Lightning Only Strikes Once - Clexa

Chapter 72: The Rest Is History

When they enter, the first thing that happens is that Raven flies across the room to embrace Anya, hugging her tightly. The colour floods back into Anya's too-pale face and she presses a kiss to Raven's forehead. Lexa notes, distantly, that she's glad Raven's alive. And Wells is too, standing in the room, his face set and angry.

She gives Anya a nod, and Anya leaves to go organise the gonakru and find out any further information she can from them, reluctantly releasing Raven. Lexa will fill Anya in on the information she gets from this meeting later. Raven looks like she wants to follow Anya for a second, but then meets Lexa's eyes and stays put.

The others in the meeting are Kane, Abby, Sinclair, a gona named Jora, and for some reason the boy John.

"Who did this?" Lexa says, her voice too quiet and controlled. She knows by the way everyone else in the room shrinks back that she is scaring them, and could not care less.

"Maybe we should be asking you that," Abby snaps . "They certainly got to Arkadia without any trouble, despite all your warriors and your supposed border blockade."

Kane puts a hand on her arm to quiet her. "Greetings, Commander," he says to Lexa. His face is drawn but he still has a calmness the rest of them can't quite match. "We're not entirely sure who did it, but we suspect Prison Station, since one of them was found dead in the radio room."

"I saw one of my dad's friends, one of the ones who was on Prison Station, right before the attack," John says grimly, which at least explains his presence to Lexa. "I think he's the one who set the fires."

"There were three fires set," Kane tells Lexa. "I think they were a distraction. They knocked out everyone inside the buildings with – well, that's where this gets a little more complicated." With a light click, he places a used gas grenade on the table.

"Did you take weapons out of Mount Weather after ordering us not to?" Abby says, crossing her arms. Lexa notices her eyes are red and raw, and that deep shadows lurk beneath them, but she's not in the mood to be sympathetic right now, not even to Clarke's nomon.

"No, I did not," Lexa snaps. There's only one possibility. "If they used Maunon weapons, they must have gotten them from the Azplana, the Ice Queen. She had a deal with the Maunon at one point." And that means Nia has Clarke. No. That cannot happen. Not again.

"That doesn't explain how they were able to get through your blockade," Abby retorts.

"I ordered that no Skaikru were to be harmed," Lexa remembers, cursing herself. She had not realised the loophole that would leave for Diana's people. Or for Nia, using Diana's people, if that was what happened. "But I cannot understand how you allowed them in with weaponry -" she turns her head to pin Jora with her angry gaze.

"Moba, Heda," Jora says, bowing nearly to the floor. His heavily lashed eyes are fearful, his smooth face worried, and it makes him look far younger than he actually is. "We were searching those who entered and left, but we were commanded to stop." The annoyed glance he sends towards Abby makes it clear whose idea that was.

"Anyway," Kane says firmly. "This isn't the time to be apportioning blame. What matters is it happened. Using the fires to distract everyone, they destroyed the radio and took the missile and Clarke. I don't know if they planned to take Clarke from the start, or if it's because she killed one of them, or even if they took her just because she was nearest to the missile. If they didn't recognise her, they might think she could tell them how it works."

"They probably knew her from Prison Station," Raven points out. "She was there for a year."

"Her father was the best engineer we had ," Kane replies. "Her mother is our chief of medical. If they didn't know her well, it would be easy to assume she knew a lot of science. She was locked up for knowing Ark secrets and she was in the room with the missile, both of which also point towards her being one of the people who would know how our most dangerous weapon works."