Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The sun hurts her eyes.

Lynn blinks hard, swiping at the moisture gathering at her lashes. The sun hurts .

It is this thought that wakes her from her wide eyed open mouth staring at the sky she has been doing for the past minute.

On the station, sunlight came through triple-paned glass and solar blinds, measured in precise lumens to mimic a cycle no one alive remembered. This is daylight uncontrolled, with no filter, no man-made phenomenon.

For a moment, she just stands there, letting the warmth press against her skin. It prickles, unfamiliar and raw, but not unpleasant. The sensation is so foreign she almost laughs.

Clouds move above her, their shapes half-hidden by the swaying tops of trees. Trees . She almost can’t believe it. Real trees, not the stunted hydroponic things in Farm. Their leaves whisper to each other in a language she can't understand, stirred by something even more miraculous than the sun— wind . Honest-to-god wind, sweet and cold and ever-moving, not recycled through a hundred lungs before reaching hers. She has never felt the cool soft touch of fresh air moving through her hair.

She reaches out, brushing her fingertips against a low-hanging branch, touching it. The leaves are softer than she'd imagined, waxy and cool, springing back when she releases them. A laugh escapes her—quiet, disbelieving. It doesn't echo on any walls, it calls open and clear through the clearing.

The sounds overwhelm her most.

On the Ark, sound had rules. A dropped wrench in Mecha would reverberate through the pipes all the way to Hydro. A shout in Farm would echo down the ventilation shafts until the station's bones absorbed it. Even a sneeze carried its own distinct timbre as it bounced off the bulkheads. Hell, you could hear your neighbour fart from the echo of the waterpipes, the constant wiring and humming of the vents everywhere.

Here?

Here, sound vanishes . The Factory boy's whoop of joy dissolves into the trees. The Supply Station girl's laughter, with her better quality clothes and nicer shoes, is swallowed by the breeze. A bird's call, sharp and bright, fades into the air without echo. It makes her ears ring and her head hurt as she adapts to the new sounds, uncomfortable but not unpleasant, her mind rearranging itself to understand all the new sounds it is hearing.

Lynn crouches, plunging her hands into the soil. It gives way beneath her fingers, cool and damp and startlingly alive. As she sifts the earth through her fingers, something moves—a spider, maybe? Its body glossy black and impossibly large, legs splayed across the disturbed ground. It freezes when her shadow falls over it, then scuttles backward with terrifying speed, disappearing into a crevice between roots.

Her breath catches. On Hydro, the only insects were the tiny, pale things that sometimes infested the algae vats—weak, slow creatures that died quickly under UV sterilization. This thing has moved like liquid shadow, all coiled potential and alien grace. It is probably the first time she has ever seen anything bigger than algae. 

Around her, the other delinquents are coming apart at the seams. A boy from Recyc Station (Grey clothes and safety goggles, from the Pit, as they normally called it) stares into his hands, his shoulders shaking. A girl spins in dizzy circles, arms outstretched as if to catch the sky. Most just stand trembling, their faces turned upward like flowers seeking light.

She blinks one, two, three times until the sun's glare fades enough for colors to come back into focus. Green—who knew there could be so many shades of greens?—and browns that aren't metal rust, and blues that have nothing to do with coolant lines. It is overwhelming in the way the old fantasy vids her father secretly screened had been, all those impossible hues the Ark had bleached out generations ago. Her mother would have loved to see this.

A laugh bubbles in her chest. She lets it out this time, sharp and startled giddy with excitement and a bit of terror.

They are supposed to be dead. All of them. Floated for their crimes. Instead they stand on Earth, breathing air that has never been processed, drinking water that has never been recycled. Paradise , as imagined by people who'd never known a day outside metal walls.

For just a little while longer, she allows herself this—the feel of wind in her hair, the scent of living earth, the sound of a world that doesn't obey the Ark's rigid laws.

(Later, when the blood and screams come, when the spear strikes and the fire burns, she will remember this moment with perfect clarity. The way the sunlight had felt on her skin. The way the leaves had whispered. The way the world had seemed to hold its breath, just for her.

For one heartbeat, suspended between the metal cage of the Ark and the coming storm, she had stood in paradise.)

Ten minutes later, Lynn turns her back on the celebration and presses her palms to the dropship's warm hull. First things first: water, shelter, survival. The Ark might have meant this as a death sentence, but Hydro Station had taught her one immutable truth—

Where there is water, there is life.

And she knows how to find water.

