✧】0. prologue【✧

AMERY EKKER SITS straight up in her bed, cursing under her breath as any trace of sleep flees, no doubt scared away by the frustration emanating from every part of her consciousness. Swinging her feet over the side of the creaky mattress, she groans at the cold of the floor that immediately seeps into her skin. With a shudder, she snatches some pants and a flannel, tugging it on loosely over her white shirt. As she wrangles her hair into a haphazard braid, she slips her feet into her favorite worn combat boots and slips out the door, wandering down the dark halls of Mecha Station. The low buzz of machinery and the clicking of her soles against the ground are the only soundtrack against the quiet night. 

"Frickin' transmitter," she mutters to herself as she walks, flashing a keycard to grant her access to the workspace holding the dropship. "Stupid, stupid." Sinclair assigned her to the comms systems, stressing that the task was "more important than avoiding Marcus Kane on Unity Day" but refusing to tell her anything else about the project.

"You need to keep this one on the down-low," he'd explained, and Amery picked up on the low waver of nerves in the familiar warmth of his voice. "Especially from Reyes, alright? Too curious for her own good, that one."

Amery had grimaced, which didn't go unnoticed by Sinclair. She hated keeping secrets from her friends, but Sinclair gave her a pleading look that reminded her so much of those cute puppy commercials that played between segments of the old association football recordings that she just nodded.

Whatever the ship updates are for, she's sure Sinclair has a good reason for keeping it a secret. She trusts him like she would a father. Like she did her father, before Kane floated him and left her another one of too many orphans on a giant space station.

Slipping through the door, Amery climbs up to the second floor of the ship and pushes the hatch open with a clang. She grips a flashlight from her tool belt between her teeth, then dislodges one of the ceiling tiles from the top of a crate and pulls herself up with ease. A strand of ratty auburn hair falls into her vision and she blows it away in a huff of irritation. She had realized in the middle of the night that she'd forgotten to rewire the main transmitter to reach the screen on the ship's first floor. She doesn't want to half-ass this job, not when it's obviously so important to Sinclair.

Lying on her back, Amery finishes rewiring and slams the circuit box closed in time with another loud, mechanical sound coming from below. She sighs, flicking off her flashlight and shoving it back into her tool belt. Sinclair must've been alerted that the door opened, and now she's going to have to explain how she wasn't thorough enough to get the transmitter wiring right the first time— at two in the morning, no less.

But the deep voice that bounces off the dropship's metal walls isn't Sinclair's.

"In a seat! Buckle up!" the voice demands, and the ship fills with the sound of heavy footsteps and confused muttering. Amery can't tell how many people there are, but they just keep coming. They all sound young– both boys and girls, some of them shouting, some of them in tears, but all of them with no idea what's going on. Instinctively, the mechanic rolls to her stomach and flattens herself against the ceiling tiles, sliding the one she's dislodged back into place and leaving a small gap to see through.

"I said buckle up, kid. You wanna survive the atmospheric hit, you're gonna need that," the guard's voice says before disappearing down the hatch. Atmospheric hit?

"What's going on?" a girl's voice wails, accompanied by several small sniffles. What is going on? Amery thinks, about to slide the panel back and drop down to the floor, demanding an explanation. She needs to explain to the Guard that she's not supposed to be here. She doesn't know where this ship is going, but she doesn't like the way it sounds. What if they get the wrong idea and arrest her just for being here? How do they know she wasn't trying to sabotage the systems instead of fixing them? But then she hears something else.

"It's okay, it's okay," a male voices murmurs to the distressed girl, soft and gentle, full of familiar warmth and reassurance. "Hey, just stick with me, alright? We got this. It's... it's just, uh, Earth. We handled space. We can handle Earth."

Earth? Amery thinks, mind spinning as she squints through her gap in the tiles. The new destination is shocking, but she doesn't care about that as much as she cares about the owner of the new voice.

She presses a hand tightly against her mouth to stifle a loud gasp. It takes several blinks to process the head of brown curls on the room's opposite wall, the distinctive voice of comfort and trust and home associated with the sight of his face.

"Keaton," she whispers to nobody but herself, tears threatening to escape the threshold of her eyes. Amery makes her decision quickly and silently. She is staying in this dropship. She is going to Earth. She is going for Keaton, to make up for everything, to see him again after four years and beg him to forgive her and do whatever she can to make sure Earth doesn't kill him or his spirit. She owes him this much.

Tightly gripping two thick cables as the ship begins to shake, Amery knows it's too late to change her mind now. Sorry, Sinclair, she thinks as the ship detaches from the Ark. But I'm doing this for you, too.

Amery is sure that Sinclair would prefer her keep an eye on his son instead of doing minuscule mechanic jobs around Mecha and Tesla all day. She thinks of his pained expression and quiet demeanor on Keaton's birthday every year, the way Sinclair would seem to melt into the Ark's unforgiving walls in his son's absence. She thinks of the way her heart would shatter every time, because it was her fault Sinclair looked like that, her fault Keaton was taken away.

