CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
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     HER PEN MOVED OVER THE PAPER ABSENTLY, her mind in a different place as she attempted to find anything of use in the binder, scratching out words and sentences that were irrelevant and circling the ones that could have importance. Her head was leaning against the wall at the top of her bed, while Clarke stretched out above her, speaking to Jasper on the opposite side of the bunk.

The doors to the dorm creaked open and Miller came walking through with a smile, Maya and Leo in tow. "Look who finally got released," Jasper remarked with a grin.

"Hey," he greeted casually, apparently not sharing the same panic that others did upon waking up in a strange place. Taylor got up from her bed and wrapped him in a quick hug, smiling at him when they broke apart.

"I was wondering when you'd show up," she said, Miller giving her a playful smirk.

"Miller," Clarke spoke up, gaining his attention. He smiled at her with a nod, looking glad to be around some familiar people despite the calm aura he possessed. "I'm glad you're okay."

"Yeah. It only took, what, three surgeries?" he joked, looking over at Maya, who nodded with a suppressed laugh. He turned to look at Taylor for a moment, but then primarily looking at Clarke. "I hear you're fitting right in."

Clarke's face faltered slightly and her eyes narrowed as she glanced over at Maya. Clearly, she had been the one to tell the tales of every disaster that had taken place since they'd arrived involving Clarke, and presumably Taylor.

Maya's expression shifted with Clarke's, looking slightly apologetic, before handing over a pill bottle she carried to Miller. "Twice a day. Don't forget. He'll be okay in a few days," she told them. She handed Miller a larger duffel bag before moving forward with Jasper. Leo lingered slightly, being oddly quiet the whole time. It looked as if he was about to say something before a blaring alarm went off, similar to the one that had sounded when they had attempted escape.

From down the room, Maya whipped around and started to head to the exit, Clarke descending from the bunk and jumping in front of her before she could leave. "Hey, what's going on?" she questioned, looking between Maya and Leo, both very prepared to leave.

"That signal means a surface patrol is back, and someone needs medical attention," she explained quickly.

"We have to go to quarantine," Leo finally said in addition, Clarke and Taylor glancing at each other somewhat strangely as the two rushed out of the door and down the hall, out of sight. Clarke was quick to attempt to follow, only to be caught by the arm by Jasper.

"Hey, Clarke. What are you doing?" he asked, looking back to the place that Maya had just disappeared and back to his friend anxiously.

"Maybe they found survivors. If our people are hurt, we have a right to know," Clarke rushed out, not wasting any time in breaking from his grasp and making her way to the door again. Taylor watched in thought as the exchange occurred, ultimately deciding that this might be one of their people and it wouldn't hurt to know the place a bit better.

"I'm pretty sure we shouldn't just go wandering around," Jasper tried to tell her, but Clarke was already out the door.

"If we're so welcome here, why not?" Taylor shrugged before following after Clarke in a sprint, Jasper following reluctantly behind with a sigh.

They turned several times down the halls, Clarke clearly having seen where Maya and Leo had gone off to, yellow lights flashing through the halls. Taylor and Jasper, having been lagging behind the whole time, arrived just for Clarke to take the badge off of a man who was just speaking.

"Come on, guys," she urged, pushing her way through a door that she had opened with the keycard she had taken.

Taylor didn't hesitate in following, hearing Jasper say behind her, "Someone's got to keep them out of trouble." They emerged into another starkly white hallway, just like the one that she had first experienced. Quarantine was definitely where they had ended up. Clarke led them into a room, Taylor unsure of how she had guessed where they had to go.

"Clarke, slow down! You have to stop pushing so hard, these people -" Jasper began as Clarke charged into the room, immediately beginning to examine a body that lie motionless on a table.

"Are lying to us," she finished over heavy breaths. "That's a bullet wound. Grounders don't use guns."

"Unless the Grounders got the guns from us," Jasper replied, staring down at the body in shock.

