Author's Note: Thank you to each and every person who left reviews on the last chapter, feedback is a crucial component of being a writer and I greatly appreciate the time you took to give thoughtful feedback. I couldn't help but want to post this chapter quickly, especially since I'm heading in to my final week of classes and I don't know what my schedule will be like. I hope you enjoy this chapter, please please let me know what you thought.

The corridors are silent, save for the sound of our footsteps as we walk side by side. In the quiet I ponder how I will meet my fate. A fall into the chasm seems most fitting, poetic even due to its appearance in my landscape. Nobody would question the body of another initiate floating down the current. Eric could snap my neck like a twig, but a dead initiate with a broken neck might be too suspicious for even him to cover up. Lethal dose seems like the cleanest option, minimal work and the evidence would be easy to dispose of. The euthanisation serum is reserved for executions of the worst sort of criminals, but I'm sure Eric could get his hands on it easily enough.

I expect him to take a right at the fork that will lead us to the chasm or his office, but instead we go left. I'm confused by the unexpected direction until I find myself standing before his door. He doesn't say a word as he lets us inside, ignoring me as he heads for the kitchen. I take a hesitant step inside and close the door behind me, acting on autopilot. I watch as he emerges with a whiskey in one hand and a water in the other. The water he sets down on the table, as if I'm not still stuck by the door, before he heads for the window.

I follow after a moment's hesitation, taking a cautious sniff of the water. I decide it's probably not poisoned and take a swig as I step up beside him, stifling a gasp. The view is breathtaking; you can see the whole city from up here. Everything from the scales on the Merciless Mart to the Eye of Erudite lies before us.

I feel a pang in my heart as my gaze wanders over the orchards of Amity. Right about now my mother should be in the kitchens, pulling out loaves of bread to cool before mealtime. I would be probably be working at her side if I had stayed. Instead I stand in the apartment of the man who is most likely to kill me, alone. Even with death looming over me like a dark cloud I do not regret leaving, though it doesn't quell the ache of being away.

"You and Four seemed pretty cozy in there." He breaks the silence, feigning casual curiosity even as I see his knuckles turn white. It amazes me that he wishes to spend our final moments together speaking of Four, but I don't interrupt. "Should I be worried?"

"No." I shoot him a sharp look despite my better judgment. I'm not sure why I still feel the need to comfort him when he's the one about to kill me. Old habits die hard, I suppose. "Where the hell have you been?"

"What were you two talking about? Must have been pretty important, thought I'd need to tear the two of you apart with a crowbar."

"He was explaining something I struggled with in my landscape, gave me some tips on how to overcome it. He was helping me out, that's it."

"Oh yeah? Why'd you ask him for help?"

"Because he's my instructor!"

"So am I."

"You've been gone for two days!"

"I'm back now. You didn't think to ask your boyfriend for help?"

"You're not my boyfriend."

That shuts him up real quick, mouth snapping closed as he whirls around to look at me. I swear I see a flash of hurt on his face but it's gone in the blink of an eye. An unreadable expression crosses his face at whatever he sees reflected on my own.

"What?" A mix of shock and hurt colors his tone, so unlike him. As much as the noise sends a ripple through my heart I can't bring myself to stop.

"The last time I saw you, you kicked me out of your apartment before disappearing for two days without a word! That's generally a sign that the relationship is over."

"A relationship is over when we say it's over and I don't recall either one of us saying we were done."

"That's because you didn't give me a chance to say anything!" I shout, patience worn thin by stress and sorrow. "You tossed me out like I meant nothing to you, like I was garbage! What else was I supposed to think?"

"I don't exactly remember you fighting too hard to stick around!"

"What did you expect me to say? 'Hey, I know you're probably going to kill me, but we should really talk this out first!'" I don't even notice I'm crying until he brushes away a tear, but he pulls his hand back at the look on my face. "Look, if you're going to kill me please just get it over with."

"Stop saying that!" He thunders into the silent apartment and I'm startled by the ferocity of his objection. "I don't want to kill you!"

