The next morning, the cast was taken off my leg since the salve they provided helped heal my wound.
Caleb was nowhere to be found in Erudite headquarters this morning. Probably sulking somewhere, as that is what Eric thinks.
Passing by one of the small observatories, I see Peter on the phone talking to someone.
"Uh huh, yes, Cara, I'm listening," says Peter, using his shoulder to keep the phone against his ear as he's writing something down. Among the taskforce that Aunt Jeanine sent to Candor, there were five Erudite that joined to make an observation. Cara betrayed the Erudite by rallying the loyal Dauntless. Eric isn't upset about it as Aunt Jeanine is though, which tells me something but I don't know what.
I walk pass the room where Peter is at and enter the control room. The control room in Erudite headquarters differs from the one in Dauntless. Three men in blue suits type in computers and look at the screens above them. In one screen, it shows Tobias pacing in his cell and in another Tris is sleeping on the mattress on her cell. It's ten thirty in the morning.
That sedative drug must have been too strong in her system.
I leave the control room and head to the cafeteria, where I pick out orange juice and a PB&J sandwich.
As I approach the glass window that looks into Tobias's cell, I see him hunched over, an agonized expression on his face. I saunter to the metal door and press my fingers against the numbers on the keypad. The door slides open and at the sight of me Tobias slouches slightly.
Who was he expecting? Eric?
"Oh, it is just you," says Tobias weakly.
"Hungry?" I ask him.
He shakes his head 'no'. I'm not Candor, but I tell he's not telling the truth.
I set the juice and sandwich in front of him. "Eat it. The Erudite don't like hungry test subjects."
As I turn to leave I feel someone grab my shoulders and Tobias slams me against the metal wall. I feel a stab of pain against my shoulder.
"I'm not one your test subjects," he says through gritted teeth. "If you were a true Dauntless, you wouldn't –"
"Wouldn't what? Are you calling me a coward?" I ask.
He doesn't answer and I shrug him off of me.
"I got things to do," I say before exiting the room and closing the door.
I walk towards Millennium Park, where I see Caleb hunched over by the giant lima bean. I approach him, to see what the matter with him was.
He looks up when I see him.
"What are you doing here in this weather without a jacket?" I ask him.
"It's not that cold," he says.
"It's forty degrees out," I say.
He just looks down. I sit next to him.
"I just don't understand, why Jeanine would do that," he says. "She promised me that she would not tell Tris the source of the information."
"Since you're sister showed aptitude to Erudite, you should have realized that she would have been curious, and my aunt feeds curiosity," I say. "Also, you think you know my aunt but you really don't. I have been around her even when I was a toddler. You only have known her for the past month. If something happens or if you disagree with her plans, she'll go back on her promises."
Caleb doesn't say anything.
"I want to ask you a question: do you want your sister to die?" I ask.
"I don't but…" he begins.
"But what?" I demand.
"Every plan I think of, I know Jeanine will find out," says Caleb weakly. "I don't want Tris dead. Thing is, every strategy I think of to help Tris, it ends with the same thing: Jeanine finds out."
"That's strange coming from someone that sucks up to my aunt," I say bitterly.
"I used to, but I'm not so sure," he says.
"Trust me, your lack of creativity to help your own sister is cowardly, but the positive thing is that you're not inherently evil," I say.
I turn to leave when Caleb asks, "Isobel, did Tris see me before she blacked out?"
"Unfortunately, yes," I say, "and I doubt that she would be as understanding as I am."
Tris may have Erudite in her, but she is mostly Dauntless. I admit it, I would be upset if my own brother betrayed me, but it doesn't hurt to step inside someone's head. Tris thinks she knows Aunt Jeanine. Inside and out.
She knows that Aunt Jeanine does terrible things, but Tris has never been around her to be exposed by my aunt's poisonous weed of manipulation and persuasion.