"How? If most of us were taken here with guns strapped to us, it doesn't make sense. I know I had mine with me," Taylor countered, knowing that they hadn't left a single gun lying around by the time the battle had come to an end. Everyone who was able was equipped with one.

"I think our people are alive out there," Clarke revealed, Jasper looking unsure and unable to respond with the arrival of several hazmat suit clad people, enraged to find them there.

"Get them out of here!" a woman commanded. All three stood on in shock as a man was brought in, gasping in pain with almost his entire upper body singed in burns.

__________

Taylor stood near Jasper, patiently waiting for Clarke to return from her own personal examination of the body that they had seen earlier. Cornering Dante was evidently all she needed to do in order to see what she wanted to see.

When she finally entered the dorm, Clarke looked lost in thought as the others stared at her cautiously, as if she was having some sort of mental break. "What did President Wallace say?" Jasper questioned, moving to walk beside her as she headed to the back of the room. Taylor followed curiously, desperate to find something that could incriminate Dante somehow.

"He showed me Shaw's body," Clarke responded tonelessly, staring directly ahead at the wall. She shook her head slightly before leaning against a table next to one of the beds. "It looked like an arrow wound."

"Maybe because it is an arrow wound," Jasper said innocently, clearly wishing that Clarke would stop trying to dig any deeper.

"Then why did it look like a bullet wound when we saw it earlier?" Taylor interjected, crossing her arms defensively. She, for one, wasn't going to give up on trying to escape.

"We don't know what we saw," he denied, looking at Taylor with a paranoid look. It appeared as though she would be looked at in the same way everyone saw Clarke soon enough.

"Or what if that's what they want us to think? What? They could've doctored it," Clarke pointed out as Jasper sighed lightly, giving her a distressed glance.

"Clarke, you sound like a crazy person," he finally admitted in a calm tone, looking at her evenly. "And you're not too far behind, Taylor. Why do you wanna screw this up for us?"

"I don't know what this is!" Clarke retorted in an exasperated tone, her shocked eyes darting away from Jasper to glance at the room.

"This is safe," he argued. "This is food, a real bed, clothes. My personal favorite: not getting speared by Grounders. And how long do you think they'll let us stay if you keep this up?"

"We didn't even have the choice to stay here, Jasper. They kidnapped us," Taylor snapped quickly, not giving Clarke much chance to respond to his words. Miller scoffed slightly from the bed next to where they were standing. Clarke's expression shifted and she narrowed her eyes carefully, pushing off of the table she was leaning against.

"Did someone threaten you?" she questioned lowly, Jasper giving her an incredulous look.

"No. No, it's common sense," he scoffed. "Look, we're guests here, not prisoners. What would you do with a guest who kept calling you a liar? Who generally acted like an ungrateful ass?"

"I'd kick their ungrateful ass out," Miller chimed in from the bed, not even bothering to look up from his reading.

"Right now, the biggest threat to us is you," Jasper finished, looking at both of them far too seriously for Taylor to be okay with that statement. It seemed to be getting to Clarke, who remained silent, but Taylor stepped up and scowled at Jasper.

"How can you even say that? After everything? Right now, my gut is telling me that something isn't right here and so is Clarke's. That's how we even survived until now and I can't believe you're going to believe these people over your own friends," she rambled, taking in a sharp breath when she finally finished. Jasper simply stared at her for a moment before huffing and walking away.

Taylor sat down on her bed again, thinking to herself while making sure to ignore Miller. She wasn't sure if she even wanted to talk to Clarke. Leaning back and resting her head on the pillow, she had only then realized just how little sleep she had gotten in the past month. Her eyes fluttered shut by only accident, and when she woke up, the room was all but virtually empty.

A select few people milled about, leaving her nearly by herself. Unsure of how much time had passed, she was ready to ask Clarke, who had just entered the room as she adjusted to consciousness. But she didn't even get to open her mouth before Clarke was checking the room for anyone else and looking at her urgently.

