Chapter Text
Chapter 1
“Prisoner 299. Face to the wall. Hands behind your back.”
The voice hit the cell like a slap.
Marie moved before the door finished opening. The Sky Box did not teach you bravery. It taught you speed. She pressed her palms to the cold wall, cheek turned just enough to track the guard without looking like she was looking.
Nine was too young for prison. Nine was old enough to know that questions made things worse.
The guard did not carry food. No pouch, no tray, no water tube.
Her stomach clenched anyway.
Hands grabbed her wrists and dragged them behind her back. Metal cuffs bit into skin. Marie swallowed the sound that wanted to escape her throat. The stupid little whimper that would make her weak. She tasted blood where her teeth found her bottom lip.
“Move.”
He shoved her forward. The corridor outside her cell was chaos. Too many bodies, too many clinking cuffs, too many voices trying to sound angry instead of afraid. Teenagers spilled from cells like a flood, some fighting their restraints, some walking stiffly as if their legs had forgotten how. A boy somewhere yelled a curse that made a guard laugh.
Marie’s eyes skated over familiar faces and did not stick. If she stared too long, someone would notice her.
They were all being taken.
A cold thought slid under everything else.
Floating.
No one under eighteen was floated. That was a rule. Marie clung to it like it was a railing over a cliff.
“What’s happening?” Her voice came out smaller than she meant it to. She hated that. She hated that her fear sounded like begging.
The guard hesitated. Not much. Just a fraction of a breath, like a human being remembering he was human.
“I’m not allowed to tell you,” he said, low. “You’ll find out.”
“That means yes,” Marie whispered. “That means we’re being floated.”
His head moved, so slight she could not tell if it meant no or stop talking.
The corridor turned. Another turn. Marie lost the map of the Ark in her head. They were going somewhere she had never been.
Then she saw it.
An airlock door.
For a second she was not in the hallway anymore. She was smaller, small enough to fit behind her mother’s skirt. She was staring through glass at her father’s face as the fear took it over, as the vacuum reached for him.
Her father’s mouth formed her name.
She could not hear it. In her dreams she still could not hear it.
Marie jerked against the guard’s grip, sudden and wild.
“No. No, please.”
The guard swore under his breath and tightened his hold. He did not have to fight her like he was fighting a teenager. She was a child. He just lifted enough that her feet scraped the floor as he dragged her through the airlock like a bag of rations.
The door sealed behind them.
Her heartbeat did not slow. It only changed shape. Panic turned into a thin terror that left her hands numb.
The corridor beyond did not look like the Ark she knew. The walls were newer here, cleaner. Too clean. She had heard whispers about the dropship, about old sections of the Ark that had been locked away like secrets.
They entered a room lined with seats. Straps. Harnesses.
A launch room.
Marie was shoved into one. The belt snapped across her chest so hard it stole her breath. The guard unlocked her cuffs but did not let go of her wrist. His fingers were iron. His thumb pressed into the soft inside of her arm like he was marking her.
Then he pulled out a metal band.
Not cloth. Not plastic. Real metal, cold and unforgiving in his hand.
Marie had seen ankle monitors in old videos. This was different. Too heavy. Too final.
It clicked around her wrist.
Pain slammed through her like lightning.
Marie’s mouth opened, but her scream stayed trapped in her ribs. The pain was wrong. Not a bruise. Not a cut. Like needles being shoved under skin and left there to pulse.
She stared down at the metal around her wrist, eyes watering, teeth clenched so hard her jaw ached.
The guard’s face flickered. Something like apology. Something like shame.
Then he left.
One by one, the other prisoners were strapped in and tagged the same way. Some glared like wolves. Some cried without sound. A boy called the guards every name he could think of until someone hit him and he shut up, breathing hard.
The last one brought in was not walking.
An older blonde girl, unconscious, head lolling. Marie recognized her vaguely from the med bay. The chef’s daughter. The one who always had clean hands and a too straight spine.
The door sealed.
No guards stayed.
Only kids.
For a moment the room held its breath. The kind of silence that felt like a verdict.
Then the screens on the walls flickered and came alive.
Chancellor Jaha filled them, looking down at them like a man who had already decided they were ghosts.
“We are sending you to the ground…”
Marie felt the words hit her one by one, each heavier than the last. Down to Earth. The place that was still supposed to be poison. The place her lessons had painted in ash and radiation and death.
Her palms turned slick against the straps. She stared at the screen until her eyes burned.
Expendable.
That was what he called them without saying the word.
Marie blinked hard and felt tears spill anyway.
“You’re crying already?”
The voice beside her was rough, older. A boy leaned toward her, brown hair falling into sharp angles around his face. He looked like he had been built out of fights.
“What can a little kid like you have done to get locked up?” he sneered.
Marie hated the way kid made her small. She lifted her chin anyway.
“I tried to steal medicine,” she said. Her voice shook, but she forced the words out clean. “For my mom.”
Something shifted in his face. Not softness, nothing that gentle, but the sneer dulled.
“My dad got floated for stealing medicine for me,” he said, almost like it was just a fact. “Jonathan Murphy.”
Marie swallowed. The dropship shuddered around them. Metal groaning, vibration running into her bones.
“I’m Marie Matthews,” she managed. “But call me Marie.”
Murphy huffed a laugh. “How old are you?”
“Nine,” she said. And because she could already hear the pity waiting in his eyes, she added quickly, “I’m not helpless.”
Murphy’s gaze lingered on her like he was deciding whether to believe that.
Somewhere to their left, the chef’s daughter had woken up and was fighting with a dark skinned boy in low furious bursts. Another kid unbuckled and pushed off, floating, laughing like the sky itself was a toy.
For a second Marie felt something bright in her chest. The floating did look like fun.
Then the dropship lurched.
The bright feeling broke.
Marie screamed as the world bucked under them. Something tore loose from the wall and crashed to the floor. Murphy’s hand shot out and caught hers, fingers locking around her knuckles like a promise made without words.
“Hold on,” he said.
Marie held on. To the strap. To his hand. To the idea that she might not die in the next ten minutes.
The impact came like a punch.
Bodies slammed. A crash of noise. A scream cut off too fast.
Marie’s head snapped back into the seat. White flashed behind her eyes. When her vision cleared, she saw two boys lying on the floor where they had been thrown, not moving.
The chef’s daughter, Clarke, someone said, knelt beside them, face gone pale. Her hands hovered like she did not want to touch death.
“Are they dead?” Marie whispered.
Clarke did not look up. She nodded once.
The hatch was opening. Light spilled into the dropship, too bright, too real. Air rushed in.
Outside, people were cheering. Screaming in joy. Laughing like they had landed in a party instead of a grave.
Marie stepped forward slowly, the way you stepped toward something you had only seen in books.
Green.
Not the sick green of algae farms. Real green. Layers and layers of it. Leaves moving in wind. Grass. Trees so tall they made the sky feel farther away.
Her breath caught.
It smelled like nothing she knew. Not metal. Not disinfectant. Not recycled air.
It smelled alive.
A bird burst from the branches with a harsh cry, and Marie flinched and then stared, wide eyed, because it was real. A living animal. A creature that had survived everything.
Behind her the dropship’s broken trees burned, flames licking bark. Ahead, mountains cut the horizon like teeth.
Clarke was trying to gather people. No one listened. Someone laughed and shoved her aside.
Marie stepped closer anyway, because mountains meant shelter, and shelter meant water, and water meant not dying.
But the older kids barely glanced at her.
“Too little,” someone snapped, and shoved past her.
Marie’s cheeks burned. She turned away before she could cry again and walked into the woods instead, because if no one was going to keep her alive, she would.
The forest swallowed the noise of the camp within minutes. Sound changed here. No hum of machinery. No echoing metal. Only wind and insects and her own breathing.
Movement flickered in the leaves ahead.
Marie froze.
Her mind supplied a hundred terrible answers.
Then a bird shrieked from a nearby tree and launched itself into the sky. Marie watched it go, heart hammering, and only then realized her hands had curled into fists.
Animals, she thought, dazed. There are animals.
Water had to exist if animals existed.
“Marie.”
She spun.
Murphy stood behind her, grin crooked, shoulders loose like he had never been afraid a day in his life.
“Might not be safe out here alone,” he said.
“Because I’m small?” Marie shot back, anger coming easier than fear now. “Because I’m nine?”
Murphy’s eyes narrowed, not unkindly. “Because you’re one person.”
Marie hesitated. Pride wanted to push him away.
But she remembered the airlock. The way being alone felt like a door shutting.
“What are you doing out here then?” she demanded, trying to sound tougher than she felt.
Murphy jerked his chin toward the trees. “What are you looking for?”
Marie swallowed. The word was simple. The need was not.
“Water.”
Murphy nodded once, like that was an answer worth respecting. “Then let’s go.”
Marie turned and started walking. He fell into step beside her without comment.
For a while they did not speak. The silence was not suffocating out here. It was wide.
“I saw a bird,” Marie said finally, unable to keep the wonder out of her voice.
Murphy glanced up into the branches, expression shifting, just slightly. Curiosity. Cautious awe.
“Do you think anyone survived?” Marie asked. “Real people. On the ground.”
Murphy shrugged. “We’re alive, aren’t we?”
Marie did not know if that was comfort or a warning.
Above them, unseen, a shadow moved from tree to tree, silent as breath, watching the Sky People walk deeper into Trikru land.
And listening.
Chapter 2
Marie and John walked until her legs felt like someone else’s.
At first she had been too dazzled to mind the distance. The forest had been a miracle, an entire world that did not hum with machinery. Leaves moved when the wind moved. The air tasted different every time she inhaled, sharp and wet and full of things she could not name. She had kept turning her head like she might miss something important if she looked away for even a second.
Then the wonder began to thin, and the ache in her feet took its place.
Her shoes were not made for this. Nothing on the Ark was made for this. The ground was uneven, roots catching at her steps, dirt soft in some places and stubborn in others. After a while she could not even pretend the silence between them felt comfortable anymore. It pressed on her chest, heavy and awkward, like she had done something wrong without knowing what.
John walked ahead half the time, hands loose at his sides, as if the whole world belonged to him already.
Marie did not know what to say. She did not want to ask about Earth again and sound childish. She did not want to ask whether he was scared, because she did not want to hear the answer and she did not want him to hear it in her voice.
“So,” John said suddenly, loud enough to cut through the birds and the insects. “What did you like to do up there?”
Marie startled, more from relief than surprise. Her shoulders loosened a fraction.
“Reading,” she said, and then, because she wanted him to understand that it had mattered, “My mum would trade for books. Every few weeks, if she could. I read them until the pages felt soft.”
John made a sound that was half laugh, half scoff. “Could never get into it. My dad tried. Failed.”
“What happened to your family?” Marie asked, because the question came easy with him, like she had known him longer than a day. Because he had held her hand on the dropship and she had clung to it like it meant something.
He did not look at her when he answered. “Told you. My father stole medicine for me and got floated.”
He said it like it was nothing. Like floating was weather.
Marie swallowed. The image of her own father flashed behind her eyes, too sharp. The airlock glass. The panic on his face.
“Do you remember him much?” she asked, and her voice betrayed her, turning quiet at the edges.
John shrugged. “Some. Not everything.” He hesitated, then added, as if it annoyed him to give her anything soft, “I still remember him telling me to try to be better.”
Marie’s throat tightened.
“I still see mine being floated in my dreams,” she whispered. “I wasn’t there when my mum was floated, but I see my dad. Every time.”
John’s jaw moved like he was chewing words he did not want to say. He stayed silent. His pace did not change.
Marie stared at a patch of moss, blinking too hard, and forced herself to move on.
After a few minutes she tried again, because she did not want to sit inside her grief and let it swallow her. “What about your mother?”
John’s face twisted. Not sadness. Something uglier. “Useless drunk,” he said. “Pathetic.”
The word landed hard enough to end the conversation.
Marie looked away. She did not know if she should apologize for asking, or if apologizing would make it worse, like she was treating him like something fragile. She chose silence. The forest gave her plenty to focus on. A thin vine curling around a tree. A cluster of small bright flowers that looked too vivid to be real. The way sunlight filtered down in shifting patches.
Then the light changed.
Both of them noticed it at almost the same time. The sky above the trees deepened, the shadows lengthening.
John stopped and turned, scanning the direction behind them. “We head back now,” he said. Worry edged his voice, small but real. “If it gets dark we will not find the dropship again.”
Marie dragged her feet as she followed. The frustration had nowhere to go.
“We didn’t find any water,” she complained, and hated how close her voice came to whining. “We walked all day for nothing.”
“Obviously,” John muttered, and urged her faster when she lagged, eyes shifting from tree to tree like he did not like how the woods looked at dusk.
By the time the noise of the camp reached them, Marie’s stomach was a hollow knot. Her feet felt swollen inside her shoes. The cheerful screaming from earlier sounded different now, strained at the edges, like laughter had become a way to pretend.
They broke through the trees and the dropship came into view, half wreck and half monument.
A dark skinned boy stood near the center, trying to herd people into something like sense. Marie recognized him from the dropship, from the argument with the blonde medical girl.
“We need shelter,” he was saying, voice steady. “We need a plan.”
Most of the others ignored him. Some laughed. Some looked at him like he was trying to give orders on the Ark again, and that insulted them.
Then the boy in the guard uniform stepped forward. Older. Bigger. Smiling like he had found a stage.
“We are not on the Ark anymore,” he announced. “Here the privileged do the dirty work.”
A shout of agreement rose up, ugly and pleased.
Marie’s face tightened. She hated him immediately. She saw the uniform and felt a flicker of confusion. Why was there an adult here at all. If the Ark had sent one, why not someone useful.
John stepped in as if he had been waiting for an excuse.
He shoved the dark skinned boy hard enough that Marie flinched.
“Your old dad isn’t chancellor here,” John snapped.
The cruelty in his voice made her stomach drop. It was not the boy from the woods. It was someone sharper, someone who seemed to enjoy being sharp.
The dark skinned boy stiffened, anger rising. Words flew. Insults. Accusations. John’s mouth curled.
Then knives appeared.
Marie froze.
