Chapter 4: Probability Jokes
POV: Alec Morgan
Unity Day preparations buzzed around camp like flies on a corpse—too much activity masking the rot underneath. Three days since Jasper's fever broke, and people were starting to believe we might actually survive this. The naive optimism was painful to watch when I knew exactly what was coming.
Diana Sydney's coup was already in motion on the Ark. The Exodus ship that would bring our families would also bring death when it crashed, taking three hundred souls into the mountainside because of political ambition and structural sabotage. And down here, we were making moonshine and planning a party like teenagers everywhere.
"Wouldn't it be crazy if someone tried to assassinate the Chancellor during the celebration?" I said loudly enough for half the camp to hear, keeping my tone light and joking. "Or if the Ark had technical failures? Just saying, seems like a really exposed moment."
A few people laughed nervously. Unity Day was supposed to be about hope and connection, not paranoia about political violence. But I caught Clarke filing away my words with that sharp intelligence that missed nothing, and Bellamy went rigid beside the fire.
"Good. Someone's listening."
"You're a cheerful drunk," Octavia teased, passing me the current bottle of Monty's latest batch. The moonshine burned my throat like liquid fire, but my enhanced metabolism processed alcohol faster than normal. I'd need twice as much to get properly drunk, which was probably for the best given how much I needed to stay alert.
"Just thinking tactically," I said with a shrug. "Big celebrations make big targets. Basic security thinking."
"Security thinking?" Bellamy's voice was casual, but his eyes were sharp. "Where'd you learn security thinking, farm boy?"
"Careful. Don't reveal too much." I took another sip of moonshine, using the pause to calibrate my response. "Agricultural Station had riots during the food shortages two years ago. Guards talked about crowd control, vulnerable moments, that kind of thing."
It was plausible enough to pass casual scrutiny, but I could see Bellamy filing it away with all the other suspiciously convenient knowledge I'd displayed. The man was paranoid enough to notice patterns, smart enough to draw conclusions, and protective enough to act on them.
"Besides," I continued, "my mom always said optimism without preparation is just wishful thinking."
More maternal wisdom from my fictional botanist mother. The lie was starting to feel worn out, but it still provided useful cover for knowledge that shouldn't exist.
"Your mother sounds like she was a practical woman," Wells observed from across the fire.
"She was." I let real emotion color my voice, thinking about my actual mother who'd died three years before my car accident. Cancer, not radiation exposure. "Would have loved seeing all this." I gestured at the forest around us. "Real plants, real soil, real sunlight."
The group fell quiet for a moment, each of them probably thinking about family members still trapped in the Ark's failing life support systems. Or dead in the culling. Or scheduled to die when the oxygen finally ran out.
If only they knew their families would be joining them soon—some alive, some as corpses raining from the sky.
Monty appeared at my elbow, clutching a metal container that reeked of fermentation and dubious chemistry. "Hey Alec, you mind taking a look at the still? It's making weird noises."
I followed him away from the fire, grateful for something to do with my hands. Monty's distillation setup was impressive for teenage engineering—a collection of salvaged metal, improvised condensation coils, and creative plumbing that turned food waste into something resembling alcohol.
"What kind of noises?" I asked, examining the apparatus.
"Clicking. And the temperature's running too high."
POV: Bellamy
Bellamy watched Alec examine the still with growing suspicion. The kid approached the equipment like he understood it, hands moving with confidence as he traced connections and tested joints. Not the tentative poking of someone guessing, but the systematic inspection of someone who knew what to look for.
"Try loosening this coupling," Alec suggested, pointing to a joint between two metal sections. "Thermal expansion might be causing binding. And this tube here—the angle's creating a pressure point. If you adjust it like this..."
Monty made the changes, and immediately the clicking stopped. The temperature gauge dropped back into acceptable ranges. The whole system ran smoother, more efficiently than it had since he'd built it.
"How did you—" Monty started.
"Lucky guess," Alec said with that self-deprecating grin that was becoming his signature deflection.
Bellamy filed it away with all the other "lucky guesses." The tactical placement during combat that saved Monty from the second spear. The botanical knowledge that saved Jasper's life. The mechanical intuition that improved every piece of equipment he touched.
One lucky guess was coincidence. Two was pattern. Three was something else entirely.
"You seem to have a lot of mechanical knowledge for an agricultural specialist," Bellamy observed.
Alec shrugged. "Farm Station maintained their own equipment. Cross-training was mandatory. Basic mechanical principles aren't that complicated."
Another plausible explanation. Another convenient backstory detail that explained away suspicious competence. Bellamy was starting to recognize the pattern—every question about Alec's knowledge received a reasonable answer that somehow felt inadequate.
