Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Council had made the decision that the search team would leave at dawn and Abby had spent a fitful night in her room since then waiting for the hours to pass. Her cot was narrow with only a stiff covering over the iron frame. Most nights she was so tired she didn't notice and fell asleep easily but last night she felt as though she was skinless, just raw nerves and sharp bones hard against cold canvas. It was too uncomfortable to rest easily. She had finally slipped into sleep just as the first fingers of light were breaking through the dark and then the sound of many pairs of boots clattering along the metal floor outside in the hall had brought her back to consciousness too soon.

There was a sharp rap on her door and she dragged herself into a sitting position as the door opened and Marcus Kane entered. He was dressed for the mission in a black jacket, trousers and utility vest. She appraised him through sleepy eyes. His beard was really growing in now. He looked more awake than she felt although his black hair was still mussed up from sleeping. Perhaps conscious that she had noticed some dishevelment, he ran his hand through the waves to tame them as he stood in the doorway.

"Is it time?" Abby asked. "Yes," said Marcus. "In fact we're running a little behind schedule." His eyes scanned her as she sat on the cot, and Abby could suddenly see herself as he must be doing, her crumpled clothes and bleary eyes. She felt self-conscious and also indignant at his disapproving look. She had been up late tweaking a new anaesthetic for him to take on the journey. Marcus looked at his watch. "You seem to have slept in. You should have been in Medical ten minutes ago."

"Well, thank you for the wake-up call," she said, not bothering to soften the edge in her voice. She swung her legs over the side of the cot and Marcus stepped forward to offer his hand to her as she pulled herself up. She hesitated but then took it; she still found certain movements painful after the bone marrow operation. His hand was warm as it folded around hers. He held on to her as she stood facing him. His brown eyes met hers and despite her annoyance at his presumptuousness she felt the familiar flutter in her stomach as she held his gaze. After a long second she pulled her hand from his and placed it lightly on his chest, plucking at the frayed edge of his vest strap.

"You know I still don't understand why you're so against going on this mission," she said, pulling a stray piece of fabric away from the strap. "You were the only one who voted against last night. If our people are out there we have to do everything we can to save them."

Marcus stepped back. "That's the problem, though. I don't think our people are in that ship. It's been more than two months since we came to ground. Why haven't we heard anything from them before now? Why haven't they sent scouts out like we have?"

Abby moved over to the basin and splashed her face with water. "Because Grounders are holding siege to them. That's what the scout reported." Marcus handed her a towel and she patted herself dry with it.

"For two months? If that is the case, then they will have run out of supplies by now. We are risking the lives of fifteen of OUR people to rescue the dead."

"Well we don't know that for sure, and that's why we have to go." Abby tied her hair back into a loose ponytail. "Can you just...." She twirled her fingers round to indicate he should look the other way. Marcus raised an eyebrow but turned his back as she took off her dirty trousers and pulled on a cleaner pair.

"There has already been too much death, Abby. And what about Clarke? We should be out there looking for her."

Abby put her hand on Marcus's shoulder and turned him back round to face her again. "Clarke doesn't want to be found yet, Marcus. When she's ready, she will find a way to let us know."

Marcus gave a small smile, though his brow was furrowed. "I hope you're right about this."

They looked at each other a moment longer.

"I won't see you again before I leave. I have to finish getting the vehicles ready." Marcus said. He moved his hand towards her and for a moment she thought he was going to touch her face but then he dropped it. "May we meet again."

"Be safe," said Abby. "I'll be at the gates for your return."

A small sigh escaped Marcus as he turned and left the room. Abby watched him go for a moment, an unsettled feeling in her stomach. Despite what she had said she did fear for him and his mission. She wasn't sure why he was so reluctant to go, though. If there was the slightest chance, they had to try. There was also that complicated something she had felt for him for some time now. She cared for him, there was no doubt. They had always had a fractious relationship, particularly back on the Ark. His punishment of her with the shock lashing though had changed things between them. It could have pushed them apart and Abby found the memory of it painful and still bore the physical scars. She knew she had left Marcus with little choice though by breaking the rules.

When he came into Medical afterwards she had hated him for a moment, hated his stiff adherence to the rule of law. His decision to lead a search party for the kids had therefore come as a big surprise and she had felt a surge of respect for him, that he had the courage to step back and realise that there was another way. He said he had heard her and once he was clear in his own mind that it was the right way he had acted with swift efficiency. They had both softened and bent a little towards each other after that and with everything that had happened up at Mount Weather they had become more of a unit, despite their disagreements.

Abby pulled on her work boots, grabbed her back pack and left her sleeping compartment, making her way along the halls to the medical unit. The halls were full of people in similar clothing to Marcus, all laden down with back packs and weapons, moving purposefully toward the main exit. Abby turned left away from the main throng and entered Medical. Jackson was already there, packing cases with all the equipment they could spare. The scout who brought them news of the surviving station had not been able to make contact with anyone in the remains of the ship. The grounder crew laying siege to the main structure prevented movement in or out. The scout had reported the sporadic firing of weapons from the ship and surmised that there must be survivors.

Abby smiled at Jackson. "How are we doing with the supplies?" Jackson opened up a hard-backed silver case crammed with medicines, syringes and bandages and showed it to her. "It's difficult to know how much to pack. We don't know if there is one survivor or fifty, or how many of them are injured." Jackson replied. Abby pulled the suitcase towards her and rummaged through its contents. "Well, we have fifteen people going with Kane on the mission and they will need supplies as well just in case there are any incidents on the way." She looked through the boxes Jackson had laid out on the table which represented all the medicinal supplies they had, doing a quick inventory of the contents. There wasn't nearly as much as she would have liked. "Let's fill three of these cases, one for each truck and a portable kit for each rescuer." She looked at the clock on the wall; there was fifteen minutes left before the rescuers were due to depart at six. "We'd better hurry; they'll be here for these soon."

-----

In the vehicle hold, Marcus began loading arms and supplies into the lead truck, which he would be commanding. He was more than uneasy about this mission. The journey to the crash site was a long one, even in the trucks they had got from Mount Weather, and fraught with danger from the terrain and from grounders. They had no idea what they would find when they eventually reached the crashed station. The scout was certain there were survivors but as he had argued at Council last night, Marcus did not believe it. He was worried they were heading for a trap.

He secured the supplies to the inside of the truck with straps. There was just room left for the medical cases which Abby and her team were preparing. His meeting with her earlier had left him with an unsatisfactory feeling. He had never meant it to be anything more than a perfunctory call to let her know they were leaving but he had been undone by the sight of her still drowsy from sleep. He had not given much thought to what she was doing when he knocked and immediately opened the door. Inside he found she had just woken and was sitting on her cot all languid limbs and heavy eyelids, her hair loose and untamed. She had looked at him with unguarded eyes, making him feel completely naked in front of her. Her hand was warm to touch when it grasped his and when he pulled her up she was so close he could smell the sleep on her, of rumpled, slept-in clothes and heated skin. She had placed her hand on his chest and his pulse had quickened at the gesture, until he realised she was just tidying him up. They had argued about the mission again, but he had wanted to say something more personal. But what? That she disturbed him? That he was worried he would never see her again; that the thought upset him?

He had known her all his life. They had grown up together on the Ark. He had been a gawky, serious child whose strict religious upbringing had left him with a belief in a pre-ordained order of things. She had parents who were liberal and indulgent and Abby had seemed to him like a creature he had read about from Earth history – a butterfly; bright and fluttery and always just out of reach. They were the same age but like most girls Abby had grown up quicker than Marcus and she had lauded that maturity over him, teasing him and keeping him at arm's length like the small child he was in her eyes.

Marcus stroked his beard absentmindedly as he thought about the young Abby. His fingers brushed a small scar on his lower lip and the memory of how he came by it bubbled to the surface. They were twelve years old and spent a lot of time with each other because their parents worked together in Engineering. Left to their own devices when not at lessons, they roamed the Ark role-playing hunters and warriors. Marcus remembered it was hot that particular day; something to do with the heat conductors playing up. The adults were all at a meeting in the Mess Hall to discuss the problem and Marcus and Abby were free to stalk pretend enemies through the hallways. They had reached the Administration Centre and the grey, forbidding door of the Chancellor's office lay ahead. "There is nowhere else for the enemy to go, Marcus," Abby whispered. "They must be hiding inside. We have to get into the office." She tried the door, turning the handle but it just spun in its socket without releasing. Marcus was alarmed. "We can't go in there Abby. Chancellor Wells has forbidden it!" His pleas were in vain though because Abby was already picking at the lock with a pin from her hair. She gave him a satisfied look when the lock clicked open. He looked behind them down the length of the hallway to see if anyone was looking. They seemed to be completely alone. Abby had opened the door and was already inside. Marcus hesitated. He was as curious as she was deep down, but he was scared of the consequences of being caught in the Chancellor's office. "Come on, Marcus!" It was a challenge she was issuing he knew, one he had to accept or be forever the young boy in her eyes. He had followed her in; as she must have known he would.

Of course they had been caught, and faced with the stern gaze of the Chancellor and the disappointed look of his mother Marcus had crumbled and blamed Abby for the whole thing. "You're a big sneak, Kane" she had said, her eyes narrowing at him and her lips set in a pout and then she'd picked up a small metal cup from the table and hurled it at him. It was so unexpected he had no time to react and it caught his lip, bursting it open so he could taste fresh, warm blood; the taste of humiliation. He had deserved it though; he knew that even then.

Marcus smiled to himself as he touched the scar, remembering the way she had looked when she saw what she had done. Wild strands of her long brown hair were plastered to her face because she was hot with exertion and temper. Her brown eyes were wide with shock but there was a slight upturn at the corner of her mouth – a hint of triumph. Marcus had felt a quivering feeling in his stomach under that gaze, like someone was stirring a spoon round his insides. It made him feel sick and excited at the same time. He didn't understand the feeling at the time, though he did later. It was what loving Abby felt like.

"Something amusing you, Kane?" Marcus jumped as Sinclair's voice intruded into his memories. "Just remembering what it was to be young," Marcus replied. "I'm surprised you can remember that far back." Sinclair grinned. Marcus smiled at his old friend and patted him on the arm in greeting. "Have you got the medical supplies?" Sinclair nodded. Three men with Sinclair were holding a large silver case each and a fourth was laden with two long metal boxes. "These are the cases with supplies for the ark station and there are a couple of boxes of extra food supplies." Marcus nodded. "Put one case in each truck," he directed the men. "The food can go in here," he said, indicating his own vehicle.

With the trucks fully stocked it was time to leave. Marcus got into the driving seat of the lead truck and the convoy bumped across the uneven ground towards the main gates. As the gates were slowly opening, Marcus looked out of the window at the small crowd of fifty or so people who had come to see them off. Most of them probably had friends or family on the missing stations. Their hopeful faces made him anxious but also lifted him. If they only made one of these faces smile on their return then it would be worth it. It was up to him to keep his fellow rescuers safe and make sure they all returned in one piece to Arkadia. He scanned the crowd for a glimpse of Abby; he felt a deep-seated need to see her one more time, but she was not there.

Chapter Text

The gates closed behind them and Marcus turned right to follow the worn track along the edge of the compound through a clearing they had cut in the trees. The sun was just above the horizon, casting fingers of orange light across the grey-blue sky. An orange-tinged mist rose over the rows of silhouetted conifers which cast long shadows across the path of the convoy. The smell of fresh earth after rain drifted through the barred window, a scent of renewal. Marcus never tired of that smell. It was life-giving, life-affirming, after forty years spent breathing the recycled oxygen of the Ark. “It’s going to be a beautiful day,” said Sinclair, echoing Marcus’s thoughts. “It’s just as well,” said Marcus, “we’ve got about 100 miles to drive.” It didn’t sound like much but the terrain between Arkadia and the fallen station was rough and mainly through woodland and over rocky plains. The tracks were barely that; most of them were made for horses, not vehicles. They’d be lucky to cover fifteen miles an hour.

Ahead of them was a painful, bumpy journey. The vehicles they had retrieved from Mount Weather had been well maintained but they were old; the pneumatic shock absorbers were worn and there was barely any nitrogen left to work the pistons. Marcus had learned this the hard way when driving the trucks back from the military base. He had never driven a vehicle before and his foot was heavy on the accelerator. They had bounced around in the truck, all of them physically lifted off their seats as they careered over rocky, rutted ground. Marcus drove more carefully now, but it was still a bruising ride.

They drove for a couple of hours in a companionable silence. Sinclair was in the passenger seat looking out of the side window, partly to watch for potential attackers but probably partly to enjoy the view. Like with breathing the fresh air, the nature that surrounded them never got old. Nothing had prepared Marcus for his first sight of the Earth from the ground. The glittering, mirror-like lake they had landed beside, the snow-capped mountains bigger than anything he could imagine, and the trees – a green oasis that stretched beyond what the eye could see. The only tree on the Ark was the one small tree his mother had tended, that Marcus himself had tended when a small boy. It had been worshipped because it was unique. Did people here worship trees when there were so many of them or did they take them for granted? Marcus felt a pang of regret that his mother was not here to see this. Abby had said it was everything she had dreamed of, but for Marcus it was more than that. He had rarely let himself dream of the ground and when he did, it was barren, poisoned. His generation was not supposed to be on earth; they were the harbingers, the ones who were to prepare the way but never go themselves. What is the point of dreaming about something that will never happen?

“Attack!”

Sinclair’s shout jolted Marcus out of his thoughts and made him jerk the wheel to one side. He struck a small boulder and the jeep skidded to a halt, its wheels kicking up dirt that sprayed the bars of the window.

“What is it?” A series of dull thuds hit the side of the truck.

“Keep moving! Keep moving! It’s Grounders,” Sinclair shouted. Marcus floored the accelerator but the wheels couldn’t get any traction and spun in place. The two trucks that were following Marcus ground to a halt behind him because the track was too narrow for them to pass. More thuds against the side of the truck. “Crap!” shouted Marcus. He shifted gear into reverse and hit the gas again; the engine screamed and protested but the wheels continued to spin and they went nowhere.

“I can see maybe ten of them, they’re moving in from the woods. They’re about five hundred yards away,” said Sinclair.

Marcus slammed his hand on the steering wheel in frustration. “We’re stuck. The only way this jeep is moving is if we get out and push it.” Another hail of thuds and this time one of them struck the hood and lodged in the metal. It was a bronze-tipped arrow.

“We’re sitting ducks if we stay here.” Sinclair was bent double trying to keep out of the line of sight.

“Then let’s get out. We can use the jeep as cover.” Marcus opened the door and jumped out. The track hugged the side of a hill which provided some protection from behind. It also provided little means of escape if the Grounders got too close. They would be hemmed in. Sinclair crawled across the driver’s seat and half rolled out onto the ground next to Marcus. Marcus looked back at the other two trucks. The rest of the team had also jumped out and were crouched down behind their vehicles. Johnson, who had been sitting in the back of Marcus’s jeep, passed across a couple of guns to Marcus and Sinclair.

Marcus risked a peek over the hood of the truck. There were two groups of five, each group fanned out like an arrow head. The lead of each group was wielding an axe; the others were firing arrows at the convoy. They were running through the trees, covering the last few hundred yards of ground quickly. Their war cries echoed off the hill behind Marcus, filling the air. The lead Grounder in the group closest to Marcus was a giant; at least 6’5” and almost as broad. His dark, braided hair swung wildly behind him as he ran.

A volley of shots rang out to Marcus’s right. He ducked back down and turned to see where the shots had come from. Bates was standing behind the hood of the last truck; he was spraying bullets from his automatic rifle at the charging Grounders. The Grounders were still within the forest trees, however, and none of the bullets were hitting their targets; some were ricocheting back off the nearby trees towards the trucks. Peters was trying to pull Bates back down to the safety of the vehicle but Bates was shrugging him off.

“Get down, man!” shouted Marcus but it was too late. A Grounder arrow found its mark in Bates’s forehead. He looked shocked for a moment and then his knees buckled and his body seemed to fold in on itself as he fell to the ground.

“Shit!” Marcus looked at Sinclair, seeing his own fear and pain echoed in his friend’s shocked face. There was no time to dwell, though. Marcus had another look over the hood. He didn’t see the arrow that flew within an inch of his head, just heard the hum and felt a rush of air on his face as it went past. In the split second he had to survey the scene he saw that the Grounders had spread out and were moving to flank the convoy on either side. They would soon be on top of the group. Marcus rested the barrel of his gun on the window of the truck, between the bars. Looking down the sight he tried to push everything else from his mind and concentrate on the scene in front of him. He slowed his breathing, waiting for the moment a Grounder came into view. When one did, he exhaled and pulled the trigger at the same time. The shot missed. Marcus was a sharp-shooter but hitting moving targets that were zigzagging through trees whilst under a hail of arrows was not an easy task.

He sat on his haunches, his back against the vehicle and turned to Sinclair. “We need to wait until they are out of the trees and then move out as a unit, spray them with bullets. We don’t have the time to pick them off individually.”