She had not seen the blades in their hands before. She had not realized how quickly words turned into weapons here. She held her breath as they circled each other, eyes locked, bodies tense. The guard uniform boy stood back with his arms crossed, watching like it was entertainment.
No one moved to stop it.
Marie’s throat tasted like metal.
A boy dropped from a tree with the smoothness of someone born to it. Bigger than John, older too. He shoved himself between them without hesitation, one hand slamming into John’s shoulder, the other pushing the dark skinned boy back.
The fight broke apart with a sudden harshness.
John glared, chest heaving, but he backed off. He said something low and vicious as he retreated, something that made the dark skinned boy’s face go tight with contained fury.
Marie watched John follow the boy who had stopped them, and a hollow disappointment settled inside her.
She had thought she could stick with him.
She had thought that would be enough.
Instead she walked to the edge of camp and sat against a tree, knees pulled up, staring up at the sky as it darkened through the branches. Her stomach rumbled again. Hunger was familiar. The Sky Box had taught her how to endure it. How to wait it out. How to pretend it did not exist until it became a dull ache you could live beside.
Around her, the older kids kept laughing. Touching. Drinking in the new world like it was a drug.
A boy and a girl collapsed to the ground only a few steps from her, mouths already on each other. Hands pulling at clothing. Marie turned her head away first, then shifted deeper into the treeline when she realized the boy was unfastening his trousers and the girl’s shirt was sliding up.
Her cheeks burned with embarrassment and annoyance and something else she could not name.
She hugged her knees and listened to the camp like it was a distant storm.
Why was no one building shelter. Why was no one looking for water again. Did they think supplies would appear because they wanted them.
The leaves shifted beside her.
Marie jerked, heart jumping, and found the dark skinned boy standing there.
He held out his hand politely, smile careful. “I’m Wells.”
Marie stared at his hand for a second, then took it. His grip was warm, human. Not a guard. Not a threat.
“Marie,” she said. Her voice sounded small again, and she hated it. “You were right. We should build shelters.”
Wells blinked, surprised, then smiled wider. “So you’re smart.”
For a second she puffed up with pride, as if the compliment could fill the empty place in her stomach.
“I’m sorry John was mean to you,” she added, because she could not stop herself from trying to smooth things over, even when it was not her job.
Wells shrugged. His smile tilted into something self aware. “Didn’t expect to be popular among criminals.”
Marie frowned. “Most of us aren’t criminals like that. Some just stole. Or did something stupid.”
Wells opened his mouth, probably to explain, to soften it, but Marie was already tired. Tired of the day and the fear and the way the camp sounded like it might turn violent at any moment. She lay down on the moss under the tree instead, turning her shoulder toward him. The moss felt soft in a way nothing on the Ark ever had, and also damp. Cold seeped into her clothes almost immediately.
Wells sighed behind her, a small sound of annoyance, but he stayed.
“I’ll keep watch,” he said. “You shouldn’t be alone.”
Marie did not answer. But she did not tell him to go away either.
Sleep took her in uneven pieces.
Her nightmares did not care that she had reached the ground.
Her father in the airlock, mouth open, eyes wide. Her mother in a bunk, skin too pale, breath too thin. The med bay doors closing. The sound of cuffs. The door of her cell shutting and shutting and shutting until she was screaming and no one came.
“Hey.” A hand on her shoulder. Gentle, but real.
Marie bolted upright, breath tearing at her ribs.
Wells was still there, face soft in the low light. “It’s okay,” he said quickly. “Just a dream.”
Marie shook her head hard. Tears stung her eyes. “It’s not just a dream,” she whispered, furious at herself for the wetness in her voice. “It’s everything.”
Wells watched her for a moment, then spoke in a slow steady tone. “Match your breathing. In. Out.”
Marie tried. Her breaths were too fast at first, jagged. Then they began to follow his voice, and the panic loosened its grip.
She managed a small grateful smile, still shaky.
Before she could speak, shouting erupted at the center of camp.
They got to their feet and moved toward it, drawn by noise like everyone else.
The group that had gone toward Mount Weather had returned. Clarke stumbled in with others around her. Another girl leaned heavily on a boy, injured. They carried no supplies. No water. No food. One boy was missing.
Marie’s stomach sank.
She listened as people argued about what had happened. Something in the woods. Animals. Humans. Someone said mutant monkeys and the word felt ridiculous, but the fear did not.
Clarke wanted to go back for the missing boy. John volunteered too fast. Another boy with him. Marie did not even consider asking. No one would bring a nine year old into danger, and she did not want them to.
The camp shifted again after that, restless and hungry.
Near a fire, a line formed. Teenagers gripped stones and smashed at their metal wristbands until the metal gave way. Faces twisted in pain. Hands shook.
Marie watched, rubbing her own wrist unconsciously. The band still ached. The skin beneath it felt bruised, tender.
Someone waved her over. She shook her head and backed away. The thought of making the pain worse made her stomach turn.
But hunger had a voice too, and it was getting louder.
Later, a hunting group returned with a dead animal, dragged and heavy, and the smell of blood made Marie’s mouth water in spite of herself. Meat was divided out, and the rule became clear fast. No wristband, no share.
Marie stared at the band on her arm.
No one on the Ark cared if she lived or died. That had been proven.
Her hunger won.
She joined the line.
The stone came down. The metal bit. Pain flashed white. Marie gasped and nearly folded, hands flying to her wrist. She blinked hard, breath shaking, and told herself not to cry in front of them. Not here.
Then the meat was placed in her hands.
It looked strange. Dark and real. Not printed protein. Not synthetic paste. Something that had been alive.
Marie stared at it with a frown, then lifted it to her mouth and took a cautious bite.
The taste made her eyes widen.
It was rich and hot and wrong and wonderful. It made her stomach twist with relief so sharp it felt like pain.
Rain started later, sudden and cold, and the camp erupted in laughter again as people tipped their faces up to catch the water. Marie did too, letting it run into her mouth, shocked by how simple it was. Water from the sky.
She had imagined rain differently. Softer. Warmer. More magical.
It was wet. It was cold. It was still water, and that was enough.
When her clothes were soaked through and her teeth began to chatter, she followed the others into the dropship for shelter. It filled quickly. Bodies pressed close. The air turned damp and warm and smelled like sweat and smoke and blood.
Marie found a corner and slid down, back against cold metal, knees tucked in.
Her eyelids drooped. Her body felt heavy with exhaustion. Somewhere above, people were still arguing, still laughing too loud, still pretending they were not scared.
Marie closed her eyes and tried to picture a future where this became normal. A routine. A life.
In her mind it almost worked.
In her body, a quieter truth settled.
It was a childish hope.
And she did not know it yet, but it would not survive.
Chapter 3
Morning did not arrive gently.
It came with Bellamy’s voice cutting through the camp like a blade, ordering people to their feet, pointing, assigning tasks as if he had been born to command and not thrown onto Earth like the rest of them. The dropship stood behind him like a wound in the forest, smoke still clinging to it in thin stubborn threads. Around it, the others hauled branches and sharpened stakes, dragged metal scraps into place, argued about angles and gaps, built a wall out of fear and pride.
Marie watched them work and felt useless in a way she hated.
She was too small to lift what they lifted. Too light to shove stakes into the ground the way they did. When she tried anyway, someone snatched the branch from her hands and told her to move before she got in the way. She swallowed her frustration and looked for another job before the helplessness could turn into tears.
A pile of gathered nuts sat near the fire, and someone told her to ration them out. Put equal portions aside. Count them. Make sure nobody stole.
It was boring. It was also safe.
Marie sat on the ground with the nuts between her knees, her hands moving in a slow rhythm, dividing and stacking, trying not to look at how the others kept glancing past her as if she were furniture.
John did not work.
He moved through the camp like he owned it, shouting orders in a voice that had grown too big for him overnight. He laughed when others struggled. He watched Bellamy with a tight hungry interest, as if he was memorizing how power looked so he could wear it later.
Marie had liked him yesterday, in the woods, when he had been the only familiar shape in a world that felt too bright and too vast. Now he was sharp. Mean. He smiled with his teeth and it made her stomach twist.
He had told her his father’s last lesson had been to try to be better.
Marie did not know what better meant, but she was fairly sure it did not look like this.
Charlotte stayed close to Bellamy, almost pressed to his side. She was only a few years older than Marie, but she carried herself like someone trying very hard not to be seen as small. Marie had tried to approach her once, early, when the camp still smelled like damp earth and smoke and new morning, but Charlotte had looked through her and walked away. She followed Bellamy like a shadow, and Bellamy let her.
Wells had told them to collect rainwater. Hardly anyone had listened.
By midday throats were already dry again, and irritation crept over the camp the way sweat did, slow and sticky. Marie felt it in herself first as a tightness behind her tongue. Then as the way her thoughts kept circling back to water even when she tried to focus on counting.
She was hesitant to ask for any. The mood felt wrong. Like one sentence spoken at the wrong time could earn a shove or an insult.
She approached John anyway, because she knew him, because she had held his hand when the dropship shook, because she wanted to believe that yesterday still mattered.
John gave her the water without being asked twice. He even flashed her a friendly smile, quick as lightning, gone just as fast.
Marie drank carefully, forcing herself to stop before she gulped it down in a single desperate swallow.
A few minutes later another boy approached John and asked for water too.
John’s friendliness vanished as if it had never existed.
He barked at the boy to get back to work. When the boy did not move fast enough, John shoved him. The boy shoved back.
For one sharp second, everything in the camp turned its face toward them.
Marie held her breath.
John’s eyes narrowed. He smiled.
He stepped forward, and before Marie understood what he was doing, he humiliated the boy in the worst way she could imagine. It was not a fist. It was not a knife. It was something dirtier than violence because it was meant to make the other boy feel less than human.
The camp erupted in laughter.
Marie stood very still, as if moving might make her part of it. Her cheeks burned. Her stomach turned. She looked around for someone to stop it, for someone to look away in shame, for someone to say this was wrong.
No one did.
John looked proud.
Marie’s hands shook as she went back to her nuts, counting faster, tighter, trying to pretend she had not seen anything, trying to shove the image out of her mind because she did not know what to do with it.
The boy did not get the chance to retaliate. Shouting rose at the edge of camp.
Clarke returned with her group, breathless, dirty, carrying a boy who hung limp between them.
They had found Jasper.
He did not look like someone who had been found. He looked like someone who had been taken apart and put back together wrong. His skin shone with sweat. His lips were pale. Blood soaked through a ragged patch over his chest. There was a hole there, dark and wet, and Marie felt dizzy just looking at it.
“Clean water,” Clarke shouted, voice sharp with panic. “Now.”
Marie was on her feet before she realized she had decided. Rationing nuts meant nothing. This mattered.
She ran to the dropship and grabbed water and carried it in with both hands, careful not to spill.
Clarke took it with a brief nod that might have been a thank you. Then her focus narrowed to Jasper again and Marie became invisible.
She lingered anyway.
Clarke crouched over Jasper like she had done it a thousand times, hands steady even as her eyes looked frantic. Marie watched her the way she had once watched Abby Griffin in the med bay. Clean the wound. Press cloth. Make him drink. Speak in a voice that sounded calm even when it was not.
Monty sat close, holding Jasper’s hand with both of his, pleading like prayer.
“Clarke, please,” he whispered again and again. “Please save Jasper.”
Clarke’s mouth tightened. “I am doing all I can, Monty.” Her voice strained on the edges. “He is strong. He will survive. I don’t know what they put on the spear. Something. Something that kept him alive long enough to get him back.”
Another girl sat down beside Monty, the one who had been hurt on the trip. She tried to calm him, her hand on his shoulder. Her eyes looked too bright.
Then Jasper woke up.
His scream tore through the dropship so violently that Marie flinched back as if the sound had struck her. It did not sound human. It sounded like an animal caught in a trap. Goosebumps rose over Marie’s arms.
She had never heard pain like that.
Clarke grabbed Jasper’s shoulders, trying to hold him still, trying to keep him from tearing at the wound.
Marie’s throat tightened, memory flashing of her mother in bed on the Ark, trying not to moan, trying to swallow pain because there was no point in making noise when no one could fix it.
“Don’t we have painkillers?” Marie asked, voice small, too small for the horror filling the room.
Clarke shook her head, anger and regret flickering in her eyes. “They did not pack medical supplies. Nothing for this.” Her gaze moved fast, thinking, hunting for options that did not exist.
A moment later Jasper’s eyes rolled back and he collapsed into unconsciousness again, breath ragged, body limp.
The silence that followed felt like mercy.
Marie left the dropship with her heart hammering. Outside, the wall around the camp had grown. Stakes stood in jagged lines. Metal scraps glittered in the sun. People hammered and pulled and argued.
It looked impressive.
It did not feel safe.
If someone could throw a spear across a river and put it through a boy’s chest, Marie did not believe a wall made from sticks would stop them.
The afternoon dragged on with Jasper’s pain echoing over everything. He woke and screamed. He woke and screamed again. Some of the older kids started to mutter about mercy, about ending it, about how he would die anyway. Marie hated them for saying it out loud like that. She hated herself for not knowing if they were right.
She could not listen anymore.
She slipped away from camp without anyone noticing, moving through the trees with a quiet determination that surprised her. They needed water. Yesterday they had found it. She could find it too.
The forest felt calmer away from the camp. Cleaner. The air tasted like leaves and earth instead of smoke and sweat. The light was softer under the canopy.
For a while she managed to believe the Earth was not trying to kill them.
Then she heard rustling behind her.
Marie ducked behind a tree, heart thudding, her breath caught between her ribs. The sound drew closer. Heavy steps. A snapped twig.
A blade flew past her so close she felt air move against her cheek.
It buried itself in the trunk behind her with a hard wooden thunk.
Marie froze, staring at it, her mind taking a moment to understand how close she had been to dying.
“Damn,” a voice snapped. “I could have killed you.”
A boy stalked up to her and yanked the knife free with a violent motion. His expression was furious. Behind him Bellamy appeared with two others, all of them carrying weapons, all of them looking like they had been hunting.
“No one was supposed to leave camp alone,” the boy kept going, still angry.
