FLARES ━ BELLAMY BLAKE ( 1 )

chapter nine

She sat there for another ten minutes or so when she heard the door open and a crowd of people exiting. All went off in different directions, one pair of feet heading in hers.

"Well, now what do we have here?" a sneering voice questioned. Her eyes shot up to the source of the sound and she stood up to meet his gaze more firmly. "If it isn't Taylor Flynn, dearest friend of the Blakes."

"Councilman Myers," she greeted warily, the man always having scared her when she saw him. "Has a council meeting just happened?"

"Yes...one discussing your fate," he admitted easily. Her stomach churned, not having a good feeling about any of it. She didn't have the proper emotional control to even continue with the civil pleasantries.

"Please don't float us," she blurted out, unable to control what had popped out of her mouth. The man laughed at her bluntness and stepped forward. His eyes glinted with malice and greed, sending shivers down her spine.

"Things aren't looking good for any of you," he told her menacingly. His expression turned into one of fake sadness and he put a hand dramatically over his heart. "If only there was some way to save you."

"Is there?" she whispered, feeling incredibly desperate and powerless.

"I think that you and I can make a little arrangement," he answered with a wicked smile.

"What kind of arrangement?" she questioned cautiously. He leaned forward, it taking everything in her not to jump back in disgust, and whispered his demands right in her ear. She paused and took a deep breath, thinking of her mother and of Octavia. Thinking of Bellamy.

"I'll do it. As long as you can keep us alive, I'll do anything," she agreed reluctantly.

"Excellent. Now I think the council is suddenly more willing to change their minds! Would you look at that, there's hope!" he exclaimed, the same fake emotions present in his face.

She decided that Myers was a manipulative man whose crimes ran deeper than she could have anticipated. And it made her sick. But she also knew that if she didn't do anything, they would suffer the ultimate consequence.

__________

"Taylor? Are you okay?" The number of times she had heard those three words in the past few days astounded her. She nodded, snapping out of the memory that she had just relived. Bellamy still stood at her side, giving her a concerned look.

"You know you can talk to me," he told her and she nodded, words failing her all of the sudden. She felt the need for some distance between her and everything else.

"Hey! I found it!" Jones shouted from across the river. He had an object in his hands and was attempting to shake it dry, a stupendous amount of water flowing out of the device. Bellamy and Taylor met everyone else at the very edge of the river, Raven now holding the radio and picking weeds off of it.

"Can you fix it?" Clarke questioned hopefully, despite it being quite obvious that the radio was past saving at that point.

"Maybe. But it'll take half a day just to dry out the components to see what's broken," Raven disclosed in an irritated tone. Clarke's eyebrows pinched together with her mouth hanging slightly open.

"Like I said, it's too late," Bellamy spoke up. Taylor knew that this 'I told you so' comment would not fly well with Clarke, Raven, or anyone else.

"Do you have any idea what you did? Do you even care?" Clarke seethed, stepping up to him and getting right in his face.

"You asked me to help. I helped," he defended, standing his ground against the small, angry girl.

"Three hundred people are gonna die today because of you!" she yelled.

"Stop! He knows what he did, okay?" Taylor chimed in, tired of the needless arguing. Clarke rounded on her, an equally as infuriated look plastered on her face.

"And you. You helped him do this!" she snarled. Taylor's mouth dropped open and she took a threatening step closer to Clarke.

"I didn't help him! I tried to get the radio back!" she shot back, just about tired of the way Clarke had been talking to her since they had met.

"She had nothing to do with this. Back off, Princess," Bellamy intervened, Clarke taking an indignant step back.

"Hold up," Raven interrupted. "We don't have to talk to the Ark. We just have to let them know we're down here, right?"

"Yeah, but how do we do that with no radio?" Finn asked, his confused look matching everyone else's. Taylor was beginning to catch onto the fact that Raven was extremely intelligent; a plan was evidently forming in her mind.

Not much later, she was sitting back at camp and watching people bring parts from Raven's ship back so they could make flares to signal to the Ark that they were, in fact, alive. She had never been much of a scientific type, only having been a mechanic in training for a few days. That and she could tell Clarke was still fuming at her and thought it best to stay as far away as she possibly could from everything.

Night had finally fallen and people were rushing around, putting everything in its place. The rockets were propped up against giant poles that she figured must have been scrap from the dropship.

She walked over to the back of the crowd and watched as they launched them into the sky. They raced off into the black oblivion with a fiery crack, red streaks of spark trailing behind them. Monty and Jasper had wandered next to her, their eyes glued to the sky.

The day was ending much like how it had started. Everyone looking up at the sky. But now it was just for different reasons.

"It's working," Monty mumbled through the cracks and flashes of light that surrounded them. She assumed that everyone knew about Raven, the radio, and the Ark by now since news spread fast around camp.

"Yeah, it is," she agreed, not taking her gaze off of the lights that illuminated their faces.

"So what now?" Jasper inquired.

"Now we hope," Taylor replied. She hoped that somehow, some way, her mother saw the signals that they were sending. She hoped that they weren't too late to save the people who were supposed to be sentenced to death. "Do...do you guys have anyone up there?"

"My whole family's up there," Monty answered solemnly. She wasn't the only one putting hope into the long shot that the Ark would see the flares. She tore her eyes away from the sky and looked back at the ground, unable to think about it any longer.