Chapter 12: Bleeding Hearts - Part 1
POV: Alec Morgan
The morning brought urgency wrapped in Kane's static-filled voice demanding detailed resource assessments and population viability reports. Suddenly our casual survival had become a formal mission with deadlines, objectives, and adult expectations we couldn't ignore.
"We need more comprehensive data," Clarke announced to the gathered group, her leadership crystallizing under parental pressure. "Water sources, game populations, defensive positions, territorial boundaries with the Grounders."
It meant more dangerous expeditions into hostile territory. More opportunities for me to volunteer for risks others couldn't take. More chances to use my abilities while pretending they were just farm-boy intuition and remarkable luck.
"I'll take scouting teams north and east," Bellamy decided, already shifting into tactical planning mode. "Miller, Harper, Monroe—"
"I'll go," I interrupted, stepping forward before the volunteer list closed.
Bellamy's eyes found mine across the circle, and I could see him cataloguing this as another data point in his growing file of Alec Morgan behavioral patterns. The kid who always stepped forward for dangerous work. The one who took point positions and tested unsafe ground like he knew he'd survive whatever happened.
"You volunteer for a lot of dangerous assignments," Miller observed, not accusingly but with genuine curiosity. "Either you're incredibly brave or you've got a death wish."
"Maybe both," I said with forced lightness, while internally calculating regeneration rates and poison resistance development. My adaptive systems had been strengthening with each exposure, each near-death experience building immunities and resistances I'd need for future threats.
Bellamy studied me with that predatory focus that meant he was seeing patterns I'd hoped to keep hidden. "Something else entirely," he muttered, too quietly for most people to catch but loud enough for me to know I was still under observation.
An hour later, we were moving through forest that felt actively hostile—too quiet, too watchful, shadows that moved wrong and vegetation that looked deliberately arranged. My combat instincts buzzed with low-level warnings, not immediate danger but the promise of violence waiting for the right trigger.
"Territory markers," I said quietly, pointing at scratches on tree bark that formed patterns too regular to be natural. "We're being watched."
"How can you tell?" Harper asked, squinting at marks that looked random to untrained eyes.
"Spacing's too uniform. Angles are deliberate. Someone wanted these to be noticed by people who knew what to look for."
Miller checked his weapon automatically, nervous energy translating into tactical preparation. "Think they're planning an ambush?"
Before I could answer, my combat prediction exploded with sudden clarity—three Grounder warriors materializing from concealment, arrows nocked and aimed with lethal precision. I had perhaps two seconds before they loosed their shots, two seconds to position myself where my regeneration could absorb damage that would kill others.
"Down!" I shouted, lunging sideways toward Harper just as the first arrow whispered through space where her head had been. The second arrow caught me in the shoulder as I tackled her, poison-tipped point punching through muscle and scraping against bone with precision that spoke of practiced lethality.
Fire exploded through my bloodstream immediately—not just physical pain but the distinctive burn of neurotoxin designed to paralyze and kill. I felt my adaptive regeneration kick into overdrive, cellular defenses recognizing the threat and beginning countermeasures even as the poison spread.
"Grounders!" Bellamy shouted, returning fire with the kind of tactical precision that kept everyone alive while I fought to remain conscious through accelerating toxicity.
The Grounder attack lasted perhaps ninety seconds—arrows and blades and desperate close-quarters combat that left all of us bloody but breathing. When the attackers finally retreated into forest cover, I was still standing despite poison that should have dropped me in minutes.
"How bad?" Clarke demanded, examining the arrow that had punched clean through my shoulder.
"Poison-tipped," I said, feeling the toxin burning through my system while my regeneration worked frantically to neutralize it. "But I think I'll live."
"You think?" Miller stared at me like I'd just made a particularly bad joke. "Grounder arrows kill people. That's their entire purpose."
"Barely scratched me," I lied, feeling the poison lose its grip as my adaptive systems gained ground. "Arrow went clean through, missed anything vital."
But Bellamy had been watching the fight, had seen me take a direct hit from weapons designed for lethality, had noted the way I'd positioned myself to absorb damage meant for others. His expression was transitioning from tactical concern to something approaching certainty about conclusions he'd been avoiding.
"Let's get back," he decided. "We've pushed far enough for today."
The return journey should have been agony. Grounder toxins were designed to cause progressive paralysis, respiratory failure, eventual death from suffocation as muscles stopped responding to neural commands. Instead, I felt the poison's effects fading with each passing hour, my body systematically breaking down and eliminating compounds that should have killed me.
By the time we reached camp, the entry and exit wounds had stopped bleeding. The muscle damage was already beginning to repair itself. The toxin had been reduced to a faint burning sensation that was more memory than active threat.
"Too fast. This is healing too fast for anyone to miss."
But when I looked around our small group, I saw Miller helping Harper with a twisted ankle, Monroe cleaning shallow cuts from Grounder blades, Bellamy planning tactical reports for Kane's consumption. Everyone focused on their own survival and mission objectives rather than monitoring my impossible recovery.
Everyone except the person waiting for us at camp's edge with medical supplies and an expression that meant my secrets were about to face their most dangerous interrogation yet.
Raven stood near the radio equipment, her dark eyes tracking my movements with the systematic assessment I'd learned to fear from engineers and mechanics. She could see the arrow wounds that should have left me incapacitated, note the lack of poison symptoms that should have been manifesting, calculate healing rates that violated basic human biology.
"Rough patrol?" she asked as I approached, her tone casual but her attention laser-focused on details I couldn't hide.
"Grounder ambush," I confirmed. "Nothing we couldn't handle."
"That arrow wound looks like it went clean through your shoulder."
"Lucky angle. Missed everything important."
"And the poison?"
The question hung in the air like a blade. She'd been watching long enough to see me take a toxin-tipped arrow, long enough to note the absence of symptoms that should have been killing me by now.
"What poison?" I tried, but my deflection felt weak even to me.
"The kind that coats Grounder arrows and kills people within hours," she said patiently. "The kind you were obviously hit with based on the arrow design and the way you moved immediately after impact."
"She's not going to let this go. Not this time."
"Good constitution," I offered lamely. "Always been resistant to that kind of thing."
Raven stared at me for a long moment, her engineering mind working through evidence and possibilities, calculating probabilities and rejecting explanations that didn't fit observed data.
"We need to talk," she said finally. "Privately. Tonight."
It wasn't a request, and we both knew it. The conversation I'd been avoiding was finally coming, and no amount of deflection would postpone it any longer.
As evening shadows lengthened around camp, I found myself facing the choice I'd hoped to delay indefinitely: trust someone with truth that could destroy everything, or lose the person who'd become more important to my survival than the secrets I was protecting.
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