“Sorry,” Marie whispered. Her hands trembled.
Bellamy’s gaze shifted to her face. His expression softened a fraction. “You okay?”
He stepped closer and offered his hand. Marie took it before she could decide not to. His grip steadied her in a way that felt unfamiliar.
She nodded and forced herself to stand tall again, brushing dirt from her clothes like she could brush the fear away too.
A horn sounded somewhere in the distance.
The sound rolled through the trees, low and strange, and it made every hair on Marie’s arms rise.
“What was that?” she asked, eyes wide.
No one answered. Even Bellamy looked uncertain as he listened.
Then yellow smoke drifted between the trees.
It moved too smoothly. Too purposeful.
Bellamy’s face changed. “Run,” he barked, and grabbed Marie’s arm when she did not move fast enough.
She stumbled after them, her mind still trying to name what she was seeing.
They reached a bunker, a metal mouth in the earth, and shoved themselves inside.
One boy did not reach the door in time.
Marie heard his screaming through the crack before the bunker sealed. The sound went on and on, and she pressed her hands over her ears because she could not stop herself, because she could not bear it.
“What was that,” she asked again, voice shaking.
Bellamy swallowed, grim. “Acid fog.”
Marie’s stomach rolled. Spears. Acid fog. She did not know how they fit together. She did not say it out loud because everyone in the bunker looked trapped inside their own fear already.
While they waited for the fog to clear, arguments filled the bunker like smoke. People talked about Jasper, about whether he would live, about whether Clarke could do anything. Bellamy said if Jasper was still screaming tomorrow, he would end it.
Marie curled into a corner, hugging her knees, trying to make herself smaller than she already was.
Charlotte screamed in her sleep at some point. A nightmare. Bellamy spoke to her in a hushed voice too low for Marie to catch. The camp settled again into tense uneasy silence.
When the fog finally cleared, they spilled back into the forest, blinking at the light as if they had been underground for days.
Most of them wanted to head straight back to camp. Bellamy and two others insisted on continuing the hunt.
Marie went the other way.
She knew the general direction. She could find it.
She did not get far before she heard someone moaning.
Ragged breathing. Wet and broken.
Marie followed the sound, and then she saw him.
The boy who had not reached the bunker lay on the forest floor, barely recognizable. Skin blistered. Blood and fluid seeping. His eyes clouded and unseeing. His mouth moved around pain that did not have words.
Marie screamed before she could stop herself.
Bellamy and Charlotte arrived with two others. Charlotte’s face went pale, horror cracking through whatever mask she tried to wear.
Bellamy stared at the boy, jaw tight.
“Get back to camp,” he snapped, eyes never leaving the burned body.
Marie turned and ran.
She did not want to watch Bellamy kill him. She did not want to watch anyone die. Not like that.
By the time she reached camp, night was falling.
Jasper’s screaming carried from inside the dropship, echoing into the dark.
Marie walked into the dropship because she did not know where else to go. John stood near the ladder, hammering on the hatch to the upper level, demanding to be let in while Jasper screamed above him.
John stopped when he saw her, and for a second she thought he might say something human.
Then Clarke burst in behind her, breathless, eyes wild with determination. She climbed the ladder and demanded access. She had found something.
The girl upstairs hesitated, then let her in.
A few minutes later Jasper’s screaming softened, then stopped.
The sudden quiet felt like a hand over Marie’s mouth.
She stood there, listening, praying Jasper had not died. Praying Clarke had helped and not ended him.
Eventually she slipped back outside and sat in front of the dropship. The air was cold. The sky was full of stars, endless and indifferent. Marie stared up at them until her eyes blurred, and she fell asleep under them like they were a roof.
She woke to sunlight on her face and felt a strange punch of emotion, sharp and bright. She had never thought she would see the sun from under it. She had never thought she would see stars without glass between her and them.
The peace lasted only minutes.
Wells was dead.
They found him outside the wall, killed in the night, blood dark against the ground. The word grounder moved through the camp like poison. Clarke looked as if something inside her had snapped.
Marie felt sick.
Wells had been kind to her. He had sat with her when she woke from nightmares. He had told her to breathe.
Now he was gone.
They dug graves. Wells went into the earth beside the two boys who had died in the crash, and the boy burned by the fog, and Marie watched dirt cover bodies and felt herself growing older with every shovel of soil.
They worked harder after that. They sharpened metal. They reinforced the wall. Everyone moved like fear had become a shared language.
Marie did not believe it would be enough.
They still did not know what they were facing. They did not know if there were people out there, how many, how close. They did not know if the earth itself could turn into acid again without warning.
Clarke stormed to John and shouted that he should be punished for killing Wells.
Marie stared, confused, horrified.
John was cruel. She had seen that. But murder felt like a line too far to cross so quickly.
Then someone found his dagger.
Hands grabbed him. A group of teenagers swarmed him like a pack. John fought, shouting, biting, spitting words that sounded like rage and terror all mixed together. They beat him until his face swelled and bled.
“You’re killing him,” Marie cried, pushing toward them, but someone shoved her back hard enough that she stumbled.
Bellamy and Clarke argued over what to do. The camp screamed for blood.
It was chaos. It was animals in human skin.
Bellamy looped a rope around John’s neck and started to pull.
Charlotte screamed.
“I did it,” she shrieked, voice breaking. “I killed him.”
Everything stopped.
Marie stared at her. Charlotte looked small suddenly. Not brave. Not fierce. Just a child with something terrible inside her.
John dropped to the ground when someone cut him down at the last moment. He hit hard, coughing, choking, sucking air like it was the first time he had ever tasted it. His face was bloody and swollen. His eyes were wild.
Clarke and the boy who had cut him down dragged Charlotte away. Voices rose from inside a tent, muffled, frantic.
Marie approached John hesitantly when the crowd loosened.
“Are you okay,” she asked, and hated herself for the weakness of it, hated that it was all she had to offer.
John looked at her like she was stupid.
He shoved her away and stormed after the tent, shouting for justice, for punishment, for someone else to pay.
Marie stood frozen, watching the camp split into arguments and alliances and hatred, feeling like she was watching a world collapse in fast motion.
Charlotte disappeared.
People went into the woods to find her.
Marie stayed behind, sick with fear and grief and the sense that nothing was stable here, not safety, not rules, not kindness.
She went back to the dropship because she needed something that was not shouting.
Jasper was awake. He looked better. Still pale, still weak, but his eyes were open and he even smiled when he saw her.
“You’re looking better,” Marie said, because she needed the words to be simple. She needed something that sounded like hope.
“I’ll live,” Jasper murmured. “Thanks, kid.”
“My name is Marie,” she snapped automatically, annoyance flaring because she hated being reduced to what she was.
Jasper’s grin softened. “Sorry, Marie.”
“What happened outside,” he asked, voice fading already. “I heard yelling.”
Marie’s eyes filled without permission. She blinked hard, but the tears came anyway, hot against her lashes.
Jasper watched her for a moment with something like understanding. Then he whispered, almost to himself, “We’re spiraling.”
He fell asleep before she could answer.
Hours later they returned from the woods with the news that Charlotte had jumped from a cliff.
The camp went quiet in a way that felt worse than screaming.
Then the decision came.
John would be exiled.
No supplies. No weapon. No mercy.
Marie argued until her throat hurt. No one listened. John was shoved beyond the wall into darkness, and the camp turned its back on him like that settled it.
Marie stood behind the crowd with her heart hammering. She thought it was unfair. She thought it was cruel. She thought they were all pretending they were not capable of the same violence.
Charlotte was dead.
Wells was dead.
John had been their target and now he had no one.
Marie did not know why she moved. She did not know why her feet started carrying her toward the trees. Maybe because she could not stand the thought of being like them. Maybe because she could not stand the thought of being alone.
She slipped into the woods after him, quiet as she could manage, pushing through branches and darkness, hoping she was fast enough to catch up.
Later she would understand that this decision changed her life.
In that moment, it only felt like the only decision she could live with.
Chapter 4
Marie stumbled through the woods as if the dark itself had hands.
Her breathing was loud in her own ears. Every time a branch snapped under her foot she flinched, half expecting someone to answer the sound with a weapon. The night was nearly moonless, and she could barely tell the ground from the roots from the low brush that clawed at her ankles. She kept moving anyway, because stopping meant admitting she had no idea where she was going.
No one at camp had called her back.
No one had grabbed her sleeve. No one had shouted her name.
The thought came with a hollow sting. It made the decision feel easier and worse at the same time. She pulled her thin jacket tighter around her ribs and forced her feet forward.
She had told herself she would catch up with John. That she would not let him be alone.
Now she could not see him. Could not hear him. Could not even be sure she was heading in the right direction. In daylight she might have read the world in small signs, broken grass, displaced leaves, the way the ground had been pressed by someone’s weight. At night the forest was a single moving shadow. It all looked the same.
Marie swallowed hard and called out again.
“John.”
Her voice came out too soft the first time, as if it had been swallowed by the trees. She tried again, louder, feeling her throat scratch.
“John.”
Silence answered her. Only the night noises, the rustle of leaves, the distant unknown clicks and chirps that sounded peaceful in daylight and wrong in the dark. She kept walking, trying not to change direction too often, afraid of circling back without realizing it. Every tree trunk looked identical. Every patch of black looked like another patch of black.
The cold seeped into her clothes slowly, patient as a sickness.
Her feet started to ache. She stumbled more than once. Each stumble left a sting on her palms or a scratch on her cheek where a branch caught her. She tried to ignore it. The sting was simpler than the fear.
Her throat grew hoarse from calling.
“John,” she shouted again, and listened with her whole body, desperate for any reply.
Nothing.
Her shoulders sank. Tears pricked at her eyes, hot and humiliating even though no one could see them. She blinked hard and forced herself to breathe slowly. Crying would not change anything. Crying would only make her throat worse. She pressed her lips together until her jaw hurt.
She tried to think clearly.
If she had been smart, she would have waited for daylight. If she had been smart, she would have taken something, a blanket, a knife, anything. If she had been smart, she would not have left at all.
The forest did not care about smart.
It only cared about weak.
Marie hated that her mind kept returning to that word.
Weak.
She kept walking until her sense of time dissolved completely. It might have been minutes. It might have been an hour. She did not know. The only things she could measure were the cold in her fingers and the way her stomach tightened when the shadows shifted.
At some point she stopped because she could not pretend she knew where she was anymore.
She leaned against a tree trunk, chest rising and falling too fast, and for the first time let the tears slip down her cheeks without fighting them. They felt warm for a moment, and then the cold stole even that.
She wiped her face with the back of her hand and tried to steady herself. Her hands were already trembling.
Sitting still made it worse.
The cold crawled under her clothes the moment she stopped moving. Her shivering began in small sharp jerks. She hugged her knees, trying to conserve warmth, and told herself she would rest for only a minute. Only until her breathing calmed. Only until she could think again.
Exhaustion pressed down on her so heavily it felt like a weight on her skull.
Her eyelids drooped. Her head tipped against the tree.
Then a scream ripped through the woods.
Marie jolted awake so hard her heart hurt. For a split second she could not tell if the sound was real or part of a dream. Then she heard it again, followed by a low commotion, multiple voices, movement.
Her fear snapped into focus.
John.
She was on her feet before she could decide whether it was a good idea. She ran toward the sound, stumbling, pushing through brush that slapped her face, ignoring the pain in her shins. Her mind held one single thought.
He needs help.
It did not occur to her that she had nothing to help with.
The trees opened into a darker clearing, and Marie stopped so abruptly she nearly fell.
John stood in the middle of it, but he was not alone.
Two figures moved around him with the confidence of predators. They were tall. Broad. Their faces were hidden behind masks that looked like carved bone or painted wood. In the dim light she could not tell. She only saw eyes. Not human eyes, not in the way she was used to. They watched without hesitation.
Both carried blades that caught the faintest light with a cold flash.
John tried to move. He tried to fight. It did not matter. One of them struck him down with frightening ease, and John crumpled as if his bones had turned to water. Before he even hit the ground, one of the masked men hoisted him over a shoulder.
Marie’s body froze. Her mind lagged behind what her eyes were seeing.
They were taking him.
She took one step forward without meaning to.
A branch snapped under her foot, loud as a gunshot in the silence.
One of the masked men turned. His head angled toward her in a sharp decisive motion. Then he started running.
He ran straight at her, sword raised.
Marie’s breath disappeared. She could not scream. She could not think. All she could do was stare as the distance between them collapsed too quickly.
She turned to run.
Her feet betrayed her.
She stumbled, and the world tilted. Her head struck a rock on the ground with a dull brutal impact. Pain burst behind her eyes. For a moment she saw nothing but white.
Hands grabbed her.
Rough hands, strong hands, yanking her up as if she weighed nothing. She tried to kick, tried to claw, but her limbs felt sluggish and wrong after the blow. The man threw her over his shoulder. Her stomach rolled as her body folded against him.
She was carried like a sack.
Her struggle did nothing. If anything, the grip tightened around her legs and waist until she could not move at all.
The other masked figure carrying John joined him, moving fast, silent, sure. They navigated through the dark as if the forest belonged to them. Trees whipped past in blurred shapes. The ground under them was uneven, but they did not slow. Marie felt the speed in the bounce of her own body, in the jarring rhythm of footsteps that did not falter once.
They spoke to each other in low voices.
Marie strained to listen, desperate for any meaning, but the sounds were foreign. Not English. Not anything she recognized. The words flowed sharp and quick, and she understood nothing.
She tried to lift her head enough to see John.
She could not.
All she caught were flashes. Metal glinting in moonlight. Strange layered clothing. The smell of smoke and earth and sweat that did not belong to camp. The certainty in the way they moved, like they had done this before. Like this was routine.
Time blurred.
It could have been an hour. It could have been only minutes. Marie’s head ached where she had hit the rock, and the pain made everything feel thick and distant. She drifted in and out of awareness until movement slowed and voices multiplied around them.
They had reached a village.
Marie heard people shifting nearby, quiet and watchful. The night still held, heavy and cold, but the darkness was broken here and there by faint light, firelight or torches hidden behind structures.
They were brought underground.
