The heavy wooden gates of the camp swung open, and the low hum of activity inside instantly fell dead silent.
Aleksander walked through the entrance, his expression entirely unreadable. Slung effortlessly over his shoulder was a full-grown man, completely limp. But it wasn't the body that caused the delinquents to stop and stare—it was what the man was wearing.
The prisoner was clad in a thick, synthetic gray hazmat suit, outfitted with heavy tactical webbing and a terrifying, dark-visored gas mask that completely obscured his face. He looked like a nightmare pulled straight out of a pre-war history textbook.
Whispers rapidly swept through the camp as teenagers crowded closer, their eyes wide with fear and confusion.
"What the hell is that?" someone muttered from the back.
"Is that a Grounder?" another asked, shrinking away as Aleksander carried the unconscious man toward the center of the camp.
Hearing the commotion, the core group pushed their way through the gathering crowd. Bellamy, Octavia, Clarke, Wells, Jasper, Monty, Raven, and Finn emerged into the clearing just as Aleksander unceremoniously dumped the heavy, suited figure onto the dirt near the dropship ramp.
The guard hit the ground with a muffled, heavy thud. He didn't move.
Jasper took one look at the tactical gear and the gas mask, aggressively shaking his head. "Nope. No way. That is definitely not what threw a spear through my chest. The guys we saw were wearing animal skins and war paint."
"Jasper's right," Monty agreed, taking a cautious step back. "That looks like... radiation gear. High-tech."
Bellamy immediately stepped in front of Octavia, his hand dropping to the grip of the assault rifle slung across his chest. His tactical mind was racing. "Alex, what the hell did you just bring into my camp?"
"Not a Grounder," Aleksander answered calmly, rolling his shoulders to stretch the muscles. "His name is Jack. He is a guard from Mount Weather."
The name hit the inner circle, but this time, it wasn't with pure disbelief—it was with a grim, sickening realization.
"You were right," Clarke breathed, her medical mind instantly analyzing the heavy filtration tubes attached to the gas mask. She looked at Wells and Bellamy. "When the pod crashed... Alex told us whoever was in Mount Weather was occupied and had the tech to jam our radios. This is them."
"Very much so," Aleksander confirmed, his dark eyes sweeping over the leadership circle. "They survived the bombs by sealing themselves underground. But they don't have our genetic adaptations to solar radiation or the ambient fallout on the surface. They cannot breathe the air outside their bunker without melting from radiation poisoning. Hence, the suit."
Finn stared at the unconscious man, a deep, uneasy look crossing his face. Since he had been completely frozen out of Aleksander's inner circle, he had no idea about the radio jamming or the tactical theories. All he saw was advanced technology.
"Why did you bring him here?" Finn demanded, stepping forward, his voice laced with his usual, frantic need for peace. "If they live in Mount Weather and have this kind of tech, they're civilized. They aren't the ones shooting arrows at us in the woods. We should wake him up and talk to him. We could broker an alliance."
Aleksander turned his head, looking at Finn with a gaze so cold it could freeze boiling water. He needed to shut the boy down without exposing his telepathy to the rest of the camp.
"Civilized?" Aleksander repeated, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous register. "I found Jack and five of his heavily armed friends in the woods. I watched them oversee a massacre. They were using high-pitched sonic transmitters to control a pack of mutated, feral cannibals—directing them to slaughter a Grounder village."
Finn faltered, shaking his head. "Wait... controlling them? How do you know that?"
"Because I stripped this man's tactical webbing before I brought him here," Aleksander lied smoothly, providing a flawless, observable explanation for the camp. "He was carrying specialized chemical restraints and syringes filled with synthetic narcotics. They are capturing Grounders, drugging them, and turning them into monsters to terrorize the woods for them."
Behind Aleksander, Clarke, Bellamy, and Wells exchanged a heavy, subtle look. They knew exactly how Aleksander actually got those specific details—he had ripped them straight from the Mountain Man's mind. But the cover story worked perfectly, grounding the horrifying truth in physical evidence the rest of the camp could understand.
The color drained from Raven's face, and Octavia looked physically sick at the thought of what was happening out in the woods.
"They don't want an alliance, Finn," Aleksander stated ruthlessly, completely dismantling the boy's naive worldview in front of everyone. "They view everyone on the surface as expendable lab rats. I brought him here because he is a prisoner of war. And he is going to tell us exactly how to bypass Mount Weather's security protocols."
Bellamy stepped forward, a hard, dangerous smirk crossing his face as he looked down at the Mountain Man. He completely ignored Finn, looking directly at Aleksander.
