CHAPTER TWENTY
this just might be one hell of a night
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𝐀s soon as Lincoln and Bellamy left the camp, Elliot tried to follow them, armed from head to toe with her blades and bow and arrow. The raw slice wounds all over her body still stung every time she moved but she didn't let it bother her. She had to find a way out of this hell hole to watch over Lincoln.
He had not agreed to her going with them. Explicitly why she was trying to sneak out of the camp. But Elliot was stubborn. She was following them no matter what. Maybe he and her weren't too different after all. They still knew how to care. The ground just shaped them into monsters they didn't want to be.
She was stopped by a young guard who looked too cocky for his own good. He clutched a rifle in his arms, smirking from ear to ear. He had messy blond hair and eyes too soft that didn't compare to the darkness in the Grounder's own. The blank expression on her face remained as she waited for him to say something.
"I don't think you're allowed to leave, Scarface," He said, tone filled with smugness as he eyed her from head to toe.
Elliot wanted to slap the smirk off his face but refrained from doing any further damage. She didn't miss the name he called her. That's new. She decided not to say anything because she always knew that silence was better than words. Elliot calmly turned around and was about to walk away when a rough hand latched on her shoulder.
Out of pure instinct, she grabbed the hand and used her strength to flip him over the ground, earning a bunch of unwanted attention. The young guard groaned in pain while clutching his arm from being twisted. She heard a couple of guns clicking and angry murmurs from the sky people while the Grounders could only watch in amusement.
They know better than to cross the lone warrior. There was a reason why she was a traitor. In Azgeda, she was known as the manslayer who used the blood of her victims to wash away the dirt on her skin. And most Grounders found out about it in a hard way when they'd crossed paths with her.
"Don't touch me again." Elliot glared, letting go of the boy as she stepped away.
He was not worth being on top of her countless problems. The guards were ordered not to shoot them anyway. Their first mistake was thinking they wouldn't fight back whenever they did something. The permanent blank look on her face seemed to make them move away and ignore her.
Thankfully, nobody had noticed her slip out of the fences, especially Octavia. The girl had been too busy watching Indra and her group of warriors. Elliot knew the younger Blake wasn't too happy about her brother and Lincoln leaving, but she wasn't going to drag her along with her little plan.
She always worked better alone anyway.
The two men hadn't gotten far when she found them in the middle of the woods both dressed in Grounder clothing. Bellamy blended well with their rugged clothes. At least he looked the part. Elliot thought as she crept behind trees, holding an arrow-loaded bow in one hand and the other on the string to release it.
Then she saw the deer that they had been aiming to kill. Instantly, her muscles relaxed and the arrow came flying at the animal's head. Both men shifted in alarm as the deer fell dead with blood seeping out of its big eyes. They quickly turned to find the culprit behind them with her bow now lowered to her side.
"Elliot." Lincoln didn't look happy. He lowered his guard down, letting out a small sigh. There was no way he could tell her off because she would just do what she wanted either way. "You're not supposed to be here."
"He's right," Bellamy grunted. His eyes searched around them. "Where's Octavia?"
"Not here," Elliot muttered, trudging towards them. She looked at Lincoln. "What's your plan?"
"It doesn't include you, El." He shook his head adamantly before dropping to his knees beside the deer with a knife in his hand. Bellamy watched him uneasily as he started gutting the poor animal's inside out.
"Let me help," Elliot pressed on, becoming frustrated as time passed. The woods looked damp today and the sound of cicadas and birds filled the silence. "I can help."
"Go home," Lincoln told her. His eyes shot up towards her as he finished smearing animal blood on his face. "That's all you can do."
"Shut up," Elliot spat in their language, feeling Bellamy's eyes on her. "I'm not going anywhere."
"Fine." The man hissed, taking the limestone from the older Blake as he drew uneven lines across his face with the white powder. "You help me get him to the intake door."
"What happens then?" Bellamy asked.
"We kill everyone, and you slip inside," Lincoln said nonchalantly.
The look on Bellamy's face told a lot. It was crazy how they could just talk about killing people like it was nothing. He realized just how dangerous they were. These two were just as bad as any of them out there, and yet a small part of him still trusted them. Maybe because Elliot had saved him countless times just as Lincoln did to his sister.
"Let's go." Elliot sent a nod at the two men. "We have a lot of ground to cover before dark."
"Hey. I needed to know what happened after the intake door."
"They remove your clothes, blast you with boiling water, and douse you with something that burns even worse. From there, we were sorted. The others were tagged harvest. I was tagged Cerberus, turned into a Reaper."
"Cerberus. Three-headed dog that guards the Underworld." Both Grounders looked at the oldest Blake with confused tilts of their heads. "My mom read mythology to us all the time. Octavia loved it."
That made the corner of Lincoln's lips lift into a small smile. Bellamy noticed it, and he couldn't help but think about the fact that this Grounder would die for his little sister. He wasn't the only one who wanted to protect her anymore. Like it had always been. I suppose he needed to learn to accept that.
"You're good for her," Bellamy said almost forcefully. Behind them, Elliot narrowed her eye at the back of his head. "You made her strong."
"She was already strong."
The mountains hid behind thick mounts of fog which made it look harder to get to. Elliot never wandered that far. It was too much of a risk to come across the Mountain men. She had killed a few of them, but she almost died twice, too. Their weapons were advanced and that gave them the upper hand.
