Chapter 7: Bridge Politics - Part 2
POV: Alec Morgan
Eight seconds.
Lincoln stood on the far side of the bridge, his dark eyes calculating as he assessed our small group. Clarke stepped forward with diplomatic determination, Wells flanking her with political caution. Finn tried to look heroic. Octavia bounced on her toes with nervous energy, positioning herself near the bridge's center.
Seven seconds.
My combat prediction painted the scene in crystalline detail—trajectory paths for shrapnel, blast radius calculations, probability matrices for survival based on positioning. The explosion would come from directly beneath the bridge's center span, timed for maximum casualties when we were clustered together in false security.
Six seconds.
"We want peace," Clarke called across the water, her voice carrying the authority she'd inherited from her mother. "We don't want to fight."
Lincoln nodded slowly, his expression unreadable. "Peace requires trust," he replied in accented English. "Trust requires—"
Five seconds.
The combat prediction exploded into my consciousness like a camera flash, showing me exactly where the blast would originate, exactly how the wooden planks would splinter into deadly projectiles, exactly which angles would send shrapnel through Octavia's spine if she remained where she stood.
Four seconds.
"Move. Move now. Save her."
Three seconds.
Time dilated as adrenaline flooded my system. I could see every detail with supernatural clarity—the grain in the wooden planks, the droplets of mist rising from the stream, the way Octavia's dark hair caught the sunlight as she leaned forward with curiosity rather than caution.
Two seconds.
My body moved without conscious thought, enhanced reflexes triggering in response to predicted threat. I launched myself sideways toward Octavia, arms extended to tackle her away from the blast center. The world moved like honey, every microsecond stretched elastic as physics bent around my desperate need to reach her in time.
One second.
Lincoln's eyes widened as he saw me moving, his warrior instincts recognizing action that preceded any visible threat. Clarke turned, confusion flashing across her face as she tried to understand why I was suddenly airborne, why I was reaching for Octavia with such desperate urgency.
Zero.
The world exploded.
Fire and thunder erupted beneath the bridge's center span, exactly where my prediction had shown it would. Wooden planks disintegrated into a cloud of splinters and debris. The blast wave hit like a physical wall, hurling me forward even faster as I wrapped myself around Octavia's smaller frame.
I felt the shrapnel hit my back—dozens of wooden daggers punching through clothing and flesh with surgical precision. Each impact registered as a distinct point of agony, nerve endings screaming as foreign objects buried themselves in muscle and scraped against bone. But I kept my body between the blast and Octavia, kept my arms locked around her as we tumbled through smoke and chaos.
The impact with the water drove the breath from my lungs and drove the shrapnel deeper. We hit hard enough to raise a geyser of spray, then sank like stones into the stream's cold embrace. Current immediately grabbed us, spinning us downstream as blood clouded the water around my shredded back.
POV: Octavia
Water filled her mouth and nose as they sank, Alec's weight carrying them both toward the rocky bottom. Octavia thrashed against his grip, panic overwhelming rational thought as she fought to reach the surface. But his arms stayed locked around her, protective even as blood poured from wounds that looked like they should have killed him.
She managed to break free and kick toward sunlight, lungs burning as she fought against the current. When she finally breached the surface, she immediately spun around looking for him.
"Alec!" she screamed, her voice raw with terror.
He surfaced twenty feet downstream, his face pale with shock and pain but his movements surprisingly strong. Blood streamed from his back, turning the water pink around him as he fought against the current. She could see the wounds—dozens of punctures where wooden shrapnel had punched through his shirt and deep into muscle.
"I'm okay," he called, though his voice was strained with agony. "Are you hurt?"
She stared at him in disbelief. "Are you insane? You're full of holes!"
"I'm stubborn," he said with a weak grin, then began swimming toward shore with strokes that should have been impossible given the extent of his injuries.
Octavia followed, her mind reeling as she tried to process what had just happened. The explosion, his impossible reflexes, the way he'd moved before the blast like he'd known exactly when and where it would hit. And now this—swimming strongly despite wounds that should have left him unconscious from blood loss.
They dragged themselves onto the muddy bank fifty yards downstream from the ruined bridge. Above them, shouts echoed as the others searched through smoke and debris. Alec collapsed face-first onto the ground, his back a landscape of torn fabric and seeping wounds.
"Oh God," Octavia breathed, kneeling beside him. "Alec, these are bad. Really bad."
