A/N: Hello everyone, i know i've been MIA for a long time, but I'm back after having revised Guardian and made changes which took the story in the direction i wanted it to go. I will not delete the older version just yet. But today i will be posting the first two chapters of the new story.
I really hope you guys like it and please do not be shy in leaving comments! enjoy!
Chapter 1:
"The test results of the latest modifications to the serum have come back. Every single one of the test subjects tested positive, albeit with varying results. We can have this serum ready to be used for this year's aptitude test if you wish Ms. Matthews. We have also finished the final touches on the mind control serum for Dauntless, which puts us ahead of schedule. We can have it sent over to be given by the end of this year's initiation."
I felt my nails digging into the flesh of my palm, even as my face remained stoic. I had already listened to the footage of the woman presenting her report in an almost robotic voice to the woman behind all the problems occurring in Chicago. Jeanine Matthews was sat listening to the younger woman, her personal secretary, deliver the report of the latest attempt to hunt Divergents. The woman was the definition of pristine, scarily so, with not a single hair out of place, dressed in a modest knee length bright Erudite blue dress. It disgusted me as Jeanine started to looked more and more impressed as her secretary relayed her report.
I chanced a glance at my father, trying to gauge his reaction as he watched the video feed. He was leaning back in his office chair watching with an almost a bored expression on his face. It almost looked as if he thought we were simply wasting his time, which was ridiculous. He was the head of the Bureau and the man in charge of the Chicago experiment, he should be concerned with what was going on in the city. The whole reason for bringing him in for this was to get him to do something before yet another city fell to ruins. We had lost enough lives, and I was done just sitting around and watching it happen.
I was ready for him to give me the green light to stop this as soon as possible. Jeanine Matthews was fast becoming a threat to the city of Chicago, something we hadn't expected. She climbed through the ranks in Erudite quite easily, which wasn't surprising considering her high IQ and efficiency in everything she did. We expected her to be the one to make the next biggest advancements in the city and we weren't disappointed. However, it was her obsession with the divergent and her unwavering belief that they were a threat to the city that would be the experiments downfall. She was ready to use a serum she developed to create her own army of mindless robots to massacre an entire faction to gain full control of the city.
That was something I couldn't allow to happen. The point of my father's experiment was to prove that humanity by itself could 'correct' the evil we all held within us. To make us genetically superior in a way where we would be perfect. It wasn't a belief I shared, but as long as the people of the experiments were taken care of, then I didn't really give a shit what the results of the experiment were. I just couldn't stand by and let yet another city come crumbling down and have hundreds of innocent lives be lost because of my father's idealistic belief that there were only a handful of us that were genetically pure. It was the genetic bullshit my great ancestor once believed to be true that led to, quite literally, the end of the world. Because of him the world we once knew was gone, leaving behind a mostly barren plant that was still in the midst of recovering from the nuclear war.
I wouldn't have even known what Jeanine Matthew's was doing if it wasn't for Forrest, my twin brother. He had brought it to my attention after noticing that that Erudite had taken people that were suspected to be 'Divergent' and used as test subjects for her experiments. Together we decided our father should know about this and make his decision on how it should be dealt with. However, going by his bored expression and his constant need to check his tablet, I was starting to second guess the decision to include him in this.
"Interesting, good work catching this Forrest. Keep monitoring this, and make sure to hand in a detailed report on whatever happens." My father suddenly exclaimed, moving to rise out of his chair. I scrambled to get up, fixing my uniform jacket as I did.
"That's it?" I asked incredulous, moving to intercept my father before he left. He was eager to get out of here, which only made me think he was due to head to the Capital. He had been complaining for months about the lack of funding the Bureau was receiving lately. "Jeanine is trying to hunt down every single divergent to kill them. Something needs to be done before this problem escalates!" I snapped, glaring at my father before pointing to the screens behind us aggressively. "Jeanine is ready to use Dauntless soldiers to massacre Abnegation in order to become the governing faction! That means hundreds of innocent lives at risk of being killed!"
"We cannot interfere with the experiment, we've already done enough to try and get the end results we're looking for. So, far no one has shown signs of being 100% pure, therefore all Jeanine will find are defects." I glowered at him until he let out a huff of annoyance, rolling his eyes as he did so. "Yes, I will admit these so called divergent have shown much more potential than the rest of the city, but they have no value to me if they aren't 100%, which we will not know until we get this year's aptitude results." My father calmly explained to me, infuriating me more than ever. He brushed past me while I stood there stunned. "The last time we even bothered saving one of her victims we ended up picking up another defect." He threw over his shoulder.
My mouth dropped at the mention of Amar, the last divergent we had saved after he was discovered. My father had been ecstatic with the thought that Chicago had finally produced its first 100% genetically pure person. Turned out that Amar had only been 78% genetically pure. My father had sneered and almost had him killed. We barely managed to convince him that testing Amar would be most beneficial to seeing how we could manipulate the genes to reach 100%.
He suddenly stopped and turned around to look at Forrest and I. "By the way I have pending business in the Capital that's going to take some time to settle. I'll be leaving in two days, and I trust I can leave you two in charge while I'm gone." And with that he was striding out of Forrest's office.
"That's it?" Forrest asked looking blankly at the door from where our father had exited through. I watched as his grip on his tablet grew stronger to the point where I swore I heard a crack. I took a stepped towards him and placed a hand on his shoulder. "He's not going to do anything about this?" His voice shook with anger, before throwing his tablet across the room. I didn't even wince when it made impact with the wall and shattered to pieces, instead I moved closer and wrapped an arm around him.
