OUT OF MIND² ━━ Bellamy Blake

𝐗𝐗𝐕𝐈𝐈: The War to End All Wars

"She hasn't been the girl under the floor for a long time," says Lyra without second thought.

Because it's true, isn't it? More than anyone else she can think of, Octavia has come a long ways from the girl she was in space. She'd been the reason the hundred had ever even had the chance to form an alliance with the Grounders because of her love for Lincoln, she had fought in the first war, she had trained to be a warrior under Indra's command, and she had fought at the battle against the Mountain Men as a warrior. Lincoln had been shot down by Pike and Octavia had murdered him without question, waiting only until the City of Light fell. She'd stayed behind in Polis as a part of Kane's security detail and a way for him to connect to the Grounders. And the stories Lyra had heard of who Octavia had become in Polis. . .

It's fitting, Roan had remarked in the labs once. Stormwalker and Skairipa.

Skairipa. Death from above.

"She's got this." Lyra gives another nod, as if it's set in stone.

"She'd better," says Emori darkly. "She's all we have left."

With this warm and fuzzy sentiment, nobody seems willing to keep the conversation going. There is a terrible silence in which Lyra fights the urge to look any one of her friends in the face; she isn't quite sure she can bare seeing the same hollowed cheeks and bleak eyes again and again, she is so tired of seeing the hopelessness eat them from the inside out.

And she will not see the same look on her face reflecting back at her.

"We're five minutes out from Polis," Nate announces hours later.

Night has fallen. True to Nate's word, Lyra can make out the glittering of fires on the horizon. Red and orange flames weave around one another as they twist towards the moon.

"City's still off-limits," he continues. "We've got two ambassadors in the Worgeda in the tower, but that's it. Everyone else is in the designated safe-zone, which is where we're going — "

"Wait." Lyra lurches forwards in her seat. "Drop me off at the entrance to the tunnels."

     Nate stares at her through the mirror. "Did you not hear what I said? Polis is off-limits."

"I need to get to the Worgeda in the tower," insists Lyra, acting as if she hadn't heard him. "I need to find out whether Octavia's alive or not — "

"It means nothing!" Murphy retorts. "You can't do anything — "

"It means everything!" Lyra's chest heaves as she fixes him with the most heated glare she can muster. Looking astonished, he falls back into his seat, though mostly out of surprise. "If Octavia's alive, I'll send word to the safe-zone. And if she's — and if she's — "

"Been brutally mutilated?"

"Yeah, that," says Lyra, wishing he'd never open his moth again. "Then we have roughly 72 hours to figure out a backup plan — "

"A backup plan?" Murphy echoes with sharp incredulity. "There is no — "

But he's cut off as Jackson twists around in his seat, regarding Lyra carefully. "It shouldn't be you. You're the one that could have a seizure at any moment — "