Chapter 3: Medicine Man
POV: Alec Morgan
Jasper's screams cut through the morning air like broken glass, each cry driving ice deeper into my chest. Three days since the spearing at the river, and the infection was winning. I could smell it from across camp—the sweet, rotten stench of flesh dying while the body still lived.
Clarke knelt beside the makeshift stretcher we'd rigged inside the dropship, her hands steady despite the exhaustion carved into her face. She'd been fighting for Jasper's life with nothing but basic first aid supplies and desperate improvisation. Alcohol for disinfectant. Torn cloth for bandages. Hope for anesthetic.
It wasn't enough.
"Temperature's spiking again," she reported to the small crowd gathered around her. Monty hovered closest, his face gray with worry and sleepless vigil. "One-oh-four-point-six. If it hits one-oh-six..."
She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't need to.
I stood in the doorway, my survival knowledge screaming with solutions while my cover story held me prisoner. I knew exactly what Jasper needed—knew three different types of natural antibiotics that grew within a mile of here, knew how to prepare them, knew the precise dosages that would save his life without killing him.
But Alec Morgan, farm kid from Agricultural Station, shouldn't know any of that.
"There has to be something," Monty said, his voice cracking. "Some plant, some—"
"I've tried everything I can think of," Clarke snapped, then immediately softened her tone. "I'm sorry. I just... I don't know what else to do."
Jasper's fever-bright eyes found mine through the crowd, unfocused but desperate. In the show, he'd survived this infection, but barely. The script had been kind to him, had provided convenient plot armor and dramatic last-minute saves. Here, now, with real consequences and real bacteria eating through his bloodstream, that armor was nowhere to be found.
I could let canon run its course. Trust that somehow, miraculously, he'd pull through without my interference.
Or I could save him and risk everything.
"My mom mentioned something once," I heard myself saying, the words tumbling out before I could stop them. "About seaweed. Marine algae with antibiotic properties."
Clarke's head snapped up, medical desperation overriding suspicion. "What kind of seaweed?"
"Fuck. Fuck. Think, you idiot." I scrambled for a way to describe brown kelp without sounding like I'd memorized a field guide. "Uh, brown stuff. Slimy. She said it had to be fresh, not dried out. Something about the, uh, the active compounds breaking down in air?"
"Seaweed?" Wells stepped closer, his expression skeptical. "We're nowhere near an ocean."
"Rivers," I said quickly. "Fast-moving water. It grows on rocks where there's current and good oxygenation." The knowledge poured out of me, too detailed, too specific. I tried to dial it back. "At least, that's what she said. I never actually saw it work."
Clarke was already moving, grabbing supplies. "Where? How far?"
"The river where we—where Jasper got hurt. Maybe half a mile upstream from the crossing." I'd seen it during our failed Mount Weather expedition, catalogued it automatically along with dozens of other useful species. "But I'm not sure it's the right type. Mom's descriptions were kind of vague."
"It's worth trying," Clarke said grimly. "Wells, gather a small team. Finn, Octavia—"
"I should come too," I interrupted. "In case I remember anything else."
Wells studied me with those sharp politician's eyes. "A lot of things your mother taught you, apparently."
"She was thorough," I said, meeting his gaze while my heart hammered against my ribs. "Agricultural Station took botany seriously."
An hour later, I was knee-deep in river water, the current tugging at my legs while I searched for the distinctive brown fronds I'd memorized from survival manuals. The water was shockingly cold, spring-fed from mountain snowpack, and my fingers were already going numb.
"There," I pointed to a cluster of kelp attached to a submerged boulder. "That looks right. Brown coloration, broad leaves, growing in fast current."
Clarke waded over, her medical bag slung across one shoulder. "How much do we need?"
"Maybe two handfuls? Fresh as possible." I reached for the nearest fronds, then hesitated. "We should be careful not to damage the root system. Mom always said to harvest sustainably."
"Your mother said a lot of useful things," Wells observed from the bank.
