An uncomfortable question bumped against the jumble of other thoughts in Clarke’s mind. “How many people died? Like, thousands?”
Her father sighed. “More like billions.”
“Billions?” Clarke rose to her feet and padded over to the small, round, star-filled window. “Do you think they’re all up here now?”
Her mother walked over and placed her hand on Clarke’s shoulder. “What do you mean?”
“Isn’t heaven supposed to be somewhere in space?”
Clarke’s mother gave her shoulder a squeeze. “I think heaven is wherever we imagine it to be. I’ve always thought mine would be on Earth. In a forest somewhere, full of trees.”
Clarke slipped her hand into her mother’s. “Then that’s where mine will be too.”
“And I know what song will be playing at the pearly gates,” her father said with a laugh.
Her mother spun around. “David, don’t you dare play that song again.” But it was too late. Music was already streaming out of the speakers in the walls. Clarke grinned as she heard the opening lines of “Heaven Is a Place on Earth.”
“Seriously, David?” her mother asked, raising an eyebrow.
Her father only laughed and bounded over to grab their hands, and the three of them spun around the living room, singing along to her father’s favorite song.
“Clarke!” Bellamy emerged from the tree line, breathless. It was too dark to see the expression on his face, but she could hear the urgency in his voice. “Come and see this!”
Clarke stumbled awkwardly through the water. She reached the muddy bank and, forgetting that she was barely dressed, broke into a run, ignoring the rocks under her bare feet and the sting of the chilly night air.
He was crouched on the ground, staring at something Clarke couldn’t make out.
“Bellamy!” she called. “Are you okay? What was that sound?”
“Nothing. A bird or something. But look at this. It’s a footprint.” He pointed at the ground, his smile shimmering with hope. “It’s Octavia’s, I’m sure of it. We found the trail.”
Relief coursed through Clarke as she knelt down for a better look. There seemed to be another print a few meters away, in a patch of mud. Both looked fairly recent, as if Octavia had walked by only hours earlier. But before she could reply, Bellamy stood up, pulled Clarke to her feet, and kissed her.
He was still wet from the lake, and as he wrapped his arms around her waist, her damp skin clung to his. For a moment, the world around them faded away. All that existed was Bellamy—the warmth of his breath, the taste of his lips. He moved one of his hands from her waist to her lower back and Clarke shivered, suddenly acutely aware that she and Bellamy were standing in their underwear, dripping wet.
A cold breeze shuddered through the thick canopy of leaves and danced across the nape of Clarke’s neck. She shivered again, and Bellamy slowly unlocked his lips from hers. “You must be freezing,” he said, rubbing his hands up and down her back.
She cocked her head to the side. “You’re wearing even less clothing than I am.”
Bellamy ran his finger up her arm, then tugged playfully at her damp bra strap. “We can fix that, if it bothers you.”
Clarke smiled. “I think it’s probably a good idea to put on more clothes before we head off into the woods to follow those footprints.” Even though she didn’t think the tracks would vanish overnight, she knew Bellamy wouldn’t want to stop now that he’d found the trail.
He looked at Clarke. “Thank you,” he said, leaning over to kiss her again before he took her hand and led her toward the shore.
They dressed quickly, then grabbed their packs and headed back into the shadow-filled woods. The trail was fairly easy to follow, although Bellamy kept spotting the next print long before Clarke saw anything. Had his eyes grown that sharp from hunting? Or was it the by-product of his desperation? “Forget the gills. I think you’ve developed night vision,” she called when he dashed toward yet another footprint she hadn’t noticed. She’d meant it as a joke, of course, but then she frowned. The radiation levels on Earth clearly weren’t as high as she’d once feared, but that didn’t mean they were safe yet. Low-level radiation poisoning could take weeks to present, even if their cells had already begun to deteriorate. For all she knew, that was why no more dropships had arrived. What if the Council wasn’t waiting to determine whether Earth was safe—because the hundred’s biometric data had already proved that it wasn’t?
Her heart racing, Clarke glanced down at the monitor clamped to her wrist and counted the days they’d been on Earth. She looked up at the moon, which was three-quarters full. It had been a pale sliver that first terrible night after they’d crashed. Her stomach plummeted as she remembered a pivotal moment in her parents’ research. The day most patients grew sicker. Day twenty-one.
“I’m used to looking for things in the dark,” Bellamy said ahead of her, oblivious to her anxiety. “Back on the Colony, I’d sneak into the abandoned storage areas. Most of them didn’t have electricity anymore.”
Clarke winced as a branch scraped her leg. “What were you looking for?” she asked, shoving aside her concern. If anyone did begin presenting signs of radiation poisoning, they had some medicine that might help, albeit a paltry amount.
“Old machine parts, textiles, the odd Earthmade relic—anything worth trading at the Exchange.” His tone was casual, but she could hear a hint of strain in his voice. “Octavia didn’t always get enough to eat at the care center, so I had to find a way to get extra ration points.”
The admission pulled Clarke from her own thoughts. Her heart ached at the idea of a younger, slighter version of the boy in front of her, alone in a dark, cavernous storage area. “Bellamy,” she started, searching for the right words, then cut herself off as she caught sight of something glinting from the shadowy depths behind the trees. She knew she should keep moving; they couldn’t afford to lose any more time. Yet something about the way it shimmered brought Clarke to a stop.
“Bellamy, come look at this,” she said, turning to walk toward it.
There was something on the ground, scattered among the roots of a large tree. Clarke bent down for a closer look and saw that it was metal. She inhaled sharply and reached out to run her finger along one of the long, twisted pieces. What could it have been part of? And how had it ended up here, in the middle of the woods?
“Clarke?” Bellamy shouted. “Where did you go?”
“I’m over here,” she called back. “You need to see this.”
Bellamy materialized soundlessly next to her. “What’s going on?” He was breathing heavily, and there was an edge to his voice. “You can’t just take off like that. We need to stick together.”
“Look.” Clarke picked up a piece of metal and held it in the moonlight. “How could this have survived the Cataclysm?”
Bellamy shifted from one foot to the other. “No clue,” he said. “Now can we keep moving? I don’t want to lose the trail.”
Clarke was about to set the strange artifact back on the ground when she noticed two familiar letters carved into the metal. TG. Trillion Galactic. “Oh my god,” she murmured. “It came from the Colony.”
“What?” Bellamy crouched down next to her. “It must be part of the dropship, right?”
Clarke shook her head. “I don’t think so. We have to be at least six kilometers from camp. There’s no way this is wreckage from the crash.” At least, not our crash.
Clarke felt suddenly disoriented, as if trying to discern between a memory and a dream. “There are more pieces scattered around. Maybe they’ll be something that’ll—” She cut herself off with a cry as a jolt of pain shot through her right arm.
“Clarke? Are you okay?”
Bellamy’s arm was around her, but she couldn’t look at him. Her eyes were fixed on something on the ground.
Something long, dark, thin, and wriggling.
She tried to point the creature out to Bellamy, but found that she couldn’t move. “Clarke! What’s wrong?” he shouted.