Clarke raced past trees, over boulders, down ravines, and through a creek. Heartbeats vibrated through her entire body while panic overthrew her normal logic. Knowing she couldn't get away meant nothing to the instincts shouting for her to keep running. The sharp pains in her side and labored breathing couldn't stop her now. To move was life, to stop was death. The Grounders were faster with their horses circling her until another set of instincts kicked in. They told her to surrender and live to fight or escape another day.

Thrown over the side of a saddle, Clarke passed out from over-stimulation. When she came to, her muscles ached like never before. There was little light, but it looked like she was in a bunker like the one Finn found. Finn who she'd made love to. Finn who had a girlfriend already. Finn who broke her heart to bits and pieces. That, more than aches and pains or being captured, had her eyes misting up. A few deep breathes, and she got herself under control. She couldn't afford to be emotional right now.

It took a while, but she finally pulled herself up to sitting. This gave her a better view of her surroundings and showed that she was not by any means alone. Out of the dozen people, she knew three of them.

Simone'd been in the skybox for over ten years, making her five when she went in. Both her parents had been floated for stealing the materials they used to make a back brace so she could walk. When her parents were being taken away, Simone panicked and stabbed a guard in the thigh, severing the artery there. She'd bled out in less than two minutes and Sim disappeared into the skybox.

Locke had been a friend of Clarke's when they were small, along with Wells. The joke'd been they were the only known set of conjoined triplets. But then he got addicted to painkillers when they were all around twelve. The injury starting it all had been a railing going out, dropping Locke and tearing his left ACL. Since they'd float a person for not handling chronic pain well, he'd turned to morphine. If the Chancellor had been merciful, Locke would've gone for a suit-less spacewalk. Both sweet and sour memories of him reproduced long suppressed heartache.

The one that worried her though was Murphy. His glare felt as though it was trying to turn her to ashes, forcing her gaze away.

Everyone here had some kind of injury, and her drive to help people took over and she began triage.

"What happened to everyone?" she asked no one.

"The Grounders play this violent game of Red Rover. Oh and they play for keepsies." Murphy's snark made her laugh despite the direness of the situation.

Five people were beyond help, acid burn victims. "There was a fog?"

"Toward the end of the battle, yeah. Most of us got away. These poor bastards couldn't walk so they were brought here." His lack of caring seeped through and disgusted her in the familiar way Murphy did. "Don't know why they did that. Usually we kill the hopelessly dying right away."

Their suffering useless, left only one mercy. But that would have to wait, the others needed treated. She used water from a crack in the wall to clean cuts. Fabric torn from the patient's clothes provided bandages, slings, and straps to hold splints in place. Murphy said nothing to her as she cleaned the deep scratches on his face and chest, which suited her fine.

There was one girl who wasn't injured at all. Clarke made sure that she was warm and had plenty to drink, her thin frame worrisome.

With nothing to use to kill the five dying with any expediency, Clarke felt helpless, too overwhelmed to think. Locke didn't even seem aware of his surroundings through the haze of his pain. Her chin trembled as she looked at the five acid burn victims. "I have to, ah, but I have nothing." Clarke sucked in as much air as possible to keep from crying.

"Like this," Murphy said as he grabbed the chin of the dying Grounder closest to him, reached behind their head. "Yu gonplei ste odon." Then pulled his arms in opposing directions. The neck snapped and death was instant. Murphy speaking Grounder surprised Clarke since he'd seemed even more psychotic than when she'd banished him.

Death brought a truce, however unspoken, between her and Murphy. She shook while killing two people. One of them being an old friend. A boy that had been like she imagined a brother being.

Clarke made sure everyone was as comfortable as possible, and as warm as possible too, trying to distance herself from everything. Once more over-stimulated, she needed sleep, but with all the activity, the only place left for her was right next to John Murphy, but she was beyond caring if he killed her in her sleep. With an internal promise to search for ways to escape when she woke up, she rested her head on her arm and curled up as small as she could.

Her dreams were jumbled bits and pieces of the Ark, the bomb shelter, and the drop ship. They created a maze lined with dead bodies and burn victims, suffocating her as she tried to find an exit. Gasping for air and sobbing, Clarke reached out in search of something, someone, anyone to cling to for reassurance that she was okay. The hushing noises and circling arms soothed her back to sleep, folding her in a blanket of sunlight and safety.

Clarke woke up as someone dragged her to her feet, slapped her across the face, and yelled at her in a language she didn't recognize. Thin strong fingers dug into her chin, forcing her to look right. The amber brown eyes boring into her belonged to the uninjured girl from the night before. Clarke recognized that what she thought was frailty was in reality lean muscle. "You know how to heal, let's see if you can injure."

The woman let go, and Clarke tried to get her bearings, but before she could do so, someone was attacking her. The first blow sent her flying backward, hitting the ground so hard the breath left her. A kick to her ribs cracked something, but she still twisted her body to avoid the next attack. Her fingers brushed against something metal. It turned out to be a piece of rebar. She picked it up and swung it around like a sword as she coiled to her feet. A good look at her opponent told her where his blind spots were given the way he moved. A lifetime of training kicked in as she parried left, so he missed again, while she struck him hard in the arm. The burly man grunted but didn't flinch or stop.

Though not entirely like the fencing she learned on the Ark, having a long piece of metal in her hand helped her focus, no matter how unwieldy. Swordplay was the only physical thing Clarke excelled at growing up. Never did she think she'd be using it as anything other than exercise.

With a machete in play now, Clarke was even more grateful for the loose piece of rebar as she blocked a strike aimed at her face. A well timed slap to his hand at the right angle sent his weapon skittering across the ground. Another blow to his already injured arm, followed by one to the back of his knee downed the man. Clarke aimed for his head and came up short when the woman grabbed her wrist, swung her around, and head butted her. Sprawled across the rocky ground, Clarke clambered backward trying to get away grasping for her lost weapon. This new attacker kicked her in the head, leaving her too dizzy to move.

"I'll take care of her, Anya," Murphy said as he picked Clarke off the ground.

Head dangling at the small of his back, the jostling combined with the head trauma nauseated Clarke to the point of throwing up. As if that weren't bad enough, given her position some of it went up her nose. How burned was the perfect metaphor for how her life was going right then.