A door creaked open. Cold stone air rushed over Marie’s face. Then she was dumped onto a tiled floor hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs.
John hit the ground beside her, but he was already moving, already furious. He scrambled to his feet and surged toward the door.
It slammed shut in his face.
He struck it anyway. He shoved at the bars. He shouted until his voice cracked.
A guard stood on the other side.
The guard wore a mask too. Marie could not see the face beneath it. Only the stillness of the body, the posture of someone trained not to react. Behind the guard the corridor fell into shadow. There could have been others there. Marie could not tell.
John tried to force the bars with sheer rage. The metal did not bend.
Marie stayed where she was for a moment, her back against the wall, trying to orient herself. Her eyes adjusted slowly. The cell was old, tiled, dirty. Dry leaves and grit collected in corners. The air smelled damp, like earth trapped under stone for a long time. Above, through the bars, she could see a slice of sky.
John slammed his fist against the bars again.
Marie’s throat hurt, but she forced herself to speak. “John. I don’t think you can break them.”
He whirled on her so fast she flinched.
His face was twisted with fear and fury, and for a heartbeat Marie saw something in him that looked like hatred looking for a target.
“Just shut up,” he snapped. His voice was too loud in the small space. “Just shut the fuck up.”
Marie jerked as if he had hit her. She slid down the wall until she was sitting again, knees pulled tight to her chest, arms wrapped around her stomach as if she could hold herself together by force.
John drew a harsh breath. His shoulders rose and fell. He dragged a hand through his hair, agitation vibrating through him.
“Sorry,” he muttered a moment later, rough and reluctant. “Sorry, Marie.”
Marie did not answer. She kept her gaze on the floor for a moment because looking at him felt like stepping into a storm.
Silence stretched between them, thick and oppressive.
John finally sat down across from her, abandoning the bars for now. “What were you doing out there anyway,” he demanded, brows raised, confusion cutting through his anger.
Marie shrugged. She did not want to admit she had followed him, not after being screamed at. It felt too vulnerable. Too stupid.
They sat with the quiet again, both of them listening to the world outside the cell, the occasional distant footsteps, the soft murmur of voices they could not understand.
Eventually Marie’s resistance broke. “I didn’t want you to be alone,” she said quietly.
John stared at her. Surprise flickered across his face. For a second he looked younger. Less sure of himself.
“Oh,” he said, and the sound was almost an apology by itself. “Damn. I didn’t know.”
Marie managed a small tight smile and looked away quickly, embarrassed by her own honesty.
John’s gaze shifted back to the guard, and his anger returned like a reflex. He surged to his feet again.
“Let us out,” he shouted at the bars. “We didn’t do anything.”
The guard did not move.
Marie watched the still figure and felt a slow dread unfurl in her stomach. “I don’t think they understand English,” she said, keeping her voice low. “I didn’t understand anything they said to each other.”
John’s eyes narrowed. He glared harder, as if rage could force comprehension.
The minutes dragged.
The cold returned. Marie started shivering again, teeth clicking lightly. She tried to hide it, but her body betrayed her.
John noticed anyway.
He pulled off his jacket and tossed it to her.
Marie caught it awkwardly, surprised. It smelled like smoke and sweat and the camp. Familiar. She wrapped it around herself like a blanket and warmth crept back into her skin in small grateful waves.
“Tell me if you’re cold,” she said softly, after a moment. “If you want it back.”
John shook his head. “Keep it. You’ll get sick faster.”
Footsteps approached.
Not one pair. Many.
The guard turned his head and gave a small nod toward the shadows, a greeting. The sound of voices rose, hushed and quick.
The cell door creaked open.
Marie’s whole body tensed. The hair on her arms lifted. She pressed herself back against the wall.
Five figures entered, two women and three men, moving together as if they had rehearsed it. The men wore masks. Weapons hung from them. They went straight to John and yanked him up without hesitation.
John struggled. It did not matter. They dragged him toward the door as if he were nothing but a heavy object.
Marie’s throat tightened. She tried to speak, but no sound came out.
The women looked at her.
One of them, dark skinned, stared with open contempt, like Marie was dirt that had tracked itself into a sacred place. The other woman, blonde, watched her with a colder neutrality, eyes assessing, measuring, as if Marie were a problem to be solved.
The dark skinned woman spoke sharply to the blonde one and then drew her sword in one fluid motion.
Steel flashed.
Marie scrambled backward instinctively, palms slipping on the dirty tile.
The blonde woman barked a command in their language. Her voice snapped like a whip.
The dark skinned woman held the blade poised for a moment, then reluctantly shoved it back into its sheath. She glared at Marie one last time and stormed out of the cell.
The door remained open.
John was gone, pulled into the corridor, his protests swallowed by distance.
Marie’s chest tightened in panic. She could hear a muffled shout from somewhere farther down, then a pained sound that made her stomach drop.
John.
“Please,” she whispered, to no one and everyone. “Please don’t hurt him.”
The blonde woman stepped closer and spoke again, harsh, impatient.
Marie did not understand. She shook her head helplessly.
Suspicion sharpened the woman’s features instantly. Her gaze narrowed as if Marie had just committed an offense by failing to answer.
Then the woman switched languages.
“Where are you from, girl,” she demanded in English, her accent hard on certain syllables but perfectly understandable. “Answer.”
Marie blinked, shocked into stillness.
The woman’s glare intensified at the hesitation.
“From the Ark,” Marie said quickly.
“The Ark,” the woman repeated, and the words sounded wrong in her mouth, like something sour. Her eyes flicked over Marie’s face. “Mountain,” she snapped, as if testing.
Marie frowned. “No. Not a mountain.”
The woman’s hand tightened on her sword hilt.
“It’s a ship,” Marie blurted, voice rising with panic. “A space ship.”
The woman stared. Confusion crossed her face, then sharpened into disbelief.
“Space.”
“In the sky,” Marie insisted, swallowing hard. “Up there.”
The blonde woman’s eyes narrowed further. She looked at Marie as if Marie had tried to insult her intelligence.
“You fell from the sky,” she said, slow and dangerous.
Marie nodded, because it was true enough.
“The strange star,” the woman said. “The fire in the sky.”
“It wasn’t a star,” Marie rushed out. “It was a dropship. We were sent down.”
The woman held her gaze for a long moment, then asked, “How many.”
Marie swallowed. Lying felt like stepping onto thin ice.
“A hundred,” she said. “But four are dead already.”
A distant scream echoed through the corridor.
Marie flinched violently. Her hands clenched in the jacket wrapped around her. The scream sounded human. The scream sounded like John.
The woman’s face did not change.
“Why were you sent,” she asked.
“To see if Earth is survivable,” Marie answered. “The Ark is dying.”
The woman’s eyes sharpened with a sudden alarm. “How many are left above. Will they follow.”
Marie shook her head. “I don’t know. More than two thousand, I think.”
The blonde woman’s posture stiffened. For the first time she looked genuinely troubled, as if Marie had just handed her something heavy.
“What do you want here,” she asked, voice pressed tight.
“To live,” Marie whispered. It felt like the only honest answer she had left.
The woman studied her again, then asked, “Your name.”
“Marie.”
“How many summers.”
Marie frowned, confusion cutting through fear. “None. There are no seasons on the Ark.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed in impatience. “Your age.”
“I’m nine,” Marie said quietly.
For a fraction of a moment, something softened in the woman’s gaze. Not kindness. Not warmth. Something like recognition, or calculation with a gentler edge.
“A goufa,” the woman murmured, and the word sounded like a label. “A child.”
Another distant cry rose, strained and sharp.
Marie’s throat constricted. She stepped forward without thinking, clutching the jacket tighter around herself. “Please don’t hurt him,” she said again, voice breaking. “Please.”
The woman stared at her, unimpressed.
Marie forced herself to breathe. Forced herself to ask the question that mattered to her own survival.
“What will happen to me.”
The blonde woman looked at her for a long silent beat, then spoke in an even voice that did not promise comfort.
“We will see.”
Marie’s skin went cold.
Then the woman added, almost flatly, as if stating a fact and nothing more.
“But for now, you will live.”
Chapter 5
The woman turned her back on Marie after a long, tense moment of silence. She barked a short order in the strange language, as if she were speaking to the darkness itself. Marie watched her go, eyes drawn to the weapons at her body. A longsword across her back, and a long dagger strapped to her thigh, both catching the faint light with a cold metallic glint.
Someone moved.
A girl stepped out of the shadows a heartbeat later and answered the woman in the same language. They exchanged a few quick sentences. Then the woman strode past her, shut the cell door with a firm final motion, and disappeared into the corridor.
Marie stayed very still.
The girl remained on the other side of the bars with her for a moment, studying her. She looked only a few years older than Marie, but she carried herself with an ease that made her seem older anyway. A sword hung at her hip. The fact of it made Marie’s stomach twist. On the Ark, no one would have handed a weapon to a child. Here it seemed ordinary.
The girl’s brown eyes held an open, almost honest curiosity. She tossed her wavy brown hair back and lowered herself to the floor in one smooth motion, sitting cross legged across from Marie as if they were simply sharing a quiet corner of a room, not a cell.
“I am Tris,” she said in English, the accent thick enough to be obvious but not thick enough to hide meaning.
Marie blinked at her, then swallowed. It was a reflex of the Ark to introduce yourself, even when it did not matter. Even when it could make things worse. “Marie.”
Tris’s mouth curved slightly. “I already knew.”
Marie huffed under her breath, more air than sound. She did not know what to say to that. It felt like being reminded that she was not in control of anything here. She let the silence sit for a moment.
Tris leaned forward a little, interest brightening her face. “Are you really from the sky.”
Marie narrowed her eyes. “From the sky is not really right. The Ark is in space. That is behind the sky.”
Tris went still as if she had been handed a story too big to hold. Her gaze drifted up to the slice of night visible through the bars, and for a long moment she stared at the stars as if she might see the Ark if she looked hard enough.
“What is it like,” she asked finally, voice eager. “Living up there.”
Marie hesitated. Adults had questioned her like knives. This girl questioned her like she actually wanted to know. It was disorienting.
Tris seemed to read the pause correctly, because she smiled lightly. “You do not have to answer. This is not an interrogation. I am just curious.”
Marie studied her for another beat, then decided the girl was probably telling the truth.
“The Ark is cold,” Marie said, choosing her words. “Sterile. Crowded. Everything is metal. Everything is rationed. Even air feels like something you have to earn.”
Tris listened with the focus of someone starving for images.
“And you can see the stars,” Tris pressed immediately. “Close.”
“Yes,” Marie answered. She glanced up again, toward the dark sky. Her voice softened without meaning to. “You can see them. You can see the moon. But I always liked looking at Earth most.”
Tris’s eyes widened. “What does it look like from up there.”
Marie pictured it. The curve. The cloud bands. The quiet blue that had felt like a promise even when the Ark was a prison. “Huge,” she said. “Round. Covered in clouds. So much blue. So much green.”
A quiet settled between them, almost reverent.
Then Marie’s fear forced itself back in. She could not hold it down any longer, not when she still did not know whether she would see morning.
“Do you know what will happen to me,” she asked quickly, cutting through the moment before Tris could ask another question.
Tris shrugged, but her tone stayed light. “I do not know for sure. But you are still a child. I do not think you will be killed.”
Marie’s eyes widened anyway. The words hit like a blow because they implied the question had been on the table.
Tris continued as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. “Indra wanted to kill you without speaking to you. Anya refused.”
Marie stared. “Anya is the woman who questioned me.”
Tris nodded. “Yes.”
Marie tried to find something reassuring in that. She could not. “Now that is not reassuring,” she muttered, dry as dust, because sarcasm was easier than panic.
Tris laughed, loud and bright, as if Marie had just told her something delightful. The sound felt wrong in the cell, too alive.
Then Tris leaned in again, undeterred. “Tell me why you were sent down.”
Marie rolled her eyes, because Tris had definitely been close enough to hear earlier. “We were expendable,” she said, bitterness rising. “They sent a hundred juvenile criminals to test if Earth is survivable.”
Tris blinked. “All criminals.”
Marie exhaled hard. “On the Ark most crimes are punished by death. Children under eighteen are jailed first. Some are reintegrated. Some are floated later.”
Tris frowned, the concept clearly grinding against everything she knew. “Death for stealing.”
“Death for anything,” Marie corrected, and felt the old anger flare. “I was jailed for breaking into the medical bay and stealing medicine for my mother.”
Tris stared at her as if Marie had said the sky was made of fire. “You are punished for trying to heal your family.”
“Everything is rationed,” Marie said, forcing the words out quickly before tears could rise. “We only have so much. My mother was sick. The medicine was not enough. So I tried.”
Tris was quiet for a moment, actually quiet this time, processing. When she spoke again her voice was softer. “Most of the others. Are they like you.”
“Yes,” Marie said immediately. “Stealing. Taking drugs. Petty things. Only a few have done truly bad things.”
She drew a careful breath, relieved she had gotten through the explanation without breaking.
Tris tilted her head, then shifted the direction of the conversation with the ease of someone used to reading danger and choosing a new path around it. “What is life like on Earth for you,” she asked. “Before you fell.”
Marie could not help the small glow that returned to her eyes, even here. “It is colourful,” she said, almost reverently. “Everything is alive.”
Her gaze dipped to the sword at Tris’s hip again. The weight of it seemed wrong against the girl’s small frame. “What are you,” Marie asked, careful. “Why do you have that.”
Tris straightened, pride filling her posture. “I am Anya’s second.”
Marie frowned, uncertain. Tris added quickly, almost pleased to explain. “I train under her. To become a warrior.”
Marie stared at her, disbelief turning to unease. “How old are you.”
“I saw my twelfth summer this year,” Tris answered. “I began training in my fifth.”
Marie’s stomach tightened. Five. A child learning to kill when Marie had been learning to read.
Tris misread the expression as doubt, not horror. She tugged her shirt down slightly and twisted so Marie could see her shoulder.
Five small round scars sat in a neat pattern.
“Kill marks,” Tris said, voice proud and calm. “I earned them in battle.”
