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STARS OF
BLOOD AND ASH
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WHEN THE NEWS breaks that the Second Dawn's bunker had been found, Lyra does not know how to feel.
It is a blessing, of course. Twelve-hundred people can survive for five years in that bunker. There is a hydro farm and a water recycler, both reported to be able to keep Level C completely self-sustainable should the rest of the bunker fail. The bunker is also equipped with an underground aquifer that has a filtration system, oxygen and air scrubbers, medical area, and air locks. Supplies left behind include hazmat suits that Lyra assumes will make it possible for people to travel to the surface even during the nuclear apocalypse.
There is easily enough room for Skaikru, Trikru (who Lyra assumes Octavia will not leave behind), and Azgedakru (who Lyra assumes Clarke will not leave behind.)
But things on the ground are never that easy, as Lyra has learned. And that leads her to the question What happened to the people?
Because the bunker was too secret and crafted only for the highest members of the Second Dawn, those at Level Twelve ━━ this means the old world's elite, the geniuses snd the billionaires, and of course the fanatic Cadogan and his family. Monty has assured Lyra a number of times that there is absolutely no sign of people ever having lived, which is simply baffling to her. Surely someone must have gotten into that bunker. At least one person.
But it is as empty as a crypt.
And then there is the absolute hell they have gone through in the labs. The last irony before the second nuclear apocalypse is perhaps this: Becca's Island, a safe-haven for science meant to save the world, has again become a carcass of murdered peace, bloodlust's abode, and a shadow-devoured shrine of desperation and survival at all costs. A mutilated exoskeleton of despair. Because again they have wreaked havoc and left nothing but pain in their wake. They slaughtered Baylis ━━ an innocent man with a family ━━ in cold blood. They stripped Luna of her basic human rights and turned her into a blood bag, as if they were all sick, masochistic vampires. They stuck a syringe into Emori's veins and then laid her down like a discarded toy to burn her alive even as the boy who loved her protested as if it was him who was being forced to lay down his life in the name of good.
A cyclone of inhuman thirst has torn apart these labs.
It had all been for nothing.
They are going to survive anyways.
And Lyra is still dying.
"What are you putting in your bag?"
Lyra jerks her head up guiltily from the drawers. She zips her backpack up quickly. "What?"
"Those vials," Raven says. "They're not on our supply list. What's in them? Why are you taking them with us?"
OK. Don't fuck this up, Jupiter.
She blinks. "What are vials?"
You fucked it up!
Raven stares at her. "I know we're becoming brain dead, but neither of us are stupid enough for that yet."
"I got it!" Murphy's voice echoes across the nearly empty labs.
"You sure?" Raven briefly glances up from her inventory list as Murphy struggled with some sort of enormous piece of tech. "It's heavy."
Making a face, Lyra tries to block them out and focus on the laptop in front of her. While most of the monitors are stuck in the lab, this is something she can take with her. She's been trying to alter the code all morning so that it will be able to perform the same heavy-duty tasks as the computers, but it's not easy.
"This is why they left us behind?" Emori's whisper meant for Murphy is far too loud and carries across the chamber. "To scavenge tech?"
He is quick to assure her. "Hey. We talked about this. We didn't get left behind. They're coming back."
The small group of four is all that is left on the island. In short, there wasn't enough room for everyone on the boat. Clarke and Roan are the two most important people and they were both rushed back to Polis, where a war over the tower rages. Nate accompanied them as the guard. Luna had refused to spend another minute on the island where she had been betrayed countless times. Meanwhile, Abby wasn't going to let Clarke out of her sight after the stunt she pulled in the lab, and that meant that Jackson got dragged along with them.
Not that Lyra minds. No doctors means she won't be looked at like a freak of nature.
"Forgive me if I don't believe what your people say anymore," comes Emori's scathing retort.
"Murphy's actually right," says Raven, interrupting the couple's bickering. "Don't worry, they might ditch him, but I'm too awesome to leave behind."
"There you go," says Murphy. He doesn't even seem annoyed that Raven had trashed him. "Plus, Lyra's here."
"And?"
"And the three most powerful people in Arkadia are literally obsessed with her," Murphy informs her. "There's Octavia, the best friend who happens to be a literal assassin these days.
"Then there's Bellamy, the boyfriend, who is known for his long list of massacres and genocides. If I had any brain cells, I wouldn't leave behind his girlfriend to burn alive."
"Last but certainly not least, there's Noah, the father, who is actually fucking terrifying."
"So she's not getting left behind," concludes Murphy smartly.
Lyra suppresses a smile. Everything has been shitty here, but she can't deny that she's got a lot waiting for her in Arkadia.
"Congratulations, Emori," says Raven dryly. "You get to live in a hole in the ground for 5 years. Thanks for playing."
