"assurgent" : moving upward : rising; especially : ascendant
1
Tobias
I sit in my apartment. It's sundown. For nearly four years I have been half of myself; a ghost in my own body; a stranger in my own home city. Acceptance has come, in little bouts, from a seed of traitorous relenting to a larger bloom of surrender. Life has been life, hard and dull, but not nearly empty. I still have them, the people who shaped me, who shed tears with me, who fought and loved with me.
I am tired. Weary. There is an ache in my bones, a sigh more than pain. It is a burden I carry with me everyday and seldom does it leave, although for merciful instances it does. Instances where my heart soars as it once used to, small moments where the laughter and love that surround me fill it, making it feel lighter than air. However relieving these rare occasions are, I hate them, because they make me forget, no matter how briefly, that She is gone.
Day after day it had been dull and numb, the memories faded, the sights murky, the sounds distant. For two years I had lived my life in a waking death, and had slowly started to push out, assisting Johanna Reyes in governing Chicago. I had worked and moved and toiled so that my mind would be too preoccupied to betray itself, but after the two years had passed, something changed within. I would wake up before dawn, covered in sweat, even more uneasy; as if things were not finished, not settled, not final. But they are. And they always will be now.
I debate tearing off the door to the small safe in the floor of my bedroom and downing the vial containing the serum I stole. And like a thousand times before, I veto this thought. Christina was right back then when she said that Beatrice would not have wanted it, would have hated it. And until today her words are imprinted, and yes, she is still right.
This is the hardest, being alone, having to constantly face my own mind. And yet I hate being in throngs of people, because I still stand alone, devoid of her touch, devoid of warmth. Because their loud, disrespectful chatter reminds me that her voice will forever be silenced, no matter how many times I hear it in my sleep.
I down my mug of coffee and contemplate it. It's an erudite blue, which shouldn't mean anything now, but it reminds me of the stain on her shoulder, and I glare at it and hurl it away, as far as I can, hearing it crash against the cold cement somewhere in the near distance.
"Four?" Christina's voice echoes from behind me. I turn around, half-expecting her to chasten me. But the Candor in her, though remaining, has softened over the years. Or maybe she has more important things to say.
She walks to me, breathing deeply, and I turn my head to look at her. The past four years have been just as hard on her, and yet time away from constant fighting and renewed mourning has softened her features and lessened the tension from her expression. Still today, she looks anxious, her dark eyes glittering with an emotion I can't fathom.
"Cara called." My heart jumps into my throat but I will it to calm down. The thought of even searching for all these years seems stupid and pointless, and yet Cara, who has been, so like the Erudite, seeking for answers to many questions. Many.
Christina puts her hand on my shoulder. "She wants us to go to her office. Now."
Cara stands as we enter, her face taut and anxious. My eyes flit to the adjoining chamber, where a gun fires into the air. Surprisingly, the bullet reverses direction and pings into the wall behind the gun and I catch a flicker of light in the seemingly empty air.
"New invention?" Christina inquires. For some reason I cannot find words to speak.
Cara nods. "It's a passageway protector. I made a polymer sensor which detects potentially dangerous projectile objects. You need force as well as mass to pass through it; a bullet will bounce off but a human running through it will only feel a slight resistance."
"What is someone decides to use a tank?" says Christina.
"This is for primary protection only. Ideal for attacks from long distance, but not so inconvenient that you need to enable and disable it if you wish to pass through, unlike previous blast-proof barriers."
I frown and Christina notices, her eyes conveying a small apology for deterring us from the main reason we were here.
Cara breathes deeply and turns to us, her blonde hair looking harsh against the bright lights. "Sit."
Christina settles into a metal chair facing Cara's desk, but I cross my arms and stand. I am at unease. Cara sits and opens her drawer, bringing out a plain white envelope. She offers it to me, but I give it to Christina, not wanting to be at the receiving end of whatever startling news we are about to find out.
