ATARAXIA • BELLAMY BLAKE

[ 6 6 ]

Consciousness comes back slowly.

The first thing I feel is fabric digging painfully into the corners of my mouth. Then the ache.

My head pounds so hard it feels like my skull's splitting apart from the inside, and my shoulders burn from the awkward angle my arms are twisted behind my back. For a second everything stays blurry and heavy, my thoughts struggling to catch up with my body. Then it hits me. The Grounder.

My eyes snap open properly. For a second everything blurs together, dim lights, metal walls, shadows shifting slightly in front of me. The room spins once before slowly settling into focus, my vision clearing enough to make out Miller sitting directly across from me. Tied up and gagged.

Harper, Bryan, and Monty are beside him, each of their hands restrained by cuffs that have been mounted to the wall, all of their faces bruised, exhausted, and tense.

What the hell?

I stare at them in confusion, my breathing quickening as I immediately start making muffled sounds through my gag. I try to move toward them instinctively and realize my own wrists are cuffed. The sharp restraints cut into my skin the second I struggle.

Miller sees I'm awake first. His eyes widen slightly before immediately hardening again, like he's trying to warn me about something. I stare at the three of them in confusion, trying to make sense of it, but the gag muffles any sound they try to make.

A noise beside me makes me jerk my head to the right too fast. Pain shoots through my skull again.

Octavia and Jasper sit against the wall a few feet away from me, hands cuffed behind them too. Jasper looks pale. Octavia looks furious.

I realize we are inside one of Alpha Station's smaller airlocks, and images of Aurora being sucked out into space cloud my vision. Pushing them aside, I turn left.

Jaime.

He's slumped beside me against the end wall, head tilted unnaturally forward. Still unconscious.

Fear punches straight through me, hitting so fast it makes my pulse spike painfully against the pounding in my skull. I straighten abruptly, trying to say his name even though it comes out completely muffled by the gag. I shove my foot against his leg instead. No reaction.

Panic starts climbing higher in my chest. I hit him again harder this time, trying desperately to get him to wake up. Still no response. My breathing turns uneven.

"Mmffph—"

His name catches uselessly behind the fabric over my mouth as I try louder this time, desperation clawing up my throat. The sound barely leaves me before something slams sharply into my shin.

I jerk and look over at Octavia. Her eyes lock onto mine hard. Be quiet.

I stare back at her, pulse hammering painfully in my ears while my eyes dart around the small space again. My chest heaves once as I force myself still.

How long have they been here? How long have I been here? And where the hell are the others?

Then faint static crackles somewhere outside the airlock. "Freya, Jaime, come in," Bellamy's voice comes through.

My head snaps toward the sound. One of our packs sits abandoned a few feet outside the airlock door in the hallway. I can just barely see the radio clipped to the side of it before it crackles again.

"Octavia, are you there?"

Silence fills the space once more.

I look back toward Octavia again, searching her face for answers, but all I get is the grim look sitting behind her eyes.