CHAPTER ONE
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WILLOW LAUGHED as she tossed the ball back to her roommate, the joke she had made still ringing in her ears. She would never get tired of poking fun at the Ark.

She had stolen the ball from the Common Area the day previously and deduced that it wasn't worth much to anyone since she had been able to keep it so long without incident. They weren't strictly allowed to bring things from the Common Area back to their cells, but people weren't strictly allowed to commit arson either. So it didn't bother her that much.

She tried to go to the Common Area as much as they possibly allowed her on the off chance that she might see Clarke there. Never once did she spot even a trace of her friend.

Willow had come to realize that after all of her months spent waiting, that Clarke wasn't coming and was more than likely locked up in solitary. It made her unsettled, her mind drifting to the fact that Clarke might not make it through her retrial whenever she thought of her.

Sudden loud thumps and shouts emitted from outside of their sealed cell. Willow caught the ball and held onto it, peeking out of her bunk in curiosity. Her roommate had not ceased her ramblings about some story that had occurred a number of years ago.

"Ellie," Willow said, trying to get her attention. She was still talking up a storm on the other side of the room. "Elle! Listen."

Ellie's mouth snapped shut and her eyes drifted to the front of the room where the door was. The yelling was now echoing through the halls and it sounded as though an unimaginable amount of roughhousing was going on.

"What's going on?" Ellie questioned, her eyes slightly widened and a slight tinge of fear lacing her words. Ellie was, to put it lightly, not as experienced with the world as Willow was, or considered herself to be. Willow had made this conclusion when she learned that the reason Ellie had even gotten arrested in the first place was because she had taken the fall for someone else's crime. She wasn't exactly a hardened criminal, to say the least.

"Don't know," Willow responded as she sat up on her bed, clutching the ball in her hand slightly tighter. Almost just as the words had left her lips, the door burst open and two guards stood in the doorway menacingly.

They didn't care to say anything as they approached the two girls. Even if they did, it would be drowned out by the panicked screams coming from outside of the room.

Willow hauled from her bunk with force, pressed up against a wall, and had some kind of bracelet clasped around her wrist, causing the ball to fall out of her grasp. A million tiny spikes seemed to be a part of the apparel — she could feel them digging in.

"Willow!" Ellie called out with a yelp as her guard did the same to her. She seemed like she would very much wish to object to what they were doing.

"It's okay! Just do what they want," she called back as Ellie was ushered out of the room. The guard yanked on her arm and shoved her out of the cell, the full scale of the Skybox now spread out before her.

When she reached the outside of their musty cell, she was greeted with complete and utter chaos. Prisoners everywhere were being escorted out of the Skybox, somewhere none of them had been away from for a very long time.

Willow did not object. She calmly walked where her guard escorted her, watching the other people being marched to wherever it was that they were going. "Finally doing it, huh? Floating us all?" she questioned quietly, knowing that her death would have probably been soon either way.

The guard didn't respond to her question, to which she scoffed at. Disregard for citizens well-being wasn't a new concept to the officials of the Ark.

She could spot Ellie in the crowd slightly further ahead, still looking just as panicked as she did before.

After a few minutes, they finally reached a rather large line that trailed up to a ladder. Her guard placed her in that line and stood off to the side to escort more kids further along. She furrowed her eyebrows before it connected. The amount of Earth Skills classes that they had gone through lately, the ladder up to where she guessed was a ship...it all made sense.

She was absolutely baffled. Willow couldn't believe that they were actually being sent to Earth. If she was right, they were still being sent to their deaths.

The line shuffled along at a steady pace. Her uneasiness grew when she spotted a familiar figure at the head of the line. "Abby?" she called out in a slightly angered tone. It caught the woman's attention, as she snapped her gaze over to Willow. She muttered something to the man next to her and walked over to Willow, who was almost at the front of the line.

"You're a part of this? You're doing this to us? To your own daughter?" she asked in disgust, waiting for whatever explanation Abby could offer.

"We have reason to believe the ground is survivable," she explained.

"But you don't know for sure," Willow finished, scoffing at her. "But since we're criminals, it doesn't matter if we die. I see."

"Willow, honey, it's not —"

"The hell it isn't! Whatever, have fun figuring out how to explain this to our families. See you on the other side, Abby," she snapped, pushing away the hand that Abby tried to set on her shoulder.

Her small confrontation with the other woman had slowed up the line a bit, something that the guards were not pleased with. One of them suddenly grabbed her arm and began to drag her forward to the entrance of the ship, muttering, "Let's go."

They were directed to the first floor of the ship where the guard led her all the way to the seats that were packed together. She was strapped into one without somewhere to sit, one with only straps planted on the wall. Hanging there, she was filled with confusion when the guard that led her in strapped himself in right next to her.

"What the hell are you doing?" she questioned.

"The less you know, the better," he replied quickly, not even looking at her. She rolled her eyes and shrugged.

"You're lucky that I'm losing my ability to even care right now," she retorted, anger still evident in her voice. The seats around them soon filled in and the level was packed full of prisoners. Soon enough, she could hear the final sound of the door sealing along with clicking sounds just before the ship lurched downward.

All Willow could feel next was falling. She felt weightless, vulnerable. She had lived in space her whole life but never once had the Ark moved in such a way. Willow knew that she was going to die. She knew that this would kill her. She had come to terms with that a long time ago when she had gotten arrested.