"Take him to the third level of the dropship," Bellamy ordered, fully stepping into his role as a wartime leader. "Tie him to the support beams. Let's see exactly what the Mountain Men are made of."
The heavy metal hatch of the third level clanged shut, sealing the inner circle inside with their prisoner.
They had stripped the Mountain Man of his gray hazmat suit, his gas mask, and his tactical webbing, leaving him tied securely to a thick metal support beam in nothing but his drab, olive-green undergarments. Jack was completely unresponsive, his chest rising and falling in a deep, unnatural rhythm—courtesy of Aleksander's sleeping spell.
Down on the main deck, Finn had been ordered to stay back, left under the watchful eye of Raven, who was still quietly processing the fact that the boy she loved was practically a stranger.
On the upper deck, however, the atmosphere was suffocating.
Aleksander stood in the center of the room, looking at the unconscious guard with absolute disgust. Clarke, Bellamy, Wells, Octavia, Monty, and Jasper stood in a tight circle around him, the adrenaline of the day rapidly giving way to profound horror as Aleksander finally dropped his cover story and shared exactly what he had ripped from the Mountain Man's mind.
"The Cerberus Project—turning the Grounders into Reapers—is only half of their operation," Aleksander explained, his voice low and devoid of any warmth. "They have another system running in that bunker. They call it the Harvest Project."
"Harvest?" Clarke repeated, her medical instincts immediately sensing something terrible. "Harvesting what?"
"Blood," Aleksander stated bluntly. "As I told you outside, the Mountain Men cannot survive the ambient radiation on the surface. But they have found a treatment. They use Grounder captives as living filters."
He looked at Clarke, knowing she would understand the biological horror of it faster than anyone else.
"When a Mountain Man needs a treatment, they select a Grounder—usually the strongest ones first," Aleksander detailed ruthlessly. "They stun them, knock them out, and hang them upside down in a specialized chamber. They then hook their veins directly into a dialysis machine, circulating the Grounder's highly oxygenated, radiation-resistant blood through the Mountain Man's system. It takes about an hour and a half to heal the radiation damage."
"And the Grounders?" Octavia asked, her voice trembling slightly. "What happens to them after the treatment?"
"It is not a quick death," Aleksander answered, his voice dripping with cold contempt. "Each captive is kept in a cage and used multiple times. They are drained over weeks or months until their bodies inevitably begin to fail. And when they are completely depleted—often while they are still barely conscious and clinging to life—the Mountain Men simply dispose of them."
He paused, letting his dark eyes sweep over the group so they fully understood the depravity they were up against.
"They throw them down into the old mine tunnels like scraps of meat, leaving them in the dark for the Reapers to feast on."
The room was dead silent. Jasper looked like he was going to throw up, pressing both hands over his mouth as he backed away from the unconscious guard. Monty stared at the Mountain Man as if he were looking at the devil himself.
Bellamy's jaw clenched so tight a muscle ticked in his cheek. He had done terrible things to get on the dropship, but this? This was industrial, systematic slaughter.
"They're vampires," Bellamy growled, gripping the barrel of his rifle so hard his knuckles turned white. "They're literal, bloodsucking parasites."
"They are scientists without a conscience," Aleksander corrected, stepping closer to the center of the group to ensure they grasped the ultimate threat. "The Mountain Men have been trapped in that bunker for nearly a century. They are desperate to find a permanent way to survive on the surface without their hazmat suits. The Harvest Project is just a temporary fix."
He let the heavy silence stretch for a second before delivering the final, lethal piece of the puzzle.
"Now," Aleksander said, his voice dropping to a terrifying whisper. "We were born in space. We possess genetic adaptations to solar radiation that far exceed what the Grounders have naturally developed. And do not fool yourselves into thinking our arrival went unnoticed. Mount Weather probably has known we are here since the second our dropship hit the dirt. They have been observing us from day one—watching ninety-eight teenagers with heavily modified, ultra-radiation-resistant blood set up camp right in their backyard..."
Aleksander let the sentence hang in the air, allowing the horrifying implication to settle over them.
"What do you think they will do to us?" Aleksander finished.
Clarke felt the blood drain entirely from her face. Her medical brain instantly ran the horrifying calculus. "They wouldn't just kill us. They would put us in cages. They would drill into our bones to get to the marrow. They would harvest us until there was absolutely nothing left, just so they could walk on the ground."
"Exactly," Aleksander nodded, the predatory authority returning to his posture. "This is not a war over territory. This is a war over our literal biology. If we do not eradicate Mount Weather, they will consume every single one of us."