lethal, commander lexa

prelude

❝ Ares poisoned men's hearts with
jealousy and suspicion. he turned them
against one another and war
ravaged the earth ❞

     COMING TO THE ground was supposed to be a dream. A paradise, even. But it wasn't for them, and that dream quickly faded away into a nightmare.

One hundred delinquents were sent to the ground after a nuclear war left them stranded in space for a hundred years. They survived on twelve space stations that joined together at the time of the bombs, which they called the Ark.

No matter how small a crime you'd committed on the Ark, you would still get locked up in the Skybox, then when you turned eighteen, the Council would decide if you would live or if you would die.

     The Ark was dying, meaning the people of the Ark only had a few months of oxygen left to live.  When that time ran out, thousands of people would die, floating through space as nothing but a lifeless figure.

The hundred had been sent to the ground due to their crimes making them 'expendable.' Coming to Earth, the hundred didn't know what challenges they faced, whether it be radiation or something entirely different, but they had never guessed there would be other people on Earth, people who had survived the bombs and then populated the Earth, and these people were lethal, willing to kill anyone who stepped into their territory.

     Athena Hargrove had been one of the hundred that had been sent to the ground. Her crime was murder. It was self-defense, but the Council didn't know that. She was thrown in a cell for something that wasn't even supposed to be a crime.

On her eighteenth birthday, she thought she was going to be floated, knowing the Council wouldn't pardon her crimes for a crime as big as murder. But they didn't float her. Instead, they sent her to the ground, which was far worse than any death she could have faced.

On the ground, you repeatedly stared death in the face, and you just had to have enough courage to fight back, and not allow her to take you.

After defeating the Grounders, having burned 300 of their warriors in a ring of fire, they faced a new threat, the Mountain Men, which were also enemies of the Grounders.

The Mountain Men inhabited Mount Weather, the spot where the hundred originally should have landed. Forty-Nine of the delinquents had been taken to Mount Weather after the attack on the Grounders, Athena and Clarke being two of them. One of the Grounders, Anya, the Grounder the delinquents referred to as the 'Grounder Princess,' helped them both escape before being fatally shot by one of the guards at Camp Jaha.

     The Mountain Men had survived in Mount Weather for almost a century. Due to radiation, they weren't able to go outside. Clarke had managed to find out the secret behind Mount Weather; they were holding the Grounders captive for experiments to try and get the people of Mount Weather back on the ground. Athena and Clarke both knew that once they ran out of Grounders, they would start using delinquents, or they would start sooner than that.

     The delinquents knew it would be a war to defeat the Mountain Men, and a struggle to get the Grounders on their side.