Clarke's words hung in the air after she had said them.
Murphy's the weapon.
Lily stood very still and let herself understand what that meant. She had read about it once, in the Ark's archives — pages about the old world, about wars fought with disease instead of blades, about armies that had sent sick men through enemy lines on purpose. She had read it the way you read about things that happened in another time entirely, things too distant and too strange to feel like anything more than history.
It didn't feel like history now.
She looked at Murphy on the floor — trembling, his face marked by three days of deliberate damage — and she thought: they built this. Every wound. Every hour they kept him. And when they had finished, they had opened the door.
And she had brought him in.
She had pushed past Connor. She had put his arm over her shoulders. She had walked him through the wall and through the camp and into the dropship, past everyone who had been standing between the gate and this room.
Lily pressed her fingers flat against her thighs.
"Is this your revenge?" Bellamy's voice cut through the silence — hard, directed at Murphy, who was still on the floor with Clarke crouched beside him. "Helping the Grounders kill us all?"
"I didn't know about this," Murphy shook his head, his voice trembling. "I swear."
"Stop lying!" Bellamy took a step forward. "When are they coming?"
Clarke's voice came steadier, quieter. "Murphy. Think, all right?" She kept checking his wounds while she spoke, her hands not stopping. "What can you tell us that's useful? Did you hear anything?"
Lily watched Murphy's face. She thought about the Grounders — about what little she knew of them. They spoke English, both Lilcoln and the commander of the bridge had proved that. But they had their own language too, the one they used among themselves. If Murphy was telling the truth, and she believed he was, they would never have spoken their plans in front of him. They would have used their own tongue, kept him deaf to it on purpose. Whatever he had heard would have been nothing they wanted him to carry back.
Murphy looked at Clarke with wet eyes. Still trembling, he shook his head. "They are vicious," he said. "And cruel."
Bellamy let out a sharp breath and turned back to Murphy.
"You wanna see 'vicious'?"
"Bellamy, stop." Lily stood, and he turned to her with wide eyes.
"Why do you keep defending him?" Anger in his voice, and underneath it something that moved faster than anger. "Look what he has done!"
"It was the Grounders, Bell." She kept her voice level, trying not to make it tremble. "They took him, tortured him, and then freed him." She held his eyes. "It's not his fault if the virus is in the camp..."
They looked at each other. She had learned Bellamy's silences by now. This one was not the silence of someone who had nothing to say. It was the silence of someone holding too many things at once, trying to decide which one to put down first. She could see it in the set of his jaw, in the way his eyes stayed on her face with an intensity that had nothing to do with anger anymore, or not only anger. There was something else underneath it. But she didn't want to know if it was fear or anger.
"We have to be careful." Clarke's voice broke the silence. "Whatever this is, it spreads through contact."
Lily took a step back without deciding to. Her body making the choice before her mind named it, as her eyes stayed on Bellamy.
"Clarke!"
Finn's voice arrived a second before he did, coming through with that urgency.
"Finn, you shouldn't be here." Clarke turned, concern clear in her face. "No one should."
"I heard you were sick," he said, and Bellamy's eyes moved to Lily.
"Yeah." Something in his voice had gone flat. "She's not the only one."
Lily looked away. She bit down on her bottom lip and held it there. Behind them, Jake coughed — deep and wrong, the sound she had been learning to dread all night. Bellamy frowned at him, then looked back at Lily with a little frown.
"Clarke, what is this?" Finn asked.
"I don't know." Clarke moved to check on Jake, then straightened. "Some kind of hemorrhagic fever."
"There's something we can do about it?" Bellamy asked, and his eyes went to Lily.
She thought about what she had. Yarrow — it helped slow external bleeding, she had used it enough times to trust that. Willow bark to bring the fever down, to give the body some relief from the heat that was burning through them. Charcoal, if she could find enough of the right kind, to absorb whatever the body was trying to expel. Plantain, which she had used for infection and inflammation ever since Jasper.
But she knew, with the same certainty she knew the names of the plants, that none of it was a cure. She could not cure this. There was nothing in the forest that cured this. What she could do was slow it, and try to keep them from drowning in their own bodies before something changed.
