Yes, as the summary mentioned, this is a SEQUEL to my story, Divided City, so if you haven't read that, I insist that you go do so or else you'll be hopelessly lost! And for those of you who already have... welcome! There's still a lot of story left.

I just wanted to take a moment to give a special shout-out to eruditeprincess1993 for helping me to proofread everything, and for catching a few canon errors here and there. I appreciate everything that you've done to help me.

Tris watched from the window of her new apartment as the train rumbled past the building. She could see a few people on it, but saw no Dauntless jump on and off from it, even though it was on a low stretch of track.

She turned away from the window. Dauntless was no more. The factions were no more.

It had been a week since Evelyn Johnson, Four's long-lost mother, had led her band of Factionless into Erudite, subdued Jeanine Matthews, and taken over the city. Within an hour, the Factionless had completely dismantled the entire Faction system.

"It is the reason why things got to the point that they did," Evelyn had gone on to explain after she'd told everybody that the Factions were no more. "If we continue to push aside the very things that make us human, then we're more likely to embrace those things as well. Jeanine Matthews did just that to the point where she became an inhuman monster, and is responsible for the deaths of thousands! If we were to take her down, but to allow the Factions to exist… we would only just allow another, power-hungry person just like Jeanine to take in and fill her shoes. And then, we'd be right back to where we'd started!"

Tris had to admit that Evelyn did have a point; it was the reason why the divergents didn't just storm into Erudite and kill Jeanine on the spot, after all. But she also didn't think that the Factions had been the problem. After all, the city had existed without any sort of a problem until Jeanine's predecessor came along and started to spread rumors that the divergents were dangerous. And things only got worse when Jeanine stepped into power and decided that the best way to deal with the divergents would be if the divergents no longer existed.

And sure, the Factionless had stepped up to the plate and saved everybody in the city when the divergents were too scattered and afraid to do much anything but hide in the tunnels. But that didn't mean that they could just come in and snap up the power vacuum and declare themselves in charge.

After a beat, Evelyn started to explain what was going to happen now that there were no more Factions. "We will all take rotations to do the different jobs that need to be done in the city," she went on. "And, because it would be unfair to expect everybody to live in Faction-sanctioned homes, we're going to assign new homes to everybody. However, this will take some time, so please be patient while we get things settled out."

Now Tris was in an apartment in the Candor section of town. She wasn't quite sure where her parents had been settled, or even Eric. To say that things were strange was a bit of an understatement.

Somebody knocked on the door, and jarred Tris out from her musings. She went to answer it; most of the people who came to visit her were her new neighbors, who were going around to find out where their friends were.

"Chad!" Tris exclaimed with glee when she saw that it was her Dauntless friend.

"It's good to see you, Tris," Chad said as he greeted her with a warm hug. "I'm going around to try and figure out where all of us have been scattered to." He leaned in close to her ear. "It's not safe to talk about it yet."

"I know," Tris agreed quietly, and then pulled away from him and offered him a warm smile. "Why don't you come in?" she asked a bit louder. "It's not much, I know."

"Just for a moment, but I have things to do," Chad said as he stepped inside.

Tris shut the door. Chad went over to her desk, pulled out a piece of paper, wrote something on it against the wall, and then handed it to her. There was an address on it. "Tonight," he whispered to her. "Midnight. Make sure you aren't followed."

Tris quickly memorized the address— it was in the section of town that used to belong to Erudite. Then, she tore off the part with the writing on it and stuffed the paper into her mouth. "The stove is electric," Tris said around the paper in response to Chad's bewildered look. He laughed soundly.

"You are really something, you know that, Tris?" he said as he walked over to the door. "Well, it was nice catching up with you, but, as I said, I've other things to do today. I'll see you later, okay?"

"Okay," Tris said. She showed him out, and then went to get herself a drink of water from the sink. Paper was very dry.

Tris slunk through the streets, which were pitch blank thanks to the fact that the curfew was still in effect. Everybody was supposed to be in bed with their lights turned off to conserve energy by now. It was wonderful for having secret midnight meetings, though.

