sunset|| j.murphy

4||grounders

"the bad news is the grounders will"

Everything after that was a blur. I felt paralyzed. All I could think about was Jasper.

"Ophelia, come on!" Clarke tugged on my arm as we ran through the forest. We all ran as fast as we could, not looking back to see if whoever speared Jasper was chasing us. 

Monty was ahead of the group, followed by Octavia, Finn, Clarke and myself at the end. Monty tripped over something, landing flat on his stomach.

"Monty, come on, get up!" Octavia rushed, grabbing his arm. In front of Monty was some kind of decayed skeleton, it was disgusting.

"Who are they?" Finn muttered. Clarke picked up a deformed skull off the ground which didn't look human.

"What are they?" She grimaced. 

"We are so screwed." Octavia breathed. A loud, painful cry filled our ears, only it didn't belong to any of us. It belonged to my brother.

"Jasper!" Clarke exclaimed. "He's alive."  I said nothing and booked it back to the direction we came from. That scream meant he was alive. I ignored the shouts of protest coming from behind me.

"Wait! Stay under the trees." Finn directed. We stayed hidden in the tree line as we looked out across the river where Jasper once lied. He was nowhere to be found.

"He was right there." Clarke said breathlessly.

"Where is he?" Monty asked.

"They took him." Clarke declared.

"We gotta go. Now." Finn decided. We all silently agreed and started running back to the dropship.

***

We made it back to the dropship and as we got closer, we heard the yells of the delinquents. We made it back to the sight of Wells holding the boy who claimed Jasper and I were 'with him' in a headlock and a knife to his throat.

"Wells! Let him go!" Clarke shouted as we arrived. Wells shoved the boy to the ground but the boy was straight back up on his feet and charged at Wells. 

Bellamy held the boy back. "Hey! Enough. Murphy." Bellamy scolded. So his name must be Murphy. That's handy to know. "Octavia! Are you alright?" Bellamy rushed to his sister's side the second he saw her with her arm around Monty for support.

"Yeah." She sighed as she let her brother help her down. I looked down, missing my brother and feeling guilty that we just left him.

"Where's the food?" Bellamy asked.

"We didn't make it to Mount Weather." Finn replied as he shed his jacket and sat down on a log.

"What the hell happened out there?" Bellamy demanded.

"We were attacked." Clarke answered.

"Attacked? By what?" Wells cut in.

"Not what. Who." Finn corrected. "Turns out when the last man from the ground died on the Ark, he wasn't the last Grounder." I hadn't said a word to anyone since Jasper was speared. I was just too caught up in my thoughts and too distraught to say anything.

"It's true. Everything we thought we knew about the ground is wrong." Clarke confirmed, speaking to the crowd of delinquents that had formed as well as Bellamy. "There are people here. Survivors. The good news is that means we can survive. Radiation won't kill us." 

"Yeah, the bad news is the Grounders will." Finn added.

"Where's the kid with the goggles?" Wells asked. 'The kid with the goggles'? Seriously? He couldn't just say my brother's name?