“That’s risky,” said Sinclair. “We’ll be exposing ourselves directly to them. Look what just happened to Bates.”

“Bates should have waited. The trees protected the Grounders. If they’re in the open there will be nothing between us and them. I can’t see another way. If we don’t do this they will be upon us in a moment. We won’t win at hand to hand combat, if it even gets that far. We have to take the fight to them.”

Sinclair grimaced, worry and indecision etched on his face. “OK,” he said. Marcus could tell he wasn’t happy about this but what else could they do? “Tell the men to get ready. On my shout we’ll move out firing. I’ll take the ones moving in to the left. Tell Peters to do the same on his right.”

Sinclair moved across the line to inform the men of the plan. Out of the corner of his eye Marcus could see a couple of heads turn to look at him. He nodded his head to give a reassurance he didn’t quite feel himself. He set his rifle to automatic fire and crept past the front wheels of the jeep. He looked up one last time. The Grounders had reached the tree line and were about to come out into open ground.

“Let’s do this now!” Marcus stepped out from around the jeep and planted his feet firmly on the ground. His main target was a few yards ahead and to the left. He opened fire at the Grounder, trying to concentrate the bullets at his head and torso. All around him was a cacophony of automatic fire, the guttural shouts of the charging Grounders and the screams of someone from his own side who may have been hit. Marcus was not going to look round to find out. This time his bullets found their mark and the Grounder hit the earth with a thud. Marcus paid him no further attention. He turned further to the left and ducked just in time as an arrow flew by at head height. His heart was hammering in his chest. He took deep breaths to focus himself and for a few crucial moments time seemed to slow down and everything became clear. He stayed hunkered to the ground and continued firing. A second Grounder went down. He turned further down the line of trees to aim at the next man but there was no one left standing. The firing stopped but the sound of the guns still rang in Marcus’s ears. He looked at his own men; Johnson was removing an arrow from his arm with a grimace but otherwise everyone appeared to be safe. All ten of the Grounders lay scattered on the rocky earth before them. It had only taken a minute to wipe them out. Marcus was thankful they had found these guns at Mount Weather. Arrows were not a match for automatic weapons in a face to face battle. Marcus didn’t suppose it was a fair fight in the end, but then they hadn’t asked to be in this situation.

“Is everyone okay?” The men nodded, looking around at each other and at the Grounders they had killed. “Yes sir.”

“Check the bodies; see if there are any survivors.” Marcus went over to where the two men he had killed were lying close to each other on the blood-soaked ground. Now that the ringing in his ears had subsided it seemed eerily quiet. A lone bird, a robin, was perched in a tree at the edge of the forest, its plaintive love song the only sound in the still air. Marcus checked the two men over, felt for a pulse on each, even though they were clearly dead. Both bodies were bullet-ridden and the face of the first man Marcus had hit was obliterated on one side, shattered bone and torn muscle all that remained. He remained kneeling by the side of the body for a moment, his hand resting on the man’s bloody chest and closed his eyes. Too much death, he thought. The robin continued to sing and for a moment Marcus wanted to shoot it off its damned branch. This was a place of death, not love and life.

But that wasn’t quite true. Only one of his men had been lost. It could have been so much worse. They had survived.

Marcus sensed movement behind him and stood up. Sinclair was there, a bloody gash on his cheek but otherwise okay. “What happened there?” asked Marcus indicating the cut.

“Near miss with an arrow.” Sinclair gave a rueful smile. “I’m okay.” Sinclair took Marcus’s hand and shook it, patting him on the shoulder at the same time. “It was a brave decision, to face them openly. The right decision.”

Marcus did not think there was much of a decision to be made if you had no choices, but he accepted the comment with a nod and a half smile and a squeeze of Sinclair’s arm in return.

“Let’s bury Bates and get on our way. There may be other Grounders between here and the ark station. I don’t want to waste time.”

The men dug a grave in the soft earth at the edge of the forest and they laid Bates to rest. Marcus recited the traveller’s blessing and bowed his head in respect. He no longer felt the words or the meaning behind them, though. The blessing was written when the ground was the Holy Grail, an earthly heaven for those trapped in the starry one. They hadn’t found much love or peace since arriving on the ground; it didn’t feel like heaven to Marcus either, despite its physical beauty.

He stood back and looked at his men. “Be vigilant for the rest of the journey. No more surprises.”

---

The next few hours of the journey were thankfully uneventful. Marcus concentrated on driving. Sinclair continued to look out of the window, searching for enemies. They did not speak to each other. Each man was lost in his own thoughts.

Marcus contemplated the robin in the wood, singing its love song to attract a mate, oblivious to the man-made chaos around it. The beauty of the song had jarred with the sights and smells of death. Could there be hope in love, even amongst such horrors as they faced here on Earth? Abby had it with Clarke; a mother’s love that was complex and layered but had survived the worst of what both of them had done. Marcus had always held himself at a distance from others, even his own mother, even Abby. Especially Abby. There was a price to pay for love - the pain and fear of losing that person. Marcus used to believe such feelings clouded one’s judgement.  Recently, though, he found himself wanting to feel something more than friendship. He wanted a connection. Abby’s love for Clarke also brought her great joy; of loving someone, and being loved in return. He felt that he and Abby had forged a new relationship on Earth, one of mutual respect and affection, however infuriating she could be at times. She was resourceful, loyal and determined; qualities he admired greatly in her. There could be more to it than that though, he thought. Perhaps love…

Marcus’s thoughts were interrupted as a loud rumbling sound filled the air, getting louder until it became thunderous. The ground started shaking violently and Sinclair gripped Marcus’s shoulder painfully. Boulders fell from the cliff onto the path in front of the jeep sending up huge clouds of white dust that obscured his vision. “What now?” thought Marcus, slamming on the brakes. He watched helplessly as a large boulder rolled down the hill towards the jeep. He had no time to react before it rammed against the side of the vehicle, flipping it over. Metal crunched and squealed as it concertinaed and the space inside the jeep suddenly got smaller. The air became acrid with the smell of gas and other leaking fluids making it hard to breathe. Marcus felt a sharp pain in his side and his leg and then everything went black.

Chapter Text

The earthquake had been felt at Arkadia. Abby was in Medical checking on a guard with a broken leg when everything began shaking. Her medical instruments clattered on the table as they vibrated against the stainless steel. What was at first a barely audible rumbling became louder and the ground beneath her feet shook, causing Abby to stumble. She caught hold of a workbench and held on to keep her balance. As the shaking intensified, beakers and test tubes fell out of open cupboards and smashed on the floor. Abby was dismayed to see precious medicines crash to the ground as well, their life-saving properties spilling uselessly onto the tiled floor.

Saunders, the patient with the broken leg, was clinging onto the examination table as it rocked violently, threatening to throw him off. Abby let go of the workbench and lurched unsteadily towards him, feeling like a drunk after too many whiskeys. She reached Saunders and leaned over him, using her body to pin him to the table. His eyes were wide with shock: “what the hell’s going on?”

“I think it’s an earthquake.” Neither of them had experienced anything like this before, having spent all their lives in the tranquillity of space. On the Ark, the thrusters kept the ship in a steady orbit and nothing rocked the boat. The explosion caused by Diana and the rebels had been the first time Abby had felt shockwaves or any major disturbance. She was taught about earthquakes, though, in Earth History but had never expected to feel one herself. It was disconcerting but she didn’t feel overly concerned for her safety. She supposed having been flung out of orbit in a large piece of metal with a 95% certainty you’re going to be vaporised in seconds made anything else seem survivable. The thought made Abby smile. She looked across at Saunders who clearly didn’t feel as sanguine about it as she did. She patted his arm and smiled again. “It will be alright. We just have to wait it out.”

After what had felt to Abby like an eternity but was really less than a minute, the shaking subsided. She had spent the rest of the day checking the damage and clearing up. No one had been injured in the quake. Engineering had inspected the Ark itself and there were no apparent structural defects. Most of the damage had been to equipment and supplies. Thankful as she was that they had come out of this relatively unscathed, Abby had a nagging concern that they had been unable to reach Kane and his team via the two-way radios. She knew the most likely explanation was they were out of range. Even with boosters and the Mount Weather aerials they’d be lucky to work beyond 80 miles. Abby had estimated Kane’s team to be about three quarters of the way to the fallen ship when the quake struck – a distance of about 75 miles. Technically within reach but it was not an exact science. Weather conditions could affect the range, or it was possible the earthquake had knocked out the Mount Weather aerials and then the radios would be all but useless.

Abby hadn’t wanted to take any chances so she had sent a couple of scouts in the direction of the fallen ship to see if they could find any trace of the team. That had been two days ago and they should have been back by now. It was worrying, she had to admit.

As if thinking about it made it happen, the door flung open and Jackson burst in. He was flushed and a little out of breath from running. “The scouts are back, Abby. You need to hear this.”

Abby felt her pulse quicken. From the look on Jackson’s face the news was not good. She refrained from asking him to tell her, preferring to hear it from the scouts themselves. She hurried after Jackson, down the corridor and into the mess hall where the scouts were waiting. They stood to attention when she entered but she waved her hand in dismissal.

“What’s your report?” The female scout stepped forward to speak. She was pale and her voice was quiet and shaky. Shaw, was her name, Abby thought.

“It was a difficult journey. We came across a couple of landslides and fallen trees blocking the route which we had to clear. That slowed us down considerably.”

“What about the convoy? Did you find them?” Abby was impatient for news of the men, of Marcus.

“We came across the vehicles, about 80 miles from here. It looked as though they had been caught up in a massive landslide. Two of the vehicles were very badly damaged. They were buried under a huge rockfall. The third truck was flipped on its roof and was part wedged under a big boulder.”

Abby’s heart sank at this news. If the men were in the vehicles when the earthquake struck, which was likely, then they must have been killed, or badly injured. She tried to keep her voice calm and level: “and the men?”

“We struggled to get into the vehicles at first. We had to shift a lot of stone to get access. It isn’t good news I’m afraid. We found nine bodies trapped in the vehicles.”

Jackson let out a small cry of shock at these words. Abby glanced at him but had to look away again quickly. His big brown eyes were so full of sorrow and concern. If she looked at him too long, she feared she would not be able to hold it together. She didn’t want to ask the next question, was scared of what the answer would be, what it would mean. She had to know, however, no matter what.

“Did you recognise the dead men?”

“Most of them. A couple were…” Shaw broke off and swallowed hard, trying to compose herself. “They were not immediately recognisable.”

“Who did you recognise?” Despite her fear, Abby was impatient to know. Nine dead, but fifteen had left camp. That left six potential survivors.

“Bartlett, Hummel, Henriksen, McDonald, Santos, Trudeau and Pirocchi."

Not Kane or Sinclair, thought Abby. There were two unidentified, however, and six missing.

“Were there survivors? What about the other six?”

“We only found the bodies. They were in the two vehicles at the rear of the convoy. The first vehicle, the one that had flipped, was empty.”

Abby thought that was most likely to be the vehicle Marcus and Sinclair were in; they were leading the mission after all. She had to be sure though.

“The two that you couldn’t identify: could they have been Kane, or Sinclair?” She felt Jackson put his hand on the small of her back, as though he was getting ready to protect her, or catch her if she fell.

“It was really difficult to tell. I…I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure.”

“Were there any signs of the missing six? Did you search the surroundings – they could have been injured nearby?”

“We searched a good radius around the crash site. That’s why it took us so long to get back here. We didn’t find a trace of anyone.” Shaw hesitated, looked at Abby and Jackson and then down at the floor.

“What is it?” said Abby.

“There was a lot of blood in the lead vehicle, particularly in the driver’s area. That side of the truck was really squashed. I think whoever was in there must have been hurt pretty badly.”

Abby considered this. The men in the lead truck must have survived the initial impact although clearly they were injured. They could have started walking towards the fallen ship. That’s what she would have done. It was about 20 miles; not an impossible distance to cover on foot, but if they were badly injured…? There were too many unknowns in this situation. Abby came to a decision.

“We need to get a search and rescue party together. Jackson, make up some medical kits and get someone to pack me a bag. Pack one yourself. Shaw, we’ll need a couple of trucks with winches and another five or six people. We’re going to recover the bodies and search for the survivors.”

It seemed to take an age to get everything packed and ready to go. Abby busied herself checking the medical kits and making sure they had all they would need for the journey, just as she had three days ago when Marcus and the team left. She didn’t want to dwell too much on what all the blood in the lead truck meant for the missing men. She was also trying not to think about Clarke, who was out there God knows where. All Abby could do was hope she was okay and had been somewhere safe when the earthquake hit. Abby had tried hard to understand why Clarke needed to process what she had done at Mount Weather away from the people involved but it wasn’t easy. It was difficult coming to terms with the fact that Clarke didn’t need her anymore. She was still her little girl to Abby and she supposed she always would be. That was the essence of being a mother; she would always feel the need to take care of her child. One day Clarke would understand that.

Abby pushed thoughts about Clarke to the back of her mind. There was nothing she could do about her right now. Time to concentrate on what she could do something about, and that was finding Marcus and the other missing men.

…

Abby sat in the back of the second truck with Jackson and Naiman and Park from Mecha Station. The truck turned out of Arkadia and they were soon bumping along the same rough-worn track that the convoy had taken. Philip King, a large capable man from Alpha station who Abby had known all her life was driving. He was going a little too quickly for the terrain, causing the truck to bounce over the rocks and despite being strapped in, everyone in the back of the vehicle was constantly being lifted out of their seats and dropped back down again. It was painful, but no one was complaining. They all wanted to get to the crash site as quickly as possible.

Abby could feel Jackson’s eyes on her and turned to look at him. He gave her his usual shy half smile and rested his hand on top of hers. “It will be okay, Abby. Kane is strong, and Sinclair too. They’re survivors.”

“I hope so,” replied Abby and she laced Jackson’s fingers through hers. They sat like that for a while, in quiet contemplation. It was true that they had all survived so much already. They were lucky to even have survived the journey to the ground from space. The trouble with luck, though, was that at some point it usually ran out.

The small convoy of vehicles continued making steady progress. They had to stop a couple of times to clear newly-fallen trees but soon the only things blocking their way were the three trucks of Kane’s convoy.

They pulled up behind the trucks and everyone got out to see for themselves what the scouts had reported. Abby’s senses were immediately overwhelmed by the scent of decomposition. It was a warm day with little wind and the smell hung in the air, fetid and almost sweet. As she approached the trucks with the bodies in them it was like walking through a wall of stench; each breath brought with it a taste of death. Abby was still getting used to the smell in many ways, despite being a doctor, because on the Ark, most people who died were either floated so their death was outside of the ship, or succumbed to natural causes and found pretty quickly and ejected from the Ark in the same way. She’d rarely had to do an autopsy. When the 320 martyrs were killed, she had checked them all for signs of life and then orderlies had arranged for them to be removed to the airlock and floated out into space. Since being on the ground, however, she had become depressingly familiar with the smell.

The trucks had been severely crushed by the falling rocks. She peered through a large gash in the twisted metal of the first truck. Five bodies were entombed within. It was the same with the second truck; this one had four bodies, two in what remained of the cab and two in the back. The unseasonal heat and the metal chassis of the trucks had combined to accelerate the decomposition of the bodies. They were already looking to be in a poor condition. They could not take the bodies any further if that’s what they needed to do, and Abby couldn’t afford to lose one of the two trucks and any of the crew.

Abby stepped back and beckoned to the crew. “We need to get these bodies out of the trucks. We’re not going to be able to take them back to Arkadia in this condition. King – can you and Park start digging a grave.”

While the rest of the crew began work to extricate the bodies from the trucks Abby went over to the first truck. It had completely flipped so that it was lying on its roof, a large boulder pressed up against it. The driver’s side was scrunched inwards, compressing the space within to over half its original size. Flies buzzed in and out of the truck and around Abby’s head. She batted them away. They were attracted to the pools of congealed blood on the seat and in the footwell of the vehicle. It was a lot of blood, but not as much as she had feared. Abby noticed that both seatbelts had been cut cleanly with a knife and a section of one was completely missing; perhaps to use as a tourniquet.

She walked out in the direction the trucks had been heading, looking closely at the ground as she went. She found a couple of dried blood spots in the grass 50 metres apart along the track. She took that as a sign the survivors had continued on towards the fallen station as she had suspected they would.

She turned back towards the crash site as Jackson came up to her. “We’ve got the bodies out of the trucks. They’re ready for you to see before we bury them.”

Abby went over to where the bodies were laid out next to each other on the grass by the side of the track. It was a sad sight, one that had become all too familiar. She confirmed the identification of the seven men Shaw had already ID’d. The other two men had such bad crush injuries they were unrecognisable but she could tell by looking at them that neither was Marcus. Marcus was tall and lithe and both these men were too short, with one of them leaning towards fat.

She looked up and addressed the crew. “I think the remaining men have headed in the direction of the fallen ark station. That’s where we should head next. Hopefully we’ll either overtake them on the way or find them safe at the station. We need to winch these trucks out of the way so we can get passed and bury the bodies. Let’s get moving as quick as we can.”