Tris approached the address that Chad had given her, but then circled around the block to make sure that she hadn't been followed. As she approached the building again, somebody grabbed her from behind. Tris jumped a little at the contact, and tried to come up with some excuse as to why she was wandering around here so late at night.

"Mom!" Tris exclaimed, and rushed into her mother's arms. Then, "Dad!" She offered Andrew a quick hug, too, and the two of them hurried into the building. "I'm so glad to see you. It's been a mess since everything's happened, and I don't know where you live now."

"We've been put into what used to be the Erudite section," Andrew explained as they walked. "Which was why we picked this building, since we know very well that it's currently empty." Natalie led them down into a sort of root cellar, where some kegs were hiding in the corner.

"A brewery? Drinking doesn't exactly seem very Erudite to drink," Tris said.

"No, but you'd be surprised what sort of scientific theories had been thought while people were drinking," Eric said.

"Eric!" Tris breathed, and then ran over to him. He engulfed her in a huge hug, and then kissed her tenderly. "I missed you."

"I missed you, too."

They only pulled apart when some other people came into the basement. But neither of them took their hands off from the other; they couldn't stand to be separated again.

"Why don't we take a seat while we wait for the others?" Natalie asked. Andrew and Chad started to pull out some folding chairs that were stacked against the walls and set them up for the others. Tris and Eric sat.

"Where did they put you?" Tris asked.

"In Candor… or what used to be," he said with a sneer.

"I'm in Candor, too," Tris said quickly. "Over by the bank!"

"Then I'll come and find you tomorrow," Eric said, his voice super low. Tris offered him a shy smile, which he quickly returned.

The group waited another fifteen minutes. "This is everybody that I was able to track down," Chad said once one last person came into the room and Natalie ushered her to have a seat.

Tris looked around at the people assembled there with some dismay. There were maybe about three dozen people in the room, where as before, there had been maybe a thousand or so divergent.

"Please, don't look so horrified," Chad said quickly in the silence that followed his words. "It's a big city, and I'm knocking on a lot of doors. People want to talk to me. There's only so much ground that I can cover."

"Then we should be out there, trying to track everybody down, too," Tris spoke up.

"Yes, but a lot of us have been marked by Evelyn as being divergent and likely to stir up trouble," Natalie said. "Sometimes, the best course of action would be to sit back and let other people take the reins for a while."

"Wait, what? What did I do?" Tris protested.

"You were in Jeanine's custody when the Factionless rescued you," Natalie explained. "Evelyn has since decided that anybody dangerous enough that Jeanine would want to lock up is obviously bad news. They're keeping a very close eye on the known divergents, but especially those who were being held."

"So we have a black mark simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time?" Megan spoke up.

"There isn't much that we can do about it," Natalie said gently. "Just keep your heads down while we try to figure out what to do next."

"And what is next?" Eric asked.

"Yes, we're all curious for answers about what that attack was about," Tris said. Nobody had said a single word about the attack after Evelyn and the Factionless had taken over. In fact, it seemed as though anybody who tried to bring it up was quickly silenced.

"I've done a lot of digging in the days since the Factionless took over," Natalie started. "It's a lot of hard work to keep from making too many waves, but in the end, my work has paid off. First things first: As I'm sure that all of you now know, the so-called flu vaccine that Erudite gave to Dauntless days prior to the attack was actually a simple water solution that was swimming with microchips. The very same microchips found in the suspicious suicide victims that Tris and Eric kept finding in Dauntless."

"The mind-control ones," Eric said.

"Yes," Natalie agreed. "After the Dauntless had sent the reports back to Erudite that everybody in the faction had been 'immunized', Jeanine started her attack using the Dauntless that were now completely under her control. As they were leaving the Dauntless compound, they were programmed to kill anything that didn't respond to the microchip programing. Mainly, those who did not received the 'vaccine', who, upon hearing the noises outside, came to investigate."

