ATARAXIA • BELLAMY BLAKE

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A faint beeping sound draws my mind to consciousness. The more I come to it, the more voices I hear coming from every which direction, disturbing my pounding head. My body is curled up into itself, aching all over.

When I finally manage to open my eyes, I quickly jump to sit up straight, banging the top of my head in the process. All of my drowsiness disappears once I get a scope of my surroundings.

I'm in a tiny metal cage, barely fitting inside, with similar cages all around me. Every single one of those cages has a person inside, each of them looking ghostly and close to death. What the hell have I gotten myself into?

Ignoring the pain from banging my head, I leap forward and look out between the metal bars to get a better look at the other cages to find where they've put Bellamy. But I don't see him. What I do see, however, is that at the far end of the walls of cages, two people are hanging by their feet from the ceiling. Tubes connect them to a tall and broad machine in the middle.

"No, no, no," I mutter to myself as I realize this is where Clarke had told us all that they take the Grounders' blood to transfuse into the Mountain Men.

"Bellamy?" I call out, hoping he'll answer from somewhere in here. But he doesn't. I try again, this time louder, but I once again get no response.

What if they've already gotten to him? Taken his blood and realized it was more effective than the rest and dragged him off to God knows where to whatever they're already planning to do to the rest of our friends in here? I need to get out of here.

Grabbing the bars at the front of my cage with both hands, I use all of my strength to try to force open the door. I pull and I struggle, and I try to force the padlock on the outside off, even attempting to pick it open with my nail, but I immediately stop with a start when someone next to me yells something out.

I look to the side to see a Grounder looking right at me, eyes boiling with anger. He says something else, looking a whole lot like he wants a response.

"I can't—I don't understand you," I say, my breathing shaky as I hear more people fight to try to open their cages.

Then the man leans forward, nose poking through one of the gaps in between our shared cage wall as he angrily asks. "Skaikru?"

I nod and scoot back a little, worried that he'll try to grab me in between the bars and strangle me since he probably doesn't know that we're no longer enemies. But he doesn't. All he does is lean back and turn his body to face away from me as if I'm contagious with something deadly.

It hurts to sit on the grate that separate me and the person under me. The metal of it digs into the bare skin of my thighs and feet, and I try to adjust my position. But nothing works, because right now I'm all skin. Only my chest and lower body have been covered, wrapped in white bandages. By reflex, my hand flies up to my neck, searching for my necklace to check if the Mountain Men had taken it along with the rest of my clothes. My fingers catch the small emerald pendant on the chain and I relax a little, but only for a second.

The people surrounding me look the same as I do, all of their bodies wrapped in bandages as well. They have more than me, though, on places such as their legs and arms where blood stains through, undoubtedly as the result of having been tapped into for blood. I'm not letting them do the same to me.

Ignoring the irritable Grounder next to me, I go right back to fighting with everything in me to force open this cage, yelling and grunting with effort as I scoot back to lean agains the wall of it and start kicking the bottom of my foot at the door. The Grounder yells at me, but I ignore him and keep doing all that I can to open this stupid thing.