Everyone got to work and Abby felt hope rising with every dig of the spade into the ground. In the now three days since the earthquake Marcus and his men will most likely have made it to the ark station or be pretty close. With any luck she would find him before the day was out.

Chapter Text

Marcus woke from a troubled sleep. He had dreamt he was back on the Ark, crawling through the vent to rescue survivors of Diana’s stunt with the dropship. The heat was stifling and his temperature was rising with the exertion of crawling through the narrow space. Somewhere, someone or something was pounding a steady rhythm on the metal walls of the station. A pulse in his head throbbed to the same tempo; sweat dripped steadily from his brow blinding him, and everything was starting to close in around him until he felt like he would pass out. In his dream he knew Abby was in the room on the other side of the locked door. His dream world narrowed further as he crawled, his body constricted against the tight walls of the vent but he didn’t care; reality faded away as he focussed solely on reaching her. The dream Marcus knocked the grille through easily, didn’t notice how his hand blistered as he pulled the scorching hot lever, didn’t feel the pain as it pulsed and swelled when he scrabbled with the battery. Abby was on the other side, she was waiting for him and she needed him.

His dream self, unlike his real self, knew it was her in the distance and felt relief when he saw her lying on her side, her back to him. He tried to run to her but it was like running through molasses; his steps were heavy and sluggish. Time slowed, colour drained to black and white. There was only him and her. When he got to her he reached out; she was blazing hot to touch. He slid slowly to the floor, took her in his arms and turned her so he could see her face. Her head lolled in the crook of his arm; her eyes were closed, her long hair plastered to her brow. She was so hot, so damp, so limp. He brushed the hair from her face. “Abby,” he said. “Wake up!” The dream Abby did not respond. He cradled her in his arms, blew gently on her face. “Wake up!” No response. He pressed his lips to hers and kissed her and kissed her and kissed her, desperately trying to breathe the life back into her but deep down he knew she was gone. Despair overwhelmed him; he felt it down to the pit of his stomach. He retched and his breath hitched in his throat, causing a strangled noise of animal-like pain to be emitted. Just when he thought he could not endure it any longer he had woken up, sweating and panting, his face damp with tears.

The feelings lingered, the anguish seemed so real, and when he shifted his position he felt physical pain shoot up his leg. He cried out with the agony of it and the noise of his own distress woke him fully. Reality flooded back and with it came a mixture of relief and agony. The relief came with the memory that he had found Abby, that she was alive and they had survived that and more together. The agony came because he was lying on the damaged side of his body. The wound in his leg and the deep bruises that covered his left side were pressed painfully into the cold, damp ground. Marcus turned his body slowly so that he was lying on his back, without moving his injured leg. He lay there for a moment, eyes closed, gathering himself.

When he opened his eyes he was looking directly up at the night sky and he gasped, not from pain but from the sheer beauty of the star-filled sky above him. Dawn was a couple of hours away and it was a new moon so the sky was a deep black. The Milky Way stretched above him, a purple bruise across the sky. He had witnessed some amazing sights from the Ark of course: seeing the Earth from space, tracking storms as they raced over the continents, marvelling at the aurora borealis as it danced its green-fingered waltz through the atmosphere beneath them. He had seen the Milky Way so many times, but cocooned in the Ark station the reaction to it was intellectual, occasionally emotional, and it had become just part of the scenery. Down here on Earth the reaction was physical. Lying here he could feel the chill spring air on his face, could smell the pine trees that surrounded him. The ground was hard beneath his aching body and his thin blanket was covered in dew. Most of all he felt the heavy weight of the stars; their sheer number physically oppressed him, made him catch his breath. He reached a hand up as though to touch them; they seemed close enough to be able to do that. He felt as though he was reaching back in time, into history: the past and present merged as one around him.

He wished he could go back into the past, to the Council meeting where this disastrous mission was proposed, and be more forceful with his concerns, but he knew it wouldn’t have made any difference. His worries were groundless, based on intuition, not fact or science, which was unlike him and had amused Abby greatly. It was the present that had to be dealt with. He used his elbows to lever himself into a sitting position and placed his hands on his leg, gingerly turning it so it was in line with the rest of his body and the injured parts were off the ground. The spasm that ran through his body left him breathless and sweating. He panted out a few short breaths to ease the pain.

A few yards away a figure crept slowly towards him.

“Everything all right, Kane?”

Sinclair emerged from the shadows, a concerned look on his face.

“Yeah, I’m okay. I slept on the damned leg and it’s just woken up and said hello.”

Sinclair turned his flashlight on. “Let me have a look. Can you get your trousers off?” Marcus unbuttoned his pants and slipped them down, trying to tent them over the wounded area so they wouldn’t catch. He leant over to his right hand side so Sinclair could see fully.

“Hold this will you.” Sinclair passed the torch to Marcus who shone it in the direction of the wound. Sinclair unwrapped the bandage and leaned in close to inspect the deep gash. He put his nose to the area and inhaled deeply.

“You could use a shower, Kane, that’s for sure, but I can’t smell any infection.” He pressed gently on the sides of the wound, testing the strength of his stitches. “Not bad, not bad. Not as neat a job as Dr Griffin would have done. You’ll be ugly, but you’ll live.”

He opened the medical case and took out some pills and a fresh bandage for Marcus’s leg. He passed the pill bottles to Marcus and proceeded to replace the dressing on his leg. Marcus opened up the bottles and worked up some saliva to help him swallow the antibiotic and painkillers. He had never been more thankful for Abby’s diligence and thoroughness. She had packed the medical cases for every eventuality. He had pondered many times since the earthquake how strongly it had been felt at Arkadia, whether anyone had been injured, if Abby was okay, whether she was worried about him. He had no answer to the first three questions but he had concluded that if she had felt it and was uninjured, she would be thinking the same questions about him and the convoy. Knowing Abby she would have at least sent out some scouts to check their route. If that was the case then she would know by now about the trucks and the dead men. She would consider on the balance of probabilities that he was alive and had continued to the ark station. She would organise trucks to come out and replace the ones they had lost so they could finish the mission.

In the meantime, they had continued with their plan to get to the crashed station. When the earthquake hit, Marcus’s side of the truck had took the full force of the boulder’s impact; Sinclair was luckier and had managed to cut them both out of their seatbelts and drag Marcus to safety. The four men in the back were bruised and shaken but otherwise unhurt. The boulder had done the main damage as it pressed the metal of the truck into Marcus’s side; parts of the truck had sheered under the pressure and sliced into his thigh. He had bled profusely before Sinclair had got him out but fortunately the metal had missed his femoral artery and Sinclair had stemmed the bleeding with a tourniquet made from the seatbelt and stitched up the wound. They had salvaged as much equipment from the truck as they could carry between them and Sinclair had made a stretcher using the seat belts and luggage holders woven as slats between thick tree branches. Marcus had travelled the last two days bouncing up and down on the make-shift stretcher desperately holding on to the packs that had been tied loosely on top of him, clenching his teeth to stop from screaming out as each bounce jolted his wounded leg.

The team had made good progress despite having him as a burden and they were now camped just a mile from the crashed station. They had seen it yesterday when they came to the end of the ridge they had been walking along. Without the vehicles they had been able to take a more direct compass bearing through trees and along narrow footpaths and had knocked about 5 miles off the journey. The path they were on took a sharp right to skirt the edge of a small corrie and down in the basin of the long-departed glacier sat the remains of Arrow station.

Even from that distance they could tell the station had suffered greater damage than even Mecha station when it landed on earth. It was barely recognisable as part of the Ark. Twisted metal was scattered as far as the eye could see over the floor of the basin and only a small section of the station remained relatively intact. There were no living trees left in the immediate surroundings, just blackened stumps and logs. The ground was mainly bare rock although some vegetation was starting to push through the patches of scorched earth.

Sinclair had surveyed the area through his binoculars. “I can’t see evidence of any Grounders or any signs of life.”

Marcus took the glasses from him and scanned the ground around the station. There was nothing except the station and the debris. If there were survivors they had made no obvious attempt to clear ground, establish a perimeter or become self-sustainable. It had been more than two months since the Ark had come to the ground. In that time, as well as fighting Reapers, Grounders and the Mountain Men, the survivors of Alpha and Mecha stations had built a proper camp, cleared routes around it, installed defences and set up a food growing area. They were on their way to becoming self-sufficient. It had looked to him as though Arrow station had crashed with no survivors.

It was late and getting dark when they had found the station so they had made the decision not to descend the ridge and to camp at the edge of the forest. They couldn’t be sure there were no Grounders hidden on the other ridges or behind rock falls in the basin and one more day couldn’t hurt. It was best to get as much rest as they could and head down under cover of dawn. They had not risked lighting a camp fire and so they had not been able to heat water to rehydrate the few ration packs they had left. They had gone to bed cold and hungry.

Now that dawn was coming they needed to get ready to move down into the basin. Marcus took Sinclair’s arm and let his friend pull him to his feet.

“How does the leg feel now that you’re standing on it?”

Marcus shifted his weight so that it was resting more on his injured leg. He still felt a good deal of pain but nowhere near as much as when he had woken; Abby’s strong painkillers were doing their job already.

“I think I can manage.”

“Walk around for a few minutes while we get everything together. You need to test it out before we decide whether you need the stretcher again today.”

Marcus walked into the woods, weaving a broad circuit around the huge pine and birch trees, grimacing as each step brought with it a fresh wave of pain. It was easing though, he was sure of it. After two days bouncing around on the stretcher he was determined to walk the last mile to the station. Besides, he needed to build up strength in the leg. If Abby did not send any rescue trucks they had a long walk back to Arkadia and he needed to be fit for that.

He circled back to the camp. Sinclair, Johnson, Woodley, Farrell and Smith were packing up the last of the backpacks.

Sinclair looked up: “how was it, do you feel up to walking?”

Marcus nodded. “Yes, I’ll be fine.”

“Great,” said Sinclair, “then you can help us tie everything onto the stretcher and we can get going.”

Within a few minutes they were back on the footpath that led down to the floor of the basin. They were passing a low bank of vegetation when Johnson put up his hand to stop them. He turned and beckoned them over to have a closer look at the area. It was a low man-made wall built up of clumps of grass and rushes. The ground behind it was flattened, the vegetation virtually worn away.

“A look-out position do you think?” asked Johnson.

Marcus limped over and scoured the ground. He found a broken arrow shaft at the end of the bank. He held it up to show the others: “looks like there were Grounders here after all.”

The team hunkered down quickly using the wall as protection. Sinclair took his binoculars out and scanned the whole territory slowly. “I can’t see anyone. We’ll just have to proceed carefully, keep a good look-out.”

They kept a tight line as they descended the rest of the route; Marcus led the way as he was the least burdened down. He only had a backpack with basic medical supplies and his gun as Sinclair hadn’t wanted him to carry too much weight to protect his leg as best they could. Sinclair took up the rear; the others carried the stretcher awkwardly between them. Once they reached the floor of the basin they only had a short distance to cross before the station itself loomed above them. Marcus indicated to the others to spread out and look for a way in. He found one of the emergency airlocks but it was clear that this would not work as an entrance; the impact with the ground had buckled the whole structure at this point and the metal had twisted in on itself. It would be impossible to prise this open.

A shout from Woodley alerted him to another possibility. He limped further along to where the station curved slightly. On the other side of the bend was a second airlock; Johnson and Woodley were already trying to get the two crowbars they had brought with them in between the doors. They were struggling to get a good purchase to lever the doors apart. Marcus searched around and found a large burnt log nearby.

“Help me get this will you,” he said to Sinclair. Between them they dragged the log to the door and Marcus stood it on end behind one of the crowbars. They returned with another log for the other side and the two logs gave the men something to lever against. With a lot of effort the doors slowly moved apart until there was enough room to get another log on the ground between them to wedge them apart. The men slipped through the gap and into the airlock itself. Marcus’s eye was immediately drawn to a small symbol on the inside wall of the airlock – a crude depiction of the Eden Tree. Marcus felt a shiver run through him; this must have been the airlock the Arrow station crew used to float people from. Marcus had never been inside an airlock when on the Ark, although he had put plenty of people in them, but he knew that this symbol was hidden inside the airlocks on each station, just above the inside of the entrance door so it was the last thing people would see, if they chose to. Memories of the people he had floated, or tried to float, bubbled to the surface but Marcus pushed them back down. Now wasn’t the time to dwell on past actions.

Johnson and Woodley got the inner airlock door open in the same way and together they entered the ark station. It was dark of course; there was no power and no windows to provide illumination. They shone their torches ahead of them as they made their way carefully through the corridor, stepping over the debris littering the floor, ducking under cables and wires that hung low from the ceiling. It was eerily quiet and their footsteps echoed along the walls.

Ahead of them lay another door; the same type as Marcus had got through using the battery when he rescued the survivors of Diana’s rebellion. This kind of door was very hard to open with the crowbars but they had carried a portable battery with them to cover this eventuality. They hadn’t expected to take nearly three days to reach the station though and Marcus was concerned that the battery would have drained by now. Sinclair evidently had the same worries because he looked at Marcus. “Fingers crossed this works,” he said. He clamped the battery’s electrodes to the door’s opening mechanism. There came the familiar shoosh of the door as it slid to the side. Sinclair gave a triumphant smile.

They filed through the open door. They were in a large room containing tables and chairs and lined with cupboards and storage shelves. There were three doors leading off from this room.

“Let’s set our equipment down here and make this our base for exploration of the rest of the station,” said Sinclair. “We’ll cover ground more quickly if we aren’t weighed down with everything.

“Johnson and Farrell take door number one, Woodley and Smith number two and Kane and I will take the third door.”

The men set off as instructed. Marcus opened the door to his right and went through. His torch picked out a small kitchen area. The room was packed with catering equipment, heavy pots and pans sat neatly on the shelves; large boxes were stacked along the walls. He couldn’t believe these had survived the drop in place so someone must have been alive long enough to tidy up. He edged across the galley to a door labelled “Mess” at the other end. He pulled it open and entered a large room set out with more tables and chairs. He swung his torch around and got the shock of his life when a pale face materialized into view. Large, dark eyes blinked in the glare of the torch and the man put up his arm to shield his face from the light. Marcus swung the torch round and was amazed to count ten people huddled on makeshift beds at one end of the room. They stared back at him with the same shocked look as he imagined was on his face.

“Hello,” he said, feeling unprepared for this encounter. “My name is…”

“Kane,” said a woman sitting on a bed closest to him. “You’re Councillor Kane.”

“I am, yes; at least I was on the Ark. And you are?”

“Rose Howard, Arrow Station.”

Marcus looked Rose over as best he could in the weak light from his torch. She was very pale and seemed emaciated. Her cotton dress hung loosely on her thin frame. Her eyes seemed impossibly large in her sunken face; there were dark circles beneath them.

“Is this everyone, are there any other survivors?”

“We are all that is left.”

A young voice piped up from the corner; it came from a small boy who looked to Marcus to be around ten years old. “Have you come to rescue us?”

Marcus went over to him and knelt on the ground before him. He smiled at the boy. “We have,” he said. “I’ve brought friends with me and we’re going to get you out of here.” He looked around for Sinclair but he was not behind him as Marcus had assumed he would be. He turned back to the boy and ruffled his blonde hair. “There are many survivors just a few miles from here and they’ll be so happy to see you.”

At that moment another rumbling began and the room started shaking. Marcus groaned inwardly. This must be an aftershock following the earthquake; he had read that these could be frequent particularly after a large quake.

“Get under the tables,” he said. “There’s going to be a lot of noise and shaking.”

He sat down awkwardly beneath a table with the young boy in his arms. His leg was aching with the exertion of the last couple of hours and the crooked position he was in. The aftershock seemed more powerful than the original earthquake. The noise of the rumbling and the falling furniture and shelves was deafening. He pressed the boy’s head into his chest, covering his ears as best he could. The tables did a good job of protecting them from the flying debris, though and after half a minute or so the shaking stopped and they emerged from beneath the table. He went over to the door to get Sinclair but he couldn’t open it. Something on the other side must be wedged up against it. No matter what he did the door wouldn’t budge.

He shouted Sinclair’s name and banged on the door for a whole minute but no one came. They appeared to be trapped.

Chapter Text

The journey towards the fallen station took Abby and her crew on narrow tracks through forests of conifers where row after row of trees crowded in upon them, casting perpetual shadow even though the sun had risen an hour ago. Then the track widened as it crossed open ground until it spread so wide it became hard to follow; it meandered across the plains like a braided river and King was having trouble finding the most direct route. They had no maps for this area of the ground. The surveying work they had started doing had concentrated mainly along the routes towards TonDC and the main centres of population. They only had a copy of the sketch the scout who first saw the fallen station had made for them. It was lacking in detail but they knew they were on the right track when they came across a small tarn nestled in a depression in the bare rock. It was about a quarter the size of the lake they’d landed beside only a few short months previously. The scout had marked it on the sketch though and they took the opportunity to stop for a break, to stretch their legs and take on some food and water.

