched for opportunities to subvert Cadogan's plans, doing his best to maintain the illusion of obedience.
He walked along the halls beside the Shepherd, once again adorned in the white robes of Bardo.
"The device will have closed off their exits. They won't be returning."
"Won't they find the stone, my Shepherd? There was at least one man left behind on Earth who carried a helmet." Levitt walked abreast of Cadogan and Bellamy. His tattoos reminded Bellamy of Doucette, and again there was a stabbing pain near the bullet hole in his chest.
"Even if the helmet is undamaged, the explosive will have shaken the foundations of the bunker and made it impossible to get to. I know that place's weaknesses. After all, I designed it." The familiar unsettling smile appeared on Cadogan's face.
"You've been uncharacteristically quiet since our departure from Sanctum, Bellamy. What do you think?"
Bellamy's gaze flickered up to meet that of the old man briefly before falling back again to his folded hands. When he spoke his voice was gruff with disguised hatred. "Yes, Shepherd. I don't think they will return." He tried to hide the wince of pain in his face at the words.
Cadogan watched him, eyes shrewd, grin everpresent. "You did a great service to humankind, Bellamy. You and your friends will be rewarded ten fold for your sacrifice when we reach transcendence."
Bellamy could feel the man's hand on his shoulder, his gaze probing into him for signs of disloyalty or faithlessness. Bellamy swallowed past the dry fear cloying at the back of his throat. He nodded. "Yes, my Shepherd."
Cadogan studied him for a moment longer, but then seemed satisfied and turned back to Levitt.
"Time to find the key, and end the suffering of all mankind."
The two of them stepped into a blank white room bearing a single chair. On it sat a small, dark haired girl. Around her head was a crown of electrodes and lights. Her hands clutched the arms of the chair so tightly, her knuckles were white. She turned her head and Bellamy's brown eyes locked with Madi's large blue ones. He could feel the pain and fear in them, pleading with him to help. He stood frozen as the door slowly slid closed between them, locking her into what seemed to him a white tomb.
Bellamy stood breathless for a moment, feeling a mixture of panic and despair. There was no telling what lengths Cadogan might go to to retrieve memories of the A.I. from Madi's mind. Before he was aware of himself, his feet were already running, carrying him away from the door towards...what? He stopped at a crossroad of hallways, chest heaving as he looked this way and that, trying to think, to come up with some way to rescue the girl. There had to be a way. In all the years of impossible situations he had faced, hadn't he and Clarke, Raven, Murphy, Emori, Echo, Octavia, found a way to elude certain death at every turn? Hadn't they always found the answer at the last moment before the final blow was struck?
The bullet hole burned as he thought about them. The final blow had been struck, even, and he had survived. Surely, there was some way out of this now. He turned and ran down the hallway toward the bridge, praying his feet were fast enough for him to find out.
When he arrived at the bridge, a squadron of soldiers turned and began filing toward the door leading to the stone, followed by a woman in white robes with a viewing lens over one eye. She turned when she caught sight of Bellamy running toward the door, looking flushed.
"Bellamy. Is something the matter?" she said in a matter-of-fact tone.
Bellamy wheezed, trying to return to a visage of calm. "I need to get across the bridge. The Shepherd left behind the diary of the girl. He needs it to help find the code in her memories."
The woman looked back at him, confused. "The Shepherd instructed us to move the bridge to prepare for the commencement of the final war. Surely you knew that," she said, her eyes narrowing.
"Has it already been shifted?"
"Yes...why would he-"
"I'll just have to let him know that we can't return it. He will be disappointed," retorted Bellamy, trying to make the anxiety in his voice seem terse and cold. He turned on his heel to walk back toward the medical sector, but the woman caught his arm.
"Actually, it hasn't been shifted yet. I can send you back to Sanctum briefly, and you can return with this." The woman reached into her robes and produced a small glass vial containing blue silicone chips. Bellamy's eyebrows knitted as he looked at them. They looked like A.I. chips.
"They're nano tracking devices," she said, offering him one. "They will return you to this coordinate if someone here calls you back. I can activate it in a few minutes to pull you back to Bardo. Is that enough time?"
