Finn stepped out from the crowd, his defensive irritation from earlier instantly replaced by that infuriating, carefree grin. "Sounds like a party. I'm in."
Jasper and Monty exchanged a quick, nervous look before stepping forward as well, Jasper clearly trying to puff out his chest as Octavia confidently walked up to join the group.
Wells pushed himself off the rusted metal strut of the dropship, his face going pale as he put weight on his injured leg. "I'm coming too."
Clarke immediately stepped in his path, pressing a firm hand against his chest to stop him. "No, you're not. You can barely stand, Wells. You need to rest that leg, or you're going to permanently damage it before we even build a camp. Stay here. See if you can salvage anything from the comms."
Wells opened his mouth to argue, but one look at the stubborn determination on Clarke's face told him he had already lost. With a heavy sigh, he nodded and limped back toward the ramp.
A few feet away, Bellamy was watching the search party form. His jaw clenched, eyes narrowing dangerously when he noticed his sister lingering a little too close to Aleksander. Octavia wasn't just standing near him; she was openly staring at the Alpha Station prodigy, an incredibly appreciative spark in her dark eyes.
Bellamy's overprotective instincts instantly flared. He closed the distance in three long strides, grabbed Octavia by the elbow, and practically dragged her behind a cluster of scorched metal debris, well out of earshot of the others.
"What?" Octavia yanked her arm free, brushing off her jacket. She cast another lingering glance back at Aleksander. "He's hot."
"He's a criminal," Bellamy hissed, stepping into her line of sight. "You saw what he just did to Murphy. He's dangerous."
Octavia rolled her eyes, letting out an exasperated laugh. "They're all criminals, Bellamy. That's the whole point of this field trip."
Bellamy ran a hand over his face, genuine frustration bleeding into his voice. "Look, O. I came down here to protect you."
The playful, rebellious spark in Octavia's eyes vanished, replaced instantly by a fierce, deeply ingrained anger. "I don't need protecting. I have been locked up one way or another all my life. Under the floor, in the Skybox... I am done following orders. I need to have fun, Bell. I need to just do something crazy just because I can, and no one, including you, is gonna stop me."
She turned to walk back to the group, but Bellamy caught her arm again. His grip was looser this time, desperate rather than commanding.
"I can't stay with them, O," he said, his voice completely hollowed out.
Octavia stopped. Her brow furrowed in confusion as she looked back at him. "Now what are you talking about?"
Bellamy glanced nervously toward the open dropship doors, his voice dropping to a harsh, strained whisper. "I did something, okay? To get on the dropship. Something that they will kill me for when they come down. I can't say what it is just yet, but you have to trust me." He looked back at her, stripping away the arrogant bravado he had worn since the doors opened. "You do still trust me, don't you?"
Octavia stared at her older brother. For the first time since they landed, she saw past the stolen guard's uniform and recognized the terrified, desperate boy who had spent his entire life keeping her alive.
Her expression softened, and she gave a small, definitive nod. "Yeah."
The six of them were already gathered near the edge of the camp, preparing to leave. Finn, Jasper, Monty, and Octavia had quickly latched onto the idea of a rescue mission—or, in their minds, an unsupervised road trip.
Finn leaned casually against a tree, his defensive irritation from earlier replaced by that infuriating, carefree grin. "So, Mount Weather. When do we leave?"
"Right now," Clarke said, securing the map into her jacket pocket. "We'll be back tomorrow with food."
Wells, leaning heavily on his good leg nearby, frowned at the small group. "How are the six of you gonna carry enough food for a hundred?"
Before anyone could answer, Clarke noticed Finn prying at the heavy metal clasp on his wrist. She stepped forward, her eyes narrowing. "Hey, were you trying to take this off?"
Finn yanked his arm back, rubbing his wrist. "Yeah. So?"
"So this wristband transmits your vital signs to The Ark," Clarke explained, her voice rising with frustration. "Take it off, and they'll think you're dead."