Abby left Jackson boiling water to rehydrate their food rations and strolled down to the lake shore with King. They were looking for traces of Marcus and the men. They’d stopped briefly at a few likely places along the way with no sign to be found. Of course, with no vehicle the men wouldn’t have had to stick to the main track, so they could have taken any of a number of routes. This tarn was the best possibility they’d come across for a resting or camping spot. It was half way between the crashed vehicles and the reported site of the station. There were only two routes round it.

“You check to the right,” she instructed King. “I’ll check this side.”

They moved off heads down, peering at the ground, looking for signs of a fire or rubbish left behind. She doubted there’d be much rubbish because the men were drilled to leave as little trace behind as possible. Still, there had to be something. Her side of the tarn did not look promising though. The reeds that covered the edge of the lake were tall even in early spring and showed no signs of being disturbed recently. She pushed on; there was always the possibility they’d arrived and left from a different angle.

“Chancellor!” King shouted her from across the lake and she looked round.

“I think I’ve found something.” 

She doubled back on herself and round to his side of the lake where he was peering at the ground.

“There’s some scorching of the earth here and I found some charred logs scattered around.” He poked a stick at a circle of burnt earth and grey embers. “And there’s this.” He hooked a small piece of cloth with the stick. It was paper thin and blackened but she could see spots of blood on the few white parts that remained.

“Looks like part of a dressing,” she mused.

“Don’t see what else it could be out here,” said King. “And this fire is recent, no more than a day old. I can still smell the smoke on the logs. They’ve raked over the coals and scattered any still-burning logs as they were taught to do. It’s definitely our guys.”

“Okay,” said Abby. “That’s good. We know they’re still alive. I think we need to press on as soon as we’ve eaten. We must only be a couple of hours behind them now.”

They made their way back to the Rover and shared the news with the others. A renewed sense of purpose was palpable between them and they ate quickly, eager to be on the road again. Abby calculated that ten miles would take them less than an hour.

It turned out not to be as straightforward as that, however. The track from the lake onwards was narrow and the earthquake and aftershocks had caused a few landslides along the way. King had to pick his way slowly over ground strewn with rubble and hidden crevices. Abby sat quietly in the back with Jackson next to her. The hum of the Rover and the undulating ground had a soporific effect on Jackson and he fell asleep on her shoulder. She put her arm around him, smoothing his hair with her hand like she did when Clarke was young. It used to soothe her and help her sleep. Now, his deep breathing and gentle snoring were a comfort to Abby. She wanted to rest because she had slept poorly last night, too hard and uncomfortable in the back of the Rover, too cold and damp on the ground, but she was too wired. She couldn’t get Marcus out of her mind and just wanted time to speed up so she could be at the station finding out what had happened. The time it had taken them to get this far was frustrating. She had never had much patience and was hopeless at sitting still. She needed to be doing something hands on and practical.

She rested her head against the side of the Rover and thought about her relationship with Marcus, how it had waxed and waned over the years. They had been good friends as children. Well, that was not quite true. They had been thrown together a lot because their parents worked together. He had been a willing playmate, happy to follow her around, let her be in charge. She had been very bossy back then. She smiled as she imagined Marcus saying “some things never change!” Something had changed, though. Not just the usual growing up, growing apart. He had taken his father’s death badly. Fourteen was a young age to learn that nothing was forever, that comfort and security could be illusory.

He’d dealt with the death by trying to be the man he thought his father would have wanted him to be. At least that’s how it had always seemed to Abby. His father was an engineer but he mostly worked in Tesla station, maintaining the power supply. Marcus had told her his father found the job very stressful because so many lives depended on him. Abby thought that he was strict with his son, instilling in him a belief in hard work, loyalty and that the Ark came first above all. It was a lot for a young man to live up to. Marcus had always been a fairly serious child; he pondered everything before he took action, which used to drive Abby mad because she was impulsive and he slowed her down. His father’s floating made Marcus withdraw and become even more introspective. Had he been happy at all since? Truly, deeply, can’t stop smiling happy? She didn’t think so.

If Abby’s father had been floated for something he didn’t do she would have harboured a simmering resentment against the establishment, but Marcus had done the opposite. If anything, he’d become its biggest advocate, more hardline than the Chancellor himself. She’d never understood that about him. He’d changed a lot since then, but back on the Ark he’d been dictatorial, cruel almost, in his dispassionate adherence to the law. She used to think he enjoyed the power he had over people, that he held their lives in his hands. It never seemed to bother him when he sentenced someone to death for even the most desperate act like stealing food or medicine. Even when he’d tried to float her, he’d remained unmoved by Callie’s pleas and Jackson’s tears. He’d nodded his head like she was some rubbish to be dispatched out of the chute. Forty years growing up together and she was just another piece of troublesome garbage. It had taken a while for her to get over that.

He never enjoyed it, though, she knew that now. He was motivated by the same thing as she was, to save their people and would have done anything to make sure that happened. He’d admitted that when they were trapped in TonDC. His methods were cold and hard, though. Maybe the outward lack of emotion was a mask to hide the lonely, sad little boy who missed his father. It was not something she’d ever felt able to ask him. He never would have opened up back then, and even now he was guarded, not yet able to truly let someone in. She felt the mask was slipping though recently. He was slowly learning that he could let his emotions show and others would respond, and to welcome that response. She saw it in the way he was with Clarke, letting her lead, allowing her space to grow and make mistakes. He was finding his feet as protector and peacemaker. Abby admired the man he had become even more because of where he had started from. She looked forward to what he could be, if she ever found him and got him home.

Jackson stirred and she looked down at him. She felt the familiar surge of love and protectiveness when he looked at her, his big brown eyes slightly unfocused. He was like the son she would never have.

“Hey!” she said softly.

He looked around; confusion clouding his face as he slowly remembered where they were.

“Hey! How long have I been asleep?”

“I’m not sure, half an hour maybe.” Abby didn’t have a watch and she’d been lost in her thoughts of Marcus so had no idea how much time had gone by.

“We must be nearly there, surely?” 

Abby was about to answer when the truck came to a shuddering halt, pitching them forward hard against their straps. They heard the driver’s door open and shut and a moment later the rear door wrenched open and King was standing there, a frown on his face.

“What’s the matter?” said Abby. “Another landslide?”

“No, it’s nothing like that. The track peters out and it has become too narrow for me to get through. We’ll have to walk from here.”

Abby and Jackson got out and looked around. They were next to a small woodland clearing. Ahead of them the track narrowed as trees crowded in from one side and a wall of huge sandstone slabs loomed on the other. Abby walked into the clearing. There were clear signs that a number of people had camped here recently. There were boot prints in the damp soil, at least 4 different sizes that Abby could count and large areas of grass were still flattened, not having had chance to spring back in the early morning sun. Abby beckoned Jackson over.

“Someone’s been here recently,” she said. “We can’t be more than a couple of hours behind them.”

Jackson looked around the site. “There’s no sign of a campfire.”

That was a concern. Most of the food they’d taken required heating up to rehydrate it. They must have been hungry after a long day’s walk but they hadn’t eaten.

“Maybe they were too tired to make a fire,” Jackson said.

“Maybe.” Or maybe they’d run out of food, thought Abby. “I don’t think we’ve got any time to lose. Let’s get everything unloaded and get down to the station.”

The team unloaded as much equipment as they could carry from the two vehicles, concentrating on medical supplies and food. As Abby stood looking over the gear, checking they had everything they might need, a starling landed on the hood of the truck. He glared at her defiantly, feathers puffed out like he was issuing a challenge. Abby stopped for a moment to watch him. He strutted across the dented metal hood, his eyes never leaving hers. His black belly was studded with white like stars in the night sky, his back the colour of an oil slick, glinting iridescent in the sun. Abby stared back but when she held out a tentative hand he flew off. Not quite so brave then, she thought.

They set off in single file along the narrow path. The sun was beating down on Abby’s head, unusually warm for the time of year and this early in the morning. It was going to be a beautiful day. She felt hope rise again as they grew closer to their goal with every step. It had been a long five days since she’d said farewell to Marcus in her room at Arkadia. Five days full of trouble, death and uncertainty. They were surely due some good luck. After half an hour or so of slow progress along the stony track they reached a rise and were looking down on the same scene Marcus had viewed just a couple of hours earlier. A twisted and broken Arrow station shimmered in the haze, sun glinting off its metal walls. Abby was shocked at how damaged it was, much worse than Mecha station. She was grateful they’d landed on soft ground next to the lake rather than this boulder-strewn basin.

She surveyed the station through her binoculars. There was no sign of anybody around. There was complete silence; even the birds whose songs had been an accompaniment to their journey over the last two days were quiet. The air was still and heavy. Abby suddenly felt uncomfortable for no real reason. She was keen to get down to the station.

Jackson took hold of her hand and squeezed it.

“Not long now, Abby. We’re nearly there.”

She squeezed it back and smiled. “Just another few minutes.”

They continued their descent towards the station. King, who was leading the team, stopped suddenly again half way down at a small clearing with a man-made wall of vegetation. Abby bumped into him because she wasn’t expecting him to stop and she’d been concentrating on keeping her footing on the slippery rocks.

“Why are we stopping again?” She couldn’t keep her frustration out of her voice. They were so close now. She was desperate to get into the station, find the men and deal with whatever situation was awaiting her. She was beyond impatient.

“I just want to double check there are no surprises waiting for us. We were expecting Grounders, remember,” said King in a voice that was as calm as hers was edgy.

He started to raise his binoculars to his eyes when a deep rumble began in the bowels of the earth. The ground shook and Abby lost her footing as a powerful aftershock ripped through the basin in front of them. She landed on her back on the rocks, the sharp edge of one cutting into her. She watched in pain and horror as the remains of Arrow station tore apart with a sound like a thousand souls screaming. It was the sound of metal sliding against metal, buckling, twisting. A cloud of dust and earth rose from the station, shielding it from view. Debris flew out towards them, shards of metal like arrow heads landing all around. Abby shielded her face with her arms as stones and earth peppered her.

Eventually the ground stilled and the debris stopped falling. A silence descended. Abby lay stunned for a moment, trying to process what had happened. She had been so full of hope a few seconds ago and now…

She didn’t want to raise her head, didn’t want to see what she knew in her heart was a scene of devastation but she had to. She reached behind, feeling the stone that was cutting into her so sharply. It didn’t seem to be buried very deep. She eased herself into a sitting position, felt the wound with trembling fingers. It was maybe a centimetre deep, not too bad. It was bleeding but not profusely.

She could dimly hear her name being called over and over again. She looked around for the source of the noise. King was sitting on the ground to her right. He was quiet and in shock.

“Are you alright? Do you need anything?”

He nodded. “I’m okay.”

She smiled reassuringly and then left him there. He didn’t seem injured and she had to check the rest of the team. She looked to her left. Jackson was on the ground a couple of feet away from her. He was holding his shoulder, trying to get up. Behind him the rest of the crew were looking around dazed but seemingly uninjured.

“Abby! Abby!”

She crawled over to him, not trusting her legs to hold her up just yet.

“I’m here, I’m here. Are you hurt?” She put out her hand to prevent him getting up. “Sit down. Let me look at you.”

Jackson settled back against a rock. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“It was an aftershock from the earthquake. The strongest one we’ve had. It may even have been another quake I don’t remember how these things work. Is your shoulder hurting you? You’re holding it awkwardly.”

Jackson nodded, “I fell and landed on it. I think I’ve dislocated it.”

“Let me see.” It was difficult for Abby to see the injury because Jackson was wearing a heavy jacket. “We’re going to have to take the jacket off so I can feel the socket. It’s going to hurt. I don’t have anaesthetic in the kits.”

“It’s okay. I’d rather be alert anyway. Just do it.”

Abby eased Jackson’s good arm out of the jacket and then lifted his bad arm out a little so she could slip the sleeve down. Jackson sucked air in through his teeth but didn’t scream.

Abby ran her hand gently over Jackson’s shoulder. She could feel the ball part of the joint under the skin at the front of his shoulder. It had definitely popped out. She felt carefully along his scapula and down his arm.

“I can’t feel any obvious fracture but you have dislocated the joint. I’ll have to perform a reduction. You know what that means.”

“Yes,” said Jackson. “A lot of pain.”

Abby found a medical kit nearby. She rummaged around for some painkillers and offered a couple to Jackson.

“Take these. They won’t help ease the pain of the procedure but they’ll reduce the inflammation.”

Jackson swallowed the pills and then took a deep breath. “Okay. I’m ready.”

Abby knelt in front of him, smiled and stroked his hand. “It will be okay.”

She took hold of his arm and rotated it around the shoulder joint. Jackson screamed in pain and her heart broke for him. Why hadn’t she packed some anaesthetic? She’d put some in the kits Marcus’s team had taken with them but she hadn’t thought she would need it in her own. It took five rotations before the shoulder popped back into place. Jackson was crying with pain by the end of it and Abby could feel tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. She blinked them back.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

She couldn’t hug him for fear of hurting him so she held his good hand while he calmed down.

“Abby?”

“Yes?”

“The station.” Jackson was looking over Abby’s shoulder towards the basin.

Abby turned carefully, wincing as the wound in her back stretched. The dust had settled and she could see with painful clarity that Arrow station had been torn asunder. A huge section of it had sunk into a rift that had appeared in the ground. Most of the rest was a pile of twisted metal completely unrecognisable. There was only one small part still relatively intact.

Abby couldn’t help a small cry that escaped her. Marcus, Sinclair and their team were in there, she knew it in her heart, but which section? What were the chances they were in the one small section that still looked like a piece of the Ark?

She rose on wobbly legs and addressed the team. “I know we’re bruised and in pain but we have to get down to the station. We have to go now. If anyone’s alive in there they need us more than ever. Pick up the gear. And tread carefully.”

They descended the rest of the path in a half-run, careful not to fall and injure themselves but desperate to get to the station as quickly as possible. Abby was first down into the basin. She skirted the newly-formed crater and the destroyed part of the station and headed for the only part still intact. From close up the devastation to the building was even more obvious. The station groaned as it shifted and settled into its new shape. Loud bangs rang out as pieces gave up hanging on and crashed to the ground, making Abby jump every time.

She found a door that had been wedged open with two logs. The door had lifted and twisted so that the top half had closed together but there was still a gap at the bottom large enough to climb through.

Abby motioned to the team. “In here,” she said. She crawled through the tight gap, the top of the door scraping on her sore back, and the others followed. Inside was pitch black. She retrieved her torch from her kit and shone it into the darkness. Another door was ahead. This door had also been wedged open with logs but they had snapped and the door had closed, leaving shards of wood scattered on the floor. She shone her torch on the mechanism. It was one of the automatic doors that ran off electricity and battery power. They would struggle to get this open. She shone her torch through the small window in the door. Most of the beam bounced back but a weak light picked up some movement within. Abby’s heart skipped a beat. Someone or something was alive in there. She banged on the metal.

“Hey! Is someone there? Can you hear me? Are you okay?”

A figure crawled on its belly towards the door. All she could make out were dark curls and black clothing.

“Marcus, is that you? Marcus!”

The figure lifted his head, pain-filled eyes wide in the beam of her torch. It was Sinclair. Abby felt relief mixed with fear.

“Sinclair. Thank heavens. Can you hear me? Are you hurt? Where are the others? Where’s Marcus?”

Sinclair’s voice came through the door, reedy and muffled. “Abby? Oh, thank God. You’re here.”

Abby felt a stab of impatience and pushed it back down. “Where’s the rest of the team, Sinclair? Can you get this door open?”

Sinclair turned onto his back, slouched against the side wall, just in view of her torch. He looked at her with tears in his eyes.

“They’re all dead, Abby. I’m the only one.”

Blood seemed to drain from Abby’s body, leaving her cold and shivery. “What do you mean they’re all dead? Are you sure? Marcus too? Have you seen him?”

Tears filled her eyes and she wanted more than anything to let them fall, let grief take over but she stuck her fingernails into her palms instead so she wouldn’t give in.

Sinclair slumped further down. “The rest of the team, yes. I’ve seen them. They’re crushed. Marcus went into another room. I wasn’t far behind him and then everything came crashing in. I was trapped. It’s a mess back there.”

“But you haven’t seen Marcus? You don’t know for sure what has happened to him?”

“No, but it was bad, Abby. I don’t see how…”

That glimmer of hope was enough for Abby. “Sinclair, we need to get this door open. Can you help us?”

Sinclair sighed. “It’s impossible, Abby. The battery’s dead. The door can’t be prised open.”

“Then we’re going to have to find a way to get it open or find another way in.”

Abby set about organising some of the team to look for another way in. She left Jackson sitting on one side of the door, comforting Sinclair on the other.

She stood for a moment, considering her options. She hadn’t come this far to give up when she was so close. Not when there was a chance Marcus was alive inside and needed her. There had to be another way, but what?