Bellamy nodded, taking the blue chip and placing it on his tongue. "I'll need a suit and helmet."
Bellamy watched behind the geometric screens of the helmet as the squadron marched in unison toward the swirling green smoke of the bridge before he himself vanished into its void.
When the smoke cleared, he found himself again on Sanctum, inside the Palace of the Primes. He could still smell the metallic sweetness of blood clinging to the walls and floor as he turned toward the throne Sheidheda had built from the skeletons of the Children of Gabriel. As he approached he reached out his hand hesitantly to touch the bleached bone but recoiled from it, feeling the sting of guilt in his chest again.
Perhaps if he had been here, they wouldn't have died, he thought dismally. Then, turning away from the horror of the throne, his eyes found the grey diary laying open on the floor nearby. He stooped for it and turned it over in his hands. The pages were spattered with blood, his blood. He ran his hands over the drawings, praying there was enough time for this to work. In a puff of white smoke, the Palace of the Primes stood empty again.
Bellamy quickly ran back to his chambers and stowed the suit and helmet out of sight and redonned the white robes before heading back toward the medical sector carrying the diary. The symbol of his betrayal in his hands, again being offered to The Shepherd. It was a cruel irony.
When the door slid open, Cadogan stood on the threshold, hands folded before him. Bellamy held out the diary.
"I went back to find it. Maybe this will jog her memories so you don't have to...go so deep into her mind," he hesitated, his eyes flickering to Levitt standing over a haggard looking Madi who had black blood trickling from the sides of her forehead.
A mischievous twinkle entered Cadogan's eye. "Ah, that's a brilliant idea. Wonderful work, Bellamy. Come, see the fruits of your labor," he said, turning back toward Levitt and beckoning with one hand.
Bellamy stepped inside and on a holographic screen were displayed diagrams of neural networks and synaptic pathways with running lines of code beside them. Bellamy's gaze fell immediately to Madi, who stared back with tired, glazed eyes. He tried to read the emotion in them, but could not.
"I'm sure this will be motivational, won't it Madi?" Cadogan's voice was smooth as oil as he held up the diary in front of her. There was a sudden flash of fear in the girl's eyes as she recognized the sketchbook. Her pained expression shifted to Bellamy, running him through like a sword. He stared back in dismay. His lip quivered with unspoken explanations he knew would never suffice. He had hoped this might buy them some time while he tried to think of a way to free her from the chair, or lessen the brutality of her sentence to this probing through the deepest layers of her consciousness, but it would only help if she did not fight it.
"Becka said you weren't ready," Madi replied, her voice quavering with fear as she watched Cadogan flipping through the images of the diary.
"Becka was a smart woman. But then again, several lifetimes do change a man." Cadogan held up a picture from the sketchbook in front of Madi's eyes. "All those who undergo great change are never ready, isn't that right Bellamy?"
Bellamy opened his mouth but no sound came forth.
"Now Madi, please try to remember, and this will be over soon." Cadogan nodded to Levitt, who's hands wavered over the electronic controls uncertainly before he continued conducting the M-Cap.
The piercing sound of Madi's scream tore through the blank white space as images were ripped from her unwilling mind and projected onto the screen. Faltering images of Callie's face and the stone flickered before going to static again.
"I won't let you have them!" Madi cried through gritted teeth.
"Oh, my dear, you do not have a say in that, I'm afraid."
Bellamy stepped forward then, catching Cadogan's arm. His eyes pleaded with the man. "My Shepherd, surely there's a better way to get this information."
Cadogan appraised him coldly. "As you well know, Bellamy, mankind is a fool when it comes to its own survival. Humans always fight the inevitable as if they think there's a chance they can withstand the ceaseless flow of change. This is for the betterment of all. You're dismissed."
The Shepherd nodded to a few guards standing by the door, who stepped forward to grasp Bellamy's elbows before he turned back to Madi. Her scream of pain came again alongside Bellamy's protests.
