Thank You, God, for everything.
DISCLAIMER: I do NOT own Divergent or The Host. PLOT AND TWISTS AND YES.
We spend the next couple of days there. None of us dare to move out of the apartment lest we get discovered. This apartment, while looking inhabited, with all the furniture and a goldfish in the office, doesn't seem to belong to anyone. If it did, the owners are gone. No one comes into the rooms, but we still are on alert. We have a guard up every time we all fall asleep.
I peek out the window my first shift. Everything looks so calm and peaceful out there. There are cars moving on the streets. People - Souls walking down the sidewalk. Souls speaking kindly to Souls and helping older Souls cross the street.
That's the strange thing. Everyone is so kind to everyone else. The images of the video flash back into my mind. I try to push them out, but still they remain. This world looks nothing like that, though. This world is so much nicer than the world back in our city, like if everyone took an aptitude test, they'd be Divergent. They'd get Amity and Abnegation.
Is that why those aliens came to this planet? To be nice to everyone? Maybe we were that far gone that we were able to be taken over.
On the third day, I sit next to the window. In a corner of the wall, I scrunch up and make myself small there. My gun in my hand still, I glance out into the world. I don't think I'm visible from the street.
"Tris?" I hear. I turn to see Tobias standing up, stretching. I took my spot as guard at four this morning. It's now nearly eight. He fell asleep early last night. Tired.
"Hey," I say. He crosses the room and takes the spot across from me. He watches out the window for a moment before he looks to me. His dark and murky blue eyes practically pierce me. When he looks at me like that, I feel like he can see right through me. See everything I'm thinking of, know me and look into my soul. It's scary, but also it shows him how vulnerable I am.
"Is there anything different out there?" he asks.
"Than what we've seen?" I shake my head. "Nothing."
A minute passes; he says, "It's strange, isn't it?" He glances out the window.
I furrow my brows. "What is?"
"That an alien race is kinder to each other than the human race is to each other?" Tobias says. His voice is low as to not wake up the rest of our party. He looks back to me and says, "Do you think it was a good thing, to have the Souls take over the human race?"
The Souls were almost like the faction leaders, those who originally made the factions. They were used to protect us from each other. The main idea was to make the world a better place.
It seems that the aliens have done a better job than we have.
I shake my head.
Tobias smiles.
There's a rattling at the door. Like the clinging of keys. Tobias and I instantly get to our feet. My hand shakes around my gun as he hurries forward and sends a push through Uriah, Christina and Zeke by shaking their shoulders.
Tobias positions himself behind the door. I let out a breath. We need a place to escape. I turn and run to the end of the apartment. There's a window. I force it open and look out on the world below. There's a black staircase that goes back and forth along the side of the building. That's awfully convenient.
I turn back when I hear yelling. Through the doors, I can see Uriah and Tobias shooting. Christina darts toward me, turning back and firing carefully as to not hit any of the boys. She just misses the head of a child with silver eyes.
The apartment's family has returned. We can't stay here anymore.
"Christina," I yell. She sees me and hurries over to me. She looks over the window and says, "That'll work."
She turns and yells for the boys. I hook one leg over the window and lower myself onto the black staircase. We're several feet off the ground. I don't care as I let my entire body hit the staircase. I look up to see Christina making her way over. I have confidence that this will be nothing like the last time we went out of windows. There's no controlled faction members to shoot up at us should we slightly slip something off.
I hurry down the rest of the stairs to the bottom of them. Christina runs after me. We gather at the end with a black gate. My empty hand grips the gate. I hear yelling up ahead.
"Are we running from danger?" I whisper.
Christina looks up. "Well, if we are, the boys are joining us. Now, jump!"
I look up. Uriah and Zeke are turning and going back and forth down the stairs to join us. Tobias has blood splattered against his forehead. He looks tentatively down. The idea of facing his fear must hit him, because he ends up putting a leg over the windowsill and falls onto the black staircase.
I turn and look to the ground. Just a few feet away. I climb over the gate and hold on, clutching the sides with my one empty hand. It's like the chasm. Only no water. But still a jump.
I jump and land on my feet.
Christina falls after me. No fear of jumping from her. No water slicking the railing. No long, inevitably murderous fall. Just dark pavement.
Zeke and Uriah join us. I look up. Tobias crouches on the railing, his legs squat. He lets out a breath and falls next to me. He winces slightly, and straightens.
