No excuses, I'm an arse.I own nothing.Unbetta'd.I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.

Twenty Eight

The hair on the back of Eric's neck had been standing on end since he woke up this morning, but it wasn't until Stuart came running up to him with panic written all over his face that his stomach started twisting into knots.

"Eric! Do you know where Rose is?" Eric would usually publicly reprimand him for speaking to him so casually in public, but reason told him that he had bigger problems to deal with today. Rose and Stuart where hardly ever more than a few feet away from each other, especially since Rose had been stabbed.

"I haven't seen her since breakfast" that in itself was unusual as well. Rose was someone that was just always there, annoying Eric like a mosquito, or a sibling. It was nearly Dinnertime now, she should've been hanging around close by, nipping at Kella's heels. "Where's Kella?"

"I don't know where she is either. I asked her just before lunch if she'd seen Rose. She said she hadn't, but she'd find her for me. I haven't seen her since." Stuart's usually bombproof persona had given way to a nervous energy that was starting to infect Eric as well. He shoved the emotion down and stepped straight into fearless leader mode.

"We'll find them." He claps Stuart on the shoulder as he takes long strides toward the control room. He bursts in, expecting to see Four hunched over a keyboard. Instead, an almost dozing Zeke jumps from his seat looking guilty as sin.

"Eric! Sir! How can I help you?" Zeke's presence confuses him as much as his presence confuses Zeke.

"Where's Four?" Eric grunts his query at the shocked security officer.

"I dunno man. He asked me to cover his shift. Said he had a meeting to go to." Eric is distracted from Zeke's explanation by a panicked figure on the security feed.

"Looks like his meeting didn't go well" Zeke turns to the feed, and they both watch Four tear into the compound like a bullet from a gun.

oOoOo

Kella stared at the screen in front of her, trying to shake the feeling of doom that had settled in the pit of her stomach. It had taken her a long time, but she'd finally cracked the security encoding the last of the files she'd stolen from Erudite. All the conversations she'd recorded from Jeannine's office started making a sick, twisted sort of sense in her mind. She had been through a lot more than most in her very long life, but this level of evil surprised even her. The tests they where doing on the divergent brought a whole new meaning to the word inhumane.

But one of the things Kella had the most trouble dealing with was the DNA results. She'd known something was up with this weird city out in the middle of nowhere, what she hadn't realised was the level of genetic editing that had gone on in the past. The people of the factions where barely more human than she was, but without the knarley super powers. And the Divergent... the Divergent should be called the Convergent! They where the culmination of all mother nature's efforts to right the wrongs of her waywood children. Even with how badly the human genome had been altered, there was enough of the fully functioning alleles left for the broken DNA to repair itself over the generations. And Jeannine was doing her best to prevent this healing process. Kidnapping and torturing the Divergent, trying to find a cure for the cure, destroying this civilisation's best hope for a stable future. It was almost poetic, in a sick, twisted kind of way, because the fucked up Erudite leader actually thought she was doing the right thing.

Kella took a steadying breath before she transferred copies of the decoded files onto several flash drives and left her hidey hole office. Her first port of call was Eric, and it was nearing lunch time, so she headed toward the mess hall. She heard Stuart's uneven breathing and frantic step before she saw his slightly disheveled figure rushing toward her in the hall.

"Have you seen Rose?"...

oOoOo

Jeannine's assistant was waiting for them in the lobby of Erudites main building. That was a mistake on his part, as they barely missed him when Eric drove Kella's truck right through the huge glass front doors. Eric was out of the vehicle before it stopped moving, launching himself at the PA so fast that the guards where still on the ground. He gripped the scrawny man by the throat and held him high above his head.

"Where is she?" His quiet voice was full of menace and the assistant buckled without any further coaxing.

"In the Divergent Labs, down two floors and take your first right." The assistant's voice was barely audible with the pressure Eric was putting on his windpipe, but he managed to hear. He dropped the assistant on his arse and took off for the stairs with the rest of his squad not far behind him. It was only two levels, and the elevator just wasn't fast enough. Eric knew what happened in the Divergent Labs, he'd spent years there. The longer Kella and Rose where there, the more chance they would be coming home in a body bag.

Stuart and Four where the only one's on his heels when he made it to the right lab, the others having dropped off to deal with the pesky Erudite security along the way. What he saw when he burst through the door nearly dropped him to his knees.