But the kid fought for them. Took risks to keep people alive. Deflected attention rather than seeking it. If he was hiding something, his actions suggested good intentions rather than malicious ones.
Still, people who hid things eventually got found out. And when they did, the revelation usually came at the worst possible moment.
"Just remember," Bellamy said quietly, moving closer so his words wouldn't carry. "Secrets have a way of surfacing when you least expect them."
Alec met his eyes steadily. "I'm not hiding anything dangerous. Just trying to keep my head down and help where I can."
"Good," Bellamy said. "Because if that changes, we're going to have a problem."
POV: Alec Morgan
Bellamy's warning sat heavy in my chest as I returned to the fire. The man was getting suspicious, asking the right questions, noticing too many patterns. I needed to be more careful about how I used my knowledge—or find ways to make my competence seem less supernatural.
The problem was that every crisis forced impossible choices. Let people suffer when I could help, or reveal capabilities that would mark me as something other than human. So far I'd managed to thread the needle, but each incident left more witnesses, more questions, more eyes watching for the next slip.
As if summoned by my paranoia, movement flickered in the tree line beyond the camp's perimeter. Not the random motion of wildlife, but the deliberate positioning of something intelligent. Something watching.
My combat instincts prickled with warning signals, a developing sixth sense that felt like electricity running along my nerves. The sensation was still new, still unpredictable, but when it activated, it meant immediate danger.
I stood casually, stretching like I'd been sitting too long, and scanned the forest without making it obvious. There—a shadow that didn't match the surrounding trees. Human height and build, but moving with a fluidity that suggested exceptional physical conditioning.
Lincoln. Had to be. The Grounder scout who'd been tracking us since the river crossing, probably assessing our threat level and tactical capabilities. In the show, he'd eventually become an ally, but right now he was a weapon pointed at people I was starting to care about.
The warning sensation intensified, and suddenly I could see it—a flash of movement, an arm drawing back, trajectory calculations playing across my vision like heads-up display graphics. A knife, spinning end over end, aimed directly at Clarke's back as she bent over the map table.
Time stretched elastic. I could see the weapon's path with crystal clarity, could predict exactly where it would hit, but my body wasn't trained enough to react with superhuman speed. Instead, I stumbled forward like someone who'd had too much to drink, arms windmilling for balance, and crashed into Clarke just as the knife whistled through the space where her spine had been.
We went down in a tangle of limbs and surprised curses. The blade buried itself in a tree trunk with a solid thunk, vibrating like a tuning fork.
"What the hell—" Clarke started.
"I tripped," I said quickly, rolling off her and onto my feet. "Sorry, I think Monty's moonshine is stronger than—"
The words died in my throat as everyone stared at the knife embedded in the tree. Six inches of polished metal that would have punched through Clarke's ribs and into her heart if she'd been standing there two seconds longer.
"Grounders," Bellamy breathed, drawing his weapon and scanning the tree line.
But Lincoln was already gone, melted back into the forest like smoke. My combat prediction couldn't track him anymore—the immediate threat was over, leaving only the aftermath and questions I couldn't answer.
"How did you—" Clarke stared at me with wide eyes. "You moved before it was thrown."
"Shit. Shit. How do I explain this?"
"I saw something," I said lamely. "Movement in the trees. Thought it might be dangerous."
"You saw a knife being thrown from a hundred yards away in the dark?" Wells' voice held sharp skepticism.
"I saw movement. Figured it was better to be paranoid than dead."
Bellamy was studying me with that predatory intensity again. "You've got good reflexes for someone who was drunk five minutes ago."
"Fear sobers you up fast."
More deflection, more convenient explanations. But this time the evidence was harder to dismiss. A throwing knife that would have killed Clarke without my intervention. Movement I shouldn't have been able to see. Timing that was too perfect to be coincidence.
I was running out of ways to hide what I was.
A sound like thunder rolled across the sky—engines burning bright against the star field as something descended from orbit. The noise grew louder, more focused, until a trail of fire streaked overhead and impacted in the forest less than a mile away.
A drop pod. Raven's arrival, right on schedule.
"That came from the Ark," Finn said, voice tight with hope and fear.
"Could be supplies," Wells suggested.
"Or reinforcements," Bellamy added grimly.
I watched the orange glow fade beyond the trees and felt the weight of accumulating complications. Raven Reyes, genius mechanic and walking question mark, about to join our little group. Someone else to hide my abilities from, someone else who'd notice patterns and demand explanations.
And somewhere in the darkness, Lincoln watched and planned, deciding whether we were threats to be eliminated or assets to be preserved.
The dominos were falling faster now, events accelerating toward crisis points I couldn't prevent without revealing everything. Soon I'd have to choose between maintaining my cover and keeping people alive.
The knife in the tree told me that choice was coming sooner than I'd hoped.