CHAPTER THIRTY
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A CERTAIN CAGE IN PARTICULAR had caught Clarke's eye, Taylor following her over to where she was now yanking on the metal bars of the cage. Inside of it sat Anya, looking worn down and exhausted.
"We're gonna get you out of here," Clarke promised quickly, dashing off to the front of where the rows of cages began. Taylor stood beside Anya's cage in an utter daze, wondering if that is what they had eventually planned to do to her and her friends.
Clarke returned with a metal bar and pried at the lock of the cage, it popping off and rolling to the floor with a clatter. The other Grounders began to take notice of their efforts, and started to reach out of their cages and mumble incoherently. The cage creaked open and Clarke started to help Anya out, but their plans were quickly faltered by the arrival of one of the head doctors.
Taylor's eyes widened and saw Clarke helping Anya back into her cage while also trying to climb in herself. There would be no room for the three of them. Instinctually, she bolted down the rows until she finally hit a corner and turned, hiding herself in an inconspicuous group of cages.
The Grounders around her groaned and noticed her presence just like the other ones did, looking malnutritioned and skeletal, reaching out for help. It made her sick to her stomach being unable to help them.
The closing of the door echoed throughout the chamber, letting her know that the coast was clear. She jogged back to where she had left Clarke and Anya, finding them already out of the cage and struggling forward.
Taylor silently took Anya's other arm and she and Clarke aided her over to a door that marked the end of containment, signalling that suits were needed past that point. Heaving open the door, the trio stepped into a small, square room with a large hatch covering most of the floor.
The door that they had just walked through suddenly sealed shut and an alarm, just like the one when they had originally tried to escape, sounded in their ears. Clarke immediately tried to pry the doors back open and stepped back when she couldn't.
Taylor and Anya glanced at each other in confusion, Anya asking, "What is that?"
Neither party was able to respond before the floor below them gave out with the hatch opening out from under them. Screams were let out from each one of them, Taylor too shocked when she hit a cold metal slide to keep shouting.
The impact of whatever they hit hurt, and when she finally sat up and looked around, she had to cover her mouth to keep the scream from echoing down the mining tunnel they had ended up in.
Gritting her teeth, Taylor immediately grabbed onto the edge of the cart and heaved herself out, wanting nothing more than to be away from the dead bodies that she had just landed on. They had an entire chute dedicated to the disposal of people. Those they had used and thrown away like garbage. It was getting more challenging for her to swallow the bile that rose in her throat threateningly.
The panics of Clarke and Anya seemed like background noise to her as she landed on the ground, rocks digging into her bare feet painfully. "Anya! Take my hand!" she heard Clarke yell. The other two dropped to the ground just behind Taylor, where she was breathing quickly, trying to process too much at once.
"We're out," Clarke breathed, looking toward a door that would logically lead directly back into the mountain. Taylor nodded while she hurried over to a pile of furs and started picking up various items of clothing. "Come on, get dressed. We can't cover any ground like this."
Taylor was already kneeling next to her, pulling on the clothing that they had found, trying to think about anything else other than the fact that they belonged to people that had been murdered.
"I won't leave my people behind," Anya objected quietly, still leaned over the cart of dead Grounders. Taylor stared at the clothes numbly and started to pull on various items of clothing over her dirty hospital gown.
"Anya, listen to me, my people are still inside the place too," Clarke told her earnestly, marching back over to where Anya had moved barely an inch. "But they have guards. They have weapons. Once we get out of here, we can find help, we can come back."
"There is no 'we'," Anya snapped, looking at Clarke harshly.
"Shut up. There is no getting out of here unless we work together. But we can leave you here and you can get caught and put back in that place, by all means," Taylor rebuked. Before Anya could say anything in response, loud voices echoed from the other end of the tunnel.
"Someone's coming," Anya announced, while Clarke looked down to the direction of the noise.
"Not just someone. Reapers," she corrected, Taylor's heart skipping a few beats at the mention of them. She remembered everything from when Clarke and Finn had returned to camp with the ghastly descriptions of them and when they had eventually played a part in taking down the Grounders.
Taylor stumbled up from the ground while Anya tried lifting a large rock in means to fight. "Anya, you can't fight! You can barely stand!" Clarke told her in a hushed tone, the voices of the reapers growing ever closer. "I have a better idea."
She pointed to a mining cart and both her and Anya grabbed some clothes from the pile that Taylor had been picking out of and the three of them toppled into the empty cart. The glowing light of torches passed over them and footsteps became louder. Taylor snapped her eyes shut and attempted to cease her breathing
It began to move with a creak as it was pushed down the tracks, a Reaper hovering just above them. Taylor dared not to make any move that would signify that she was alive. A few other bodies sat in the cart with them, completely cold and motionless.
The cart came to stop and the Reapers heaved a body out of the cart just next to them, the person in question undoubtedly alive when they heard the screams that escaped his throat when he was murdered another few feet away.
