[Forest Edge — Day 9, Dawn]
The log weighed more than Cal did.
He had it braced across both shoulders, bark grinding into the skin at the base of his neck, legs burning with each step up the slope from the tree line to the camp perimeter. Thirty meters. Might as well have been thirty miles. The caloric deficit had deepened overnight — five ration bars yesterday, and his body had consumed them like paper fed to flame. The nanomachine hum was constant now, an insistent drone behind his temples that spiked each time he exerted himself, his cells demanding fuel he didn't have.
He dropped the log at the perimeter line. It hit dirt with a thud that rattled his teeth.
Six more like it lay in a rough row, end to end, forming the skeleton of what would become the eastern wall section. Crude. Unfinished. But the outline was there — a defensive perimeter that would eventually ring the entire camp, chest-high at minimum, with firing positions at intervals and a reinforced gate at the south approach.
Cal had drawn the plans on Day Nine's first light, scratching them into the dirt with the same stick he'd used for every map since landing. Wells had refined them — suggesting drainage gaps to prevent flooding against the base, angled support braces he'd learned from Ark structural engineering. Between the two of them, the design was sound. What they needed was labor.
That meant Bellamy.
Cal found him at the fire pit, briefing his morning patrol — four teenagers with sharpened sticks and the confidence of people who'd never faced anything sharper than a schoolyard punch. Bellamy moved between them, adjusting grips, correcting stances, performing the role of commander with a conviction that almost obscured how badly they were all outmatched.
Clarke was there too, restocking the med kit on the dropship ramp. Good. Cal needed both of them in the same place.
"We need to talk about the wall."
Bellamy turned. The measuring look from the previous night — the one Cal had caught over a fourth ration pack — was still there. Sharper now. Bellamy Blake tracked threats, and Cal had graduated from background noise to something that required categorization.
"What wall?"
Cal pointed at the log line. "That wall. The one that's going to keep us alive when the people who threw a spear through Jasper decide to do it again at scale."
"I've got patrols handling—"
"Your patrols are four kids with sticks walking a route the Grounders mapped two weeks ago." Cal kept his voice level. Not challenging — informing. "I found observation marks fifty meters from camp. Carved tallies. They know our patrol times, our guard rotations, probably our headcount. Patrols are a start. A wall is a foundation."
Clarke descended the ramp. "You found observation marks?" Her tone was carefully neutral — the voice of someone adding another line to a growing file.
"Showed Wells last night. Cedar tree, northeast. Fresh carvings."
"And you waited until now to tell everyone?"
"Told my logistics partner first. Now I'm telling my military partner." He looked at Bellamy. "And my medical partner. Because when the wall goes up, people are going to get hurt building it, and Clarke needs to be ready."
A beat. Bellamy and Clarke exchanged a glance — the unspoken negotiation of two leaders who shared authority the way divorced parents shared custody.
"Show me the plans," Bellamy said.
Cal walked them through it. The perimeter line, staked with rocks he'd placed at dawn. The wall sections — logs vertically sunk, lashed together, packed with earth at the base. Firing positions every ten meters. A gate with a crossbar that could be sealed from inside.
"Who's building this?" Clarke asked.
"Everyone who doesn't want to end up like Derek."
The name landed. Clarke's expression tightened. Bellamy's jaw shifted.
"I'll get the crews," Bellamy said.
---
They built.
For three days, the camp transformed from a loose collection of sleeping spots around a dropship into something that resembled a settlement. Bellamy's people — the fighters, the followers, the kids who'd torn off their wristbands and sworn loyalty — hauled logs and dug post holes. Clarke organized water and food distribution for the workers, rationing with the precision of someone who'd watched her mother manage Ark medical supplies. Wells ran logistics, tracking which sections needed reinforcement, which crews needed rotation, which materials were running short.
Cal worked the line. Every section, every shift. He hauled, he dug, he lashed, he packed earth. His hands — already calloused from the latrine and the water system — cracked and bled and kept moving. He ate four ration bars a day and stayed hungry.
On the morning of Day Ten, before the camp stirred, he walked fifty meters past the wall line into the forest.
Bare feet on soil. The contact was deliberate — boots insulated him from whatever frequency the earth transmitted, and the earthbending instinct demanded direct connection. He stood in a clearing, pre-dawn gray filtering through the canopy, and pressed his toes into cold dirt.
Push.
