To Ashes and Blood || Bellamy Blake

Prologue: A bit of Faith

For 97 years now, humanity has been surviving in space to preserve civilization. In Faith's opinion, it was a record-breaking waste of oxygen in the history of that very humanity.

In seven months in a 5x8 meter box, Kane had plenty of time to give herself to existential reflection. But this particular thought, about oxygen and waste, had crossed her mind a second before she'd pulled the trigger and splattered the brains of a now ex-councilman on the dull gray wall.

She didn't have any visitors with the filling of her father. He didn't show up himself either, didn't let her see her grandmother, made sure Liam Parrish, the pride of the new generation of guards, Ark's golden boy and her childhood friend, didn't get shifts in the prison cell block. Marcus Kane had been generous once, when put her in a cell with the sister of her second and last friend.

Faded Rubik's cube slammed into the metal door with a pitiful clang. The paper airplane went off course and suffered the same fate.

"Hey!" Faith threw up her hands and frowned at the neighbor. "Don't you dare destroy the only thing that keeps my brain sharp. Or hold out for another ten days."

"Sorry," Octavia sighed. An origami frog now took its place in her hands. One of the dozen that Faith made especially for the girl. Unlike freaks Blake had tried to fold herself, her creations could jump if you pressed on their tails.

Octavia's temperamental nature was about to crack up under the tension in their cell. On this Ark, her friend was a wildcat forced to grow up in confinement. From time to time, Faith would deliberately step on her tail. Like all cats, Octavia could act entertainingly.

"If you're worried that you didn't get me an eighteenth birthday gift..."

"Shut up." Unlucky frog was thrown at giggling Kane. "They can't just float you." She slid down the wall beside Faith.

"You know what you're missing, O?"

"Don't you dare..."

"A bit of faith!" Faith sang out, tickling the tense girl. Octavia twisted around and returned the favor. Messy lump of laughter, squeals and curses continued to roll on the floor until they were both exhausted.

"I hate you." Blake exhaled, shoving the annoying neighbor under the ribs one last time.

"Bullshit, you love me."

"Even though I killed a man." she added inwardly.

Her crime was no secret to Octavia, but it was out of details. Retrial of the case wouldn't save her, Jaha was unlikely to forget the gun muzzle pointed at him. In front of witnesses. God, her own father testified against her in person!

For the sake of all mankind. For the good of the majority.

Faith grimaced, starting to fold another frog.

She didn't want to die, even if life on that huge mechanical doughnut wandering through space was drab and gray. Even if this doughnut had no more than six months left to wander.

Two hours later, Octavia was taken for another survival lecture. Kane wasn't even allowed in. Of course, everything her friend had recounted to her, she already knew. Not so much from the school curriculum but from her mother's lessons.

Vanessa Kane was a genius. But her ideas were so unlikely and in some ways insane that by the end of her life she was considered crazy one.

She already knew six years ago that the Ark would not survive another century. She told her daughter everything possible about Earth. And she was convinced that their generation was capable of surviving the planet's radiation environment.

Either the Council finally believed in her mother's reasoning and was quickly preparing the juvenile delinquents for return to Earth, or Faith would be out in space in ten days.

Well, she could use a bit of faith herself.