DISCORDIA

[ 27 ] radio silence

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RADIO SILENCE

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   JINNY COULDN'T COME TO TERMS with the fact that the Ark had abandoned them again. She ran a hand across her face as she sat in front of the radio, knuckles turning bone white from how hard she was clenching the receiver. Monty sat in the corner watching her with concern as he salvaged whatever he could find from the Exodus ship wreckage.

"Ground to the Ark, come in," she spoke again. "Oh, my God, someone answer me! Fuck you, Jaha, you piece of shit!" Monty snorted. "I know you're listening to our channel, Kane. Screw all of you!"

She reached out and turned the knob to the frequency again, listening hard for any sign of a clearer signal. There was nothing; there hadn't been ever since the Unity Day pageant. The Ark should have had backup generators in case something happened, they couldn't all be dead yet. She calculated that there should still be enough oxygen for them to make it to the ground in time.

"Hey, Jinny," Monty called. "Check this out."

He fiddled some more with the black box as she moved to sit next to him in front of the work bench. They both leaned in to listen to the interference before a series of interspersed noise took over, effectively decreasing the signal entirely. Jinny exchanged a perplexed look with Monty.

"Does that sound deliberate to you?" she asked.

"It definitely sounds like something was jamming the signal," he told her. "The nav system went nuts after that."

"Grounders wouldn't know how to jam us... right?" She raised an eyebrow. "They use pointy sticks to hurt us for crying out loud."

"Maybe there are sophisticated Grounders hiding out somewhere," Monty suggested uncertainly. "I don't think that makes things any better."

"Wait a minute." Jinny sat up straight and furrowed her brows. "If the Exodus didn't decouple with the Ark properly before launch, then their systems would have been tied to the Ark. If the Ark went dead, and there was no one to manually override the system, they'd have to rely solely on internal controls to launch their landing instruments. But if their systems were being jammed..."

"They would have crashed," Monty finished for her.

The both of them sat there in silent horror at the revelation they had just discovered. Jinny's brain whirled as she tried to process the information and what it could possibly mean. Was there something else about the ground that they hadn't known about? Octavia told them about the so-called Mountain Men that Lincoln had warned her of and Jinny sat there pondering the myriad of possibilities when the dropship ladder rang hollowly as someone climbed up.

Bellamy popped his head through the hatch. "Hey, Jin. I need to talk to you. Got a minute?"

She merely stared back at him.

"Are you giving me radio silence too?" he chuckled at his own joke. "Come out here. We need you."

Jinny sighed before setting down her headphones on the tabletop and got up to follow after the man. They walked out of the dropship and towards one of the guard posts by the north wall. Bellamy spotted Clarke on an incline nearby, looking out at the forest, and called out to her.

"Still nothing?" he asked and she shook her head. He turned back to Jinny. "Jasper thinks he could cook up some more gunpowder if he gets more sulphur, and Raven says she could turn that into landmines. What do you think?"

"I like seeing things go boom," she replied. "But Bell, I'm worried about those Mountain Men that Lincoln was talking about."

"What do you mean?" He frowned at her. "What's going on?"