"The Mountain has many eyes between here and the tunnels," Lincoln informed Bellamy who walked back to them after looking over the map Clarke had drawn. "From now on, details must be exact."
"What if we run into real Reapers? Won't they wonder where you've been?" Bellamy questioned. His gaze flickered to the girl who stood a few distance from them. "What are you gonna do?"
"I'll deal with it," Elliot said shortly.
Bellamy frowned. "How?"
"I'll do my thing, you do yours," She snapped, giving him one of her glares as she pushed herself off the tree she was leaning on. She pulled off the sharpened knife she had stabbed on the tree and pointed it in his direction. "Worry about yourself."
"All they see is red," Lincoln cut into their growing argument as he answered Bellamy's question about the Reapers. "Once you take it, nothing else matters, just how you'll get more."
"How much do you remember from when you were on it?" Bellamy asked hesitantly. This time, Elliot had calmed down and she was dreading to hear Lincoln's answer. It made her angry that she wasn't able to save him from that.
"Everything," Lincoln said grimly.
Elliot walked up, holding a large piece of log. "Turn around."
Begrudgingly so, Bellamy turned so she could put the wood over his upper back and he put his hand on both ends. Lincoln began tying his wrist to the log and Elliot did the same to his other side. She saw the man take a deep breath before she fully tightened the makeshift rope around his wrist.
His eyes flickered towards her, watching a few ivory strands fall to her face from the wind. She looked better. Well, at least after getting almost killed from torture. Her skin looked flushed through the uneven tan lines on her face. Courtesy of the mask she always wore. Not today though. She needed to look her part. A monster.
Something inside Lincoln froze when they stopped in front of the same mine that the Reapers had dragged him into. Even Elliot seemed restless by the unsettling atmosphere in the darkness of the tunnel.
"Come on," Bellamy breathed, trying to make it seem like he wasn't as nervous as he let on. This was a suicide mission. "Let's do this."
Lincoln glanced at his sister with shaky irises. The younger Grounder nodded her head like she was determined. Together, they crept into the lion's den and basked in the darkness with only one thing in their minds: They had to get their job done and come out of it alive.
"Why are we stopping?" Bellamy looked back, finding Lincoln staring at something on the ground before he crushed it under the weight of his boots. Elliot suck in a deep breath, realizing it had been a vial of the drug that made him a Reaper. "You okay?"
"Link." Elliot stepped forward to be in Lincoln's vision, a deep crease between her light brows.
"As soon as they open the intake doors, we attack." His dark eyes stared ahead of the mine. Then he trudged towards Bellamy, briefly glancing at Elliot. "Do not let it close. Once they're all dead, you go in. I'll make it look like you escaped. Once you're inside━"
Bellamy clenched his jaw. "I know."
"They're close," Elliot muttered, her grip on her swords tightening. She never took her eyes off the end of the tunnel as she heard footsteps and voices.
"Elliot." Lincoln looked at her. It frustrated her that she couldn't figure out the look on his face. "If something goes wrong, you run the opposite way. Promise me."
Her face hardened. "I don't make promises I can't keep."
"Another raider party."
"What are you doing?"
"We have to go back. It's the only way."
Elliot looked confused and alarmed as she darted her eye back and forth between the two men and the incoming group of Reapers. She wasn't sure what Lincoln was doing but she helped him take off the binds on Bellamy so he could move freely and defend himself.
"What's going on?" Elliot demanded. "Lincoln, look at me!"
Lincoln stopped, breathing heavily. "Look, I thought I could do this, but I can't. It's over."
"No. It's not," Bellamy exclaimed, looking at him in the eyes. "We can join them. Listen to me. When they bring out the red, you grab it, and you run like hell. And Elliot's gonna be there with you."
"He's right," Elliot said in a hushed voice, slightly hefting her weapons like she was itching to fight. "The Reapers won't help themselves, they'd make a run for it. The Grounders will escape, and the Mountain men have to deal with it."
"You can't be here," Lincoln said hurriedly. "You have to go."
Unfortunately, they both knew Elliot wasn't going anywhere. Lincoln did the last thing he thought he'd have to do. He grabbed the log that was holding Bellamy and reluctantly hit her in the head. The female Grounder crumpled like a leaf but Bellamy was quick to catch her with wide shocked eyes.
Bellamy cursed under his breath. It didn't make it any better that the Reapers were getting nearer. Lincoln hastily grabbed Elliot and lowered her unconscious body inside the empty mine cart on the tracks. He muttered a quick apology before turning back to Bellamy with quivering lips as he went to grab him.
He ended up attacking Lincoln, shoving him against the cart with his elbow on his neck. The Reapers were now onto them. Bellamy gave the Grounder a hard look with apprehensiveness: "Fight back. They'll think I'm trying to escape."
Lincoln forced him to his knees and put a knife against his neck. Then he told the Reapers in Trigedasleng, just right in time they neared them. "This one tried to run off. He's mine."
"Put him on the log."
Elliot had never been so angry at her brother. They were gone when she awoke. She wanted to yell at him, to tell him that she hated him for doing this to her over and over again. As if she couldn't protect herself from the dangers of their world. But that would be hypocritical of her because Elliot does the same for him.
She had no choice but to turn the opposite way. These tunnels were unfamiliar and unfamiliar things were dangerous. With a quiet curse and a glance filled with hesitation to the end of the tunnel, Elliot decided to get back to the camp, hoping that Lincoln had made it out safe and sound.
Oh, how wrong she was.