Chapter Text
They came from space. There was an empty vastness that surrounded them their entire lives; glistening stars and a sun that they had to shield their eyes from. They were delinquents, holed up in a Sky Box prison, sitting side by side and waiting for their retrial – waiting to find out if they would die or be left to join the stars, out in the distance.
Below them, Earth was untouchable. It was out of their reach – the planet which their ancestors used to own. A boy with a hard glare and death surrounding his mind would look out of his cell window – a pot-head in the bed next to his – and stare at the world he would never see for himself. A girl, with hair bright as the sun, in a windowless room, isolated and cold, couldn’t remember the colours of the open ocean that she used to gaze at longingly.
A man eyed another warily – a gun held out in front of him. The guard uniform that he use to wear so proudly stared back at his janitors clothes. He reached out and took the gun, as a girl with his likeness curled into her sheets. She’d never had a bed before, and her cell mate loved to talk, so she would try to feel as if she hadn’t lived her life under the floorboards.
It was their unique combination of solar radiation in space, and the nuclear radiation still swarming around Earth after the war, ninety-seven years beforehand, that would change them.
But they didn’t know that yet.
JASPER JORDAN
To be fair, the Dropship did have this old, antique vibe going for it – all dusty walls and seats that reminded him of images of rollercoasters from pre-bomb Earth. But that wasn’t what you wanted in a rocket ship that was supposed to safely deliver you to Earth. For this, you wanted something new; definitely going to work, and not a death trap.
“Unless that’s what they were going for,” Monty, Jasper’s best friend, mused beside him. They were on the lowest level of the Dropship, the door at the other end of the room, and delinquents he’d been sharing his life with for six months surrounding him on all sides. “To kill us.”
“They wouldn’t do that, would they?” Jasper asked slowly, wincing. Monty shrugged as best he could in his seat up against the wall.
“We don’t know what they would do,” he replied. That much was true. The Ark Council was unpredictable – hell, the Chancellor’s son was among them, Jasper had heard, and why would Jaha send his own kid down to die? Then again, why were any of them being sent? Wasn’t Earth supposed to be barren and dangerous for another hundred years? Wasn’t that the point of being up in space?
On various monitors, Chancellor Jaha’s face and voice flickered, the soundtrack to their death. He was talking about Mount Weather, about survival, about finding the rations that had been sent down with them. Jasper was watching a boy – probably a year older than him – float about the ship as people laughed.
“Sit down!” a female voice was calling, but the guy kept going. This time he did a flip. Jasper recognised him vaguely – he wasn’t very close with a lot of people in the Sky Box. There was his cell mate, John Murphy, who hated Jasper with a fiery passion, it seemed. But he wasn’t a friend – Jasper tended to hang around Monty, Harper, Monroe and Miller. They were his type of people – all getting done for petty crimes that wouldn’t really hurt anyone, unless you thought about it too hard.
Murphy, on the other hand, burned down the guard’s station, which-
Apparently a whole month of oxygen was lost in that endeavour. Jasper was pretty sure Murphy was going to get floated when he turned eighteen, so maybe the slim chance that the Dropship wouldn’t kill them all on the way to Earth was better for the guy. Not that Jasper cared in the slightest.
There was turbulence, as the second kid climbed out of his chair, following the first. The first, it seemed, was Spacewalker – or Finn Collins, as he was actually named. He wasted oxygen, too, on an illegal spacewalk outside of the Ark. From what Jasper heard, Finn was about three months from turning eighteen – from getting floated without a doubt.
The Dropship started to shake, bringing Jasper back to reality as he gripped at the seat belts that crossed over his chest. He slammed his eyes shut, Jaha’s voice cutting out and letting them die with the screams surrounding them. The black was more comforting than knowing what was going on around him – he didn’t see the second boy’s body crumple at a particularly big jolt, nor did he see the sheer terror on his best friend’s face.
The ride didn’t even out, but it eventually stopped.
There was a crash, and then silence. His skin felt like it was on fire as Jasper opened his eyes, little by little. Everything about him was hot, but he pushed the thought aside, looking over to Monty.
“Are you alright?” he asked. Monty nodded groggily, slowly unclipping his seatbelt. Jasper was there in a second, letting Monty lean on him as the delinquents began to reach for the door.
There was a man at the front of them in a guard’s uniform, and Jasper frowned. Did the Ark send a chaperone? Really? He was reaching for the lever that opened the door when a blonde girl called for him to stop.
“What if the oxygen is toxic?” she asked, a frown across her features. Monty was leaning heavily on his side, skin cold to the touch.
“Then we’re dead anyway,” the guard replied. “Might as well get it over with, right?” He turned back to the lever once more, but there was another voice.
“Bell?” It was a girl, and Jasper watched her push through the crowd. She looked vaguely familiar; like someone he’d seen around the Sky Box, but never bothered to talk to. She was cute, though; attractive in a blatantly obvious way that matched that of the guard.
“O?” Bell questioned in response. It became clear to someone after that, because the whispers started to surface, that the girl was Octavia Blake – the one they found under the floorboards. The two embraced in a hug, before the lever was pulled and the door lowered, air releasing from the ship.
For a moment, they stared at the trees; everything so vibrant and bright, contrasting everything they’d known back on the Ark of muted greys. The world was green and it was beautiful.