Chapter Text

Lynn knows she is a bit too much sometimes. 

Not in a bad way, she doesn't think, but in a too-stubborn, too-focused, too-anxious kind of way.

She likes doing things her way, following the correct system that lives in her head, not missing details.

It makes her head quiet, to know what she is doing and to check, just to make sure, that everything is under control.

Like how she's already counted ninety-eight delinquents stumbling out of the dropship (should be a hundred, but two idiots unbuckled during the landing because apparently zero gravity was too much fun to pass up, two people already dead—).

Like how she's mentally cataloging who looks strong enough to help build shelters and who's already wandering off into the forest without telling anyone, without looking back.

She makes sure her actions are controlled, the consequences taken into account, the results exact.

She worries and she prepares and she makes lists—actual physical lists when she can trade something to write with, mental ones when she can't—and plans to maybe, somehow, not make a mistake ever again.

It's impossible, of course. She knows that. Knew it when she watched her friend float for stealing medicine. Knew it when her own calculations couldn't save her from the Skybox.

Doesn't make her try less. Just makes her more creative about it.

✦ ✦ ✦

"No," Clarke says, frowning and shaking her head slightly.

She's still got dropship seat marks pressed into her arms from the rough landing, but she's already pointing at maps and making decisions.

The morning sun catches in her blonde hair, making her look irritatingly noble.

Fair enough—someone has to take charge.

It's not like Lynn wants to boss around a bunch of teenagers, no thank you.

She is not boss material.

She was barely a pipe-runner, maybe engineer if she had been lucky in a few years. Not that it matters now, what with being on fucking Earth. But she was overhearing the Alpha kids' conversation and she couldn't not butt in, because how are they so desperate to go to a place that might not even exist? 

Finn Collins (the spacewalker who cost three months of oxygen, which honestly, Lynn can't decide if that's impressive or just deeply stupid) crosses his arms behind her, that loose-limbed confidence that makes Lynn's teeth itch.

Wells fucking Jaha (and how this Alpha kid—the Alpha kid—even got on the dropship is anyone's guess) stands near Clarke like he's ready to back whatever she says, practically radiating agreement before she's even finished talking, all loyal eyes and angry frown.

"Yes." Lynn crosses her arms for good measure, noting that she's slightly taller than Clarke and feeling surprisingly vindicated about it.

Petty? Maybe.

But she'll take her wins where she can get them.

The air tastes different here—thicker, alive in a way that makes her lungs work harder. They've been on the ground for what, ten minutes? Half an hour?

And Clarke's already planning a day-long hike through a radiation-soaked forest that's been mutating for ninety-seven years.

"We need to secure the camp before going out to check Mount Weather. Find water first. Build shelters. Then tomorrow—"

"Tomorrow might be too late," Clarke interrupts. "We need those supplies."

Supplies that might not even exist. Which Clark knows. But different people means different priorities, she supposes. Clark sees teenagers and delinquents,  a disaster waiting to happen, and picks her fights. 

Lynn's already calculating—the Ark wouldn't waste resources on a suicide mission. They have no food, no water, no tools. Mount Weather's been sitting there for ninety-seven years. What are the odds anything useful survived? The dropship has materials, metal and maybe, just maybe, a spark. 

Four walls, a door they can close, familiar metal between them and whatever's out there.

Clarke shares a look with Wells that, honestly, doesn't tell Lynn anything. But she catalogs it anyway—the slight tilt of Clarke's head, the way Wells shifts his weight. The connection.

"You can secure it." Clarke says nossing, as if she is giving Lynn permission with her casual shrug of her shoulders. "We'll go for supplies and come back before dark."

Before dark. Like they know how long days last down here. Like they know what comes out when it gets dark. Like hypothetical ninety-seven-year-old supplies are worth more than actual shelter and water.

"You know what? Whatever. Why do I even—?" She shakes her head, shares a look with Spacewalker, who of course goes with them, never one to miss an adventure. "Look, do what you want—but when you faint from dehydration, I'm definitely saying I told you so." She pauses, can't help herself. Worries.

She's already making a new list in her head: Things that need doing while Clarke chases ghosts at Mount Weather.

Someone whoops in the distance and Lynn adds another item: Figure out who actually wants to survive versus who thinks this is summer camp.

Subitem: Start betting pool on who gets killed first.

No, that's morbid. Even for her.

Subitem: Start betting pool on who gets poison ivy first.

Better.

