Prior.
There's a resistant group. Someone outside of the factions. Someone bearing my parents' name. My name.
The shouting echoes throughout the room; people protesting, asking questions, trying to wrap their mind around what they have been told. But I am silent, struggling with my own thoughts and feelings that are too far away for them to have a full effect on me.
"Tris," Tobias says, his voice appearing right by my ear, stirring my hair. One of his hands wraps around my arm as if to steady me.
"All this time," I say. My voice sounds different to my own ears. "All this time we were here...there was..." there was something bigger, I mentally finish. Sudden anger ripples and bubbles up inside of me. This person...this Amanda could have helped us. And now, she will walk around and tell other people her name which is not her's. It's mine; it belongs to my parents who are no longer alive to claim it.
I almost forget Tobias is still there until he says, "I know. Maybe they needed time to...organize before they came to our aid."
It's hard to hear him over the noise and he knows it so he ends up dragging me by the arm, pulling me through the tightly knit pack of people, into a hallway that is vacant and quieter.
"We haven't heard anything," I reply, the anger growing, a steady stream of flame. "There hasn't been any reports, no news of resistance. There hasn't been any extra protocol. They haven't done anything!" I'm yelling now.
"Since when are we told everything of what's going on?" he asks, raising his eyebrows. "This isn't necessarily their fault-"
"You're defending them?" More anger surfaces. "Mind control wasn't enough to have them start invading? A psychotic woman who invented different syrums for...feelings that shouldn't exist...none of that was enough to have them start whatever they're planning?"
Tobias's eyes fall to the floor as if he's trying to think of what to say. I look around the hallway, as if I'm waiting for a resistance, whatever that Amanda is in charge of, to break through the windows and attack. They may say they're here to help, but by this point, my trust is very limited that I am starting to question everything at least a few dozen times before I give any of it away.
"Why'd she pick that name?" I ask finally, which is what has really been eating at me. I don't want Tobias to voice the possibility, I don't want him to, I don't. But a part of me does want him to.
He looks me in the eyes. "Maybe she's...a distant relative or chose that name because she knew..."
That my parents are dead, I think. That my brother is a traitor. That I am practically gone.
"Tris," he says again, grabbing my shoulders and giving me a determined look, which is the same one he always wears. "We will figure this out. I'm not going to ask you if you are okay because I know even if you aren't, then you will be."
I just nod as he continues.
"So, let's go discuss a plan as to of what's going to happen next. Arrange...something." He takes my hand and leads me back, keeping a tight hold on me like if he lets go then I will float away and disappear again.
His words play inside my mind as we re-enter the loud room, but it is accompanied along with the distant voice of Amanda's on the video and I can't stop but continue to think of the name Prior, Prior, Prior coming out of her mouth, echoing inside my mind.
And I don't like it.