"But you have to." I spit the words out, surprising us both the venom between the lines. "It's your fucking job and we both know how much you love that. Don't be cruel, quit dragging it out!"

"Dammit, Indie, I don't want to kill you, I love you!" I recoil, as if he's struck me. I feel as if all the air has been sucked out from my lungs and I struggle to reply as the tears fall harder.

"Stop it." I whisper, shaking my head as if I can force out all the terrible thoughts. "You don't love me, don't say that. You don't know me; we don't know anything about each other, not really. You can't love someone you don't know."

"You know more about me than anyone in this whole place."

"Then that makes me very sad for you because I don't think I know you at all. I know that there's so much that you're keeping from me, so many secrets and lies. If you're not going to let me in and tell me the deep stuff, then we're not going to ever be anything more than jus—"

"Jeanine is going to invade Abnegation and overthrow the Council." I hear a sharp gasp and it takes me a moment to connect that the sound came from me. My mind goes blank as all the blood rushing through my veins turns to ice. Words fail me and all I can do is stare back at him, helpless. I almost miss what he says over the sound of my heartbeat thundering in my ears. "That deep enough for you?"

My mouth falls open to respond, but nothing comes out. I remind myself to blink and to breathe, basic functions frozen by shock. I can hear my breaths increase as my hands start to shake; I know Eric hears it too from the way his face pinches in alarm.

"What?" I finally manage in a strangled gasp, placing a hand over the furious drum beating in place of my heart. "Is this some kind of sick joke? Because this isn't funny! Tell me you're joking! Tell me this isn't true! Eric, tell me—"

"She's going to march into Abnegation with her little army and put a bullet between the eyes of every member on the council. Then she's going to hunt down every single Divergent in this city and see to it that they suffer a fate worse than death. This isn't a joke, this is a very real thing and it is going to happen."

"How do you know all this?" My voice is feeble, weary, for I already know the answer in my heart. The pleading look on Eric's face confirms my most terrible suspicions.

"Because I'm helping her do it." My eyes fall shut at his confession, as if this will help soften the blow. Tears stream down my face and I can't choke back a sob as I try to speak.

"How could you do this?"

"I don't know!" He roars, but this time I do not flinch as I anticipate his ballistic response. He throws his glass of whiskey against the wall, watching as glass and liquid rain down on the floor. "I don't fucking know! I thought I knew, I thought I understood, I—I had my reasons, and then you came along! You walked in here all perfect and good and kind and then you tell me what you are and I just—"

"Hey, slow down, you're not making any sense. What do I have to do with any of this?"

"Everything! How can you be so blind? I was fully prepared to sell out this faction and everyone in it until I met you! You ruined everything and I love you for it!"

"I don't understand." I whisper, wiping away an errant tear as he stares back at me with the most utterly defeated expression. "How could you be ok with this, with any of this, before I came along?"

"It's not an excuse." His voice is quiet now, just above a whisper, but I do not have to strain to hear him. "I've always struggled with forgiveness, with letting things go. I suppose it's why I'm not in Amity, but I'm sure there are many more reasons for that. My sister died when I was thirteen, strangled by her boyfriend. He was openly Divergent, the only one in our faction, and he fled before justice could catch up to him. My sister was my best friend. When she died, nothing made sense anymore. I was vulnerable when Jeanine came to me, grieving and lost. It's not an excuse, but it's why she picked me. She knew I had an aptitude for Dauntless, it was just too easy for her to tell me what made sense. I believed her when she said that divergence was a disease that would wipe us all out if we couldn't contain it. I was all too eager to help her rid this city of the monsters that killed my sister because all I could see was a chance for revenge.

"Then I met you and…and nothing made sense anymore. You're not a monster, you're an angel. I…I had my suspicions from the start, there was no way could you be that calm in sims even if you did come from Amity. But I ignored all the signs that I saw because I wanted to be with you, I just didn't want you to be one of them. I could pretend for as long as we kept lying to each other, but then you told me the truth and all my worst fears came true. I'm so sorry for the way that I acted. There's no excuse."

