The Ruling - Bellamy Blake

32. Harvest Chamber

Bellamy and I make our way to where the grounders are kept. I keep my sword up holding the keys tightly.
"Her first. She helped me." Bellamy says pointing to a cage. I nod walking over to it and unlocking it.
"Our people are coming." I say to her while helping her out. I glance over and see the guy Bellamy is trying to get out trying to to fight him back. I run over.
"Bell, slow down." I say before turning to the guy and saying, "we're here to help. Lexa is here," in my best Trigedasleng, which I'm not even sure he understands because of how awful it sounded leaving my mouth.

"What's your name?" I say turning to the girl.
"Echo." She says.
"I'm Nova. This is Bellamy. There is an army coming and I need you to help us get them ready to fight. Can you do that?" She nods.
"Good. Start with him." Bellamy says going to unlock more cages. Everyone starts pounding on their cages.

"Echo, too much noise." I say quickly. I know they want to get out, but if they don't stop no one's leaving alive. She walks to the middle and yells in Trigedasleng making them all go quiet. Everything in me wants to know what she said.

"How do we do this?" She asks walking over to us.
"There's an army going for the main door. When they get it open, all hell will break loose. That is the signal for my friends to come here, and then-." Bellamy starts saying before being cut off.
"My fellow citizens, this is your president speaking. I have news to share with you that will change all of our lives forever. For 97 years, Mount Weather has been our home. It has kept us alive, but it has also held us captive. Most of us have made peace with what we've had to do to survive. We've done these things for one reason. So that our people could someday return to the ground. That day is today."
"He's going public." Bellamy mutters.
"Before my friend, Lorelei Tsing was murdered by the outsiders still at large in this mountain she found a cure. It was in their bone marrow."

I hand Echo both mine and Bellamy's keys. We need to go. And now.
"We'll be back." I say.
"Where are you going?" She asks.
"He's trying to get his people to turn on eachother. They'll find our friends." Bellamy says.
"We have to save them. We'll send them in groups.  You get your people ready to go, but you wait for us to come back, okay?" I add. She nods and we start walking. She grabs my arm.
"Thank you." I nod.
"Free your people. Protect mine when they get here. We can thank eachother once we're out."

We both walk out while listening to Cage continue his speech. Every word he says makes me want to dig my blade into him even more.

As we speed up my leg hurts but I continue to ignore it. My priority is saving my people and I refuse to let them keep being killed for the benefit of Cage.

We're about to exit the vent but Vincent is standing infront of it. He sees us and motions his hand for us to wait. I start to hear footsteps.
"Out of the way, Vincent." A man says.
"That's my daughter."
"Dad, don't." I hear Maya's voice say. I don't know what's going on.
"Quiet! She's been aiding and abetting the outsiders. You need to get out of our way."
"I won't let you take her, Paul."
"Listen carefully. We've got orders. She knows where they're hiding. Now, step aside. I'm not gonna ask you again." I can hear Maya crying. I grip onto my sword tighter preparing to break the vent and help her.
"If you want her, you gotta go through me."
"Dad please. They'll kill you."
"Don't make me do this, Vincent." I can hear a gun click.
"I'm sorry, Paul." Vincent says. A gun goes off and he runs to open our vent.

Bellamy and I both climb out and I see Miller knock a guard out.

"We need everyone in the harvest chamber. You'll be safer there." I say.
"Safe in the harvest chamber?" Jasper asks confused.
"Just trust us." Bellamy says.
"Are the others there?"
"Not yet."
"Monty?"
"Monty's with the other group on level 3." Vincent says. "Don't worry. We moved them after the last sweep. You should go there next."
"Okay, go. Vincent will take you. Nova, you should go with. I won't be long." Bellamy says turning his attention to me.
"No. I'm fine." I say knowing he's talking about my leg. As sweet as it is, he should know by now that I won't give up until it's over.
"You sure?" He asks putting a gentle hand on my shoulder. I nod.
"I'm not stopping until everyone is safe." He nods.
"Hey. I'm coming with you." Jasper says.
"Jasper."
"I promised I'd protect them, that's exactly what I'm gonna do."
"Let's go." I say as we take off walking. If he wants to protect his best friend he has every right to.

Jasper and Maya come up behind us as we start walking through the vents.
"Try to be as quiet as possible." I say to mostly Jasper since he's the most unfamiliar with climbing through the vents.

Bellamy leads us to a vent pushing it out.
"We don't have much time. The last 12 are on this level." He says stepping out and helping me.
"Including Monty. Which way?" Jasper asks.
"This way." Maya points.

I keep my sword high as we start to walk down the hallway.
"Attention. Class 1 quarantine protocols are now in effect." A man on the PA says. "All citizens must report to level 5 immediately. Hard seal lockdown in T-minus-30 minutes." I stop and look at Maya who's talking to Jasper. "This is not a drill."
"We won't let anything happen to you, will we?" Jasper says looking at Bellamy who nods walking to the end of the hallway. I follow keeping an eye out.

"I can't go to level 5 without being shot in the head." I hear Maya say as we walk back over.
"Guys, we need to keep moving." Bellamy says.
"We'll get you your hazmat suit. Extra oxygen. Enough to last until your engineers get the power on."
"Then what? Think Cage Wallace is gonna let me live here after that?"
"Attention. Class 1 quarantine protocols are now in effect."
"Then we kill him." Jasper says. I look over at him genuinely surprised in this version of him.
"He's dead anyways." I mutter knowing that no matter what happens I will be killing him.

A gunshot comes from the end of the hall.
"Monty." Jasper mutters as we start running.

We turn and start walking forward seeing a woman dead on the floor.
"It's Mrs. Ryan." Maya says.
"She was hiding the last 12." Bellamy says.
"Where'd they take them?" Jasper asks.
"My guess is level 5." I say as my eyes scan the hallway around us.

Jasper goes to move but Bellamy stands in front of him.
"Get out of my way."
"Every person inside this mountain is on level 5. Every soldier." Bellamy says.
"Jaspers right. After lockdown, it'll be almost impossible to get them out. It's now or never." Maya says.
"Okay, but how do we-?" I start before getting cut off by a noise.

I see Monty stick his head out. He sticks his hand up stopping Japser from running to him.
"What's wrong?" Japser asks.
"They know about the grounders. That's why I hid. I didn't do anything to save the others. I let them kill Mrs. Ryan."
"What do you mean they know about the grounders?" Bellamy asks.
"It's on a soldiers walkie. They're going for the harvest chamber."
"If they take it, we lose everyone."
"We have to go." I say starting to run. I hear them follow after me. I ignore the shooting pain running through my leg as I push myself to move faster.

We get there and we look around looking for a threat. My eyes land on the body on the floor. It's Vincent. Maya starts to sob running to him. I look away unable to see her sob without thinking of the last time I saw my parents.

I look around seeing that everyone is gone. We were too late. I look up at Bellamy feeling my heart drop. His expression tells me his did too.

"What do we do now?" He ask looking at me. I take a deep breath trying to think. We don't have the grounders to help us on the inside anymore. They have our people. And they've killed a lot, if not all of our help.
"We fight ourselves and hope Clarke and Lexa hurry the hell up." I answer.