Kella was strapped to a rack in just her cargos and a bra, broken and bleeding. She was stretched out so far that she had dislocated both shoulders, her arms held at a funny angle above her head. She was covered in fresh wounds, all obviously inflicted to cause the most pain possible, and what they could see of her skin underneath all the blood was mottled with fresh bruises. Eric cried out in fury and fear as he took in her appearance, and she looked up at him. Her eyes where wide with anger, the iris' blood red and burning. She was a terrifying sight to behold, even being chained as she was.

"Let them go!" The powerful voice that rang around the room didn't come from Eric, or even Four. It was Stuart, eyes black with rage, jaw clenched tight and considerable muscles bulging. It was then that Eric realised that little Rose was being held at gunpoint by a disheveled looking Jeannine.

"And why would I do that, you bottom feeding muscle head? I've just spent months trying to get that mutant here to run these tests! Why the hell would I let you take her again?"

"It's over Jeannine. We have all the evidence we need to lock you up and throw away the key. All the 'experiments', all the lies and secrets, we have them all. You're done Jeannine, let the girls go." Four's gentle voice grates on Eric's already worn nerves as he desperately looks for a way to free Kella without getting her killed in the process. It's not until Kella looks pointedly at Rose that Eric realises that he can't free her until Rose is safe, and that Jeannine used Rose as both the carrot and the stick to get Kella here in the first place. Kella will probably heal from just about anything they do to her, Rose won't. The realisation makes the path before him very clear, but he doesn't like it one bit.

"Hey Jeannine" Eric waits until the cunning bitch is looking straight at him before he makes his move "Go to hell" He opens fire with Neuro stim darts, peppering her and anyone else that gets in the way. He knows he gets Rose at least four times, and Kella more times than he cares to think about, but Jeannine and her lackeys cop the brunt of the shots from the three Dauntless men by the door. Stuart stops firing and runs into the room, catching a few darts on his way. They don't seem to slow him down any as he reaches Rose and drags her to relative safety behind Four and himself. Once she is safe Eric yells at Four to "Cover me!" as he runs to free Kella from her painful predicament. As usual, she's one step ahead of him, already having broken her chains and fallen to the floor, rolling around against a table to pop her shoulders back in.

Jeannine has also recovered somewhat, and raises her arm toward Kella, pistol in hand and an evil smile on her face. It takes less than a heartbeat for Eric to drop his rifle, grab his sidearm, and shoot that evil bitch with a real bullet. She drops the gun and seems surprised when she looks down at the blood blooming across the shoulder of her blouse.

"You!! You where my protege! I gave you every opportunity to excel, even with your divergence, and this is how you repay me? You shot me!"

Eric rolls his eyes as he extends a hand towards Kella, helping her to her feet. "I was never your fucking protege. It was a choice of play the game or spend the rest of my life being experimented on. I was never in your fucking pocket Jeannine. I fucking played You, get over it"

Kella's dark chuckle stood out in the sudden silence that had enveloped the room. She looks toward Jeannine, smiling in a way that made the hair stand up on the back of Eric's neck.

"You wanted me to talk? Well, I'm talking now, cunt, and you're gonna fucking listen." Kella's voice rings through the room, silencing all but Jeannine.

"Who the hell do you think you are?" Jeannine is still trying for control, but Kella shuts any thought of that down.

"I am Kella Esarossa, the White Wolf. I am the Vessel of the Final Darkness, and the Oncoming Storm. I am the Lonely God, the Living Death, and the Destroyer of Worlds. The Sword of the Morning and an anointed Knight of the Order of the Thistle. I am Judge, Jury and Executioner. If you're looking for a higher authority on this planet, you won't find one. The buck stops with me."

The complete terror that flashed onto Jeannine's face was almost as satisfying as sex to Eric, the fact that Kella had been the cause was the icing on the cake. Eric watched in fascination as Kella strode toward Jeannine, grabbed her by the throat, and screamed in her face. The noise that came out of Kella's throat was more like a song than a scream, but it was like no song Eric had heard before. He felt his nose start to bleed as he watched the life leave Jeannine's eyes. Kella dropped her lifeless body and turned toward Eric, her eyes moving from red, through lilac, and back to ice blue. She smiled at him when he reached for her, holding her tightly in his arms. Then she slowly closed her eyes and went limp in his arms, leaving Eric screaming "Medic!! Medic!!" As she faded from this world.