Clarke shifted next to her while Taylor tried to squeeze her eyes shut and forget about the man who was being killed as she sat at the bottom of the rusty cart. A more peculiar sound echoed through the tunnels, one that sounded like biting. Taylor joined Clarke in looking up above the edge of the cart and watched in horror as the Reapers dug into the man that they had just killed.
"Come on," Clarke urged, mostly looking at Anya, who had barely moved from where she was lying right next to them. She sat up and gently touched the face of the last remaining Grounder that was practically dead in the cart with them. "What are you doing? Let's go."
She barely gave Clarke a glance before continuing in what she set out to do. "Yu gonplei ste odon," Anya muttered before snapping his neck sharply. Taylor jumped back slightly and started to crawl out of the cart with little hesitation after what she had just witnessed. She could still hear the Grounder being eaten, and agreed with Clarke on the front that they needed to leave.
They all piled out of the cart and started to bolt further down the tunnel, Taylor almost certain that nobody really knew where they were going, including herself.
"Damn it! This place is a maze," Clarke grunted in frustration.
Anya slowed down behind them, coughing slightly and staring down at her hand. "What did they do to us?" she questioned, looking up at Clarke.
"They use your blood," she answered. "I saw a soldier come in with radiation burns, hours later he was fine. It's like your blood is healing them somehow. I've never seen anything like it. Come on, this way."
Anya, however, headed in the opposite direction. "Hey!" Taylor called out, rushing after her with Clarke by her side.
"You go your way, I'll go mine," the woman dismissed simply, an absent look fixed on the direction she was intent on going.
"Anya, we need to stick together," Clarke told her desperately, her look practically pleading her to stay.
"I told you there is no 'we'," Anya snapped, staring down the two women in front of her coldly.
"I saved your life."
"You saved my life because you need me," she rebuked. "I know the way back to your people. I know where the traps are hidden. You'll never make it on your own."
Clarke started on again about how the best chance was making it out together, mumbling more and more as she walked away, but Taylor watched as Anya continued on her own path. "Clarke," Taylor alerted, gesturing for her to follow but not glancing back to see if she was or not.
That was something that she regretted almost seconds after doing it when she realized that Clarke was no longer behind her, or anywhere in sight for that matter.
"I see that you're wiser than your friend," Anya commented, throwing a glance back at a very confused and now extremely concerned Taylor.
"Who we're going back for," she replied, looking behind her once again as if Clarke might just appear there if she hoped hard enough.
"Not until I find my way out. I don't know how many times I have to tell you two that there is no team here," the woman bit back sharply, continuing her steady pace towards wherever she was headed. There was no feasible way that she knew her way through the mountain any better than Taylor did.
"You don't know where you're going," she argued, jogging up at a faster pace in order to catch up to Anya.
"And neither do you." The sound of rushing water entered her ears from a distance, Taylor's eyebrows furrowing. A large opening faced them with sunlight pouring into the tunnel from the outside. She could see the trees and other mountains surrounding the place, never having thought she would have missed it as much as she did.
Another sound came from the opposite way, men's voices and loud booms, protests bouncing off the walls loudly. "Clarke," Taylor breathed, knowing that either the Reapers or Mountain Men had found her.
"Wait here," Anya commanded, not waiting for a response before she ran down the tunnel and turned, leaving Taylor to her own devices. She slowly inched toward the opening, reaching the very edge of the rock ledge. Down below her were numerous waterfalls, each one coming down from the boundaries of the dam that powered the entire mountain.
Scuffling and heavy breaths could be heard behind her, Anya and Clarke skidding to a stop on either side of her. "Wait," Clarke objected momentarily, looking down at the towering drop with hesitance. "There has to be another way."
"There isn't," Anya finalized. A horde of Mount Weather guards crowded at the end of the only other way back in, guns drawn.
"Give up, Clarke. You have no place else to go," one of them told her, thinking for certain that he had her utterly trapped. The three exchanged a few looks, and that was all it took for Anya to take a few steps back and throw herself off of the edge.
"ANYA!" Clarke screamed, looking down the drop where the woman fell helplessly, a certain fear in her eyes that wasn't assuring in the slightest. One of the guards continued to speak, but Taylor could barely hear anything anymore. Taking a few steps back herself, she gave herself the slightest bit of momentum and jumped.
Clarke calling out to her was faint, but audible. She fell just like she fell to Earth. Except now there was nothing holding her down or no one to hold on to. Her screams rippled through the air, the rushing wind making them harder to hear. The flat water was awaiting her at the bottom, awaiting her final landing.
Hitting the lake was painful, but nowhere near as painful as the fire that invaded her lungs when she realized that she couldn't swim. She was slowly drowning and there was nothing that she could do to help herself. The world was becoming blurred but she wasn't ready to say goodbye. She wanted to keep fighting.
But that seemed farther away the deeper she sank.