Christina pulls out photographs, a map, a key. And a heavy journal, with coded stamps and imprints. And handwriting. Cryptic handwriting. The photographs are of a room, dimly lit with old-technology lights, and computer database systems, and filing cabinets. The map seems unfamiliar, a building I cannot recognize seeing in Chicago, until I realize it is one of the Bureau. The map reads "Bureau of Genetic Welfare", and B4.6 is scribbled in blue ink, as well as wobbly lines that form an X on the map. The key bears the same letter and number combination.
I glance up at Cara, who nods. She wants me to see for myself. I take the journal from Christina, opening it to the front page.
"CLONING EXPERIMENTS" is printed, in noncholant black ink, plain letters, of no remarkable feature. But they make my eyes swim with confusion and my heart race. I flip through the rest of the pages, which all describe, in words so passive and scientific, a process which the Bureau has experimented with, yet another curious test at playing with human life. I stop at the end of the book, because a name catches my eye.
"This journal contains a summary of findings into the topic of Cloning by researchers of the Bureau of Genetic Welfare. These results and methods will be withheld from the public and from the lower working force of the Bureau..." the statement drabbles on, but at the bottom is what has caught my eyes. Under the words "The Council of the Bureau of Genetic Welfare" is a signature. David's.
I look up at Cara. "When did you find this?"
Her eyes meet mine, stoic and yet soft at the same time. "A few weeks ago, David was in his office. He found a very well-hidden safe he obviously doesn't remember, and called me, asking what it was for. I sent someone with a device I made, a scanning ray built into -" she pauses, checking her Erudite tendency to go off on long soliloquies concerning technology, and continues. "Anyway, inside was a collection of documents that shed light on so many things. But the key and map were the most interesting. We went to Basement 4, which was hardly used at all, and found room 6. The pictures are of it, and the journal from it."
I swallow and ask, "Why didn't you tell us right away?"
Cara blinks. "I wanted to know what it all meant first."
She hesitates. "I didn't want you to hope for nothing."
At her words my stomach jumps into my throat and I take a seat next to Christina. "So what does it mean?" I say, weakly but insistently. I want to know. But I also don't want to.
Cara frowns, and the expression on her face makes me even more impatient. She hangs her head for a few seconds, probably trying to figure out how to break the news in terms that don't scream a research scientist. "We didn't collect Tris right away, because no one wanted to go near the death serum. We had to wait until we were sure it had dissipated. Until Caleb found us and told us that she had held him at gunpoint so she could take his stead. A few minutes had already gone by at this point, and she was cold when we found her."
My hands are shaking the moment she says her name. I've called her Beatrice to myself and to everyone else since she left, and the stinging heartache her old nickname brings is as rabid as ever. I angrily say, "Why are you telling me this? It's nothing new." Christina lays a hand on my shoulder, squeezing gently, and I feel my eyes rim with tears. I shake it away, angry at my own weakness.
Cara comes nearer and sits at the edge of her desk, hands clasped and shoulder struggling not to give in to a slouch. She extends her palm and I give her the journal, more like shove it towards her. She gives me a look of understanding and flips to a certain page, labelled "Cloning Apparatus" and points to a gun. "This was in the safe too. It was the last and final version of a Clone gun. It would take cells from the body and use these to generate clones. After they shot subjects with it they saw dizziness, numbness, and hallucinations before the subject would drift into a coma. The clones were always unsuccessful, because although they'd materialize, they never had any life. Life is something not just that easily created."
Cara reaches behind her and hands me a folder. "This is Tris's autopsy."
She pauses, and Christina, who has been so quiet since my outburst, takes the moment to ask, "Why do you have it?"
A nervous twitch graces Cara's lips, as if she's too scared to tell us what she's found. Finally she speaks. "I wanted to make sure of my memory. Because when we found her body, I don't remember seeing a blue stain on her arm." She inhales. "And neither does this autopsy report."
Hello everyone. Like many, I was heartbroken by the end of Allegiant. Despite telling myself again and again that Tris was, in fact, fiction, and not someone I truly knew, I could not get over it and therefore decided to take my sorrow into my own hands and start writing this. I am much open to constructive criticisms and reviews, but please do not flame me. If you dislike my story there is no reason to keep on reading, right? R&R my friends. :)