Chapter 1

Choosing day.

That can only mean one thing – a group of new initiates. Both Dauntless born and transfers alike. I've been working in intelligence for over a year – I've finally been able to put my aptitude for Erudite to good use.

I'm still trying to absorb the fact that I came first during the initiation.

There are only two defectors from Abnegation that have come first during initiation that I am aware of, me and Tobias.

This morning, during breakfast, conversation was infinitesimal. I can tell Tobias is worrying about what they will be like this year. He struggles every time.

In the early hours of the morning, during the small conversations when he begins to let me further into his head, he tells me exactly what it is like to go into someone else's fear landscape again and again.

I've only experienced it once, but for me that was more than enough.

I could feel the nervous energy pouring from him when he said his tight goodbye to me, kissing me only partially on the mouth, his mind elsewhere.

The stark white walls of the Control Room serve as a deep contrast to the dark wooden desk in which I am now sitting. The wood is worn but finely polished.

I assume the bare walls are to serve a purpose. Most likely, so we aren't distracted.

Two monitors sit on the desk in front of me. The monitor to the left shows each of the four cameras on my rotation, the right allows me to look further into any of those four cameras. If I don't need to investigate further, each camera sits on a rotation of three minutes each on the right monitor.

We don't often get any disturbances other than a play fight turning serious, somebody running a bit too fast down the hallway and tripping or a prank going extremely wrong.

Currently, there is no suspicious movement on the screens in front of me.

I allow my thoughts to drift back to mine and Tobias' early morning conversation…

"You're still awake?" I rub the sleep out of my eyes and roll over to look at my alarm. 3AM.

"Mmm-hmm" He mumbles whilst wiping the sweat from his palms on the bed sheets.

"What's wrong?" I ask.

"Nothing."

"Tobias, you really are a terrible liar. If you want to be honest like a Candor as you said you did, you have to start telling the truth. It's kind of their manifesto."

For the first time since our conversation began, he lets out a small, genuine laugh and the tension in his shoulders relaxes.

"You see right through me." He lifts his arm and I move to lie on his chest.

I let the silence draw out between us, waiting for him to communicate what's troubling him in his own time.

"I'm scared for them." By them, I assume he means the initiates that will transfer tomorrow. I keep quiet. "They really have no idea what is in store for them. Not only do they have to fight their new friends, they have to face fears that have plagued them their entire lives."

"Why are you scared for them?"

"Tris, their innocent." My gaze falls to my hands. Not all of them are. "Okay Tris, they aren't all innocent. But they aren't all like Peter. I just can't stand the fact they have to be put through an excruciating amount of stress and the aftermath that follows." He lets out a deep sigh.

"Well, look at that. You really do have a heart."

"I guess you've changed me."

My focus turns to the only entrance to the Dauntless compound which the initiates can enter. The movement that has commenced is what catches my attention.

The room is dimly lit, the strip lighting bouncing off the concrete floor and walls in a very eerie way.

Tobias and Lauren have entered the room, awaiting the first jumper.

I was so busy staring in their direction that the flash of a body tumbling onto the net startles me.

My mind flows to the time when I was the first to jump. The look in Tobias' eyes when he pulled me from the net, not quite believing that somebody hadn't pushed me over the ledge.

"You know you shouldn't be focusing on that screen alone, Tris." Uriah says.

Uriah is now my supervisor, he began training after Gus left.

"I know, I, um, just can't help it. I'm nosey." I lie.

"More like possessive." He says it gently, but there is an undercurrent of annoyance in his voice.

"Don't be so stiff, Stiff. Come on, let's go to the cafeteria for our break." He says, with a lopsided smile.

I can't believe he still calls me stiff.

Uriah's easy jokes and happy laugh stop my thoughts from drifting to Tobias. Not completely, but enough for me to laugh along happily.

We sit around the overused long metal table. It's too early for lunch, but it doesn't stop Uriah having two full plates of food, a muffin and a piece of cake.

"Come on Tris, you can't tell me you didn't laugh when Lynn got taken out during the paintballing match. Even if you didn't, I bet you were dying too." I laugh and give him a small nod. He is satisfied with my answer and returns to his food.

Sometimes I like to be with a bigger group of people so I can blend into the background. It's almost impossible to do that when you are with Uriah. He always asks my opinion, keeps me involved and makes me feel welcome. I appreciate it more than he would ever know.