"I'm sorry about your sister." I mean it, too. Even if I hated him like I know I very well should, I'd still mean it. "I don't know what it feels like to have a sibling, but I know how it feels to have the people you love taken away from you. If someone had come to me with a target to blame for my father, then I'd probably do just about anything they wanted too. I understand that your reaction was compounded by the lies you'd been told by Jeanine. I forgive you."

"I don't deserve it."

"Probably not." I agree, a sad smile stretching across my face to let him know that doesn't change anything. "Where did you go, the night that I was in the infirmary?"

"I had a meeting with Jeanine. She was displeased that I hadn't drawn up a list of Divergent initiates for her yet."

"And after Al…when I was asleep?"

"I did actually bring Peter and Drew to the factionless."

"I saw a message from Jeanine on your tablet, right before you got back. It didn't say anything, just a simple SOS. What happened?"

"She summoned us to her lab for a demonstration. She'd made some progress on a serum she was developing and she thought she'd figured it out."

"What sort of serum?" I ask, apprehensive to hear the answer.

"The sort of serum that not even you can fight." A dark, faraway look flashes across his face and I feel a seed of dread beginning to bloom in the pit of my stomach. Even so, I must know everything he knows.

"What did this demonstration involve?"

"Jeanine had been developing this serum for quite a long time, but she lacked the sort of subjects she needed to test its effectiveness."

"She needed a Divergent subject."

"Precisely. Somehow, she discovered that there was a child in the factionless sector who was just what she was looking for."

"The missing factionless boy." I gasp, my mind working at a frenzied pace as the dots begin to connect. "Did you take him? Are you one of the Dauntless soldiers his mother saw?"

"No!" He looks affronted, as if he hadn't just told me that until recently he was on board with a plan to eradicate all Divergent. "Of course not. Jeanine wanted us to grab him but Max put his foot down, said that at that age children were still developing and he might not even be Divergent. So, she had some of her lackeys dress up like us and go get him. That way, if anyone saw them, our faction would be blamed and no one would look at Jeanine."

"But I thought it was Jeanine who warned you that the Abnegation were trying to get permission to invade?"

"She did, so that we could accuse the council of overstepping their bounds by planting falsehoods in the heads of the other faction leaders. Harrison was furious, but Max let it go since the Abnegation didn't have any solid proof."

"Except for the mother's word."

"Unfortunately, the testimony of a factionless woman means little in the courts of Candor."

"What did she do to him?"

"She put him inside a glass box and attached him to a bunch of wires. Then she injected him with the serum and had him demonstrate a small range of motions. He could stand up, he could walk, and he could run all with the press of a few buttons. Harrison wasn't impressed so she upped the ante, even though her scientists seemed weary of doing more. But, Jeanine is the leader because she has the highest IQ so thus she knows best." His words are sarcastic, tinged with a darkness I only now understand. "He seemed fine at first, marching from one end to the other pretending to shoot at invisible targets. Then…then the monitors showed his heart rate starting to spike and he became more lucid, less controlled. One second he was awake and the next he lost it. He started running headfirst into the walls, over and over again until one hard hit put him down for good. He was dead instantly."

I can't stop the sob that falls from my mouth as I begin to cry anew, tears streaming down my face as my whole body begins to shake. Eric's arms are around me in an instant and I'm so distraught I don't even try to shake him off. I fall into him, letting him catch me as we slowly sink to the floor. The only relief I can find in this is that at least Eric had little to do with the atrocities of that boy's ordeal.

"He had your eyes." His voice is distant, numb, but he can't keep the devastation off his face. "I looked into his eyes and suddenly all I could see was you in that glass box, dead because of a plan by a mad woman on a mission to wipe out an entire group of people just because they're different. It's pathetic and I'm ashamed, but it wasn't until then that I could admit to myself that I was on the wrong side."

"Is that everything? No more secrets?"

