The morning air was thick with mist as the scouting party assembled near the dropship. Finn was leaning against the metal wall, quietly moping after being ordered to stay behind and keep an eye on Jasper's fever. Bellamy, honoring his new alliance with Aleksander, had also opted to stay at camp to organize a rationing system and oversee the construction of the wall.
As Aleksander, Clarke, Wells, and Octavia prepared to leave, Aleksander noticed Monty hovering near the gate, watching them with desperate, eager eyes. The engineering prodigy had been locked in the dropship all night wrestling with the comms board, and the cabin fever was clearly setting in.
Aleksander sighed, giving a curt nod. "Grab an empty pack, Monty. You're with us."
Monty's face lit up, and within minutes, the five of them slipped through the rusted metal gates and into the treacherous forest.
Aleksander led them directly back to the dense, overgrown ravine from the day before. He moved with absolute certainty, stopping abruptly in front of a seemingly normal embankment of dirt and thick roots.
Without a word, Aleksander stepped forward. Using his massive, hidden Fey strength, he casually grabbed a thick layer of deadfall and vines and ripped the entire tangled mass away from the hillside. The heavy, tearing sound echoed in the quiet woods, revealing a massive, rusted steel door set directly into the earth. Beside the handle sat a dead electronic keypad.
Monty stepped forward, his eyes wide with absolute shock. "Is that... a bunker? How did you even see that?"
"I know how to look at the dirt," Aleksander replied smoothly, stepping back. He gestured to the keypad. "Can you open it?"
Monty pulled a small array of salvaged wires and tools from his pocket, a confident smirk instantly replacing his fear. "It's a pre-war magnetic lock. The battery died ninety years ago. Just give me two minutes to jump the circuit with my wristband battery."
True to his word, a minute later, a loud, metallic CLACK echoed from inside the door. Monty pulled the heavy latch, and the steel door groaned open, exhaling a long hiss of stale, dry air.
They stepped inside, coughing as the dust settled.
It wasn't a military armory, nor was it a cozy civilian shelter. It was a rugged, utilitarian FEMA outpost, designed specifically for park rangers and environmental scientists surviving in the deep wilderness. Metal shelving lined the concrete walls, heavily stocked and completely untouched.
They immediately fanned out, their eyes wide at the sheer volume of resources.
"Oh my god," Clarke breathed, rushing toward a wall-mounted locker marked with a faded red cross. She pulled it open. "Trauma kits. Heavy-duty surgical scalpels, hemostatic gauze for blood-clotting, antibiotics, burn salves... This is exactly what we need for the camp."
Across the room, Monty and Wells were standing in front of a climate-controlled locker. Wells pried it open with a crowbar, revealing rows of vacuum-sealed cylinders.
"Seeds," Wells said, pulling out a heavy canister. "Corn, beans, root vegetables. They're meant for post-fire forest repopulation."
Monty clutched one of the canisters to his chest like it was gold. Next to the locker, he spotted a row of heavy crates. "And solar-powered water filtration pumps! Hand-crank generators... We don't have to rely on Ark rations. I can actually start agricultural planning. We can grow our own food."
"Guys, look at this," Octavia called out from the back of the bunker. She opened a heavy steel trunk. Inside lay a massive cache of high-carbon steel forestry tools. "No guns. But there are machetes, felling axes, hatchets, wire saws..."
Aleksander walked past her, inspecting the adjacent shelves. "Perfect," he murmured.
"They are silent, they never run out of ammo, and they double as construction tools to build the wall." He grabbed a stack of heavy canvas tarps and a spool of high-tensile paracord. "And we have weather-proofing for the dropship and the tents before the winter hits. Climbing equipment, pitons, carabiners... This is a survival jackpot."
As the group frantically began stuffing their bags with the supplies, Aleksander noticed a wide, flat table sitting in the center of the room. He walked over, brushing a thick layer of dust off the surface.
Bolted to the table, preserved under a sheet of thick plexiglass, was a massive, highly detailed topographical map of the Eastern Seaboard. But it wasn't a standard road map. It was a classified FEMA disaster-response schematic.
The map was covered in hundreds of glowing, phosphorescent dots.
"Everyone," Aleksander commanded quietly. "Look at this."
Clarke, Wells, Octavia, and Monty gathered around the table. Aleksander tapped the legend in the corner of the plexiglass, which categorized the glowing dots by color codes:
Green:Environmental & Forestry Outposts (like the one they were currently standing in).
Blue:Civilian Evacuation Shelters.
Yellow: Strategic Military Armories.
Red: Federal Command Bunkers.
Monty stared at the map, his voice completely breathless as he traced a finger over the glass. "It's a network. The Ark Council always told us there was nothing left but ash. But look at this. The government built a massive underground grid before the bombs fell."
Aleksander's dark eyes scanned the map, his predatory, tactical mind instantly processing the geography, the distance, and the terrain separating them from the other nodes.
"This isn't just a map," Aleksander murmured, a dark thrill of strategy slipping into his voice. "This... this is an armory. A supply chain."
He looked up, meeting the eyes of the group. His expression hardened into absolute, unbreakable authority.
"We don't tell the camp about this map," Aleksander ordered. "Not yet."
Monty looked at him like he was crazy. "What? Why? Alex, there are civilian shelters out there with food, clothes, maybe even functioning tech! If we tell Bellamy—"
Aleksander shot his hand out, grabbing Monty firmly by the wrist to stop his frantic rambling.
"If we tell Bellamy, he sends scavengers blindly into the woods to find guns,"
Aleksander stated brutally. "If we tell the camp, they get greedy. They'll break protocol, wander past the perimeter looking for treasure, and the Grounders will slaughter them one by one."
Aleksander let go of Monty's wrist and pointed sharply down at the glowing dots on the map.
"This map is a tactical advantage only if we are disciplined enough to use it properly," Aleksander explained, forcing them to understand the brutal reality of their environment. "We secure our walls first. We train the kids to hold a machete. We make sure they don't panic. Then, and only then, we form a specialized scouting team to hit these yellow and blue nodes."
Monty stared at the coloured dots for another long moment, the sheer temptation of all that supplies and weapons warring with his better judgment. Slowly, the heavy reality of the camp outside set in. He let out a long breath and pulled his hand back.
"You're right," Monty conceded, his shoulders slumping. "If Murphy or any of the others got their hands on a real armory... half the camp would be dead by sundown."
Octavia crossed her arms, her eyes dark and unwavering as she looked at the map. She knew her brother better than anyone. She had watched him scramble to keep the delinquents in line, trading chaos for temporary loyalty just to survive the first few days. Bellamy's hold on the camp was volatile, built on the illusion of absolute freedom. If an influx of military-grade gear or weapons suddenly appeared, it would trigger an immediate, bloody power grab.
"Aleksander's right," Octavia chimed in, her voice firm. "Bellamy's control isn't foolproof. If the others find out there are guns and secret bunkers out here, they'll tear themselves apart fighting over them—and they'll drag us down with them."
Wells nodded, tightening the straps on his pack filled with vacuum-sealed seeds. "We keep it quiet. We use what we need to survive, fix the camp's immediate problems, and keep the map to ourselves."
Clarke looked from Wells to Octavia, then finally to Aleksander. The heavy, utilitarian weight of survival was settling over her, too. She hated keeping secrets, but she was a doctor first. She patted the trauma kits secured in her pack, knowing they had what they needed to save people without risking a civil war back at the dropship.
"Agreed," Clarke said quietly.