Before I know it, we are back in the control room. I don't go looking for the camera that showed Tobias before, but it eventually comes around on the rotation.

He's not there. I let out a sigh I had been holding in.

My knee starts tapping, as it does when I'm nervous about something. I think I have gained the trait from Christina.

Looking at everything and anything but the screens in front of me, I see a piece of crumpled paper behind the monitors, I've never seen it there before.

My curiosity, as always, peeks. I pick up the paper and find login details for an account in the control room.

I take a sideways glance at Uriah just to make sure he isn't looking at me.

He's not, he's playing the game he created himself from scratch. His eyes seem dead to the world, so I know I'm safe.

Unfolding the paper, I log out of my account and into the one that's written down on the paper.

I look through the documents stored on the computer, which seem to me to be leadership material. Lists of supplies, names of old initiates and their rankings. Max. Dauntless Ex-Leader. The very person who was executed for his involvement with Jeanine Matthews.

My heart sinks when I see supplies for the attack serum that was injected into us last year. I also find a map of the entire Abnegation territory.

I look at the dates in which these files where last accessed, and see that it was before the attack on Abnegation even began.

I close the programmes down quickly, my stomach churning.

I can't look at them, I just can't.

But something else picks at my curiosity this time.

"Uriah, who sat at this desk before I did?" I ask, not really wanting to know the answer as I have a feeling I already know who it is.

"Um, Four, why?" He asks curiously.

"No reason." I manage to spit out. I've already crumpled the piece of paper and thrown it away, so he won't ask me about it.

I sit forward with my elbows on my knees and comb my hands through my hair.

I can't believe Tobias knew about these attacks before I did, and didn't even think to warn me. He knows where my parents live, where his father lives.

Just because he doesn't care about his family, doesn't mean that I don't care about mine.

We all almost died that day, when everyone in Dauntless awoke with dead eyes and no sense of what was happening.

We all underestimated just what Abnegation was about to do.

Always one step ahead of Jeanine Matthews.

She never knew what was coming when Abnegation overthrew her and her lackeys.

Now there is a new leader of Erudite, Imogen Yates.

She was elected soon after the imprisonment of Jeanine. She has a much gentler face with eyes brimming with intelligence as opposed to evil.

Things have been getting back on track since Jeanine Matthews was overthrown.

But now, how do I face the fact that Tobias knew about what was about to happen? Not only did he not tell me, but nobody in Abnegation, the other leaders?

My breaths come out in short bursts. My fingers are trembling.

I'm lucky that Uriah isn't in the slightest observant, or I would be screwed.

I need to get out of here.

"Uriah, I'm not feeling well… I'm going back to my apartment." I stutter, but my voice didn't quiver in the way I thought it would.

I run, almost sprint, back to the apartment I'm currently sharing with Christina.

I push past people not caring that they might turn to violence, as the Dauntless almost always do when someone attacks their cowardice.

I get a few pushes back, and few nasty words, but nothing that I can't handle today.

I jam the key into the lock and push through the heavy door of my apartment, almost slamming my head against the metal. Shit.

I'm disorientated at first, but I soon make out the figures moving slowly under the bed sheets of Christina's bed, then I hear the noises.

The noises.

"Wow, Tris! You know it's my day off today!" She squeals.

I turn my back immediately, heat almost bursting from my pours.

Abnegation really, really aren't used to intimacy. I'm still learning with Tobias. I wish I hadn't seen that, I hope it doesn't make our relationship uncomfortable.

"Sorry Christina." I manage to throw the words from my mouth as I fumble for the door handle.

I've always hated how there are no rooms in our apartment, as any other that the Dauntless occupy. It's just a kitchen area, dining area, living room and some beds with large floor to ceiling windows. The only small room which is private, is the bathroom.

I decide to go to the only other apartment which I have a key for, Tobias'.

I scramble my way through the dark corridors and up into the Pire towards his apartment. I bump into a few people. I can't seem to meet anybody's eyes after that awkward moment.

I take a seat on the edge of his bed, not wanting to become too comfortable. I pick at the corners of a blue blanket that is sprawled on top of the covers. I smile to myself, I wouldn't have thought a Dauntless would sleep with a blanket. He hasn't even made his bed.

I lift it to my nose and my heart sinks, it smells just like him.

