Aleksander stood beside Clarke near the base of the dropship ramp, quietly observing as she dragged a piece of charcoal across the weathered surface of her map. A heavy, uneven footstep broke his focus. He turned to see Wells limping toward them, heavily favoring his right leg.
Aleksander's eyes immediately tracked the injury. "What happened to the leg?"
Wells let out a frustrated sigh, wiping a streak of soot from his forehead. "Finn. He landed on me when the retrorockets fired and gravity hit. Pretty sure it's twisted."
Aleksander knew with a simple touch and a brief channeling of energy, he could knit the sprained tissue and inflamed tendons back together in a matter of seconds. But he ruthlessly suppressed the instinct, flashing volatile magic in broad daylight, surrounded by a hundred unpredictable, panicked delinquents, was a quick way to get himself hunted. Tonight, he decided. When they're all asleep.
"We got problems," Wells continued, his tone grim. "The communications system is dead. I went to the roof. A dozen panels are missing. Heat fried the wires."
Clarke didn't look up from her map. "Well, all that matters right now is getting to Mount Weather. See? Look." She pointed firmly at a marked peak on the paper. "This is us. This is where we need to get to if we want to survive."
Wells looked at the map, a hint of old familiarity softening his features. "Where'd you learn to do that? Your father."
"Ah, cool, a map."
Jasper swaggered into their small circle, leaning in way too close to Clarke with a lopsided grin. "They got a bar in this town? I'll buy you a beer."
"You mind?" Wells snapped, shoving Jasper back by the shoulder.
"Whoa," Jasper stumbled, holding his hands up.
Before the tension could dissipate, a sharp, aggressive voice cut through the air. "Hey, hey, hey, hands off of him." Murphy stalked forward with his group of thugs, stepping protectively in front of Jasper. "He's with us."
Wells held his ground, though his bad leg made him sway slightly. "Relax. We're just trying to figure out where we are."
"We're on the ground," Bellamy announced loudly, walking down the ramp with Octavia right behind him. He rested a hand casually on the assault rifle slung across his chest. "That not good enough for you?"
"We need to find Mount Weather," Wells argued, looking around at the gathering crowd. "You heard my father's message. That has to be our first priority."
Octavia scoffed, crossing her arms. "Screw your father. What, you think you're in charge here, you and your little Princess?"
Clarke stepped up, desperately trying to get the swelling crowd to listen. She pointed toward the jagged peak in the distance. "We are on the wrong mountain. Mount Weather is that way. If we don't get to that bunker, we are all going to starve."
Bellamy smirked, playing effortlessly to the captive audience of delinquents. "Got a better idea. You go find it for us. Let the privileged do the hard work for a change. The rest of us are staying right here."
The crowd erupted into cheers, the anti-Ark sentiment roaring to life.
Eager to impress the guy with the gun, Murphy stepped right up into Clarke's personal space, a nasty sneer twisting his face. "You hear that, princess? Why don't you and the Chancellor's boy take a hike? Leave the real world to us." Without warning, Murphy turned and shoved Wells hard in the chest, sending the injured boy stumbling backward into the dirt.
Before Murphy could even pull his hands back to laugh, Aleksander moved.
He didn't step. He didn't lunge. He simply glided, covering the distance with a terrifying, predatory speed that the human eye almost couldn't track. In a fraction of a second, he was wedged directly between Clarke and Murphy, an immovable wall of quiet, lethal intent.
"Don't touch him," Aleksander said, his voice completely flat.
Murphy scoffed, looking Aleksander up and down with dismissive arrogance. "Or what, pretty boy? You gonna—"
Murphy raised a hand, fully intending to shove Aleksander into the dirt right next to Wells.
Aleksander simply caught Murphy's wrist in mid-air. He didn't look angry; his expression was entirely, chillingly dead. Slowly, deliberately, Aleksander began to squeeze. The crushing, unyielding grip of a Dark Fey felt like a hydraulic industrial vise clamping down on human bone.
Murphy's smirk instantly vanished. A sharp, breathless gasp tore from his throat, his knees buckling as the bones in his wrist began to audibly grind together under the immense pressure. He dropped to his knees in the dirt, completely immobilized, trapped in a grip he couldn't even begin to break.