Tris turned her face into Eric's arm. The sights of Nikki's and Drew's bloody, lifeless bodies haunted her dreams whenever she tried to get some rest. It could have very easily happened to both her and Eric, which was even worse to think about.

"Once they left the Dauntless compound, they headed over towards the Abnegation section. There, their mission was a simple seek and destroy one. Most of Abnegation is now dead because of Jeanine," Natalie went on.

A long moment of silence followed as everybody reflected on all of the lives lost.

"Do we know why she was so insistent on killing everybody in Abnegation?" Eric asked, breaking the silence.

"I have yet to actually find the answer to that question, and, some part of me thinks that Jeanine is the only one who can properly answer that," Natalie said. "Upon finishing their sweep of the Abnegation section of town, the Dauntless then headed to Candor, where reports are that they started to look for something. While a few people died in Candor, it was not the all-out blood-bath that things had been in Abnegation."

There was a beat of silence. Natalie looked over to her husband, and he squeezed her hand. "I know that some of you started to talk while I was gone following the initial Erudite-lead Dauntless attack," Natalie went on as she returned her attention back to everybody. "And, for the most part, it is all true. It is something that I hoped I wouldn't have to tell you… because I wouldn't ever need to tell you. But the time for secrets has indeed past. Yes, I was born outside the city, and yes, I was put into the city to help combat first Michael Norton's disdain for the divergents, and then Jeanine Matthew's. As you can imagine, my job only got harder and harder the longer I stayed in the city, for the longer I stayed, the worse the situation began to get."

"What's outside the city?"

"Why are the divergents so important?"

"How did the divergent rumor even begin in the first place?" People started to talk all at once.

"BE QUIET!" Eric barked as he surged to his feet. Everybody was quick to fall silent after that. "If you guys would be quiet for two seconds, maybe Natalie will answer all of your questions!" He gestured to Natalie.

"Thank you, Eric," Natalie said quietly as he took his seat again. "Yes, I do have answers to most of your questions, and maybe some day, I will tell all of you. But right now, our time is limited. As you all know, when the Dauntless showed up to take Abnegation out, I slipped away from my home and went off in search of something. That something was a box that I'd brought into the city. It was the only thing that I was allowed to bring in, and it contained a video file that would explain everything. Before I was placed in the city, I was instructed to only show it to the city as a worst case scenario. However, there was no way that I would be able to keep a close eye on it at all times, so I hid it where I thought that it would be safe."

"But now it's missing?" Tris spoke up.

"I looked everywhere for it when Dauntless attacked, only to figure out that the city has changed a lot in the twenty-some years since I was first implanted here," Natalie agreed quietly. "Buildings were torn down and new ones put up in their place."

"So the question remains: should we focus our energy on finding the box or on how we can take down the Factionless?" Eric asked after a brief silence. A longer silence stretched out following his question.

"I truly believe that finding the box is the key to taking down Evelyn," Natalie finally said.

"So, those of you who were not in the tunnels nor captured by Jeanine, continue your search for the remaining divergents. The rest of us will keep our heads down but our ears open for news of the box and the files that it contained," Andrew said.

"Where exactly did you hide the box?" somebody asked.

"When I first hid it, it was in a section of town that belonged to Erudite," Natalie explained. "It was in an air vent of a book store called Minerva's."

"Wait, I remember that place," Eric said slowly. "It closed when I was maybe five or six. The building sat empty for a few months, and then the Erudite leaders had it torn down. First a coffee shop went in, but by the time that I'd transfered to Dauntless, that had been torn down, too, and an apartment building went in."

"I suppose that it's too much to ask for that the box somehow ended up back inside both the coffee shop and the apartment building?" Megan asked.

"No, not if it was in an air vent," Tris said slowly.

"Everything like building remains gets hauled off to a processing plant where it's sorted through to determine what can be immediately reused, what needs to be reprocessed in order to be reused, and what cannot be reused at all," Andrew explained to everybody. "The plant is on the other side of the city… back behind the fields."

