CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
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     THE PANEL LOOSENED until, after much work, it finally came up and they were able to easily get through the open space that would fit someone in. Raven, Taylor, and then Jasper all slid down into the ship together.

     Raven and Jasper each clicked on their flashlights and they looked around, the area as foreign as the world around them had once been. It was strange to her that they were beneath the ship that they inhabited so often.

     "Very cool," Raven commented, her eyes gleaming at the assorted wires and parts that made up the interior.

     "Stop thinking like a mechanic and find me something to shoot through," Jasper told her with an edge to his voice, only confirming the guilt that Taylor had suspected he was feeling.

     "Well, this mechanic's gotta hotwire the door," Raven replied, opening a panel that only revealed more wires than she could count.

Back on the Ark, Taylor had originally entered training to be a mechanic after she had finished her schooling. She hadn't even gotten the chance to complete much of it before Octavia had gotten caught and she was stripped of her chances to ever be one. After that, it was mostly just janitorial duty. Some of what Raven said sometimes made sense, but other times it was far too complicated for her to even comprehend.

"There's the hatch," Jasper pointed out, scooting closer to the metal opening that was shut tightly.

"Locks from above, forget it," Raven dismissed, shutting the panel she had opened and crawled forward. What she was searching for, Taylor was unsure of, but was dedicated to help her in any way that she could.

"Jasper, you can't just go in and shoot from wherever," Taylor told him in a disapproving voice while she followed behind Raven. "If you shoot up there blindly, guns blazing, and you miss...Bellamy's dead and so are we."

Raven opened another panel and Taylor could hear voices speaking above her. If she really tried and moved a little closer, she could make out what they were saying. Bellamy was speaking and her heart lurched at what could be happening just above her.

"Damn it!" Jasper cursed loudly, directing his eyes to the floor above them. "He's up there because of me."

"Shh!" Raven hushed. "Help me find the door circuit." Jasper's words of discouragement did not end there, so Taylor looked at Raven and nodded at the panel, communicating that she would help silently.

"We lost Clarke," he continued hopelessly. "We can't lose Bellamy too."

"You don't know that," Taylor demurred with the shake of her head, her eyes still scanning the walls she passed in search of the door circuit. "She could be fine."

"Do you honestly believe that?" Jasper asked a little louder, Taylor lost for words at the question. Raven shuffled closer to him and shushed him once more.

"Jasper, shut up," she begged him in a whisper, pointing up to the floor above them. "They are like right above your head."

Above them, she heard Murphy raise his voice and she flinched at the sound, her worried thoughts close to zooming out of control. "Good," Jasper said, straining to listen to see where the voice was coming from. "I'll just shoot through the floor. I just need to figure out where Murphy is."

He moved around, trying to pinpoint Murphy's location, but Raven caught his arm. "What did I tell you? It's not that easy and it's dangerous," Taylor scolded in a harsh whisper. Her voice softened when she saw his distressed face. "You're right, we can't lose Bellamy. I refuse to let it happen. Which is why you can't do this."

"Not only that," Raven agreed, her eyes now wandering to large metal tubes above them that were positioned just below the floor. "But look." She tapped it, the flashlight she held revealing that hydrazine was flowing just above their heads. The same liquid she used to build the bomb that obliterated the bridge. She tapped on the tank and the sound of the hydrazine flowing above their heads did not make Taylor feel any better about the situation.

"Holy crap. There's tons of it," Raven exasperated, looking at the tank in awe.

"The engines fired late on the way down. We can make more bombs," Jasper realized. While that was indeed true and would give them the edge over the Grounders they so desperately needed, all Taylor was able to think about was Bellamy and what was happening above them.

"Yeah. Put that on our to-do list," Raven said, looking up at the ceiling before back at Jasper. "But from now on, no shooting, you got me?" Taylor nodded along with her, further solidifying that shooting was definitely not a good idea.

