CHAPTER FIVE
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THE NEXT DAYS WERE NO EASIER for camp, Jasper's screams and groans traveling across the whole area much to the distaste of virtually everyone in camp. It was setting Taylor's hairs on edge, but she wouldn't go as far as some others who shouted for him to just die already.

She climbed up the ladder to the upper level of the dropship, her hands sliding over each cold metal rung carefully. The smell of infection permeated in the confined space when she popped her head in. Finn, Clarke, Monty, and a dark haired boy who she hadn't seen before were sitting around the room in various places.

"Hey," she greeted with a small smile. "Any better?" She knew the answer to this question already because of the sounds Jasper had been making; the whole camp had heard them. She felt it more polite to ask.

Clarke looked at her oddly as she came over and sat near Jasper's feet. She had gotten the feeling that Clarke wasn't her biggest fan and this was only confirming what she already thought.

"No, I'd say he's worse," she responded sharply. Taylor sighed and stared down at the boy who was whimpering as Clarke dabbed at the spear wound with a cloth. She furrowed her eyebrows while she inspected it. "The Grounders cauterized the wound. Saved his life."

"Saved his life so they could string him up for live bait," Finn remarked as he walked over and leaned up against the wall. "Garden of Eden this ain't." Clarke looked away from him and back towards the wound, the same pensive look on her face.

"This is infected. He could be septic," she deduced grimly.

"It smelled pretty septic when I came up here," Taylor said, earning her yet another odd look from Clarke. She wanted to say something to her but held her tongue.

"Any progress on using the wristbands to contact the Ark?" Clarke asked, turning her head to Monty who was sitting in the corner of the room with multiple wristbands surrounding him. He didn't respond, his vacant stare focused on his wounded best friend. "Monty?"

He snapped his gaze away from Jasper and shook his head, responding, "That would be a firm no."

Clarke closed her eyes and took a breath, turning her head back to her front. "My mother would know what to do," she said quietly. Silence slid into the room, soon interrupted by the sound of another arrival. Wells crouched down next to Clarke and looked at Jasper.

"How's he doing?" he inquired.

"How does it look like he's doing, Wells?" Clarke snapped without even giving him a second glance. Taylor knew that she wasn't Clarke's favorite, but whatever Wells had done was evidently much worse than whatever she could have done.

"Hey, I'm just trying to help," Wells defended calmly, his tone contrasting greatly with the one that Clarke had used. She looked down and took a deep breath.

"All right, you wanna help? Hold him down," she ordered, Wells doing so obediently. The dark haired boy, who had been silent the entire time, stood up and looked at Clarke questioningly.

"What are you doing?" he asked frantically as Finn joined in and took hold of Jasper's legs next to Wells. Taylor stood up and took a small step back, expecting more expressions of pain to be elicited from the boy. Clarke grabbed and knife and stuck it into the small bowl of fire burning beside her.

"I'm not gonna like this, am I?" Monty said as he looked around at the others nervously. His question garnered no answer. Clarke began to work the knife against Jasper's skin, his screams filling the room and likely the entire rest of the camp.

"Hold him still!" Clarke commanded. "I need to cut away the infected flesh." Jasper's screams faded and his eyes rolled to the back of his head; he had passed out from the pain. Octavia rushed in with widened eyes.

"Stop it! You're killing him!" she demurred loudly as Clarke checked his pulse.

"She's trying to save his life," Finn told her quickly in defense. Yet another person arrived, making the area extremely crowded and even stuffier than it had been before.

"She can't," Bellamy denied as he strode in. Wells sighed and stood up, not looking like he wanted to deal with Bellamy at all.

"Back off," he warned. He said it in a way so calm that it didn't come off as very threatening. Taylor was learning that her previous judgments of Wells had been wrong. It was certain that Wells was far from the same person as his father.

"We didn't drag him through miles of woods just to let him die," Clarke said tensely, not even looking back at Bellamy.

Without missing a beat he responded, "Kid's a goner. If you can't see that, you're deluded. He's making people crazy." Taylor's face contorted in anger and as did Clarke's.

"Sorry if Jasper's an inconvenience to you, but this isn't the Ark. Down here, every life matters," she asserted bitterly.

"Take a look at him. He's a lost cause," Bellamy continued. Everyone was quiet for a moment, looking down at Jasper. Taylor had to admit that he was in bad shape, but that didn't mean they could just leave him to die. She had seen enough death on the Ark and one thing she could agree with Clarke on was that they weren't going to throw away life on the ground.

"Octavia, I've spent my whole life watching my mother heal people," Clarke assured, catching a glimpse of Octavia's worried expression. "If I say there's hope, there's hope."

"This isn't about hope, it's about guts," Bellamy interjected. "You don't have the guts to make the hard decisions. I do."

