(3/21/2020)

For a writer to say, I have no ideas what to write... tells you the world has indeed turned a bit upside down!

Practice social distancing, stay safe, watch out for one another, stay inside and read more Fanfiction, (and review what you read so the writers stay motivated to write! ;) )

Two points from two reviews...

NotSoCliche mentioned seeing Tori, Evelyn, and Jeanine interact. You are going to see more of that. They all came from Erudite (canon) and there just felt like there was a bit more going on than just the war to me. So, in future chapters you are going to see a bit more of that.

Shori:d mentioned that what was planned for Adam made her think of Eli. Yes, there is a reason for that!

Characters

Glynis- (mentioned) Norton's secretary

Lisette- (mentioned) Norton's daughter

Charlotte- (mentioned) Norton's "crush" she died of cancer and was married to Ian

Adam- (mentioned) Lisette's husband

Anderson- Norton's middle child

Ian- (menioned) Norton's rival for Charlotte, first Divergent he killed.

Taryn- Norton's wife. He only married her because she came from Dauntless

Devon- (mentioned) intellectual rival of Norton and Jeanine's grandfather

Patrick- (mentioned) friend of Norton's and Andrew's grandfather

Chapter 23

It is hard to keep to my routine this morning. I don't want to meet with Glynis first thing to review my day. I want to skip my morning review of the faction and what is going on with it, but I can't do that, either.

What I want to do, the only thing I want to do, is go up to my private work space on the top floor, and pull up the records of births and deaths since Friday. I want to open up my handwritten notebooks, the ones that I have kept since I became the leader, and transfer the names from the records Glynis will give me to my private ones, so I can see if Adam's name is there.

So I can know that my little girl, and my city, are safe from him.

After I finish the minutia that starts my day, I move the bookcase aside that hides my personal elevator. I managed to get it put in when I created my private work area on the top floor. It took me a couple of years after Ian died to get my private space, a space where there are no cameras. An area that no one, not even Dauntless, monitors.

There is a more public entrance where there are more stringent security measures in place. I put my thumb to the pad to let it read my thumb print. As soon as it registers, I hear Charlotte's voice ask,

"Where do you want to go?"

"To heaven," I reply.

The elevator starts moving up. It takes my thumb print to activate the elevator, my voice to give the command, and the password for the elevator to even move. If I give the wrong password, like the floor number that my work space is located on, the elevator will go up about 6 inches and "break."

As I ride up, I'm thankful that I have always made sure that morning meetings don't take place until my paperwork is done.

Everything I need is up here. Computers that aren't tied to the network. Chemicals for the death serum that I don't have to account for. There are still things that I am slowly acquiring for my personal use, but my work space is complete, and the lab has almost everything Anderson needs for any private work he does up here.

Most importantly, nothing that we do up here is recorded.

The first thing that I moved up here is my notebooks where I record births, choosing ceremonies, and deaths. These are my personal copies to make sure that if history is ever tampered with again, I will have proof of who should be accounted for and where they belonged.

Booting up my computer, I pull the drive out of my pocket that Glynis updated and gave to me in our morning meeting. It contains the records that I copy every morning of the births and deaths that have occurred since I because leader. But it can be tampered with, so the written copy is necessary, too.

Even though there is no one here to see what I am doing, I force myself to continue to follow the habits I have built over the years. There will be no evidence I vary in my routine. I record the births first, since that is what I have always done. If I allow myself to slip up in private, it will open the door for me to make a mistake in public.

Births before deaths. I copy each one meticulously in my book.

Before I open up the list of deaths, I close my eyes, drawing strength to see what I hope to see. I scan the short list, looking for his name. Of course, even if he is dead, he may not be on today's list. It will depend on when they found his body.

Adam.

Letting go of the breath I've been holding, I start the actual process of recording.

He died of a broken neck, falling out of a tree.

Looking over the coroner's notes, I think about how it will look to anyone else reading the report.

He told his wife he wanted to look over the orchard where the cameras need to be replaced after cutting down a stand of old trees. There was no one with him. The found him in the orchard after his wife was worried that he hadn't returned. He was already dead when they found him. Because that area of the orchard was getting new cameras, there was no recording of his fall. Accidental death.

Writing down his name, I put a dash next to it before recording the cause of death, just like I do for each entry. But just like I did with Ian's mark, I let my pen swoop up just a little, and then correct it. It's a small enough mark that I don't think anyone will recognize it for what it is: a record to let me know that, just like the dash has diverged off its path, the person it is with was Divergent.

Two down.

I let myself think about the concern that I have pushed to the side ever since Lisette told me about Adam.

I had almost convinced myself that Ian was a fluke, a one-off. There wasn't supposed to be anyone else here. I've been laying my plans defensively, trying to figure out how to protect the city from a threat from the other side of the fence, from people beyond Amity.

There have been two of them already inside of our faction system that I have stumbled upon. Two whom I discovered by the most illogical thing to trust: luck.

Now, it's time to plan. I can't count on luck. How am I going to find them, going forward?

Pushing myself away from the computer, I walk over to the table in middle of the room. Looking around the room, I take a mental inventory of everything that I thought I needed to protect us from the outside.

The three dimensional map on the table of our city with the fence that surrounds us standing on its surface. The plans for expanding the wall to contain Amity on it. Is that still necessary? Is Amity how they join our city?