"There are things I can do," she said carefully. "To slow the bleeding. To bring the fever down." She paused, and made herself say the rest of it. "But I can't stop it, Bell. Not with what I have here. The most important thing right now is water — clean water, as much as they'll take. Whatever this takes from them, we have to put back."
Clarke thought about what she had just said, "So we can just contain it for now, before—"
The sound Eric made stopped everything.
The cough became something else entirely — his whole body seizing with it, going sideways, limbs moving without control. Lily watched with her hands pressed together, her mind going very fast and finding nothing to hold. There was nowhere to act. There was nothing she had that would stop this.
Eric pushed himself upright. Then he vomited blood.
The sound that followed had no name she knew. And then his body went still.
The room held its breath.
She could not move.
She watched Clarke cross to him, telling Finn not to touch her as he attempted to. Then Lily watched Clarke press two fingers to the side of Eric's throat, and she already knew. She had known from the moment the convulsions stopped.
This is what it does, the thought arrived without asking permission and stayed. This is what I brought in.
"Clarke," she whispered.
Clarke raised her head.
"Is he—?" Bellamy said.
"He's dead." Clarke stood and turned and looked at Lily.
Bellamy turned to her too.
Lily held his gaze. She did not look away, because she thought that if she did something in her would not come back from it. She felt the full weight of it arrive.
She had brought Murphy in because she could not leave him outside. She had been right. She still believed she had done the right thing.
And yet boy was dead on the floor.
"What do we do?" Finn asked, his hands freshly wet from the alcohol he'd poured over them.
"Quarantine." Clarke's voice steadied into command. "Round up everyone who had contact with Murphy. Bring them here." Finn nodded and moved for the exit.
"And everyone they had contact with?" Bellamy asked. He didn't sound certain about the plan.
"We have to start somewhere." Clarke turned to Lily. "Lily. Who was with you when you brought Murphy back?"
She knew the answer. She had known it since she had walked in and found Connor and Eric already on the floor.
"Octavia," she said. She closed her eyes. "She was with Eric and Connor when Jake and I brought him back."
When she opened them she found Bellamy's face.
She watched it move through fear first. Then the thing that lived underneath fear in him, harder and older, the thing that had always been there when it came to his sister.
"I'll go get her," he said, with jaw set.
Lily let out a shakey breath in seeing him move away. "Bell—"
He looked at her. She had wanted to say something enough, something that could hold the weight of what she had done, but there was nothing like that and he could see that she knew it. His eyes said more than his voice did.
"You have to hope she doesn't get sick because of this." He said quietly, as his eyes glistened under the light that came through the courtains of the dropship.
She felt the tears come without wanting them. He held her gaze for one more second, and then he was through the entrance, and his footsteps crossed the clearing fast, and she heard them until she didn't.
The breath that left her was unsteady. He would have never forgive her for that.
"Lily." Clarke's hand touched her shoulder, brief and warm. "Come on. Help me arrange this place."
They worked without talking much, which Lily was grateful for. She was not ready to talk about all those thoughts that were circling inside her head. She knew she had to helpd Murphy, but now not only Murphy, but the whole camp could get sick. And this sickness was deadly.
She looked at Eric, until two guys decided to bring him outside. Then she looked at Connor and Jake on the floor. And then she saw how many people were starting to be brought inside the dropship.
"The third level will be for who had a contact but don't show any syntomps. "The second for who is having just a fever, and the first--" She stopped as she looked around.
"For who's bleeding," Lily finished for her, with a nod, but her glistening eyes were betray her. "Alright."
They moved the stored supplies against the wall to clear space, laid out blankets and coats in the rows that beds were supposed to make. Lily did what her hands were told and kept her mind on the task in front of her and nowhere else, and it helped the way it always helped — narrowing everything to what was immediate, what was possible, what could still be done.
Lily sent two of the boys who were still standing near the entrance to fetch a barrel from the stores. Then she went to the dropship entrance and called out a list to one of the patrol boys standing nearby.