Chapter Text

Abby had spent the morning trying to make a battery out of materials they’d salvaged from the station. She only had water to act as a conductor and no matter what she did she couldn’t get enough voltage to power the door mechanism. Sinclair was helpful at first but as the day wore on and the heat rose he lost energy and was sleeping more than he was awake. This concerned Abby greatly but there was nothing she could do about it stuck on this side of the door.

It was hot and airless in the station and she left Jackson to keep an eye on Sinclair so she could step outside to breathe and cool down. It was a beautiful, warm spring day. The sun was bright in a cloudless sky. She was surrounded by nature in the first bloom of new life, each tightly-curled leaf holding the promise of renewal. It all seemed to heighten Abby’s feeling of hopelessness. She’d been invigorated when they first found Sinclair and she had a problem to solve at last. With each frustrating hour that had gone by since then she’d started to lose faith that they were ever going to get into the station. She imagined Sinclair dying slowly before her eyes just inches away from rescue. When she thought of Marcus, trapped and injured at best, every second they wasted sounded a death knell. The weight of that thought, the pressure of it was too much. Almost. 

She took deep breaths, mentally pushing down the rising panic until it settled into a dull ache in the pit of her stomach, and felt calmer. She hadn’t fallen apart when she was in the airlock, seconds from being floated, or when she was trapped in TonDC with Marcus, two claustrophobics buried under the rubble of a Grounder village. She wasn’t going to fall apart now.

She was turning to go back into the station when King came running up, breathless and covered in dust, his bare arms scratched and bloody.

“Chancellor! I think we’ve broken through. Come and see.”

Abby felt the kindling of hope again.

“Let me get Jackson and my bag. I’ll be right there.”

She crawled back into the station. Jackson was asleep with his head resting against the inner door. She stroked his good arm, trying to wake him gently but he jerked awake, looking around startled.

“It’s me, it’s me,” she whispered. “The team thinks they’ve found another way in to the station. We need to go.”

Jackson shook his head. “I can’t go, Abby. Whatever way they’ve found it’s bound to be too tight for me to crawl through with my arm like this. Besides, I don’t want to leave Sinclair. He shouldn’t wake up alone.”

“I don’t want to leave you here. I’ve no idea how long we’ll be. It could be hours or even days before we get to Marcus and Sinclair.”

“I’ll be fine, Abby, honestly. I’ll just slow you down. Just find Kane, okay?”

Abby sighed. “Okay, but make sure you go outside regularly for fresh air. I know it’s painful crawling through the gap but the air in here is getting stale and you know what that can lead to.” She took some bottles of water and nutritional bars from her pack and put them on the floor next to him. “Try to ration these out as best you can. I’ll leave the two-way radio as well. I doubt it will work once we get inside but I feel better if you have it.”

She bent forward and placed a kiss on his forehead. “Be safe, and try to keep Sinclair talking as much as you can.”

With a heavy heart she left the two men alone in the station, hoping that it wouldn’t be long before she was on the other side of that door, with Marcus in tow.

King was waiting impatiently outside the entrance and she had to half-run to keep up with his long strides as he led her to a site at the back of the station where the rest of the team were waiting. Everyone was filthy from head to toe, with dusty hair and dirty faces streaked with sweat. They were smiling brightly, though, and she couldn’t help but smile back.

“What have you found?”

King led her to where a section of the station had sunk deep into the ground. A pit had been excavated beneath, a large spoil heap piled beside it.

“We’d been looking for places where the structure was weak or where an opening was created during the earthquake. We struggled to find anything until this. We found a fissure in the metal but it wasn’t wide enough to get through.”

“Plus we didn’t know how far down into the ground it went,” added Naiman.

“That’s right,” continued King. “So we did a little digging and discovered that the fissure widens the further underground it goes.”

“And it leads into a corridor,” said Naiman triumphantly. King gave him an annoyed look for stealing the moment of glory.

Abby was delighted, and keen to get inside to see for herself. “That’s wonderful. How far does the corridor go?” She slipped her backpack off and bent down to look into the pit. It was dark and all she could see was dirt and jagged metal.

King shook his head. “Don’t get too excited. Corridor is an optimistic word for what’s behind there,” he said, glaring at Naiman.

Abby stood up, ignoring the sharp pain that radiated out from the laceration on her back. She slipped her hand under her shirt. The wound was sticky and the area around it felt warm. She hoped it wasn’t becoming infected. She didn’t want to take too many antibiotics herself as they had a limited supply and she didn’t know how many people were injured inside the station.

“What do you mean? Is it a way into the station or not?” The pain combined with frustration at the seemingly endless obstacles that were in their way made her words come out sharper than she intended.

King didn’t seem to notice. “It WAS a corridor,” he continued, “but it’s now little more than a crawl space. It’s not easy to get through, as you can see.” He indicated the cuts and scrapes they were all covered in. “It seems to lead towards the centre of the station, possibly to the command room if I remember the layout of Arrow station correctly. If we can get there then the kitchens and mess hall should be close by.”

“If they’re still intact,” said Naiman.

“Yes, thank you, Naiman. We didn’t manage to get all the way to the control room, there’s a lot of clearing and digging to do but I think it’s our best chance of getting to Kane and anyone else who’s still inside.”

“Then let’s get going. Do we have everything we need?”

“We’ve got the spades and pickaxe we brought with us and Park has made some hand tools to help us in the narrower spaces.” Park showed off some trowel-like implements she’d fashioned out of salvaged metal and tree branches.

“We’re not going to be able to carry our backpacks or the medical cases though,” said Park. “The space is too low and narrow.”

Abby thought for a moment. “We could tie a couple of the stretchers together and load everything on to those – drag them behind us.”

They set to work, unfolding the stretchers and binding all the equipment to them with rope. Abby left Stevens to stand guard outside the entrance with a two-way radio and instructions to check on Jackson and Sinclair hourly. King agreed to lead the way with Naiman bringing up the rear, hauling the stretchers behind him. They could only enter the corridor in single file and crawling on their hands and knees. Abby was behind King and was not looking forward to being enclosed in such a tight space. As they squeezed through the opening, Abby felt panic rise, tightening her chest and throat and making it hard to breathe. She thought of Marcus, injured and needing her, and that gave her the determination to push through her fears, into the dark recesses of the station and towards the unknown.

---

While Abby was trying to make a battery and her team were looking for a way into the station, Marcus was tending to the other people in the room with him. When the aftershock had subsided he’d shouted for Sinclair and banged on the door on and off for an hour until his voice was hoarse and his knuckles were torn and bleeding. He’d reluctantly come to the conclusion that Sinclair was either injured or worse, or his route to the Mess was blocked and he couldn’t hear the shouts. Marcus was hoping for the latter because at least that meant Sinclair was okay and hopefully organising a rescue.

In the meantime he set about examining the people who were the sole survivors of Arrow Station. There were six men, three women and the boy whose name was David. Rose was one of the luckier ones. She was emaciated but she still had enough energy to move around and help him with the others.

Marcus questioned her as he examined each person. “Did you get trapped in here after the first earthquake?”

“Yes,” said Rose. “We’ve been using this room as a Medical centre since we landed. The station was badly damaged in the crash as you could tell and we lost most of our medical supplies. About three quarters of the station was inoperable from the start. I was on shift in here when the earthquake happened and we couldn’t get out of the station.”

That would explain the condition of the patients, thought Marcus. They were already ill before the earthquake hit and clearly things had got a lost worse since then.

“How much food and water do you have?” Marcus took the hand of an older man of about seventy years, feeling for his pulse. It took a while for him to find and when he did, it was rapid and thready. Marcus received basic medical training on the Ark as they all did, and he had learned more from Abby since they had been on the ground. He knew this was a bad sign; the man’s organs were likely failing due to lack of nutrition. The room was stuffy with a cloying smell pervading –a mixture of decay and unwashed bodies. Marcus suspected there had been no fresh air coming in for a long time. Everyone on the Ark was familiar with the consequences of oxygen deprivation; it was why they had come to Earth after all. This was not good.

“We ran out of food yesterday, but we didn’t have much to start with,” Rose said.

“Because of the Grounders?” asked Marcus.

“Yes, they were holding siege to us for a couple of weeks before the earthquake. We couldn’t hunt or get supplies. We tried to ration but eventually, there was nothing left to share.”

“Have you ever had fresh vegetables? I noticed you haven’t started farming the land. Was it not suitable?”

“The ground is very stony, there is only a thin soil but that is not why we haven’t farmed. There just weren’t enough survivors. About fifty people survived the initial drop but a quarter succumbed to their injuries fairly quickly and some were too old and ill to till the land, as you can see.” She gestured to the patients in the room. “We managed to trade materials from the station with some of the friendlier Grounders to get some fresh food.

“The siege and the earthquake took care of the rest of the survivors. It’s just us here, trapped in this tomb.” Rose started to sob and Marcus turned to her, putting his hand on her arm to offer some comfort. She surprised him by slipping her arms around him, pulling him into a hug. For a second he didn’t know what to do; physical displays of affection did not come naturally to him but the pain and sadness in this woman’s cries tugged at his heart. He put his arms around her, held her close. She was so small her head barely reached his chest.

“I’m sorry,” sobbed Rose. “I just. I haven’t felt the comfort of another human in so long.”

Marcus rubbed her back, trying not to wince as he felt the sharp points of her shoulder blades, her ribs so prominent he could count each one.

“No,” he murmured. “Neither have I.”

He thought of the walk back from Mount Weather, nearly two months ago now, holding hands with Abby as she lay on the stretcher. They hadn’t spoken of that since and he wasn’t sure what he had meant when he took her hand and then couldn’t let go. It physically hurt to walk such a distance like that, half-bending at times to reach her. Seeing her pain as the drill bore into her leg and being unable to help her had been like a stab to his heart.  All he knew was that he felt the need to hold on to her, to be there for her on the journey home as he couldn’t be there for her in the bunker. He thought he was comforting her but the warmth of her small hand in his and the look in her eyes - like she felt safe, like he made her feel safe - was comforting to him. The moment felt weighty, portentous, but since then they’d been busy setting up the camp, exploring the area, as Chancellor and her Second-in-Command.  He liked the feel of that, how they’d settled into an easy pattern of working together but that potential for, something different, seemed to have gone; it was all business.

He was jolted from his memory by a sharp pain as a sudden weight attached itself to his injured leg. It was the boy, David. Marcus ignored the pain and reached down to stroke his hair. The three of them stood in this awkward triangle for a moment, until Marcus pulled away. No more sentiment. If they were to get out of here, they had to get practical.

Marcus instructed Rose and David to fetch some clean water from the small supply she had stored at the back of the kitchen. He triaged the rest of the patients. Two of the women and three of the men, including the old man, were listless, their only movement the rapid rise and fall of their chests as they took shallow gulps of the bad air. They didn’t respond to his touch or his questions. The remaining men and woman were more responsive, able to tell him their names and describe their symptoms. Everyone was suffering from poor nutrition and lack of air. Their hearts were working too hard to service their failing bodies and for some of them Marcus feared the end was very close.

He emptied the contents of his backpack on a spare bed. He had packs of dried food that needed hot water to rehydrate. There was no electricity on the station and he had no intention of making a fire in here even if he could; he wasn’t going to further pollute what little air they had left. He put the dried packs aside as a last resort he hoped they wouldn’t need. There were twenty nutritional bars and eight small packets of seeds. It wasn’t much to feed eleven people especially when he had no idea how long they were going to be trapped.

Rose returned with ten litre bottles of water. “That’s all we have left,” she said and Marcus felt despair rise as the desperateness of their situation was laid bare before him. He knew he was going to have to make some difficult decisions. He thought about what Abby would do. She would want to save everyone but as a doctor she would also know that when resources were limited you had to save the ones that were most likely to survive. He looked at Rose. She nodded, as though she understood his dilemma. In the past the way forward would have been straightforward for him, he would barely have questioned himself. He would do what had to be done for the greater good. Things were different now, he was different. Marcus had a lot of souls on his conscience. He felt the weight of them at all times and where at first he had tried to relieve himself of the burden, offering himself as a sacrifice, putting himself in danger before others, now he welcomed the weight. He didn’t try to lift it, he carried it; it was part of him and reminded him that he should always look for the other way, the better way. He asked himself whether he could live tomorrow with his actions of today and he knew what he had to do.

He split five of the bars in half and gave a piece to each person together with a small handful of seeds. The ones who were gravely ill didn’t have the energy to even swallow so he instructed Rose, Sara and Karl, the healthiest of the patients, to feed them, crumbling the bars and giving them small sips of water to help wash it down. He crushed painkillers from his medical pack and made a solution which each person drank. It wasn’t much but he thought it might help slow the heartrates, make people sleep easier.

He didn’t have anything himself except a sip of water. It had been over twenty-four hours since he had eaten but he didn’t feel hungry. They’d experienced longer periods of food deprivation on the Ark and he was the strongest here by far. He didn’t need the nutrition as much as the others did.

With everyone fed and settled down it was time to put the next phase of his plan into action, which was to find a way out. Help may be on its way but he couldn’t be sure and he wasn’t going to sit in here and slowly rot while he waited to find out.

---

Abby had been in some horrible situations before but this was just about the worst of them. They’d been crawling through this tiny tunnel for two hours, stopping seemingly every five minutes to cut through hanging cables or shovel debris out of their way. She was hot and exhausted. Her back was throbbing and she was pretty sure it was bleeding again because she’d caught it so many times on the roof or on bits of metal she didn’t see in time to avoid.

They’d taken advantage of wider areas of the tunnel to swap the lead round and she was at the head of the team. There had been no debris for a few minutes and as she crawled she had allowed herself to drift into a fantasy where she was back at Arkadia, wrapped up in her cot where even the hard canvas felt like silk beneath her skin. She wasn’t prepared, therefore, for her hand to suddenly reach into nothing. She nearly tipped forward over the edge as her hands scrambled for purchase in thin air. She fell flat on the floor, her breasts crushed painfully against the hard edge where the floor met empty space. The pain knocked the wind out of her and she lay there trying to suck air back into her lungs. King was not prepared either and a second later she heard a “fuck” as he banged into her prone body. She couldn’t speak to warn him.

“Everybody stop!” King commanded and there was a hubbub of noise as the team asked what the problem was, talking over each other, their voices echoing off the metal walls.

“Chancellor? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Abby panted as she was finally able to breathe again. “We’ve run out of tunnel.” She inched over to the edge and shone her torch down. A few feet below them was a large room with tables and chairs. The beam of her torch swept over a bank of broken monitors. “I think we’ve found the control room.” Abby realised they hadn’t been in a corridor at all, they were in a maintenance shaft and it had led them straight to their destination.

The ground was about twelve feet down and her sore back and aching breasts jarred as she lowered herself out of the shaft and dropped the last few feet. The team followed with Naiman lowering the stretchers and then dropping down himself. They examined the room, looking for the exits. There were two doors leading off the main room and one more maintenance shaft.

“Do you have any idea which way the Mess room is from here?” Abby asked King.

“It depends how similar the design of Arrow station is to Mecha. I remember some of the layout but not exactly.”

“Well, let’s assume it’s the same,” said Abby, impatient to continue. “Which door would it be?”

King thought for a moment and then pointed to the door being the row of monitors. “That’s my best bet,” he said.

Abby went over to the door. It wouldn’t open easily. She removed the rope from the stretchers and tied it to the door. The team formed a line on the rope and like a one-sided tug-of-war team they pulled and pulled until the door finally gave. Abby’s heart sank when she saw what was behind it – the floor had collapsed leaving a gaping hole too long to cross. She shone her torch into the corridor and the beam bounced off a wall of debris about fifteen feet in.

“We’re not going to be able to get through here,” said Abby.

“We could try the maintenance shaft next to it,” said King. “It doesn’t open up into the kitchen or the Mess but I’m pretty sure it bypasses them. We might at least get close enough to speak to anyone that’s in there.”

Abby did not relish the thought of crawling through another maintenance shaft, especially if it was as damaged as the one they had just been in. “What about the other door?”

Park managed to open the door and stepped through. “It’s clear,” she said. Her torch picked out a sign that read Medical and Maintenance. “But I don’t think it’s the right way.”

“Okay,” said Abby. “Take Naiman and the others and check out what’s beyond that door and the other maintenance shaft between you. King and I will head this way. See if you can find a route through to Sinclair.”

They divided up the equipment, taking a stretcher each and King hoisted Abby up into the shaft, standing on a chair to feed her the equipment and finally pulling himself up behind her. Abby was relieved to see that this shaft was much less damaged than the previous one. It was still narrow, though, and airless.

“How are we going to know when we’ve reached the right area?”

“It will be at least five hundred metres along, if not more. We’ll stop every hundred metres and bang on the floor, see if we can get an answer,” King replied.

Abby started the slow process of crawling along the warm metal again, trying to estimate the first hundred metre mark. Could she really be just a few yards from Marcus, after all this time? She didn’t dare to hope, just put her head down and crawled.

---

Marcus had spent the last few hours examining every inch of the kitchen and Mess. There was only the one door in, which he couldn’t open no matter what he did. He’d tried levering it with kitchen implements, bashing it with a meat tenderiser which was the strongest weapon he could find, but it wouldn’t budge. The door was solid and the weight of the debris behind it must be too great.

