✧】x. do they grow on trees now?【✧

[ his sister's keeper ]

IT DOESN'T SEEM possible.

Octavia does not go missing. She goes where she wants when she wants, every move of her own volition, eyes set in determination and willing to do whatever it takes to maintain her freedom. Octavia goes on adventures. Octavia does reckless things. But Octavia does not just go missing.

But she did, Keaton explains, dragging Amery and her tentmates into the fray. Bellamy has combed the entire camp two times over, and nothing. In fact, nobody's seen Octavia since early that morning— yesterday morning, now, Amery supposes— when she'd apparently gotten into a spiff with her brother over the radio and his shooting Jaha.

She could be anywhere by now.

A duffel bag of weapons hangs open in the center of the haphazardly formed circle around Bellamy as he explains the situation.

"My sister's been out there alone for 12 hours," he barks, eyes hardened with determination. "Arm up. We're not coming back without her."

Zoe is one of the first to follow instructions, grabbing a spear and weighing it in her hands. The sharpness returns to her eyes, and with that spear in her hands, she once again turns from Zoe to Monroe in the blink of an eye.

Amery's heart thuds against her ribcage, unrelenting. She likes Octavia. Her brother might be a dick, but Octavia's still learning how to live without having to look over her shoulder at every breath. This can't be it for her.

Amery thinks of the woods. The Grounders. The fog. She thinks of Atom's body being hauled into camp. She thinks of Jasper with a spear through his chest.

And then she sees the boy walk toward the pile of weapons wearing a solemn but determined expression, the torch he holds illuminating his blood-stained face in gold.

"Hey," Clarke murmurs, catching Jasper's elbow. "Jasper, you don't have to do this. You haven't left camp since we brought you back."

"Clarke, I need to do this," he murmurs. Monty's eyes cloud with worry, and Amery observes quietly as he wages the internal battle of whether or not to go solely to protect his friend.

"We need all the people we can get," Bellamy says. Clarke hesitates, holding eye contact with Jasper for a long moment before the both of them nod and Jasper pushes past.

Bellamy then turns to Clarke and murmurs something before calling, "Finn! Get out here."

No response.

Amery knows he's undoubtedly with Raven and scoffs as she returns her attention to Keaton, eyeing the dagger in his hand.

"You're going," she says. It's not a question. In the dark, his eyes bore into hers, that depth screaming the same thing it always has when it comes to Keaton: protector. Even though Keaton hardly knows Octavia. Even though he's not a hunter or a fighter. He's a defender, and that's enough.

Keaton just nods, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth anxiously. "We're getting her back."

"I'm coming with you."

"Mer–"

"I'm. Coming. With. You." Amery tilts her chin up to level a stare at Keaton, refusing to break eye contact first.

If Octavia is truly in danger out in those woods, Amery's not risking Keaton stepping into that danger without her.

Keaton swallows, looking her up and down, red hair slipping from the torn fabric she'd used to tie it back, eyes wide and tired, but full of determination.

He doesn't object again.

Cash appears on Keaton's other side, reading the tension between his two friends with a raised brow. He glances between Keaton and Amery a few times before deciding that Amery's won and pulls out an extra dagger from his jacket pocket, pressing it into her hand.

"Hope your hand-to-hand combat skills are as sharp as that tongue of yours," he drawls. They're not— Amery vividly remembers trying to take down Keaton at age seven and ending up cowering under his bed in two minutes flat— but she just smirks in response.

Keaton sighs.

"Finn! We're leaving," Bellamy warns loudly. The Spacewalker still hasn't emerged from his tent.

"All right, I'm coming!" he shouts, voice muffled.

Kip appears next to Cash, running a tired hand through his hair. "You going?"

Cash and Keaton nod in tandem, but Amery doesn't miss the way Keaton's shoulders tense just slightly at Kip's arrival. Interesting.

