"I'll wait for you in the glass room," Eric says, "Then I'll take you over to the Erudite compound." He gives me a kiss and I leave the apartment for training as if it were a normal day and not possibly the day I die. I have to stop thinking that way. I will win; I'll make sure I win and survive and have the life I want. I came here to be fire; it's about time I started acting like it.
After breakfast, we go back to the glass room just outside of the fear landscape room where we find Four, Six, Uriah, and Christina all waiting.
"Last year, I was afraid of moths, falling in the chasm, being kicked out of Dauntless, my family's death, becoming old, killing a dog, being attacked in the night, and…" Christina lets out a sigh, "Having my wardrobe destroyed." Well, she has built her livelihood around clothing; she has to have some attachment, I guess.
"Most of you will have ten to fifteen fears," Six says, "That's the average."
"What's the lowest record?" Parker asks.
"Four," Six says with a smirk. Everyone just stares in awe at Four and then back over at Six, coming to the realization that I did: they didn't just beat the average, they smashed it in half.
"You won't find out your number today," Christina says, "The program's been set to my landscape and you'll each experience one of my fears to get a sense of how the simulation works." She starts to assign her fears randomly; I'm going to be attacked in the night. I wait as the others go before me and I watch each of their reactions. Most cry in the simulation; a lot of these aren't fears in the scared sense, but fear in the dread sense it seems. The only ones to display any seemingly actual fear are Sam, Xandra, and Coraline who had moths, the chasm, and Christina's destroyed wardrobe respectively. Finally, it's my turn and I step inside.
I'm lying in a bed in the transfer dorms when I feel a pair of hands reach for me and hold me down while another hand goes over my mouth. I struggle, but they're too strong. They're two males that I don't recognize; one's muscular with orange-red hair and the other has dark hair and green eyes. The red-headed one is holding my arms down as the dark haired one leans over me.
"You didn't think I could just let you be better, did you?" He pulls out a butter knife and I know what's coming. This is what happened one year ago.
"I wonder which one I'll pick." He holds the knife above my face and hovers it over one eye, then the other, back and forth. I have to relax, I have to relax right now. I start with my muscles, I'm still tense and struggling, so I try to relax them first.
"I think this one." The butter knife is right above my right eye. "On the count of three."
"One." I get my breathing under control.
"Two." I try to slow my heartbeat.
"Three!" The butterknife comes flying for my eye, but right when it would have made contact, I've relaxed enough to break free of the landscape. The first thing I do is touch my eye to make sure it's fine; I know it was all fake, but that butter knife came in contact with my eye and if I could feel that, I don't want to know what I would have felt if I hadn't gotten out.
"Good job," Christina says as I exit, "Not many people are able to just relax."
"Who the hell were those two?" If I didn't know that had happened, I wouldn't have believed two people could do something so horrible and disgusting.
"Drew and Peter," she says, her face contorting with disgust.
"What happened to them?" I may not like Farewells, but I hope they got one.
"For that? Nothing," she says, "But Drew was cut off at the end of the third stage. Peter stayed, but he's far away at the fence now." That's just terrible; how the hell could a sociopath like that stick around. Then I remember what Eric had said when Darren was attacked; that it wasn't that simple. That there had to be proof. I guess they didn't have any on Peter and Drew.
With training finished, I prepare for my new task: breaking into easily the most defended computer in all of Erudite. I meet up with Eric outside the glass room and we head for the train tracks.
"Remember, when we get over there, it's for a family visit," Eric says, holding onto me as we ride the train.
"I know," I say, "I'll even stop by the hospital to see my mom."
"Not quite, there's something that I need to tell you about. I just wanted to wait on it."
"What do you mean?" What other family is there?
"We'll actually be seeing mine." I forgot he had family in Erudite.
"And who's this family?" What division are they in? Are they highly ranked, so we'll have an easier time getting in?
"Jeanine Matthews. My mother." I just stare at him in shock. I look at his face and try to find some trace of her in him and I can't, until I look at his eyes. They're not watery, but they're that same grey eyes that I've come to know better than my own. That's why he was so confident about his ability to get me in. He'd have no trouble getting close to Jeanine; she's his mother.
"We're breaking into your mom's computer…" I don't finish the rest. We're going to break into her computer to find incriminating evidence against her. We're going to find evidence that will probably get her arrested and worse. I am asking him to help me take down his mother.
"No, we're breaking into Jeanine's computer. You know I'm not into sentimentality." I press lips to his neck and hug him. Even if this is really the way he feels, I'm sorry for having him do this. But this is what needs to happen to end this war before it begins.
"Here's our stop," he says as he holds onto me and jumps. We're right outside the Erudite compound. He takes my hand and waltzes right in. The people at the front desk look up.
"Can I hel—"
"No," Eric cuts of the Erudite who was speaking to us and just marches over to the stairs. No one makes any effort to stop him; I don't know if it's from recognition or fear. Whichever one, it's working extremely well. We start climbing steps until we're at the very top of the compound. A thin woman with thick glasses and dark hair sits in front of a door with a hand scanner; I don't know how he intends to bullshit our way inside.
"Jeanine's out at the moment, can—"
Eric just strides across the room and up to the door.
"Sir, you can't go in!"
Eric just puts his hand up to the scanner and it beeps and opens. He really would have no problem getting me in. The woman stares at him with shock.
"Sir, Jeanine is—"
"Out, I heard you. We'll wait inside."
