The 99

Chapter One: Clarke

An idea I came up with. I'm really excited about it. Please review, thanks! (Also available on my fanfiction)

Her fingers were stained with lead.

One of the guards had sneaked her a pencil but already it was wearing so thin, it was a nub she had to pinch to keep it from slipping through. She didn't know what she'd do when the lead tip finally ran out. The small piece was the only escape she had from the cell walls that pressed around her. But even they were losing available art space until she'd finally had to resort to drawing on the floor.

Clarke stood up, gazing at the crude image beneath her feet. It was a sun. Or what she envisioned to be a sun. It hung low over the trees, pools of light trickling over the ground. It was the best she could do from just the pictures she'd seen. Clarke had never actually seen a sun with her own eyes. She'd never felt the heat of it on her face or witnessed it breaking over the hills. Or maybe the sun was like the moon now, in that it didn't give off any warmth.

around her, the walls held other images. Pictures of stars pinned against a curtain of black. A river dividing a wood in two. There were drawings of the sea and birds, though their proportions seemed off somehow.

there were none of her parents, though. Clarke didn't want that reminder.

She ran a hand through her hair, further smearing the lead but she didn't care. Appearance didn't matter to a criminal, much less a prisoner.

Footsteps suddenly echoed down the hall, muffled by the door but she heard them. Clarke braced for whatever was coming. Her birthday was three weeks from today; too early for her to get possible reprieve; too early for her to be sentenced to death. Or maybe they'd made an exception. It wasn't unlike the Counsil to want to hurry things along. After all, it had only taken a day for her own father to be convicted. A couple hours later, and he was already drifting among the stars.

The door to her cell opened abruptly, and in walked a guard, clad in black with a gun holstered at his side. Clarke grimaced. Soren. Brusque and hotheaded, Clarke cared for him the least of the entire  Guard, however much a prisoner could like her captors. But at least Corwin offered the occasional bad joke. At least Dimitri had sneaked a pencil through the door.

"What do you want?" Clarke asked, not bothering to conceal the thread of hostility woven in her words.

Soren narrowed his eyes, until only slits of calculative blue shown between his lids. "Chancellor Jaha has made an announcement," he said, tone steely and unfeeling. It was evident he'd been given strict orders as to what to say; obviously straining against the borders on his words.

Clarke snorted and gave him a bitter smile. "And how exactly does that affect me? Unless he's agreed to have me floated," like a fish, she mentally added.

Soren didn't rise to the bait, but she saw him flex his jaw. "You've been offered an ultimatum."

She frowned. "An ultimatum? Do I get to choose my way of demise?" Clarke shrugged. "Why don't you surprise me?"

The guard walked forward and a part of Clarke wanted to retract into the walls, but he grabbed her hand before she could, the one still clutching the nub.

"You've been offered something no one could have anticipated," he hissed at her. "I wouldn't be making jokes."

Clarke smirked. "Who said I was joking?"

"Chancellor Jaha has offered you a chance to be pardoned." He pulled her closer. "Are you listening now?"

She had to admit, a large piece of her was. "Why would he pardon me?" She asked, not quite able to keep the disbelief out of her voice. "I'm an accessory to treason in his eyes."

"I didn't say your options were preferable," Soren sneered and this time, Clarke could smell his breath, sharp and bitter with the trace of protein packets.

Her mind whirred, but she wouldn't let herself hope. Not yet, anyway. Clarke kept her wariness. "What are they? Be floated in three weeks? Or stay a prisoner for life?"

Soren yanked her forward, until she was close enough to glimpse the anger in his eyes, resonating just beneath the surface. All she had to do was cut his skin, and it would come pouring out like blood.

"Be floated in three weeks," he said, "or be sent to the ground."

Clarke's lips parted in shock and she gazed back at him with wide eyes. Her confusion must have shown in her face because Soren smiled.

Before she had a chance to ask how, or even why, his grip tightened over her wrist until she couldn't keep her hold on the pencil nub and it fell to the ground at his feet.

"At least you'll have a better view as you die," he said. Then he crushed it under his heel.