Maybe she's being extra sarcastic today. Maybe it's because twenty minutes ago she saw an actual spider—not a mutation, not some radioactive monster, just a regular, Earth-normal spider crawling next to her—and nearly had a heart attack.

Eight legs.

Eight.

Who needs that many legs?

It had just sat there, existing, like spiders were a normal thing that could just exist near people. She'd read about them, sure.

Arachnids. Class Arachnida.

But reading about them in Earth Studies and seeing one just being there, close enough to count the segments of its legs...

Or maybe it's the fact that they're on Earth, actually on Earth, breathing Earth air that tastes like green and dirt and possibility and terror all mixed together.

The air is heavy, pressing against her skin in a way recycled Ark air never did. It moves—actually moves—carrying smells she has no names for, makes her pant and light-headed just from moving around too much. Standing on Earth dirt that moves under her boots in ways station floors never did. 

The ground is soft. It gives. When she shifts her weight, it remembers where she stood, unlike the Ark. There are her footprints, right there, proof she exists on a planet that shouldn't let her exist.

On the Ark, leaving your mark was an act of quiet, invisible rebellion.

The station was efficient at erasing individuality—metal doesn't hold footprints, personal items are reused when you die. You learned to carve your existence in small, hidden ways: a name scratched behind a maintenance panel where only another engineer might find it years later, a bolt loosened just enough to peek through to the next corridor, a toy wedged between pipes where no inspector would look.

Tiny declarations of I was here in a place designed to forget you.

It wasn't cruel, the forgetting.

It was just survival.

The Ark couldn't afford sentiment. Couldn't waste resources on memorials or monuments. Every gram mattered, every surface had a function. Individualism was a luxury they'd lost when the bombs fell.

But here, in the mud, her footprint remains. No one will come to clean it, to optimize the space, to restore regulation flatness. It's hers until rain or time takes it away.

She turns and leaves, the others already back to planning their little death trip, looking at the sky as she goes. 

(The sky. 

God, the sky goes on forever.

No ceiling, no walls, just endless blue that makes her dizzy if she looks too long.

How do you calculate the safety parameters of infinity?

How do you plan for a world that doesn't end at the next bulkhead?

They're on Earth and she can't stop her brain from thinking all the ways this impossible thing could kill them—because of ninety-seven years of radiation, because they're not supposed to be here for another four years, because two kids are already dead and they've been here twenty minutes—because that's what her brain does now.

It takes beautiful things and finds their sharp edges.)

But she's handling it fine. Really. The sarcasm is just how she processes.

Always has been. It's easier to make jokes about radioactive spiders than admit she's terrified of regular ones too.

Chapter Text

Clarke's group disappears into the tree line, and Lynn watches them go with something that might be concern if she lets herself think about it too hard.

Five people.

Five people walking into a forest that's had years to get creative with radiation.

She turns back to the dropship and—yeah. This is going to be harder than she thought.

Half the delinquents are already scattered, exploring their new "freedom" like the concept of death took a vacation.

Someone's trying to climb a tree (dangerous but... kind of amazing? The highest you could get on the Ark was maybe two meters up a maintenance ladder before hitting another ceiling), another group is having what looks like a dirt-throwing contest (just... why?), and she's pretty sure she just saw someone licking a rock.

New list: Ways we're all going to die.

Subitem: Stupidity. Just... stupidity.

Lynn spots a familiar face near the dropship—Chen from Factory Station, Section B. They'd worked adjacent maintenance shifts, never talked much, but he was one of the few who didn't complain when she triple-checked the pressure readings. Good with his hands, better with keeping his mouth shut.

The kind of person you wanted around when things needed doing.

"Chen," she calls out, and he actually stops. Small miracles. "You interested in not dying of thirst?"

He looks at her, then at the chaos around them, then back at her. "What are you thinking?"

"Rain collection. We need containers, something to channel water." She's already moving toward the dropship, grateful someone's actually listening, Chen close behind. "The clouds here—they're different than the projections, but they look heavy. A bit dark, right? You think it could rain?"

Chen looks up, his hair falling around his ears in sweaty and dark waves. Turns to her with a smirk, nods, following. "I'll check for loose panels inside."

Two more people drift over—Lynn recognizes the girl immediately. Isabella from Hydro Station, worked two levels down from Lynn's family quarters. They'd crossed paths at shift changes, shared the occasional gossip in the corridors. She doesn’t remember what ISA did to get in the Skybox, but it’s not something people ask.

They end in the same place, after all. 

