DISCORDIA

[ 25 ] prodigal son

     JINNY STOOD IN THE CENTER of the crash site with a rifle in hand, her dark eyes fixated on the charred remnants of the Exodus ship. She had gone through an entire checklist of fault trees, imagining each scenario in her mind's eye as she searched for clues. There was still no signal from the Ark, as if the space station had been swallowed by a black hole.

   "What are you thinking?" Bellamy asked, stepping up beside her.

   "A mutiny," she replied. "If the Exodus ship was forcibly ejected from the Ark, it would have caused a global system malfunction. That'd explain the hole in the sky and the Exodus crash."

   "What are you saying?" Clarke asked from nearby. "There was a coup on the Ark?"

   Jinny turned around and examined the site again, her eyes landing on the leaking fuel tank. She held her hand up towards it, calculating trajectories, and drew a line to the right. "The aft nacelle supplies oxygen to the ship," she murmured while tracing designs in the air. "It connects with the fuselage that houses the silicon wires, running up towards the ceiling to meet the mainframe."

   "What's she talking about?" Clarke glanced at Bellamy for an explanation.

   "I've known her all my life and I still don't understand half of what she says." He readjusted his grip on his gun and continued to watch Jinny draw her fingers through the air.

   "There it is." She finally stopped and pointed at a pile of rubble. "The black box is there." Miller went over and dug through the debris, holding the recording device over his head like a trophy when he'd found it.

   "How'd you do that?" Finn asked with a stunned expression.

   Jinny rubbed her face with the palm of her hand. "I had to install a complete overhaul of the Exodus operating systems and hardware. It was't fun. The fault couldn't have been technical, it has to be mechanical. I bet the ship wasn't pressurised properly before it launched; meaning someone was in a hurry."

   "Who would want to stage a coup and hijack an Exodus ship?" Clarke frowned.

   "Diana Sydney," Bellamy replied.

   "Well, let's hope the bitch is dead now," Jinny remarked coldly, turning away to survey the perimeter and ignoring the scorched body parts that littered the scene. One of them could be her father, or Clarke's mother. There were supposed to be a lot of good people that she knew onboard. If Diana Sydney actually did hijack the Exodus, then there was still a chance that she only brought along her cronies. She really hoped her father had learned his lesson.

   "Stay sharp," Bellamy called out. "Grounder retaliation for what happened on the bridge is coming, just a matter of when."

   "Can you blame them?" Finn asked.

   "No. I blame you." Bellamy turned to him, casually walking around with his gun held closely.

   "Maybe if you didn't bring guns—"

   "If we didn't bring guns, we all would've been killed," Raven told him firmly.

   "Why they're coming doesn't matter anymore," Bellamy said. "It's our job to be ready when they do. We're on our own now." Which couldn't have been more true.

   Clarke exclaimed loudly from examining the fuel tank, withdrawing when she took in a breath of fumes. Raven quickly jogged over towards her. "Clarke, stop!" she warned.

   "Rocket fuel?" the blonde asked.

   "Hydrazine," Raven answered. "Highly unstable in its non solid form. If this stuff meets fire, we're all pink mist." She dipped a rock into the leaked pool, then stood up. "Fire in the hole!" she called before flinging the rock to an empty spot that was still burning. A small explosion erupted, spitting out a tuft of dust and smoke that startled a few people.