Marie forced herself to nod. She did not want to offend her. She did not want to show fear either. Life here truly must be harsh if children carried proof of kills on their skin.
“Do all of you become warriors,” Marie asked, trying to sound neutral.
Tris shook her head. “No. Some are healers. Some are hunters. Some trade. Some craft. Everyone has a place.”
Marie absorbed that greedily. A place. The words felt foreign and precious. On the Ark, place was ration. Place was privilege. Place was whether you were useful enough not to be discarded.
Her mind grabbed another question that had been nagging since she saw the swords. “You do not have guns.”
Tris’s eyes widened in immediate horror. “No.”
The single word landed like a rule carved into stone.
“Guns are forbidden,” Tris said, voice firm. “It is said if a warrior takes one, the village will burn.”
Marie blinked. The superstition sounded absurd, but Tris’s certainty did not. This was not a story for children. It was law, or belief strong enough to become law.
A scream echoed faintly through the corridor.
John again.
Marie flinched and wrapped her arms tighter around herself, the jacket still around her shoulders. “Why are they hurting him,” she whispered.
Tris shrugged as if the answer was simple. “He does not answer their questions.”
Marie swallowed hard. Tris’s lack of reaction made Marie feel even sicker than the scream itself. “Will he be killed.”
Tris hesitated just long enough to make the truth sharper. “It is possible. If he is no longer useful.”
Marie’s skin went cold. Useful. That was Ark language. The idea that this world spoke it too made her stomach twist.
“Why am I alive then,” she asked, voice thin. “What use am I.”
Tris grinned, mischievous in the middle of something terrifying. “Anya liked you.”
Marie did not find the answer funny.
Tris continued anyway, as if it were the obvious next piece. “But the Commander will decide what happens. For you. For him.”
“The Commander,” Marie repeated, unfamiliar with the title.
Tris blinked, then looked almost pleased to teach her. “The Commander leads the coalition of the twelve clans. She will arrive at dawn.”
Marie lifted her gaze to the strip of sky above the bars. It was still pitch black. Dawn was hours away. A few hours until a stranger decided whether she lived or died.
Her stomach rolled. She pressed her lips together until the nausea eased.
Tris seemed to notice the change in Marie’s face, because her tone softened. She began telling stories then, perhaps to distract her, perhaps because talking was what she did when the world felt sharp.
Tris spoke of a village near the border of Azgeda, of raids and fire, of parents lost when she was four. She spoke of being one of the few children found alive among ashes. She spoke of Anya arriving after, searching for survivors, choosing Tris and taking her into training.
The adoration in Tris’s voice was unmistakable. Anya was not only a general to her. She was rescue. She was purpose. She was the person who had turned a ruined child into someone who belonged.
Marie listened with a strange mixture of envy and grief.
Tris’s life sounded simpler in some ways. No screens. No hum of machines. No artificial light. But it was harsh, brutally harsh. People died young. Wounds could steal limbs and with them a future. Every story carried the weight of survival.
Marie kept comparing it to the Ark without meaning to. The Ark had technology, but no mercy. It had rules that crushed you even when you did the right thing for someone you loved. It had rationing so strict it turned kindness into crime.
Here, there was no metal ceiling. There was space. There was colour. There was community and roles and a kind of care Tris described as normal, even when everything around it was violent.
Marie did not know if the people from the Ark could ever adapt to a world without electricity. Most of them were built around it. Dependent on it. But Marie also knew the Ark was dying, and that dependency would not matter if the life support failed.
Tris’s stories carried them closer to dawn one word at a time.
Marie held onto them because there was nothing else to hold.
When silence returned, it was heavier than before. Marie hugged the jacket closer and stared up at the slice of sky, waiting for it to lighten. Waiting for the Commander who would decide her fate.
All she could do was pray she would be allowed to live.
And if she lived, pray she would be given the chance to see more of this world, not just as a prisoner, not just as a problem, but as someone who might still find a place.
Chapter 6
Dawn came quicker than Marie had thought possible. Tris’s steady chatter had carried her through the worst hours, and Marie had barely noticed time moving at all until the strip of sky above the bars began to pale. The light should have been comforting. Instead it made Marie’s nerves tighten by the second. She stopped truly hearing Tris’s words and began to fidget with John’s jacket in her lap, twisting the fabric between her fingers as if she could wring fear out of it.
Tris noticed. Her smile softened. “I do not know when the Commander will arrive exactly,” she admitted, sounding almost apologetic. They did not seem to measure time the way the Ark did, and if the Commander was travelling by horse, arrival was more a matter of the world’s pace than a schedule.
Marie’s stomach growled loud enough to embarrass her.
Tris’s stomach answered with an equally undignified sound.
Tris laughed under her breath, pushed herself up, and winced slightly as her legs complained after sitting cross legged for so long. She stretched her arms over her head and rolled her shoulders as if loosening a knot. “I will see if I can get food for us,” she said, then smirked at Marie as if this were a simple errand.
Before Marie could answer, Tris turned and slipped out.
A guard appeared nearer the door a moment later.
Marie had not heard him move. He must have been there all along, simply standing farther back in shadow. The realization made Marie’s skin prickle. She looked toward the corridor, straining to hear anything that might hint at John. His screams had stopped hours ago, and the absence of sound was worse than the sound itself. Marie tried not to imagine reasons for the silence. Every possibility sat sharp in her mind.
She was alone here. Truly alone. The delinquents would not search for her. She had slipped away without anyone stopping her, and even if someone had noticed, would they care enough to come looking. Marie doubted it. She had been too small to matter on the Ark. She was too small to matter now.
The minutes stretched long again now that Tris was gone. The silence became a weight on Marie’s chest. She could feel fear trying to climb into her throat.
To keep it down she looked at the tiled wall and began counting.
One, two, three.
The task was mindless, and that was the point. Numbers did not have teeth. Numbers did not decide whether you lived.
She reached somewhere around a hundred before she lost track and had to start over. She was still counting when footsteps returned and the cell door opened.
Tris stepped inside carrying a plate in one hand and balancing two mugs in the other. The guard let her in and shut the door again, then faded back into his post as if he had never moved.
Tris sat down across from Marie with an easy, practiced grace that made it hard to remember she was still a child herself. She set the plate between them and offered a mug.
Marie accepted it immediately and lifted it to her lips without thinking. The first swallow hit her like relief. It was plain water. Cold. Real.
She began to gulp.
“Slowly,” Tris warned, alarm flickering across her face. “Slow down or it will come back up.”
Marie forced herself to slow, but the mug was empty seconds later anyway. She set it down with a grim little regret. She should have paced herself. She should have saved it. Hunger and thirst made you stupid.
Tris gave her an amused look and pushed her own mug toward her. “Take that too. I can get more later.”
Marie nodded a quick thank you, then stared down at the plate.
There was meat on sticks. Bread. Something pale and dense that might be cheese. Fruit she did not recognize.
“Take what you want,” Tris said, watching her expression.
Marie lifted one of the meat sticks cautiously and sniffed it. It smelled incredible. She had eaten panther already, but this was different, smoky and rich. Her stomach ached at the promise of it.
Tris laughed, misunderstanding the hesitation. “It is not poisoned.”
Marie shook her head quickly.
Tris’s grin turned wicked. “Poison would go better into water anyway.”
Marie took a bite at the exact wrong moment, startled, and nearly choked. She coughed hard, eyes watering.
Tris laughed freely at her reaction. “Just a joke.”
Marie glared at her with what little dignity she could manage, then took another careful bite. The flavour was enough to make her eyes widen despite herself. It was warm, salty, real in a way Ark food had never been.
The moment shattered when the door opened again.
Anya strode in like a storm, eyes sharp and angry. She spoke rapidly to Tris in the grounder language. Tris’s smile vanished as if it had been slapped off. Her shoulders sagged. She looked suddenly younger.
Marie understood without needing translation. Tris had not been given permission to bring food and water.
“Please,” Marie blurted, impulsive. “Do not be hard on Tris. She was nice to me.”
Anya’s gaze snapped to her, a glare so cold it made Marie’s breath stutter.
Anya turned back to Tris and continued scolding her in that harsh, quick language. Tris stood at attention, then bowed her head as if accepting punishment, and hurried out without looking at Marie even once.
After a heavy silence Anya left as well.
Relief moved through Marie in a shaky wave. She looked down. The food and water remained. Anya had not taken it. Marie ate quietly, chewing slow, forcing herself not to devour everything at once. She drank only a little. Who knew when she would see food again. Anya’s anger made it seem unlikely Tris would be allowed back soon.
With nothing else to do, Marie returned to the tiles. Counting. Losing track. Starting again. Letting the numbers fill her head so fear could not.
The door opened again.
Marie looked up quickly.
A young woman stepped inside.
She was too young, Marie thought immediately, for the title Tris had spoken with such reverence. Too young to be the one who ruled. But the moment Marie met her gaze, the thought faltered. The woman had brown hair woven with braids and wore armour similar to the others, yet there was something about the way she held herself that made the air feel different. Her green eyes were calm, sharp, and absolutely sure of their right to be.
Power did not always look old.
Marie straightened, trying to sit taller, trying to look less frightened than she felt.
“What are you doing on my land, skygirl,” the woman asked, voice steel, eyes narrowing as if she could pin Marie in place with a look.
Marie’s tongue felt thick. “We were sent from the Ark,” she managed. “To see if Earth is survivable.”
The woman inclined her head, expression almost bored. “I know. The boy told me.” Her gaze sharpened. “Why did you leave the safety of your camp.”
Marie opened her mouth, then closed it again, scrambling for the right words. She forced herself to answer truthfully because lying to someone like this felt like stepping off a cliff. “John was banished,” she said. “I did not want him to be alone.”
The woman stared down at her, incredulous. “So you followed him unarmed into the woods in the middle of the night.”
Marie’s shoulders lifted in a helpless shrug. She could not defend it. Put into words, it sounded even more foolish. She lowered her eyes.
The woman’s voice cut in again. “Why do your people seek the Mountain.”
Marie looked up quickly. That at least she could answer. “We were told there might be stored food at Mount Weather. We did not get supplies from the Ark.”
The woman’s gaze stayed cold. “Your people will not find what they seek there.”
Marie swallowed. She could feel the questions that mattered most pressing against her ribs like trapped breath. Before the Commander could continue, Marie forced them out.
“What will happen to John and me.”
Silence.
Marie tried not to squirm under it.
Finally the woman spoke. “You will not share the boy’s fate.”
Marie’s eyes widened. Horror rose so fast she tasted bile. “You will kill him.”
The woman did not flinch at Marie’s reaction. “We do not harm the young needlessly. You will be allowed to stay and find a place within Trikru.”
Relief hit Marie and guilt followed it immediately, sharp and nauseating. “And John,” she whispered. “What about John.”
“The boy will be sent back to your camp,” the Commander said, voice final.
Marie’s relief caught on something jagged. Sent back could mean many things. It could mean alive. It could mean broken. The Commander did not clarify. Marie’s mind tried to fill in the blank with nightmares.
“Come,” the Commander ordered.
She turned and left without looking back.
Marie pushed herself up too quickly. Her legs were stiff from hours on stone. Pain shot through them and she stumbled for a moment before she steadied herself and hurried after the Commander, panic rising at the thought of losing her in the corridors. The sound of the Commander’s steps was already fading. Marie forced her feet to move faster despite the ache.
At the end of the passage the Commander paused as if she had known exactly how long Marie would need to catch up.
They climbed old stairs into daylight.
The village opened around them, larger than Marie had realized in the dark. People moved everywhere. Warriors sparred in open spaces, bodies flashing with speed and training. Others prepared food. A woman sat nursing an infant at her chest. Smoke curled from cooking fires. Life, ordinary and relentless.
When they noticed the Commander, everything shifted. Conversations died. Movements slowed. Heads bowed. Reverence rolled through the crowd like a wave.
Marie followed, eyes wide, trying to take everything in at once. She barely noticed the hostile stares aimed at her. She barely noticed the tension in the air. She was too absorbed by the reality of it. A world built without metal walls. A world that breathed.
The Commander stopped suddenly.
Marie, distracted, walked straight into her back.
She stumbled backward, startled, and would have fallen if the Commander had not shot an arm out and caught her with quick, controlled strength.
Marie looked up, mortified, cheeks burning.
A warrior nearby drew his sword and stepped toward her, blade lifted in a clear threat.
Marie froze.
The Commander released her and lifted one hand.
The warrior stopped as if he had struck a wall.
The Commander’s gaze swept the onlookers. Worry and suspicion lived on many faces.
“The girl will be our guest,” the Commander said, voice carrying across the space. “Indefinitely.”
Marie’s heart hammered.
“I expect you to welcome her,” the Commander continued, tone unyielding.
Some people still stared at Marie with undisguised distrust.
The Commander’s voice sharpened, steel entering it. “An attack against her will not be tolerated.”
Heads bowed again, quickly this time.
The Commander turned back to Marie, speaking low enough that the words felt meant only for her. “Watch where you walk.”
Marie nodded mutely, throat tight with embarrassment.
They moved on.
Marie kept her eyes more forward now, careful with her steps, but she could not stop herself from glancing around. Everything was too new. Too alive.
The Commander led her toward a large central tent guarded by broad warriors. One of them pulled the flaps aside. The Commander entered. Marie followed hesitantly.
Inside, furs covered the ground. The air smelled of smoke and leather. At the far end a wooden throne rose on a platform, heavy and carved, made for someone who expected to be obeyed.
Anya waited before it with the dark skinned woman from the cell, Indra. Anya’s expression was calm, contained. Indra’s was sour, her dislike for Marie visible as soon as her eyes landed on her.
The Commander crossed the tent and sat as if the throne belonged to her the way the sky belonged to the sun.
“The girl will be allowed to stay,” she said, casual, as if discussing the weather.
Indra’s reaction was immediate. A sound like a snarl, disbelief and anger twisting her face. Her hand tightened on the hilt of her sword.
The Commander looked at her, eyes flat and dangerous. “Do you have anything to say, Indra.”
Indra spoke rapidly in the grounder language, voice sharp and heated.
The Commander silenced her with a lazy gesture that somehow felt more threatening than shouting. “Speak in gonasleng, Indra.”