"She was smart," I replied, letting real emotion color my voice. Someone's mother had been smart, even if it wasn't technically mine. "Died trying to help people during the food shortage."
I grasped the kelp firmly and pulled, feeling it tear free from the rock. The stuff was slimier than I'd expected, coating my hands in mucus that smelled like fish and mineral water. As I reached for a second handful, my foot slipped on the algae-covered stones.
Time stretched elastic as I fell. My left arm shot out to catch myself, and I felt the sharp edge of a broken bottle slice deep across my forearm. The water around me bloomed red immediately—not the bright red of a surface cut, but the dark, pulsing red that meant serious damage.
"Alec!" Clarke was moving before I'd even registered the pain, splashing through the current toward me.
I looked down at my arm and felt my stomach drop. The cut was deep enough to expose bone, running from wrist to elbow in a clean line. Blood poured from it in steady pulses, mixing with river water and washing away downstream.
"Oh God," I gasped, more from shock than pain. "That's—that's really deep."
"Don't look at it," Clarke commanded, reaching me just as I struggled to stand. "Keep it elevated. We need to get pressure on this immediately."
But even as she spoke, I could feel something happening. The familiar warmth spreading through my arm, the tingling sensation that meant my regeneration was kicking into overdrive. The bleeding was already slowing, edges of the wound drawing together like they had a mind of their own.
Clarke grabbed my arm to examine the damage, then froze. I watched her face transform as she stared at the cut that should have been spurting blood but was instead merely oozing. The edges that had been gaping wide seconds ago were already beginning to close.
"Shit. Shit, shit, shit."
"That's..." She blinked hard, shaking her head. "That's not possible."
"What?" I pulled my arm back, angling it so she couldn't see the wound clearly. "It's not that bad, right? Probably looks worse than it is with all the water."
"No, I saw—" She reached for me again. "Let me look at it properly."
"It's fine," I insisted, backing away through the current. "Just a scratch. All this red water's making it seem worse."
But Clarke's medical training wouldn't be fooled by misdirection. She'd seen the bone, seen the arterial bleeding, seen tissue that should have required immediate surgery. When she looked at my arm now, she'd see pink scar tissue where minutes ago there had been a gaping wound.
"Alec, stop moving and let me examine you," she said in her doctor voice, the one that brooked no argument.
I had seconds to make a choice. Let her see the impossible healing and try to explain it away, or create a distraction big enough to make her forget what she'd witnessed.
"The kelp!" I said suddenly, pointing at the plants floating away downstream. "We're losing it!"
Wells splashed into the water after the drifting fronds, and Clarke's attention split between medical emergency and mission objective. In that moment of distraction, I pressed my arm against my side, using my body to hide the evidence of regeneration that shouldn't exist.
"We got most of it," Wells called, holding up a dripping mass of brown kelp. "Is this enough?"
"Should be," I said, wading toward shore while keeping my supposedly injured arm out of sight. "We need to get back to Jasper quickly. This stuff loses potency fast once it's out of water."
Clarke followed reluctantly, but I could feel her eyes boring into my back. She'd seen something impossible, and her logical mind was working overtime trying to rationalize it. Maybe the cut hadn't been as deep as she'd thought. Maybe the blood in the water had made it look worse. Maybe exhaustion and stress were affecting her perception.
Maybe. But Clarke Griffin was too smart to doubt herself for long.
POV: Clarke
The walk back to camp felt like a fever dream. Clarke's mind kept cycling through what she'd seen at the river—the clean cut exposing bone, the arterial bleeding that should have killed him in minutes, then somehow, impossibly, a wound that was barely bleeding by the time they'd gathered the kelp.
Medical training warred with physical evidence. Deep lacerations didn't close themselves. Severed arteries didn't spontaneously repair. People didn't heal from life-threatening injuries in the time it took to collect plants.
But she'd seen what she'd seen.
Alec walked ahead of her, cradling his left arm against his body in a way that suggested pain but not the agony that should accompany a wound requiring immediate surgical intervention. His movements were too fluid, too coordinated for someone who'd just lost significant blood volume.
