CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Tris
The longer I am on this train, the faster my heart races. I press myself closer against Tobias. "It'll be okay, Tris," he murmurs into my ear. "We'll get him back."
Soon the train will reach Erudite, and we will jump out. Then we'll just have to get to their headquarters undetected, sneak in without anyone seeing us, make it up to the ninth floor, and find Uriah. Oh, and deal with any traitors we find, of course. We know that Eric left the Dauntless compound on the train twenty minutes before ours.
"It's not just that." My voice trembles. "It was horrible there. I'm afraid I'll panic. What if I freak out and mess everything up? What if I put everyone in danger?"
Tobias is silent for a while before he answers. "Tris, I've noticed something about you. Fear doesn't shut you down, it wakes you up. I think you'll know what to do and you'll do it. But I've always got your back. I promise. Just don't leave me again, okay?"
I pull him in for a kiss. What we're doing tonight is dangerous. Something could happen to one of us, and this could be our last time together. Tobias pulls away and rests his forehead against mine. "Promise me, Tris." His voice is rough and thick.
The night I left for Erudite last time flashes in my memory, his desperate pleading for me to choose him. I didn't think of it as choosing him at the time; all I saw was that my life was not worth all the lives that could be lost. My eyes sting and I squeeze them shut tight to hold back the tears- tears of guilt for how I have hurt him. No more lies, no more secrets, no more broken promises, I vow to myself.
"I promise," I breathe, and I seal it with one last kiss before we jump.
The five of us- Four, Zeke, Marlene and Edward- have somehow managed to circle around the alleys of the Erudite sector, eventually ending behind Erudite headquarters. Zeke, Tobias and I decided to include Marlene before she even had a chance to wake up and notice Uriah's untouched bed. There was no way she would let us go without her, and Edward was a part of the deal- not only is he an excellent fighter and marksman, he grew up in Erudite and knows his way around and how things work here.
Marlene tests the door that she and Uriah had entered to pull a prank not even two weeks ago, and once again, it opens. Glancing both ways, she waves us toward her. One by one we sprint across the alley and into the service entrance. Tobias shuts the door gently and we all huddle together.
Tobias seems to search my face for a moment as I bite my lip and wipe my sweaty palms on my pants leg. His eyes meet mine, and I see trust and certainty in them- he doesn't even need words to tell me that he believes in me, that I can do this, that the fear will wake me up, make me braver, stronger. He nods at me, and suddenly this mission is in my hands. "Ninth floor," I whisper. "Stay quiet."
We creep up the stairs single file, quietly but swiftly. At some point, they'll see us on their monitors. They will know we are here. But it will take some time to get anyone here from Dauntless, and we can take the guards they have on site. We still have Eric to go up against, though, and he won't be an easy opponent.
Every step I climb, I grow more nervous, expecting a door to fly open and a guard to come running at us. But the guard never comes. Everyone must be at dinner. I would have expected the Erudite to be smarter than this.
At the door to the ninth floor, I turn. "Okay, this place is like a maze. It's big, and all the hallways look the same. I say we split up. Four comes with me, Zeke goes with Marlene and Edward." Marlene is the most emotional of us all right now; I want her in the largest group, with people she trusts.
I lead Four the best I can remember toward the labs Jeanine used when she held me captive. I think I'm going the right way, but it's hard to tell for sure.
Somehow instinct guides me, as if my feet are acting on muscle memory. My heart races faster the closer we go, and my eyes grow wider. We reach a door, and inside I know that this is where she tested the serums on me. I taste bile, but push it and the fear back down. Four and I both ready our guns before kicking it open.
My mouth drops open in surprise.
The floor is littered with a puddle of orange liquid and broken glass. A computer is pulled apart in the corner, and there is only one person here. Strapped down to the simulation chair, bruised and unconscious, is my brother. Caleb.
Tobias and I share a meaningful look as I check Caleb's pulse and breathing. Caleb's presence in this chair can only mean one thing: Uriah found a way out of this room. And we can only hope that we find him before Jeanine or Eric does.