In a timely manner, a gunshot rang out above them, the sound echoing menacingly. If one of those shots was aimed slightly the wrong way, they would all be dead in a fiery inferno. The next thing she worried about was whether or not that shot had hit Bellamy.

"Get that door open," Jasper whispered, Raven nodding in determination. She crawled to a different panel with Taylor in tow, Jasper crouching just behind them with his gun still in hand and his flashlight positioned on the floor between him and Taylor.

Only a minute later did yet another gunshot ring out. Taylor was unsure if that was a good sign or not — another shot meant that Bellamy was still alive, or at least up until just moments ago.

"We need to do this now," Jasper rushed after the shot was fired, all of them feeling the same sense of urgency.

"I'm working as fast as I can," Raven defended, her eyes focused on her hands that were fiddling around with the wires inside of the panel. "The wires for the door are mixed in with the ignition system. Sparking the wrong one would be bad."

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Taylor questioned quickly in a hushed voice, her eyes darting between the panel and Raven.

"Hold these to the side, but be very careful," she ordered, pointing to a few wires that Raven decided weren't the correct ones. Taylor carefully took a few of the wires in her fingers and moved them aside so that Raven could further explore the other ones that rested within the panel.

She moved onto a string that was connected at a base and scanned each one of them. "I think I found it," she confirmed, tilting her head in Jasper's direction. "Get outside. Be ready when it opens."

Jasper hurried in the direction in which they had come, but Taylor didn't move. "Wait," Raven suddenly breathed. "Don't move."

"Why?" Taylor inquired through grit teeth, now frozen in her place.

"One of the wires that I had you move — it looks damaged," she elaborated, pointing to a frayed wire in between Taylor's fingers.

"And that means?" she pushed further, sincerely hoping that if she moved it wouldn't end in their deaths.

"It means that it could fall apart and bad things could happen or I could cut it and bad things could happen," Raven replied, twisting her pliers around in her hands while she looked deep in thought. "It looks like it goes to the thrusters."

"Okay...those are totally shot. After we landed, they should be useless, right?" Taylor tried, hoping that it wouldn't impact that ship in such a way that would doom them.

"Yeah. Unless I happen to be wrong, we risk it, and bad things happen," Raven pondered, her eyebrows furrowed as she stared at the wire.

"Couldn't bad things happen no matter what we do?" Taylor asked, her voice beginning to acquire a frantic quality to it. The more they had this conversation, the more time they wasted, and the more time was left for Murphy to kill Bellamy.

"Yeah...I'm gonna cut it," Raven decided, raising her pliers quickly and not even hesitating before snapping the wire in half. Taylor shut her eyes tightly, expecting something to happen, but opened them to find a slightly relieved Raven who was smirking. "You're lucky that I'm usually right."

Taylor rolled her eyes and a small grin spread across her lips for a moment. Raven continued with her work and split one of the wires, striking it wrong, causing sparks to leap up from the end and onto her fingers.

"Ah!" she let out loudly, both of them freezing after she had. It was much louder than any of their words had been up to that point, even Jasper's ramblings about Clarke, Bellamy, and shooting through the floor.

Several shouts resounded from above them before Taylor jumped back in surprise at the numerous gunshots that went off following the noises, putting her arm up as an involuntary and useless block against the bullets that descended upon them.

When they stopped, she took a few breaths and felt no pain, concluding that none of the shots had hit her anywhere. When she sat up, she discovered that Raven was not so lucky. She clutched her lower side and her face was screwed up in pain. She raised a shaky finger and pointed it to the panel.

"Hotwire it! Hurry!" she panted in a rushed voice. Taylor lunged over to the panel and fumbled with the wires for a moment before she finally got it right. The sound of the doors opening rumbled above them while numerous footsteps thumped on the floor.

"Go," Raven grunted. "Help them. I can get out of here."