Did all of the kids on this ship came from the Skybox, too? Amery doesn't recognize many of them, but a few faces ring a bell. Zoe Monroe sits in the corner, knuckles white around the straps of her seatbelt, leaning into the shoulder of Harper McIntyre, whom Amery remembers from her first Earth Skills class. She'd always liked them.

The ship shakes violently and suddenly, triggering a scream that escapes Amery's mouth as she tumbles to the side, every bone in her body shaking. Her hands sting from holding the cables so tightly, her muscles straining as she refuses to let the ship throw her around. Her loud outburst is luckily drowned out in the reactions of the kids below, filling the ship with similar shouts of alarm and panic.

"What was that?" one girl cries, and is answered by a deeper voice from somewhere Amery can't see.

"The atmosphere."

Amery remembers the words of the male guard. Atmospheric hit. Are they really going to Earth?

As the ship's shaking dulls slightly, the redhead's attention shifts to listening as a familiar voice echoes through the speakers of the ship.

"Prisoners of the Ark, hear me now," comes the voice of Thelonious Jaha, and Amery doesn't need to see below to know that it's his face appearing on the screens. This is why she had to rewire the comms systems? So Jaha could bid farewell to half the Skybox? A flurry of anger trickles through her blood like water from a faucet, and she clamps her bottom lip between her teeth before she can let out a growl of frustration. "You've been given a second chance, and as your Chancellor, it is my hope that you see this as not just a chance for you, but a chance for all of us..."

Amery tunes him out, returning to quietly scanning the top floor of the dropship. She doesn't need to hear the Chancellor's self-sacrificing courage spiel. Around Mecha, they'd look both ways to make sure guards weren't around and then call the man "The Loneliest Haha." A stupid name, a serious lack of tact and creativity, but the only revenge she and her friends had against the person who had so much power, the person who took so many people from their families without flinching.

Something new draws her attention– a gruff voice shouting, "Your dad is a dick, Wells."

At first, Amery thinks the guy must be speaking rhetorically, but then she catches sight of the dark skin of the Chancellor's son himself. He's talking to the girl she recognizes as Abby Griffin's daughter. She doesn't remember her name. They didn't talk much before the blonde teenager got locked up. What the hell is Wells on this ship for? she thinks, trying to put together what she knows.

They're all from the Skybox, as far as she can tell, except she has no clue how Wells could have possibly ended up in there. Almost every station is represented from her perspective in the ceiling. Then, a series of shouting and obnoxious whoops leads Amery's eyes to a kid who's... floating around, out of his seat.

"Spacewalker!" the teens are hollering as the guy smirks and ruffles his too-long hair with a wink in the other direction.

You idiot, Amery thinks, but then realizes this is her opening. There's no way she'll survive the landing in the ceiling if this ship is really going to Earth.

Suddenly, something sparks behind her, singing the edge of her sock and left pant leg. Lights below flicker rapidly and the open air fills with startled screams. A sharp bump slams Amery into the wall, eliciting a loud curse lost in the symphony of panic below.

Before Amery can think twice, she slides the ceiling panel to the right and drops down, landing on one knee on the second floor of the ship. She winces at the impact, but lifts her head in determination.

All eyes are on her.

For a moment, the second deck is silent. Then one kid– John, she thinks– whistles lowly, looking her up and down with wide eyes.

"A stowaway, huh?" he quips with a grin, and the surrounding prisoners break into an explosion of noise. Amery shoots daggers at him with her eyes and darts to the Spacewalker's open seat, buckling in before anyone can protest. It's his fault he chose to be so irresponsible. This seat belongs to her now. Some other boys have followed the Spacewalker's lead, recklessly leaving their seats to take advantage of the zero-gravity situation.

"Mer?" One voice breaks through the cacophony, and Amery almost bursts into tears at the sight of Keaton Sinclair's face. Nervous muttering erupts on the other side of the deck before she can even reply, and a loud crash shakes the entire ship and sends her head slamming into the wall behind her. She squeezes her eyes shut and grips her seatbelt, breathing hard.

The first to break the silence is a voice Amery doesn't recognize. It's soft and subtle, seeping into the emptiness of the air almost as a suggestion.

"Listen," the boy says thoughtfully, and Amery lets her eyes flutter open. "No machine hum."

✧✧✧

a/n:

I can't believe I'm actually publishing a fanfic...? I've never actually done this before. I mostly stick to original works– you'll see my ongoing novel, Genesis, as the only other published work on my account. And I haven't watched The 100 since the horrible ending of the show, but when Monty Green inspiration strikes (and you're running out of ways to procrastinate summer semester papers), you know...

What do you guys think of this? Is it something you want me to continue?

Thoughts on Amery? Thoughts on Sinclair having a son?

This story isn't far along yet, so let me know what you want to see in the future!

vote + comment & i'll love you through the radiation apocalypse ! <3