┍━━━━ ⋆｡˚☽˚｡⋆ ━━━━┑
CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE
┕━━━━ ⋆｡˚☽˚｡⋆ ━━━━┙
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
HERE'S THE THING ━━ pressure fucks with you.
Lyra doesn't know what she expected, when he heard his little inspirational speech and thus became confident enough to walk back into the dropship. Lyra doesn't know what she expected, but it wasn't this. The thing with the dropship right now, as she's learnt in her five minutes of being inside (as you've learned, she's like, super-observant on the, like, vibes of places) is that it fucks with her. Five minutes ago, Lyra looked around at the too-close metal walls and thought shit, and it's only gotten worse as the air starts to get sticky from the amount of people crammed inside. Then of course there's Finn dying, like, right there and things start to get even worse.
Because sure, it fucks with you when a bunch of lives in space are depending on you. But the thing is, they aren't here. You don't get a constant reminder that they're dying and each little mistake is pushing them closer and closer and closer to the edge.
So. The pressure is fucking with her and Finn's dying and everyone's panicking.
Shit. Well. At least Bellamy tried.
We all have great expectations for you, Miss. Jupiter.
"I know, I know," she mutters. "I know."
" - Lyra - Lyra!" Jerking up, Lyra realises Raven's looking down at her and she knows that her eyes must be mirroring her own. Ample and manic with fear. "Raven Reyes to Lyra Jupiter-Angelo - did you hear a word of what I just said?"
"Um, no," she says, wincing.
She doesn't know how to explain it. She can't just say ━━ Sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of my shirt tag being itchy and one of my shoelaces being untied and the sticky air in here and Finn dying and everyone breathing in here ━━ Oh, actually also ━━ And my panicky thoughts about scurvy because when was the last time I ate a fruit?
"I said do you need help soldering those wires?" Raven asks patiently, though her foot is tapping incessantly against the floor. "You're burning your fingers."
What? Lyra looks down at her fingers. Raven is right. The stupid radio's betrayed her, sparks crackling through the air and singing the skin on her fingers until they're raw. As Lyra stares stupidly, Raven grabs them and solders the two together swiftly using scrap metal from the dropship as filler to let the electrical current flow.
"And can you stop talking to yourself?" Connor grumbles from the side, cross-legged on the floor. "It's distracting."
"That's what I keep telling myself!"
"So fuck off," Octavia snaps to him. "Maybe try being useful and help everyone else bring the tents inside."
Connor looks at her mutinously, but Octavia doesn't hesitate to shoot him a withering glare. Weighing his options briefly, he seems to decide against furthering the argument, and instead climbs to his feet and strides down the ramp into the storm. Rain is beating furiously down upon the ground, drops falling so thick and so fast that it's almost impossible to even make out the manmade walls guarding their dropship. Thunder roads like one billion infuriated wasps, violent and condemning. Lightning flashes and it cracks the dark sky into one thousand fissures as it splinters the rain for a heartbeat.
Dax shoves past Lyra, dragging a soggy tent behind him. Whoever isn't helping gather materials instead gather inside the dropship and hover on the lower level, waiting anxiously for progress. Lyra can barely focus on anything other than the way Monroe breathes beside her, the rapid rise and fall of her chest, the staccato of her heartbeat.
"I can't get a signal!" Wells shouts in a panic from the transmitter and as Raven is too busy soldering another wire, he turns around to survey the dropship for any help. "Where the hell is Monty?"
"Doing something stupid," Octavia answers sourly. She's been. . . pissy ever since she got back.
He considers this. "He's with your brother?"
"Yeah."
"You're up, then," he calls out across the chaos to Lyra.
Right. OK. Easy.
Easy, easy, easy.
Running through every single factoid she's got stored in her brain under the label Electromagnetic Waves and the Electromagnetic Spectrum, Lyra hurries to the transmitter she set up earlier with Raven's busted control panel. She doesn't have to push her way through the crowd. Everyone parts for her instantly. Someone, she thinks it's Drew, gives a hasty "You got this!"
