The buildings here were more prominently deteriorating, the roads had huge holes and garbage littered the gutters and sidewalks. They walked for a while before they found a man sitting in the shade of a doorway to get away from the heat.
Samantha gestured for Eric to stop and she approached the man quietly. "Hi, my name's Sam and this is…"
"I know who he is. What do you Dauntless dogs want?" He interrupted her, eyeing them up warily.
"We have information for the Divergent that is really important and we're trying to find them." She explained.
"What makes you think they're around here?"
"We've been outside the gate and we know they're not out there, but something else is that they should know about. Please just tell us where we can find them." She said, her tone pleading with him.
He scrutinized them for a second before answering, "They're staying at the old Kendall College dorms on East Van Buren Street. They won't take kindly to you lot though."
"We'll worry about that." Eric told him over his shoulder as they jogged back to the main street.
The college dorm, a twenty seven story building with many windows that glinted in the sunlight, was in the factionless sector of the city so all the buildings around it were completely abandoned which made it a good hideout from the eye of the Erudite and could hold a lot of people. As they approached it, off to the side at the building before the dorms, three guards shouted at them.
"Stop where you are Eric!"
They stopped walking and raised their hands into the air slightly.
"My, aren't you a popular guy." Samantha joked with sarcasm.
"A lot of Dauntless initiates don't make the cut and become factionless as well as our older members who cannot keep up, so yeah a lot of them will know me and want to kill me for it. Probably best if you stayed quiet until we see Four." Eric explained.
Realizing how much danger he was in by coming here, she clamped her mouth shut as the guards tied their hands together and marched them into the building. One of them ran off to inform Four and Tris that they were there and the others sat them in the corner of the lobby with their guns pointed at them.
Not long after, a couple came down the stairs whom Samantha presumed was Four and Tris. To her it looked like Tris was holding back from attacking Eric outright from the way she stared daggers at him and Four merely looked at Samantha with curiosity.
"How did you find us?" Four asked.
"We asked around. It wasn't too hard, when you ask properly." Eric replied with a shrug.
"Who did you hurt this time?" Four growled.
"No one! We just told him that we had information about what is outside the gate and he told us where to find you." Samantha interjected quickly before Eric could piss them off.
Their gaze rested on her. "Go on." Four urged.
"They're lying, Jeanine, all of them. Everything they told us is a lie." She said, continuing to tell them about her experience with the town and everything the librarian had told them about history.
Four and Tris gave each other a look and conversed quietly a few feet away when she was done. Four gave the guard a curt nod and they went back upstairs as the guards hauled Samantha and Eric up to their feet and shoved them through the building to a room in the basement with no windows and locked them in. The dusty lamp overhead glowed dimly and they could see that it was a small empty room with yellowing walls that were once white.
"That went better than I thought it would." Eric said as he slid down the wall to sit against it.
"From the look Tris gave you I'm surprised she didn't shoot you on the spot." Samantha agreed and sat down as well.
"She might still if we can't convince them we're telling the truth." He rubbed his face with his hands. He suddenly looked tired and she scooted closer so he could rest his head against her shoulder.
She sat there with him lightly snoring against her for a couple of hours before they finally came back for them. She nudged him awake and they took the stairs to another room a few floors up. It must have been the Divergent's office because it had maps pinned up on the walls and papers cluttered around the desk. They shoved them into two chairs that sat in the middle of the room so they faced Four, Tris and another woman dressed as the Dauntless.
"Christina. Glad to find out that you've been a spy this whole time." Eric shook his head and chuckled.
Samantha didn't know her personally but she did see her around the compound once in a while. Christina ignored him and handed the serum she held to Four.
"Christina has also been our supplier of truth serum for occasions such as this so we can to see if you're telling the truth or not. You're first Eric." He said as he injected Eric in the neck. They gave him a few minutes for the serum to take effect before they began their inquiry.
"Are you a spy?" Four asked. Tris stood back quietly with her arms crossed over her chest.
"Yes and no. I'm a spy for Erudite into the Dauntless, but I'm not here as a spy for either faction."
"Then why are you here?"
"We came to tell you what we found outside the gate. I originally wanted to go back to Dauntless and ask Jeanine if it was true, but Sunshine convinced me to come to you first." He answered.
"Why are you working for Jeanine Matthews?" Four asked.
"She told me that Abnegation was in the process of destroying our society by releasing important information but she never mentioned what that information was. She convinced me that a couple hundred Abnegation lives lost would be better than hundreds more in a war." Eric spilled.
"And why did you trust her?! Why did she choose you?" Tris asked angrily.
"She's my aunt, I've never had a reason to not believe her. When she found out I received Dauntless on my aptitude test she asked me to become her informant against the Divergent. She said they were the most dangerous to our plan because they would want the information released and she wouldn't be able control them with her serum."
"So that made it okay to kill innocent people?" Tris growled.
"He was under the simulation too, they all were." Samantha said.
"Is that what the Dauntless told everyone?" Tris laughed with disbelief. She violently pointed at Eric and said, "They lied to you. All the Dauntless leaders were in on it and were not under any simulation. I know because we were there and he tried to kill us when he found out we were Divergent."
"What?" Samantha looked at Eric confused. "You're a murderer?"
His eyes pleaded with her. "I did only what I thought was best. I wish I had known what I do now, because then I would have done everything differently."
Samantha couldn't believe it. She sat back in her chair stunned as they continued with their investigation.
"What is their plan now?" Four asked Eric.
"Jeanine is using a special serum to control a select group of the best Dauntless like a special ops team and plans to send them outside the gate to find the Divergent. We've all assumed you left the city that is why we haven't been searching for you inside the gate." He replied, defeated.
The three of them let the information sink in. "Normally when people undergo this serum they have difficulty answering, grunting and sweating and such. Why aren't you having trouble?" Christina asked him suspiciously.
"I'm not fighting the truth." Eric replied.
Four rubbed his chin and gazed between Eric and Samantha. "Why did you leave the city?" He asked.
"I wanted to find Sunshine."
"How did she come to be outside the gate?" Four pressed.
"She quite Dauntless training and snuck out the gate."
"Why would you care if someone chose to be factionless?" Four asked confused.
Eric paused for a long time and refused to look at them. Eventually the serum must have won out because he blurted out, "Because I like her."
Four surprised faces looked at him. "You have feelings for someone other than yourself? That's a new one. You've never shown interest in anyone outside of the bed before." Four said.
"Neither did you until Tris came along." Eric said irate.
Samantha couldn't believe it either. She wasn't sure how she felt about him now with the new information that he was involved voluntarily. She was appalled by what he did and yet she felt sorry for him at the same time. Why couldn't he have just left her alone outside the gate? Then she wouldn't have this moral dilemma.