By the next day, Eric and I have already laid out our plans for when we leave the fence: Amity has agreed to have someone drive us a little ways outside the farm. They have promised that they would not inform the Erudite. Johanna Reyes calls us crazy for leaving past the Amity farms, but she cooperated.
Since she is representative of Amity, she probably knows about the fact that we are in a experiment. By noon, Eric and I file into one of the testing rooms where Tris is waiting, sitting next to Peter. Her eyes are closed, suggesting that she is asleep.
"Beatrice?" asks Caleb curiously as he walks in. She rouses, looks around her surroundings before her eyes find Caleb. The way Tris looks at him suggests that it will not be pretty. He stands a few feet away from her, his posture uncertain.
"Did you everleave Erudite?" she demands.
"It's not that simple," he starts. "I –"
"It is that simple," she says flatly. What gives her the right to think it is simple when she can't get a grasp on how my aunt fully operates? It's not simple to defect from my aunt because if it was, Eric and I wouldn't be sneaking around in my house planning to go beyond Amity's farms. "At what point did you betray our family. Before our parents died, or after?"
"I did what I had to do. You think you understand this, Beatrice, but you don't. This whole situation…it's much bigger than you think it is." His eyes plead for her to understand but he sounds condescending. I wonder if he's choosing his words carefully because he knows this room could be under heavily surveillance. This is a testing room after all.
She pushes herself to her feet. Her expression is cold. Unforgiving. "You still haven't answered my question," she says.
Caleb steps back.
"This isn't about Erudite; it's about everyone. All the factions," he says, "and the city. And what's outside the fence."
"I don't care," she says but her eyes are asking questions. "I thought you were all about facts. About freedom of information? Well, how about this fact, Caleb? When –" her voice quakes. "When did you betray our parents?"
Eric rolls his eyes.
"You do realize that you are in a room under heavy surveillance," Eric says, agitated.
"You stay out of this," Tris demands to Eric before turning her cold gaze to Caleb. What Eric was saying, Your brother is not answering the question you are asking because Jeanine would use that against him.
"I have always been Erudite," he says softly. "Even when I was supposed to be Abnegation."
"If you're with Jeanine, then I hate you," she says, her face red. "Just like our father would have."
"You do realize that hate is a strong word," says Eric. "There's faction before blood, but I think he would have been more disappointed."
"Shut up! You didn't know my father!" exclaims Tris before looking at Caleb.
"Yes but I doubt a man would hate the child he fathered," Eric muttered quietly. Tris doesn't hear him.
Caleb ignores us. "Our father was Erudite, Beatrice. Jeanine told me – he was in her year at school."
Tris would easily see this as betrayal when it was obvious that my aunt supplied him with the information during Erudite initiation. Of course my aunt would tell him before the attack on Abnegation. Before he agreed to betray his sister.
"He wasn't Erudite," Tris says a few seconds later, her voice shaking with anger. "He chose to leave them. He chose a different identity, just like you, and became something else. Only you chose this…this evil."
I just tune out their conversation, frustrated. Does Tris realize that Caleb is probably choosing his words carefully, because testing rooms are the most heavily monitored rooms in Erudite headquarters.
After Tris sits down, Caleb goes and stands by one of the screens with Eric and me.
I look at him and say, "She's not going to understand, is she?"
Caleb shakes his head and slumps back.
A few minutes later, Aunt Jeanine, a few Erudite scientists, and a few Dauntless enter the room.
"Let us view the results, shall we?" she announces. I touch a button and one of the screens comes on, showing the data modules of the brain.
She goes on about mirror neurons, asking the scientists questions like a teacher would to students. Ten minutes later, when Tris closes her eyes, they inject the serum in Tris and connect her to wires.
The screen changes. A heavily bleeding Tobias shakes Tris awake and the simulation shows them escaping with obstacles. At the end Tris realizes that she is under simulation and says, "You'll have to do better than that, Jeanine."
"Shut off the simulation!" she orders. Eric turns off the screen and Aunt Jeanine screams in frustration when Tris rouses.