Over his shoulder, Amery catches a streak of blue and brown as Finn chases after Clarke, whose brows are pinched in agitation. The two have a hushed conversation, but from what Amery can gather, it's more of Finn appealing to Clarke while she shuts him down, face lined with annoyance and frustration. Amery notes that Finn's hair is shorter than it was a few hours ago.

Definitely the work of Raven. Back on the Ark, Raven would give Amery haircuts whenever her ginger locks got irritatingly long. Keaton tried once, and Amery would rather die than ever let him doing it again. What a disaster that was.

"He needs to get his priorities straight," Amery says flatly, letting Keaton and Cash follow her line of sight to the lovers' quarrel. Cash just snorts.

"Guys, guys. Come here!" a boy shouts, and Amery's hair whips into her eyes as she spins to locate the source. Murmurs spread among the campers, a chorus of "wows" and colorful language.

"What is that?" someone asks.

"Did you see that?"

"Look up there."

"It's so beautiful."

Keaton's jaw drops. He grabs Amery's chin between two fingers and simply tilts her head up.

The pattern above her looks like hundreds of shooting stars, a cascade of lights and lights and more lights falling across the sky.

It is beautiful, Amery thinks. But then Raven pushes through the crowd, distraught eyes and sagging shoulders, and shudders.

"They didn't work," she says softly, disbelievingly. Her tone wavers, fragile, as moonlight pools in her eyes like tears. "They didn't see the flares."

It clicks in a millisecond, those beautiful streaks of ethereal light taking on a morbid hue as Amery recognizes them for what they are.

Bodies.

"A meteor shower tells you that?" Bellamy asks.

Clarke is the one to explain. "It's not a meteor shower," she says, eyes pooling with dread. Her voice shakes. "It's a funeral. Hundreds of bodies being returned to the earth from the Ark. This is what it looks like from the other side." She turns to Raven. "They didn't get our message."

Amery's heart stops. Hearing the words aloud... it makes it real.

"Shit," she and Keaton murmur in tandem. Amery squeezes her eyes shut and prays to whatever, whoever will listen that Sinclair is not one of those lights.

Raven starts fuming at the ears, pushing right between Clarke and Finn to storm toward Bellamy with embers in her breath.

"This is all because of you!" she shouts, a bite behind her words that makes Amery shudder.

"I helped you find the radio," Bellamy says back, level, calm despite the deaths of three hundred people, three hundred–

"Yeah, after you jacked it from my pod and trashed it!" Raven cries, her words shooting right for Bellamy's throat as Clarke and Finn jolt forward to hold her back by the arms.

"Yeah, he knows," Clarke interrupts, voice flat, with a sidelong glance at Bellamy. "Now he has to live with it."

That's not enough, Amery thinks, but doesn't trust herself to speak, not with the heat of tears pricking at her eyes. She tries to push away the horrendous images flashing through her mind— images of Sinclair being one of those bodies, or Kyle. She knows it's unrealistic, that engineering and electrical are too valued, and that in itself is a testament to how warped the Ark's priorities are— weighing some lives above others— but she can't shake the fear that one of those morbidly beautiful lights in the sky is a person who she loves.

Bellamy takes a breath. "All I know," he says slowly, "is that my sister is out there, and I'm gonna find her." He glances at Finn. "You coming or what?"

"Yeah," Finn mutters.

"What are we waiting for?" Bellamy calls to the search party. "Move out!"

Amery sets her shoulders and takes a step forward in tandem with Keaton, but Clarke's concerned voice pulls her back.

"We have to talk to them," the blonde says worriedly. "Three hundred won't be enough. The oxygen level will just keep dropping. And if we don't tell them that they can survive down here, They'll kill more people. They have to."

Amery lets out a shaky breath, catching Zoe's eye with a wave as the girl turns around and makes her way over.

"Hey," Amery murmurs, eyes darting around the camp in search. "Where's Harp?"

"In Fox's tent," Zoe explains. "She looks up to Octavia. She's pretty freaked out."

Amery nods in understanding. Harper is good with kids in a way Amery can't fathom.

"Guys," Jasper says as he appears before Clarke, hesitant and quiet. "They're leaving. We gotta go."