I drop the blanket back down on the bed and begin to pace the floor.

Could I forgive him for not telling me about the attack? Surely, surely there is a good enough reason.

I stride to the window and peer out at the dark afternoon sky. I see spots of black everywhere, heads bobbing up and down as they run for the train.

Other Dauntless are in the forecourt throwing supplies up into the trucks. I prefer to be up here in the Pire sometimes as opposed to the pit, the brightness fills me.

I startle when the door opens.

"Tris, what are you doing here?" Tobias asks curiously.

"I came to talk to you, how was your morning?" I ask, too sweetly.

He eyes me suspiciously, he's onto me.

"Not like you to show up here unannounced. This morning was fine, twelve Dauntless initiates. Seven transfers." He says blandly.

"Oh, where are the transfers from?" I ask.

"Two Erudite, four Candor and one Abnegation" He smiles a little about the last transfer. "How was your morning? Aren't you supposed to be at work?" His eyebrows knit together.

It's now or never.

"I left early, I don't feel well"

"What's wrong?" He takes two strides over to me, reaching for me immediately.

"Nothing, really." I shrug out of his hold. I can't let him touch me when I tell him this or I'll lose all of my defenses.

"I found a scrap of paper behind my monitor, it had a log in details and in the account I found the list of supplies for the serum that nearly killed us all. Plans of the entire Abnegation sector. I know you saw them Tobias, so don't tell me it wasn't you. How could you not have told me? I worried myself to death over my parents. And you saw it coming" I spit.

He sighs long and heavy, like everything he had been holding back has left his being.

He resigns himself to sit on the edge of the bed, just like I did before.

He can't meet my eyes.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you. Please don't think that I didn't want to."

I huff, that's all I can do.

"Careful, Tris." His eyes burn into me.

"I've got a lot to explain, about what happened before the attack." He says slowly. He gets up and approaches me like I'm a wounded animal. He touches his fingertips to my cheek lightly.

I move away, backing closer to the door.

"It's too late Tobias, you should have told me at the time. Do you realize how close we were to being killed? Did that never occur to you?"

My fingers grip around the door handle, sure and steady this time.

"It's too late for explanations Tobias. I thought we had moved on from keeping things from each other, clearly not."

The last sight I see is his back, the tips of his tattoo peeking from the top of his shirt. Walking towards the other side of the room, away from me, shaking his head.

I lie in bed, staring the pipes and bland ceiling above me. It's not late, so I know Christina isn't asleep in the bed opposite me. I can't hear her steady breathing, her tell-tale sign of slumber. Do I tell her? The day that she nearly became a cold blooded murderer, she could have been told. No – warned.

But how much can you really tell a Candor? Can I trust her not to tell everybody about how Tobias betrayed us? He would be executed as a traitor, for sure.

I let the guilt of my last thought run through me. She's my best friend, of course I can trust her. Not for the first time today, I'm feeling brave.

"Christina, can I talk to you? But can you like, be a girl for five minutes?" I ask, mimicking her words back to me when she confessed about her feelings for Will.

She sits up straight, eyes alight with humour.

"Hmmm… 'Kay!"

"I found something out today - Four knew about the attack on Abnegation before it happened. He never did anything to stop it." I murmur. I'm surprised she even heard me, with all the shouting and yelling in Dauntless I'm pretty sure we are all partially deaf.

Her face falls.

"Are you kidding?" She looks at me incredulously.

"Why would I joke around?"

She looks at me wrapped up in my duvet, tucked in as tight as can possibly be.

Her body relaxes, angry tension released.

"Ok, so don't kill me for saying this. I think you should hear him out, listen to what he has to say." She says, her mouth pulled to one side.

I shuffle out of my duvet and go to reach out for her.

I shake her, hard.

"Christina?! Is that you? Are you in there?" I ask mockingly.

She laughs.

"Well I'm just saying Tris…" She trails off, throwing one of her pillows at my head.

"This isn't like you, you're not really the forgiving type. What's changed?" I ask while eyeing her suspiciously.

"I know you know more about Four than anybody else, but I just think he's definitely not the type to do something without good reason. Talk to him before you worry yourself stupid about it" She says while turning over.

She made a good point, Tobias would never do anything to deliberately hurt me without good reason.

I stay awake until I hear Christina's soft snoozes.

I'll hear him out, if he'll still talk.