Conflate | Bellamy Blake ¹ ✓

✯ | chapter seventeen [bellamy's pov]

❝we're all capable of terrible things.❞

-annalise keating, how to get away with murder

♛

IF THE MOUNTAIN MEN are trying to burn his damn skin off, they're doing a fantastic job of it.

Bellamy wonders if he'll die by being scrubbed to death. The brush is working mercilessly across his body, soaking the boiling water into his skin and making it burn even worse. The shackles holding him, once cold, are now prickling hot to the touch. The one around his neck is particularly annoying because it keeps pulling him backward. And then he's covered in white powder that feels like the equivalent to acid. His entire body is tense, arms folded in front of him as his nerves are practically melting.

But hey, this is the cleanest he's been since he got to the ground.

The pill isn't so bad. It makes him choke, as he thinks it's supposed to, but it hitting the back of his throat isn't as horrible as everything else. His wet hair is plastered to his forehead in a way that makes him wish for a haircut. The temperature is turned higher, higher, until he can't take it anymore and lets out a gargled scream that rattles his own eardrums.

Bellamy wakes up in a cage. His first thought is, Where Am I? The second one is, Shit, I'm in a cage. Then, he props himself up on his elbow and heaves himself to a sitting position by pulling his body up. His fingers lace through the thin bars as he tries to survey his surroundings. There are more cages surrounding his, and even more across the aisle from him. If he looks far enough to his left, he can see a man and a woman hanging by their ankles from a machine, bodies slack and eyes closed. He shivers.

So this is Mount Weather.

His other hand latches onto the front of the cage and he shakes it harshly, trying to possibly get himself free. However, the damn thing doesn't budge, and a girl to his right he hadn't noticed before tries to speak to him. But she says it in Trigedasleng, and Bellamy doesn't know ape-shit about it.

"I can't understand you," he mumbles back to her, which he figures is a bad idea as soon as he says it. She practically lunges toward the bars separating them. Her badly scratched face leers at his own with her busted lip pulled down into a frown.

"Sky Person?" she demands in a harsh whisper. When he nods, she spits in his face. Yeah, definitely not a good idea.

"I guess nobody told you," he says lowly as he wipes her saliva off of his cheek, "that we're not enemies anymore."

The Grounder rolls her eyes. "There was a girl who said she knew you."

Bellamy's head snaps toward her, his heart constricting in his chest. He doesn't miss the past-tense word usage. "Was?"

She points to their right, where another machine shaped like a 'T' is placed. And there, hanging by her ankles from it, is Fallon. There are several patches on her body, and a tube sticking out of one of them runs into a sack filled with dark liquid. Monitors separating her from the empty space on the other side display her vitals. She appears totally unresponsive, which is definitely not a good sign.

Shit. No. No, no, no, no, no.

"What are they doing to her?" he asks quietly, his voice kind of breaking. He clears his throat to fix that. He was mildly alarmed when he had woken up to find himself dressed in only bandages instead of boxers, but this... This is a whole new light. Seeing her unmoving form like that is something he never wants to lay his eyes on again.

"Taking her blood," the Grounder girl replies like it's no big deal. "Don't worry- she wasn't as stupid as you, just unlucky."

"Just unlucky" might be the best description of Fallon that Bellamy has ever heard.