"Come on," Murphy says. "At least we get to live."
"Said the cockroach to the raven."
Ignoring the slowly-but-surely sharpening pain in her skull, Lyra continues to tap rapidly on the keyboard. She knows she shouldn't be messing around with the code of the computer, but she can't help herself. She needs to download all the software from the bulkier monitors onto here. It'll improve life in the bunker by a tenfold and give her something to do for five years.
Not five years, the snide serpent in her head reminds her. You'll be lucky to have five months.
Her heart crumples.
"Systems check complete."
Lyra's head snaps up. That hadn't been Murphy's condescending drawl, Raven's ruthless taunts, or Emori's crude snide remarks ━━ that had been the computer system. And just as she realises this, engines begin to whine, pitches rising to a gentle whine as systems begin to come to life. Light blazes through the hangar bay door; someone has turned the rocket on.
What the hell?
Slowly turning her head, Lyra goes to ask Raven what's going on, but the mechanic is nowhere in sight.
"What is it?" Murphy's stopped eying the tech and now suspiciously watches Lyra.
"Orbital launch systems online," announces the computer systems.
Lyra's fingers twiddle together as anxiety curls up through her stomach like smoke. "You don't. . . you don't hear that?"
His expression darkens and he does not dignify her with an answer. "Emori, get the seizure kit — now! Abby left it in the office — "
"No!" Lyra exclaims rashly. Her cheeks flush as both Emori and Murphy stare at her. "It's — I'm fine. Put all that stuff with the gear for the last run. I'll start on the processors."
"No, no, no." Murphy stops her in her tracks before she can get so much as an inch closer to the rocket, holding his arms out as if prepared to tackle her to keep her from going there. "No coding, all right? Did you miss my whole speech on why it would be a bad idea to let you die? I'm not in the mood to get skewered by Octavia, shot by Noah, or tortured by Bellamy."
"Don't be dramatic." Lyra makes a face. "I'm not coding. I'm unhooking. Just. . . look for Raven or something. Make sure she's not dying."
He studies her for a moment as if trying to catch her in a lie. Evidently he's unable to discern her expression and he stands back to observe her and the lab at large. Only it's then that his face falls and he stares helplessly at Emori.
"Where is Raven?"
Leaving them to their new dilemma, Lyra takes off for the hangar bay where the rocket hides. She tries to hide her worry at the way her knuckles bleed white around the glass railings, unable to see whether the clamminess of her palms are from condensation or the fact that she's had chills all day. She has felt like a weightless phantom ever since her first stroke, but now she is reaching the peak of her sickness. No matter how much rest or sleep she gets, she feels like a ghost of a girl. Nausea had consumed her body yesterday; it had been so violent that it had nearly stripped her of her will to live entirely. Fatigue oozes through her veins like poisonous honey. All she wants to do now is crawl beneath sheets and sleep for a hundred years. A nightmarish fairytale.
She feels as if she is crawling towards her own death and she doesn't know how to stop it.
Still. She forces herself forwards, towards the hangar bay, towards the rocket that is lit up. Up the stairs. Prying open the hatch door. And then ━━
"Initiating ground launch sequencer now."
Lyra almost collapses in shock. "Becca?"
Because it cannot be anyone else. It is unmistakably the woman Lyra met in the City of Light, from the sleek raven hair to the neat brows and no-nonsense lab coat and dainty glasses pushed up her nose. It is Becca Franko, Pramheda, the neuroscientist that somehow managed to both orchestrate the destruction of the world and save humanity, Lyra's own flesh and blood, the neuroscientist who shares the same fire in her veins.
Becca hardly glances at her, as if it's perfectly normal to see your dead ancestor fooling around with a rocket.
"You can tell me that it's none of my business," begins Becca casually. "But why live in a hole in the ground when you have a perfectly good rocket?"
At that same moment, a white-hot bolt of pain cuts through Lyra's mind.
She lets out a shriek. Beneath her, the ground rolls and heaves as if she's back on the boat. Her entire stomach lurches and she knows that she is pale as death. Sweat prickles across her brow as she leans heavily on the freezing side of the rocket for support and it feels as if a spike of molten lava is being driven straight through her skull.
And blood begins to drip from her nose.
͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙ ✩ *̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ .·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙ ✩ *̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙
"YOU CAN'T IGNORE me forever, Lyra!"
Screwing up her face, Lyra walks across the empty labs faster. There is no one in there except for her ━━ well, there should be no one in there except for her. But lo and behold, she can hear Becca's heels clacking noisily against the glossy tile as the neuroscientist that is supposed to be dead chases after her.
"I'm not ignoring you," argues Lyra.
Becca gives her a look.
"I just have selective hearing," Lyra continues. "Also, no offense, I am praying that you'll disappear soon. Y'know, since you're not real."