"You've really had the guts to be an asshole, lately. Must be so hard," Taylor snapped as she stared him down irately. She wasn't going to hold back any longer. She wasn't going to deal with Bellamy's strange actions or Clarke's passive comments any longer. Getting pushed around wasn't something she was going to tolerate.

"He's been like this for three days," Bellamy said, only giving Taylor a hardened glance in response to her comment. "If he's not better by tomorrow, I'll kill him myself."

He walked over to the ladder nonchalantly as if he hadn't just made a threat on Jasper's life. "Octavia, let's go," he ordered with one hand on the top bar of the ladder.

"I'm staying here," she told him simply, refusing to look at him like Clarke had been doing the entire time. He appeared disgruntled before exiting without another word.

"Power-hungry, self-serving jackass," Monty insulted the minute Bellamy was out of sight. "He doesn't care about anyone but himself." He glanced at Taylor and Octavia. "No offense."

"Honestly I'm having a hard time even trying to disagree with you, so none taken," she responded lightly, attempting to let all of her anger at Bellamy melt away. Octavia silently shrugged, having nothing to add to the conversation.

"Yeah, Bellamy is all that. But he also happens to be right," Finn said, earning him a few surprised looks from everyone else in the room.

"I need some air," Clarke announced, leaving the room quickly. Her heavy footfalls faded and both Wells and Finn were quick to also 'get some air' not long after her. It only left the four of them in the room, quietly sitting around Jasper's sickbed.

"So what's this wristband thing Clarke was talking about?" Taylor asked, directing her attention to Monty. He sighed and took a pause before speaking.

"I think there's a way to use it to get some message to the Ark in place of the communication systems," he explained quietly. Taylor nodded, only imaging how Bellamy would react to that information. A few more minutes passed and she decided that nobody in the room was medically qualified to be alone with Jasper that long. They needed Clarke.

"I'm going to see where Clarke went. He needs her and we're not, you know, qualified doctors," she told the group. They all nodded sullenly as Taylor exited the glum atmosphere. The open doors to the ship provided a beautiful, refreshing breeze of cool air.

When she glanced outside there was no sign of Clarke. She felt it ironic that Clarke was so adamant on Jasper not dying but wasn't even there to help him. Sighing, she was about to turn back but furrowed her eyebrows when she heard the sounds of shouts and thundering footsteps.

When she looked up she saw a deep yellow fog rolling over the trees. Some people standing around didn't seem to yet be aware of the running people or deadly looking fog. "Hey! Everyone inside!" she tried yelling out to the ones who were still immobile. This seemed to alert them as most of the people in the camp had begun retreating back into the dropship.

Once she was sure that everyone was inside, she yanked the lever that closed the doors just as the fog had begun to tumble over the camp. Everyone inside was yelling and scrambling around in panic.

"Hey! Calm down!" she tried yelling. Her voice was not quite loud or authoritative enough to gain the delinquent's attention. She let out a sharp, irritated breath before yelling, "SHUT UP!" The teenagers ceased their yelling and crying out, all looking towards her. A few people coughed violently, being the ones who were closest to the fog when it arrived.

"Someone needs to make sure that everything is closed up," she told them. "Whatever that is, it's clearly not anything good." A few of the people in the crowd hurried off to do so, double checking every crack and crevice of the ship to make sure that the fog wouldn't penetrate the structure.

"Who made you boss?" someone snapped from the crowd. It did not surprise Taylor to find that it was Murphy who had said it. "I, for one, am not gonna do anything you tell me to." Her instincts told her to walk away and shut herself off to such criticism but instead, she didn't hold her tongue; she didn't hold back.

"Do you wanna try me, Murphy? Because last time I checked, you were taking orders from someone else anyway," she spat. Her heart was beating rapidly, the unusual feeling of taking control making her slightly nervous. "Nobody opens this door for any reason. Got it?"

Nobody objected to her orders and it seemed that she had quieted Murphy for the time being. Taylor pushed through the crowd and climbed the ladder again, a sick feeling in her stomach. She knew that Bellamy was still out there and Finn, Clarke, and Wells were unaccounted for. And she had been the one to shut the door on them.

Jasper looked like a wreck. He was a pasty white and beads of sweat covered his face. His grunts of agony had not ceased. The ship was twice as stuffy and terrible smelling; having every single one of them crammed into the confined space and Jasper's condition was not a good mix.

She crawled up and over the hatch and took a set next to it. Octavia and the other boy chatted calmly and quietly and Taylor looked down at her feet. There was nothing they could do at that moment. She hated to think it, but Clarke was their only hope at saving Jasper. Looking over at her companions, she knew that the only way they would get through it was together.

Monty excused himself to get some water and she nodded as he passed her, his boots clicking on the metal while he descended the ladder. Octavia cast a look toward Taylor and she raised her eyebrows, looking for some clarification as to why she was giving her such a look.