One, two, three. . . Lyra counts her heartbeats, her palms shaking as she furls and unfurls her fists. She stares down the transmitter. The oscillator, modulator, and amplifier stare back at her. Quickly she tried to calculate a typical radio wave frequency ( 88~108 MHz) and then moved to the wavelength (3.41×109 ~ 2.78×109 nm). But they'll all have to be amplified dramatically ━━ she's trying to send a signal using a toy car transmitter all the way through the atmosphere.
One, two, three. . . One, two, three. . .
Logarithms flash across her vision. Numbers dancing in front of her eyes. Equations that are somewhat easy to sort through, even though her fingers are shaking and her heart is pounding.
We all have great expectations for you, Miss. Jupiter.
Adjusting the RF output connector and reassessing the tuner, her quivering fingers scrabble for the headset jacked from Raven's pod. It takes a second but eventually her fingers latch onto it. She jams it over her head and static cackles through her ears. Radio static.
She just has to find the wavelength.
Finn lets out a low, warbling cry of agony and her eyes dart to him. He looks half-dead, like a corpse as he shivers. Blood steadily pools all around him. The knife still sticks up from his chest and sweat dribbles down his arms in rivulets. Clarke attends him fretfully, but there's nothing she can do, not without her mom. Not until Lyra does this.
She draws a shuddering breath. Wind snarls inside the dropship. The air is thick, hazy as a heatwave.
And she starts to speak.
"This is Lyra Jupiter-Franko calling Ark Station." Lyra tries to enunciate each word, but her mouth is slack with fear, her muscles creaking with desperation. She is met with radio silence. "This is Lyra Jupiter-Franko, calling Ark Station. Please come in."
"Do you have a signal?" Clarke asks agitatedly.
"No, I - " Lyra feels dizzy with hysterics. "There's too much static on our end."
"That's it," declares Raven, striding across the dropship and towards the radio as a familiar sound cuts through the air. She's drawn her pocket knife. "I'm cutting these wires."
She does it swiftly, without hesitation.
"There," she announces, her tongue swiping over chapped lips as she pockets it. Her apprehensive eyes reach Lyra and her lean muscles are taut with tension as she rolls her shoulders back in her olive green tank top. She'd stripped away her red jacket ages ago. "That should help with the static."
Nodding, Lyra speaks into the mic once more. "This is Lyra Jupiter-Franko calling Ark Station. Do you read me? I repeat, this is Lyra Jupiter-Franko calling Ark Station."
Radio silence.
Brushing her bangs from her eyes, she bounces her foot on the ground.
"Are you sure you have the right frequency?" Monroe questions.
Raven bristles. "Of course she's sure."
"Raven," comes Clarke's soothing voice and the blonde approaches them. Though fear flickers in her stormy eyes, she's managed to recollect herself, to return to her place as the steady and true leader. "You guys can do this, OK?"
One, two, three. . . One, two, three. . . One, two, three. . . One, two, three. . .
The Earth rattles with the force of the storm. Lightning fragments the sky. Ripping Lyra to shreds. Ten thousand supernovae turn to dust and crumble beneath her feet.
But she can't give up.
"This is Lyra Jupiter-Franko calling Ark Station," she reiterates into the microphone, choking down the sob that rumbles in her throat. "I am one of the one hundred. We are on the ground. We are alive."
Radio silence.
One, two, three. . . One, two, three. . . One ━━
And then suddenly, abruptly, her com link explodes to life, a shrill shrieking.
"This is a restricted channel," a distinctly male voice crackles through. "Who is this? Please identify yourself."
Time seems to stop.
She almost bursts from her skin in surprise, her heart bashing against her ribcage.
She looks around with her jaw hanging open to make sure she wasn't the only one who heard that, to make sure her head isn't feeding her a fantasy. But everyone is staring back at her just, dumbfounded. Conversations halt. The room is void of frantic whispering. She might have even felt self-conscious at all their eyes on her at once if it weren't for the alleviation imploding through her chest.
