Homecoming

Clarke stared at the door for a long moment, a strange, distant thought tickling the back of her mind. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but something about this door—that sign, those words—felt familiar. She tried the handle, but this room was locked too.

“Clarke? Did you find more rooms?” Bellamy’s voice was faint, but there was a tinge of worry to it. “Clarke?”

“I’m here,” she called back, spinning around and hurrying down the hallway toward his voice.

They finished helping everyone get settled, then went with Max, Wells, and Sasha to take inventory of the supplies. On their way to the old cafeteria, Max explained to them that his people had kept Mount Weather up and running all this time, just in case of an emergency like this.

“So you’re pretty familiar with this place, then,” Clarke said.

“I was born down here, actually,” Max replied, to her surprise. “I was the last Mount Weather baby. A few months after I was born, it became clear that the radiation levels were finally safe, and we all moved back to the surface. I still spent a lot of time down here, though. It was my favorite place to explore because the adults hardly ever came inside.”

“I can imagine. So, speaking of exploring,” Clarke said carefully, trying not to sound like she was snooping. “I found a radio room today. Do you know what it would’ve been used for?”

“Mostly for fiddling with, honestly,” Max said with a shrug. “Every generation has had a system for sending out signals on a regular basis. But no one—not once—has gotten a reply. As far as we could tell, there was just no one out there to respond.”

Clarke felt an unexpected wave of disappointment, but then another question surfaced through her sea of confused thoughts. “Did the scientists who came on the first dropship use it?”

Max looked at her quizzically, as if trying to figure out where she was going with her questions. “Actually, yes. Well, they tried anyway. They asked a lot of questions about the radio, and I even let them in to try it out but I told them what I just told you—”

Clarke cut him off. “You have the key?”

“Yes, I have the key. Do you want to go in?”

“Yes, please. That would be great, actually.”

Bellamy shot Clarke a questioning look, but she looked away, letting her mind wander in pursuit of a memory she wasn’t sure was ever hers to begin with.

Clarke forced herself to take a deep breath, just like she did before assisting Dr. Lahiri with a complicated surgical procedure. But this time, she wasn’t about to use a scalpel to expose someone’s tricuspid valve; she was bracing herself to enter the Exchange.

Clarke hated the vast hall that was always packed, no matter when you went. She hated haggling for a good price, and she really hated having to make small talk with the attendants, pretending like she cared whether a T-shirt was ten percent earth fibers or fifteen. But it was Wells’s birthday tomorrow, and Clarke was desperate to find him the perfect present.

Yet just when she had gathered the courage to step inside, Glass and Cora came her way, prompting Clarke to duck around the corner. There was no way she could pick a present for Wells with them watching, making loud comments about her selections as if she couldn’t hear them. She’d just have to come back later. They were scrutinizing scraps of fabrics with the same care Clarke reserved for tissue samples in the lab.

“I just don’t see any harm in looking.” A man’s voice drifted down the hall, making Clarke stop in her tracks.

“David, you know there won’t be anything even close to what we need at the Exchange. All that technology was snatched up years ago. We could check the black market on Walden, if you think it’s worth the risk.”

Clarke’s breath caught in her chest as she peeked around the corner. It was her parents. Clarke’s mother hadn’t gone to the Exchange in years, and she couldn’t remember her father ever going. What in the world were they doing here in the middle of the day, when they were supposed to be in their respective labs?

“The radio works,” her father was saying. “We just need to find a way to amplify the signal. It’ll be simple, really. We just need a few pieces of equipment.”

“Which is all well and good, except for the fact that there’s no one on the other end to hear us.”

“If anyone made it to Mount Weather, or to one of the CDC bunkers, then they have access to a radio. We just need to make sure—”

“Do you know how crazy you sound?” her mother said, lowering her voice. “The chances of it working are infinitesimally small.”

“But what if I’m not crazy? What if there are people down there, trying to make contact with us?” He fell quiet for a moment. “Don’t you want to let them know that they’re not alone?”