After Finn's heavy footsteps faded down the metal ramp, an awkward silence settled over the middle deck.
Raven sighed, rubbing the back of her neck. She looked at Aleksander, Clarke, and Bellamy, a deep flush of embarrassment creeping up her neck. She loved Finn, but sitting in a room full of people who were actively trying to keep everyone alive made his outburst look incredibly childish.
"I'm sorry about him," Raven apologized, offering a weak, defensive smile. "He just... he wants everything to be okay. He can be a bit too naive sometimes."
Aleksander didn't smile back. He looked at the spot where Finn had just been standing, his dark eyes cold and calculating.
"That is exactly what I am worried about, Raven," Aleksander said quietly. "Naivety on Earth is a fatal condition. And usually, the naive person isn't the one who pays the price."
Raven swallowed hard, the absolute truth of his words stinging more than she wanted to admit. She pushed the thought away, reverting to what she knew best: the mission.
"Right," Raven muttered, turning her back on the tension. "Let's get this radio working."
The Signal
Aleksander, Raven, and Monty gathered around the stripped-down communication console on the lower deck. The modifications were complete. They had bypassed the heavy audio transmitters and rigged the system to punch a single, concentrated stream of data through the electromagnetic jamming field.
Raven tapped the makeshift telegraph key she had wired to the motherboard. A sharp, high-pitched ping echoed from the console.
"Okay," Raven breathed, her fingers hovering over the key. "The bypass is holding. I'm transmitting on the Ark's primary emergency frequency. Let's hope someone is listening."
With practiced speed, Raven began tapping out the Morse code.
Dot, dot, dash.
Aleksander and Monty watched in tense silence as she repeated the sequence three times to ensure it broke through the static, sending the most important message in human history up into the stars.
98 Delinquents alive. Earth is survivable. Hostile survivors on the ground.
The Ark: Earth Monitoring Station
High above the toxic clouds, the Ark was draped in its usual heavy, oppressive silence. In the dim light of the Earth Monitoring Station, Dr. Jackson was sitting at the comms console, rubbing his tired eyes. He had been staring at the static of Sector 7 for days, hoping for a miracle after the wristbands had all mysteriously gone dark.
Suddenly, a rhythmic, piercing beep cut through the white noise of the speakers.
Jackson bolted upright in his chair. He slammed his headphones over his ears, his hands flying across the keyboard to isolate the frequency.
"No way," Jackson whispered, his heart hammering against his ribs. He grabbed his radio. "Chancellor Jaha. Dr. Griffin. You need to get to Earth Monitoring right now. We have a signal."
Within minutes, the heavy doors to the monitoring station hissed open. Chancellor Jaha strode in, closely followed by Abigail Griffin, Marcus Kane, and Chief Engineer Sinclair. Right behind them, walking with the rigid, commanding posture of Alpha Station elite, were Joseph and Ygraine—Aleksander's parents, who had been heavily involved behind closed doors since the dropship launched.
"Jackson, what is it?" Abby demanded, rushing to the console. "Is it Clarke? Are they alive?"
"It's a Morse code ping, punching through the localized interference," Sinclair noted, looking over Jackson's shoulder at the raw data scrolling across the screen. "Brilliant engineering. Someone stripped the audio to force the signal."
"Decode it," Jaha ordered, gripping the edge of the table.
Jackson hit a few keys, running the sequence through the translation software. A moment later, bright green text flashed across the main monitoring screen.
98 DELINQUENTS ALIVE. EARTH IS SURVIVABLE.
A collective, breathless gasp filled the room. Abby covered her mouth, tears of pure relief flooding her eyes. Jaha let out a massive sigh, the crushing weight of sending a hundred children to their deaths finally lifting off his shoulders. Even Sinclair allowed a wide smile to break across his face.
"They did it," Abby whispered, laughing through her tears. "They're alive."
But as the room erupted into quiet cheers and relieved sighs, the screen refreshed, translating the final line of the transmission.
HOSTILE SURVIVORS ON THE GROUND.
The celebration died instantly. The temperature in the room seemed to plummet.
Kane stepped closer to the screen, his tactical mind immediately shifting into war-room mode. "Hostile survivors... People. There are people down there who survived the bombs."
"And they are attacking our children," Ygraine said, her voice like cracking ice. She stood perfectly straight, her sharp, aristocratic features hardening. She looked at her husband.
Joseph's jaw was clenched so tight a muscle ticked in his cheek. He had known Earth was a gamble, but he hadn't anticipated an active warzone waiting for them in the dirt.
Abby's relief instantly morphed back into terror. "We have to go down. We have to send the Guard to help them."
"We can't just drop the Guard blindly in single pods into hostile territory," Kane argued firmly, looking at Jaha. "If they are organized enough to be labeled a threat by our people, we are looking at a completely unknown enemy force. We need to bring the stations down together."
"My son is down there," Ygraine interrupted, turning her piercing gaze onto Kane and Jaha. "And if Aleksander deemed the threat severe enough to include it in a desperate distress ping, then it is not a minor skirmish. They are fighting for their lives."
Jaha stared at the glowing green letters, the reality of their salvation turning into a nightmare. Earth was survivable, but it was already occupied. He turned away from the screen, his face grim, and looked directly at his Chief Engineer.
"Sinclair," Jaha said, his voice heavy with the burden of leadership. "The Aegis Project. How long until it is ready for launch?"
A heavy silence fell over the engineers in the room.
The Aegis Project wasn't an original Ark Council design. It was a highly classified, revolutionary blueprint that Aleksander had left behind in his personal diary for his parents and Sinclair before he was sent to the ground. Using advanced, theoretical force-field technology, Aegis was designed to encapsulate the Ark's massive stations in a protective energy barrier, allowing the colossal metal structures to survive the brutal friction of atmospheric reentry and safely touch down on the surface without shattering.
It was a brilliant, reality-defying failsafe. But building it on a dying space station was a monumental task.
Sinclair let out a long, exhausted sigh, rubbing his hands over his face. He looked at the Chancellor, then briefly at Joseph and Ygraine, the weight of the impossible math crushing him.
"A year," Sinclair answered, his voice thick with dread. "To retrofit the thrusters, generate the required power output for the force-fields, and ensure the structural integrity of the stations... it will take us a minimum of one year."
Abby felt the blood drain from her face. "A year? They have to fight off a hostile ground force by themselves for a year?"
Nobody answered her. They just stared at the glowing green text on the screen, the horrifying reality settling over them all. The Ark was coming, but until the force-fields were ready, the hundred were completely on their own.