"Well?" Octavia nudges her sharply. "Respond!"
Lyra clutches the headset like a lifeline. "This is Lyra Jupiter, transmitting from the ground. I am one of the one hundred. We are alive." Her breath catches as she remembers Finn barely breathing across from her. "Please - you need to get Doctor Abby Griffin. Doctor Abby Griffin - now."
"Lyra?"
She could collapse from relief. "Sinclair!"
"Hang on, kid," his voice cackles through in response. "We're trying to boost your signal." Something fizzles in the background and she can just barely catch his next words. " - off the Ark-wide channel. This room only. Copy?"
The whole Ark heard her. The whole Ark.
If her dad is alive, he heard her.
There is no more hiding from him now.
"Lyra, are you there?" Abby Griffin's distinct voice shudders through the static.
Pausing, Lyra wonders what to say. Doctor Griffin had been a part of the council's unanimous decision to give her a death sentence. Struggling to think of anything to respond back to the Doctor, Lyra turns expectantly to Clarke with a look that says, Your turn.
Clarke swallows thickly, her eyes swimming with an unreadable emotion as draws a sharp breath. Her mouth flounders as she tries to speak coherently. Then, finally she chokes out:
"Mom? Mom, it's me."
Disbelief overwhelms Abby's voice. "... Clarke?"
"Mom, I need your help," Clarke is fighting to keep her voice steady. "One of our people was stabbed by a Grounder."
There's a pause. "Clarke, this is the Chancellor," the familiar voice of Jaha rumbles through the shoddy speakers. "Are you saying there are survivors on the ground?"
Behind Lyra, Wells draws in a shuddering breath.
"Yes. The Earth is survivable. We're not alone," Clarke answers, wiping something from her cheeks. The radio channel falls silent, likely from shock on the other end, and her hazy voice cuts through the static again. "Mom, he's dying. The knife's still in his chest."
The storm continues to howl against the dropship. Del has taken to grappling with the canvas hanging from the entrance that streams in the wind. No ones closed the ramp yet.
"Clarke, is my son with you?"
"I'm right here, dad!" Wells calls hoarsely. "I'm all right. I'm alive."
"My dad - ?" Lyra chokes into the headset, something scratching at the back of her throat. "My dad, his name is Noah Jupiter. Former guard, Alpha Station. Is he - is he OK?"
A beat.
"I am sorry, Miss. Jupiter," comes the Chancellor's cool voice. "But your father is not permitted to be in the Commission Room."
But he's OK, right? She thinks, her stomach dropping. He's OK? She is about to ask again, but Abby returns to the radio.
"I'm gonna talk you through it step by step. Clarke, give five... Medical... Med - "
She cuts out.
Something slams against the side of the dropship and the lights flicker feebly. Lyra's quivering fingers fly across the control panel, adjusting the tuner, repositioning the oscillator to recalibrate for longer wavelengths. Abby's voice cuts through the thunder twice, but it's lost. Drifting between channels.
"What?" Clarke cries out. "Lyra, Raven - what's wrong?"
"It's not the radio!" Raven splutters, a hand raising to coil in her hair in frustration and despair stab at her voice. "It's the storm!"
"We must be in a hurricane," breathes Wells, watching the rain churn outside the dropship.
With a frustrated cry, Lyra fights the urge to yank off the headset and hurl it. If somehow Finn dies because of this hurricane after all they've gone through to get the fucking radio to work, she's gonna be pissed.
The radio blinks red, almost taunting Lyra. Staring at it, she feels more and more like an idiot. Then, as static continues to shriek into her ears, she speaks into the mic, no longer spluttering, her voice steadier than it's been all night; "Doctor Griffin? Doctor Griffin? The storm is interfering - can you hear me?"
No answer.
The cackling static sounds roars in her ears. Though she knows it's entirely pointless, she starts to mess with the frequency. It's at least something to do. Sorting through various channels, she screws around a little bit with the oscillator and decides to change the velocity of the wave.