Finn starts to depart without prelude, but Raven catches his arm. He was about to leave without even saying goodbye?

Meeting the girl's eyes, Finn lets his hand fall to Raven's, frowning slightly. "I gotta do this," he says. "And you should stay and fix the radio, okay?"

Fix the radio?  Without a functioning transmitter, the Ground and the Ark won't be talking anytime soon. Amery bristles. Finn shouldn't talk about things he knows nothing about.

"Fix it?" Raven fumes, hands balling into fists. "The transmitter's smashed. Unless there's a parts depot down here, we're not talking to the Ark!"

Clarke's eyes widen, and she pulls her lips into a thin line, seems to hesitate before her head snaps up resolutely and she addresses Finn. "Art supply store," she says.

"What?" Amery can't help the confused murmur that slips from her mouth, but Clarke ignores her, speaking to Raven instead. "I know a place you might be able to get a transmitter."

Amery does a double take. "Down here? Do they grow on trees now?" The girls ignore her, attention drawn to Keaton as he groans and runs a hand down his face in exasperation.

"Fuck," he sighs. "I... I can stay. Let me work with what's left of the radio. Me and Monty." His gaze shifts to Amery, concern pooling in his eyes. Concern for her, going out into the woods without him to fend against the darkness.

Amery tries to shoot her friend a reassuring smile, tries to say I'll be fine, but she knows it isn't something she can promise. The tension remains in Keaton's shoulders as he worries his bottom lip between his teeth.

Raven doesn't smile as her gaze shifts from Finn to Clarke, reading the tension between them, the knowledge of this "art supply store" that seems to bind them in a way that sets both Raven and Amery on edge. "Great," she says, the word drawn out and flat. "It looks like you're coming with me instead."

Finn does not seem all too happy with that idea, but Amery is almost excited.

She can't wait for his two-timing ways to blow up in his face.

"Hey," Monty's voice cuts through her thoughts, a warm hand coming to rest on her shoulders. "I... be careful."

Amery manages a half smile as she turns to face the boy. She nods slightly.

"Please," Monty adds softly, but with a breathtaking intensity. "And, uh..." His eyes shift to look over her shoulder, and Amery follows his line of sight to where Jasper stands nervously near the crowd of campers. "Look out for him, will you?"

Amery stares at Monty, memorizing the angle of his jaw, the color of his eyes. Come with me, she wants to say. I'll stay, she thinks. But she doesn't say either of those things. She has to do this. For Octavia. For Jasper. For Monty.

"I will," she whispers. And then she turns away before she can change her mind, having to tear her eyes away from Monty's imploring gaze. I will.

"Finn?" Jasper asks, hesitant to poke the bear, it seems. "We're not gonna find her without you."

Finn glances between Clarke and Raven with nervous eyes. "Be careful."

Finn turns to leave, but Raven stops him with a hand on his chest. "Hey," she says, her voice disappointed, disbelieving that he'd leave without saying goodbye. She kisses him quickly and gives him a little smile. "I love you." It sounds more like a question. A plea.

Amery hates the way Finn hesitates before he says it back, quietly and without conviction.

Clarke's voice is flat when she breaks the tense silence.

"It's this way."

✧✧✧

The woods are an entirely different creature at night. Every branch seems to pose a threat, shadows illuminated by dim moonlight scattering the ground and biting at Amery's heels. Every rustle of leaves and bushes sounds like an animal ready to pounce— an animal or a Grounder.

Amery wonders if there's a difference.

"How far do you think she could have gotten?" Zoe murmurs from beside her. Amery shrugs. It depends on whether she was hurt— whether she's just lost, or an animal got to her, or a Grounder did.

"I don't know," Amery whispers truthfully, worry showing in the waver in her whisper. She keeps her eyes trained on Cash's lanky figure toward the front of the party, the boy unusually silent as he dodges low-hanging branches and reads the forest floor for tracks. "It's Octavia, you know? Maybe she just got preoccupied... chasing butterflies, looking at flowers," she muses hopefully, but a swirling dread in Amery's gut tells her that isn't the case.