Octavia handed the rag that she was using to wipe the sweat from Jasper's face to the boy and scooted slightly closer to Taylor. "Can you talk to him?" she asked in a lowered voice, clearly meaning for that conversation to be a private one.

"Who?" Taylor questioned, confused as to what exactly Octavia was asking of her.

"Bell! You know how he's been lately," she responded impatiently as if she should have known that from the beginning. Taylor rolled her eyes and sighed.

"I've tried that. What makes you think I'll make any difference?" she said, having given up on trying to talk to Bellamy and instead hoping that his attitude would fade.

"He listens to you," Octavia told her honestly. Before Taylor got a chance to respond, loud noises erupted from below them. They heard Monty before they saw him, his yells of warning resonating through the small space as he hurried up the ladder.

"Murphy's gonna kill Jasper!" he shouted in a panic. The minute he had cleared the hatch both he and Taylor tried to shut it before Murphy could get up. Octavia kicked him in the head, allowing Taylor and Monty to get themselves on top of the hatch while he grunted in pain below them. "The lock's on the other side! Chandler, help!"

The boy whom Taylor had not known the name of up until that point sprung into action and started to look around frantically for a solution with Octavia who ordered, "Don't let him in!" Murphy wasn't relenting and pounded on the hatch, causing Taylor and Monty to bounce up and down with every hit.

"I'm gonna kill him, okay? Let me in!" Murphy yelled from the other side. Taylor wanted to scoff at his remarks. Did he really think that was convincing enough to make them want to let him in? "Let me in, Monty!"

Octavia grabbed a pipe of some sort and began to yank at it desperately. " No rush! We're fine here!" Monty yelled as the banging intensified and the two tried their best to hold it down.

"I got it!" Octavia exclaimed, dashing over to the hatch. "Move it!" Taylor and Monty scooted out of the way quickly and she pushed the bar through the handle, securing it so that nothing could get through.

Taylor couldn't count the hours they spent locked in the ship. She only knew that it must have been over when she heard the grinding pull of the doors opening. All four of them in the room decided that they would keep the hatch locked for a little while longer to be safe. They had no way of knowing what was still going through Murphy's mind. His attempts to open it had ceased but for all they knew he could be waiting there the moment they opened it.

When they finally opened it, barely anyone was left inside of the dropship. Taylor was the first to come down, Octavia following suit. Chandler and Monty stayed, insisting that they would stay with their friend. During the time they had been locked in together, she had learned that the three had been best friends on the Ark; practically inseparable since as long as they could remember.

It was now dark, the faint light of the fire illuminating the camp outside. Octavia went outside to find the source of the loud commotion happening. Taylor could hear the loud mumbling of a crowd from inside of the ship. She decided to stay, just in case anyone uninvited decided to show up.

Clarke pushed the tarp aside and appeared through the doorway. She was holding a bag with seaweed flowing over the edges. Taylor glanced at her and nodded while Clarke just looked at her before climbing up the ladder.

A few moments later, Octavia rushed in looking extremely upset. "O, what's wrong?" she asked quickly, stepping in front of the ladder so that she couldn't avoid telling her. All Octavia did was pull her into a hug, letting out a few cries. Taylor took this to mean that she wasn't going to tell her.

So she hugged Octavia back and assured her that everything was okay. "Go get some rest, okay? I'll check in later," she said and Octavia nodded, climbing up the ladder almost dejectedly. She snapped her head around and walked over to the tarp when she heard the echoes of Bellamy's yells.

She rolled her eyes at the sight of him up in Murphy's face, yet she didn't really care that it was Murphy who he was yelling at. Stepping out of the ship, she caught sight of Bellamy storming away from Murphy. She followed him reluctantly, thinking about what Octavia asked of her earlier.

Taylor found him around the dropship, leaning against the wall looking like he was trying to compose himself. She didn't say a word and simply leaned against the wall next to him. "What happened to Octavia?" she questioned in a low voice. Neither of them looked at each other yet, the tension from earlier still there.

"Atom's dead," he responded gruffly. Taylor looked up at him, his eyes swimming with something that she couldn't quite detect. "Acid fog."

She didn't respond. One thing she knew about their new world was that she was going to have to get used to this happening. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

"I'm sorry. I was an ass," he said suddenly. She opened her eyes and turned her head towards him, shooting him a questioning look. Taylor had no idea what exactly had happened out there but she didn't need to ask; he didn't need to tell her.

"At least you know," she scoffed. He turned and gave her a soft, almost pleading look. She sighed and pushed off of the wall and made her way in front of him. "You can't keep going on like this if we want to survive."

She figured that on some level he already knew that he needed to slow his roll a bit. His fear of the dangers of the ground had far outweighed his fear of the Ark coming down, at least for now. "We'll talk later," she told him, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder before walking back towards the glow of camp.