Chapter 49 - From grounder to reaper

By the time I managed to gather the whole team, Bellamy and Clarke had already left the camp. Without wasting any more time, we quickly catch up with the two of them, before we all made our way back to the dropship.

When we arrived at the familiar place where we spent our first weeks on Earth, Clarke rushed forward to climb the ladder up to the last floor where Lincoln was being kept. As soon as we reached the top level, I saw Octavia sitting on the floor trying to hide her sadness in her hands, but as soon as she saw Clarke, a relieved look appeared on her face as if she had found something that would help her. Right as the rest of our group climbed up onto the top floor, a sudden growl made everyone take a step back and raise our weapons to aim at the source of that growl.

"Guys! It's okay. It's okay. We have restrained him, see? So please, lower your guns."

Bellamy tried to assure us that Lincoln wasn't a threat and that even though he resembles a reaper, he was still the guy that helped us many times in the past, but more than that, Bellamy tried to assure Clarke, who was the most affected by the growl and the state of Lincoln as she was tightly hugged by Finn who glanced at Lincoln as he tried to break free from his shackles, and even though he was chained up, Lincoln was doing everything in his power to test the durability of those restrains.

Seeing him struggling so much made me worried that the chains would break, but rather than fearing for the worst, I deiced to trust Bellamy and Octavia's judgment on how to keep the man restrained.

It took a few more minutes for Finn to calm Clarke before she managed to talk again, albeit a little bit shaken, but still bearable.

"I can't believe we're back here again, after everything that happened to us…in the same room where we met him for the first time."

"Clarke, don't worry, we'll save them as well as Lincoln, and we owe him that much after all he has done for us."

Before Clarke could say anything, Octavia, who until now was trying hard to drown out the growls and pain of her lover as well as her sorrow decided to walk in front of Clarke and grab her hands tightly as if she was begging the blonde to save Lincoln.

"I don't know, Octavia. I knew Mount Weather controlled the Reapers...but I had no idea they were creating them, yet I'm sure that we can help him in some way or another."

Suddenly, Bellamy gulped in fear as he spoke a rather horrific thought out loud. "If they can do that to Lincoln, what are they going to do to our friends?"

As soon as his words fell, no one could say or think about anything other than what Bellamy had just said. Other than the growls made by Lincoln, we all realized how fast we need to move if we want to even have a chance of saving our friends before Mt. Weather use them for some sick experiment or even worse, using them for their bone marrow. But as I thought about that a sudden thought made me exclaim out in shock.

"I may not be the smartest guy, but it kind of makes sense. They made the reapers to fight the grounders and capture them so that they would have an infinite supply of fresh blood that would heal the radiations. And since they can make the reapers and control them, there should be a way to disable, even temporarily, whatever they did to them in case something they didn't expect happened. We just need to figure out what that is and how to undo the thing that makes reapers from Lincoln's body, but as I said before, I'm not the right guy for this job."

"Right! Leon, you are a genius. I remember that when the reapers caught us, the guards injected them with something, some kind of drug I guess. Maybe the way to remove the drug is to simply keep Lincoln away from it for a time then in the worst-case scenario if his heart stops working, we just need to bring him back to life, which as we all know is easier said than done."

While we were listening to Clarke as she remembered what she had seen back in the mines, I briefly glanced at Lincoln only to see him acting strange before it clicked in my head.

"Clarke! Lincoln's convulsing!"

As soon as she looked at him, Clarke noticed some blood flowing down from Lincoln's thigh.

"What happened to his leg?" Clarke turned and looked over at Octavia and Bellamy, and the two of them were quiet for a while before Octavia lowered her and confessed what happened.

"I had to shoot him or else we would have been killed by him."

As she said that I looked at her, and to be fair, I wasn't enjoying watching the girl who was anxiously shaking her leg as she desperately did everything in her power to fight back the tears in her eyes as she said the confessed what she had done to her lover. After hearing her I knew that it was my place or as a matter of fact, the place of anyone to comment on what she did, neither did Clarke need to say anything because all of us knew how hard was for Octavia to shoot Lincoln.

"Clarke, he has lost a lot of blood."

"I know Finn, but I think I can see something on his neck. Can someone give me some light, I want to see what's there."

Monroe quickly took a flashlight and pointed it at Lincoln's neck, before Clarke and Octavia gasped when they realized what Clarke had found.

"T-those are…"

"Needle marks…I was right, it's a drug."

Suddenly, one of the chains that were holding Lincoln in place flew out of the wall and whipped on the chest, sending me to the floor. Before anyone could react, freed from his restraints, Lincoln jumped on top of me to strangle me. Surprisingly, no matter how hard I punched him, the drugged man wasn't bugging me at all, and even though I wasn't going to pass out yet, I could feel how I was becoming weaker by the second thanks to the lack of oxygen. Bellamy was the first one to react and jump to help me. He quickly grabbed Lincoln maintaining a firm grip on him while at the same time giving me the need for oxygen to work properly. Sadly not long after that, Lincoln's hand wrapped around Bellamy's neck, squeezing it as hard as he could, before I punched him in the stomach as hard as I could. While it didn't knock him out, Lincoln threw out some blood before, Finn was the first one to wake up followed by Murphy, Monroe, and Sterling who woke up from their shock when they heard Finn's yelling at them to snap out before they start hitting Lincoln with the guns. Eventually, we managed to knock him out cold, before we quickly chained him up again, despite my rather severe injury provoked by that metal chain.

As soon as the fight stopped, I took a deep breath before I looked at Lincoln, and even though he had injured me, I can't bring myself to hate him for not being in control of his body. No one said anything when Octavia kneeled down next to her lover, but after a few seconds, Clarke looked over at me for a split second before she exclaimed out loud.

"Oh my god! Leon, you're bleeding. "

"I'm fine Clarke, it's just a scratch, and it's not that deep. Take care of Lincoln, he needs it more than I do."

"I don't have time to argue with you. Monroe, please bandage this stubborn idiot before he passes out."

Monroe smiled at me before she grabbed a bandage from Clarke's bag.

"Stand still, Leon. Even though you are though, we still need to take care of your wounds or else Clarke would kill me."

While Clarke and the boys were busy putting Lincoln back in chains and I and Monroe busy with my body, no one noticed when Octavia sneaked out when we weren't looking at her.

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