[Dropship Camp — Day 12, Midday]
"Take them off."
Bellamy stood on the supply crate — the same one he'd used for the "whatever the hell we want" speech, now positioned in front of the south gate like a podium. The camp gathered in a loose semicircle. Sixty-odd wristbands glinted in the noon sun, and Bellamy pointed at them with the certainty of a man who'd confused conviction with strategy.
"Every band they read is a reason to come down here. Every signal that reaches the Ark tells them we're alive, and when they know we're alive, they send guards. Guards mean the Council. The Council means laws, rules, lockup, everything we came down here to escape."
Cheers from Bellamy's core — Mbege, Roma, a rotating cast of teenagers who'd traded institutional authority for charismatic authority without recognizing the exchange.
"You want freedom? Real freedom? Cut the cord."
More cheers. A kid near the front ripped off his wristband and threw it into the fire. The metal popped. The crowd roared.
Cal stood at the back, arms folded, doing math he couldn't share.
The Ark's life support was failing. He'd known this for eight months — the oxygen recyclers were degrading, the CO2 scrubbers losing efficiency. The Council's solution was the same solution every government reaches when resources contract: reduce demand. In the show, that reduction had taken the form of a culling — three hundred and twenty volunteers, floated to save oxygen for the remaining population.
The culling happened when the Ark believed the hundred were dead. Every wristband that went dark was evidence of death. Every piece of evidence pushed the Council closer to the calculation that Earth was uninhabitable, that the hundred had failed, and that three hundred people needed to die so that two thousand could breathe.
Cal unfolded his arms and stepped forward.
"Three hundred people."
His voice wasn't loud. It didn't need to be — he'd learned on the Ark that quiet certainty carried farther than volume, and the camp had developed the habit of leaning in when Cal spoke.
The cheering died unevenly, pockets of noise trailing off as heads turned.
"Three hundred people on the Ark are about to be sacrificed to save oxygen," Cal said. "The Council has been rationing for months. They're out of options. The only thing stopping the culling is proof that Earth is survivable — proof that comes from these wristbands."
Silence. Not complete — shuffling feet, whispered questions — but the energy had shifted.
"Every band that goes into that fire is a vote to kill someone's mother. Someone's father. Someone's kid sister." Cal looked at the crowd, face by face, and let the weight settle. "Your freedom matters. I'm not arguing that. But right now, three hundred people you grew up with are breathing recycled air and waiting to find out if they get to keep breathing."
Bellamy's jaw tightened. "You don't know that."
"I know how oxygen recyclers work. I know the math on CO2 scrubbing for a population of twenty-four hundred. And I know the Council doesn't have a plan that doesn't involve reducing headcount." He turned to face Bellamy directly. "Your sister is down here. Safe. How many people up there have sisters who won't be?"
The blow landed where Cal aimed it — not at Bellamy's authority but at his conscience, the part of him that had smuggled Octavia to a dance because he loved her, the part that understood sacrifice wasn't theoretical when it wore a familiar face.
Bellamy's expression didn't crack. But it tightened.
"Even if you're right," Bellamy said, slow, choosing his words, "what do wristbands change? The Ark can't talk to us. We can't talk to them. The signals are one-way — vital signs, nothing more."
"Then we build something that talks both ways."
---
Monty's workspace was a corner of the dropship's lower level, lit by a salvaged lamp and cluttered with components stripped from wristbands, hull panels, and the dropship's secondary communications array. Cal had approached him the previous night — quietly, away from the political circus — and laid out the proposal.
"A transmitter." Monty held a circuit board up to the light, squinting at trace lines. "You want to build a transmitter from wristband biomonitors and a communications array designed for orbital telemetry."
"I want you to build the software side. I'll handle hardware."
"The array's frequency range is wrong. Wristband components operate on a medical telemetry band, not voice comms. You'd need to bridge the gap with a frequency converter, which requires—"
"A crystal oscillator. I know." Cal pulled a quartz crystal from his pocket — scavenged from the dropship's navigational backup system, cracked but functional. "Already sourced."
