Rebellion (The 100 #4)(47)

She pulled a dagger out of a pocket in her long, flowing skirts. It glinted dangerously in the low light of the room. Wells held his breath, heart racing, as Soren ran its blade along the inside of Wells’s arm, then sliced through the ropes binding him.

Wells let out a long sigh of relief, rotating his ankles and wrists until the feeling returned to them in sharp prickles. Pocketing her dagger, Soren stood.

“The others will require more, of course,” she went on. “My Protectors.” Soren pressed her hand to her heart, smiling indulgently, like she was talking about small children. “Our community’s very existence requires our men to be brutes. It’s what they know, and it’s what they respect. If you want to join our community and be accepted by them, they’re going to need a brutal kind of proof from you. It’s the only way to get them to trust you.”

Wells felt his breath stilling, icy in his chest.

“Take this young man out to the forest and kill him,” she ordered, her voice light as ever. “You can make it as quick or as drawn out as you like, but do it well outside our sacred walls, please. We don’t need any more blood spilled here today.”

No. The word tore through Wells as hatred and revulsion battled for dominance. This was where it ended. They had to get out of here. Now. A second wave of nausea crashed over him as the implications of Soren’s words sank in. What did she mean by more blood? His mind raced back to that mention she’d made of an unexpected visitor. Now he prayed with every fiber of his being that it hadn’t been one of his friends.

“Oak will accompany you as a witness to your obedient service.” Soren opened the door and waved Oak over, then glided away without another look back.

Oak filled the doorframe, two guns clutched in his ropy hands. He trained them on Graham. Graham stood shakily and walked out the door, like one of the Earthborns’ sheep being herded to its pasture.

Graham glanced over at Wells, but Wells couldn’t read any expression through his swollen eyes and bruised jaw.

The sky was starting to darken toward sunset. They walked in silence out of the small front entrance to the Stone, picking their way through the courtyard, into the forest beyond. As they reached the line of trees, Wells swore he could see something strange out of the corner of his eye, a bright flame moving westward fast, but he didn’t dare turn for fear of giving Oak an excuse to pull the trigger.

Every time Wells thought they might stop—this had to have been far enough—they would keep going, dread gripping him tighter and tighter with every step.

Finally, Oak barked, “Here,” and Graham and Wells stopped walking.

Wells turned slowly, arms high, then winced as Oak shoved one of the guns across his chest. Oak stared at him expectantly, and Wells grasped for a way to buy time. He’d find a way out of this nightmare. He had to.

“Can I—can I have a moment alone with Graham to say good-bye?”

Oak’s eyes softened slightly. “Fine, but I’ll be right over there if you need me.” He pointed to the perimeter of the Stone, then turned to walk away.

Wells held his breath, his pulse stilling to a cold, steady beat. What could he do? He could either kill Graham, or refuse and be killed himself, or kill Oak. There wasn’t an option. He lifted the barrel of the gun and trained it at Oak’s retreating back. He closed one eye, taking aim, his finger on the trigger and—

Two bound hands pulled the barrel down again.

Wells gasped, turning to Graham, whispering, “What are you doing?” He wrestled the rifle free. “We’ll shoot him and we’ll run.”

Graham smiled bleakly. His eyes were so swollen with bruises that Wells could barely see his eyes. “You really think it’s that simple? I can barely walk after what they did to me. How are we going to get away? They’d come after us, and they’d kill us both. I’m a dead man either way. But you can get back in there and help our people. And if you can bring these bastards down in the process, so much the better.”

Wells wiped sweat from his forehead. “What are you saying?”

“You know what I’m saying, Jaha, don’t be obtuse.”

“There’s another way—” Wells’s breaths came short, frantic. “I’ll fire at the tree. Give you a chance to run, say I missed.”

“They’ll kill you for missing.”

“I’ll dig a hole and say I buried you, I’ll—”

“They’ll want to see a body, Wells, think!” Graham’s whisper rose into a shout. He sucked his voice back in, shaking his head, his eyes growing distant. “All those things you said in there…”

Wells’s mouth went dry, though he kept his gun trained on Graham so Oak wouldn’t get suspicious. “Graham. I didn’t—”

“They were true.” His eyes rose to meet Wells’s, wide and clear. “I am not a good person. I’m not. Never have been, not for my entire life. But you are.” Graham snorted. “I think it’s what’s always bugged me the most about you.”

“I…” Wells’s head slumped. Graham was wrong—it had been a very long time since he’d considered himself a good person by any definition of the word. But this, what they were asking him to do, was a new level of monstrous. “I won’t do this. I can’t.”