He’d shifted furniture, tapped on the walls to see if he could hear a weakness in the metal, even stood on the tables to try and reach the highest points of the walls. They seemed to be in the only part of this listing, crumbling Ark station that was solid and intact.

The smell in the room was becoming unbearable and when he’d questioned Rose about it she’d admitted that she’d stored the dead bodies of two patients in the chest they’d used as a freezer when on the Ark. There was nowhere else for her to store them. He’d enlisted the help of Karl and together they’d moved the freezer as far away from the people as they could. Now he was arranging furniture in front of it to try and box it in. It wasn’t going to keep out the smell for long, if at all, but it felt good to do something about it. He was also concerned about the build-up of toxic substances as the bodies decomposed. In such a confined space such air could be fatal, especially for the patients already struggling to breathe.

He became aware of a banging noise like metal on metal. It was sporadic and seemed like it was coming from far away. He thought it might be a loose pipe banging, or the station moving and settling. He continued working and after a few minutes the noise came again, only closer. He stopped work and looked around. “Can you hear that?” he asked Rose.

“Yes,” she replied. “What is it?”

“I don’t know. I thought it was the station settling but it’s getting closer.”

David ran over to him and flung his arms around him, burying his head under Marcus’s t-shirt. “I’m scared.”

Marcus lifted his t-shirt off the boy and hugged him tight instead. “You’ll suffocate under there. Don’t be scared. I think it might be help. We’re not alone.”

They all sat quietly, waiting to hear the sound again. Five minutes went by and Marcus was about to give up when it came again, right above them. It was so loud they all jumped and several of the patients cried out in fear. Rose went over to comfort them.

A voice filtered through the ceiling, muffled, but unmistakable. “Hello! Is anyone there? Can you hear me?” The voice was followed by two more bangs.

“Abby?” Marcus felt astonishment and relief wash over him. “Abby, is that you?”

“Is someone there? I can’t hear you properly? Is that you, Marcus?”

Marcus scrambled to move a table underneath where the voice was coming from. He jumped on top, ignoring the pain coursing through him from his leg, and shouted.

“Abby! Abby, it’s me.”

“Marcus! Oh, thank God. I’ve found you.”

Marcus tried to reach the ceiling to touch it but was a foot too short. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

Abby’s voice was clearer now that he was closer to her. He imagined her lying just a foot above him. He so wished he could reach her, even through the metal. “I’m here, Marcus. It’s going to be okay. Is everyone all right?”

“Not really. There are ten people in here with me and some of them are gravely ill.”

“Are you okay? There was blood in your Rover. Are you injured?”

“It’s my leg but it’s fine. We’ve got more things to worry about than that. We don’t have much food or water and the air, Abby… it’s pretty bad in here.”

“Yes, I can smell it from up here. Just sit tight. I’m with King but we’re going to have to go and get more help and then we’ll see how we can get you out of there.”

“Abby?”

“Yes?”

“Have you seen Sinclair? Is he okay?”

There was a silence for a long second and Marcus feared the worst.

“I’ve seen him. He’s, well he’s not in the best shape but he’s alive. We can’t get to him either. I’m going to leave you for a short while. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”

Marcus heard her shuffling off and listened until the last sounds of her movement faded away. He felt empty suddenly. It had thrilled him to hear her voice again after so long and now she’d gone so soon he felt the loss like an ache. You’re getting sentimental, he told himself. It was probably the lack of oxygen.

He got off the table and lay down on one of the beds. He wanted to rest for as long as he could before she came back. He had the feeling things were going to get busy quickly. David climbed on the bed with him and insinuated himself under Marcus’s arm. Marcus stroked the boy’s hair as he thought about the situation. One thought was going round and round in his head. The metal walls of the maintenance shafts on the Ark were strong and thick. How the hell was she going to get in here?

Chapter Text

Within a minute of lying down on the bed Marcus was asleep, and dreaming. He was with Abby somewhere he didn’t recognise. She was standing on a clifftop, her back to him, looking out over a green-blue sea. Her hair was loose and windswept, glinting gold in the evening sun. She kept trying to tuck it behind her ears but the wind loosened it again, lifting long tendrils into the air. She was like Medusa before her fall, before the snakes. No wonder Poseidon fell in love with her. Marcus moved to stand beside her. “Shall we go down?” She nodded and he took her arm to guide her down the steep cliff path.

They descended through a pink carpet of thrift and sea campion. Gannets and Kittiwakes circled them, cackling and cawing, warning them not to get too close to their precious chicks. The coconut smell of gorse was in the air, sweet and cloying. As they approached the ground the smell of the sea became stronger, though Marcus knew it was not the seawater they could sense. It was the seaweed drying and rotting in the sun, the algae blooming far out on the ocean’s surface. It should have been horrible, but it was invigorating. Marcus took deep breaths, letting it fill his lungs.

Marcus had never been to the coast in real life. The nearest he’d got to a large body of water was the lake they’d landed beside. He’d read extensively about the Earth, though, and those years of knowledge were turning theory into reality in his dream.

When they reached the sand, they looked at each other and knew the other’s intentions without speaking. They grinned manically as boots and socks were stripped off, trousers rolled up. Marcus sighed as his bare feet sank into the warm sand. The grains were soft but diamond-edged. They got between his toes and pricked his skin as he started to walk across the sand. Soon they were running and it became a race to reach the sea first. Abby was ahead of him most of the way but as they got close to the water’s edge he caught up with her and pulled her arm back so he could push past her. The water was freezing which was a complete shock and he yelped as it splashed up his calves and turned the blood in his legs to ice.

Abby saw his pain and surprise and laughed. “That serves you right,” she said. She stopped at the edge, letting each rise of the tide lap gently at her toes so she could get used to the temperature. Marcus wasn’t having that, and he reached out and pulled her in so that she was as deep in the freezing water as he was. She cried out and laughed at the same time, batting him playfully on the arm. “You bastard!”

“It’s better to jump right in, Abby. You’ll soon get used to it.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this,” she replied, looking round at the miles of white sand and ocean.

Marcus was not so enamoured with the coldness of the sea after splashing in it for a few minutes. “My legs are starting to go numb. If I don’t get out of this water soon I fear they might drop off.”

“I think that’s highly unlikely,” said Abby with a smile.

They waded out of the water and sat down next to each other on the sand. The sun had changed colour to a fiery orange and was starting to set. Time slowed as they sat quietly, watching the sun drain into the sea, turning everything a blood red. Abby surprised him by putting her hand on his leg. It felt heavier than it should, a hot centre of mass concentrated on his thigh but radiating heat throughout his body. “I’m glad we’re seeing this together,” she said. He placed his hand on top of hers, lacing his long fingers between her delicate ones. “So am I,” he replied. She bent her fingers so that they gripped his. They sat like that until long after the sun had disappeared below the horizon and the first stars were pricking the sky.

Marcus thought he had drifted into a much-needed sleep on the sand with Abby in his arms and was annoyed that someone was trying to wake him. He tried to push the hand away that was shaking him. A voice, tired but insistent was speaking in his ear. “Sir, sir! Wake up. She’s back.”

Marcus gradually came to, expecting to see the night sky above him and smell the fresh sea air. Instead there was grey metal and a smell that was indescribable and an assault on his senses. He gasped and the taste of death filled his mouth. Where the hell was he? He opened his eyes and a small, thin woman was looking down at him. Rose, her name is Rose, he thought, and then stark reality came back to him. David was still asleep in the crook of his arm and Marcus carefully disentangled himself from the boy and sat up. “Abby’s back?”

Rose nodded as the welcome sound of Abby’s voice came through the ceiling. “Are you there, Marcus?”

“Yes, yes, I’m here.”

“Good.” Marcus could hear the relief in her voice. “What’s the best place for us to try and cut through the shaft?”

“Probably about where you are. You’re at the far side of the room about half way along its length.”

“Okay, then I need you to get everyone to the other side of the room. If you can get them under tables then do it. I don’t know what’s going to happen when we get through but it’s possible we could collapse the entire ceiling. This whole station is very unstable.”

“Okay, I’ll do it. Give me a few minutes.”

“You’ve got time; I’m still waiting for the rest of the team with the equipment. They should be here soon.”

Marcus started moving the furniture across the room. The beds the patients were lying on weren’t really beds, they were tables covered in folded blankets. He upturned the unoccupied ones and pushed them together. With the help of Sara, Rose and Karl he gently transferred the patients so that they nestled in the tray made by the underneath of the table. He spread the blankets over them and then placed other tables at right angles over the top, forming a shelter. He rationed out more of the food bars and the water, this time taking one for himself because he was starting to feel weak and his head was pounding.

When everyone was settled he climbed back on top of the table he’d left underneath where Abby and her team were lying. “We’re ready down here.”

“That’s great,” said Abby. “I need to be able to contact you as work progresses. Do you have a radio?”

“No. Sinclair had it.”

Rose interrupted. “There is a radio but the battery is dead.”

“Can you make it work, make a new battery?”

Marcus looked around the room. There was an electrical oven and the old freezer with the bodies in it. He could strip them for parts.

“I might be able to. I don’t want to use any water though, there’s not enough as it is.”

“You’re in a Mess hall – is there baking soda or anything like that? You could use that as a conductor.”

Marcus looked at Rose. “There might be,” she said. “I’ll go and look.” She came back a moment later with a box of baking soda and a knife and meat saw from the kitchen. “Will these be any help?”

Marcus nodded. “Yes, I think those will be a big help. Thanks, Rose.” He shouted up to Abby. “I think there’s a chance I can make it work.”

“That’s great. I’ll keep the channel open. I hope to hear from you soon. I think we’re ready up here. It’s going to get noisy. You might want to make some earplugs for everybody.”

“We’ll do that.”

Rose began tearing up some cloth they could put in their ears to deaden the noise. Marcus started taking the oven apart to salvage materials to make a new battery. He was glad to have something to occupy him while he waited for Abby and her team to break through.

---

On the other side of the shaft Abby was organising her team. She’d found the others still exploring the halls and corridors leading to Medical and Maintenance. Naiman was convinced he could find a way through to Sinclair so she’d left him to try and brought the others and most of the equipment back with her. It was cramped in the shaft so they’d decided to work in shifts. King and Park were taking the first turn. Abby sat away from the others, preparing to monitor the radio. She wanted to keep in touch with Marcus to keep his spirits up but mainly so she could monitor his health. She didn’t think he’d noticed but he’d slurred a couple of his words a few minutes ago and she was concerned for everyone down in the Mess hall. The smell coming through the shaft was ghastly and she could only imagine what it must be like in the room. It was slowly poisoning everyone in there.

She had no idea if they were going to be able to get through the thick metal of the floor. The only sharp tool they had was the pickaxe. They were going to try and introduce a weakness to the metal by repeatedly hammering it at one point. Once they’d broken through they would try to widen the hole and work the spades in to peel back the metal. The problem was most of the Ark was made from titanium, Kevlar and high grade steel. It was designed so that it couldn’t be punctured by meteoroids or other space debris. King suspected that the maintenance shaft was made of a lower grade steel and aluminum and the entire operation was based on that supposition.

King looked over to her. “We’re ready, Chancellor.”

She nodded. “Let’s do this.” She watched as King raised the pickaxe as high as he could and brought it down on the floor in front of him. It barely made a scratch. He looked up at her. Abby gave a smile of encouragement. “Keep going. It’s just going to take time.” And a lot of effort, she thought. Time was the one thing they didn’t have and energy would soon run out with the amount of effort required.

Half an hour went by and King gave the pickaxe to Park for her shift. He had managed to puncture a small hole in the metal but his torch just picked out what was one of presumably many layers beneath it. Still, the small breakthrough was encouraging. Abby had heard nothing from the radio but then in one of the pauses between pickaxe strikes she heard a crackling and Marcus’s voice came through faint and full of static. She moved further away from the team so that she could hear him.

“Abby?”

“I’m here, Marcus. I can barely hear you, though.”

“The battery isn’t very strong.”

“Well, it’s better than nothing. You’ve done well.”

He didn’t answer but she could hear him breathing, loud, shallow breaths that concerned her. She kept her voice light. “How is everyone down there?”

“Not good. We’ve lost one, Peterken, from Tesla station originally. He was the oldest, and the weakest. He was already ill, before…” Marcus’s voice trailed off.

“Marcus?”

There was silence for a few seconds and then his voice came through again. “How is it going up there?”

“It’s going well,” she said, trying to inject confidence into her voice. “We’re making progress.”

Marcus wasn’t fooled. “Don’t lie to me, Abby. I need to know the truth.”

“We are making progress. It’s going to take a while; hours, probably.”

“Okay. Well, we’re not going anywhere.”

“That’s true. Save the battery. I’ll speak to you again in another half an hour.” Abby clicked the radio off and looked at the tiny hole in the metal with frustration. How could they be so near and yet so far?

The next few hours followed the same pattern. Every half hour there was a shift change and Abby would talk to Marcus over the radio. The hole in the floor got gradually wider and deeper. The tunnel became hotter and more airless. Everyone was exhausted, dripping with sweat and tempers were becoming frayed amongst the team with arguments about technique and how many layers of metal were left. Abby had taken a turn with the pickaxe and it had nearly destroyed her. The restricted space meant she couldn’t get a full swing and let gravity help power her arms. Instead she had to use all the strength she could muster to hammer down on the metal. It was the most physical work she’d ever done in her life.

Back in her relatively quieter section of the shaft Abby switched the radio on again and called for Marcus. It was taking him longer to answer every time. He was sleeping in between conversations and although no one else had died he’d told her that four of the patients had slipped into comas and no one else had much energy left. She had decided to try and keep him talking to keep him awake and alert as long as she could.

His voice crackled over the radio, heavy with sleep. “Hey.”

“Hey. How is everyone?”

“Same.”

“Have you eaten anything?”

“No.”

“Then do it now. You need to keep your strength up.” She could hear the rustle of paper as he tore open a nutritional bar.

“There’s not much left,” he said.

“No. It won’t be long now. Drink a little.”

“He worked with my father, you know.”

This comment came out of left field. Abby didn’t know what he was talking about. “Who did?”

“Peterken, who died.”

“Oh, right. Yes, you said he was from Tesla station. That must have been a long time ago.”

“I thought I recognised him, and then I remembered. He came to our quarters sometimes. He was younger. My age.”

“Not that young, then,” The radio fell silent. Abby didn’t think it was her poor joke; he had probably nodded off again. “Marcus?”

A few more beats of silence that sent fear running through her veins and then “Hmmm?”

“What do you remember about him, your father?”

“Strong. Tall. Tough.”

“Like you.”

He gave a small laugh. “Hmm. Not back then.”

“No, you were a scrawny kid.”

Another laugh. “Yes. I wanted to be like him, especially after he died.”

“That was a tough time. I remember.” Abby remembered it well. The Guard marching in to the Mess Hall while they were all having dinner, taking him away in handcuffs. Young Marcus sitting in silent shock, Vera screaming. He was never seen again. Justice on the Ark was swift, always had been; except it wasn’t justice, because he was innocent. By the time everyone realised that it was too late. There was a question Abby had always wanted to ask Marcus but never dared, about why he had been such a vehement supporter of the powers that be after what happened. The subject of his father had always been a closed book. She thought about asking it now, as he seemed to be opening up, but it didn’t feel right, like she was exploiting his condition. She tried to lead him gently to the subject in the hope he would answer it without her asking. “He never got a pardon from the Chancellor, after they found out the truth.”

“No. What would be the point? Too late by then.”

“The point being that it was a miscarriage of justice. They got the wrong man. He didn’t deserve to die.”

“He did under the rules of the Ark at the time. They thought they had their man. They did the right thing by the law.”

“Do you really believe that?” There it was, the question, sort of. Her pulse quickened.

“It was what he believed. The law is the law; the future of the Ark depended on it. That’s what he taught me. You can’t change the laws just because it becomes personal, Abby, or it’s someone you care about. He wouldn’t have wanted that.” 

No one knew that better than Abby. She’d watched as her own husband was floated for a crime he never really got around to committing. She’d been in the airlock herself as Marcus tried to send her into oblivion with a nod. There was little room for sentiment on the Ark, but that’s where they went wrong, she believed. They were too strict, too rigid, and it didn’t stop people when they were desperate. Nothing ever would.

She persisted with her original question. She needed to know his answer. He’d changed, since the Ark, but maybe not as much as she’d thought. “Is that what YOU believe, even now?”

There was a long pause while he thought about his answer. “I think perhaps there are more shades of grey than I realised.”

“Maybe even a little colour?”

He sighed deeply. “You’re the colour,” he said quietly.

Abby was flustered. “What do you mean?”

He didn’t answer directly. “My father… I never wanted to get close to people after. Hurts.” He yawned. “Tired.”

“Try to stay awake, Marcus. Do you still feel that way?”

Another long silence, then: “Not s’much.”

“What made you change your mind?”

