Homecoming

Max fell silent, and although his expression remained stern, Clarke could tell he was considering Wells’s words.

Sasha spoke first. “Dad, we should listen to Wells. He knows what he’s talking about. I don’t want to go underground any more than you do, but in this case, I think it’s the right thing to do.”

Max stared at her with a look of mild surprise, then something in his face shifted, as if he were looking at his daughter in a new light, accepting that she’d gone from child to confidante. Clarke’s heart throbbed painfully as she thought about her own father and the long hours they’d spent discussing Clarke’s medical training or his own research. In the year leading up to his arrest, he’d begun treating her like a trusted colleague, a friend. Would she ever get the chance to tell him all about her adventures on Earth? Would she ever get to share the questions she’d been saving especially for him?

Finally, Max nodded. “Okay. We’ll do this calmly. And we need to emphasize to our people that this is only a precaution. We’ll send out the signal and get everyone moving right away. Wells, you come with me. You can brief us on Rhodes and his strategy while we evacuate.”

After conferring with some of his advisors, Max decided to move everyone inside Mount Weather that night. He sent a few engineers ahead to make sure that the fortress was ready for an influx of people, and spent the rest of the evening going from house to house, explaining the situation.

By midnight, everyone in the community had gathered at the base of the mountain, prepared to spend the night in its depths for the first time in decades. Most people carried food and clothes, leading children who clutched their favorite toys.

Max stood by the enormous metal door built into the hillside, which had been propped open to let the stream of people file in. Bellamy and Clarke hung back until nearly everyone was inside, as did Wells, who was standing watch with Sasha. “Is there anything I can do?” Clarke asked Max as they approached.

“Just make sure everyone’s settled. There are more than enough rooms, but some of them are hard to find. If anyone seems lost, you can tell them to wait for me. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

Clarke nodded, took Bellamy’s hand, and led him through the door and down the first flight of steep, narrow stairs that seemed to descend down into the belly of the Earth. They’d both been inside Mount Weather before, but that was when they’d believed the Earthborns were their enemy, so they hadn’t spent a great deal of time admiring the incredible setup. This was no dark cave—this was a sophisticated bunker that had been built by the best engineers in America to withstand the Cataclysm.

Clarke and Bellamy made their way down the first residential corridor, a brightly lit hall lined with bedrooms on either side. At the end, a woman stood holding the hands of two small, scared-looking girls. “Do you need any help?” Clarke asked.

“All these rooms are full,” the woman said, a note of anxiety in her voice.

“Don’t worry. There’s a whole other section the next level down,” Clarke said. “If you just wait here, I’ll run ahead and find it.”

“My doll’s tired,” one of the little girls said, holding a wooden toy in the air. “She needs to go to bed.”

“It won’t take long. And you know what you can do in the meantime? You can tell my friend here all about your doll.”

“What?” Bellamy shot her a look. “I’m coming with you.”

“No extraneous activity for you. Doctor’s orders.”

Bellamy rolled his eyes, then sighed and turned to the little girl. “So…” she heard him say as she hurried off. “What’s your doll’s favorite way to hunt? Does she like spears or bows and arrows?”

Clarke grinned to herself as she imagined the look of confusion on the little girl’s face, then took another flight of stairs down and turned in the direction she assumed led to the bedrooms, but the layout of this floor was different than the one above. She backtracked and tried going the other way but ended up even more turned around.

The corridors looked different in this wing. It had fewer doors and seemed more utilitarian, like it’d been built for equipment or supplies. Sure enough, the first door she reached had a sign reading PHYSICAL PLANT OPERATIONS: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Since anyone authorized to open the door had been dead for at least a couple hundred years, she figured there was no harm in sneaking a peek. She jiggled the handle. It was locked.

Clarke moved along to the next door, on the opposite side of the hall. RADIO COMMUNICATIONS: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY the sign read. Clarke froze. Radio? She hadn’t thought about it before, but of course people would have wanted a way to communicate if they were locked down inside Mount Weather… but who would they have communicated with? If they were using this room, then presumably there wouldn’t have been anyone left to take the call. Unless… had there been other bunkers maybe? Other versions of Mount Weather?