Lightning Only Strikes Once - Clexa

Chapter 60: Levelled Up

Resistance is light – much lighter than Lexa was expecting, in truth. Some Maunon thrash against things only they can see, others whimper in corners. Some are passed out, bleeding from their nose, mouth, eyes, even ears. They are helpless. One threatens her with a gun but he clearly sees someone else in her place, someone far more terrifying. She slits his throat without effort and the two bullets he fires hit the ceiling.

They've cleared out the two lowest levels already. Anyone showing signs of violence is immediately executed. Raven found a stack of plastic bindings in one room they entered that they have begun to use on the more harmless members of the population, binding their wrists and ankles tightly while they moan and thrash and ask for their parents and other such things. They ignore the children hiding in corners or whimpering in closets.

The very lowest level was nothing but a fancy office. The access passes they found did not get them into it, but Jasper and Monty were able to make the door open eventually. There was nothing of use inside and no people, so Lexa simply closed it again and went to clear out the level above, Level 6. She has no use for the Maunon's finery, their smooth perfect furniture and fancy technology, which may as well be built with the bones of her people.

Level 6 contained wide open spaces, what looked like many homes, and a strange place with odd machines that the Skaikru told her was a 'gym' for training. It also had hundreds of civilians and most of the guards. All were easily removed from the situation, killed or tied up without much effort. When Lexa thought of the inside of the Mountain in the past she always automatically thought it would be as fierce and well-guarded as the outside, but instead it is as luxurious and vulnerable as Clarke proclaimed. The hard outer shell is all the defences they seem to have.

Now they reach Level 5 – or try to. "I can't get it open," Monty says, frustrated.

"Or rather, we can get it open, but we can't get it open," Jasper says, apparently trying to clarify. He quails when Lexa looks at him. "Uh, we can hack it, that's not a problem. The door says it can open. But there's something stopping it, like the wires aren't connected."

"They have damaged it so it will not open," Lexa realises. None of the Maunon they've encountered so far on the lower levels have had grenades, so she has removed her gas mask to gives orders more easily. The smoke from the jobi nuts gives her an unfamiliar sense of lightness, but none of the hallucinations the others fear. "Raven, use your bombs to remove the door."

Raven grins a little nervously. "And if I blow us all up?" she asks.

"We will all wait on the stairs. They are relatively strong, structurally speaking," Lexa says. "Do it. Now."

There's a pause where Lexa wonders if Raven might be about to argue, but instead she says, "Sure thing, Commander." She starts setting up her bombs, her face becoming set as the smile on it fades. "We're probably far enough down now that the explosion will make the whole place shake, though. Everyone in the Mountain will know they're under attack."

"If they are anything like the warriors we have faced already, I think we can withstand that," Lexa says dryly, avoiding discussing what she knows Raven was actually talking about – Clarke. If Mount Weather's leadership haven't realised they're under attack yet, that the nuclear bomb was simply a distraction, then they will definitely realise it now. The direct threat will no doubt stop any negotiation with Clarke, placing her at great risk. Lexa hopes that the Maunon with Clarke will be impaired enough that they are unable to harm her – and also hopes that Clarke will not be so impaired. But there is nothing she can do about it right now. Perhaps Clarke is on this level, perhaps not.

She prays that Clarke is on this level.

Raven said that whichever level she's on must be close to the bottom to have knocked out the main lights as far as the very lowest level, so that the only thing left undamaged was life support with its extra-thick metal walls. So they work from the bottom up. They will find her. The map is in Lexa's mind. And Clarke is strong. She has successfully distracted and manipulated the Maunon this long, a task no one else could ever have completed, and she will continue doing so.