TRIS
"Tobias." My mouth is dry, my throat like sandpaper as I push myself upright. I scream through gritted teeth as my side pulls painfully, and fall back against the pillow with an exasperated sigh. There's a bloody handprint on the wall opposite the bed in this tiny room, which is really barely big enough for the fold-out bed I lie upon. A clear plastic tube is draped from a bag hanging from a pole over my head, connected to a thin needle stuck into my hand. I push the blanket back from my bare body, hissing as the cold air prickles my skin, and gingerly push at the fresh bandages on my side. The white cloth is no longer soaked with red, and the skin beneath feels freshly stitched. It hurts, but it's better than before- instead of screaming with burning agony, it throbs softly like a fresh bruise.
The room spins around me as I press my head into my pillow, frustration already grinding at my nerves. I need to be up and about, but every time I lift my head off the bed I find myself drowning in a wave of dizziness. Where is Tobias? My stomach turns as I tilt my head to look sideways, examining the smudged handprint marking the wall. I catch sight of a bundle of black clothes out of the corner of my eye, folded on the floor with a pile of folded and crumpled paper on top of them.
My hand shakes as I reach out, straining to take hold of the grey photographs. When my fumbling fingers finally find the pile, I'm overcome with a sense of grief and longing that I can't comprehend. Caleb's smiling face shines out from the paper, his grey clothes like any others in the black-and-white image of his last school photograph. Tousled black hair hangs in front of his wide eyes, the round-cheeked face showing no hint of the traitorous behaviour soon to follow.
I move his picture to the back of the small pile, shuffling past a grainy image of me and Caleb playing in the snow and a blurred picture of the two of us sharing our toys in the living room. My eyes finally fall upon the most crumpled of all the images, tear-stained and blackened at the edges. The ink is smudges in parts, but in others the matte paper glistens with nostalgia.
My parents sit at an Abnegation kitchen table, their hands entwined on the surface and smiles marking their young faces. Friends crowd around them, Marcus and Evelyn on one side and other Abnegation members I've never met hovering on the other. Even here, Evelyn's smile is forced and tired, Marcus' face creased with lines of stress and age.
These images must be a gift from Tobias, forbidden snapshots from my childhood. I know these are not allowed, but I also knew about the camera my parents kept hidden in their room. They'd sneak it out occasionally and take some pictures, and my mother would develop the film on special paper using some orange juice she'd saved from our breakfast quota. The fact that she kept them, after all this time, and that their integrity was protected from the hot flames of our living room fireplace warms my heart.
I feel the heavy pull of sleep drawing at my eyelids as I try and absorb as much of these photographs as I can. With the destruction of the hard drive, I'd thought that all images of my parents were lost forever- but I'd forgotten about these. This legacy left by my mother has become my most valuable possession, and yet it can be taken away so quickly, so easily.
My eyes flutter closed and I force them open. I have to stay awake, I have to…
They drift closed again and my head sinks further into the stiff pillow, and I know there's no chance of them opening any time soon. My hand falls from my chest, the photographs floating to the floor like charred confetti. I fight to catch them as I sink through the bed, falling into the blackness of the roaring chasm before I land at the bottom of the pit, the glass floor of the spire shining like a tiny dot of torchlight far above my head. The view is peaceful and silent, until the harsh blast of a gun shatters the rainbow glass. It rains down on me in a shower of dried paint and splatters of blood, corpses falling from the room above and hitting the floor around me like limp rag dolls. I gasp, and I'm drowning in the stench of death, unable to surface as Will's body falls from the roof, landing next to my head. The next to fall is Cara, her glassy eyes facing me on my right. Then Matthew and Christina and Uriah and Zeke all come tumbling down, landing in the sea of bodies with soft flumps, like bricks falling onto a bed of pillows.
The final body to fall is Tobias, his empty eyes blank and staring as they get closer and closer. His floppy body falls directly on top of me, his bloody hair dangling into my forehead as I'm frozen under his dead weight. I scream, but the air is crushed from my lungs as I fight to escape. My fingers claw at the soft flesh around me, but they only sink into the rotting bodies. The stench of death and decay sills my nostrils, burning the hairs as I'm forced to stare up into Tobias' glazed eyes. I take one final gasp as my vision blackens at the edges, dimming what little of the room I can see. Then, against the white light of the spire above, I see the muscles in Tobias' sagging face move, twisting into a bloody grin.