"How's the arm?" she called.
"Stings a bit," he replied without turning around. "But not too bad. Think I'll live."
The casual dismissal of what should have been a medical emergency made her stomach twist. Either she'd completely misread the severity of his injury—which seemed unlikely given her training—or something was fundamentally wrong with her understanding of the situation.
Back at the dropship, Jasper's condition had deteriorated further. His skin was waxy pale, lips cracked from dehydration, breathing shallow and rapid. Monty sat beside him, gripping his friend's hand like physical contact could somehow transfer health between them.
"Did you find it?" Monty asked desperately.
"We found something," Clarke said, accepting the kelp from Wells. "Alec thinks it might have antibiotic properties."
"Might?" Bellamy had appeared in the doorway, drawn by the commotion.
"I'm not a doctor," Alec said quickly. "Just remembering things my mom mentioned. Could be completely wrong."
Clarke examined the kelp, noting its cellular structure, the mucous coating, the way it maintained flexibility even out of water. Her botanical knowledge was limited, but she recognized several characteristics that suggested pharmaceutical potential. The question was whether Alec's "memory" was reliable enough to risk Jasper's life on.
"We need to prepare this properly," she decided. "Extract the active compounds without destroying them."
"Boiling?" Wells suggested.
"No," Alec said immediately, then caught himself. "I mean, Mom always said heat broke down the good stuff. Something about protein structures? She used to make cold preparations, like a tea that was never heated."
Again, suspiciously specific knowledge from someone whose mother had supposedly mentioned it casually. Clarke filed the observation away while focusing on Jasper's immediate needs.
They spent the next hour creating a cold extraction, grinding the kelp with clean rocks and straining the resulting liquid through cloth. The process yielded about two cups of murky green fluid that smelled like low tide and tasted, according to Alec's cautious sip, "like the ocean had a bad day."
"How much?" Clarke asked, preparing to administer the dose.
"Start small," Alec advised. "Maybe half a cup? See how he responds?"
Clarke nodded, then paused. "How do you know the dosage?"
The question hung in the air between them. Alec's face went through several expressions—surprise, calculation, then resignation.
"I don't," he admitted. "Just seems logical to start conservatively."
It was a reasonable answer. Too reasonable for someone who'd been providing suspiciously detailed botanical information all afternoon.
They gave Jasper the kelp extract in small sips, his unconscious body accepting the liquid reflexively. Then came the wait—the agonizing period where they could only monitor his vital signs and hope that desperate improvisation would somehow prove more effective than medical science.
Two hours later, Jasper's fever broke.
The change was dramatic and undeniable. Color returned to his skin. His breathing deepened. The infected wound around the spear entry point, which had been angry red with purulent discharge, began to look less inflamed.
"It's working," Monty breathed, tears streaming down his face.
Clarke checked Jasper's pulse, his temperature, his pupil response. All improving. The kelp extract had somehow provided exactly the antibiotic intervention his body needed to begin fighting off the infection.
Which meant Alec's "vague memory" had been precise enough to save a life.
She looked across the dropship to where Alec sat slumped against the wall, exhaustion written across his features. His left arm was still pressed against his side, but when he shifted position, she caught a glimpse of unmarked skin where hours ago she could have sworn she'd seen exposed bone.
"What aren't you telling us?" she thought, studying his face for tells.
But Alec's expression revealed nothing except relief that Jasper was improving and wariness about the attention his botanical knowledge had attracted.
Later, after Jasper's breathing had stabilized and Monty had finally agreed to get some sleep, Clarke found herself alone with questions that had no rational answers.
Either she'd made a critical error in assessing Alec's injury—which would call into question her competence as a medical practitioner—or Farm Station's agricultural program had somehow produced teenagers with encyclopedic knowledge of advanced botany and healing capabilities that defied human biology.
Neither explanation satisfied her, but one was significantly more disturbing than the other.