Red Lighter ✧ John Murphy

XLVI - No Longer My Own

DAMMIT I WENT IN A DIRECTION OF THIS STORY LINE AND NOW I DON'T KNOW WTF TO DO WITH IT

FUCK FUCK FUCK

k if you have any ideas let me know

thankies :3

no seriously hELP ME PLEASE GUYS

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Chapter Fourty-Six

We ran as fast as we could. It was imperative that we got to Arkadia as soon as possible. Ontari could be sending an army to Arkadia right this moment, or she could be trying to begin the ascension without the flame, which we now had. A million different scenarios of what could happen went through my head, but when I heard something ahead of us, I knew that there was something far worse coming for us.

"Clarke," I said, suddenly freezing in my steps. My eyes went wide a little, and I listened closer. It was in the bushes near us. Was there someone watching us? It couldn't be the grounders, could it?

"What? Ven, we need to go!" she insisted, bolting forwards again.

"You need to go ahead without me," I told her.

"Why?!" she said, turning to me and staring at me with a shocked and confused expression.

"Because there's something-"

I was cut off by the sound of the bushes rustling again, and I turned my head to see three men coming out from near them. Each of them wearing guards' uniforms. They had blank looks in their eyes, and I knew exactly why. It was the same look that Jaha now had after he had taken that damn pill and become ALIE's lapdog.

"Clarke, run!" I told her immediately, right as the men came at me.

I would have defended myself from the hits that they seemed ready to throw, until something hit me on the back of my head. My vision went fuzzy and my legs went limp, causing me to fall to the forest floor and feel dirt under my fingertips and on the side of my face. Before I finally passed out, I saw Clarke running, and I hoped to god that she reached Arkadia before these men did. I didn't know what they were planning, but they don't go after Clarke. They came after me. They wanted me for something rather specific that Clarke apparently could not do. Was it to give me the pill? Likely.

Would I take it? In this moment, I would say no, but then again, I had no idea what was to follow when I came back to Arkadia.

*

When I awoke, the only thing I could really feel was a throbbing in the back right corner of my head. I went to reach up and touch it to see if it was bleeding, but I couldn't. Someone had tied my wrists to a chair, and I soon realized that they had done the same with my ankles when I tried to move my legs.

"Ah, you're awake," I heard a faintly familiar voice say, and I glared at the owner when I realized exactly who it was.

"What have you done, Jaha?" I asked, my voice harsh and hoarse from not speaking for a long while. I wondered how long I had been unconscious.

"Venus, are you alright?"

I turned to my left and saw Abby sitting there, concern lingering on her features. I nodded to her, seeing that she was in the exact same position as I was.

I looked around, and saw Raven and Jackson also standing in front of us. But Raven seemed... Off. She had taken the pill.

"I want to talk to Raven," Abby suddenly hissed.

"Raven is in the City of Light," Raven said, in a voice that was not her own. "All you have to do to see her-"

"I said no!" Abby shouted.

"You want her to take a pill that will surrender her mind to a fake bitch in a red dress?" I said angrily.

Jaha suddenly pulled a chair up to sit by me. "Actually, we want you to take it as well. What we are doing is-"

"What you're doing is stealing people's minds!" Abby shouted, cutting him off.

"You're wrong," he said, shaking his head. "We're freeing their minds. And we won't be done until everyone is with us."

"You don't need Venus," Abby immediately said. "Let her go. Now."

"Like I said," Jaha said, leaning back in the chair, his voice taking an ominous tone. "Not until everyone is with us."

"I won't take the key," I stated calmly. "You need to understand that now. It won't matter if you torture me, I won't do it."

"Who said anything about torture?" Raven asked, a voice closer to ALIE's leaving her mouth.

Jackson picked up a scalpel from the table in between Abby and I, and handed it to Raven.

"What are you doing?" Abby asked worriedly.

"Giving you a choice."

With that, Raven touched the blade of the scalpel to her wrist.

"Raven, stop!" I shouted, my back coming off of the chair as I tried to jerk forwards, my body seeming to forget that it was still stuck tied to the chair. "Stop it!"

She was dragging it along the vein. That wound was so much harder to heal, and would bleed far more than a horizontal cut. She was already turning pale, and she had barely even cut it. When she had made a long slice on her left wrist, she did the same to her right. Abby was screaming the entire time, but I was too shocked to say a word. I knew that they would let her die.

She held her arms out, and the blood dripped wildly onto the floor, while she began to sway back and forth.

"If you want to save Raven, all you have to do is take the key," Jaha said, picking up two keys and holding one out to Jackson. "Both of you."

"Thelonious, please! If I don't stop the bleeding, she's gonna die!" Abby shouted, tears forming in her eyes.

"Her body will die, but her mind will live forever," Jaha told her.

"Please!"

Raven's knees went limp, and she fell to the ground, not making a sound. The blood left her arms even faster now.

"Raven!" I shouted, struggling against the ropes even more.

"I'm begging you," Abby said, her voice coming out as more of a whisper. "Please, let me go to her!"

"Open your mouth, and hold out your tongue," Jaha said.

She was tough, and wasn't willing to do so. But then she looked at Raven again, and she opened her mouth. Jaha put the pill in it, and Abby's eyes closed. Then she opened them, while I looked to Jackson. He stared down at me with a smile, and I knew that this was the only way. This was the only way that he would let Abby help her.

I opened my mouth and took the pill, swallowing it. My heart was beating wildly while I did. I felt a sharp pain in the back of my head, which soon faded into a feeling of euphoria. I didn't know exactly what was happening, but as I opened my eyes once again, I came to one simple, and yet so very complicated realization.

My mind was no longer my own.