Conflate | Bellamy Blake ¹ ✓

✯ | chapter nineteen

❝you're only a fool if you give up.❞

-aladdin

♛

CLARKE IS LESS THAN pleased when we contact her on the radio an hour later than we're supposed to.

"You're late," she chastises. "Every three hours means every three hours."

"Are you through?" Bellamy questions jokingly.

I kick him in the foot, hoping it hurts more with the fact the front of my shoe is a bit pointy. He turns his head to give me an unimpressed look. I sharpen my glare.

"Have you found the source of the acid fog?" Clarke asks, drawing our attention back to the radio.

"No," I respond with a sigh. "Not yet. But we can't waste time searching for it anymore."

"What? No!" she exclaims, tone filled with disbelief. "Nothing is more important than that."

"Clarke, I understand, but it's harder than you'd think," I tell her in a voice tinged with exasperation. I had forgotten how pushy she can be sometimes, and I'm not in the mood to deal with it. "Plus, they've started taking our friends from their dorm."

"One at a time, every few hours," Bellamy adds quietly. His voice wavers, face appearing paler by the second. I feel guilty for kicking him.

"Taking them where?" Raven questions
apprehensively.

"We don't know," Bellamy responds. "We tried to follow them, but they went to a classified level. Maya borrowed the schematics of the vent system from her boss and we're still trying to find a way in." He glances up at Maya. "Anything?"

"I think I found a path, but it's gonna be tight," she informs us, glancing down at a large paper she had set on a nearby table. "Here's the radios Raven asked for, and the earbuds." She hands one each to both of us.

"Bellamy, Fallon, you have to find them," Clarke chips in.

"Clarke, I know," I respond with annoyance lacing my tone. I run a hand over my face tiredly. "I know. We both know. We're trying to do everything we can without getting caught."

"If you don't, all of this is for nothing."

I inhale sharply and bite my lip to keep myself from blurting out anything I might regret. Instead of dropping the radio to the floor and possibly breaking it, I walk away and stand next to Maya with my head in my hands. Had Clarke listened to anything I just said?

While she's safe in Camp Jaha, we've been busting our asses off to find the source of the stupid acid fog. Don't get me wrong — I want that thing shut down more than anybody — but it's not the only thing we have to worry about. There are bigger obstacles: getting caught, running into Victoria, someone wondering why two guards are following a teenage girl all over the place, and so much more. My feet ache like no other. I'm both mentally and physically exhausted. I can feel my body cramping up from stress, causing knots in my back and shoulders that will take ages to knead out.

I squeeze my eyes shut in frustration. Maya places a comforting hand on my shoulder, tapping her fingers in a small pat. She's been a great friend, and I can never thank her enough for all she's done to help us so far.

Bellamy eyes me sympathetically as he replies with a short, "Yeah."

So much for not holding a grudge against Clarke.

--

Maya had been right- the passage through the vents is very tight.

I crawl on my hands and knees in front of Bellamy, trying to ignore the fact that my butt is probably in his face. The tunnel is dark and cramped, lit only by the vents to the rooms we pass by. A terrible sense of fear is locked inside of me.