"Yarrow. All of it that's dried and ready in the medical tent." She kept her voice steady. "The white willow bark infusion — left side of the table, stoppered cloth. Plantain, both dried and fresh if there's any left." She thought for a moment. "And charcoal. From last night's fire, if it's cooled enough — the dark pieces, not the ash." She paused thinking if she had asked for everything. "Clean cloth. More than you think we need. And a second barrel of boiled water, left to cool."
The boy looked at her for a moment, then went.
She went back inside and crossed the floor to Murphy.
He was still propped against the wall where they had left him, trembling less than he had been, which might have been improvement or might have been exhaustion. She checked his forehead — still hot — and reached to take a metal glass of water.
"Make sure to drink, alright?" She asked him, pointing at one of the hammoks they had arranged. "And try to sleep a bit."
"As my nurse say," he said tiredly, and Lily took a breath when she saw him struggling to get on his feet. So she helped, taking him by the arm. They shared a look, as she gave him a nod, before bringing him to lay down.
She was crunched next a girl that was coughing, when she heard the flap of the tent move again.
Bellamy had a cloth pressed to his mouth and nose with one hand, but his other arm stayed close to his sister's back as they moved — not quite touching, but near enough that she could feel him there. And even she seemed annoyed to have been dragged there, he wasn't leaving her side. Lily knew that he wasn't going to leave the dropship until he knew Octavia was safe.
Then Lily turned back to the patient in front of her and helped the girl tip the cup to her lips, to go back to what she was supposed to do. But she kept watching even from there.
"We're done?" Octavia asked.
"No visible signs of swelling or bleeding." Clarke's voice had flattened out over the course of the day, worn smooth by repetition. Lily could hear the exhaustion underneath it, had been hearing it for hours.
Bellamy's hand tightened around the cloth. "So she doesn't have it?"
"She doesn't have symptoms." Clarke looked at him steadily. "But that could change."
Lily's eyes went up to the ceiling without her choosing to, toward the third level where they'd put the ones who'd been exposed but weren't showing anything yet. There were too many of them up there. And more were still coming in — she could see two of Bellamy's patrol boys helping someone through the entrance even now, the boy's arm thrown over one of their shoulders, his head hanging.
Every one of them could already be sick.
"Lily."
James was at the entrance with her bag. She moved toward him, and as she passed Bellamy their eyes met for a moment, and she looked away first.
"Thank you, James. Leave the bag there, so I don't get too close." She waited until he stepped back, then crouched to go through it. Yarrow, dried and bundled. Willow bark infusion, the cloth stopper still tight. Plantain, both dried and fresh. Charcoal in a folded cloth. She was checking the charcoal when Bellamy spoke from just behind her.
"Hey."
His voice was cold in a way that was different from his usual cold. There was distance in it that hadn't been there before, even during their worst arguments. She kept her eyes on the bag.
"Is Octavia alright?" she asked.
"For the moment. Clarke's putting her on level three." A silence that had weight to it. "You need any more of that?"
Lily took a breath. They needed the medicines on the Ark, or at least components that could be more useful. But it was useless to even think about it.
"There's more yarrow still dehydrating in the medical tent," she said, her voice careful and level. "It won't be ready for a while. But it would be great if you could keep an eye on it."
"Alright," she heard him say. She could feel his presence still behind her for some moments, but then he just quietly walked away. When Lily turned, she could only see his back disappearing behind the courtain.
She didn't regreat helping Murphy, but with everything that was happening, she really couldn't handle the way Bellamy was looking at her.
She bit down on her bottom lip and held it there until she was sure it wouldn't tremble. She stood and moved to the table and began working the herbs into the water, keeping her hands busy, keeping her mind on the motions. She had to focus on helping, that was all she needed to think about.
She was still at the table when she caught a movement at the entrance. And she frowned when she noticed Octavia walking out of the dropship.
"Clarke." She turned towards the other girl. "Where's Octavia going?"
Clarke looked up from the patient she was tending, and Lily could see immediately that she already knew. Her expression didn't need to say more than that.
"We need to know what's happening," Clarke said.
Lily let out a breath, "You've sent her to Lincoln." She said, "Clarke, if Bellamy finds out--"
"He's the only one who can help us find a cure. You know that." Clarke's voice was tired in a way that went past the body. "And she's the only one who can convince him to talk."