"Look!" a deep voice shouts, and Amery thinks it might be Mbege. "Over here!"

"What is it?" Bellamy's rough voice responds, and Amery exchanges a glance with Zoe before starting to weave through the others to get to the front of the crowd. She finds herself standing over a steep slope, only a foot of space keeping her from tumbling over the edge.

"Right there," Mbege is saying, pointing down the hill to something hanging from a branch. "You see it? Is that Octavia's?"

Bellamy's jaw tenses, the angles of his face illuminated in the blue-tinted light of Mbege's lantern and the flaming torches of the other campers. "Rope," he says.

"What are you doing?" Finn asks.

"Tying a noose, Collins. What the hell do you think?" Amery spits before she can stop herself.

"We need the rope to get back up," Bellamy explains. "Flashlight."

Amery's jaw tenses as she watches a dark-skinned boy hand over the flashlight without second thought.

It reminds her of Sinclair.

It reminds her of the way he'd be tucked under a faulty panel, the way he'd say "flashlight" or "screwdriver" or "monkey wrench" without prelude, not unkindly or demanding but a sort of gently firm request, and Amery would oblige until Sinclair would push himself out from the day's machine with a grease-stained face and sparkling eyes and ruffle her hair and say "Nice work, Ames."

Bellamy only takes one deep breath to steel himself before beginning down the slope, rope gripped in one hand.

Amery finally sees what he's after: a pendant, silver, hanging from a branch.

"It's hers," Bellamy calls up. "I'm going all the way down."

He disappears into the night.

Jasper is the first to move.

He approaches the edge, breathing deeply and holding his torch out to Finn expectantly. He's determined. Brave.

Amery wants to tell him to be careful, but instead she catches his eye and gives him a slow nod, encouragement. He starts down the slope, Finn sighing and starting after him.

"After you," Zoe says halfheartedly, and Amery grabs the rope with a grimace. There's suddenly a supportive hand on her back, and she glances over her shoulder to see who's holding the rope.

Cash.

"Thanks," she smiles.

"Don't fall, or Keaton won't let you hear the end of it," he says quietly, lips tugging into a smirk.

The rope rubs against Amery's skin painfully as she struggles to find traction in the dirt, but she eases her way down the hill slowly, allowing her weight to shift downward and trusting Cash on the other side of the rope.

She breathes a sigh of relief when both of her boots hit solid, flat ground. But it doesn't last long.

Finn, Jasper, and Bellamy are crouched before a rock, wrapping up a tense, hushed conversation. In the light of a lantern, Amery sees the tips of Bellamy's fingers and blanches.

They're coated in red.

"If they took her, she's alive," Jasper says, voice quaking. "Like when they took me."

"Motherfucker," Cash pants as he lands beside Amery, Bellamy already standing and paving the way into the dark.

"Yep," Amery responds flatly, popping the p. Finn pushes in front of Bellamy, eyes trained on the ground as he moves in a slight crouch, analyzing, following. "Look. Little tracker to the rescue."

Cash snorts as Zoe lands beside him, cocking a brow and jutting her chin in Bellamy's direction.

"I liked Octavia better when she was stripping in front of a river," Cash mutters.

Amery knows he doesn't mean it— the statement is flatly sarcastic, forcibly light, a coping mechanism. The mechanic might've said something similar herself.

But it was still insensitive, so Amery slaps him on the shoulder and starts moving.

✧✧✧

Amery's heart, for some reason, is not pounding out of her ribcage as she surveys the decimated skeletons hanging from the trees, the skulls and bones lining the ground in a disturbing display of violence both old and new.

It's entirely still in her chest, which is somehow more unsettling.

"I don't speak Grounder," Finn breathes, eyes wide as he looks to Bellamy, "but I'm pretty sure this means keep out."

Amery is inclined to agree, taking a step back and running into Kip, who grunts.