"What is it?" Aunt Jeanine demands. She grabs Peter's gun and stalks across the room, pressing the barrel to Tris's forehead. "What is it that clues you in? Tell me. Tell me or I will kill you."
Caleb doesn't move and he gives his sister a pleading look, like he is asking her not to be stupid. Tris doesn't see him and she slowly pushes herself from the chair.
"You think I'm going to tell you?" she says. "You think I believe that you will kill me without figuring out the answer to this question."
"You stupid girl," answers Aunt Jeanine. "You think this is about you, and your abnormal brain? This is not about you. It is not about me. It is about keeping this city safe from the people who intend to plunge it into hell!"
Without warning, Tris launches herself at Aunt Jeanine. Caleb moves forward but I end up elbowing him hard in the nose, knocking him to the wall behind him and I drag him out of the room. I hear my aunt scream at the top of her lungs before someone punches her hard in the face.
"I couldn't afford to have you do something stupid," I tell Caleb, giving him something for his nose. "It wouldn't be pretty if your sister punched you."
"That was the stupid thing I didn't want her to do," says Caleb. "Attack Jeanine and get herself killed."
"She'll think that you were protecting my aunt, not her," I say as Eric walks into the room.
"I don't understand why Tris didn't realize why I couldn't answer her question," says Caleb. "I wanted to but as your boyfriend said, the room was under heavy surveillance."
"Abnegation, Dauntless, and Erudite are a combination that makes someone bullheaded in my opinion," says Eric. "I'm not a Stiff, and I'm glad that I didn't become one but selflessness should also apply to thinking about what other people might be thinking."
"Once the shock of betrayal clears, she'll come around, though it might take a while," I say.
"Probably for a month, since she's bullheaded," says Eric. "From my observation, Stiffs who join Dauntless end up being bullheaded."
Peter enters the room.
"They are changing the time and day of Tris's execution," says Peter.
"When?" asks Caleb, his voice hoarse.
"Tomorrow morning at eight," says Peter.
"I need to go outside," says Caleb.
In other words, Eric and I will have to go pass the Amity farms tomorrow.
Instead of having dinner in Erudite headquarters, I decided to have dinner at my house. If Theodore and I were still dependents, today would have been left-over day. I reheat spaghetti that mom must have cooked while she places double-coated chicken on a serving platter. She always used cornflakes for the outer coat.
The front door opens and I hear Aunt Jeanine talking.
"The girl's too unpredictable, William," says Aunt Jeanine. "I shall focus my attention on Tobias Eaton after her execution."
I leave the kitchen, mom following and when we reach the main hallway, I hear mom gasp.
It's obvious why Aunt Jeanine put heavy make-up on her face, as you could see the red outlines of fingernail scratch marks.
"What happened to your face, Jeanine?" mom asks.
"It's nothing," says Aunt Jeanine briskly. "Hopefully everything is prepared."
"Yes, just one more thing," she says before returning to the kitchen.
Aunt Jeanine moves away from the door and puts her blue overcoat on the hook.
"Eric still at headquarters?" I ask.
"He offered to help prepare for Beatrice's execution," says Aunt Jeanine. "I trust him."
Maybe she shouldn't, I think before I hear the beep of the microwave. I turn towards the kitchen.
"One of Isobel's favorite dishes is being served tonight and she reheats the dish that her mother made last night," I hear dad tell Aunt Jeanine as I use wash cloths to take the plate out before I took out a small bottle containing a fizzy drink.
"William, old habits are hard to die off when you're in your place of birth," says Aunt Jeanine. "If I remember, this was supposed to be a night for Isobel and Theodore to eat leftovers if they didn't like the meal that was served."
I take a sip of the lemon flavored fizzy drink. It has been a few weeks since I drank soda. Now, the acid bite feels stronger then it was. Probably because I haven't drank soda since I transferred to Dauntless.
I sit at the kitchen table and eat the spaghetti, my mind preoccupied by what Eric and I will find outside the farms of Amity tomorrow.
