Octavia's voice dropped quieter again. "Bel had just been made a guard," she said, as she began cutting the pineapple. "And after sixteen years of me just staying stuck in our quarters, he convinced me that he could take me to this stupid Unity Day dance. Said it would be okay 'cause everyone would be wearing masks anyway. Said we'd be back before Mom ever knew we were gone."

And she'd believed him, both because he was Bellamy, and because she'd just wanted it so badly.

She sighed. "He took me to watch my first moonrise, and we went to the party, but --" Here her voice got much more dry. "-- surprise, surprise, everything went to shit when there was a solar flare alert."