Lily looked around the room — at Connor on the floor with his jaw clenched, at Jake on his side breathing too shallow, at three others whose names she had learned an hour ago and was already afraid to lose. Two of them were bleeding from the nose. One had his eyes closed so tight it was impossible to tell if he was sleeping or just trying not to be there.
"Let's hope she comes back with some answers," Lily said finally, and turned back to her plants.
The hours after that had no clean edges. She knew time was passing because the light changed through the entrance, and because her body kept adding new things to the inventory of what it was doing without her permission — the ache in her legs had become a burning, the pressure behind her eyes had become a dull throb that sharpened when she moved too fast, and once when she stood from a crouch the room swam gently before it righted itself. She didn't stop. She brought water and changed cloth and crouched and stood and crouched again, and Clarke moved through the room doing the same things from a different angle, and sometimes they passed each other and sometimes they worked side by side in silence, and the silence between them held everything that neither of them had enough left to say.
She did not count the ones who were getting worse. She had tried that, early on, and had stopped.
Then the girl in the corner started coughing.
Lily heard it before she turned — the way it changed, the way it deepened into something that had no rhythm left in it, something that belonged more to the body than to the person inside it. She was already moving when the convulsions started, already crossing the floor, already getting her hands under the girl's shoulders to slow the fall. She held her through it, hands steady, voice low, doing the only thing she had, which was to stay and not look away.
She didn't know her name. She had seen her in camp — at the fire, at the wall, passing through the clearing in the mornings — and she had never spoken to her, and now she was holding her on the floor of the dropship and she still didn't know her name.
The girl's body jerked once, hard and final, and then went still.
Lily kept her hands where they were. She breathed. Behind her eyes something pressed very hard, and she felt the heat of it rising, and she pushed it back down because there was no room for it yet, no room until it was over, and it was not over. She heard Clarke behind her, heard her crouch, heard the brief quiet while she checked for a pulse.
"We have to bring her out," Clarke said.
Her voice was doing the thing Lily had watched it do all day — staying level by force alone, staying useful when everything underneath it was not. Clarke stood and her face when she straightened was the face of someone who had decided not to feel anything until later. Lily understood that. She had been doing it herself for hours.
She let herself look at Murphy. He was lying on the hammock with his eyes closed, and she couldn't tell if he was sleeping.
"I'll go tell Bellamy what happened," Clarke said. Then Lily noticed her observe her for a moment. "Do you want me to tell him something?"
Lily looked at her. Clarke's face was careful and quiet and holding more than it was letting out, and of course she knew — it had never really been a secret, even if there had been nothing official about it, nothing named. Though Lily wasn't sure anymore that there would be anything left to name, after this. If she didn't die first.
"I don't think he's going to ask anything about me, Clarke," she said. She kept her voice even, despite the sting in her eyes. "His sister could get sick. Two people have died. Believe me, I don't think I'm any of his concern right now."
Clarke held her gaze for a moment, she could read simpathy behinf that, but Lily wasn't bothered by it. Then Clarke touched her arm just before heading out of the dropship.
She felt her lip tremble, as she looked around herself, but then as she could feel a tear run down her cheek, she quickly dried it, and get back to work.
When she heard Connor caughing, the girl went to the barrel of clean water and dip one of the cups in it, to fill it. Then she turned and knelt beside Connor.
"You have to drink," she said.
He knocked the cup from her hands. The water spread across the floor in a dark stain.
"I don't need anything from you," he said. His voice was rough and mean with fever. "This is all your fault."
Lily's jaw clanched at those words, but she kept looking at him. "Can you stand up and take it yourself?" He groan, but he didn't need to talk, by only look at him it was easy to guess the answer. So she faught against the fatique in her own legs to go back to the barrel and take some more water.
"Then take it," she said once she was back, "and stay hydrated." This time he didn't refuse, even if he clearly wasn't appreciating her help.
She moved toward the next person, and then Jake made the sound she had come to recognize, and she was there before she had finished deciding to go. She got her hands on his shoulders and held him through it, and when it stopped she helped him settle and straightened slowly, and pressed the back of her wrist to her eyes.