There's a funny muffled sound. Something muted seems to rumble from the background, a distorted, " - Mr. President. . . Mr. President, this is Emerson, reporting from the Harvest Chamber. . . "
Halfway through taking the headset off, her eyes widen and she quickly jams it back on. The headphones pinch at her ears until they're sore and she flickers the switches on the radio, trying to get back to that channel. It's no use. Whatever's jamming the signal has grown stronger and besides, it's probably not even that important. It wasn't the Ark's Earth Monitoring Station. Do the Grounders have radios?
Or, more likely, she imagined it. She's still concussed and as she removes the headset, she looks around and no one else seems concerned. Maybe her concussion is worst than she thought.
Thanks a lot, Bellamy.
She holds the headset out to Wells. "Can you hold this for a second?"
He nods and she lets it go.
Returning to the transmitter with a new fervour as she patches back into the Ark's mainframe, she almost misses it when Wells goes, "Uh, Lyra?"
"What - ?" Lyra turns to see him picking the headset off from the floor. "Oh. Gravity."
Fixing the radio, calibrating wavelengths, and actually hearing Sinclair's voice had remained her all too well of one thing: spacewalking.
Head out of the clouds, Jupiter-Franko, she scolds herself mentally.
"Who needs gravity, anyway?" Wells asks with a grin, his olive green t-shirt thoroughly soaked with rainwater, mud, and sweat. "It's dumb."
"Yeah, screw Newton!" A distinctly female voice calls out in agreement.
Octavia is staggering through the entrance of the dropship, two enormous metal canisters in her arms. Lyra hadn't even noticed her leave. Drenched with rain, Octavia rather looks like she just climbed out of a lake, her usually slick onyx hair now completely plastered to her pale temples.
Clarke grapples with the lid on one of them, then makes a face. "Monty's moonshine?"
"Pretty sure no germ can survive it," says Octavia.
Suddenly the entire dropship heaves, thunder exploding through the air.
"Storm's getting worse." A crease furrows between Clarke's brow in worry and her eyes flicker to the strips of canvas shivering in the howling winds. "Monroe, close the doors."
"Wait!" Lyra whirls around in her chair. "Monty and Jasper still aren't back yet. Neither is Bellamy."
"It's OK. They'll find somewhere to ride it out."
Octavia glances up at the blonde, but doesn't say a word. Though it's not her place to stick up for Bellamy, Lyra can argue for Jasper and Monty, so she goes to protest. But just as she opens her mouth, a bolt stabs through her skull, so fiery that it surpasses all shades of red and instead is aegean-blue. Her temple seems to pulsate. Pressure is building and as she reaches out a finger to relieve it, she winces.
Vaguely she's aware of a flurry of activity in the center of the dropship.
"One stitching needle!"
Reality fades in and out. Something inside of her hurtles through seven dimensions.
"Great, I still need something to close the wound."
One, two. . .
"There's some wire on the second level. I used it for the tents."
No, fuck. You fucked up! Start over.
One, two, three. . .
"Let's see it."
"Careful!" Lyra somehow manages to burst, her posture ossified as she forces herself to return to the ground. "Don't forget that I rewired the solar panels on the roof and soldered them. Watch out for the - the - " her brow creases as she tries to recall. Green or blue. Blue or green. Green or. . . " - the, er - "
Both Wells and Octavia's voices bleed together as they call out in reminder, "The blue ones!"
Lightning flashes, illuminating the dropship in a blinding white light that stabs into Lyra's eyes. It also illuminates Finn, whose currently a whiter shade than pale. He's been stripped of his shirt, shivering violently despite the heat. The knife is still sticking out of his stomach.
"I think I'm gonna puke," she mumbles.
"You puke at the sight of blood?" Wells asks
"No, but I might at the sight of that!"
"Please don't," says Octavia, pausing to shoot her a petrified look as her hands wrap around the lower rungs of the ladder. "If Monroe closes the doors, I will not be able to withstand the smell."