My hand automatically goes to the blood on his face. I let out a breath as my hand falls back, dark red.
"It's not mine," he says.
I gulp.
"Let's get out of here," he says.
"And where are we going?" Christina says. She and Zeke and Uriah look incredulous as they look at Tobias.
Tobias cocks his gun; he's ready in case we meet any more of the Souls. "We're going back to the city."
"How? Are we walking?" I say.
"No. Let's steal a car," Tobias says. He turns and runs around the building, leaving us to run after him, not wanting to leave him alone in a country, a world with Souls that want to replace him with an alien.
"None of us know how to drive," Uriah points out.
"We can figure it out," Tobias says. He lets out a sigh as he leans against the building. I fall next to him, pressing my heavily breathing body against the cold wall. He looks down at me, and I know. He wants answers. He wants to see what happened to the city. He wants to see if the Souls have taken it over. He wants to know if there's hope for it left.
I grip his hand and give it a squeeze. That's what he needs now.
Zeke peeks around the corner and then waves his hands for us to come forward. In front of the apartment is a car. It still has its keys in. The Souls must trust each other enough to think that no one will steal it.
Unfortunately for them, we're not Souls, and we all fall into the car. It fits eight people, and so Uriah, Christina and I have ample room in the backseat while Tobias intently studies the keys. He sees the pieces and sets his feet on them. His eyebrows are furrowed. He had watched Marcus when he had driven. I know it.
He knows every one of Marcus's moves.
Within a minute, he has the car running. His mind is very good with wires and such like this. He had operated the computers at the Dauntless compound. He now sits back and turns the car onto the road.
The roads are surprisingly clear. Must be earlier than we thought. He drives us onto the street, and I let out a sigh of relief once we're outside the city limits.
I settle back in my seat next to Christina. We have a few minutes to wait until we get to our city. I wonder how I should prepare myself to see the entire city taken over. If the Souls can so easily take over Earth, how long will it take them to take over the city?
I watch out the window as the plains and fields pass away from me. They remind me, almost, of the fields the Amity have. Their orchard. A safe haven.
Suddenly, we lurch onto one of the fields. I hold onto the car door and look to Tobias.
"What are you doing?" I say loudly.
"Cars," Uriah says, and I look ahead. On the roadway coming toward where we were is a bunch of cars. They look nothing like the cars we know from our city. They're all different colors and shapes and styles. Colors and shapes and styles from the rest of the world, coming back from our city.
I understand now. We need to stay away from them now.
Tobias takes us around, and we are at the Amity fence. We go parallel to the fence, trying to find a door or entrance to get into.
We find the usual one and hold our breath. We stay nearly half a mile from the rest of the cars as they pile out of our city, full of aliens taking over the planet. More than likely leaving a job well done. I grit my teeth and look at the ground of the car as Tobias moves the car forward. They're probably done with their job, and there is nothing we could do to stop them.
They don't lock the gates behind them. They leave them wide open. Tobias drives through with no problem. He takes us down the dirt road to the Amity compound after brief discussion. We have to see if there's some humans left.
We drive as close as we can bear. Tobias and I volunteer to get out. Christina, Zeke and Uriah stay inside in case we need help. I hope we don't get captured.
Tobias and I make our way around the orchard with little words. All I can hear is my heart pounding and our breathing. I put a hand to my heart and feel it beat against my thin chest. Its skipping reminds me of when I had first felt Tobias's heartbeat. And when he had felt mine.
I realize something. There's barely any noise. Silence.
"Where are they?"
Tobias looks thoughtful, and then he jerks his head. "The meeting room. With that tree."
"You think they're all there?" I ask.
"If there was humans still, they'd be hiding from them. That means they're not in the tree room," Tobias says, and he runs across the orchard toward the dorms. I run after him.
He stops along a corner and says, "We just need to get a general consensus. Let's just check out the dorms. Quickly. If there's no humans there, we can only guess that there is none."
I nod. He mimics me and we separate.
I look in the rooms, the dorms, the laundry, the bathrooms. No one. Nobody. I even look in the closets, wary at every noise, and peek out the windows. I catch glimpses of the Souls in the tree room through a window. All I can see are their backs. But I know they're taken over. Even the Amity did not want to be killed. They're smart enough to know that aliens who take over Earth are not merciful enough to not kill them.
