I keep wanting to write "Breaking The Habit" on the header…that's going to take a while to fix. It's still kind of surreal to me, especially considering the flood of e-mails I've gotten regarding the ending. Thank you all so much for your support! I'm going to try to reply to reviews more consistently, but I can't promise anything. I'm working on several one-shots right now as well as a new multi-chapter story that will all be up sometime in May, and I'm also continuing "Assassin." I'm going to try to have one chapter up a week, even if that means writing them out in advance and stockpiling them.
Broken Boy Soldier
Chapter Two: Erudite
Eric Matthews
They lead me down hallways whose twists and turns I already have memorized, acting as if I've never even laid eyes on the compound before. It's almost painful, actually, being led around like a dog on a leash. Jeanine's dog, which I've unwillingly been the whole time. I don't speak to the guards, and they apparently realize it's better to let me stew in silence. This continues all the way to the door of Jeanine's office, where they throw their arms out in front of me and I grind to a screeching halt. "Wait here," one of them instructs, and they vanish through the door, leaving me alone.
So for a few minutes I stand there, eyeing the security cameras mounted in the upper corners of the door frame. They're incredibly small, made to be invisible to the naked eye, but when you know a building as well as I know the Erudite compound, you start to notice things like that. Not that the guards would believe that. I wonder if they even know about the cameras, or if that's a little administrative secret. It wouldn't surprise me if Jeanine had an entire network of cameras no one else knows about, just to make sure everybody does her bidding.
The door opens again and through it I see a guard beckoning me forward. I step through without hesitation, even though every part of me is screaming leave, this is bad, this is wrong. To be here is not to be where I need to be—with Christina. Anything could have happened to her by now. The traitor Dauntless could hurt her. Candor could reject her. She might not even be alive right now. The thought sends me into a mild fit and I stop abruptly in the middle of the door frame, hyperventilating. I look up and there she is, the bitch herself, sitting with hands folded behind her desk. She raises an eyebrow at me and I straighten up, evening out my breathing, because I can't appear weak in front of her, I just can't. Not if I ever want to get out of here.
"I was wondering when you would grace us with your presence," she says, and this time I am not the only one who hears the current of anger beneath her sarcastic remark. She dismisses the guards with a flick of her wrist, and they are only too happy to obey, scurrying out and letting the door close behind them with a thud. Now it is just us, so quiet I could hear a needle drop.
"Why do you want me here?" I blurt. "So you can have a set of five? Look like you've got more support than you actually do? Only half of the faction is behind you. We could easily outnumber you if it came to that." Okay, I don't know about that, and most of that was bluffing, but I've made my point. What's the use of making me support her? She might as well kill me. Either way, all she's done is create a martyr.
"To the contrary, my dear." I cringe. She only does that to make me uncomfortable, and right now it's working. "You'll find the numbers are undeniably skewed in my favor. Over half the Dauntless have already checked in at the door, and I have no reason to believe more won't follow suit."
More than half? That can't possibly be right. The groups I saw earlier looked fairly even. Besides, not that many people could actually think my crazy mother is right. I don't necessarily think the faction system is good, even though I fled to it to escape my past, but to dismantle it forcibly through an all-out war? That's not the way to go about this, and she knows it. She just wants to be in charge, and war is a perfect way to make everyone look to her for guidance.
"They won't," I reply, hoping my nervousness doesn't show too much. "Sooner or later they're all going to realize you're wrong, and then you'll have no one." It's probably too much to ask for. People are like sheep, flocking to whoever has the biggest crook, and right now, that's Jeanine. This is the least chaotic faction, that's for sure. No screaming, no blood, no death. At least not visibly.
"I doubt that. It was a valiant effort on your part, though." She's grinning in a way that says she's won, and I can't stand it. I have to say something, or else I might explode from all the emotion I'm holding in.
"What's there to stop me from just leaving?" Great idea, Eric. Threaten her. That'll do us all so much good. But it's the only thing I can think of and besides, I'm technically right. If I can get Christina to safety, I can follow her, and they'd never be able to find us. I could just fight my way out right now…
"Asher."
I freeze, my hands clenches into fists to hide their shaking. How could I have completely forgotten about Asher? I am her only hope of returning to life, and I nearly just threw that away. Words cannot even describe the shame I feel at forgetting the one person who knows absolutely everything about me, the person I've spent most of my life with.
"That's what I thought," she says, looking at the barely-controlled trembling of my hands, the tears gathering behind my eyes, making them glisten. Seeing her in an Erudite test lab, hooked up to machines that were living for her while she lay there battered and helpless, was one of the hardest things I'd ever had to do, and now I'm seeing it again in the back of my mind, in all its painful glory. I'm sure she knows the anguish she's awoken in me, and she wants me to remember it, or else she wouldn't bring it up. What I need to keep in mind if I stay here (and it looks like I'll have to) is that nothing my mother does is without a purpose. If she brings up Asher—even going so far as to use the nickname I coined, which she always hated—she wants to make sure that Ash, and her death, and the possibility I might see her again, are at the front of my mind, and Christina is at the back. She's doing this because she doesn't want me to leave.
"Why do you need me so much?" I know I've asked the same question over and over, but I can't help it. She has yet to give me a straight answer.
"Plenty of time for that, my sweet son. Plenty of time." Her sarcastic terms of endearment are making me want to vomit, and I grit my teeth. Somehow I have to get through this. It's only for a little while, I keep reminding myself. Just until I'm safe, and they're safe.
"Now, then." She shuffles some of the papers on her desk and pulls out a folder. On the tab I see the name Matthews, Eric. My file. She opens it and on the top of the stack of papers inside is a copy of my latest scan, the one I took at the door. The one that the guard said something was off about. I tilt my head in an attempt to read it, but the print is too small and I am too far away, not to mention the paper is upside-down. "We noticed something interesting about your scan when you were stopped at the door."
"I'm aware." My voice is controlled, not shaking at all, but as usual, my hands belie my nervousness. What could possibly be so wrong with it?
"It seems you still haven't been able to kick a certain nasty little habit."
Of course. Instigate. The scan recognized something foreign in my bloodstream and recorded it in my date. And it's highly likely this isn't the first time it's happened—just the first time someone's mentioned it.
"I wasn't aware it was a problem," I reply smoothly.
"Well, it is, and we're going to have to fix it. Luckily, I have just the thing." She makes a small motion with her hand, and the door opens behind me. Suddenly I am surrounded by guards.
"I've been working on a new serum aimed specifically at your…problem."
I feel a needle in my neck and I fall to the ground, my vision rapidly blurring.
"One shot should do it."