The guy could be Farm Station from the way he's looking at the plants like they personally offend him.

"We're setting up a water collection," Lynn tells them, because apparently she's doing this now. "Unless you'd rather wait for Princess and her expedition to maybe find something at Maybe Mountain."

Isabella snorts. "I'll take definitely water over maybe supplies. My mom always said—" She switches to Spanish briefly, "'Más vale pájaro en mano que ciento volando.'"

Lynn almost smiles.

A bird in your hand is worth more than a hundred flying.

It's a very typical way of thinking from some people in the Ark. Better to use what we have than die searching for possibilities somewhere else. Kind of ironic, seeing where they are now. Her own grandmother used to say that, back before the water recyclers in Hydro started failing more often than they worked.

It’s kind of amazing that, eve after all this time, they still have a bit of the old Earth with them. 

Languages and names that tell you from what station that person’s family comes from. 

Spanish names and saying are primarily Hydro, Chinese is Farm and English surnames are probably Alpha.

It can change, of course.

After generations things have mixed too much for it to be a strict rule, but you could still keep as much as you can in a place like the Ark. 

Your culture, and those who came before.

✦ ✦ ✦

And just like that, they are a team. Sort of.

Four people. Four horsemen of the apocalypse.

(Ahah, fitting. She cracks herself up sometimes.)

They work mostly in silence, which Lynn appreciates. She directs them to gather anything that can hold water—emptied med kit containers, damaged panels that could work as channels, even someone's boots if they're desperate enough (not yet, but they will be). 

Chen finds a section of piping that might work if they can clean it out. The guy she mentally labeled as Farm Station (something about the way he handles things carefully, carefully stepping over some plants) suggests using the dropship's natural slope.

Lynn climbs up to check the dropship's roof, using the same ladder they'd used to exit. The metal's warm under her hands, sun-heated in a way that feels alien. From up here, she can see the entire camp. Can see Wells near the center, left behind by the expedition, watching Murphy and that other kid—Mbege?—removing wristbands from other delinquents and tossing them into a growing pile.

She watches Wells approach them, his injured leg making him look even more like his father—all authority and disappointment. Even from here, she can hear him: "You think this is a game? Those aren't just wristbands, they're—"

"What?" The older Blake kid emerges from the crowd, and Lynn's stomach tightens. The one with the illegal sister, the one who somehow has a guard's uniform. "They're what, Jaha?"

The camp goes quiet. Not silent—ninety-eight teenagers are never truly silent—but there's a shift in attention. Everyone's watching now. Lynn sees Chen and Isa and whatever-his-name-is turning to look.

Wells squares his shoulders and answers with the confidence of an Alpha kid that has never doubted his place in the world in his life. "They're our lifeline to the Ark. Take them off, and they'll think we're dying."

Blake grins, full of sharp teeth, and it's not reassuring. "That's the point." He raises his voice, addressing everyone now. "You think they care about us? We're criminals, remember? Expendable. They sent us down here to die."

"That's not—" Wells starts, but Blake cuts him off.

"No laws on Earth, Chancellor's son. We do whatever the hell we want now." He spreads his arms wide, voice carrying across the camp. "No more shifts! No more rations! No more being told you're not good enough, not smart enough, not useful enough!"

The words hit like electricity through the crowd. Lynn watches from her perch as kids stop mid-motion, as heads turn, as something hungry and desperate flickers to life in their eyes.

Because that's the thing about the Ark—everyone had a place, a function, a role assigned before they could walk.

Mecha kids learned wrenches before words. Hydro kids like her grew up with the sound of water pipes as lullabies, knew the taste of recycled water better than their mothers' voices. Farm Station planted their first seeds at age four, tiny fingers in synthetic soil, learning that every calorie counted.

And God, the rules. The endless, suffocating rules.

Don't waste water (as if they had a choice with rationed showers).

Don't waste food (every crumb counted, every calorie calculated).

Don't have more than one child (Octavia Blake, hidden under the floor for sixteen years).

Don't get sick.

Don't question.

Don't dream.

Don't wish for more than your designated share of barely enough.

Lynn understands why the Ark works this way. She does.

Space is hard and cold and everything outside those metal walls will kill you in seconds. They're trying to survive on finite resources—air that has to be recycled, water that's been through a thousand bodies, food that must be grown in cramped hydroponic bays. The system makes sense. It should work. Everyone contributes, everyone gets their share, everyone survives.

Nobody gets left behind.

