Clarke pressed her lips together but didn’t argue. She knew better than to go head-to-head with Bellamy when he was in one of his stubborn moods. She pressed a little harder on his arm, both to keep him still and to steady herself. “Okay. Take a deep breath.”

She slid the needle into his skin, forcing herself not to move as Bellamy flinched and groaned. The best she could do was to work quickly and accurately, and make the procedure as short as possible. “You’re doing great,” she told him as she brought the needle back around and prepared for a second stitch.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’re enjoying this,” Bellamy said through gritted teeth.

“Everything okay here?” a voice called. Clarke didn’t turn around, but she could hear Max, Wells, and possibly Sasha walking toward them.

“Super,” Bellamy said before she could answer. “Just indulging Clarke’s sadistic side. Pretty standard.” He let out another groan. “I let her do this to me every night.”

“Don’t move,” Clarke said. She tugged gently on the thread and watched in satisfaction as the skin pulled tight. “You don’t want me to slip and accidentally sew your lips shut.”

She could hear the smile in Sasha’s voice as she said, “You two make a strange couple.”

“Says the Earth girl dating a boy who fell out of the sky,” Bellamy managed through clenched teeth.

Clarke tied a small knot and snapped off the extra string. “All done.” She squeezed Bellamy’s knee to let him know to sit back up.

He looked down at the stitches and nodded. “Nice job, Doctor,” he said loudly so the others could hear. Then he smiled and pulled her close. “Thank you,” he whispered before kissing the top of her head, then reaching for his shirt.

“You should head inside,” Max said, shooting a glance at the trees surrounding the village. “I don’t think your people are going to cause any trouble tonight, but there’s no reason to make it easy for them if they do.”

Wells cleared his throat. “I wanted to talk to you about that. We know it’s only a matter of time before the guards come back, most likely with more people and a lot more guns. And from what we know about Rhodes, he won’t be overly concerned about hurting innocent people. He’ll consider harboring Bellamy to be an act of war.” He paused and glanced at Sasha, who gave him a small nod. “I think it’d be safer to move everyone back inside. Underground—into Mount Weather.”

Max stared at him. “Underground,” he repeated bitterly, twisting his mouth just as Rhodes did when he said the word sister.

“It’s a fortress, isn’t it?” Clarke said. “If it could keep out a hundred kilotons of radiation, surely it could keep out a few guards.”

Max shot Sasha a look Clarke couldn’t quite read, but it was enough to make her bite her lip nervously. When he spoke, his voice was strained. “We’re well aware of Mount Weather’s capabilities. Our people lived there for centuries, entire generations entombed. They lived and died without ever glimpsing the sky. When we finally came back above ground, we vowed to stay there. We’d never let anything—or anyone—force us underground again.”

As someone who’d grown up on a space station, who still got a thrill from her first breath of fresh morning air, Clarke could understand where Max was coming from. But if it came down to living underground or dying above, then the choice was clear. “Rhodes isn’t going to stop until he gets what he wants,” she said. “And he won’t care how many of your people he has to kill along the way.”

Max’s face hardened. “We’ve fought off attackers before,” he said. “We know how to defend ourselves.”

“Not against people like this,” Wells said. “These are trained soldiers—a small army. I know the other Earthborns are dangerous, but they’ve got nothing on Rhodes’s men.”

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.