"Sorry," she mutters halfheartedly, edging closer to Zoe as her eyes refuse to leave the remains of the bodies marking the border to a land of fear and decay.

"Let's get out of here," a boy near the back of the crowd mutters. "It's crazy."

"I'm outta here."

"Yeah, me, too."

Kip scoffs, weighing his axe in his hands and shifting his weight. Amery surveys him with a critical eye— the nervous energy, the buzz of adrenaline practically emanating from his presence.

In a way, he reminds her of Murphy— itching for a fight.

Bellamy doesn't give the complaining campers a second glance. "Go back if you want," he says as he stares into the nearest skull. "My sister, my responsibility."

In the entryway of a land of bones, Amery looks at Bellamy and sees something she hasn't seen before. The set of his jaw and shoulders no longer scream arrogance— they're determined, supported by a sense of duty, familial duty. His stubbornness no longer rubs her the wrong way— it's persistence to save his sister.

Bellamy will comb every inch of the earth to bring Octavia home safe, and Amery respects the hell out of that.

Perhaps she was too quick to judge.

Jasper straightens, eyeing the skulls. "I'd walk into hell to find her," he says.

Monty's words ring in Amery's ears, his quiet concern overtaking whatever semblance of self-preservation might stop her from entering the barrier of skulls and decay. The wasteland Jasper is set on tearing apart to find Octavia. Look out for him, will you?

Cash glances at her, eyes flashing with understanding.

Amery stays. Cash does, too. On Amery's other side, Zoe makes no move to go back to camp, offering Amery a halfhearted smile instead.

Bellamy swallows. "I think we just did."

"Fuck," Amery mutters, and follows Bellamy into uncertainty.

✧✧✧

"I got nothing," Finn announces, and Amery scowls at him from her position between two thick tree trunks lined in moss. "We lost the trail."

"We lost the trail half an hour ago," the redhead scoffs, frustration boiling under her skin as she dodges a rock jutting from the damp earth. "No thanks to you."

"What is your problem?" Finn bristles, hands flying out defensively as he turns to face Amery.

"You know what my problem is, Spacewalker," she hisses. The stress of being out in the dangerous woods, the frustration of being unable to find Octavia, the knowledge that Finn is slowly breaking her friend's heart, the fact that Monty and Keaton are back at camp while she's out here— it's all catching up to her, all culminating in a furious concoction of poison in Amery's blood, one that's about to burn Finn Collins alive if he doesn't shut his mouth.

"Keep looking," Bellamy demands, interrupting a battle before it begins.

"For what, Bell?" Kip asks, running his hands through his head of blond hair before throwing them out helplessly. "We can't find traces anywhere."

"Wandering around aimlessly isn't the way to find your sister," Finn agrees. "We should backtrack–"

"I'm not going back," Bellamy says sharply, and Amery winces. She hates that she agrees with Finn, but they're not going to find Octavia like this. Everything is beginning to the look the same to Amery, the beauty of the forest in morning light having long ago lost its novelty and turning into a maze of redundant branches and leaves.

Their search party has dwindled, most campers scared away by the threat of hollow skulls in the thick of night.

"Hey," Roma says suddenly, "where's John?"

Jasper whips around with a puzzled expression knotting his brows together. "I just saw him a second ago."

Amery does a double take. She could've sworn she did, too.

"Spread out," Bellamy says. "He couldn't have gotten that far."

And then a thud sounds from right behind him, and Amery takes a few steps forward to see what fell from the sky.

Mbege's body, throat overflowing with fresh blood, eyes glossy and unblinking.

She turns around and retches onto the ground.

"Oh, God," Cash murmurs as he rubs her back, pulling her to his side as soon as she straightens.

"No," Amery whispers. "Holy shit. Cash."

"I... I know," he says back, soft, afraid. The most vulnerable she's ever heard him.

"They use the trees," Finn says in horror, and Amery's stomach coils in dread.

"Oh, fuck," Cash says, and his eyes dart to the branches overhead at the same time Amery's do. There's no hint of movement, just clusters of green and brown punctuated with the pale gray of morning sky, but somehow it's the most ominous thing Amery has ever seen, worse than the skulls, the bones, the blood.