Then the air hit them and Jasper’s body began to boil. Everyone looked uneasy all of a sudden, like they were all feeling something, but no one could tell what.
“It’s totally toxic,” the blonde girl from earlier muttered, at the front of the crowd.
“Shame,” the guard replied. “I was hoping life would actually give me a break for once.”
“Monty, you’re freezing,” Jasper whispered to his friend as Monty began to straighten, apparently feeling better.
“Yeah, I can feel that – you’re really hot. What’s happening?” Jasper looked around. Finn was making a face, and Miller, across the crowd, looked alarmed. He spotted Murphy after a moment, eyes wide and face pale, like he was going to be sick.
“We’re probably all going to die,” Jasper replied, as Octavia was nudged out onto the ramp, the first person to step foot on the ground, even if it was going to kill them.
“Sweet,” Monty said. “Better here than up in space, right?”
Octavia jumped onto the ground, anyway, and screamed out, “we’re back bitches!”
It felt piercing for just a second, like someone was pressing a pin into his temple, but that was gone after a moment. The delinquents rushed out into the open, breathing in the breeze that was cool on their skin. Jasper’s temperature slowly lowered, and it was almost as if he could feel it doing so; feel the cold air seeping into his body. He watched as a few kids kissed the ground, and others screamed with happiness. Monty and he stood by each other’s sides, looking around at the world that was theirs now.
“It’s so going to kill us,” someone else said, but no one seemed to care. Why would they? Dying on Earth was better than doing it up in space, and Jasper grinned, staring at the cloudless, blue sky.
“We made it,” he said, smiling with relief. Before Monty had a chance to respond, they were tackled into hugs by Harper and Monroe, grinning from ear to ear.
“Jas,” Harper frowned, before her smile returned. “You’re so hot, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong if I’m hot,” Jasper replied, rolling his eyes with a smirk. “I knew you’d always liked me.” Harper shoved him gently.
“You’re an idiot,” she replied, before pointedly wrapping her arm around her girlfriend’s shoulder. “But your skin is also boiling.”
“Monty’s is freezing, to be fair,” Monroe replied. “Maybe you’re trying to even each other out?” Jasper shrugged.
“We’re probably dying,” Monty said.
“At least you’re doing it on Earth,” Monroe pointed out, before spinning around to look at the world around them.
“Don’t you feel strange at all?” Harper asked her. Monroe looked over.
“You do?” Harper nodded.
“It’s like I’m getting called from lots of different places,” she said slowly, frowning. “Like, my name is being yelled a lot.”
“By… people?”
“By things – like the Dropship, or the trees, or the supplies. I feel like inanimate objects are calling to me.” The group was silent for a second, before Monroe reached over and grabbed Monty’s hand, pulling it and pressing his palm against her girlfriend’s forehead.
“There,” she said. “I think you guys are dehydrated or something.”
“You mean you actually feel fine?” Jasper asked, looking over Monty’s arm at her. She nodded.
“Yeah, I feel like I have two feet on the ground, and Earth is where I’m supposed to be. That’s what we should be feeling – we’ve lived in space our whole lives, for Christ’s sake.”
The feelings slowly faded; Monty and Jasper’s skin returned to normal, and the rations that were supposed to be sent with them were too far away to reach. A small group of them – Jasper, Monty, Finn, Octavia, and the blonde, Clarke – had gone searching, only to come across a river. Clarke had frowned at her map, and told them that it would be a few hours of walking to get to the bridge, so they turned back, Finn saying that he smelt an animal nearby.
Jasper decided that the radiation probably made them all crazy, but went with it anyway, as Finn pulled a knife from his belt – one that had been sent with them on the Dropship – and managed to kill a small wild black cat – “maybe a puma,” Finn had shrugged, about three-quarters of the size of Jasper.
They dragged it back to camp, and Clarke talked to Bellamy, the guard, who seemed to be taking charge.
“Mount Weather is too far for today,” Clarke told him as they approached camp, hefting the cat between them. “Maybe we could go tomorrow at dawn?” Bellamy looked at the food, at the fire pit being made, and frowned.
“How far would it be?”
“There and back? At least twelve hours,” Clarke replied. “If we spent a day going and getting the rations-“
“There’s clearly animals nearby,” Bellamy interjected. “We could probably survive off of the rations in the Dropship for a good few weeks, and hunt too. We’d have to take a bigger group to go get them all, and that’s just too many people to risk out in the forest on their own.” Clarke looked like she was about to argue it – that the rations could be important, but someone called Bellamy’s name, and he turned, briefly touching his hand to her arm, before yelling that he would be with the other person in a moment.
“You’re right,” Clarke said, surprising both of them, as Bellamy pulled his hand away. “We’ll hunt for now. We should get started on fortifying this place, then, if this is where we’re staying.”
Bellamy was looking a little dumbfounded, as Clarke turned to walk away, but nodded anyway.
“We found some tents in the Dropship,” he called weakly after her. Jasper watched for a moment as Bellamy shook his head, before turning away, and Clarke came back over.
“Right, we’re not going to be heading back to Mount Weather – it’s too far – so who knows how to cook?” Finn frowned at her.
“Are you sure, Clarke? Earlier you were saying it’s important for us to get those rations.” Clarke nodded.
“I’m sure,” she said, before turning back to the dead animal. “We should probably skin it first, right?”