"He doesn't give a shit Forrest." I growled, glaring at the white doors. "He's ready to let Chicago burn like all the other cities… but we're not gonna let him. I'm done with all this bullshit." I snarled, whirling around to face my twin. "Tell Michael to get his ass over here, now."
"Why do I have the feeling I'm not going to like this, Willow?" Forrest eyed me wearily, but went ahead and started typing away on my tablet since his was destroyed.
"Because, you wont." I smirked, hands on my hips.
"You're fucking joking, right?" Michael laughed, lazily leaning back in Forrest's computer chair. Michael was a dear friend of ours since we were little, and had earned his way up to work alongside my brother, in one of my father's most prestigious labs. He was with Forrest when he first discovered the discrepancies with my father's genetic purity study. And he was the guy we were trusting with my crazy plan.
When I didn't say anything, he sat up from his chair so fast he almost fell over. "Tell me she's joking." He asked, turning to look at Forrest when I didn't say anything.
"I wish she was." Forrest muttered grimly. He was leaning against his own desk, arms tightly crossed, lips set in a thin line. He'd been like that since the minute I told him about my plan to sneak into Chicago.
"You can't get into the city without being caught on the feeds, and guess what happens when you do get caught on the feeds?" He leaned forward with a sarcastic smile. "Your dad finds out and he kills you and then me." He dropped his smile to glare at me.
"It can be done, no one will tell my dad what we're doing because everyone down at the feeds are the people labeled as defects by our father. They know we're on their side and they'll back us up no matter what. As for the patrol guards, they follow my orders so I'll make sure they have so many ops they barely have time to eat or sleep, then they'll never have time to look to go watch the feeds." I said breezily, moving to stand between them, when Michael continued to glare at me, I rolled my eyes. "I may not have all the details down but that's where you come in Mikey." I smiled brightly.
"Willow, this plan of yours is beyond ridiculous!" Michael hissed leaning forward in the chair to give me one of his stern looks. I just rolled my eyes and slowly made my way over to the ceiling to floor length windows overlooking the bureau. I let out a deep sigh as Michael continued. "The plan isn't even a real plan. All you've got is you go in, destroy the system and get out!"
"Sometimes, the simplest of plans are the best." I answered, sending him a wicked smile over my shoulder. "And there's no goddamn way I'm postponing this. Jeanine is planning something big where people are going to die, and for what?" I hissed, my fist clenching in anger. "My father and the council's belief that there is such a thing as damaged genes?" I scoffed.
"And how exactly are we going to explain your absence?!" Michael exclaimed, eyes flashing. "Your father is expecting you two to run the place while he's gone and he's going to be calling to check in."
"Forrest and I will inform my father we will be going to go to the fringe on a long-term project to work on a way to control the entire group instead of just the children." I answered easily. "He's been going crazy about the slow process of getting those people out of the fringe. He doesn't like not having control over them, so he'll agree without hesitation." I rolled my eyes. It was no secret that the fringe was dangerous and that the people there are "genetically damaged". They were like our own version of the factionless, and they hated me and my patrol squads as much as the factionless hated Dauntless. I really couldn't blame them since all my people did was kill their people and kidnap their children. I did what I could to help whenever I could, but I still couldn't help as much as I wanted to. Without our father stepping down and leaving the Bureau in our hands, I couldn't do more than what I was already doing. But I guess that the first step in doing so would be going to Chicago and breaking the hold our father had on them. Chicago was his last city, and without them, his stupid experiment would be over. Once that happens, the council will pull back completely from funding the bureau as they'll see my father's work as useless. Only then can we use the bureau for real work, work that would be used to help reconstruct our damaged planet.
"Then who's going to be left in charge of the Bureau while he's gone?" Michael asked confused, looking back and forth between Forrest and I- the former unable to meet his best friend's eyes.
"Well…" I sang dragging the word out, while looking at Michael with wide, innocent eyes.
"You've got to be kidding me." Michael muttered under his breath, dropping his head dejectedly. "Of course, you guys always find a way to get me caught right in the dead center of all your plans." He ran his hand over his face before sighing heavily. "When are you scheduled to leave?" He asked, sounding resigned, which made me smile.
"You'll get fathers email by the end of the day." I raised an eyebrow at him, barely resisting the urge to laugh knowing full well that what I was about to say would lead to a tantrum. "Because you are not only in charge of the Bureau while we're gone but you're also to oversee our safe departure as well as a successful mission which will occur in less than two days."
"What only two days?" Michael's voice was oozing with sarcasm. "I would have thought you'd be leaving tonight."
I sighed, looking back out the window. "If we could have gone tonight we would have. Even our father wouldn't have believed we'd have everything ready by tonight. We have to make this look realistic otherwise he's going to get too suspicious and come and check on us. We can't have him sending someone out to the fringe to check on us. God knows how long it's going to take us to find the control room."
"Wait hold on you don't know where it is?" Michael hissed sharply.
"No, I only have a general idea where it is." I answered easily. "Dad made sure to make all records of it confidential, so all we really know is that it's located somewhere below the city. In the old tunnels where the original observation lab was."
"This is insane Willow." Michael muttered, dropping his head into his hands. He looked as stressed as I felt, but something had to be done, or else Chicago might fall just like the other experiments. I wasn't about to repeat my past mistakes of doing nothing.
"It's insane, but we'll get through this." I said confidently. "Now get to work. I have to get started on the patrol plans for the next few months." I ordered as I started out of the room. "We've got 40 hours left before we start this mission, meaning there's no time to waste."