"I'm not leaving you," Taylor denied, crawling closer to her bleeding friend. Her hand was placed on her wound in order to staunch the bleeding and she had no idea what they were going to do to help Raven once they got back out of the ship. They had barely any medical supplies, much less anything that could help a bullet wound. "Can you move?"

Raven hesitated before nodding quickly, knowing that she had to move in order to get out. Taylor helped pull her up into a sitting position and they started to slowly scoot to where they had broken the loose panel to get in. With every movement, Raven hissed in pain but assured Taylor she was just fine after she did so.

The light streaming in through the opened panel was a pleasant sight. Taylor climbed up through the panel and propped it up, figuring that this would be the most difficult part; getting Raven out of the ship.

"You're going to have to climb out of here — I'm gonna help you as much as I can, but it's probably going to be pretty painful," Taylor told her. Raven nodded weakly and took the hands that Taylor held out for her. Raven managed to get half of herself out of the bottom of the dropship and out on the ground, but when it came to her waist down was when things got worse.

She cried out in pain loudly, tears welling up in her eyes until she finally tumbled out of the ship and onto the ground below them. Her breaths were more labored now and it seemed like the pain had evolved into something even more severe.

Taylor slipped one of her arms over her shoulders and placed one of her own hands over the wound. "Okay, get ready, we're going to stand," she warned, just so that Raven could prepare herself for the next obstacle in their slow journey to the other side of the dropship.

She heaved her friend up next to her and started to guide her steps to where she could hear a myriad of commotion erupting from the center of the camp. Raven stumbled along beside her in pain, biting down on her lip with every step. Taylor hadn't spotted a bullet on the floor when she had assisted Raven in moving, which only left her to assume that it hadn't left her body.

"Help! Raven's hurt!" she yelled, hoping that someone would hear. So many people had dashed to where they were standing beside the front of the ship, she was unable to even process who was who. "Murphy — he shot her."

Jasper, who was one of the ones in the crowd, agreed with her statement before someone else picked her up from Taylor's arms quickly. Finn rushed away with her at someone's cue and disappeared into the dropship. Wait, Finn? The next person she noticed was Clarke. Both of them hadn't been found by anyone, as far as she knew, and the shock rolling through her was mixed with utter relief.

Stepping forward, she enveloped Clarke in a hug and let out a light laugh of relief. "How are you guys here right now?" she asked when she pulled away, looking at the rather rough looking girl in front of her dumbfoundedly.

"Lincoln," she answered quickly, that easily filling the gap of information that had made their escape from the Grounders seem so impossible.

Out of the corner of her eye, just behind Clarke, Taylor caught sight of Bellamy. A very okay, perfectly alive Bellamy. Inadvertently pushing past Clarke, she then wrapped Bellamy in an almost bone crushing hug. The relief she felt in that moment was exceptionally indescribable.

When she pulled away, her hands drifted from his back to an angry red mark that spanned around his neck, her fingertips brushing it gently. "What did he do to you?" she whispered in horror, her mind going back to the horrible places it had ventured to when he had entered the ship alone.

"I'm okay," he responded, taking her hands in his and lowering them with an almost pleading look in his eyes to let it go. Clarke had caught up with them again and Bellamy gained her attention before she could walk further past them. "Clarke, leaving here is a mistake."

"Since when are we leaving here? Where was I for that choice?" Taylor fired off quickly, her attention now turned to what looked like a new problem.

"The Grounders are coming. We have to leave, we aren't ready," Clarke filled her in, Taylor assuming that this information had come from her time spent in the hands of the Grounders. "The decision's been made."

"Crowds make bad decisions. Just ask Murphy," Bellamy argued, the unfortunate incident that had occurred that seemed so long ago forever haunting them.

"We can't just leave, Clarke. We've been making preparations for days. How are we going to move Raven? If we go, that just gives them the ability to pick us off out in the open," Taylor asserted, Bellamy humming in agreement.

"Leaders do what they think is right," Bellamy added. Clarke hesitated at their words for a moment before shaking her head.

"I am."