Homecoming

CHAPTER 22: Clarke

Clarke had been spending every free minute in the radio room, and today was no different. After their strategy meeting with Max, they had gone their separate ways to prepare for battle. Eric had told them that Rhodes was preparing his guards to attack just before dawn the next morning. That was eight hours from now.

They had all agreed it was best to wait for the Colonists to come to Mount Weather, where the Earthborns would have the advantage. They had their solid bunker, protected by the rock formations surrounding them on all sides. They also had intimate knowledge of the terrain, which Rhodes and his men did not. A group of Earthborns had already been dispatched into the woods, climbing high into the trees where they would be invisible to anyone on the ground. As soon as the advancing Colonists passed below them, the Earthborn fighters would drop down from the trees. The Vice Chancellor and his men would be trapped between the Earthborns outside and the ones waiting to attack from inside Mount Weather.

It was a shaky plan, at best, but it was all they had. They would have to rely on the element of surprise—and a lot of luck. While the others paced the hallways anxiously, waiting for the signal to get in position, Clarke sought the solace of the radio room. She could almost feel her parents there, and that gave her comfort—and hope.

The quiet also gave her a chance to try and process everything Wells had told her. Never in her wildest dreams, or most unsettling nightmares, would she have imagined Wells was capable of such a thing. He endangered the lives of every single person on the Colony, just to give her a fighting chance of seeing her eighteenth birthday. A wave of nausea crashed over her, nearly bringing Clarke to her knees. All those people—practically everyone she’d ever known—dead, because of her. Because of what Wells had done to save her. But then, God knew she was in no position to judge him. When Clarke had discovered that her parents were conducting radiation trials on unregistered children from the care center, she’d done nothing to stop them. More than anyone, Clarke knew what it was like to put the people you loved ahead of everything else. She’d spent so much of her life seeing the world as black-and-white, separating right from wrong as confidently as she sorted plant cells from animal cells during a biology exam. But the past year had been a brutal crash course in moral relativity.

Clarke fiddled with the dials and switches as these thoughts ran through her head. A loud, steady hiss filled the room, bouncing off the stone walls. She tried a new combination, and the hiss deepened in tone. Then a high-pitched whine kicked in. She sat forward in her chair. That was a sound she hadn’t heard before. Gently, Clarke nudged the dial a hair further. The whine dropped out, and for a beat, there was just the sound of static. Clarke’s heart sank.

Then she heard something deep in the hiss. It was so faint, nothing more than a whisper into the wind. It was unidentifiable, yet somehow oddly familiar at the same time. The sound grew louder, as if it were moving toward her. Clarke tilted her head toward the speaker, straining to listen. She wasn’t sure what she had heard. Could it have been…? She shook her head. She was probably imagining things. Was her desperation making her go nuts?

But the sound grew louder and clearer—and it was definitely a voice. She wasn’t making this up. Goose bumps sprinkled her skin, and her heart began to pound in her chest. Clarke knew that voice.

It was her mom.

The words grew to full volume. “Radio check,” her mom said in a neutral tone, as if she’d spoken those words a thousand times before. “Radio check. Alpha X-ray radio check.”

Clarke closed her eyes and let her mother’s voice wash over her, filling her with the most wonderful mix of relief and joy, like the sound of a heartbeat after a patient had gone into cardiac arrest. Her hands shook as she reached for the button that transmitted her voice across the airwaves.

“Mom?” Clarke called out, trembling. “Is—is that you?”

There was a long pause, and Clarke held her breath until her chest began to hurt.

“Clarke? Clarke?” There was no question: It was her mom. Then Clarke heard a man’s voice calling out in the background. Her dad. It was true. They were alive. “Clarke, where are you?” her mom asked across the frequencies, with equal parts amazement and disbelief. “Are you on Earth?”

“Yes… I’m here. I’m—” A sob tore its way out of her throat as tears began to stream down her face.

“Clarke, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

She tried to tell her mother that she was fine, but nothing came out of her mouth except more sobs. Clarke released all the tears she’d been too numb to shed during her long, lonely months in Confinement when she’d believed she was truly alone in the universe. Her heart was so full of joy, her happiness was almost an ache, yet she couldn’t stop crying.

“Clarke, oh God. What’s going on? Where are you?”

She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and tried to take a breath. “I’m fine. I just can’t believe I’m talking to you. They told me they floated you. I—I thought you were dead!” She thought of all the one-sided conversations she’d had with her parents over the past year and a half, imagining what they’d say when she told them about her trial, about Wells, and, most of all, about the wonders of Earth. For eighteen months, everything she’d thought, everything she’d told them, every prayer and every plea had been met with nothing but suffocating silence. And now the silence had lifted, releasing a weight she hadn’t realized had been chained to her heart.

“It’s okay, Clarke. We’re here. We’re alive. Where are you now?” Her father’s voice was so solid, so reassuring.

“I’m in Mount Weather,” she said, grinning as she wiped her nose on her sleeve. “Where are you?”

“Oh, Cl—” her mom began, but her words were cut off sharply as the high whine returned.

“No!” Clarke shouted. “No, no, no!” She swiped frantically at the dials, but she couldn’t find the right frequency again. Her tears of joy turned to frustration as anxiety welled up in her chest. It felt like losing them all over again. “Damn it,” she cried, smacking her hand against the console. She had to get the signal back.

Before she had a chance to try anything else, the door burst open, and a few of Max’s men ran into the room.

“Clarke,” one of them said. “They’re here. Let’s go.”

“But it’s too early,” she said, startled. “How did they get here so fast?”

“We don’t know, but we need to move into position.”

Her head swam as she tried to process what this meant. Rhodes and his guards were preparing to attack Mount Weather. “But we’re not ready—”

“We have to be ready,” the man said. “Time to move.”

Clarke jumped from her seat and wiped tears from her face, grateful that everyone else would be too preoccupied to ask why she was crying. Without a backward glance at the flashing lights and endless hiss and crackle of the radio, she ran from the room, ready to arm herself for battle.