He pulls me in and the door shuts. I'm almost too stunned to move until I see the computer and head over to it, but I hesitate. Almost reading my mind, Eric speaks.
"There's no cameras in here. No one will know what you do." I immediately sit at the computer and try to force myself inside.
"Know how to get in?" If he does, this will be almost too easy.
"No. You're on your own for that. Be careful, I know that if something goes wrong, it's set to poison the room." I guess there's a limit to how much I can depend on him for. No pressure on the poison or anything.
I've just gotten started, but I'm already having trouble unlocking the computer itself. I don't know how she locked it, but it's obviously something she wrote herself. I don't know how much time I used up just getting through that part, but Eric just stands behind me, silent. I finally get into her data, but it's like climbing up a mountain covered in landmines. It just keeps getting harder and harder the further I go and every step holds the possibility of instant death. It's almost all serums; simulation serum, fear serum, death serum, even peace and truth serum. I keep going farther and farther, trying to find more, but there's barricade after barricade. That's when I finally find something interesting: control serum. This is it; this is the evidence we need! With something like this, all of Dauntless can be made into drones; the perfect soldiers for a war. They won't fear death, they won't hesitate, and they'll follow all commands. I need to get this out. I go to copy it, but then I hear the beep of the door. It's going to open and I will have failed. We will be killed. Eric closes the computer and pulls me into a deep kiss. As I look over at Jeanine Matthews in shock, I find that Eric has made the perfect cover; the look on my face is exactly that of someone who just got caught doing something they shouldn't do.
"Eric," she says, rather tense.
"Jeanine."
"To what do I owe the…pleasure?" She's looking us over and I can tell by her eyes that she's considering all the possibilities to exactly what we were doing.
"Jeanine, this is Audrey, my girlfriend." I can't help but blush as he says this; it's the first time he's ever said it even if it's to his homicidal mother.
"Charmed." She reaches out her hand and I shake it, smiling. I'm still supposed to be the happy, shy girlfriend, meeting the family. "That still doesn't tell me why you're here."
"You control every other aspect of my life, so I thought you'd want some input on this one." He smiles as he says it, but those words were a stab at her.
"Helping you succeed isn't controlling. And I don't have any complaints," she says, "Audrey Kilbourn: top of her class in school. Extremely intelligent, great potential to rise in Erudite; surprised everyone when she switched to Dauntless. Anything else?" I have no idea how she knows so much about me. Then again, she's supposed to be the most intelligent of the most intelligent. I can see her keeping track of others who she can see as useful. I also want to know what she meant by helping him succeed.
"No, nothing else," Eric says, putting his arm around my waist and leading me out.
"Shall I have you sent back to Dauntless?"
"No."
"Good day, then. I hope you learned something today." It's a standard greeting to the Erudite, hoping that knowledge is bestowed upon another. But the way she says it, she knows exactly what's going on.
As we're leaving, I think over everything I've just learned. Jeanine is finishing up a control serum; that's how they're going to get total Dauntless participation. We have to either stop its distribution or stop the simulation itself. Stopping the distribution will be extremely difficult; they obviously won't say exactly what it is, nor is there any evidence, so it would be our word against the leaders'. Stopping the simulation would mean finding where they were running it from and stopping it. This is probably the best option. At least, it doesn't carry an almost 100% mortality rate. If I go against leadership by stopping the serum, I'll probably be branded a fanatic and silenced. If I destroy the computer making the simulation, I just have to get past whatever security they have and disable it. It'll be dangerous and if I fail, Abnegation is done for. But it's the only option that has even the smallest chance of working.
Once we're on board the train, I sigh.
"We were so damn close…" All I had to do was copy the information!
"We're not totally empty handed. We know what's coming."
"We're going to need more help. It's a serum; the more people we have with Divergence, the better. So even if it's enacted, we can still stop it before anything really terrible happens. You, Christina, and Will need to stay out if it's distributed." I'm going to have to count on Four and hope that whoever he finds trusts us. I also hope that if it's enacted, those three and everyone else under its influence stay out of the way.
"I won't need to; I doubt they'd give it to leadership…" I feel like there's something more.
"What're you leaving out?"
"It wouldn't work anyway…" It finally clicked. This is why he's Dauntless with some glaring Erudite traits. This is why he saw through to what I really was. Because we're the same. I'm just learning everything about him today, aren't I.
"You never said…" Why didn't he mention this before?
"You're literally the only person who knows." I don't know what to say.
"How…" How did no one find out? How did he find out? How has he hid it all this time?
"I knew about Divergence from Jeanine and I knew she wasn't above making me into an experiment, so I learned to be normal. She's the one who made the testing serum, so I had some inside knowledge; I knew how to get what I wanted. After that, I never thought of it again. And I haven't had to take any serums lately, so it wasn't an effort to hide it." He doesn't show any emotion as he says this; in fact, he looks like he doesn't care. But there was a point when he slightly tensed up before relaxing again; if he was experiencing any distress, he's very skilled in hiding it. I hold onto him; I don't hold it against him that he doesn't want me to know if it hurts. He would never admit to any weakness.
"We really are a perfect match," I say with a smile. I can tell that he probably doesn't want to talk about Jeanine and Divergence anymore.
"You're damn right," he says as he kisses me. I can't help but feel relieved that this isn't our last day together. That there wasn't any danger this time around. But I can tell that my luck is slipping and that's what I'm going to need to make it through.