God.
"You should sit down." Murphy's voice, from somewhere behind her.
"I can't," she said, before noticing him standing up. "What are you doing? Lie down."
"Commanding, aren't we?" He said, but he didn't do as she said. But she saw him hold his side as he followed her towards the barrel. She was almost there when she felt again; the room moving a half-second after her, lagging slightly, the way it had been doing for the past hour whenever she changed direction. She was telling herself it was tiredness. She had been telling herself that for a while now. It was happening more and more as the hour passed.
"You still sure you don't regret it?" Murphy said. He was somewhere behind her now, closer than before. "Helping me."
Her hands clenched at the barrel, closing her eyes to try and get her balance back. "Stop it, Murphy. Please." She really didn't want to talk about it. Because she didn't have a clear answer. And she asked herself what her mother would have done. And then she found herself asking what Marcus would have done. The anwers where both so different that didn't help her at all.
"Just asking." He said still behind her.
"I helped you," she said, turning to him, "and now I'm trying to help them. That's all that matters."
She noticed a frown appear on his face as he observed her face. "And who's going to help you?" He asked.
That managed only to confuse her, "What?"
"Your eyes," he said, his eyes never leaving her. "They're bleeding again."
She felt it in the same moment he said it — the thing she had been calling tiredness naming itself at last, the pressure behind her eyes announcing what it actually was — and her body, which had been managing this all day through sheer insistence, decided it was finished being managed. Her legs went wrong beneath her, and the floor came up, and she heard herself make a sound she didn't recognize.
"Woah, woah—" he reached her, his arm going around her waist, but he didn't have the strenght to keep her up, so he only managed to guide her onto the floor. Her hands on his shoulders, as her knees touched the iron of the dropship. He was knelt in front of her, still not letting her go. And he was the only steady thing in the room, that kept turning and turning, making her feel dizzy.
"You really need to lie down," he said, his arm unexpectedly steady against her.
But she couldn't, "I have to help." Her voice came out thinner than she wanted. "Two people have already died—"
"Yeah." Something in his voice went quieter. "Let's not make it three."
"Murphy—"
"Sweetie." He said making her look up at him. "You need to lay down, and I'm one cough away from dying myself. So, work with me here."
He managed to pull her upward, slow and careful, and she helped as much as her legs allowed, and between them they got her to one of the hammocks. The canvas took her weight and she felt the day come down all at once — every hour of it, every cup and changed cloth and held breath and managed moment. It was heavier than she had known while she was carrying it. Murphy disappeared and came back and held out a cup of water.
She looked up at him. His posture was more upright, and he moved better than before. And his breath did not seem laboured anymore.
"You look much better," she said, as he gave her the metal glass.
His mouth moved. "Are you hitting on me, sweetie?"
She didn't even fight the urge to roll her eyes. "You're definitely feeling better."
"Yeah." He looked at her, and something moved through his face quickly, something she almost caught before it was gone. "I'd like to say the same about you."
"My head feels so dizzy." She heard herself say it and was faintly surprised, because she had been keeping that back for hours.
"You need to sleep." He insisted.
"But I have to—"
"Help, I get it." His voice was dry, but there was no edge in it. "I find that difficult for you to do if you can't even stand up." He looked at her steadily. "I'll wake you if someone gets worse. I promise."
She looked at him for a long moment. She was not especting him to be that helpful, and careful. It was a very different side from the person that she had met when we lend on Earth.
"Why are you helping me?" she asked.
He was quiet. Something moved through his face, quick and carefully controlled, gone before she could name it. He reached over and adjusted the edge of the hammock.
"Sleep, sweetie," he said, and turned to go.
"Wait—" She put her hand on his shoulder before he could take a step. He looked back at her, and she thought about the last time she had seen him, when they had left him alone, without a chance to prove himself.
"Thank you, John."
He went very still for a moment, his eyes studying every part of her face. But he didn't spoke a word. He just nodded and the he turned away.
It didn't took long for Lily to closed her eyes, and for the sounds of the dropship — the coughing, the low voices, the weight of all of it — to fade into something she was no longer able to hold onto.
And before she even realized it, she was sleeping.