Kill After Reading (The 100) ✔

Kill After Reading

About 100 years ago, the leading nations of this world started a war that no one could ever possibly win. For what, only the people on the top of the food chain, the ones that started it all, could tell you. Be it for power, territory, resources – who cared when there was money to make out of the pain and suffering of the rest of the world, right?

And while the politicians and their key playmakers fought one battle after another, slowly turning the fights into a World War with biological and nuclear warfare alike – bombing cities, destroying human lives and ultimately nations around the globe in the process – the people took measures into their own hands and began to prepare themselves for what would be the gruesome and horrid outcome: the eventual destruction of what life on this planet used to be like.

That's how the settlements came to be – the few lucky areas that managed to escape the ultimate meltdown of human societies around the world, the cataclysm of earth. Not all of those settlements had made it through the war, though some had been fortunate enough; like the one situated in what used to be Virginia, USA, the one Clarke Griffin had been born into seventeen years ago.

Clarke knew the communications division did their best to work with the few remaining satellites that were still floating up in space and functioning to try and find a way to get into contact with other survivors of the cataclysm. So far, they'd managed to make contact with two settlements that had survived 'world's end' in the European area and there were rumors about others on the other continents as well.

That accomplishment had taken them decades.

It was hard to communicate nowadays without the help of what had been known to people as the 'internet', and despite people trying over the years, it was pretty much impossible to get the thing running again. Clarke's friend Monty – a fellow student at Ark University and a major in communications technology – had explained to her that for the internet to work they needed servers (whatever those were) around the globe to function again, which was next to impossible. They couldn't even make it to the servers they knew to be located near their settlement not too far outside their safe borders – on enemy territory and with the Grounders a constant threat.

Clarke shook her head, doing her best to turn her train of thought back on track. She needed to get the gist of the medical texts she was reading up on in the library at the moment or she could kiss her passing that upcoming test on human life-support goodbye. She could not think about the group of savages that wanted to eradicate each and every single human being living in the settlement right now.

Running a hand through her long blonde hair, Clarke sighed deeply before starting at the top of the page again; she had no idea what she'd been reading for the past few minutes, no thanks to her thoughts going on a journey.

The distant sounds of the few students still in the library turning pages and whispering to one another at this already late hour was a most unwelcome background noise to her studying, and the mediocre illumination in form of a handful of lamps on the ceiling only offered just about enough light to not completely screw with her eye sight. It was this lack of utter silence and bad lighting why Clarke hated to study in the library in the first place; but when you weren't allowed to borrow some of the books, there really wasn't anything you could do about it.

Somewhere in the back, she could hear Monty and his roommate Jasper start chuckling like madmen before the busting sound of a mini-explosion echoed through the library. She rolled her eyes as, only a moment later, she heard the reprimanding voice of one of the guards to either go back to studying or move their scam elsewhere. Those airheads, always getting themselves into trouble!

"Hey, Clarke," a voice interrupted her second attempt at reading the paragraph on top of the page.

Well, here goes nothing, Clarke thought darkly, shutting the thick book in front of her on one of the reading tables with a heavy thud. The universe apparently didn't want her to study tonight.