Her mother had a book once—hidden in the water pipe access panel, wrapped in stolen plastic bags.
Something about old Earth economic systems, pages yellow and crumbling.

Lynn remembers sneaking at night and reading it, until her mother came and picked her up to get her to bed again, remembers a phrase: "From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs."

The Ark had twisted it into something harder: "From each according to their assignment, to each according to their ration card."

On paper, it's perfect. A closed-loop system where every resource is measured, every person has a function, every calorie and liter and breath is accounted for. The station's algorithm calculates exactly how much each person needs based on their job, their age, their productivity. Physical workers get extra protein. Engineers get extra water for decontamination. Pregnant women get prenatal vitamins—if their pregnancy is authorized.

But reality? Reality is messier.

The algorithm doesn't account for influence, for family names that trace back to the original stations, for friendships that cross department lines.

It doesn't calculate the weight of desperation or the value of mercy. The system is rigged and everyone knows it. A kid from the Pit gets floated for stealing medicine while an Alpha Station brat gets a warning for the same crime. Your child gets sick, needs more antibiotics than their ration allows, and what parent would just watch their kid die?

What mother wouldn't steal? What father wouldn't beg?

The book had talked about something called "social capital"—how who you know matters as much as what you contribute.

On the Ark, knowing someone in Medical means your fever gets treated before it becomes pneumonia. Having a friend in Food Distribution means your ration pack might have an extra protein bar when your kid's going through a growth spurt. Being born in Alpha Station means your mistakes are "learning experiences" instead of capital crimes.

The council calls it "maintaining order" but everyone else calls it what it is—survival for the privileged, death for the rest.

"No more waking up at 0500 for a fucking job you never chose!" Blake's voice rises, and kids are nodding now, agreeing. "No more eating the same protein paste because that's all your ration card allows! No more watching your parents float for stealing medicine!"

A girl near the front—Lynn thinks she's from Factory—is crying. Actually crying. Because when was the last time anyone told her she could want something different? When was the last time anyone said she could choose?

Lynn gets it. God help her, she gets the appeal.

After seventeen years of being told exactly who you are and what you're worth, measured in oxygen consumption and calorie output, the idea of choosing for yourself must taste like freedom.

But she also knows what happens when systems fail.

When no one maintains the water recyclers because it's no one's assigned job anymore. When no one checks the air filters because everyone's doing whatever the hell they want.

When the careful balance that kept three thousand people alive in a tin can in space falls apart.

Chaos. Then thirst. Then hunger. Then death. Not always in that order.

"Who says we need their help?" Blake continues, his voice rising and falling like he's conducting a symphony of teenage rage.The guy knows how to work a crowd, Lynn has to give him that—every pause calculated, every gesture designed to pull them in. "Who says we need their rules? Their systems? Their control?"

He lets the last word hang in the air, bitter and sharp. "We're not on the Ark anymore! We don't have to be what they made us!"

She catches sight of a guy from Recyc Station in the crowd, nodding along to Blake's words with something desperate in his eyes. Lynn remembers him from the corridors—always had that particular hunch that came from crawling through recycling shafts, fingers permanently stained from sorting salvage. Kid used to talk about wanting to work in Bio, studying plants, but Recyc claimed everyone born there. The Pit didn't let go easily. Another sorter waiting to replace an aging sorter, processing garbage until he too became waste. 

Not that you couldn't change stations, in theory. Lynn's own grandmother had moved from Mecha to Hydro when she married. But it was rare. Stations were communities, tight-knit and suspicious of outsiders. You grew up knowing everyone in your section, went to school with their kids, learned your trade from your parents.

Moving meant starting over—no one to vouch for you, no one to cover your shifts when you were sick, no one to share the unwritten rules that kept you alive. So most people stayed. Worked where their parents worked. Died where they were born.

No choice. No chance. Just soil and seeds and sacrifice until you die.

Until now.

Until Blake made them believe they could be something else.

Mierda, Lynn thinks. He's good at this. Too good. She can see her own people wavering, can see them remembering every time they were told they weren't enough.

"You think they're just going to forget about us?" Wells pushes on, voice straining to be heard. "When winter comes, or when the food runs out, we'll need our farmers. Our engineers. Our doctors—"

"We don't need shit from them!" Murphy yells, and more kids take up the cry.

Blake's grin widens. "Whatever the hell we want!" he shouts, and the crowd erupts.

Lynn adds another item to her mental list: Find out what the hell Blake thinks he's doing.