Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
Chapter 3: Nowhere
The following week, our plan falls into place. We will break into the Weapons Lab and release the memory serum to wipe the memories of the Bureau. Tobias is still struggling with the decision of whether he should give the memory serum to his father or mother. He often gets up in the middle of the night and doesn't come back until the next morning. One night, I follow him out.
He goes down a hallway I've never seen before, and sits on a window ledge. Outside, flurries of snow cover the ground.
"Can't sleep?" I ask him. He turns my way. "Haven't gotten a wink all week" he says.
I climb up on the ledge and sit crossed legged across from him.
"It shouldn't be this hard" he says. "If I really knew them, I'd know what to do. But I don't. I had to find out that my mother was Erudite born from a chart a few weeks ago."
"It's not your fault" I tell him. "Your parents were never good examples to begin with."
I grab his hand and lace his fingers with mine.
"You have to trust yourself" I whisper.
He smiles at me, and together we sit in silence until sunrise.
I haven't spoken to Matthew since the night of the dream. Not that I have anything to say to him. I eat breakfast with Christiana in the dorms. I pick at my eggs. I know I should be thinking of Caleb, about he is willing to sacrifice his own life in order to gain my forgiveness. Or about the plan to reset the minds of everyone in the Bureau. But instead I think of Matthew. Was he just using me for sex? If he was, then I'm mad at myself for giving him what he wanted. It's giving me more troubles than I thought, because now I am overcome with nausea and I have to pinch the bridge of my nose to settle it.
"What's wrong?" Christiana asks me. I shake my head. "Nothing" I say.
"You're lying" she says. I'm too tired to argue. Maybe I should just tell her.
"Okay" I say. "I had sex."
Her eyes widen. Then she smiles. "Wow" she says chuckling. "Guess you're really not a stiff anymore now!"
My cheeks warm. "Yeah" I say.
"Guess I'm not."
The next morning, I wake up as sick as a dog. Everything in the room spins like a top, and I squeeze my eyes shut to block it out. Tobias kneels down next to my cot and puts his lips to my forehead.
"You don't feel warm" he says. "I think it was something I ate" I say. "I'm fine, I'm just going to go down to the infirmary. They'll give me something." He nods. "Want me to come with you?" he asks. I shake my head. "No that's all right. You still have some preparing to do for tomorrow."
"Okay" he kisses my forehead. "See you later."
I sit on a cold metal table in the infirmary, with my hands folded in my lap. The nurse walks in a few minutes later with my test results on her clipboard. She bites her lip and doesn't look at me.
"If you could just give me some kind of medicine that would be" "Tris" she cuts me off.
She looks up at me.
"You're pregnant."
When my mother died, I felt as if my whole world came collapsing down on me all at once, and that I was drowning under its weight. As I ran through that alley, away from her dead body, every detail around me smeared together into one blurry image, as I suffered from utter shock.
Now that feeling has returned, as I walk out of the infirmary and into the hallway.
I'm pregnant.
I don't know where I'm going. I just keep walking straight.
I'm pregnant.
Running. Now I'm running through the hallways, my ears muffled. I keep running until I am no longer able to, and I'm outside. I drop to my knees, into the fresh snow.
I breathe through my nose. In, out. My eyes burn. I'm crying.
In, out. I'm screaming.
Breathe.
I scream until my throat hurts, and I pick up a fistful of snow and crush it.
I've been afraid before. Before my aptitude test. During Dauntless Initiation. Before my fear landscape.
But now I'm more afraid than I've ever been. I hug my knees into my chest and sob. How could I be so careless? Tobias taught me that the Dauntless's only rule to love was to use protection and I couldn't even do that.
All I wanted was to be safe.
Now nowhere is safe.