Monty looked at the crystal. Then at Cal. The expression on his face was the one Cal had learned to dread: technical recognition. Monty Green was a genius — actual genius, the kind that rewired Ark communication relays for fun and got arrested for it. And geniuses noticed when someone else's hands moved with confidence they shouldn't possess.
"Where'd you learn to source oscillator crystals?"
"Engineering archives in the Skybox."
"The Skybox archives don't cover navigational systems. I checked."
"Must've been misfiled."
Monty held his gaze for three seconds. Then he set the circuit board down and picked up the crystal, turning it in his fingers.
"This'll work," he said. "But the power draw is going to be massive. We'll need to tap the dropship's emergency batteries, and if we drain them, we lose interior lighting and the medical monitor Clarke's using on Jasper."
"How long to build it?"
"Three days. Maybe four."
"We have two."
Monty's eyebrows rose. "Two days? Based on what timeline?"
"Based on how fast the Ark runs out of alternatives." Cal crouched beside the workbench and started stripping wire insulation with his teeth, the way he'd done for every electrical project since landing. "Three hundred people, Monty. Every hour we don't have this working is an hour closer to the cull."
Monty was quiet for a moment. Then he set the crystal down, reached for a soldering iron, and started working.
They built through the night. Cal handling the hardware — antenna assembly, power routing, signal amplification — with the muscle memory of an engineering education he couldn't explain and a military deployment that had never happened in this body. Monty handling the software — frequency bridging, signal encoding, the digital architecture that would convert their transmission into something the Ark could receive.
"Why do you care?" Monty asked at two in the morning. His voice was soft, almost absent, the way he spoke when most of his brain was solving a problem and only a fraction remained for conversation.
"About what?"
"The Ark. The people up there. Most kids down here are happy to forget they exist."
Cal stripped another wire. The copper gleamed. "Because I know what it's like to lose people you could've saved."
Truth. Not the whole truth — not the truth about highways and rain and a life that had ended at twenty-six — but enough truth that his voice carried weight Monty could hear.
Monty nodded. Soldered a joint. The iron hissed.
---
Day Thirteen. Bellamy removed five more wristbands overnight, working the camp in shifts, targeting the scared and the angry and the ones who'd already decided the Ark was the enemy. Each band that came off was a signal dying, a vital sign flatlined, another data point pushing the Council toward its grim arithmetic.
Cal found the pile at dawn — five bands, discarded near the fire pit, their telemetry lights dark. He picked one up. The metal was still warm from someone's skin.
Fifty-odd bands remaining. When the number dropped below a threshold — Cal couldn't remember the exact number from the show, only that it was somewhere around forty — the Council would act.
He pocketed the dead wristband and walked to Monty's workstation.
"Status?"
Monty's eyes were ringed with dark circles. A soldering burn marked his left thumb. The workbench was a landscape of wire, crystal, circuit board, and desperation.
"Frequency bridge is stable. Power routing is clean. But the antenna gain is too low — we're broadcasting, but the signal won't punch through atmospheric interference to reach orbital altitude." He rubbed his face. "I need another two days."
Two days they didn't have. Cal stared at the transmitter — functional, almost, the kind of almost that killed people — and heard the clock.
Three hundred lives. The number sat in his chest the way Derek's name sat in his memory: permanent, non-negotiable, owned.
"Show me the antenna specs," Cal said. "I've got an idea about the gain."
Author's Note / Promotion:
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:
🪙 Silver Tier ($6): Read 10 chapters ahead of the public site.
👑 Gold Tier ($9): Get 15-20 chapters ahead of the public site.
💎 Platinum Tier ($15): The ultimate experience. Get new chapters the second I finish them . No waiting for weekly drops, just pure, instant access.
Your support helps me write more .
👉 Find it all at patreon.com/fanficwriter1
Author's Note / Promotion:
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:
🪙 Silver Tier ($6): Read 10 chapters ahead of the public site.
👑 Gold Tier ($9): Get 15-20 chapters ahead of the public site.
💎 Platinum Tier ($15): The ultimate experience. Get new chapters the second I finish them . No waiting for weekly drops, just pure, instant access.
Your support helps me write more .
👉 Find it all at patreon.com/fanficwriter1