Let Me Down | John Murphy

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Chapter 3

Six days ago...

"I'm only going to ask you once more," Billie warned, placing a small blade against my neck. "What can you tell me about this photo?"

I re-examined it, but I still couldn't make sense of what she wanted from me. "There are two babies sitting together?"

Does she not have eyes?

"And?" She wanted me to say more, but there was nothing else to say.

"Um..."

"Look at the back!" She practically screamed in my ears, snatching it from my hands and turning it over.

My eyes took a moment to adjust before I noticed there were words on the back.

"Read it aloud!" She demanded, and I quickly listened, not wanting to make my situation any worse than I already knew it was.

"The twins: Quinzel and Billie Brady..." my words slowed as my mind processed what I had just said.

Quinzel Brady? As in me?

My head couldn't make sense of it. Why did a grounder have a photo with my name on it?

"This was found when I made it to earth eighteen years ago."

No. This was wrong.

"I have been waiting to meet you... sister."

My throat closed and I couldn't find the words to say anything.

"You and I are going to have a lot fun." Her voice was sick and all I could wonder was what she meant by 'fun'.

It wasn't good. It was the total opposite of good.

"Are you okay?" John asks as I feel a tear rolling down my cheek as I remembered the trauma of my week with Billie.

"I'm fine!" I snap, shrugging him away.

"Look, Quinn, I think we should talk about it."

"No!" I shout. "I don't want to here your excuses for leaving me behind. You made your choice, and now you have to live with it!" I walk away with hurt mixed with anger burning throughout my body.

"We have to go!" Bellamy tells us, and we all start to run.

Faster and faster we go, trying to keep ourselves hidden in all the green.

"Everyone, eyes peeled, we're in grounder territory," Bellamy says.

"Everything is grounder territory, alright?" John shouts as he stops moving. "I can't keep running! We don't even know if the guy Finn killed was telling the truth!"

Finn approaches John and grabs him by the arm, in attempt to pull him along. "Keep moving!"

"We can give him a minute," Bellamy reassures Finn.

A minute may the end of all of us, particularly me, as I know she is currently looking for me.

"You heard what the grounder said, they'll outlive their usefulness!" Finn reminds him.

"I heard what he said when you had a gun to his head."

Ooh damn!

"Look, you think I wanted to do that? He would've told his people we're coming! And by the time we got there, our people would be dead! Maybe that's something you can live with, but I can't!" Finn explains, shoving Bellamy back.

"Hey, you did what you think you had to do! But you are not yourself right now, and neither is Quinn," he says, looking back at me.

Don't bring me into this, Bellamy.

"And I can't be out here with more loose cannons!"

Oh poor you, Bellamy.

Grabbing our attention, Monroe calls, "guys..."

We look back and notice bodies everywhere. Not grounders... but our people.

Shit.

"Where the hell did they come from?" John asks, looking over at the mess.

"The ark," Bellamy says, moving through the bushes.

We follow the trail until we meet a cliff, and we let our eyes look over the large part of the destroyed ark with many dead people surrounding it.

"That's a rough landing," John concludes with a sigh.

No shit, Sherlock.

"There's nothing we can do for these people," Bellamy mutters disappointingly. "We gotta go."

However, a loud cry prevents us from leaving.

Someone survived that?

"Did you hear that?" John asks, even though we all know we heard it.

"Hey, someone's down there!" Monroe points to a small and quiet tree, sitting among the wall.

"Hey!" Bellamy calls. "Up here!"

"Please! Please help me!" the girl cries.

"Mel?" Sterling shouts.

"You know her?" John questions, seeming surprised by this new information.

"Shut up, Murphy, she's my friend! We have to do something!" Sterling snaps.

Take it easy, man. He just asked a question.

"Help me!" Mel begs. "Sterling, please!"

When I saw Bellamy and Finn begin to bicker over whether to save this girl or not, my head swayed this way and that way. Finn is right in the sense of the practicality of this situation. Trying to help the girl would be suicide. But then, Bellamy reminds me that we also need our humanity.

Just kidding, you didn't believe me, did you?

Finn's right. We should leave her for dead. I'd rather find my daughter, than waste time on a time-wasting, pointless mission to drag us down with Mel.

"We have to keep moving," I say, my motivation to find my daughter and hide from Billie, take over.

"Wait, Sterling!" Finn attempts to stop him, but the rope tied around him, he was already making his way down the cliff.

"Well, looks like we're taking that break after all, huh?" John's comment earns glares all around. He's lucky no one has taken action yet.

Sterling meets Mel on the cliff and decides to rest his feet on a piece of the cliff as he tries to grab her hand. But being that cliff's are unpredictable, he immediately loses his footing as the part caves under him.

I watch him struggle to regain his footing, just as I notice the rope about to snap.

"Fuck," I mutter in frustration, my human side coming out to play as I rush over to try and save him.

I take the rope in my hand and pull with all my might, though it's not use. It escapes my hands, giving me a well-deserved rope burn, and I hear him scream before his body hit the rocks below.

Stupid boy.

I look over my hands and trace over the burn, admiring how broken my body now is. Numerous scars all over from stab wounds, scratches, and other painful torments have told a story of my journey on earth. I am murderer, a monster, even, yet I don't feel guilty. I just feel numb.

I really am fucked in the head, aren't I?