Chapter 20: unlikeliest Choice

These steps again. I still can't see anything and the regular sounds of her heels, hitting the ground at every step of hers are the only thing I sense. A navy blue stripe crosses my sight and the view gets clear.

Jeanine is standing in front of me, her arms crossed and her face as cold as always.

„Even a Child is more intelligent than you are. You are useless. It was a mistake to assign you to my work."

She turns and walks away.

I wake up, breathing harsh and confused.

Why do I dream of this so often ?

The most logical answer would be psychological stress, but I don't think that's my case.

I try to soften my breathing, regaining regularity, but my hard noises have already woken Chloe, who slowly pulls herself up and searches for the source of the noise.

„What the hell are you doing Seph ?", she rubs her face, throwing back her hair and stands up, walking over to me, to sit on the corner of the bed.

„I just had this dream. Again. There's no reason for dreaming the same thing again and again if there's no psychological stress. But then why do I dream it so often ?"

I lean my head against Chloes and she starts to think out loud.

„What did you dream exactly?"

„ I dreamed about Jeanine, she was standing in Erudite headquarters and accused me of being dumb. She even said it was a mistake to let her work with me."

„Oh Seph. There's no chance she would get to say that. You're brilliant and trust me, because I should know it best. We did great work in initiation. You don't have to worry about such things.", she carefully rubs my back and I start to feel relieved.

„Thank you, I fell better now, but you should go back to sleep now Chloe, it's 2am."

„Yes I know, but you go back to sleep now too. And don't dare to dream such bullshit again.", she smiles.

I hear her go back to bed as I lay down again, hoping to either dream nothing, or at least dream of something nice.

Two and a half hours later, I wake up again. The sun hasn't risen yet, but I can see a little streak of light at the horizon behind the fence. Some people say, they've seen light behind it, but that is unlikely to be true. If there was life, in the wasteland behind the fence, they would either be living in ruins, or be to highly evolved to interfere with us.

Chloe is still asleep, but since our alarm is going to ring in ten minutes, I'm going into the bathroom to get ready. I'm nearly finished as the sound of our alarm goes through our apartment, followed by Chloes swearing. She's definitely not a morning person.

We soon are ready and this time, we have got the time to get normal breakfast, where Ruben and Maya tell us, what they are going to do today.

Maya is going to do some research for a certain century, they will tell her and Ruben will search the sky for star constellations tonight.

We are half an hour early as we arrive at our meeting place. No one is here yet,not even Jeanine herself, but three minutes after we arrived, she turns around the corner and looks obviously surprised as she sees us.

"Well I didn't expect you to be this early, but as you are already here, we could start now, shall we ?"

I shortly nod to Maya and Jeanine and I get to work.

In silence, we walk down endless amounts of hallways before we arrive at a single door at the end of a hallway. She takes out a keycard form her lab coat's pocket and slides it through the keycard- reader. The light turns green and the door opens, revealing a huge laboratory. Our Leader enters and the lights go on immediately.

„So what is it, that we will be working on ?", I carefully ask. She starts the computer and sits down on a chair next to her desk.

"We will invent a device that, if applied to the patient's blood circulation, heals wounds."

"You mean like Nano-bots ?"

This is going to be fun. Building Nano-bots was something I ever wanted.

" Yes, Indeed something like this."

The next three Days, I spend planing and calculating with Jeanine.

Until one day,it is lunch time and she turns to me:" Go if you are hungry, I won't eat lunch today."

"Me neither, we should continue working."

She looks at me with surprise,"Are you sure ?", she asks.

"I am. We've got no time to loose so close to our goal."

"Pass me the hard drive then. I'll program the algorithm."

I pass her how she asked and wonder:"What should I do then?"

"You can figure out a way to test them."

"You mean we're going to test them on me ?", that's why she wanted to work with an Initiant, she couldn't ask this from the older Erudite scientists.

"Yes, I do. Do you have a problem with that.", her cold gray eyes bore in mine.

Not wanting to disappoint her, I quickly answer: "No, No of course not."

"Then we can start, shall we ?", she hands me a scalpel. Not that I've done anything like this before, but it's surprisingly easy to cut my arm. The wound is not really deep but it's starts bleeding automatically. I don't feel pain, somehow.

Jeanine injects me the Nano-bots and I feel an impulse running through my veins. Suddenly, the bleeding stopps and the wound gets closed by a thin layer of something that looks like a fried egg's protein, what the device technically does. My lab partner looks at the data in the tablet, and all trough her expression is cold, I can see pride in her eyes.

"We did it !", I smile.