I need to take a look at Ian's family tree. He was born Erudite, but were both of his parents? Is there an Amity connection with all of the Divergent?

The wall opposite has lists of what we need to get together to make sure we can repel an invasion like what we had when I was a child.

Frustrated with my inability to answer my own questions, my hands slam on the table, causing the fence to rock and falls in places.

The computer voice I programmed to sound like Charlotte sounds gently. "Anderson. Sixth generation, Faction of origin and selected Faction, Erudite."

Hurrying to set the fence back up so my son can't see my tantrum, I knock more of it over.

Anderson must see what I am doing, because his first words echo my thoughts. "We've been preparing for an attack from the outside. We never thought we should be preparing from an attack from the inside."

"They aren't supposed to be in here!" I feel my frustration from the past few days gathering. "Our city was designed to be a refuge from them."

"We've found two. If we have found two, there are more." Anderson again voices my thoughts, "How do we find them?"

Anderson knows me well. Giving me a problem to solve will put me back on track. "The only way I know to find them is through simulations. Everyone already takes the Aptitude Test. That's a simulation." My feet start to carry me around the room while I think.

Anderson says nothing but lets me walk and think.

"We need information from it. Erudite don't have time to administer the test, so Abnegation volunteers do that. We could have them ask each sixteen-year-old they test if they were aware during the simulation."

"How would you convince the Abnegation to ask? If they think the question is just self-serving, they won't give you the information."

My strides take me past Anderson a couple of times while I think. "How old is the test?"

"Old. Although Ian started working on a new test, that was abandoned with his death. It's been a couple of generations, at least, since it has been updated," Anderson reminds me.

Stopping in my tracks, I turn to look at him, "Updating the test after a couple of generations would be logical, and if we were looking at a new test, wouldn't it make sense for us to start with a questionnaire? It's reasonable to get information put together before we start on anything new."

Anderson smiles at me. "And since work in Serums, it would be sensible for me to work on the new serum and come up with the questionnaire."

"Devon is still department head," I remind him, "and both of you are in the Top Ten. Both of you would be on the project, at the very least, and you would certainly have input on the questionnaire. Yes, I think that is our starting point. At Wednesday's meeting, I'll bring up updating the Aptitude Test as a talking point. I won't have a lot to time to speak to you and Devon after the meeting, but we'll at least have a quick discussion about the questionnaire then."

"You usually don't plan anything after Top Ten meeting so you have time to discuss anything that might come up. What is going on?"

"Your mother is keeping something from me."

Anderson laughs but stops suddenly when he realizes I'm serious. "You have to be joking. Mother can't keep a secret, especially not from you."

"I'm pretty sure she's been keeping one about her health."

"What do you mean?" Anderson is suddenly concerned.

How much do I tell her son? The only child she still has left. "There are just some signs I've noticed about your mother lately that make me think her blood sugar is off again. She has an appointment set for shortly after the Top Ten meeting, a time she knows I am likely to miss. She doesn't know it yet, but I'm going to her doctor's appointment, even if I have to cut the meeting short, to find out if I'm right.


Diabetic Nephropathy.

The word cycles in my head along with what I have learned about it today.

Diabetic Nephropathy occurs when the kidneys are damaged by the high glucose levels in the blood. The kidneys are no longer able to remove waste products and keep a healthy balance of fluids in the body. Protein begins to get past the kidneys and end up in the urine.

Taryn has had this condition for years without telling me. She is stage four of five.

And if I hadn't come today, she probably would have been in stage five, kidney failure, before she would have told me.

How do I handle this?

The same way I wanted to handle Charlotte's cancer diagnosis. I will do for Taryn everything I couldn't do for her.

We are home before I break the silence that has been between us. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Before today, I've never noticed exactly how still my wife can be. She stands in our kitchen, both hands in front of her, right hand over left. "What could you have done, Norton? Quit your job? You don't have a job where you can cut back on hours. You are either the leader, or you are nothing. Your job means so much to the faction and to you. I don't want to see anyone else in your position because of my health. You are the leader of Erudite. You aren't a researcher like Devon where you could have reduced your hours or started working on some kind of a cure. You aren't a doctor like Patrick, where you would already know more than me about the disease and help me to navigate it."

Taryn has a strength to her placid stance. She has thought this through. This wasn't a decision that she made without giving it a great deal of thought. "I could have..." I start, but she interrupts me.

"You could have made sure I had the top doctor in the field? I'm your wife. I already have that. You could have allocated resources so that kidney disease got more funding. Far fewer people get kidney disease than cancer. The money should go to cure more, rather than fewer people."

"I could have been here for you." I say simply, knowing she can't argue against this.

She gives me a ghost of a smile. "And taken that time from what? Your sleep? Your job demands a lot from you. I've always known that. I've had Marion. She's been there for me any time I've needed her."

Looking Taryn in the eyes, I tell her forcefully, "No more secrets. No more not telling me what is going on with your health. You will tell Glynis about every appointment that you have so she can put in on my schedule."

"I don't want Glynis to..."

"Just tell her you have an appointment. You don't have to tell her what it is for. She will put it on my calendar so I can can be there."

"You don't have to."

Taking a deep breath, I calm myself a little before I respond to this. "I want to."

It's a lie. I don't want to, but I wanted to be there for Charlotte, and I couldn't.

So I will do it for Taryn instead.