DISCORDIA

[ 39 ] red hot

       She shook her head. "None... Where's Finn?"

       Bellamy shared uneasy glances all around before replying. "Looking for you."

       "Clarke, who took you?" Jinny asked.

       "The Mountain Men," she answered with a hint of anger in her voice.

       "Damn it, Raulf was right. I knew we couldn't have trusted that Grounder," Jinny swore before pausing. "He's a looter. He must have traded our stuff to that village so he'd know where to send us to look for clues. Shit. If Finn finds them, he'll take it the wrong way."

       "W-what? Why?" Clarke asked in confusion.

       "He's off his rocker trying to look for you!" Jinny exclaimed. "He killed a Grounder in cold blood, almost left Mel to die at that cliff. He's armed and he's dangerous, and we need to stop him."

       She started back towards the gate but Bellamy grabbed hold of the back of her shirt. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, you're still injured!"

       "Yeah, I noticed that too," Raven said, lowering her gaze to Jinny's wounded leg. "What happened?"

       "Grounders happened," Bellamy replied with a frown, hooking his elbow around Jinny's arm and forcibly dragging her towards the medical tent at a slow gait.

       "The guards won't let anyone out unless they have permission," Clarke told them as she followed.

       "I'll just show them my fist and they'll let me through," Jinny said, throwing her balled hand in the air.

       Bellamy shook his head in exasperation and sighed as they walked through the entranceway of the medical tent and he led her to a seat. Abby was examining Mel's arm while Jackson was cleaning up the gash on Monroe's arm. Jinny prodded her own thigh and winced, finding that the bleeding still hadn't stopped. This was going to be a problem. "So what did I miss while we were gone?" she asked, turning to Raven.

       "The Commander and Kane went on some diplomatic slash suicide mission to find the Grounder leader," Raven told her. "We still have no way to contact the other stations if they made it to the Ground because Byrne shot my beacon." Her tone ended bitterly with that.

       "Byrne's an idiot," Jinny said dismissively. "What about you, Clarke? Tell us everything about Mount Weather."

       The blonde girl launched into a lengthy explanation of the entire facility, the forty-seven surviving delinquents still inside and the blood farm. It sounded like a crazy sci-fi film that they'd watched from the old archives, but Jinny seemed wholly fascinated by the tale. Their blood had a higher metabolism for radiation and it could be used as a cure; that in itself seemed like a grand feat of human evolution. Jackson came over midway through the story to fix up her leg, but their scarce supplies couldn't even offer her any painkillers.

       Since Kane was gone, Abby had become the Acting Chancellor and she held a meeting with the remaining Council members and chiefs to decide their next course of action. Octavia had gotten lost amidst the crowd and Bellamy wasn't letting Jinny anywhere out of his sight. She refused to sit down, limping alongside Raven most of the time and taunting Wick with their superior teamwork to pass the time.

       "Hey, guys," Clarke called, finding them lounging around in the Engineers' work room. "They just convened the meeting."

       Bellamy and Jinny stood up, but Raven waved at them to go on without her. The wound in Jinny's thigh was aggravating, to say the least, with its constant ache and pain whenever she moved the limb. They met up with Abby outside of the conference room, Clarke going forward to ask her mother about their decision.