Uriah
Eric grins evilly at me as he catches my arm mid-punch. There's a gun in his other hand. My left eye is still blurry from the chemicals in the beaker Caleb broke against my skull.
Losing isn't an option here, and I need to get the upper hand fast. I'm not afraid to fight dirty, so I grab one of his lip rings and pull. I pull hard. So hard, that it rips right out of his lip. Eric clutches his lip, shouting every dirty word I've ever heard and some I haven't- and I take advantage of his momentary distraction to knock the gun out of his hand; it skids across the floor, far out of my reach. It's a good thing, too, because this asshole is now so completely enraged, I'm surprised that his eyes don't glow red.
As soon as the gun flies out of Eric's hand, just as he's snapping his head in my direction, I kick him in the stomach. Eric grunts loudly but he knows how to take a hit and it doesn't slow him up much. I dodge a punch at my stomach, which turned out to be faked, and it's immediately followed by his fist colliding with my throat. I stumble backward, feeling like I am choking on air, trying to suck in a breath. I jump outside Eric's kick just in time, and taking a step toward him, land a punch to his jaw. His head snaps backward and I kick at his stomach, but Eric catches my foot and I crash to the tile floor.
Black threatens my already blurry vision right at the edges, but after a moment clears away. I roll out of the path of Eric's foot and grab his legs with my own, knocking him to the floor next to me. For a moment it's like two puppies wrestling, and it's all a blur, but soon it gets a lot more blurry, because Eric is slamming my head hard into the tile floor.
I can't think, I can barely see, and my head pounds harder than it ever has before, but I can't let him beat me. It's literally do or die. For me, and Marlene probably as well. Then I remember the gun; I scramble toward it best I can with everything around me spinning, but so does Eric… and he gets there before I do.
He stands a couple yards away from me and as I watch him aim the gun at me, I try to find a way to keep fighting back, I have to keep fighting back. I can't give up now!
But then there is a loud pop, and intense pain shoots all over my upper left leg. My body had already been trying to pull me away from consciousness and the pain is too much. I hear someone yell my name, then two more gunshots, just as the black at the edges of my vision overtakes it all and I fall into nothingness.
Marlene
As Tris and Four take a left at one of the nearest hallways, Edward, Zeke and I continue straight. We slow here and there, peeking around corners. It isn't long before we come across a guard; Edward comes up behind him and puts him in a choke hold. After clawing at Edward's hands for half a minute or so, the guard collapses. I've never been able to execute that move- impressive.
It seems like we are wandering aimlessly; Tris wasn't kidding when she said it was like a maze. I think we must be near the perimeter of the building right now. Suddenly Edward grabs my arm and I stop. "Zeke!" I whisper-yell, and when he turns, Edward holds a finger to his mouth, and we all listen.
Then I hear it. Yells, growls, a truly impressive string of curse words; the sounds of fists against bones, grunts of pain. We weave through the maze of hallways using our ears as a guide, but it takes a few wrong turns to find the right place.
I freeze when I see Uriah.
He lays on his back, one eye swollen nearly shut, blood running from a gash in his head, all in all just looking bloody and broken. And a few yards away, his back to us, is Eric, with a gun pointed right at Uriah.
Zeke aims just as Eric fires. Uriah lets out a scream as blood begins to seep out of the bullet wound in his left thigh, but his voice dies out and his eyes close just as Zeke shoots Eric in the right arm, and then immediately the left leg- a wound matching the one he had just inflicted upon Uriah.
Eric almost collapses, but I suppose it's pure adrenaline that keeps him going and he turns with a roar. He dropped the gun when his arm was shot, and blood drips down his chin- it looks like Uri must have ripped out one of his piercings. Eric tries to punch with his left hand but it's honestly pretty pathetic, and Edward has no trouble grabbing Eric's arm mid-punch; he twists it behind Eric's back and I finally break free from my stupor and clamber for one of the zip ties I brought along in my pocket. As soon as I have secured the plastic around Eric's wrists I rush to Uriah; Zeke is already kneeling over him, slapping his face to try and wake him up.