"Yes,we did. I'm finished here then, please clean up, then you'll be allowed to take your free time."

That's not really friendly. But nothing else I expected from a women which is said to have no heart,no feelings. To work like a machine, timed like a clockwork and always success orientated, alone driven by logic and intelligence.

I somehow look up to her, because of the respect, that's payed to her, probably. She only focuses on the important things, never spends time needlessly.

That evening, I go to bed early because I'm exhausted as a human being can be. I'm near sleep as Chloe enters the apartment.

"Already finished then ? Tell me, how did it go with Jeanine ?", she asks excited.

"Mhhh. Nothing. We just finished and she went of.", I somehow feel more exhausted than before and turn in order to finally get some rest.

"Well, get some sleep then. But you'll have to tell me tomorrow.", I hear her say as she goes to bed too.

The next day, I tell her everything at breakfast as a notification reaches my device. It's a Tablet we all got to save data or communicate.

"You were assigned to work at lab 1569, work begins in half an hour."

"That's unfortunate, I've got to go, I was assigned newly.", I rush out of the dinning hall and proceed to the lab. I enter and loads of pairs of eyes lay on me. I either just entered the wrong lab or I'm going to work with a bunch of old Erudite. I'm about to ask if I'm right here as our leader enters the room from another door.

"I see you finally arrived. Let's get started then.", she turns and walks into the lab. The scientists and I follow her, both surprised and disoriented.

Jeanine explains they've been working on a device to make Dauntless troops and objects invisible. They've created a kind of a coat that breaks the light around the hidden objects and reflects the image of the world behind it at the same time.

As they'll still need energy to power the reflection, and Jeanine wants me to try to help them. Because I was able to build the Nano-bots, she said.

At the end of the week, I have found a way, together with the other scientists, to let the coat create its own energy. I'm heading to the dining hall to grab some dinner with Chloe, who I haven't talked to in a while because of the project, as I get called to Jeanines office.

That's either good news, or she's going to make me factionless. Great !

I knock on her door and she opens, clearly disappointed. I enter and she mentions me to take a seat across her table, which stands in front of a big window showing the whole city. Her walls are all painted in royal blue and her floor is made out of white marble. Bookshelves are hung everywhere and I'd bet her books are all in alphabetical order. I'm slightly impressed.

" You were wrong.",She says as I finally get my gaze off of her panorama window.

"Excuse me ?",I carefully ask.

Please don't kill me !

"The coat project. It didn't work the way you told them to go."

Shit. That will be my last hour then.

"I'm sorry but I.I don't understand." There I am making a complete fool of myself again.

"The Generator you created. It doesn't even work but is also a great risk to the users health. How could you even think of exposing people to that kind of radiation ?", she remains calm however but I can sense her anger.

I don't know what to say, so I stutter: "I. I'm so so sorry. I didn't know that this would happen. I-I'll go pack my things then. I'm gone till dawn."

Embarrassing. AWESOME !

"There's no need for you to leave. I will forgive you this time, but only this one time."

Well, THAT was unexpected. The first part she's angry with me and then she spares me ? What the actual fuck ? I think I should be grateful for this so I hurry to get out of here.

Some time later I sit with Maya and Chloe to eat evening as they ask me what I did today. I tell them from the awkward meeting in Jeanine's office and both of them react like I did.

„This is not only the most embarrassing thing I've ever heard of, but the most strange thing to."

„And the most unlikeliest thing for Jeanine to do.",Maya adds.

We nod in agreement.

„As long as I can remember, Jeanine never spared anyone. Not even the oldest or most famous people that made mistakes."

„Not even the Initiants ?", Maya asks.

So why did she spare you ?", Chloe thinks out loud.

„That's the question of the day.", I say as I bring back my Tablet to head to our apartment.

„Im going to bed now. Do you come with me ?", I ask Chloe.

„No, not yet. I've still got my desert."

On my way back to our apartment, I can't stop thinking about Chloe's question. Why on earth should Jeanine Matthews, leader of Erudite, ever spare me, a simple Initiant ? That just doesn't make sense at all. Nobody ever gets a special treatment from her, not even her nearest friends and colleagues, if Jeanine ever had friends.

Of course it's fairer this way, but it leaves me questioning.

At home, I continue thinking about what happened today at my bed time routine and even when I try to sleep. This never happened before, so nobody could help me.

Jeanines POV:

It's a few hours later and I'm still questioning my decision to spare this girl. It's not just unlikely for me, but irrational and illogical. She did a mistake and mistakes should be punished, but instead I didn't even gave her a task as punishment. Maybe because I knew her from somewhere ?