Read The 100 (The 100 Series) for Free Online Page B

to sleep. For the most famous scientist in the Colony, her father’s deductive reasoning left something to be desired. Although he spent so much time wrapped up in his research, it was unlikely he’d even know that scrubs weren’t currently considered high fashion among sixteen-year-old girls.
    “Either way, it’d be best if you stayed out of the lab,” he said with calculated carelessness, as if the thought had only just crossed his mind. In fact, he’d said this about five times a day since they’d moved into their new flat. The Council had approved their request for a customized private laboratory, as her parents’ new project required them to monitor experiments throughout the night.
    “I promise,” Clarke told them with exaggerated patience.
    “It’s just that it’s dangerous to get near the radioactive materials,” her mother called out from where she stood in front of the mirror, fixing her hair. “Especially without the proper equipment.”
    Clarke repeated her promise until they left and she was finally able to return to her tablet, though she couldn’t help wonderingidly what Glass and her friends would say if they knew that Clarke was spending Friday night working on an essay. Clarke was normally indifferent toward her Earth Literatures tutorial, but this assignment had piquew ent haded her interest. Instead of another predictable paper on the changing view of nature in pre-Cataclysmic poetry, their tutor had asked them to compare and contrast the vampire crazes in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries.
    Yet while the reading was interesting, she must have dozed off at some point, because when she sat up, the circadian lights had dimmed and the living space was a jumble of unfamiliar shadows. She stood up and was about to head to her bedroom when a strange sound pierced the silence. Clarke froze. It almost sounded like screaming. She forced herself to take a deep breath. She should have known better than to read about vampires before bed.
    Clarke turned around and started walking down the hallway, but then another sound rang out—a shriek that sent shivers down her spine.
    Stop it
, Clarke scolded herself. She’d never make it as a doctor if she let her mind play tricks on her. She was just unsettled by the unfamiliar darkness in the new flat. In the morning, everything would be back to normal. Clarke waved her palm across the sensor on her bedroom door and was about to step inside when she heard it again—an anguished moan.
    Her heart thumping, Clarke spun around and walked downthe long hallway that led to the lab. Instead of a retinal scanner, there was a keypad. Clarke brushed her fingers over the panel, briefly wondering if she’d be able to guess the password, then crouched down and pressed her ear to the door.
    The door vibrated as another sound buzzed through Clarke’s ear. Her breath caught in her throat.
That’s impossible.
But when the sound came again, it was even clearer.
    It wasn’t just a scream of anguish. It was a word.
    “
Please.
”
    Clarke’s fingers flew over the keypad as she entered the first thing that came to her head:
Pangea
. It was the code her mother used for her protected files. The screen beeped and an error message appeared. Next she entered
Elysium
, the name of the mythical underground city where, according to bedtime stories parents told their children, humans took refuge after the Cataclysm. Another error. Clarke tore through her memory, searching for words she’d filed away. Her fingers hovered above the keypad.
Lucy
. The name of the oldest hominid remains Earthborn archaeologists ever discovered. There was a series of low beeps, and the door slid open.
    The lab was much bigger than she’d imagined, larger than their entire flat, and filled with rows of narrow beds like in the hospital.
    Clarke’s eyes widened as they darted from one bed to another. Each contained a
child
. Most of the kids were lying there asleep, hooked up to various vital