"It's a continuous sub-space ping tied to the Ark's bio-telemetry mainframe," Aleksander chimed in, perfectly relaxed as he adjusted the cuffs of his jacket over his own unseen, glamoured rings. "If the pulse rate flatlines or the band's internal circuitry is severed, it triggers a localized distress signal. If all hundred bands go dark, the Council's algorithmic models will classify Earth's atmosphere as lethally toxic with a ninety-nine point eight percent certainty."
Finn scoffed, looking between them. "Should I care?"
Clarke stepped right into his space. "Well, I don't know. Do you want the people you love to think you're dead? Do you want them to follow you down here in two months? Because they won't if they think we're dying."
Finn held her gaze for a second before dropping his hands in defeat. "Okay."
A few feet away, Bellamy had been listening intently to Aleksander and Clarke's explanation. As Aleksander broke down exactly how the mainframe interpreted a broken wristband, a dark, desperate realization formed in Bellamy's eyes. If the Ark thought they were dead, they would never come down. The Council would never know he was the one who shot Chancellor Jaha to get a spot on this ship. Unknowingly, Clarke and Aleksander had just handed him the blueprint to his own survival.
Bellamy shook off his thoughts and focused on his sister, who was standing entirely too comfortably next to Aleksander. "Hey, what the hell are you doing?"
Octavia didn't even flinch. "Going for a walk."
Bellamy looked at the determined set of her jaw, realizing he couldn't stop her in front of the others without causing a riot. He gave a stiff, reluctant nod. "Go on."
Octavia practically bounced over to him, planting a kiss on his cheek. "Mwah!" She turned on her heel and jogged back to the group.
Clarke lingered for a second, looking back at the injured boy leaning against the dropship. "You shouldn't have come here, Wells." With a heavy sigh, she turned and marched into the thick brush of the forest.
The dense, overgrown woods swallowed the six teenagers almost immediately. The air was rich and humid, filtering the harsh sunlight into a dappled, vibrant green.
As they walked, Octavia smoothly closed the distance to walk right beside Aleksander. She threw a playful, challenging look over her shoulder at Clarke. "Before you get any ideas, Aleksander is mine."
Clarke rolled her eyes, pushing a heavy fern out of her way. "He is not a toy you can just claim, Octavia."
Aleksander let out a quiet, genuine laugh. "I'm flattered, Octavia. Truly. But right now, my immediate focus is the fact that Finn is leading us in a circle."
Up ahead, Finn stopped and turned around, looking defensive. "I'm following the game trails. The brush is thinner here. It's easier to walk."
"It's also inefficient," Aleksander replied without missing a beat, his mind effortlessly crunching the spatial geometry of their surroundings. "You're taking the path of least resistance, which is pulling us approximately twelve degrees off our necessary azimuth."
Finn crossed his arms. "Azimuth? English, Alpha Station."
"Bearing," Aleksander clarified, stepping forward. He pointed up at the canopy. "At an estimated distance of twenty miles to that peak, a twelve-degree drift means we'll miss Mount Weather by over four miles.
Furthermore, based on the angle of solar declination through the trees and the length of our shadows, we only have about four hours of daylight left. If you don't correct our vector by keeping the sun exactly forty-five degrees to our right shoulder, we'll be spending the night sleeping in the dirt instead of a fortified bunker."
Clarke quickly pulled out her map, holding it flat and aligning it with the sun's current position. She blinked, looking up at Aleksander in surprise. "He's right. The trail is pulling us way too far north. We need to bear left."
Finn sighed heavily, though he couldn't completely hide the impressed look on his face. He hacked at a thick vine with a piece of scrap metal he'd picked up. "Whatever you say, human compass."
"And one more thing," Aleksander added, his voice dropping slightly as he noted the heavy, damp air pressing against his skin. "Given the localized humidity and the barometric pressure density, we're walking through a geographic basin. Acoustics change here. Sound is going to travel a lot farther and faster than it did on the Ark."
He gave Finn a pointed look. "So, keep your voices down. Unless you want whatever made those game trails to find us before we find the bunker."
Jasper swallowed hard, suddenly looking very nervous about the deep shadows between the trees, and Clarke shot Aleksander a grateful nod as they silently adjusted their course toward the mountain.