"I always wondered what that building was," somebody said.

"If the box wasn't destroyed when the building was torn down, then who knows where the file might have ended up when everything was hauled off to the processing building," Eric said.

"It could be anywhere by now," Tris said.

"Of course, that's assuming that the box and its contents weren't destroyed," Andrew went on. "Even if it somehow survived the bookstore being torn down, somebody along the way might have destroyed the files contained within the box, or even watched it."

"No, I would know if somebody had watched the files," Natalie said quickly. "Even though the video on the file was contained on a seemingly ordinary USB stick, the reality is that, as soon as the stick is plugged into any device, it starts to send out a signal. Then, a secondary signal is sent out as soon as the video starts to play."

"What does the signal do? Send for help or something?" Tris asked.

"The Watchers who sent me into the city told me that I was to use the video as an absolute last resort," Natalie repeated herself. "They said that things were even worse off than they could have possibly imagined if I needed to play the video."

"So, you're saying that you aren't sure what the signal might do? For all you know, there is no signal," somebody said.

"This is also true," Natalie said. "And while I have an inkling of what might be on the video, I'm not positive on what it's about."

"So you want for us to try and track down a file that you lost some twenty years ago, that might have been destroyed at one point or another, and if it still exists, it could literally be anywhere in the city," Tris said dryly.

"That about sums it up, yes," Natalie said with some hesitation. She then heaved an annoyed sigh and hung her head in shame. "To be honest, I'm not even sure if it'll help to mollify the Factionless."

"While we all go out and try to find this, maybe we should also start to think about a Plan B," Eric said after a beat.

"The Factionless stormed into the tunnels and took all of our weapons," Andrew said. "They said that they were going to go stop Jeanine and the Erudite, but now, we see that it had double-meaning. We're now completely weaponless."

"They're starting to tear down the Dauntless compound," Eric went on. "They said that it's because it's too enclosed. The future of our city is that we have no secrets, especially not kept in the Dauntless compound." He gave an annoyed sneer.

"Then building up our arsenal again is out of the question," Megan said. "They swooped in and took over everything because they kept their heads down and thought smart. We're going to have to do the same."

"I came down here tonight with only the intent to put everybody on the lookout for the missing file," Natalie said quietly. "But now I see that it's out of the question. I'm not going to give up hope that I find it, but we should take a week to think of some other plans to get Evelyn and the Factionless out of power. Let's meet up again in a week? Same time, same place. Somebody will be around to you if we have to change the date, time, or venue. Since we're regathering our forces after both attacks, it's going to take some time for us to regain the foothold that we once held. And it's even worse because the Factionless somehow knew about the tunnel system, and we can no longer use it to sneak around the city easily."

People stood up and started to slowly trickle out from the building in groups of two or three, just like the old divergent meetings. "So, should we go back to my apartment or yours?" Eric asked Tris in a low voice.

"I bought condoms the other day, in the hopes that you would come and spend the night," Tris whispered into his ear.

"Good, good," Eric said and gave her a cheeky smile. She leaned over and kissed him, but then stood up after a moment to go say goodbye to her parents.

"I'm happy that you're both safe," Tris said. "You'll have to come and visit me sometime, okay? I'm in the apartment building by the bank."

"We will," Natalie said as she warmly hugged her daughter, and then hugged Eric. "I'm happy that both of you are safe, too." After Tris had hugged her father, Andrew offered Eric a handshake. Then, Eric and Tris started out from the old building.

"Your father has it out for me I think," Eric whispered as they crept along the dark street.

"Why? What did he do?" Tris asked sharply.

"He just about broke my hand," Eric complained. Tris only rolled her eyes and shook her head slightly. "Hey, you know what?"

"What?"

"Now that the factions are no more, you finally have a chance to meet my family, too," Eric said a bit breathlessly. "Oh, I know that you're going to love Elizabeth. She's a bit of a wet blanket, but I think that you'll get along great."