Indra shot Marie a look full of hate, then faced the Commander again. “Why allow one to survive. We should kill them all. They are invaders. Heda.”
Marie’s breath caught. So that was it. They had a word for their leader. A title that made even Indra obey.
“We do not slaughter children,” the Commander replied, bored again, as if Indra were tiresome. Then her voice sharpened. “I have decided. She stays.”
Indra’s jaw clenched, but she fell silent.
The Commander’s gaze slid to Anya. “The girl will need a first.”
Marie frowned at the unfamiliar term.
Anya glanced at Marie over her shoulder, measured, then inclined her head. “I will take her.”
The Commander regarded Anya for a brief moment, a silent exchange Marie could not read. Then she dipped her head once. “You may have her. Watch her closely. She is unfamiliar with our ways. Crimes done out of ignorance will not be tolerated for long.”
“Yes, Heda,” Anya said evenly.
Anya turned to Marie. “Come. You have much to learn.”
Marie nodded, a small motion that felt like stepping off the edge of everything she had known.
She followed Anya out of the tent.
The village breathed around her, wary and watching, and Marie took her first steps into a new life she had not chosen, trying to keep her fear from showing, trying to convince herself she could learn fast enough to survive it.
Chapter 7
After they left the Commander’s tent, Anya guided Marie through the village in silence. Marie stayed close, telling herself that following the woman was the only sensible choice she had left.
A short while later Anya stopped in front of a small wooden hut. “You will get clothes suitable for your new status here,” she said, then held the door open.
Marie stepped inside and found an old woman waiting. Her skin was lined by age and sun, and unlike most of the people outside, she smiled at Marie first, then looked to Anya with bright, amused eyes.
“Landed yourself with another one, did you,” the woman asked, voice playful.
Anya nodded stiffly, expression unchanged. She gave the woman a look that meant hurry and tapped her foot against the rough wood.
“Come closer, young one, and take off your clothes,” the old woman said, gentle but firm, motioning Marie forward.
Marie blinked, brows drawing together. Strip. In front of them.
The old woman’s mouth quirked as if she had read the hesitation perfectly. “Cannot tell what will fit you best under loose clothes, girl.”
Anya’s patience was visibly thinning. The sharp look she sent Marie made her move.
Marie pulled off her jumper and trousers but kept her underwear and boots. She did not breathe properly again until she was sure no one expected more.
“A scrawny one,” the woman observed, teasing rather than cruel.
Heat rose in Marie’s face. It was not her fault. On the Ark rations had been strict even for the privileged, and in the Sky Box they had been worse. She had been fed just enough to keep her alive. Some days the hunger had been a dull companion. Other days it had been a sharp, hollow ache that made thinking feel slow and heavy. A year of that had left her too light, too narrow.
The old woman turned to a cupboard and began rummaging through stacks of clothing. Anya watched without comment, foot still tapping, the impatience in her body language louder than words.
When the old woman returned, she handed Marie several pieces and gestured for her to put them on.
Marie stared at the garments, overwhelmed. Nothing was made like Ark clothing. Everything looked reused, stitched from different fabrics and hides, sometimes reinforced with small plates and rings of metal. There were straps and buckles everywhere. Marie tried to dress herself, fumbling blindly, twisting a strap the wrong way, fastening something too high, then too low. The more she tried, the more tangled she became.
The old woman sighed, not annoyed, simply acknowledging the obvious. She stepped in, hands quick and practiced, adjusting each piece with the ease of someone who had dressed a hundred growing bodies. She tightened a strap, smoothed a fold, secured a buckle. The result suddenly made sense.
“That will do,” the old woman said, stepping back with a satisfied nod.
Anya inspected Marie briefly and gave a small approving nod. “Have comfier ones and light armour sent to my tent as well,” she ordered.
She turned and left immediately, holding the door open for Marie without waiting for a response from the old woman.
Marie hesitated and glanced at her old clothes on the floor. She bent to pick them up out of instinct, the last things that had belonged to her from the Ark.
Anya turned in the doorway. “Leave them,” she said sharply. “You will not need them. They can be repurposed.”
Marie’s fingers froze. She nodded, strangely numb, and left the clothes behind.
Outside the village still bustled with movement. Smoke rose from cooking fires. Warriors moved with purpose. Children ran between tents as if danger was a normal background noise.
Marie looked around with wide eyes. “We were taught humanity died on Earth after the bombs,” she said softly, wonder spilling out. “But it is so alive.”
Anya’s expression softened by a fraction. Not a smile, not really, but something milder than before. She kept walking, weaving through huts and tents as if every path belonged to her.
They passed near the grazing horses on the village’s edge.
Marie stopped without thinking.
She had never seen a living animal this close. Not a picture. Not a lesson diagram. A real creature with breath and muscle and calm weight. The horses looked enormous. The way their heads moved was graceful and unsettling, like something from a story made real.
Anya did not stop.
Marie snapped back to herself and sprinted to catch up, heart hammering, afraid of losing the only person who had claimed responsibility for her.
In her hurry she collided with someone.
A huge warrior, broad as a doorframe.
He spun, face hardening instantly. Before Marie could even manage an apology, his hand flashed out.
The backhand hit her cheek with a crack of force. Pain burst through her face and she staggered, feet slipping, the world tilting for a heartbeat.
“Watch out, filthy invader,” the man snarled, towering above her, eyes bright with hate.
Marie’s hand lifted to her stinging cheek, stunned and shaking.
Then the warrior hit the ground.
Anya had moved so fast Marie barely saw it. She was down on one knee over him, a blade pressed to his throat with lethal calm. Her voice was low and furious.
“You will watch out, Quint.”
The blade dug in just enough to bite skin. A thin line of blood welled.
“The girl is under my protection,” Anya continued, tone sharp as the knife. “Heda decided she will be my second. Spread word around the village.”
Quint glared up at her, sour and furious, but the fear of the blade won. He nodded once.
Anya withdrew the weapon and stood.
Quint pushed himself up and walked away without another word, but not without throwing Marie one last hateful look.
Anya glanced back at Marie, amusement flickering in her eyes as if she could not help herself. “Making friends already.”
Marie stared at the ground, cheeks burning. It had been her fault. She had not watched where she was going. She had not kept close enough.
Yet Anya did not look angry at Marie. Her anger had vanished as soon as Quint left, as if she had switched it off.
“Come,” Anya said, and her tone went strict again.
They continued through the village toward a cluster of buildings around a large fire pit. Smoke rose from chimneys, carrying the smell of cooking.
Marie’s stomach responded immediately, growling loud enough that she hoped Anya did not hear it.
Anya approached without asking. Two plates and two mugs were handed to her as if everyone already knew what she would need. It was obvious she held status here. People moved around her with a quiet respect that made space without being told.
Anya sat on a log near the fire and motioned for Marie to sit as well. Marie obeyed, grateful for the chance to rest her legs.
Anya handed her a plate and a mug.
The liquid was not water. It was faintly red and smelled sharp and strange.
Marie took a cautious sip and immediately coughed, nose wrinkling. The taste burned slightly at the back of her throat. “What is that,” she asked, glaring at the mug as if it had personally offended her.
Anya snorted. Amusement danced in her brown eyes. “Watered wine,” she said evenly. “From your expression I gather you have never tasted it.”
Marie nodded, still distrustful.
“You will get used to it,” Anya said. “Water is not always safe.”
The plate held meat, bread, and fruit again. Marie started with the berries.
The taste hit her like sunlight.
She made an involuntary sound of delight and immediately reached for another. “What are those,” she asked, eyes bright as she looked up at Anya.
“Raspberries,” Anya answered. The corner of her mouth lifted, almost a smile, then vanished again as if she had remembered herself.
Marie decided raspberries were the best thing she had ever tasted. Better than panther. Better than any synthetic meal she could recall.
They ate mostly in silence. When they finished, Anya stood and led her toward the training pits.
The pits were not true pits at all, just open ground marked by logs. Wooden targets stood in a line. The space smelled of packed dirt and sweat.
“I need to test your skills,” Anya said, circling Marie slowly as if assessing her shape and balance. “So I can train you efficiently.”
Marie looked up with doubt. “If you mean fighting,” she said, voice hesitant, “I have none. Children were not trained on the Ark.”
Anya’s expression tightened, irritation flashing. Then she nodded once, accepting the reality. “Then we start with the basics.”
The basics meant stance.
Anya corrected Marie’s feet again and again. Wider. Lower. Knees bent. Weight balanced. Hands up to protect the head. Shoulders loose. Chin down.
Marie’s thighs burned. Her shoulders ached. Her back began to complain. The posture felt unnatural, like her body was being forced into a language it did not speak.
Anya made her run the perimeter of the training ground.
Marie managed two laps before her lungs felt too small. Her legs were lead. Her feet throbbed. She had not run like this in her life. On the Ark there had been no real sport, and in the Sky Box her cell had been so cramped that pacing from wall to wall had been the only movement available. Months of that had left her weak in ways she had not understood until now.
A few village children had gathered to watch. Now they laughed openly.
Marie clenched her jaw hard enough that it hurt. Tears burned behind her eyes, frustration and humiliation mixing with exhaustion, but she swallowed it down and forced her breathing to steady.
Anya watched with arms crossed, expression stern. “You will improve faster,” she said, voice steel. Not cruel, simply uncompromising, as if the world would not accept excuses and neither would she.
Marie nodded, unable to speak, teeth clenched. The task felt impossible. Yet the alternative was worse. She had no other place. She had to become something that could survive here.
At the end Anya handed her a dagger.
Marie’s fingers closed around the hilt uncertainly. It was heavier than she expected.
“Throw,” Anya ordered, pointing at a wooden target.
Marie lifted her arm. Her muscles felt weak and wrong. She threw anyway.
The blade struck the target with a dull thud and dropped a heartbeat later, the metal clattering to the dirt.
Marie stared.
She had hit it.
Anya’s eyes narrowed, then she gave a small nod, satisfaction flickering through it. “Good. Your aim is there. Strength is lacking. We fix that. Daggers will be your first discipline.”
Marie’s chest warmed with pride. That brief statement felt like more praise than she expected to ever receive from Anya.
When Anya finally ended training for the day, relief flooded Marie so hard her knees felt close to folding.
They returned to the tent Anya had claimed for them. At the entrance Anya paused.
“You may roam the village,” she said. “Do not go into the woods alone. Dinner will be later.”
Marie nodded quickly.
Anya left, clearly with responsibilities that did not include watching a nine year old every moment.
Marie stood outside the tent alone, the village moving around her, unfamiliar and loud in a way that still felt distant. Her body was exhausted, but her mind buzzed with too many new impressions to sleep.
She looked down at her hands, still feeling the weight of the dagger in her grip.
She had survived this far.
Now she had to learn how to keep surviving without getting in the way of the people who could decide, at any moment, that she was too much trouble to keep.
Chapter 8
Marie did not feel like sleeping. She wondered where Tris might be, but she had seen only a fraction of the village and had no idea where to start looking. It was also possible Tris had obligations of her own and no time to spend with a skygirl today.
With no better plan, Marie drifted toward the place where she had seen the horses earlier. The thought of them had lodged in her mind like a bright splinter. She wanted to see them again, up close, now that no one was dragging her somewhere else.
It took her longer than she expected. The village was larger in daylight, its paths bending around huts and tents in ways that confused her. People reacted to her in uneven waves. Some ignored her as if she did not exist. Some watched with frank curiosity. Some turned away, distrust plain in their faces. No one approached. Word had clearly spread that she was not to be harmed.
Eventually she found the meadow.
A wooden fence enclosed a patch of grass where several horses grazed. Marie stopped at the fence and simply stared. The animals were immense. They moved with a slow assurance that felt almost unreal, like something out of a book that had stepped into the world.
On the Ark there had been no animals. Not even small ones. Her only references were old pictures, stories, and the single bird she had seen once as a child. Standing here, breathing the same air as these creatures, felt like waking into someone else’s life.
The horse that drew her most was black, sleek and powerful, with a white star on its forehead. When Marie stepped closer, the mare lifted her head and walked toward the fence as if she had been waiting.
Dark eyes fixed on Marie. Not blank. Not animal simple. There was something steady in them that made Marie hold her breath.
The mare extended her head over the fence and sniffed Marie’s face, warm breath washing over her skin. Marie laughed softly at the tickle and lifted a hand, careful and slow, offering her fingers.
The mare’s muzzle met her palm. Soft. Velvet over strong bone.
Marie stroked the horse’s nose, then her cheek, then the place just under her jaw where the mare seemed to lean into the touch. For a moment it felt like the horse was choosing her, placing the weight of her head into Marie’s hand as if the contact mattered.
Marie’s whole chest filled with wonder.
After a while the mare turned away and went back to grazing, as if the moment had been granted and now concluded. Marie stood there, disappointed by how quickly it ended.
She tried to coax the horse back with a gentle voice. The mare ignored her.
Marie looked at the fence. Then at the horse. Then at the gap between two rails.
Before she had fully thought it through, she climbed through.
Her boots sank into the soft grass. The black mare lifted her head again and returned immediately, nuzzling Marie’s stomach with a huff that felt almost affectionate. Marie’s hands rose automatically, stroking the horse’s neck, then scratching behind her ears the way she had seen villagers do.
Then shouting erupted behind her.
A man ran toward the fence, gesturing sharply, voice loud in the unfamiliar language Marie still did not understand. Marie blinked at him, startled, trying to guess what he wanted. His words meant nothing to her. His face, however, meant plenty. Anger. Urgency. The kind of fury that expected obedience.
He climbed through the fence and marched toward her, expression twisted as if her ignorance was an insult.
Marie took a small step back.
Before the man could grab her, the horse moved.
The black mare stepped into his path, broad body blocking him. She snorted, a warning sound, then reared slightly, front legs lifting, hooves striking the air in a threat that made Marie’s stomach drop. The horse’s ears pinned back. Her whole posture became weapon.
The man halted instantly. He retreated, scrambling back through the fence to avoid being kicked.
Marie stared, mouth slightly open.
It looked as if the horse had protected her.