"Do you remember that man who came in with the radiation burns?" she asked quickly, Taylor nodding in response. "He's nearly all cured. Up and walking and everything."

"That's...weird," Taylor responded, brows furrowing as she thought about any medical treatments she had ever seen, knowing that none of them worked nearly that fast. Clarke was the medical expert and seemed to think the same thing.

"Exactly," she agreed. There was a pause while Clarke regarded the long bandage on her arm before walking down a few bunks and examining the edges of the bed. Rolling up her sleeve, she tore off her bandage and looked between her stitches and the sharp metal.

Taylor jumped up from her bed in a panic and yanked Clarke's arm away from the bed, looking her straight in the face with utter bewilderment. "What the hell are you doing?" she hissed while Clarke took back her arm indignantly.

"Only patients are allowed in medical," she said, Taylor's eyes widening in realization. "We need to know what's going on. You and I are the only ones who really think something's not right."

Taylor thought for a moment, biting her lip pensively before lifting up her shirt to reveal the wound that had been healing steadily since the battle at the dropship. A crooked gash ran down the side of her stomach, the stitches that she had much lighter than Clarke's were. She peeled off the bandage just as Clarke had and took a deep breath, nodding at the other girl.

Clarke dug her arm into the sharp metal edge of the bed, gasping in pain the whole time, but going on nonetheless. By the time she pulled away, her arm was pooling with blood, the edge of the bed smeared with it. Taylor found a lower bit of metal sticking out and did the same, an unpleasant burning sensation crawling into her torso.

She wasn't bleeding nearly as much as Clarke was, but it had done the job. "Come on," Taylor urged, pulling on Clarke's other arm lightly to usher her into the hall. Her other hand was pressed to her side firmly, the sticky, warm substance oozing onto her skin. "Help!"

A guard at the end of the hall perked up and saw the ghastly amount of blood that they were both producing. In no time, they were being led into medical like it wasn't suspicious that both of their stitches gave out at the same time. Taylor expected they would get plenty of questions about that later.

Taylor found herself in a yellow hospital gown as she laid in the bed, new bandages over her wounds. Clarke cleared her throat from the bed beside her and she glanced over, watching as she, in similar clothes with new bandaging as well, crept out of her bed the minute the doctor left the room.

The man she spoke of earlier was in the bed to the right of Taylor, sleeping peacefully as he received his treatment. Both of them leaned over him and Clarke shook him a few times and said his name to no avail. Moving the shoulder of his gown over slightly, she revealed a metal circular object protruding from his skin, tubes flowing with blood going in and out of his body.

"What the hell? Have you ever seen anything like this?" Taylor whispered, Clarke shaking her head in confusion. Her eyes followed the tubes that led into a pipe that ran along the wall that eventually led past a heavy duty door. They wandered over and Clarke immediately began to push on the door, Taylor following suit.

They had no such luck.

"Wait," Clarke alerted, pointing at a grate that was situated about half way up the wall. Taylor started to fiddle with one side while Clarke worked at the other, and easy enough, they were in.

"Your idea, you can go first," Taylor told her, gesturing toward the vent with the ghost of a smile. Clarke rolled her eyes with a suppressed grin and climbed up into the vent. Taylor followed, the cold concrete pinching at her skin at every point of contact as she crawled.

When they finally emerged from the vent out to the other side, Taylor heard Clarke inhale sharply, confusion washing over her for a split second before seeing it for herself.

A dark room spread out in front of them, Taylor feeling absolute horror at what she saw in front of her. Cages stacked upon cages went on for hundreds of feet, all filled with sickly looking captive Grounders. Two were hung from their feet, blood coming out of them through tubes inserted in various places.

Tears welled up in her eyes as she stared on at the scene, not feeling gratified in the slightest about being right about Mount Weather. It seemed infinitely more real now that she had seen it with her own eyes. Now she only felt terrified, not just for herself, but for her friends.