"So you're trying?" Becca arches a sleek brow. "Come on. We're the same, you and I, and I know the truth. You don't want to live in that bunker."
"Does anyone?" Lyra snaps.
Becca looks unimpressed. "Have you ever heard the phrase respect your elders?"
"You're — not — real!"
"That doesn't mean I'm not right."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Lyra cries out. She halts in her tracks, whirling around to fully face Becca.
"I want to help you," Becca's tone is sleek as glass, sweet and soothing, like a balm. She reaches out a hand and grips Lyra's shoulder as if to brace her. "Your time is running out. And I'm not talking about the radiation. I'm talking about your brain. You need to ask yourself — how are you going to go out?"
It's unnerving, how Lyra can feel Becca's touch. She wonders if that means she is even closer to death.
"Down here? Miserable? In pain?" Becca continues softly. "Or up there? Free? Floating?"
For a moment ━━ just one fleeting, fairytale moment ━━ the star-girl's eyelids flutter shut and she lets the fantasy of space wash over her.
No thoughts. No feelings. Not tied down to anything. No great expectations, no burdens of survival, no impossible choices. Just her and the obsidian abyss, scattered with silver supernovas that surge against sticky shadows. Light rising from the dark. Burning, seething, cackling. Saving her from being swallowed whole. She has been chasing that feeling even before she left space. That featherweight sensation, the enchanting lure of the cosmos as she spiraled through them with only a thin rope to tether her to reality.
Floating, floating, floating. . .
But that's not her reality anymore. She is on the ground.
"I've run all the simulations." Lyra returns to this, though she isn't quite sure whether it is reality or not. It's all in her head. "There's not enough fuel to get back."
"Who said anything about getting back?"
Lyra's eyes widen as she stares at Becca. Surely she isn't implying what Lyra thinks she is implying.
"Noah, Bellamy, and all friends are taken care of. They don't need you to keep them alive in the bunker," Becca reminds Lyra, as if this isn't something she already knows. "But you will need them if you go there."
"The computer code is destroying your neurons at an advanced rate. Do you really want to put the people you love through that? Bellamy, watching the girl he loves forget everything they've ever been through. Noah having to push through the fact that his super-genius daughter suddenly can't remember his own name. Is that really what you want for them?"
"But. . . but wouldn't they want to see me again?" Lyra asks helplessly. "Don't they. . . don't they at least want to say goodbye?"
Her voice is small, fragile, scared of the answer.
"It won't just be a goodbye and then over," says Becca gently. "You'll deteriorate for days, months. Their star-girl is going to rot from the inside out and you want to force them to watch?"
Lyra's heart withers and a childish voice within her whispers Don't I get to say goodbye?
"Soon you're not going to know how to tie your own shoes," continues Becca. "Let alone how to convert a launch entry suit into something that you can spacewalk in."
Lifting her head, Lyra faces Becca evenly. Her heart feels like it is going to beat out of her chest:
"You really can help me spacewalk?"
Becca's full lips pull into a grin. "If you're gonna go out, might as well go out with a view."
͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙ ✩ *̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ .·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙ ✩ *̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙
ALL HER LIFE, Lyra Jupiter Franko has been so torn ━━ if someone were to heave her onto a surgical table and use their scalpel to spill her ruby-stained blood, she isn't quite sure that they'd see opal bones or a scarlet heart. No, instead there is a spiderweb of cracks, a fault line, a crevasse that cleaves her very being into two halves of the same whole. It's as if the cosmos themselves have ripped her apart. She has always felt something like this her entire life, torn to pieces, yanked this way and that way by her duties and her yearning for the stars. Coming to the ground had only worsened matters. For so long, all she had wanted to do was go back, but even she had known that it was impossible. So she pieced her heart back together and obeyed the indomitable laws of the ground, fighting for her people, never straying from the endgame ━━ survival. Not even when her heart shrunk at the means it would take to get her and her people there. She did whatever it took. She was not selfish. She forgot about hurtling through the stars and obediently let the good pieces of herself die all so that everyone else around her could survive.
It's why she is dying now.
All she has ever wanted her entire life was to be among the stars.
They are what have driven her ever since she can remember. But now, as Lyra pays there curled upon the freezing lab bench, listening to the technology hum softly beneath her, she does not feel whole or torn. She isn't quite sure she feels anything at all but this horrible, horrible pain.
For so long, she'd thought there was nothing she loved more than the stars. But now, thinking of who waits for her in Polis, she isn't so sure.
Just months ago, this wouldn't have been a question. She'd already be gone in that rocket.
But now. . .
"They deserve a goodbye," she whispers, her face tear-stained. "Don't they?"
"Does it matter?" Becca demands. "Going to that bunker is digging your own grave. A girl born in the stars dying beneath the dirt."
"Of course it matters!" Lyra exclaims. "I love them. I don't want to hurt them."