"Not quite. That night, once Jeanine dismissed us, I stuck around. I did a little digging in the archives, they haven't changed the passcode since I was a teenager so it was easy enough to sneak in. There was something telling me that I needed to look into my sister. I guess I figured that if my devotion to Jeanine had stemmed from her death, then I ought to be sure I had all the facts. Amelia had also been studying divergence, but she had developed a theory opposite Jeanine's. She believed that Divergents were genetically pure compared to the rest of us, and crucial to the foundation of our society. Indie, I think Jeanine may have been the one to murder my sister."

"What makes you think that?"

"I pulled the reports on her death and nothing made sense. Her death was ruled a strangulation, but there were traces of euthanization serum in her blood. Why put in the effort of strangling someone if you're just going to inject them with a death serum?"

"Because you're trying to make it look like something it wasn't."

"Exactly. The only people with access to those sorts of serums are faction leaders and the scientists who produce them. Jeanine may be the smartest person in Erudite, but she is also the most calculating and insecure. I'm sure she felt that if my sister were to find a way to disprove her theory then she could kiss her dreams of taking over this city goodbye. It's the only thing that makes any sense based on the evidence. Jeanine had my sister killed to halt her research and pinned it on her openly Divergent boyfriend in the hopes of turning people against the Divergent and support her own research. Then she used me to influence the Dauntless leaders and ensure she always had a little lapdog at her beck and call willing to do whatever it took to get rid of her biggest threat—those she cannot understand."

"Eric, I'm so sorry."

"No, I'm the one who's sorry. I know it doesn't make up for any of the horrible things that I've done, but I am so sorry. I'm sorry that I was so blind to follow her for as long as I did. I let myself be manipulated to the point where I no longer even needed to be manipulated. Amelia would be so ashamed of me if she were here."

"I think she would be relieved that you saw your own folly before you did something truly unforgivable. I know I am." His eyes grow misty as they meet mine and I feel his hand come up to rest on my cheek. I turn my head to kiss his palm, leaning my face into the warmth. For just a moment, wrapped up in the warmth of his touch and my unspoken forgiveness, I can forget the looming threat beyond the safety of his apartment. But, reality cannot wait for long.

"How does Jeanine think she is going to justify executing the council? Surely she doesn't think the other faction leaders will just step aside and let her take over?"

"She won't have to, not if she makes it look an attack by Divergent rebels."

"How does she think she'll do that? Clearly that serum she's been developing isn't as effective as she thinks it is."

"She doesn't need the serum when she can drug all of Dauntless with a mind control serum and set them loose on the Abnegation."

"She can't!" I gasp, my stomach swooping dangerously as my lunch threatens to make another appearance. The thought of everyone I know and love in this faction turned into weapons of mindless destruction is almost more than I can take. "Wait, what about the Divergent Dauntless? I'm sure I can't be the only one in this faction and Jeanine would be a fool to think we don't exist. We're able to resist serums and clearly she hasn't found a way to overcome that."

"Easy, she'll arrest anyone who's still awake or shoot them on sight. They'll be scapegoats for the attack on Abnegation and convenient test subjects."

"We have to stop her. I don't care what it takes, we can't let her do this."

"I agree, but how?"

"I don't know, but we're going to need help and lots of it."

"Does anyone else know you're Divergent? Anyone that might be sympathetic enough to turn on their leaders?"

"Four." I say without hesitation, ignoring the exasperated look on Eric's face. "It's clear he's suspicious of leadership, so he'd have no problem turning against them. He knows I'm Divergent and he's promised to protect me. Plus, it seems like he knows everyone in this compound. I'm sure he can think of a few people who would be willing to help us."

"Just one problem, he hates me."

"Which makes it even easier for him to believe that you were willing to go along with a genocide." I can't keep the sharpness out of my voice, but I try to soften my anger with a sad smile. "He knows you love me. I overheard him say it when I was in the hospital. It's why he let me leave with you today. He may not like you, but he can't deny your feelings for me. I'm sure he'd have no trouble believing you switched sides because of me."

"Finally believe it, do you?" He grins, warm and happy. "What changed your mind?"