She could not understand why.
A strong female voice cut through the tension. Sharp. Commanding.
The man flinched and backed away as if the voice had struck him.
Marie turned her head and saw the Commander standing near the fence. Green eyes fixed on the scene with a calm that felt dangerous.
Marie’s mouth went dry. The man’s reaction had clearly meant Marie had done something forbidden.
She started to apologize, words tumbling together, but the Commander stopped her with a lazy gesture, as if the apology was not worth hearing.
“As it seems, trouble follows you,” the Commander said. There was a faint note of amusement in her voice, and something almost kind in the way she looked at Marie.
Marie pouted, unsure what she was allowed to say. She did not want to deepen the mistake. Anya would surely hear of this, and Marie did not want her first days here to become a catalogue of offenses.
The horse demanded her attention again, nuzzling her stomach insistently. Marie scratched behind her ears, and the mare huffed with satisfaction.
The Commander watched. “Curious,” she said, tone light. “Touching my horses is forbidden for a reason. They do not allow anyone but me. They are trained against abductions.”
Marie froze.
Her hands dropped to her sides as if burned. She took a half step back, fear spiking hard and sudden.
The mare snorted in protest, pressing her head into Marie’s space again, as if offended by the retreat.
The Commander’s mouth twitched at the corners, the ghost of a smile. She reached out briefly, fingers brushing her horse’s nose with a familiarity that calmed the animal at once.
“She likes you,” the Commander said. “Do not anger my horse by ignoring her after you began.”
Marie blinked at her, stunned. She had expected punishment. A lecture. A harsh order. Not permission.
Slowly Marie lifted her hand again, watching the Commander the entire time, trying to read her face for deception or changing mood. When none came, Marie touched the horse’s muzzle again and felt the mare relax under her palm.
“We did not have animals on the Ark,” Marie said quietly after a moment. The truth slipped out before she could stop it, the simplest explanation she had for her fascination.
The Commander inclined her head as if she had suspected it. “Then you will need to be taught how to ride properly,” she said, as if it were an obvious conclusion.
Marie looked between the woman and the horse, wonder returning in a rush. Tris had told her they used horses. Marie had not dared to imagine she would be allowed to learn.
“When will I learn to ride,” Marie began, then hesitated, suddenly aware she did not know how to address the woman.
“You are eager,” the Commander said, and there was approval in it. “You may use my name outside of meetings. In front of other clans, you will address me as Heda.”
Marie nodded quickly.
She realized a beat too late that she still did not know the woman’s name. Heat crawled up her neck.
The Commander continued as if she had not noticed the moment. “What were children of the Ark taught,” she asked, sounding genuinely interested.
Marie tilted her head, searching her memories. “I learned to read and write, basic math, and beginnings of Earth studies and history,” she said carefully. “I would have learned more later if I had not been caught stealing.”
She bit her lip immediately after speaking, fear flickering. Admitting theft to a leader like this felt foolish.
The Commander only nodded, expression neutral, no visible judgement. “What did you learn in Earth studies?”
Marie hesitated, then forced herself to answer. The Commander waited with patience that made Marie even more aware of her own uncertainty.
“We were told survival skills,” Marie said. “How to start a fire without a match, but only in theory. Fire uses oxygen, and the Ark was always short on it, so we did not practise. Same for hunting or fishing without guns. In my last weeks before prison, they began teaching navigation, how to tell time using the sun. Later we would have learned more, how to grow crops and things like that.”
The Commander listened with a thoughtful look. “Not effective without practice,” she said.
Marie let out a small laugh, relieved to agree with something rather than stumble through it. Everything sounded easy in words. Reality was proving otherwise.
“But no professions,” the Commander asked, “before you turned eighteen.”
“Professions,” Marie repeated, unfamiliar with the word in this context.
“Healing. Sewing. Building. Crafting,” the Commander clarified.
Marie shook her head. “We did not learn a job in school. In the year before you turn eighteen you decide, or you are guided based on what you are good at. Many follow what their parents did. Training begins when you turn eighteen.”
“That also does not sound effective,” the Commander said, as if the Ark’s systems were simply another strange habit of strangers.
Marie shrugged helplessly. “I did not make the system.”
“How does it work here,” Marie asked quickly. She wanted the focus off her and onto something safer.
“Children begin training for a profession when they reach their fifth summer,” the Commander replied.
Marie stared at her with wide grey eyes. “That is so young. You do not have schools?”
“Not everywhere,” the Commander said. “In the capital there is a school. Most villages do not need one. Children learn what they must, where they live.”
Marie’s thoughts tumbled. If Earth children began at five, then every child here had years of practice she did not. How was she supposed to catch up. How was she supposed to become useful before patience ran out.
“Do your warriors start that early too,” Marie asked, voice small despite her attempt at bravery.
“It depends,” the Commander said. “Some earlier. Some later. I began my own training in my third summer.”
Marie’s mouth fell open.
The mare nudged her again, as if demanding she return to petting rather than standing frozen in horror. Marie obeyed mechanically, hand on warm hide, mind racing.
Before Marie could form another question, a messenger appeared near the fence. The Commander’s attention shifted instantly. She gave Marie a final look.
“You may stay with the horses today,” the Commander said. “You may return again. With permission.”
Then she turned and left with the messenger, her departure smooth and certain.
Marie remained inside the meadow, absentmindedly stroking the black mare while her thoughts sank into darker water. Training at five. Training at three. She was nine and already behind in every way that mattered here.
She was still petting the horse when Anya’s voice called from the other side of the fence.
“Marie. It is time for dinner. Come.”
Marie looked up. Relief washed through her when she saw Anya’s face and did not find anger there. The Commander must have spoken to her, or at least sent word.
Marie gave the black mare one last careful stroke and climbed back through the fence.
As they walked away, Anya’s tone held a thread of amusement. “Have you been with Heda’s horses the entire time.”
Marie nodded.
Her spirit felt heavier than it had before she found the meadow. The beauty had not faded, but now it carried a shadow. She could not stop thinking about the years she had lost to hunger, to prison, to being taught theory instead of skill.
She kept her eyes on the path, shoulders slightly hunched, and wondered how long it would take before Anya decided she was not worth the trouble.
Chapter 9
Anya regarded her charge silently from time to time on the way to the communal fire pits. Marie was physically unharmed, but the wonder that had sparkled in her eyes earlier had dimmed until it was nearly gone. Anya could not place what had caused the change, and the uncertainty irritated her more than she wanted to admit.
Marie accepted the plate and the mug without protest. Then she simply sat there and picked at her meal in silence.
Anya had expected hunger. After training, after a day of new rules and new faces, the girl should have eaten as if afraid the food might vanish. Anya doubted anyone would have given Marie water or a bite in Anya’s absence. Yet Marie did not seem to care what sat in her hands.
The fire pits were busier than usual. Word traveled fast, especially when a story contained a girl who fell from the sky. People gathered in loose circles, pretending to be busy while their eyes tracked Marie. Some did not bother pretending at all. The sky girl had not impressed in the training pit, but rumors had already grown teeth. She had been seen with the Commander’s horses. That alone was enough to turn curiosity into something sharper.
Marie seemed oblivious to the attention. The village’s eyes slid off her face and onto the fire, because Marie’s own gaze kept returning there. She watched the flames as if they were alive in a way she could not understand, as if the fire held secrets.
Anya watched Tris on the other side of the pit. Her second ate fast, too fast, already poised to return to guard duty. Anya had assigned the extra shifts as punishment for her disobedience with the prisoner. Tris had been told to observe, to gather information, to keep her distance. Instead she had given water and food as if Marie were a guest rather than a captive. Tris knew better. That was what bothered Anya most.
She found herself, against her will, wondering what about the sky girl had made Tris forget caution.
Across the flames, Marie nudged pieces of food around her plate. She did not eat. She did not even seem to notice she was not eating.
Anya’s patience thinned.
When Anya finished her own portion, she waited a moment longer, watching Marie’s small hands hover and retreat, hover and retreat, as if the food required permission.
Then Anya reached out and took the plate away.
“If you do not want to eat, you will go hungry for the night,” she said in a hard tone, sharp enough to cut through the noise around them.
Marie looked up as if startled from a deep thought. Her grey eyes widened. Her mouth parted, but no words came.
Anya strode away to return the plate. The food would not be wasted. Someone else could have it.
When Anya returned, Marie sat staring at the fire again, forlorn, quiet, as if the flames were the only thing that did not judge her.
“It is time to retire,” Anya said.
Marie rose immediately and followed with her head bowed.
Anya led them back through the village, irritation gathering under her ribs. She did not know what Lexa had said to the child, but something had taken the bright curiosity from Marie and replaced it with this heavy silence. Lexa had relayed nothing that suggested Marie would be so glum. Anya told herself the girl was tired, that exhaustion made children strange and brittle.
She did not believe it.
No one followed them, but Anya felt the eyes anyway. She had heard whispers earlier. The fearless sky girl who tamed Heda’s beasts. The one Lexa spared. People spoke as if Marie were a creature, not a child. A rumor with legs.
At the fire, Marie had looked anything but fearless. More like a startled deer.
Anya knew respect mattered. If the village did not respect Marie, Quint would not be the last to test how far protection truly reached. Marie would need to earn her place, and quickly, not only for pride, but for survival.
When they reached Anya’s tent, the furs had already been brought. A second bed roll had been laid out. The sleeping space felt smaller with it, crowded in a way Anya had not experienced since Tris had been young enough to need watching. Marie was old enough to sleep alone, in theory. In practice, leaving her unattended was foolish. She knew nothing of their ways. Ignorance could become a crime in a heartbeat.
Anya began stripping off her armor without ceremony. She motioned Marie toward her sleeping place.
Marie tried to undo the straps of her new clothing. Her fingers fumbled, pulling at the wrong places. Frustration crept across her face. She did not ask for help. She kept trying, jaw tight, as if pride could force the clasps open.
Anya watched longer than she should have, waiting for the inevitable request.
It did not come.
Instead, Anya saw moisture gather in Marie’s eyes.
With a huff, Anya stepped forward. She batted Marie’s hands away and undid the clasps quickly, briskly, without softness. It was easier to do it herself than to watch the girl drown in humiliation.
When Anya stepped back, Marie looked even smaller. Her shoulders drew inward. The anger in her face was not aimed at Anya. It was aimed at herself.
They prepared for sleep. Outside, rain began to patter against the tent, light at first. Marie lay down on the furs and pulled one over herself.
The furs were softer than she had expected. Warm too, a weight that settled over her body like a promise. They smelled of wood and animal and smoke. Not disinfectant. Not metal. Not the sterile emptiness of the Ark.
Marie lay still, trying not to disturb Anya. Anya’s breathing had deepened. Her eyes were closed. She had stopped moving.
Marie did not sleep.
The rain intensified. Wind picked up, tugging at the tent. The new sounds made Marie’s skin prickle. The wind’s howl warped into something that sounded like an animal in pain, and the thought made Marie curl tighter under the fur.
She missed the Ark.
The thought came with shame, but it was real. She missed being younger, before everything had cracked. She missed the small quarters, the narrow safety of what she had once thought suffocating. She missed knowing the rules.
Tears came anyway. Quiet at first, then with small sniffling breaths she tried to swallow.
Thunder rolled far above them.
Marie froze.
She knew thunderstorms in theory. She had learned the words. Lightning. Heat. Fire. Death. She had imagined watching one someday from a safe place.
She had not imagined being inside a thin tent with a woman she barely knew, listening to the sky tear itself apart.
Lightning flared, bright enough to turn the tent walls pale for a heartbeat.
The thunder that followed was close. Violent.
Marie screamed.
Anya jolted upright instantly, dagger in hand, eyes scanning for an intruder. Her body was awake before her mind fully caught up. When she found nothing but Marie curled under furs, shaking, Anya’s expression tightened.
Then another flash lit the tent.
Marie yelped again, muffled by fur.
Anya’s shoulders sagged with annoyance. A storm. That was all.
She slid the dagger back under her pillow and lay down again, intending to reclaim sleep.
It lasted seconds.
Marie sobbed quietly now. Not only from the thunder. Anya could hear the difference. The sobs came between the noises, as if something inside the girl had already been breaking before the storm arrived.
The next thunderclap made Marie cry out again.
Anya sat up with a long, tired sigh.
Lightning lit the tent once more, and Anya saw Marie’s face through the dimness, eyes red, cheeks wet. The girl did not look at her. She looked as if she was trying to disappear.
Anya rubbed her eyes. She was not a comforting person. But she was the only person here.
“What is wrong, Marie,” Anya asked, and tried to keep her tone even.
Marie turned her head sharply, startled that Anya was awake. She wiped her face with her sleeve and shook her head.
Anya huffed. Impatience rose. Lies were a waste of time.
Another flash.
Marie flinched under the fur.
“Come here,” Anya ordered, and lifted her own fur.
Marie stared at the space Anya offered, unsure if it was a trap or a test.
Then thunder cracked close enough to make the ground feel like it shook.
Marie scrambled across in an instant and dove under Anya’s fur as if fleeing an attacker.
She was shivering. Spooked. Too small.
Anya hesitated, then pulled her closer with an awkward stiffness that felt unfamiliar even to her own hands. Marie clung to her, trying to control her breathing.
“You are safe,” Anya said, voice lower. “Thunder will not hurt you.”
Marie nodded, eyes wide, wet, fixed on Anya’s face as if waiting for contradiction.
Anya exhaled through her nose. “Now tell me what soured your mood before.”
Marie stiffened and tried to turn away, as if hiding her face could end the conversation.
Anya narrowed her eyes. She hated evasion almost as much as she hated lies. She pinched Marie’s arm, hard enough to sting.
“I do not appreciate being lied to,” Anya hissed.
Marie jerked, then rubbed at the spot with a small, offended motion. Her eyes flashed up at Anya. Hurt and anger and fear tangled together.
Anya held her gaze. Unyielding.
Marie broke first, not with words, but with a shaky breath.
“The Commander spoke to me,” Marie said, voice small.
“I know,” Anya replied. “Lexa told me where to find you.”