"Thanks for the personal concern!"
Lyra listens to them for half a second. Then, in what probably is going to make the list of Lyra Valeria Jupiter-Franko's Top Ten Stupidest Moments, she reaches across the metal and starts jamming her fingers onto buttons at random.
"Hey!" Wells reaches out to smack her hand. "Don't abuse the radio."
"The radio's abusing me!"
"Technically, that's the Earth," he says. "Blame this crazy planet. The weather is abusing us."
"Earth is an asshole," mutters Octavia.
"I second that," says Lyra promptly.
"Guys... " Wells protests pointedly with a frown. Then, when the dropship lurches so vehemently that he veers into the walls and one of Monty's moonshine canisters slam into his knee, he lets out a yelp and goes, "OK, OK - I third that!"
"Hey, they're back!" Monroe's voice blasts through the chaos as silhouettes march across the steely dropship ramp and push inside.
Bellamy emerges through the hurricane, flanked by several other boys and a man Lyra doesn't recognise. He's too old to be one of the one hundred. And when Bellamy shoves him to his knees, Lyra knows this man isn't one of them.
Which means he could be only one other thing.
A Grounder.
A jagged line of crimson splits his sable skull in half. A scarlet blindfold made from reused seatbelt is folded across his eyes, a second section of the canvas shoved into his mouth as a gag.
Octavia pauses, whirling around to take in whats happening. In an instant, her eyes simmer with aureate flames and her voice rips through three octaves in her outrage. "Bellamy! The hell are you doing?"
Bellamy looms in the threshold with an air of indifference, hardly sparing his little sister a glance. "It's time to get some answers."
"Oh, you mean revenge?" Octavia retorts.
"I mean intel." He jerks his head sharply to the boys he'd taken with him. "Get him upstairs."
Using her incredible detective skills, Lyra deduces that this Grounder is in fact the man who kidnapped Octavia. There's a sinking feeling of dread in her stomach. She'd been so distracted by the radio, she hadn't even had time to ask Wells and Octavia what it had been like out there. The gory news of Roma, Diggs, and Mbege's deaths had all come from Bellamy, and she doubts either Wells or Octavia had been spared from what essentially is nightmare fuel.
"This isn't just revenge," says Wells lowly, looking at Blake evenly. "Not to them. They'll see it as a declaration of war."
Clarke's eyes flash as she steps forward. "Bellamy, they're right."
"Clarke, honey, we're ready."
Saved by the Griffin yet again!
Bellamy looks startled at sound of Abby's voice blaring through the speakers, his brow raising. A civil war blisters in his eyes. Then at last his jaw clenches, his fists coiling, and he forces himself to turn away.
"Can you hear me?"
No one makes any move for the radio.
Unsure of how long the connection will last, Lyra slips the headset back over her head. The once flashing red light on the interface now twinkles green calmly. She surveys the tense scene in the dropship briefly, then answers Abby.
"Doctor Griffin, could you please hold? I think there might be another insurrection."
There's a pause. "What?"
"Glad to see you finally got your precious radio, angel," Bellamy half-sneers at her.
"Thanks."
There's a raw desperation in her words when Clarke speaks to Bellamy, her eyes glittering. "Look, this is not who we are."
He's barely able to tame the rage contorting his features as he regards the Grounders, spitting out the words like they burn him.
"It is now."
Watching his silhouette disfigured with raw anger as he kicks the Grounder to his feet, Lyra feels a supernova blistering beneath her skin.
Is it?
͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙ ✩ *̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ .·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙ ✩ *̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙
sorry this chapter is kinda short. the next one is gonna b much longer - i forgot how wild this episode is.
and ok y e a h, maybe i did steal the episode name for my chapter title. what r u, the police? the ark council? u can't stop me 😈😈😈😈😈😈😈😈😈😈😈😈
^^ Lyra, Octavia, and Wells talking abt Lincoln
3.6 k words