She gulps, the taste of bile still coating her throat. If there was anything left in her stomach, she'd lose it right now.

"We shouldn't have crossed the boundary," Diggs says.

"Too late now," Kip snaps.

"Now can we go back?" Roma asks, eyes wide.

"There," Jasper breathes. Amery's head swivels to follow his line of sight, where he's pointing a metal bar directly at a figure in the distance. "Right there."

"Another one," Diggs says, and Amery marks the Grounder's position, this one running across the dirt with a shield in one hand and a sword in the other. Her breath catches in her throat, hands fisting at her sides, and she stumbles backward.

"We should run," Finn says urgently.

"No shit, buddy!" Cash cries, tugging on Amery's elbow and turning the opposite direction.

She snaps to her senses then, the reality of the situation hitting her in the head like an anvil. "GO!" she cries, and she's darting into the woods, weaving between the trees, heat stinging at her eyes as her breath comes out in gasps.

"Let's go! Let's go!" Diggs shouts as Amery leaps over a log, struggling to keep up with a band of more naturally inclined athletes. The fear in her chest keeps her on the move, adrenaline lacing her blood as the group veers sharply to the left.

"What are we gonna do?" someone else shouts, a deep voice Amery is too scared to register. "They keep heading us off."

"Just keep running!" someone else demands as Amery grabs a branch and uses it to propel herself forward, uncaring of the splinter that bursts the skin of her palm.

"I can't run much longer!" Jasper cries.

Amery whirls, surveying the clearing for the source of Jasper's voice. Where is he? She can't let him get hurt–

"Jasper!" she shouts.

"I'm not stopping for him!" Diggs shouts. Amery wonders why he's wasting his breath on shouting his disloyalty.

Bellamy halts. "I'm sick of running anyway."

Amery's eyes widen as she gasps for breath. She doesn't exactly love the physical activity either, but she's not about stand in the middle of the clearing offering herself up as Grounder food. She fumbles for the dagger in her jacket pocket, the one Cash gave her, and grips it tightly at her side.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Finn gasps, grabbing Bellamy's shoulder.

"Standing our ground," Kip says with a grin that's almost vile, bouncing on the balls of his feet. The fight he's been waiting for.

"They know where she is," Bellamy says loudly, clearly, with a determined steel in his tone.

Oh, you crazy son of a bitch, Amery thinks.

"Diggs, where are you?" Roma shouts, her voice distant, and Amery's eyes widen as she realizes that the other girl is headed further into the trees alone.

"Roma!" Diggs' voice calls back, but Amery can't place it. As Finn and Cash fall into a sprint after her, she pushes her screaming legs harder, desperately trying to reach the girl before it's too late.

Amery hear her before she sees her. Roma lets out an agonized scream that rips through the woods like the cry of  a wounded animal.

"Wait! Roma!" Finn shouts. And then Amery slams into his back, hard, as the boy stops short.

"What the fu–"

She freezes at the sight in front of her, realizing why Finn stopped.

Diggs, blood spurting from his mouth, impaled on a tree. Amery's hand flies to her mouth in horror.

"Could be more. Stop," Finn says.

"They were leading us here," Jasper realizes, turning in a slow circle. "It's the only direction we could run in."

"Hey. Where'd they go?" Finn asks, and Amery surveys her surroundings with a ringing in her ears, an alarm of her own making. Sure enough, there's not a Grounder in sight.

"After Roma," Bellamy and Cash say simultaneously, exchanging a worried look.

The group breaks into a run again, Zoe taking the lead as part of Roma's jacket comes into view.

"There she is," Zoe says, but makes no move to approach. "Roma!" she says in a barked whisper, and Amery gulps uncomfortably. Something isn't right, though. Roma isn't moving or responding to Zoe's call.

Bellamy approaches the tree from the side, the group ambling quietly after him until Roma comes into view.