She could see bone through some of the deeper punctures. Blood pooled beneath him, more blood than should be compatible with consciousness. Yet he was already pushing himself up on his elbows, trying to stand despite injuries that should have killed him.
"Just looks worse than it is," he gasped. "Head wounds bleed a lot. Back wounds probably the same."
"That's not—you don't understand how bad—" She reached toward the worst wound, then pulled her hand back, afraid to cause more damage. "We need to get Clarke. We need medical attention right now."
"Octavia!" Bellamy's voice carried over the water as he spotted them on the far bank.
She waved frantically while Alec struggled to his feet, his movements growing stronger even as she watched. The amount of blood should have left him dizzy and weak, but he was acting more like someone with minor cuts than someone who'd been perforated by an explosion.
"How are you even standing?" she demanded.
"Adrenaline," he said, but his eyes wouldn't quite meet hers. "Makes you ignore pain."
It was a reasonable explanation that felt completely inadequate. Adrenaline didn't make you ignore blood loss. Adrenaline didn't help you swim with punctured lungs. Adrenaline didn't explain why he'd known to move before the explosion happened.
POV: Alec Morgan
By the time the others reached us, my regeneration had already begun working overtime. The bleeding had slowed from arterial spurting to steady oozing. The deepest wounds were starting to close at their edges, torn tissue drawing together with the insistent pull of accelerated healing.
But there were witnesses now. People who'd seen me move with impossible timing, who'd watched me survive injuries that should have killed me. The comfortable anonymity I'd worked so hard to maintain was evaporating like morning mist.
"Jesus Christ, Alec," Clarke breathed as she knelt beside me with her medical supplies. "How many punctures?"
"Seventeen," she counted aloud as she examined my back, her voice growing more confused with each wound she catalogued. "Some of these are deep enough to hit organs. You should be in shock. You should be—"
"Really lucky?" I suggested weakly.
She met my eyes, and I saw the exact moment she realized something was fundamentally wrong with what she was observing. Her medical training was screaming that I should be dead or dying, but instead I was conscious, coherent, and bleeding significantly less than the wounds should have produced.
"How did you know?" Bellamy demanded, his voice tight with suspicion. "You moved before the explosion. How did you know it was coming?"
The question I'd been dreading, delivered with the kind of intensity that demanded a real answer. Everyone was staring at me now—Clarke with medical confusion, Octavia with growing realization, Raven with sharp intelligence calculating possibilities.
"I saw something," I said, the lie feeling heavy on my tongue. "Movement under the bridge. Figured it might be dangerous."
"You saw something that told you to tackle Octavia exactly two seconds before an explosion?" Bellamy's tone suggested exactly what he thought of that explanation.
"I saw enough to know we needed to move," I said, meeting his stare. "Everything after that was just reaction."
"Lucky guess?" Raven asked, and there was something in her voice that made my stomach clench.
"Lucky guess," I confirmed, though the phrase was starting to sound hollow even to me.
Clarke finished her initial assessment and sat back on her heels, her expression troubled. "These wounds need proper cleaning and sutures, but they're not as severe as they initially appeared. Blood loss is surprisingly minimal for this many punctures."
More medical impossibilities that she couldn't explain but couldn't ignore. I could feel the net of suspicion tightening around me with each observation, each question, each witness to capabilities that shouldn't exist.
"Can you walk?" Clarke asked.
I stood carefully, testing my balance and range of motion. The wounds pulled and ached, but they weren't the crippling agony they should have been. My body was already adapting, already healing, already proving I was something other than entirely human.
"I can walk," I said.
"Then we need to get back to camp," Bellamy decided. "Figure out what this means for us going forward."
As we walked through the forest, I felt eyes on me from every direction. Octavia kept glancing at my back like she was memorizing the wound pattern. Clarke made mental notes about healing rates and blood loss ratios. Raven studied my gait for signs of weakness that weren't manifesting.
And Bellamy watched everything, cataloguing evidence for conclusions that would inevitably threaten everything I'd worked to hide.
"This is bad," I thought as camp came into view. "This is really, really bad."
But the alternative had been watching Octavia die, and that wasn't really an alternative at all. Some choices were worth the consequences, even when those consequences included the slow destruction of every lie I'd built my survival on.
Behind us, smoke still rose from the ruined bridge, marking the end of any hope for easy peace and the beginning of a war that would test every secret I was trying to keep.