Marie blinked, as if the name itself surprised her. “Lexa,” she repeated softly, as if turning the sound over in her mouth.
Anya’s patience strained. “Do not evade, Marie.”
Marie swallowed. Her fingers gripped a tuft of fur, twisting it until her knuckles paled. “She told me warriors start training when they are three,” she said, then added quickly, “or five. But most start early.”
Anya stared at her. Confusion flickered. “Yes. And.”
Marie’s lips trembled. Her eyes filled again. “I am nine,” she said, as if the number were a wound. “I am already late.”
Anya blinked, still not grasping the shape of the fear.
Marie’s voice rose, cracking with desperation. “How am I supposed to catch up. Everyone here has years. They will always be ahead. I can barely run. I can barely breathe. I cannot even open my clothes without you.”
Her words came faster now, spilling out. “What if I cannot become what you want. What happens then. Will they change their minds. Will they decide I am useless.”
Anya finally understood.
Not the storm. Not the horses. This. The fear of failing. The fear that being spared came with conditions she could not meet.
Anya exhaled slowly, and some of the tension left her shoulders. She was still tired. Still annoyed at being awake. But she recognized the kind of terror behind Marie’s questions. It was not weakness. It was survival instinct.
“Marie,” Anya said, voice firm, “no one expects you to catch up in days. Or weeks. It will take time. Months. Years.”
Marie’s face crumpled further. “Years,” she whispered, as if the word meant she had already lost.
“And you will not be killed because you are slow,” Anya added sharply, cutting through the spiral before it swallowed her. “You were taken in. You are under my protection. Lexa does not offer that and then break it because a child cannot sprint on her first day.”
Marie stared at her, searching for the trap.
“What if I fail as a warrior,” Marie pressed, voice shaking. “What if you decide I am not worth it.”
Anya’s brows drew together. “I decide training. I do not decide your worth.”
The words came out harsher than she intended. She corrected, because she had to, because the girl was trembling like a leaf against her side.
“If you work, if you try, you will improve,” Anya said. “If you discover you do not want to be a warrior, you will learn another path. We have healers. Hunters. Crafters. Traders. You will not be thrown out because you are not a weapon yet.”
Marie’s breath hitched. Hope sparked, fragile but visible.
“Really,” she whispered.
Anya held her gaze. “I do not lie. I expect the same from you.”
Marie let out a tiny sound that might have been a laugh or a sob. Relief loosened her shoulders. For a moment she looked like she had earlier, curious and alive beneath the fear.
“The Commander gave me permission to visit her horses,” Marie blurted, words rushing out now that the dam had cracked. Pride flickered through her grief like a match catching. “She said I can come back.”
Anya’s mouth twitched, the edge of amusement returning. “So I heard.”
“And she said I can call her by her name,” Marie added quickly. “Outside meetings.”
Anya studied her. The girl glowed with it, as if the privilege itself were a blanket.
“You must have left a good impression on Lexa,” Anya said. “That is not given lightly.”
Marie’s eyes shone.
Then lightning flashed again.
Marie shrieked and pressed into Anya instantly, gripping her as if the fur were the only safe place left in the world.
Anya snorted, then, to her own surprise, laughed. It was short and quiet, but real. She slid a hand over Marie’s back, a steadying pressure, and held her through the next rumble of thunder.
“Sleep,” Anya murmured, voice lower, softer than her usual tone allowed. “You are safe, skaifaya.”
Marie nodded against her, still trembling, but no longer breaking.
Anya settled back down with the girl tucked close, listening to the rain batter the tent and the storm roll its anger across the sky, and kept her hand where it was until Marie’s breathing finally slowed into something that could become sleep.
Chapter 10
Morning came clear and bright, as if the storm had never happened.
Marie woke curled against Anya’s side, warm and safe in a way that still felt unreal. For a few quiet breaths she simply lay there, listening to Anya’s steady breathing. Then Marie’s eyes drifted up and she studied the woman’s face. In sleep, Anya looked almost peaceful, but the sharpness was still there, carved into her features like something permanent.
“Stop staring at me and get up,” Anya grumbled without opening her eyes.
Marie startled hard. Heat rushed to her cheeks. “Sorry,” she mumbled, scooting away quickly. She stretched like a cat and immediately regretted it. A dull ache pulled through her shoulders and thighs.
“Ugh, my muscles hurt,” she complained, voice turning whiny as she tested which movements made it worse.
Anya sat up in one smooth motion and rolled her eyes. “You will find out how they feel after another round of training.”
Marie froze, then stared at her in horror. Daily. Of course it would be daily. She did not know why she had imagined yesterday was a one time punishment handed down for being weak.
Anya laughed softly at her expression and tossed a damp cloth at her. “Wash. I will get breakfast.”
Marie caught it and glared at Anya’s retreating back, but she washed anyway. She was not brave enough to be disobedient yet. And she remembered the words from last night, the odd phrase Anya had murmured while the storm still growled beyond the tent. Marie held onto it, a small mystery she wanted to understand.
When Anya returned, Marie was still fighting her clothes. The straps and buckles seemed designed to humiliate her. Her hair had fallen into her face in sticky strands, and she kept shoving it away only for it to fall back again.
Anya set the plates down on the small table and stared at Marie for a long moment.
“That will not do,” Anya said flatly.
She stepped closer, swatted Marie’s hands aside, and fastened the buckles in a few quick motions. Then Anya ran her fingers through Marie’s hair with brisk efficiency, detangling it and braiding it into a simple plait. She tied it off with a leather cord and turned Marie around to inspect her.
“Better,” Anya decided. “I will show you the river later. You can wash your hair there.”
Marie’s pride prickled at having to be helped again, but she still smiled, grateful despite herself. Then she tilted her head, eyes bright with curiosity.
“What does skaifaya mean?”
Anya paused like she had walked into a hidden trap. A scowl snapped into place, and the tips of her ears turned faintly red.
“Enough,” Anya said, too quickly. “Eat. Or you go hungry until sundown.”
Marie opened her mouth to argue, then shut it again when Anya’s glare landed on her. She sat and ate instead, suddenly ravenous. She had barely touched dinner the night before. Now her hunger returned as if it had been waiting for permission.
Anya ate in silence, watching her with a look that said she was already counting minutes. The moment Marie finished, Anya took the plate and left the tent without another word.
Marie blinked after her, confused. Was she meant to follow? Anya had not said.
A throat cleared outside the tent.
Marie flinched, then scrambled up, moving carefully through the stiffness in her legs. She bit down on a hiss of pain and hurried after Anya as the woman resumed walking immediately, as if Marie’s hesitation had been the entire point of the lesson.
Anya returned the plates at the fire pits, handed them to someone on duty, and guided Marie toward the training grounds.
Tris was already there.
Marie’s face lit up at the sight of her, then faltered. Tris looked exhausted. Shadows sat beneath her eyes, and her shoulders carried the weight of too little sleep. Tris smiled anyway when she saw Marie, but surprise flickered through her expression at Marie walking behind Anya like an obedient shadow.
Anya acknowledged Tris with a single nod. “I hope the additional guard duty has cleared your head of your rebellious tendencies.”
Tris dropped her gaze, sheepish. “Yes, Anya. I am sorry. I will not disobey again.”
Marie’s brows drew together, confused. She had a sinking suspicion Tris was being punished for showing her kindness. The thought left an uneasy knot in her stomach.
Anya did not allow that knot any room to grow.
“Run,” she ordered.
Tris moved instantly. Marie hesitated a fraction, then tried a pitiful look at Anya, silently begging for mercy on aching muscles.
Anya’s eyes narrowed. “If you do not move now, you will run again in the evening.”
Marie moved.
She jogged as fast as she could, breath rough, legs burning. Tris ran faster, light on her feet, as if the ground hardly touched her. Before Marie finished one round, Tris had nearly finished two.
Anya stood to the side, arms crossed, watching with the cold focus of someone who measured people the way she measured distances.
“Faster,” Anya snapped when Marie slowed.
Marie pushed harder. Her chest hurt. Sweat gathered at her hairline and ran into her eyes. She tried to wipe it away and only smeared it.
After a few more rounds, Anya called them in.
Marie stopped directly in front of her, bent over with hands on her knees, gulping air. Her world narrowed to the sound of her own breathing.
Anya’s lips thinned. She looked annoyed, and Marie’s stomach sank.
Then Anya turned to Tris. “Sparring. Use what you know. Make her defend.”
Marie’s head lifted sharply. Sparring with Tris felt easier than sparring with Anya. It felt like a chance.
It was not.
Tris swept in before Marie even settled into stance. A sharp movement. A weight shift. Then Marie was on her back, staring up at the sky through leaves, gasping in shock.
“Again,” Anya said, bored.
Marie scrambled up. They tried again. Tris waited this time, just long enough for Marie to lift her hands. It did not matter. Tris was too fast. Marie hit the ground again and again, each fall stealing a little more breath and pride.
When Anya finally ended it, Marie felt like her arms and legs belonged to someone else.
Tris bent and offered her a hand, expression apologetic. “Sorry,” she murmured with a small, kind smile.
Marie took it, grateful and humiliated at once.
Before Anya could speak again, shouting rippled through the village.
Heads turned. Fingers pointed.
Marie followed their gaze and looked up.
Something was falling through the sky, trailing fire, carving a bright line toward the earth before vanishing behind the trees.
Anya’s posture changed instantly. Her eyes sharpened. “Another piece of your Ark,” she asked, voice low and tense.
Marie squinted. “I do not know,” she admitted, then swallowed. “But it is small. Maybe only one person.”
“It did not land far,” Tris observed, eyes narrowed toward the spot where the light disappeared.
Anya hesitated only long enough to decide. “Come.”
She strode toward the tree line. Tris followed without question. Marie hurried after them, excitement surging so hard it briefly drowned out her aching body.
They moved through the woods fast.
Too fast for Marie.
Anya’s corrections started almost immediately.
“Quieter.”
“Stop dragging your feet.”
“Watch where you place your weight.”
Marie tried to copy Tris, but it felt impossible. If she watched the ground, Anya hissed that she was blind to danger. If she watched the trees, she stepped on sticks that snapped underfoot.
“I am trying,” Marie whined, breathless and frustrated. “Really.”
Tris halted suddenly.
Anya spun and slapped a hand over Marie’s mouth in one abrupt motion, startling her so badly her heart jumped into her throat.
“Ssh,” Anya hissed.
Marie’s eyes widened. She tried to listen.
A heartbeat later, a stag burst from the underbrush and froze for a split second in front of them.
Marie’s stomach dropped.
The stag’s head was wrong. Split. Deformed, as if two faces had tried to become one and failed.
Then it bolted away, crashing through the brush.
Anya released Marie and scanned the woods, alert. Tris did the same, as if the creature were only a warning, not a horror.
“Something startled it,” Anya murmured. “Be careful.”
They continued.
At last they reached the river.
The pod lay nearby, half sunk into the earth, metal scorched and steaming faintly in the damp air.
Anya crouched at the edge of the tree line and studied it from cover. She did not move closer.
A moment later, new footsteps approached.
Too loud. Too careless.
Not Trikru.
Anya’s head snapped toward the sound. She signaled quickly.
Tris climbed the nearest tree without hesitation, vanishing into the branches like she had been born there.
Anya’s eyes cut to Marie. “Climb.”
Marie stared at the trunk in horror. The first branch looked impossibly high. Tris was already gone, swallowed by leaves.
“I cannot,” Marie whispered, panic rising.
The footsteps drew nearer.
Anya’s patience broke. She grabbed Marie and hauled her up with practiced speed, climbing while holding Marie’s smaller body tight against her. They settled on a branch high enough to hide them, Anya’s arm locked around Marie’s middle like a belt.
A boy ran beneath them with a gun in hand.
“It is Bellamy,” Marie breathed, recognizing him instantly.
Anya watched him like prey.
Bellamy reached the pod, tore it open, and rummaged frantically. He ripped out a metal box, slammed the pod shut, and did not even look at the figure still inside. Then he ran to the river and threw the box into the water. It vanished with a splash.
He bolted back into the woods.
Anya waited.
She did not move when silence fell. She listened, patient and wary, as if silence itself could be a trap.
More footsteps came.
This time Marie saw Clarke and Finn. She whispered their names to Anya as they approached.
They opened the pod.
A young woman climbed out, blood dried along her forehead. She hugged Finn hard. Clarke hovered nearby, tense and unhappy.
They searched the pod, then argued. Even from this distance Marie could feel their anger like heat.
Then they ran off, back into the woods, as if chasing something they could not afford to lose.
Only when the forest settled again did Anya climb down. Tris dropped from her perch a moment later, landing lightly.
Marie remained on the branch, suddenly aware of the height now that Anya was not holding her.
“Come down,” Anya ordered.
Marie gripped the trunk. Her throat tightened. “I do not know how.”
Anya’s expression sharpened. “It is not hard, Marie.”
Marie glared down, trembling with frustration and fear. Of course it was not hard for them. They had done this since childhood. She had seen her first tree days ago.
Tris shifted, sympathetic, but did not interfere.
Anya turned to Tris. “Go back. Tell them what you saw.”
Tris hesitated, glanced at Marie, then obeyed, disappearing into the woods.
Anya looked up again. “Now. Down.”
Marie tried. She inched lower, searching blindly for footing. Her hands slipped on bark. Her breath came fast.
Then her foot slid.
Marie screamed as she fell.
Anya lunged and caught her, but not perfectly. Marie hit the ground hard enough that pain shot through her leg like lightning. Her ankle twisted, and when Anya tried to set her down, it buckled immediately.
“Ah,” Marie gasped, face crumpling.
Anya swore under her breath, then lifted her into her arms without hesitation.
“Ssh,” Anya murmured, tone almost gentle despite the tightness in her jaw. “Every child falls from a tree at least once before they learn.”
Marie glared weakly at her through pain. “I would prefer… less learning like that.”
Anya snorted, adjusting her grip as she carried her back toward the village. “Nyko will look at it.”
Marie swallowed against a fresh wave of hurt, cheek pressed against Anya’s shoulder, and tried very hard not to cry.
She was starting to understand Trikru.
Here, you learned by surviving it.