TOBIAS
I stand before Evelyn, hatred radiating out from my very centre as she points to Christina. The girl's hair is greasy and frazzled, and her dirt-smeared face is red and swollen with bruises. On top of it all, her eyes are barely open, the skin around them tear-stained and traced with salty tracks. Blood crusts her cut lips, her very resolve crumbling as she looks at me through her black eyelashes. "Traitor," The words form on her lips, a whisper at first which rises to a shout as she repeats it again and again, pounding the words into my skull.
Evelyn clicks her fingers and Rose steps forwards from the edge of the room, bringing her hand up and slapping Christina across the face. Her own sister...
When I look at Christina, I see only the Candor transfer from the group of initiates; the mouthy teenager with too much to say, the girl who stuck up for her friends and refused to fight. I see the girl who hung herself over the chasm to prove her courage, to defend her friends and her honour. As I think of her, I can't bring myself to do that Evelyn is asking of me… but I have to.
Because Evelyn took pity on me. She let Tris live, despite her mere existence serving as a grand hindrance to her plans. I turn on Christina, my knuckles encased in four connected copper rings. My fingers crack as I flex them and curl them into a fist- and send them flying at Christina's stomach.
She bends over on the chair with a scream, and each collision thereafter is met with a grunt of pain. I apologise as I hit her again and again, guilt eating at my soul every time she refuses to answer one of Evelyn's questions. "Where are your cohorts?" Evelyn demands, and Christina screams "NO!" at the top of her lungs, her refusal like an explosion in the tiny room. My fist finds her stomach, and Evelyn's next question comes at her like a bullet. "Where are the others? From the Bureau?"
"I don't know!" Christina sobs, her cheeks wet once more with tears she can't hold back. Her body curls as she tries to tuck her knees into her chest to protect herself, and I send another punch into her ribs. "Please! Believe me."
Evelyn shakes her head, an evil grin manifesting on her lips. "Where are they hiding?"
"I don't know!" She shouts, her eyes snapping open to glare first at me, then at Evelyn. "You killed her. You killed the only one who could tell you, don't you understand? You're so trigger happy you don't realise how important each and every single human life is! And now she's gone, and you've lost, and you can't take it so you're making me bear the pain." Her head sags, her hair falling forwards over her face. "I've taken worse beatings." She mumbles, and I know her arms ache with the memory of the chasm.
"Please." I turn to Evelyn now, my hand aching. The copper band slides from my sore knuckles and falls to the floor, my resolve defeated. "Let her go."
Evelyn bites her lip. I know she doesn't want to let us win, but at the same time she recognises her loss. It's like Christina's words have actually touched her, like the realisation that her most valuable asset is gone and dead has finally hit her. Her head falls forwards and she sighs, glancing at me before she leaves the room. "Fine. Untie her and take her up to her cell, then return to yours. No funny business; or your precious Beatrice…" She lifts a finger, drawing it across her neck like an executioners guide. "Dead."
The final word is a whisper more sinister than any others. I work quickly, my fingers fumbling at the ropes that are holding Christina's limbs to the chair. "I'm so sorry." My voice is low, my hands working quickly on the frayed rope. "I don't want to be doing this… It's not my choice."
Christina shakes her head, and when I find her eyes they're cold and uncaring. "You're just doing your job, I know. You hate it, I get it. I can see it in your eyes. But why? Why work for them after all we planned to do to take them down?"
I finish freeing her and help her to her feet, taking her by the waist as we hobble over the elevators. How easy it would be now, to run through the atrium and out through the glass doors, out into the city and the world beyond… but Beatrice stops me. She is the only thing keeping me rooted here, making me stay.
"Tris is sick. She was dying. I didn't know what to do. This was the only option."
Christina sucks in a breath and lets out a wince, holding her bruised ribs as the lift shoots upwards. "The only choice, really? Working with them?"
The elevator stops and we step out, walking down the corridor in silence until we reach Tris' room. I push open the door, sticking my head through the gap and watching her pale, sleeping form. "It's done now, okay? I'm going easy on you. Just… act the part, and I can work lightly. Tell lies if you have to, but make them sound true. I don't want to hurt you, but she'll make me. We can escape… I just need to work out how."
Christina pokes her head into Tris' room, and when she emerges her face is dark with a deep hopelessness. "Can we, really?"
A long silence passes between us as I let the door swing to a shut and lean against the wall. "I don't know." I say, turning my head to face Christina. Her face is still swollen, her stance still bent with pain. "I don't know."
