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"TAYLOR, CAN YOU HEAR ME?" Her breath was ragged and her insides felt like they were burning up along with her skin. Coughing slightly, her eyes fluttered open to first see the outline of Clarke looking down at her concernedly.
Mouth opening ever so slightly, she was overcome with another bout of queasiness and shot to her side, heaving up another revolting mess of warm, thick blood. The makeshift bed she was lying on was somewhat comforting despite the full scale of her symptoms.
"I don't know why she's reacting so violently — it could be having such prolonged, close contact with Murphy," she heard Clarke say in a muffled tone, the rag that she held over her mouth bringing down the volume of her voice.
"What's happening?" Taylor managed to whisper, overcome with a bout of coughing just as the last word left her lips.
"Biological warfare. The Grounders sent Murphy in with some kind of sickness," Clarke explained hastily. She only groaned in response, clutching her stomach and shaking her head.
"Reacting violently? Is she going to be okay?" another voice, Bellamy's, inquired from somewhere beside where Clarke was. She was finally getting a bearing on where she was and saw both Clarke and Bellamy in total clarity glancing at her.
"Bell?" she mumbled incoherently turning her head to where she heard his voice. He too had a piece of cloth pressed against his mouth and nose, and judging by what Clarke said about her state, she could only assume that the sickness was spread through contact.
"I'm here," he assured. She felt faint and wanted to fall into a peaceful state of sleep, the exhaustion that invaded every cell in her body begging her to.
"Bellamy," Clarke warned, making sure he wasn't close enough to contract the virus. It looked like he was about to protest, but Taylor coughed in response, unable to reach out or say much at all in general.
"No, it's okay. Get out of here," she told him. "I don't want you to get sick." It wasn't exceedingly clear to her what happened after that, as she fell unconscious almost promptly after she finished speaking.
When she opened her eyes again, how much later she did not know, everything felt appreciably better. The dimly lit and pungent smelling dropship was what welcomed her drooping eyes. Fresh blood dripped from her nose and she shook her head, trying to value the fact that she wasn't throwing it up this time.
Heaving herself up, she glanced around at all of the coughing teenagers that lie on the floor coughing and sputtering, groaning in pain. The smell was ten times worse than it had been when Jasper was gravely injured. The dead bodies being dragged from the ship didn't exactly make her feel more optimistic.