The soil shifted. Not much — a ripple in the surface, like a stone dropped in still water. Dirt displaced outward from his feet in a circle roughly a meter wide. Loose, uncontrolled, the bending equivalent of a toddler's first step.
He tried again. Focused on a specific patch of ground. A clump of earth the size of his fist, rooted in clay. He extended his arm, fingers spread, and pulled.
The clump trembled. Lifted an inch. Fell back.
Again. Pull. His arm burned, not from muscle strain but from something deeper — the connection between intention and earth, the circuit that ran from his brain through his nervous system into the ground, demanding the planet move. The clump rose two inches. Hovered. He pushed it sideways and it tumbled to the left, landing softly.
His vision spotted. The headache that had been background noise swelled to a bright, specific pain behind his right eye, and his stomach clenched with a hunger so acute it bent him at the waist. Six seconds of moving dirt, and his body was billing him for a full meal.
He straightened. Breathed through his nose until the spots cleared. A pebble — smooth, gray, the size of a marble — sat near his right foot. He pointed at it and thought up.
The pebble skittered sideways three inches and stopped.
Close enough for today. He put his boots on and walked back to camp.
---
Murphy showed up to the wall crew on Day Eleven.
Nobody had asked him. Nobody had assigned him. He walked out of the dropship at first light, grabbed a log from the pile, and carried it to the eastern section where the gap was widest. He'd fashioned a harness from strips of tarp — practical, efficient, the kind of adaptation that spoke to intelligence nobody gave Murphy credit for.
He worked in silence for two hours before anyone commented.
"Since when does Murphy build things?" A kid named Connor. Thin, mouthy, one of Bellamy's inner circle. He leaned against a finished wall section, arms crossed, the posture of someone who'd stopped working twenty minutes ago.
Murphy set his log into the post hole. Packed earth around the base with his boot. Didn't look up.
"Seriously. Yesterday you were threatening to stab Dax over a sleeping spot. Today you're Bob the Builder?"
Murphy's head turned. The motion was slow, deliberate, and when his eyes met Connor's, the expression on his face was the one Cal had learned to read across six days of careful observation: not anger. Something older than anger. The specific, contained fury of a person who'd been mocked for so long that every new instance landed on bruised tissue.
Murphy hit him.
One punch, right hand, delivered with the kind of compact efficiency that suggested practice. Connor's nose broke with a sound like a green stick snapping, and he went down hard, blood sheeting through his fingers.
"Hey!" Bellamy started forward from the gate section.
Cal got there first. Not between them — beside Murphy, close enough to register as presence without blocking the exit. Murphy's fists were clenched, breath coming fast, and the next punch was loaded.
"Log's not seated." Cal pointed at the post hole. "Base is shifting. Need to re-pack it before the weight sets wrong."
Murphy stared at him. Wild-eyed. The knuckles on his right hand were split.
"Murphy. The log."
Five seconds. The fire behind Murphy's eyes banked — not extinguished, just controlled, diverted into a channel that had an outlet. He turned back to the post hole. Knelt. Started packing earth with bleeding hands.
Cal looked at Connor, who was sitting in the dirt holding his nose. "Medical tent. Clarke will set it."
Connor stumbled away. Bellamy stood five meters distant, watching Murphy pack earth with the expression of a man recalculating a threat assessment.
Cal handed Murphy a strip of cloth for his knuckles. Murphy took it without making eye contact, wrapped his hand, and kept building.
---
Late afternoon. Cal sat on the completed eastern wall section — chest-high, solid, packed tight enough to stop a running charge — and ate his fourth ration bar of the day.
The wrapper crinkled loud in the quiet. Three people turned to look. Miller, on guard duty. A girl named Fox, hauling water. And Bellamy, standing near the gate, arms crossed, watching Cal the way he'd been watching for the past hour.
Cal met his eyes across the camp. Bellamy didn't look away.
Four ration bars. In a camp where the official allocation was two per person per day, Cal was eating double. He worked harder than anyone — that was visible, undeniable — but the math still drew attention. More calories consumed than a teenage body should need. More endurance than a teenage body should have. The same data points Clarke was collecting from a different angle.
Bellamy watched Cal eat, and Cal watched Bellamy watch, and neither of them said anything.
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Your Reviews and Power Stones are the best way to show support. They help me know what you're enjoying and bring in new readers!
You don't have to. Get instant access to more content by supporting me on Patreon. I have three options so you can pick how far ahead you want to be:
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