"You'll choose their happiness over their own?"
"I always have," says Lyra fiercely. "If I do this, it will break my dad. I know it will."
"You ran away once," Becca reminds her.
"You guys ready or what?"
Miller's voice rings out across the labs as he and Jackson enter at the top loft where Murphy and Emori stare at them as if unable to believe that they are really back. In the meanwhile, Miller grips the railings, looking insufferably smug as he finds Lyra easily.
"Told you I'd make it back."
Becca looks annoyed.
Lyra scrambles to sit up straight, unable to stop from smiling. "You're late."
"There's been some developments," answers Jackson curtly. "Not all good. They've — "
"Fill you in on the way," Miller cuts in quickly and Lyra knows why. They are running out of time. "Is everything we need packed and ready to go?"
Murphy still seems stunned they came back. "Yeah."
"Great. We'll pack it onto the boat," says Miller, looking oddly cheerful. "Go find Raven. We don't have much time. Mass fiery death in five days."
"We don't have much time either," says Becca.
Lyra pointedly ignores her.
Murphy rockets down the steps. "Come on, Lyra, let's go — Raven!"
"Little busy here!" The mechanic's voice echoes from the other side of the lab.
White welding mask strapped to her face, Raven crosses the insipid white floors quickly and with a purpose. Her dark tresses are pulled back in their usual tight ponytail, though she doesn't have the same nervous survivalist energy that causes Murphy to rock back and forth on the balls of his feet. Her eyes seem sore but heartened with a feeling that seems so familiar to Lyra, yet she cannot seem to quite put her finger on it.
"Yeah, well, whatever's not packed, you need to leave it," says Murphy. "It's time to go."
Raven searches for something on the shelves and then, as casually as someone asking the weather, remarks, "I'm not going."
Lyra's eyes widen.
She doesn't need to look at Murphy to understand that the pale boy is going through the same shell-shocked feeling. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"I'm dying, Murphy."
"You've been talking to Becca," Lyra whispers, ignoring Murphy's baffled expression.
"I can't do this anymore. The pain," Raven's voice trembles as she stares so intently at Lyra that it feels as if she is looking through her. "Every day I feel it. When I was space walking, everything was right. I just want that again. Don't you know what that's like?"
Lyra's voice is shaky. "Yeah."
"I'm sorry," Murphy's voice is low, cautious, as if afraid of startling the both of them. "I'm sorry for doing this to you, Raven."
"This is not your fault, Murphy." Raven squeezes her eyes shut, trying and failing miserably to hide the fact that she is on the verge of tears. "I could deal with losing my leg, but losing my mind. . . "
His eyes are red. "What do you want me to tell the others?"
"Tell them — " Raven's voice cracks and a single tear rolls down her cheek. "Tell them I floated myself." She gives a little laugh. "Go. Survive."
Murphy doesn't seem to quite know what to do with himself. "It's what cockroaches do, right?"
And with that he turns on his heel, starting for the staircase. Before he reaches it, he calls over his shoulder, "C'mon, Lyra!"
"Go," Raven urges her quietly. "We both know. . . we both know you're too important to die. You have people waiting for you to come home."
Lyra can feel her heart crumpling. "But the stars are my home."
"You'll find your way back," says Raven softly. "We both know you will. If there's one thing I've learned on the ground, it's that you never ever underestimate Lyra Jupiter."
Lyra feels like she is being swallowed by an ocean of despair. It tastes bitter on her lips. Eyelids rolling down to contain the constellation of tears pouring down her cheeks, Lyra throws her arms around Raven before she can stop herself and hugs her as tightly as she can.
"I won't forget you," she swears into Raven's chest, clutching her fiercely.
"Of course you won't," Raven gives a watery chuckle as she hugs her back. "I'm too awesome."
Taking one last look at Raven, Lyra draws a deep, shuddering breath, and begins to move down the luminous corridors and towards the door that leads back to the cursed daylight. She does not let herself look back and stares straight ahead for what lies in front of her.
Becca waits for her at the top of the stairs. Her mouth twitches disapprovingly. "You're throwing your life away."
Lyra meets her gaze evenly. "I'm done running away."
͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙ ✩ *̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ .·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙ ✩ *̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙
IM IN CANCUN FOR SPRING BREAK BITCHESSSSS 😩😩😩😌🤩🥵🥵🤪🤪🤪🤨
(actually kinda triggered bc no one wanted to wake up for sunrise photos w me 😔😔😔)
pretty shit chapter, but uhhhhh the rest of season 4 is not much better bc Lyra doesn't have much to do w/the conclave.
But the finale is going to be fucking WILD 😈
ALSO — what did Lyra put in the backpack 🤨🤨😏😏😏😏
^^^ Lyra getting away with stealing the vials
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