She laughed loudly, letting the feeling overcome her. It was a rush, a feeling of recklessness that she wanted to feel all the time. The ship jerked violently, the lights flickering in and out rapidly. The atmosphere.

Just as they reached the pull of the earth, one of Willow's least favorite people appeared on the display of several screens placed about the ship. "Prisoners of the Ark, hear me now," Chancellor Jaha greeted calmly, as if he wasn't the one who was sending each and every one of them to their deaths.

"You've been given a second chance. And as your chancellor, it is my hope that you see this as not just a chance for you, but a chance for all of us," he continued in the same annoyingly calm tone that just made Willow angry. "Indeed, for mankind itself."

"Second chance my ass," Willow mumbled grumpily.

"We have no idea what is waiting for you down there. If the odds of survival were better, we would have sent others. Frankly, we're sending you because your crimes have made you...expendable," he explained. The remorse on his face was barely evident, showing her clearly that it didn't bother him much to call them expendable. He simply justified what he was doing like they would understand and agree with what he was doing.

"Go float yourself, asshole!" Willow shouted at the screen, her anger at the Chancellor greater than it had ever been. This earned her several laughs and cheers from the people around her. She neglected to pay attention to anything else that the man had to say. She didn't care about what he wanted them to know. All she caught after that was that they would be forgiven for their crimes which seemed like the punchline to a very funny joke to her.

However, she couldn't help but notice the slightly nervous, paling face of the man next to her. She didn't know what would be making him so uneasy, but she didn't ask. Perhaps he was just nervous about the landing or possibility of dying.

The ship jolted and there were several banging sounds coming from the upper level. Every monitor cut out and the ship began to bump violently. Willow closed her eyes and prepared for the end.

When everything ceased to move, she figured that it was over and she was most definitely dead. But the mumbling of the other passengers was not something that she thought was included in the afterlife. She snapped her eyes open, finding the same surroundings that she had left when she closed her eyes.

Everything went quiet, and she wasn't sure that she had ever experienced a moment of quiet once in her entire life. Always was there a machine humming in the background, always a sound even when it should have been silent.

Most of them were still alive, which was a shock to her in itself. She was eager as to what awaited them outside, but didn't rule out the probability of their imminent deaths. The real question was whether or not they could survive once the doors opened.

Everyone's seatbelts unclicked simultaneously, the sea of teenagers all crowding for a spot at the front. Willow didn't bother with the pushing or shoving, she knew that they would either burn to a radiated crisp or get to see the ground eventually.

There was some sort of dispute going on at the front of the ship, but she wasn't within earshot at her position in the rear of the ship. Her impatience wasn't tested much, as within the next few moments the door opened and fresh air and sunlight streamed into the ship.

A single moment of dead silence and zero movement from anyone was all that they needed to adjust. The teenage delinquents ran out of the ship screaming and cheering wildly. Willow grinned and followed, letting her legs carry her faster until her feet finally hit the solid ground.

She didn't stop running until she was in the middle of the clearing they had created during landing. Stopping, she turned around and took everything in breathlessly. Nothing else mattered in that moment except for that fact that she felt undeniably free of everything that she felt holding her back on the Ark. She was being held back, but had finally broken free; she was free to do what she wanted, free to be exactly who she wanted to be.

The cheers and excited shouts of the others made her feel like she was part of something, something that gave her more of a sense of unity than the Ark ever did. Walking forward at a mild pace in order to take in her every surrounding as she did so, she stopped herself at a tree and found herself marveling at it breathlessly.

It was something so simple for her to be in awe of, yet there she was, running her fingers over the uneven bark in wonder. Willow reached up and grabbed one of the branches, pulling herself up and sitting on it. She wasn't very elevated off of the ground and felt the sting of excitement hit her when she grabbed the next one.

And she grabbed the next one, branch after branch, until she had reached almost halfway up the tree. Willow laughed again and looked around her, everything spread out around her like a map.

Trees stretched out for miles, a sea of green going on forever. She could also see everyone who had been on the ship below. It seemed as though a fight was being broken up and the two groups that were feuding had separated. The people began to talk quickly and more people approached them, joining the discussion.

From her position, she spotted someone who looked all too familiar to her. Inhaling sharply, she scrambled down the branches clumsily, doing her best not to fall. The scraping sound of her shoes against the rough bark accompanied her all the way down, ceasing when she finally landed on the ground with a thud.

The collection of people she had seen from the tree was approaching the forest. "Clarke!" she called out, the blonde girl jerking her head in the direction of her voice. That was all the confirmation that Willow desired.

She dashed over to the girl and tackled her into a hug, the two falling back dangerously and nearly toppling to the ground.

"Oh my god," Clarke breathed happily. The two pulled apart and Willow smiled at her radiantly. "Why are you here?"

"We're going to Mount Weather for supplies," she explained, Willow's mind drifting back to an almost distant memory of what Chancellor Jaha had told them. Mount Weather is life.

"I'm going with," she decided, Clarke responding with the shake of her head.

"No, I need you here. Wells is injured and some people here...aren't very trustworthy. Someone needs to stay and make sure things don't go wrong," Clarke told her, a new kind of authority in her voice that Willow had never heard before.

She paused before agreeing, albeit reluctantly. "Okay." Clarke nodded with a smile before they said goodbye. Willow watched as they disappeared through the trees.

Everything seemed to be falling into place, a new age dawning before them.