"The fact that you changed yours."

"I had no choice, really. I want revenge for my sister, but nowhere near as much as I want to keep you safe."

Four reacts exactly as I expect. He lets Eric speak his piece without interruption, letting him lay it all out on the table without comment excluding the occasional look at me to gauge my reaction. He absorbs everything we tell him without judgment, without a word, his face betraying nothing. Then, without comment, he stands and punches Eric square in the face.

He rears his fist back to do more damage but I jump up between them, trapping his hand in mine as I force it back. Eric remains perfectly still as blood drips down his face, knowing he deserves that and so much more. Four glares fiercely in his direction, the first hint of emotion he's shown since Eric started speaking, but he calms down the longer he stands there.

"Get it out of your system?"

"For now." He quips, returning to his seat. He holds his hands up to indicate he is no longer a threat and Eric relaxes ever so slightly.

"Good. In the meantime, let's figure out how we're going to keep Jeanine from committing genocide."

"Eric, tell me exactly what her plan is. I want it step by step, don't leave any detail out."

"After the final rankings are announced everyone will be injected with a long-range mind control serum disguised as a tracking device. It will be mandatory for every member, except leadership. Then at exactly five o'clock the serum will be activated from the control room here in Dauntless. Everyone who isn't Divergent will head to the Pit to collect a weapon before boarding the train to Abnegation. Jeanine bribed the train driver to stop the train at Dauntless so everyone can board, but I'm sure she can be outbid if needed. Once in Abnegation they will round up everyone in the streets and execute every member of the Council, as well as anyone who attempts to get in their way. The Dauntless who are still awake will be shot on sight, or arrested to become test subjects in Jeanine's lab. When everyone is gathered in Abnegation then Jeanine, Max, Harrison, and myself will arrive to round up any Divergent Dauntless who made it to Abnegation. Then we'll place the whole of Abnegation under house arrest for supposedly harboring Divergent rebels in their faction. The arrested Divergents will then be returned to Erudite so that Jeanine can begin testing."

"When will the serum arrive at Dauntless?"

"The morning of the final test, sometime between five and seven so it will look like a normal shipment of serums from Erudite."

"Is there any chance for it to be destroyed en route?"

"No. Even if we found a way, they would just send more within the hour. She's made more than enough to inject the whole city and still have some left over."

"That rules out destroying it later." Four murmurs as he drags a tired hand down his face, looking deep in thought. "Would there be a way to replace it?"

"With what?" I ask, trying to follow where he's going with this.

"Anything, really. Peace serum, colored water, something harmless made to look like the serum."

"It is the same color as peace serum, but there's no way to replace it all in time even if we were able to get past the guards. Max and Harrison are keeping the serum heavily guarded until it's time. We need something discrete, but effective."

"What we need is help." Four declares, though he looks weary of including more people in this discussion. "The three of us aren't going to singlehandedly take down Jeanine, Max, Harrison, and anyone else who might be helping them. I have a few people in mind who would be sympathetic and able to assist. Eric, is there anyone you can think of who could help us?"

"I'm afraid the only people I can think of are already in this room. Until recently I was very much on the wrong side of this battle."

"That's to our benefit, for it means that they are unlikely to be on Max or Harrison's radar as well. I'll convince Zeke to throw a party tomorrow night and invite everyone that I tell him to. It's the perfect cover; Zeke usually throws a party around this time during initiation anyway so it won't raise any red flags in leadership. Eric, your presence might be suspect but I think your relationship with Indie could be explanation enough. Indie, which initiates do you think you can trust to help us with this? I'll have Zeke invite them as well."

"Tris, Uriah, Christina, Will, Marlene, and Lynn. I'd trust them with my life and I think they can be great assets in a fight if it comes to that."

"That's exactly who I was thinking of too." He smiles and for the first time all night I begin to feel like there might be some hope for us yet. "We'll come up with a better plan tomorrow night on how we're going to take Jeanine and her lackeys down. We won't let them get away with this."