This time the silence didn’t end. “Marcus!”, “Marcus!” There was no response. Tears fell and she let them. She was exhausted and her mind couldn’t help whirring through all the terrible outcomes oxygen deprivation and pulmonary toxicity could bring – organ failure, sight loss, brain damage, death. If he’d slipped into a coma then with the limited equipment and supplies she had there was little chance of getting him back.

She scrambled to her knees and crawled as fast as she could over to King. “We have to get through NOW! We can’t wait. Please hurry.”

“We think we’re nearly there but then we have to make the hole big enough to get through.”

“How long is it going to take?”

“It’s impossible to say. At least another hour.”

“We don’t have another hour, King. They’re dying down there.”

“I know, Chancellor, but we’re doing the best we can. Everyone’s wiped-out.”

“Try harder!” Abby spat the words out. It was mean, she knew, because they were trying but it wasn’t good enough. She wanted to rip through the metal with her bare hands.

She watched helplessly as the team continued to work. After fifteen minutes the hole was big enough to see through. King shone his torch through the gap.

“What can you see?”

“Just the floor. The hole isn’t big enough to see too far into the room.”

“Abby took the torch from him. “Let me see.”

“Be careful, Chancellor, the metal is jagged. It’s not safe.”

She lay down and tried to peer through the hole. No matter what angle she shone the torch at King was right, she could only see a small radius beneath. She shouted Marcus’s name over and over but there was no response.

King took the torch back from her and gave her what he must have thought was a comforting smile. “It will go quicker now, believe me. We’ll soon be through.”

The next hour was torturous. She was so on edge she couldn’t sit still. Her feet were tapping a crazy rhythm on the floor, her hands were fidgeting with her hair, cleaning dirt out of her nails, picking flecks of muck off her clothes. Anything to keep her mind occupied. And still she watched as the hole grew bigger and King started to flatten the edges to make it as smooth as he could.

Finally, he looked across to her. “It’s ready.”

Abby flew across to the hole and looked down. Marcus had left the table beneath and before anyone could stop her she dropped down into the dark of the Mess Hall and landed with a painful bump on the hard surface. “My bag,” she shouted back, and King dropped her medical kit down after her. She shone her torch around the room and the beam picked out the huddle of people at the far end of the room, sheltered underneath a haphazard arrangement of tables. The smell was overwhelming and made her gag. She couldn’t see Marcus at first. He wasn’t under the tables with the others. She found him lying a short distance from the rest, curled into a foetal position with the radio still clasped in his hand. She shook his arm and whispered in his ear. “Marcus. Wake up.” There was no response. She leaned in and took hold of his wrist. She struggled to find his pulse but after a couple of seconds she could feel a faint breath on her cheek. He was still alive, but non-responsive. There were thuds behind her as the rest of the team jumped down and ran over to help the other patients.

She brushed damp curls of his hair away from his forehead and rested the back of her hand on his brow. He was hot but she didn’t think it was from fever. It was stifling in the room and he was overheated. She gave him a shot of atropine to counter the effects of the toxic air and increase his heart rate. She got some water from her pack and wet his dry lips with it. “Come on, Marcus. Wake up, you can do this.”

She kept shaking him gently until he started to stir. He slowly opened his eyes and looked at her, his brow knitted in confusion. “Abby?” He tried to sit up but didn’t have the energy so she sat down beside him and pulled him towards her so that his head rested on her chest.

“I’m here,” she said. “Have some water, it’s the best thing.” She held the water bottle to his lips and he took a drink. 

“You made it through.” He sounded amazed and Abby was as well now that she had time to think about it. Finally after days of searching she had found him, and it felt good having him in her arms. She squeezed him a little tighter before letting him go. “I have to go and check on the others. Keep sipping the water and eat these. You need to get some strength quickly for the journey out of here.” She gave him nutritional bars and packs of seeds and reluctantly left to examine the other patients.

She found two more bodies, a man and a woman. She got Park to move them and the elderly man she presumed was Peterken to the back of the room. Two other men were in comas and unresponsive. She thought it unlikely they would survive the journey back to Arkadia but she had to try. King was examining a young boy of about ten who was slowly coming round. She went over to him.

“Hi. My name’s Abby. What’s yours?”

“I’m David.”

“Hi David.” Abby examined his heart rate and his pupils. He seemed to have survived better than any of the adults. Kids always amazed her with their resilience. “How are you feeling?”

“I have a headache.”

“That’s to be expected. Take these tablets with some water. They’ll make you feel better. It’s a bit smelly and horrible in here, isn’t it?”

David nodded, swallowing the pills. “Where’s Mr Kane? Can I see him?”

“I’ll take you to him, but he’s not feeling well, so be gentle okay.”

David took her hand. “I’ll look after him.”

Abby smiled as she led David to Marcus who was sitting up on his makeshift bed, looking more awake. “Someone to see you.”

David flung himself on Marcus and she saw him wince in pain although he didn’t say anything. Abby didn’t know why she was so astonished to see him hug the boy so tightly but she was. Marcus wasn’t usually one for hugs and affection. They had bonded through their shared experience she supposed. She watched the scene for a moment, a knot of something indescribable tightening in her chest. Then she thought of his look of pain. “Your leg! Let me examine it.”

Marcus shook his head. “It’s fine, Abby, honestly. There’s no need just now. Later, when we’re back at camp.”

“If you’re sure.”

He nodded. “I am.”

Abby gave everyone chance to take on food and water and get some strength back but she didn’t want to linger too long as the room was becoming unbearable. They packed up their equipment and got ready to leave. They had to tie the two comatose patients to rope and haul them up through the hole in the ceiling as the stretchers were too wide to fit through. Once they’d done that and got them settled on the stretchers they began the short journey back to the control room.

When she dropped down from the maintenance shaft Abby was thrilled to see Naiman waiting for her with Sinclair in tow. He didn’t look as bad as she’d thought he would. Naiman had given him food and water and painkillers to reduce a fever he was running. Abby gave him a shot of antibiotic to be on the safe side.

Marcus limped over to his old friend and they patted each other on the back. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

Sinclair smiled. “You can’t get rid of me that easily. I thought you were dead.”

Marcus shook his head. “Living to fight another day.”

“Let’s hope the journey back is easier than the one here,” said Sinclair.

“It couldn’t be any worse, surely.”

Abby interrupted. “Shush, you two. Don’t you dare tempt fate.”

It only took them half an hour to crawl back through the maintenance shaft to the outside now that the way was clear. Jackson was waiting with Stevens and he ran up to Abby as soon as she got out into the open, giving her a tight one-armed hug. “I’m so glad you’re all okay. It’s been torture waiting for you.”

“We’re fine, but we need to get back to the rovers and to Arkadia as quickly as we can. No one’s completely out of the woods yet.”

She took up the rear of the convoy, laden down with two medical cases, a pack on her front and one on her back. Marcus hung back to wait for her. “Let me take some of those.”

“I’m fine. You need to conserve your strength, and protect your leg.”

“Abby.” He gave her that lop-sided smirk that meant ‘don’t be silly’. It used to infuriate her because it was so smug and pedantic. Now it made her smile. “I can manage a backpack at least. Let me help you.”

She gave in and passed one over to him. He settled it on his shoulders, thumbs tucked under the straps, and they set off back up the path towards the waiting vehicles. Neither of them looked back. They never wanted to see Arrow station again.

Chapter Text

Abby stood at the doorway to Medical, looking along the line of patients tucked neatly into their beds, all sleeping soundly. The saline drips were helping rehydrate them and plenty of food and rest was all that was needed to aid their recovery. They had lost the two coma patients on the way back from Arrow station. There was nothing she could have done for them. At least it was peaceful in the end. They just slipped away.

Marcus was in the bed nearest to her, doped up on antibiotics to fight an infection in the cut on his leg. She’d taken out Sinclair’s stitches, which had been clumsy but effective, and cleaned and re-stitched the wound. She’d caught the infection early and was confident the drugs would sort it out. She was going to release him from Medical tomorrow. For the first time in a week she felt like she had everything under control. Marcus stirred in his sleep and she watched as he flung an arm out of the bed so that it hung in mid-air. He was a messy sleeper - lying on his back, arms and legs outstretched, the blankets bunched up around his waist. She would have thought he would sleep in some kind of neat and tidy way, as he lived the rest of his life, but maybe this was a subconscious way for him to be carefree and abandoned.

You’re over thinking this, Abby, she told herself. The simple truth was that when you didn’t have anyone else in the bed with you it was easy to stretch out and take up all the room, there was no one to push you back over to your side or call you a blanket thief. Marcus hadn’t shared a bed with anybody since Callie that she knew of, and that was only occasionally. Callie had told her he didn’t like her spending the night; that he couldn’t sleep with someone else there. Of course since then he’d had to get used to sleeping in all kinds of situations, in rough-made sleeping bags, on hard ground, everyone mixed in together. Maybe things had changed. She wasn’t sure why that thought mattered to her. No, that wasn’t true. It mattered because she had fallen in love with him, a simple truth that she could no longer deny. The days spent not knowing whether he was alive or dead, calling for him over the radio and waiting longer and longer to hear his tired voice, thinking he was dying and she couldn’t get to him. All those things had confirmed what she already knew deep down. She loved him, and she wanted to believe that lots of things about him had changed so that she could justify her feelings. They’d been through a lot but their conversation over the radio in Arrow station had left her unsure about how much of him was still the old Marcus, the man who laid down the law, who left no room for interpretation, or compassion, who would have floated her in a heartbeat if Jaha hadn’t intervened.

She went across to his bed and spread the covers back out over his body, tucking the edges under the mattress so he’d stay warm. He was in REM sleep, eyes fluttering beneath their lids, his breathing light with puffs of air escaping now and then as he dreamt. The urge to touch him was strong; she wanted to soothe him, to brush the hair back where it fell into his eyes, press her lips to the bruises on his face, as though that would heal them. Looking at him lying here, open and vulnerable, his hair long and wavy and his beard on the verge of running wild she knew he had changed. The man who’d tried to float her wasn’t the same man whose desperate cries she’d heard when she was on the operating table in Mount Weather, or the man who’d held her hand all the way back to camp for no reason other than to comfort her. What she didn’t know was whether he felt the same way about her.

She was just reaching out to stroke his hair when Jackson’s voice made her jump and she withdrew her hand, turning to look at him and feeling absurdly guilty. “What are you doing here, Jackson?” she asked, her tone more abrupt than he deserved.

He didn’t seem to notice. “I thought I’d come and take over from you for a few hours. You must be exhausted.”

Abby was reluctant to leave the patients. After so long looking for Marcus she wanted to stay close to keep an eye on him, make sure nothing went wrong with him or any of them. “I’m fine and you need your rest to help your arm recover.”

“I’ve had some rest. I fell asleep as soon as I got back to the dorm. You haven’t slept properly in days. Let me take over. I promise I’ll send for you if anything happens.”

A yawn betrayed Abby’s true tiredness so she agreed to go and get a couple of hours’ rest. She didn’t think she’d be able to sleep she was still so wired from the activity of the last few days but the hard cot was a comfort after days of sleeping rough and her blanket warmed her body as she pulled it tight up to her chin. She felt herself drifting away and decided not to fight it.

---

Marcus woke to the sound of silence and the smell of antiseptic. It was a sweet smell after the horrors of the last couple of days. Not as sweet as the smell of the sea he’d dreamt about again but comforting. It meant Medical, safety, and Abby. He opened his eyes and looked around, expecting to see her busy fussing over the patients or mixing up medicines. Instead it was Jackson he saw sitting in a chair across the room. He was reading a book.

Marcus coughed and Jackson looked up, eying him with his usual suspicion. He’d still not forgiven Marcus for shock lashing Abby and probably never would. He didn’t smile but he came over to Marcus’s bed and took hold of his wrist so he could read his pulse.

“How are you feeling?”

“I feel fine. Where’s Abby?”

“She’s resting.” Jackson didn’t offer up any more information and Marcus didn’t press the issue.

“How’s everyone else, Rose, David? Have you checked on them lately?”

He could see Jackson bristle at the suggestion that he might have been neglecting his duty. Marcus hadn’t meant anything by the comment but he always managed to say the wrong thing as far as Jackson was concerned. He resolved to try harder with him.

“Of course I’ve checked. Sinclair, Rose, Sara and Karl are still sleeping. They’ve been sedated to help them rest. I don’t expect them to wake for another couple of hours but all their vitals are looking good.”

“What about David?” Marcus looked along the line of beds but couldn’t see the child in any of them.

“David’s fine. He’s up already and Raven has taken him to get some breakfast.”

Marcus was relieved. “Thanks. You’ve done a great job.”

Jackson shook his head. “It wasn’t me. I can’t do much with this arm. It was Abby.”

Marcus swung his legs off the side of the bed. “Okay, well I need to get going.” He searched around the floor and the chair next to his bed. “Where are my clothes?”

Jackson put out a hand to stop him. “You can’t leave yet. Abby will have to examine you and sign you off.”

“I honestly feel fine. Abby can come and find me later. Help me get this out will you?” Marcus had got himself tangled up in the saline drip and couldn’t get the cannula out of his arm.

“You really shouldn’t be getting up. Abby won’t be happy.”

“Abby’s not happy. What’s going on here?”

Marcus looked up to see Abby standing in the doorway. She looked freshly showered, her long hair still damp at the ends. She had a frown on her face but her eyes were glinting with amusement.

“I tried to stop him, Abby. Councillor Kane wants to leave. He says he’s feeling fine.”

“I am fine,” said Marcus.

“I didn’t realise you’d added doctor to your list of accomplishments, Marcus. A lot must have happened while you were away.”

Marcus gave a lop-sided smile. “I’ve learned from watching you, Abby.”

Abby always liked to see him smile like that. He didn’t do it often enough, but then he didn’t often have a lot to smile about. None of them did.

“Well, get back in bed so you can have your final lesson.” That sentence came out very differently to what she’d intended and Abby waited for the inevitable quip from Marcus.

Marcus raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment. He was amused by Abby’s words and by the look of horror that came over her face when she realised what she’d said. He decided to be kind and not embarrass her, especially in front of Jackson.

He got back in bed as Abby pulled her hair into a pony tail and got ready to examine him.

“Jackson, can you prepare an antiseptic wash and get a fresh dressing for Kane’s leg.”

Abby pressed her fingers to his wrist to take his pulse. Marcus didn’t tell her Jackson had already done that, he liked the connection it made between them.

“Your pulse is a little fast.” Abby felt his forehead; it was warm but not feverish. “Are you sure you feel okay? You’re not hot, or cold, or shivery?”

“I don’t feel any of those things. It’s probably the sight of you standing there in your hospital scrubs!”

Abby laughed. “What has got into you today?”

Marcus shrugged. “Just happy to be alive, I guess. It was a rough few days.”

“I know. I’m glad you’re alive.”

They held each other’s gaze for a long moment, until Abby broke the silence. “Let’s look at your leg. If I’m happy with it then you’re free to go.”

She pulled the cover back and Marcus suddenly felt very exposed dressed only in a t-shirt and boxers. Abby removed the dressing and pressed the edges of the wound gently with delicate fingers. It looked ugly to Marcus, long and jagged, coloured in different shades of angry purple. Abby’s stitches were much neater than Sinclair’s though. He might end up looking a little less like Frankenstein’s monster.

Jackson appeared with the solution and a fresh dressing and Abby thanked him. “Can you go and arrange some breakfast for everybody?”

“That’s going to leave an ugly scar,” Marcus said.

“It matches the one on your other leg from TonDC. At least you’re symmetrical. That’s an attractive quality apparently.”

“What would you know about things like that?” Marcus couldn’t imagine Abby reading the ancient women’s magazines some of the kids had brought back from Mount Weather.

“It was in some text book or other I read a while ago, about facial reconstruction.” Abby bathed his leg in the antiseptic solution and wrapped the fresh dressing around it. “The infection seems to be under control.”

“Is that your bedtime reading, then, medical textbooks?” Marcus said with a smile.

“Well, what do you read in bed? Mills and Boon?”

“I don’t think beds are for reading in,” said Marcus in a low growl that made Abby pause as she tied the bandage off. She looked at him, at his twinkling brown eyes. Was he flirting with her, or teasing her? She couldn’t tell. She decided to play safe.

“No, they’re for sleeping in and recovering your strength. I’m going to release you from Medical but you have to promise me you won’t overexert yourself for the next few days.”

“I don’t know if I can promise you that.”

Abby rolled her eyes and had just perched on the edge of the bed so she could take the cannula out of his arm when Marcus suddenly grabbed hold of her hand.

“I dreamt about you, you know.”

Abby was confused. “What? When?”

“When I was in the station, waiting for you to come back. And again, last night.”

Abby was at a loss for words. What did this mean, what was he going to tell her? She felt a heaviness settle over her. It was a kind of hopeful dread. “I’m afraid to ask.”

“We were at the ocean, sitting on the sand watching the sun set. You had your hand in mine, like this.” He entwined his fingers with hers and Abby’s pulse quickened. “I felt at peace,” he continued.