Her lips are parted in a scream, her eyes open and glazed over. A spear juts from her chest, pinning her to the tree, not breathing. Dead.

Dead.

As Bellamy closes the girl's eyes solemnly, Amery grips the hilt of her dagger so tight she thinks her fingers may fall off.

"They're playing with us," Finn realizes, and a fire lights in Amery's blood. A flame hot enough to raze the entire forest and then some. A simmering, consuming sort of rage at the audacity of these Grounders. What entitles them to play with the lives of these people as if they're nothing more than prey? What gives them the right to impale Roma on a tree like it's some sort of game?

Bellamy's voice is quieter than Amery has ever heard it when he says lowly, gravely, "She only came because of me."

Amery backs away, stumbling over her own heels as Roma's impaled body sears itself into her vision.

"They can kill us whenever they want," Finn breaks the silence.

Jasper stands in the center of the clearing and tilts his head to the trees. "Then they should get it over with!" he screams, hands balling into fists as he releases his rage on the world. "Come on! We know you're out there! You want to kill us—"

"Stop!" Finn hisses, grabbing at Jasper's shoulders, and Bellamy appears on the boy's other side as they try to calm him down, shut him up.

"What the hell are you doing?" Kip hisses through gritted teeth.

Amery doesn't realize her feet are moving until Zoe calls out Bellamy's name unevenly, looking to the older boy for direction, and the sound is more distant than it should be. She's backed up slowly, farther and farther away from Roma's unmoving body, as Grounders stream toward the clearing in response to Jasper's screaming.

They're coming from all sides, and Amery locates the crowd of dark jackets and nervous figures and sprints faster than she's ever sprinted before.

A gnarled tree root has Amery stumbling forward, a sharp pain shooting through her ankle as she steps sideways, but there's no time to register the pain, not when the stakes are so high. Her dagger clatters uselessly to the ground, slipping from her sweaty palms, but there's no time to retrieve it, not while adrenaline races through her bloodstream like a rapid-fire circuit as her breathing comes out staggered and hot.

She cries out in exasperation, darting around a tree trunk and nearly losing her balance, but it's too late.

She careens around the trunk only to come face to face with a Grounder.

Amery has never been more terrified.

The man is all toned muscle and bulk underneath layers of leathery armor, dried blood crusting the shoulder pads as if he's made too many kills to bother cleaning them. He lets out a low snarl beneath a mask of deformed skull as he unsheathes a long, curved knife.

Amery screams, but it's too late. The Grounder roars unintelligibly and drives the knife right toward Amery's heart.

But instead of the serrated edge plunging into her body, a force on her right side has her tumbling into the dirt, clumps of it spraying into her mouth as she rolls. She barely registers the pained scream as she realizes she's been shoved out of the way. Who—

A low, wailing sound pierces the air, echoing through the forest in a wave of sudden noise as Amery pushes herself onto her elbows, spitting dirt from her mouth and blinking it from her eyes as she gasps for breath. The Grounders look around, suddenly at attention not to their prey, but... to that noise. And then they start running.

Away.

Amery is too far out to discern the hushed and panicked voices of her companions yards away, but not too far to hear Kip's shout as he tears across the forest floor, eyes wide and wild. "NO!"

Amery starts to struggle to her feet, pain shooting from her right ankle, tries to blink through the tears and dirt clouding her vision to see who pushed her, who Kip is running to with reckless abandon. The horn, what did it mean? That sound–

Zoe gasps. "We have to run."

"There's no time!" Finn barks. "Kip!"

Time. Time for what? What is there to run from? The Grounders are gone, they ran–

The fog.

Hands on her knees, Amery's eyes widen as she realizes what the airhorn means. She remembers the way campers flooded into the dropship with red-rimmed eyes, complaining about the air, remembers Atom and his emancipated body, the horror in Octavia's eyes.

But Amery has other things to worry about, because when she turns around, Cash is lying in a growing pool of his own blood.

✧✧✧

a/n:

sorry my finger slipped-

[ word count | 5.3k ]