I didn't know I was crying until my tears begin to splash against Uriah's skin- washed out and pale looking instead of its usual warm bronze tone. I feel for a pulse and it is still strong enough, and I put my cheek near his mouth to feel his hot breaths against it. "He'll be okay, Zeke," I reassure him, "we just need to find Tris and Four and get him back to Dauntless."
Tobias
Tris and I stand near Caleb as his eyelids twitch slightly, as though he's about to come to. "Should we leave him here and come back for him?" Tris asks. "Or get him out of this chair, tie his hands and find the others?"
"I don't really-" I'm interrupted by the door swinging open, and in walks Jeanine. She's reading something on a tablet, and hasn't even noticed what is going on in this room as the door swings shut behind her. As she takes a few more steps toward us, Tris carefully shifts so she's behind Jeanine and a few yards away.
"Alright, let's get started, Uriah," she begins before finally looking up. Seeing Caleb in the chair and unconscious, and me standing next to him, her eyes go wide. She drops the tablet and tries to run; I lunge at her and grab hold of her arm, dragging her back toward me.
Jeanine isn't scrappy. She has no idea how to protect herself and has always had others to do it for her, in the rare case that a situation calls for it. I easily throw her to the floor and kneel on her back to hold her down. "You got a zip tie?" I ask Tris as I search my pockets for the ones I know I grabbed earlier. They must have fallen out when we jumped off the train or something.
I look up at Tris and reach my hand out as she walks toward me with one of the plastic ties, and her eyes go wide. She drops it and her hand flies to the knife that is strapped to her thigh. I turn my attention quickly back to Jeanine; though I have her pinned to the floor, her hand is free and in it, she clutches a syringe which she is about to plunge into my leg.
I close my eyes and try to move away, though it may be too late, and that's when her shriek of pain pierces the air. I look down to see Tris's knife embedded in the back of Jeanine's hand. Her fingers go slack, causing her to drop the syringe that had been in her hand. Tris lets out a deep sigh of relief as she kicks the syringe away and hands me the zip tie. I roughly hold Jeanine's hands in place and tightly zip tie them together.
"You can't just break in here," Jeanine yells angrily. "The law is on my side, and you are faction traitors. You're probably divergent as well!" I sigh and pull Caleb's socks off his feet, stuffing them in Jeanine's mouth to shut her up. Even I am not unkind enough to leave dirty socks in her mouth indefinitely, so I search the cupboards until I find some duct tape, then return to Jeanine and replace the socks with a piece of tape to keep her mouth shut.
I glance up at Caleb as he groans, then back to Tris. "Excellent speed and aim, Tris," I say with a smirk. "You must have had a really excellent instructor."
"The best," she teases, kneeling down next to me and pulling me in for a kiss.
The moment is broken by Caleb's angry screeching. "You!" he yells. "You're the one that is screwing my sister! Don't you see, Beatrice?! How old is this asshole, anyway? He's just using you!"
Tris stands and slaps him across the face before I have time to blink. "First of all, it's Tris. Second, he's eighteen. Last, he loves me and I love him, and what the hell makes you think I give a crap about your opinion, anyway?!"
"Well, I am your brother, you should care what I think."
Tris looks like steam should be coming out of her ears, she's so angry. "If family connections mattered, you wouldn't be trying to kill your own parents, Caleb." She looks like she's about to attack him again, and he deserves it, but I know she would feel guilty for it later. I pull her away from him, and she glares at me.
"Tris," I say, and she looks away. I hold her jaw gently between my fingers to make her look at me. "Baby, I know he deserves every single thing you want to say and do, but he isn't worth it. We know what we are to each other and we don't need his approval. Don't let him get to you. I love you."
Caleb snorts. "I can't believe you buy into his crap, Beatrice."
Tris just rolls her eyes and picks up the roll of duct tape I left on the floor. She rips off a piece and seals her brother's lips shut with it. "That's better," she says cheerfully. "Now, let's get Caleb out of that chair and go find Uriah."