She stared at him, astonished at where this was coming from. It was so unlike him. “You were very poorly. You were probably subconsciously looking for something nice to counter the horror, and someone to hang on to.” She stroked the back of his hand with her thumb. “I’m glad I was there for you.”

Marcus watched Abby closely. He didn’t know why he’d suddenly decided to test the water, to gauge how she felt, it just came over him and he couldn’t stop it. If the last few days had taught him anything, it was that he was tired of wasting time, tired of waiting for things to happen. He had to take control of everything in his life, move forward, otherwise what was the point? She hadn’t withdrawn her hand but she hadn’t been lulled into any declaration of her feelings either, just a psychological diagnosis as he might have expected she would give. He felt disappointed, which was unfair, because he had sprung it on her, and she might not be sure what he was really meaning. So he did something that the old Marcus would never have done and brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. He turned her hand over, spread open her fingers and kissed her palm, and then the thin flesh of her wrist. He couldn’t feel her pulse beneath his lips but he imagined it throbbing as hard as his was. He really hoped he wasn’t making a huge mistake because there was no going back from this.

Abby gasped, the move was so unexpected. His lips were soft and warm on her skin, his beard ticklish. She felt frozen in time. “Marcus?” He didn’t answer, just worked a trail of kisses down her arm. Her hand was close to his head and she reached out and did what she’d wanted to earlier. She stroked his hair, running her fingers through a week’s worth of knots and tangles. Then she felt his lips on the side of her neck, sucking at the soft flesh beneath her ear. He was moaning and something came loose inside her. She lifted his head and brought his lips to hers. It was a tentative kiss, exploratory; neither of them sure about committing fully to it and what it might lead to. She could taste the iron tang of blood from a small cut that had opened up his old scar and wouldn’t heal. She licked the cut and he moaned louder. “Abby!” She brought her other hand up to cradle the back of his head, pulling him closer. The kiss deepened; the tip of her tongue touching the tip of his and Abby suddenly wanted to unzip him and climb inside so that there was nothing at all between them. Marcus brought his other arm up around her back and there was an almighty crash as the IV drip fell to the floor. Abby realised with a shock that he was still attached to the cannula and that they were sitting on his hospital bed with other people all around them, albeit sleeping. She had completely forgotten where they were.

They jumped apart and Abby bent down to pick up the IV and set it upright. She turned to look at Marcus and saw blood dripping from his arm where the cannula had ripped out.

“Let me get that.” She went over to the store cupboards to get a cloth and some antiseptic, grateful for a moment alone to gather herself after what had just happened. What had come over them both? Was he affected by the antibiotics or did Marcus Kane kiss her because he wanted to, because he was as in love with her as she was with him?

Marcus held his arm in the air to stem the blood flow. He watched Abby as she sorted through the cupboard. It was taking her longer than it should to find the items she needed. Was she regretting what just happened? Was she trying to give herself time to come up with the right words to let him down gently? No wonder he’d spent his life avoiding getting close to people. Wondering what she was thinking gave him an agony almost as great as when he’d hurt his leg.

Finally she came back and he put a smile on his face that he hoped was comforting but suspected looked more like a rictus grin. She was all business, pouring the antiseptic onto the cloth, dabbing it gently over his arm. It stung and he hissed at the pain.

“I’m sorry,” Abby said as she stuck a plaster over the cut. “There, all better.”

She looked up at him then, her dark eyes searching his. Marcus didn’t know what to do for the best but he couldn’t stand not knowing any longer. If he was going to change his life he had to face the tough questions head on and they didn’t come much tougher than this.

“Are we going to…?” He didn’t get to finish the sentence because there was a commotion as Jackson, Raven and David came into the room laden down with food. Abby moved away but not before giving his hand a quick squeeze and that gave him hope. The smell of hot buttered toast wafted through the room and Marcus realised he was starving. David came and jumped on his bed, narrowly missing Marcus’s leg as he settled next to him dripping hot butter all over the sheets. Marcus took the slice of toast the boy offered him and ate it hungrily, watching Abby as she checked on the other patients, discussing them with Jackson who was making notes. She’d be busy all day as the others started to wake up and needed her care. As she moved towards Sinclair’s bed she glanced back at Marcus and saw he was watching her. She turned her head again as Jackson pointed out something on Sinclair’s chart, but not before Marcus saw the ghost of a smile play on her lips.

---

Abby returned to her quarters after a mercifully short day in Medical. She had endured a week of non-stop hell first of all caring for the injured from Arrow Station and then the survivors of a collapse at one of Mount Weather’s underground storage bunkers. They’d finally released the last of the patients today and she was seeing the inside of her room while there was still the last glimmer of daylight outside for the first time since she’d left it on her mission to Arrow station two weeks previously. She’d barely seen Marcus at all in that time. He had been busy organising the salvaging and repair of the bunker while she was looking after the victims. He’d visited Medical to have his leg checked while she was on a site visit with Sinclair looking at a proposed extension to Arkadia and Jackson had seen to him.  He’d reported that Marcus was “fine” and that his leg was healing well and that was all the news she had.

Abby stripped off her scrubs and threw them in a pile in the corner of the room where they joined the other clothes she’d worn this week and hadn’t had chance to send to the laundry. She filled the basin with water and washed her body, passing the cloth carefully over the scar on her back caused by the rock she landed on. She’d never had a chance to get it stitched up properly and it had healed unevenly and was still sore. Yet another ugly scar to add to the many she’d got since being on the ground. The only clean clothes she had left were some blue sweats she’d salvaged from Mount Weather so she put those on and tried to decide whether she could be bothered going to the Mess Hall for something to eat. She had a lot of paperwork to get through so food was probably a good idea to see her through the rest of the evening.

She opened the door and was startled to see Marcus standing there arm raised about to knock. He was dressed casually in grey t-shirt and pants, his hair freshly washed and wavier than ever.

“Oh!”

“Hey!”

“I, er, I was just going to get something to eat from the Mess.”

Marcus held up a paper bag from which emanated a wonderful smell. “I brought take out.”

“You did what?”

“I got the Mess to box some food up for us, for you. I called in at Medical and Jackson said you’d just left and I figured you might be hungry, so…” Marcus tailed off, wondering if this was too much after a week of barely talking to her, though not for want of trying. But then why should it be a big deal? They ate together all the time.

Abby held the door open wider and Marcus went past her into the room. He looked around and was surprised to see it in some disarray. It was unlike Abby who was usually quite tidy. There was a line of unwashed mugs on her work table and a huge pile of clothes in the corner.

Abby saw him looking and felt ashamed that he’d caught her in such a mess but also annoyed that he was casting a critical eye over what felt like her whole life.

“Don’t you dare say anything,” she said before he had a chance to speak.

“I wasn’t going to say a word,” said Marcus. “I know you’ve been busy. My own quarters are in a similar state.”

Abby softened at his attempt to make her feel better. “I doubt that somehow.”

“Well, I’m not doing two jobs like you. Are you hungry?”

Abby nodded. “I’m starving. I don’t have any plates or cutlery in here, though.”

Marcus took his boots off and eased himself down onto the floor and indicated she should sit next to him. “I never thought to bring any. Never mind; it’s finger food anyway.”

Abby slipped her own boots off and sat next to Marcus, her back against the cold metal of the wall.

Marcus opened the bag and spread the food in front of them. There were pancakes and a peppery-smelling vegetable stew.

“That’s not finger food, Marcus!”

“It was in some ancient cultures. In Ethiopia, for example. Here, try this.”

He handed her a pancake filled with the stew and Abby took a bite, cupping her hand underneath to catch drips from the sauce. It was delicious, hot and spicy, but not easy to eat in an attractive manner. Marcus tucked into his pancake and didn’t seem to care that it was dripping all over his hand. She watched mesmerised as he finished the pancake and slowly licked the sauce off his fingers one by one. Abby wondered if he was doing it slowly like that on purpose to tease her, because if he was it was definitely working. She felt a warm heat building in her belly that was nothing to do with the hot food.

“Very nice,” he said, turning to look at her and Abby could tell from the look in his eyes that he knew exactly what he was doing.

Marcus was enjoying Abby’s reactions to the food and the way he was eating it. He hadn’t forgotten the cutlery at all. He’d decided as soon as he found out she’d left Medical early that tonight was the night they were going to finish what they’d started a week ago, in whatever way that meant. If it meant a conversation and a thanks but no thanks then so be it, better to know than to spend a lifetime wondering. He wasn’t going to give up without a fight, though and had decided to put his limited and frankly unused seduction techniques to the test. He wasn’t a hundred percent sure but he thought it was working. Her skin was flushed and not just her cheeks but her neck and the tantalising vee of flesh he could see between her breasts.

He watched her self-consciously finish her pancake, cleaning her sticky hands on a tissue. She had a smear of sauce on the side of her mouth and he was sorely tempted to lick it off. Instead he pointed to it. “You’ve got some sauce, just there.” She dabbed at the wrong side so he leaned across and wiped it from the corner, letting his thumb brush across her bottom lip for just a second. Her mouth fell open a little as he did so and it took all his willpower not to kiss her there and then.

He licked the sauce off his thumb and he heard her breath hitch, saw her pupils grow wide making her eyes look huge and black as the night. They were already sitting shoulder to shoulder, their faces turned to each other; she was mere inches away. “Are we going to talk about last week?” he finally asked.

Abby could barely breathe, let alone think, and the last thing she wanted to do was talk. “Is there really anything to talk about?” she said, and cupped his face in her hands, bringing his lips to hers. This time the kiss was raw and passionate. They were hungry for each other and there was no time for politeness or finesse. Marcus tasted of spice and paprika, a smoky heat that brought a warmth to her lips and tongue as she explored his mouth. He entwined his fingers in her hair, his thumbs stroking her temples. Without breaking the kiss Abby swung her leg over him so that she was straddling him. She settled over his cock, feeling it pulse as he grew harder beneath her. His hands snaked up her back, under her top, tracing the hard peaks of her shoulder blades, fingering the notches of her sternum, until he ended at the hard nub of her most recent wound.

He broke the kiss and looked at her. “What’s that?”

“It’s nothing.”

“It doesn’t feel like nothing. Is it…recent?”

Abby knew what he was wondering and she didn’t want to go there, scared that it would break the mood.

“It’s not, from anything, before. It’s. I fell when the second earthquake hit, cut myself on a rock.”

“Let me see, turn around.”

Abby turned round and settled herself in the crook of his legs. She really didn’t want him looking at her ugly scars but it wasn’t as if he wasn’t covered in them too. Both their bodies were a living roadmap of their battles on Earth. There was little point trying to hide them.

Marcus lifted her top and she raised her arms so he could pull it over her head. He bent her forward, brushing her hair to the side so he could see the wound, and ran his fingers over it. “It looks sore, Abby.”

“It’s okay. It’s healing now.”

“Maybe I can help it along. They say the human mouth has healing properties.” Abby was about to give a clever retort when he bent and kissed the wound, pressing his tongue to the delicate flesh and she moaned it felt so good, hot and weirdly arousing. His tongue traced little circles over her back while his hands moved round to her front, caressing her breasts, thumbing her aching nipples until they were stiff. She pressed herself back against him, her head resting against his shoulder. She could feel his cock was fully hard now, pushing insistently against her lower back. His teeth nipped at her neck where it was now exposed to him, leaving her feeling breathless with desire. One of his hands slipped inside her sweats, fingers probing the waistband of her underpants, slowly edging lower to where she was aching for him. The feel of him touching her bare skin, knowing where those fingers were heading and what they would find was making Abby’s heart race and her clit throb. He spread his legs wider so she could spread hers, allowing him better access. She arched back against him when he finally discovered her wetness, his fingertips sliding easily along, parting her lips so he could run a long finger up and down the length of her and round her clit. Abby was close to coming after just a few strokes she was so heated and aroused. He was playing gently with her nipple, rolling the nub between his fingers and the duel sensation was making her pulse with pleasure.

“Do you want me to stop?” Marcus whispered. Abby could barely speak but she managed a hoarse “no” and Marcus increased the pressure on her clit, bringing her to a shuddering orgasm that left her hot all over and weak-limbed. She turned and captured his lips again, drawing him in for a lingering kiss that left them both gasping.

Marcus withdrew his hand reluctantly. He couldn’t quite believe what had just happened even though the evidence was all over his fingers. His cock was throbbing so hard it was painful but for a few moments he didn’t want to leave her mouth because kissing Abby was like drinking mulled wine, rich and spicy, spreading warmth throughout his body.

He wanted more, though, wanted to feel her all around him so he eased her gently onto her back and then pulled his t-shirt off. Her deft fingers undid the buttons on his trousers, easing them and his boxers down in one go so that he sprang free at last. The cool air did nothing to quell the heat in his cock, if anything it made it more sensitive. He felt the tiny hairs all over his body standing up in anticipation. Abby reached between them and stroked him, finding him almost as wet for her as she was for him.

He couldn’t wait any longer, scared that he wouldn’t last more than a few moments if he wasn’t inside her soon. “These have got to come off,” he said, dragging her sweats and her underwear down so she was naked beneath him. She was paler than he’d thought she would be, creamy skin peppered with scars and contusions from her efforts to save him that were yellowing now. He kissed them, working his way up over her stomach to her breastbone and her nipples which were hard and tasted salty when he sucked on them. She wrapped her leg around his back and arched upwards giving him just the right angle to slip inside her. She was tight and hot, still slick from her orgasm and he eased in slowly, getting used to the feel of her clenching around him.

He held himself above her, muscles taut as wires as he thrust slowly in and out, watching her move her body in rhythm with his, her arms around his back, fingernails digging into his skin as she pulled him closer and closer to her. Her dark eyes were liquid, half lidded with arousal as she looked at him. Her long hair was fanned out around her head and she looked so beautiful he thought he might lose his mind.

“Are you okay?” he asked and she smiled and said “I’m more than okay,” and kissed him, wrapping both her legs around his back to urge him on. He realised he’d hit a pleasure point inside her when her breathing deepened and her moans increased. She pushed her pelvis towards him, trying to make him increase his depth and speed so he obliged and she came with a cry, her muscles contracting around him in a way that felt so good his stomach tightened and he came so hard he felt the pleasure waves all the way back to the base of his spine.

He rolled onto his back beside her, completely spent and pleasantly exhausted. Abby tucked herself into his side, her head on his sweaty chest, fingers gently tracing the line of fine hairs on his belly.

“No talking required,” she said and he laughed, pressing a kiss to her head.

“I can see myself not talking with you over and over again in the not too distant future,” he replied.

“I’d like that.”

He felt her shiver, saw goosebumps appear on her arm. “Are you getting cold?”

“I am,” she replied, “but I don’t want to move from here.”

“We’ll have to move. I can’t believe we did this on the floor.”

Abby lifted her head from his chest and looked around. “And we spilled the stew everywhere.”

Marcus looked around and the remains of the stew were indeed smeared across the floor. They must have knocked it over in their passion and not realised.

“Yet another thing for me to clean up,” said Abby with a sigh.

“I’ll sort it out.”

Abby watched as a completely naked Marcus padded around the room, fetching a damp cloth and mopping up the spill. He seemed so at ease with her already it made her stomach knot as she realised he’d probably loved her for a long time, maybe for longer than she had loved him. The thought made her feel a little sad, but she pushed it away to examine at another time. She felt slightly self-conscious sitting naked on the floor so she got up and perched on the edge of her cot instead, wrapping a blanket around her. When Marcus was finished clearing up he came across to the bed and sat next to her.

“How’s your leg holding up?”

Marcus stretched the injured leg out in front of him. It was still painful-looking, a deep purple along the edges of the scar, fading to yellow where the bruising was starting to heal. “I think it held up quite well. It’s probably a good thing it took us a week to ‘talk’ things over. It might have been more of a hindrance otherwise.”

“Then I would have just had to take control,” said Abby.

“Oh yeah?” Marcus liked the thought of take-charge Abby in his bed. It made his tired cock twitch in anticipation.

“Yeah. Do you want to get under here with me?”

Abby stretched out on the bed and offered a side of the blanket to Marcus. There wasn’t much room on her narrow cot but he scooted underneath her so she was resting mostly on him. She pulled the blanket over them and he buried his nose in her hair, smelling rosehip oils mixed with sweat and the scent of arousal which was all over them.

“Do you think we’ll ever see the ocean?”

“Like in your dream? I don’t know. Maybe one day, when there’s no more fighting, or we’re too old to be any use to people and we can just slip away, head off on a road trip.”

“I like the thought of that,” said Marcus, his voice low and sleep-heavy.

“Of what?” Abby raised her head to look at him. His eyes were closed, a flop of dark hair licking the tip of one eyelid.

“Of us getting old together.”

“I like the idea, but I think I’d rather live in the present, because down here you just don’t know what’s around the corner.”

“That would mean living each day like it’s your last.”

“Yes, and seizing every moment, not waiting for things to happen.”

“I like the thought of that more,” said Marcus and he wrapped Abby tightly in his arms as they both drifted into a contented sleep.

The End