I walk through the dining hall on my way out. There's still the tables and benches set up down the length of the room. Empty bowls sit periodically on the tabletops. It looks so normal. I stop and let my hand drift along the smooth wood. How can something be so normal when everything else has turned to such war?
I look up when I hear footsteps. Before I can pull my gun, Tobias lifts up his hands, almost defensively.
"Well?" I ask.
"Nothing. They're all taken over. I looked in on the tree room. Not one of them doesn't have those eyes," he says.
My breath hitches. "Now what?"
He lets out a breath and says, "We head back to the car, see if we can find any humans in the city."
That's what we do.
I wonder how visible we are to the Souls as we drive along the streets. We need to move through stealthily, but we also can't abandon the car to them.
We watch their faces as we pass by, crouching as low as we can. Their eyes, the eyes of the factionless and the Erudite and the Abnegation and the Dauntless and the few remaining Amity and some Candor. They're all equal now. They're all gone with an alien inside them.
I am still startled by the silver of their eyes. It's flashing and unnatural, like the dark-colored contacts of the Dauntless teens I had seen in the school cafeteria.
We have two objectives on this trip. Get into the Abnegation kitchens, where most of the food is canned and dried, and find out for certain if there are any survivors and if any of them are family members or friends to us.
I fear the worst.
Tobias parks the car alongside one of the Abnegation houses. We did see a few unfamiliar faces on the street corners. They're wearing black outfits, an outline of a pistol ready in their hand if they need to fire it.
The Seekers.
They're positioned all over the city, like guards. And all around us the people are cleaning up, taking their city back, together. Under an entirely different influence than Jeanine's, but still the same. Something that makes them all do what they're told, because they're told it's the right thing to do.
We get out. Guns in our hands, we cross over to an empty Abnegation house. As usual, it's unlocked. It's empty in the way that lets us know that there's no one living here. Just all the usual furniture and foodstuffs in every Abnegation home. It looks like Tobias's. And my own.
Christina snatches up a homemade basket and we raid the place. Tobias reaches for the tallest shelves. We get pasta and cans of soup and liquids. Sacks of small things. Uriah stands by the door, keeping watch in case someone comes after us.
I stand up, a bag hanging on my shoulder, and look to Tobias. He has gone to the second floor and he comes down the stairs bearing more things. Sheets. Blankets. Flashlights. Does it matter if we take things from the Souls? It almost doesn't feel like stealing. It's more like taking back.
"Let's go," he says, and we carry the things to the car and load up the trunk.
Tobias shuts the trunk and turns to me. "Hey," he says quietly. "What is it?"
"Isn't strange to think how we used to live in a place like this, and then just a few choices changed that?" I say quietly.
He nods and waves a hand to himself. I almost tentatively walk to him, and he wraps an arm around me, and I almost let myself fall against his muscular shoulder. He runs a hand through my hair, almost like he's just making sure that I'm here.
I'm hit with a sudden thought. What if Tobias was turned into one of those Souls? What if instead of dark blue, intense eyes, he stared back with silver ones? The thought of him leaving me forever in a world so dark and desolate sends a wave through me. A wave of pain. A wave of fear.
He whispers something into my ear, and Uriah sticks his head out, demanding for us to come into the car.
"Where are we going?" I ask as I draw back.
Tobias starts up the car. Uriah turns back to me and says, "We're going to pass by the Erudite building, see if we can find some of our people."
"They're not going to be human if they're just walking around with the Souls," I point out.
Uriah sighs. "I know. But we can still see if they're still here, and if they've been converted into Souls or not."
We're there within minutes. Our buildings really are in close corners. I see the streets I walked to get to the Erudite building after Jeanine called for me or else others would die. They're cleaner now. The Souls have been cleaning them. Not the factions and factionless. The Souls.
I look up when I see Uriah up front. He's looking for something in the shelf in the car. After a moment, he pulls out black pairs of glasses and hands them to us. The one in my hand looks shaded over. These are Erudite cars, then. Ones with unnecessary glasses.
"Will this make us look less suspicious or not?" Christina says, slipping hers on.
"If someone asks you about them, say your new eyes are sensitive," Tobias says. He waves a hand around. "Because of the recent insertion. You're not used to this planet's sun."
"What if they're not there?" Zeke says. He's in the back, looking as poised as a tiger. His eyes look anxious, and I realize something. Shauna. He left her there. I didn't even think of that until now. Of course he wants to find her.
Tobias looks determined. "We'll find them."
YES, YES, look at that, all good. God bless you!
