FROM HER ASHES³ ━━ Bellamy Blake

𝐕𝐈𝐈𝐈. Ribs

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RIBS

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NOT EVEN AN hour later, Lyra is tucked away at the bottom level of the bunker, fighting the urge to vomit.

She's never liked the bunker. Not that she'd ever admit that out loud, especially at this point. Even in the beginning, there'd always been the fear of becoming trapped, turning her prisoner all over again, caged in the Skybox while the walls closed in on her. Squeezing. Constricting. Suffocating. And then it really had happened ━━ the tower above them had collapsed and Lyra had spent four years waiting to starve to death in that bunker. The fear was a dull ache in her ribs then. Even with the doors open now, spending too long beneath the earth makes the blood drain from her face, her arms break into a cold sweat, and her heart beat just a little faster. The fear is chilling. Almost blacking out until it is the Dark Year all over again.

     And the ghosts that haunt her down here are not translucent. They are sharp, all edges.

     It's not even just this that causes her steadily mounting heartbeat. This chamber is overwhelmingly crowded. Grizzly stone narrowed by criss crossing wires and a heap of worn out electronics that coil through the room, creating a snake-like labyrinth. Her hands are sweat glazed as they hack noisily at the computer keys and green blue blazes in her throat. No, it's the boy that works beside her, the one that she'd used to be friends with in another life, and her teeth begin to chatter as she feels Monty gazing sideways at her. Even then, making it a thousand times worse, footsteps echo in the dim as Bellamy stalks back and forth the small, square-shaped shadows like a lion.

     Eventually, Lyra gets fed up. "Could you stop pacing?"

     Bellamy does not. "Can you do it or not?"

     "I have access to the mother ship thanks to the Laser-comm," Lyra begins begrudgingly; she doesn't like this next part. "But everything's encrypted. There's a camera on the ship and I could open up a back door from the inside, but I would have to be up there."

     "So you can't."

      "Since you're such a genius, why don't you do it?" Lyra says snappishly. "I'll figure something out. I always do."

     "Look, why are we even doing this?" Monty speaks for the first time, lifting his hooded eyes and slanting them between the two. "So Octavia can go to war? What happened to us being the good guys?"

     Lyra's eyes narrow. "There are no good guys."

     Monty snorts dryly. "Yeah, you don't have to remind me. We're letting her kill people for defecting. Correction — thinking about defecting."

     "It's strategic," retorts Lyra.

     "It's cruel," he fires back. "You  can't just go around killing people you don't like."

     Lyra blinks. "Uh, why not?"

     "Raven's a prisoner." Bellamy strides in front of Monty, looking at him intensely. "Murphy has a shock collar around his neck and is alone in the words with Emori. This. . . this is how we get back to them. Come on. We need to keep trying."