Conflate | Bellamy Blake ¹ ✓

※ | chapter ten

❝who you are is who you are under circumstance.❞

-halsey, music artist

♛

AS BELLAMY AND I rush to the edge of the water, Jones passes the dripping wet radio to Raven. She takes it and starts toying with some of the snapped parts where the wires have been ripped. Her face scrunches up as she examines it from all sides.

"Can you fix it?" Clarke asks hopefully.

"Maybe," Raven replies with a tinge of indifference in her flat voice. "But it'll take half a day just to dry out the components to see what's broken."

"We'll wait as long as it takes," I assert with urgency. "As long as there's a possibility, that's fine with me."

"Like I said, it's too late," Bellamy says dryly, arms crossed over his chest.

Clarke darts at him with an outraged expression. She stops inches from his face. "Do you have any idea what you did? Do you even care?"

"You asked me to help," Bellamy retorts with a blank look. He's acting much differently than he had with me a few seconds ago. "I helped."

"Three hundred people are gonna die today because of you!" Clarke exclaims, usually tough demeanor crumbling before us. I suck in a surprised breath. They're already preforming volunteer sacrifices?

"Hold up," Raven calls over their bickering. Everyone turns to her, prepared to listen. "We don't have to talk to the Ark. We just have to let them know we're down here, right?"

I don't see where she's going with this, but I trust her judgment. She's a mechanic and seems to be pretty well educated for how young she is. We could use a good brain around here.

"Yeah, but how do we do that with no radio?" Finn asks. I jerk my head toward him to emphasize that I'm wondering the same thing.

A knowing smile forms on Raven's face.

A few moments after she's explained her plan to us - which is genius, by the way - everyone is set into motion. We have torn apart the pod she landed in and removed the most important pieces of equipment inside, along with a few parts of the dropship. Finn and another boy are carrying the main heart with the controls. I'm shredding my hands even more as I rip apart the metal on the outside of the pod.

"We need to launch those flares ASAP if we have any hope of saving those people," Raven announces above everyone's work, projected voice laced with natural authority. "Finn, get that control panel to camp." She walks to me and nods in approval. "Fallon, pull out those firing circuits in one piece or they won't work. Clarke, can I have a hand?"

I sigh heavily as Clarke jumps up eagerly to assist Raven. My hand sticks further into the wiring of the pod, trying to decipher which ones are the firing circuits. There are tangles of red, blue, yellow, and green coils. I take a chance and guess at the red.

As I yank gently, one of the yellow wires rips and grazes the skin just below my pinky finger. I yelp as a slight electric shock courses through me. The tiny hairs on my arms stand up and I shudder.

I try again, much more cautiously this time, and pull the red wires. They all snap out in one piece - just like Raven instructed - and I sigh in relief. I make sure that I don't touch any more open circuits as I twist uncomfortably to wrench my arm out.

I hold the red wires in both hands and notice my fingers are covered in slimy, black machine oil. My nose crinkles at the acidic stench that drifts up my nostrils and displeases every sense I have. With a grunt, I push myself to a standing position, hearing my knees crack as I do so.