They continued the rest of the way back to Tris's new apartment building in silence. Even though there were no guards that patrolled the streets, there were still the cameras that Dauntless used to keep a watch on everything. They were now being monitored by the Factionless.

Once Tris unlocked the door to her apartment, Eric picked her up and slammed her up against the door so that it closed. He kissed her roughly, and she eagerly returned the kiss.

"I don't think that I can properly express just how much that I missed you," he breathed against her lips.

"Then maybe you should just show me," Tris replied coyly. Eric put Tris back down onto the ground and Tris lead him into the bedroom. She shoved him onto the bed and then got up and straddled his lap. Eric quickly pulled Tris's shirt off before he held her tightly and kissed her soundly.

"I was so afraid for you, after I was captured," Eric said after a moment. "Jeanine knew that I'd double-crossed her…"

"You were afraid for me?" Tris asked with some surprise. "Eric, you were in the hands of a trigger-happy psycho, but you were worried about me?"

"Yes, because I knew what my fate was, but I was worried about yours," Eric said, his gaze lowered. Tris kissed him gently.

"It's okay," she whispered against his lips. "We're both okay. And we're here, right now. Jeanine was captured, and even though our future is uncertain, we're here now, and that's all that matters." She pulled away from him and tugged his shirt off.

Then, she stood up so that she could take her boots and pants off. Eric did the same. A moment later, they were both naked, and Eric pulled Tris into his arms. Together, they fell back onto the bed. They were both content to lie in one another's arms for a long while and just kiss and touch each other gently, while occasionally whispering about how much that they'd missed the other.

"God, Tris, I need you right now," Eric said finally. "Where are the condoms?"

"In the drawer here," she said. She sat up to grab them from her nightstand. She pulled one out from the box, quickly opened the packing, and then slid the condom on over Eric's hard cock. Tris pushed Eric down until he was flat on his back on the bed, and then climbed up on top of him.

They both groaned lowly when Tris guided his cock to her vagina and she lowered herself down onto him. She rotated her hips for a few seconds, and then she started to move slowly on top of him while bracing her hands on his chest. Eric half sat up and wrapped his arms around her. Tris took the change in Eric's position to wrap her legs around his waist, and then she turned her face for a searing kiss.

The pace that they set was exceptionally slow, but both made up for it by touching the other everywhere, and kissing where they could reach.

"Eric, I'm really close," Tris gasped out after a long time.

"Me, too," Eric whispered against her neck. He pulled away from her slightly so that he could press his fingers against her clit to urge her to her orgasm a little bit faster. As his fingers danced across her sensitive flesh, Tris bit back a strangled cry as she came. Eric's movements stilled as he came as well a second later.

Shaking with exhaustion and the after-effects of her orgasm, Tris collapsed against Eric, who fell back against the bed completely. He tightened his hold on her and they lay like that for the longest time, just basking in the afterglow and the fact that they were both alive, unharmed, and together once again.

Tris had started to drift off to sleep when Eric turned his head slightly and pressed a soft kiss to her temple. "Tris," he whispered. Tris hummed to show that she was listening. "I love you."

Tris's eyes flew open and her heart started to hammer. He'd never told her that he loved her before. "I love you too," she somehow managed to stammer out. Eric turned both of them until they were lying on their sides. He was still inside of her, although his penis had long grown soft.

"I know that we haven't known each other that long, but after everything that we've been through together, it seems like much longer," he said.

"I know. I feel the same," Tris agreed quickly. "When Four rescued me from Jeanine, the only thing that I could think about was trying to find you. And then you made that message over the radios, and I was so happy. And when I saw you…"

Eric reached up and brushed away the tears that Tris hadn't known she'd shed. "It's okay, I'm here now," he whispered before he leaned over and kissed her. "And, whatever might happen, I'm never going to leave you ever again."

Thank you for reading! As always, please let me know if you spotted any grammatical errors so that I can fix them.

And, if you enjoyed reading this, please let me know in a review. They're always appreciated.