LONG LIVE | bellamy blake

1.1 TOUCHDOWN

"Your responsibility is to stay alive."

The gravity of the situation hit her. She was going to Earth. One way or another. Dead or alive.

Her body would be buried on the ground.

Of course Aria had always dreamed of the Earth. They all had. It was the only dream. But until today, that's all Aria had regarded it as, an impossible possibility. Now it was her reality.

The drop ship started to shudder and rattle. Aria gave in, clamping her eyes shut. At least the tears couldn't fall.

"In peace, may you leave this shore. In love, may you find the next. Safe passage on your travels, until our final journey to the ground. May we meet again." She whispered, like a mantra, over and over again.

"I hate to point out that this is our final journey to the ground." Miller quipped.

"Shut up, Miller."

"The retrorockets aren't firing." Aria's panic consumed her. This is it. Her final moments. The ship shuddered even more, the lights flashing. "Come on." She pleaded.

Then it wasn't.

They had landed.

"Touchdown." Aria whispered to herself.

They had landed on Earth.

They weren't dead.

They were alive.

Everyone was silent for a second. Then the sound of 100 buckles unclipping filled the air.

Aria and Miller rushed to the ladder, as they were sitting fairly central they were the first on their level. On her descent to the ground level, she caught sight of two unmoving bodies. They must have taken their seatbelts off. How idiotic. Then Aria remembered that they were just kids. They might have been criminals, but they were just kids, with families, friends, maybe lovers. She scolded herself but kept climbing down.

"No!" She heard a familiar voice yell. Clarke. Of course, she hadn't seen her for a year. "We can't just open the doors!"

Aria reached the final level with a huff.

"Back it up guys!" A male voice rang out.

"Stop!" Clarke demanded. She was just behind Aria. She recognised a flash of surprise on Clarke's face at her presence, of course she wouldn't have known that she was arrested. "The air could be toxic." She told the male by the door.

It was the guard who manhandled her onto the ship. Although Aria suspected he wasn't supposed to stay. A stowaway perhaps. He looked older too.

"If the air is toxic then we're all dead anyway." He said.

"Aria?" Clarke turned to Aria looking for support.

But Aria had none to give. This many people, in a closed space this small with no oxygen regeneration. She did a quick calculation. It would be mere hours before the oxygen level got to a dangerous condition. "He's right."

"Bellamy?" A girls voices shocked voice called. The man turned, his face slacked in disbelief.

Aria could hear murmurs throughout the crowd as the girl approached him. "That's the girl who was found under the floor." One said. Aria remembered, a year ago, a girl had been arrested for being a second child, and her mother floated. She had been hidden under the floor. What a horrid childhood.

The guards face split into a smile. "My god, look how big you are." The girl under the floor flung herself at him in a bear hug.

"What the hell are you wearing?" The girl quizzed with a face of disgust. "A guards uniform?"

"I borrowed it to get on the drop ship. Someone has to keep an eye on you." A few alarm bells rang in Arias head. She turned them off. Stealing a uniform and sneaking on to a drop ship sounds exactly like something she'd do for her own brother.

"Where's your wristband?" Clarke questioned staring at the faux-guard. Aria shot her a disapproving glare for interrupting the reunion.

"Do you mind." The girl snapped. "I haven't seen my brother in a year."

"No one has a brother!" A voice from the crowd called out. Aria quipped an eyebrow. Clearly not true.

Another voice yelled, "That's Octavia Blake! The girl they found hidden in the floor!"

The girl, Octavia, lurched forward in anger, but her brother caught her. "Octavia, Octavia, no." He calmed her. "Let's give them something else to remember you by."

"Yeah? Like what?"

"Like being the first person on the ground in a hundred years." Aria resisted the urge to correct him. 97 years. Her dad told her that her constant need to correct people was an unlikeable trait.

He pulled the lever. Arias breath hitched, the door hissed steam, lowering. Blinding white light flooded Arias vision. Natural light. Sunlight.

It was beautiful. Trees. So much green as far as the eye could seen. The breeze hit her face, it was soft and warm. Aria breathed deeply. She could smell the Earth. She couldn't place how it smelled because she had never smelled anything like it before. The living tree they kept on the Ark had no comparison to this.

Aria thought about the the first man on the moon, 180 years ago. An astronaut named Neil Armstrong. "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Octavia only had one small step now, before another giant leap for mankind.

Octavia tentatively stepped out, reached the edge of the lowered door. Taking a long deep breath. One small step. She paused, and jumped. She was on the Earth. Humans were on the Earth.

"WE'RE BACK BITCHES!!!" She yelled, throwing her hands up in the air. Aria couldn't help but break out into a grin, and along with the rest of the delinquents, she cheered and ran out the door.

Her feet hit the Earth with a squelch. Mud. For once her brain silenced, the thousands of thoughts of dangers and scientific inquiry subsided, she let out a purely euphoric laugh.

She was on Earth.