Looking down at the groveling boy, Aleksander's voice barely rose above a whisper, yet it carried clearly across the suddenly dead-silent camp. "Do I look like a princess to you, John? Keep your hands to yourself, or you won't have them much longer."
Aleksander released him. Murphy scrambled backward in the dirt like a kicked dog, cradling his throbbing wrist against his chest, his face pale with agony and shock.
Bellamy's bravado faltered. Seeing his newly minted enforcer dropped so effortlessly triggered a primal panic. He instinctively dropped his hand to the heavy guard's pistol strapped to his hip, taking a half-step forward.
"Hey!" Bellamy barked, trying to sound authoritative. "Back off, Alpha Station. You don't give the orders down here."
Aleksander turned his cold gaze onto Bellamy. He didn't even look at the gun. He looked right through the older boy, his dark eyes practically glowing with an unseen, emerald fire. "And you do? Because you stole a uniform and a piece of metal? That's not leadership, Bellamy. That's a costume."
Bellamy's jaw clenched tight. "We're not marching through a radioactive forest for you."
"No," Aleksander replied smoothly. "You're going to sit in a metal box and wait to die of thirst while patting yourself on the back for being 'free.' There is a bunker out there with enough food to keep these kids alive, and your grand strategy is a sit-in?"
Aleksander took one slow, deliberate step toward Bellamy. Despite being entirely unarmed, the sheer, oppressive weight of Aleksander's presence made Bellamy's hand visibly twitch on his holster. The entire camp held its collective breath.
"Clarke is going to Mount Weather to save your lives," Aleksander stated, his tone carrying an absolute, unshakeable finality. "I'm going with her. You can either sit here in the mud and play king of the ashes, or you can actually do something useful. But if I come back and find out you've touched our supplies—or my friend—that gun won't save you."
The absolute silence stretched for five long, suffocating seconds before the first whisper finally broke it.
Then came another. A sudden, nervous ripple swept through the crowd of delinquents as they stared at the boy who had just brought John Murphy to his knees with a single hand. The initial shock was wearing off, replaced by a sudden spark of recognition.
"Wait... I know him," a boy muttered from the middle of the pack, craning his neck. "That's Stark. Aleksander Stark."
"The Alpha Station kid?" another whispered back, his voice carrying in the tense air. "The prodigy?"
"What the hell is a high-council genius doing on the dropship? I thought he was untouchable."
A girl standing near the front of the crowd swallowed hard, staring wide-eyed at Aleksander. "He hacked the Ark's primary mainframe. Triggered a level-four security breach and locked out the entire command deck."
"How the hell did he get caught doing that?" someone scoffed.
"He didn't get caught, he let them see it," the girl replied, her voice trembling slightly. "My father was on guard rotation that day.
He said Stark bypassed the hardest firewalls on the station right in front of the detail. Didn't even try to run. When they drew their shock batons and asked him why he did it..." She paused, looking at Aleksander as if he were an unexploded bomb. "He looked right at them and said he was bored."
The murmurs flared into loud, incredulous chatter. The dynamic in the camp shifted instantly.
Bellamy's grip on his pistol loosened just a fraction, his dark eyes narrowing as he rapidly re-evaluated the boy standing in front of him. This wasn't just some pampered Alpha Station elite who didn't know how the real world worked. This was a kid who could dismantle the Ark's most complex systems as a cure for a lazy afternoon. To Bellamy, that made Aleksander incredibly dangerous, wildly unpredictable, and an absolute threat to the fragile control he was trying to establish.
Aleksander didn't bother confirming or denying the rumors spreading through the crowd. He let them believe whatever they wanted. Let them think he was a reckless, arrogant hacker with a death wish; it was the perfect, mundane cover story for a Dark Fey hiding a Phoenix soul.
He held Bellamy's gaze for one second longer, making sure the older boy understood exactly where the line was drawn. Then, with a chilling lack of concern, Aleksander simply turned his back on the guy with the gun—the ultimate, unspoken display of disrespect.
He walked back over to Clarke, who was watching him with a mix of awe and lingering adrenaline.
"We're wasting daylight," Aleksander said smoothly, his tone conversational, as if he hadn't just humiliated the camp's two biggest bullies. He gestured toward the distant, jagged peak on her map. "Who's coming to Mount Weather?"