"You're killing her! You can't sacrifice a girl to start your war! How is that saving all mankind!" he bellowed as the guards shoved him out of the door into the hallway. He leapt back at it just a little too slow as the door clicked shut. His fists pounded the hard metal as anguish began to engulf him. "You can't do this! How is this different than any other man-made war! How!"
Bellamy beat at the door until he had worn himself thin, then fled from the sound of Madi's screams as they continued unabated and out of his reach. Her haunting voice trailed behind him as he ran back to his chambers and threw himself onto his knees, gasping for air. Around him the room was spinning and the bile in his gut was rolling in waves. He already knew the end of the story. Too little, too late, and now even this girl's death was on his head. How could he ever face Clarke now, after all of the things he had done. How could he face Echo? Octavia?
At the thought of his friends he crumpled into his hands and wept. He did not know how long he was there, falling into an abyss of desolation and misery. They were the only certainty he had ever needed, and now they were lost to him. Where would he go, if not home to them?
After what seemed an eternity, and with a bitter sense of determination, he climbed to his feet and tore at the white robes confining him to this hell, ripping away the layer of delusion that had plagued him since his first footfall on the charred cinder of earth all those lifetimes ago. Beside him, he reached for the armor and helmet.
He would not let his entire life, and all this tragedy be in vain.
As he crept down the hallway, the guard had been easy to spot, or did not pay him any mind, dressed as he was. In the blink of an eye the man was on the ground, his gun in Bellamy's hand and his footfalls already turning the corner toward the medical sector. He moved silent like a wraith, watching through the specs of the helmet for approaching enemies, for that's what they were now. The Shepherd's precious disciples, no different than any war criminal or warrior he had ever faced. They were nothing in comparison to the inferno of rage burning inside him. He was rescuing that girl, if he had to put down every single one of the flock to do it.
As he approached the hall to the M-Cap chamber, the doorway stood open. He straightened, tensing and looking for any signs of life, but the hallway was empty. Bellamy trotted inside and closed the door. He turned to the chair, and saw Madi laying lifelessly upon it. Quickly, he dropped his weapon and peeled off his helmet and ran to the chair, kneeling beside her.
"Madi? Madi!" He took her face in his hands, searching it for signs of awareness. Two empty, blue eyes stared back at him without a trace of recognition. Gently he patted her cheek, swiping hair away from her face. The realization began to sink in as the girl stared vacantly through him into the unknown.
Bellamy's words struggled past the choke of his sorrow. "Madi….no….no," he whispered brokenly, dropping his head into one hand. Madi's head lolled to the side onto his arm as he tried to steady himself on the chair. He was too late. He had failed her, all of them. Again. He could feel the darkness beginning to sweep over him and everything as the grief returned. He looked up again, hoping against all logic and reason that it wasn't true.
As his gaze focused again on Madi's face, he stopped short. Flowing from the corner of her eye was a fresh dribble of tears. They dripped, glistening like small diamonds onto the black glove of his armor.
Bellamy let out a strangled cry. "Madi, Madi can you hear me? You can hear me," he said, turning the girl's face again to his and looking into her eyes. More tears trickled down over her cheeks, pattering softly onto her hair and his hands. "Oh, god, thank you," Bellamy sobbed, clutching Madi to his chest and holding her like she was the only anchor for a ship lost in a storm.
The two sat amid a tempest of tears, both of relief and disbelief as Bellamy swam through the currents of emotion back toward the present moment. Soon, reason returned to him and he looked up toward the door. Cadogan or Levitt would be returning unless they had gotten what they came for. He looked back toward the holographic screen and watched scenes of memory playing out. An image of a spiraled stone bearing symbols appeared as if on cue, and a hand reached out to touch a sequence of the symbols. The final sequence Cadogan needed to start his war. Dread flooded in to replace the relief Bellamy felt. Hastily, he turned back to Madi.
"We are getting out of here, do you hear me? We are going to find Clarke, and we are getting off this planet," he said before replacing the helmet on his head, swinging the gun over his shoulder, and picking the girl up in his arms. Her limbs and head lolled wildly as he turned and ran from the room back out into the fray to find his friends.