He doesn't remember it being this cold, and the thin and scratchy blanket that's covering seems to do absolutely nothing to stop his shivers. His shoulder throbs, but it's now tightly bound in a sling.
"It's good to see you awake." A gentle male voice says.
He turns his head towards the voice and tries to focus. He sees a halo of wild curly hair, caramel skin and kind dark brown eyes.
"Amar?" Four asks. Amar nods his head. "What happened?" Four whispers.
"Drink. Its water, and you need the fluids." He urges. "We don't have any more IV kits here at camp. Some of our medics have gone out for more supplies." He lifts the canteen to Four's lips and he takes a hesitant sip. "Once we have the kits here, we'll get you hydrated with fluids."
"Tris?" He whispers.
"They're gotten her stable. She lost a lot of blood, and as expected it was terrible for her to hear that the pregnancy couldn't be saved." Amar replies. "They've given her a mild sedative to help her to rest and heal."
"She lost the baby?" Four asks and Amar nods. "Fuck." He whispers.
"I'm very sorry." Amar offers.
"Yeah. Me too." Four says quietly before taking another small sip from the canteen. "Has anyone found Eric?"
Amar shakes his head. "We haven't found him, but once I spoke to Jack to see who we were looking for I was able to send George and his team out to look for him. George insisted on going, he needed something to distract him from losing Tori." He sighs.
"That had to be traumatic for him." Four agrees.
Amar continues, "You and Tris both lost a lot of blood, and both needed transfusions. We don't have the most sophisticated equipment here, so the medics have left to replenish what we do have. We couldn't chance taking you two back to Chicago for care, and the next nearest hospital in a peaceful area is much too far away. We brought you here in order to save you both."
"Thank you." Four whispers and Amar simply smiles in return.
The two sit in comfortable silence while Four continues taking small sips of water. Amar can see that his former initiate seems to have matured much beyond his actual age, and it has to be due to the war he was thrust straight in the middle of. He can almost hear all of the questions swirling around in Fours head and he decides to break the quiet reverie.
"Four, what have you gotten yourself into?" Amar asks.
"Jack told you, didn't he?" Four asks.
"When we agreed to take you in, Jack simply had told us he had a group of suspected divergent, with one scheduled for execution. It wasn't until today I found out that the person who was scheduled was Eric, and that he's not a divergent or a supporter of us... he's a killer!" Amar argues.
Four drinks more of the cool water from the canteen before answering. "He didn't know what he was supporting. He followed the orders from Max, who was following Jeanine. He did what he thought he needed to do as a leader. Amar, you know I don't like him, but he testified to it under truth serum. He's married to a divergent, the one who Jeanine has been chasing after, so even if Eric at some point really did believe her bullshit about being divergent he has a damn good reason to doubt it now."
"He's married to her? So the baby was his?" Amar asks and Four nods. "I assumed she was back with you. I knew she was the one you were sneaking out to train, I thought maybe it ended up working out."
"It was never meant to be." Four replies. Amar can sense this is a difficult subject for his former initiate to discuss, so he quickly changes the subject.
"Four, I need to know everything that happened leading up to your van going off the road." Amar presses.
The younger man closes his eyes, willing himself to remember the details of their accident. "I never even saw them. Not until it was too late." He says quietly. "Jack and I… we had a conversation before I left Candor. It was quick, but he basically gave me a checklist to follow if by some miracle I was able to get Tori on my side about getting Eric out of there before he was executed. He made sure his guards were elsewhere, he told me about the van, and that the van would have GPS coordinates programmed to get us outside the fence. He didn't tell me who I was meeting, only that you all were his trusted colleagues and would get us to safety. I didn't even have a chance to really discuss Jack's plan with Tori. I mean, she and I had a conversation, and we both came to the same conclusion…" He trails off.
"Which was?" Amar prompts.
"That killing Eric for following orders was wrong. We all want Jeanine and Max, but Eric is who we caught." Four sighs, and its obvious the impact of the decisions he made are weighing heavily on him. "Amar, he was only caught because he was looking for Tris. Jeanine had sent dozens of her people in to raid Candor. Our people were getting shot up with these stupid tranquilizers left and right. Eric stayed well after her people were pushed out, he was frantically looking for Tris…."
"Did you ever think he was looking for her because Jeanine wants her?" Amar interrupts.
"Yeah, absolutely at the time. But after we had him in custody, I began to doubt it. Putting him under truth serum really solidified it though. He had no clue what he was doing, he actually didn't even know that Tris was the person Jeanine was obsessed with, and he was looking for her on his own. I had already come to that conclusion after the decision was made to execute him, and somehow Tori believed it too because she willingly helped me get him out of Candor." Four replies. "We had been driving awhile, and tensions were high because even though Tori went along with getting Eric out, she still had her own reasons for disliking him. We were able to get to a calm place, and everything was just quiet until they hit us. I never even saw them coming. Tori tried to shoot at the vehicle, but they managed to hit us hard enough to push us off the road. I don't remember much after that, just waking up. It was a SUV, dark like Dauntless uses."
"Dauntless is with Erudite." Amar states.
"For the most part, yeah. There were Dauntless staying in Candor though, they were not loyal to Erudite." He replies. "How are you here?" Four asks.
"Jack. He and Johanna have been working with the factionless for years to move the divergent and the supporters of the divergent away from Chicago. Deaths are faked, suicides are staged, whatever has to happen for us to disappear and not leave a trail leading anyone here." He replies.
"Where exactly is 'here'?" Four asks.
"Right now we are about a hundred and fifty or so miles outside of Chicago. We have small camps just like this between Chicago and Portland." He replies, and when he sees the confusion on Four's face he elaborates. "You are familiar with the geographical layout of the United States from school, correct?" He asks and Four nods. "Chicago is in the pre-war state of Illinois, in what was considered the Midwest part of the United States before the Great War years ago. Portland is in the pre-war state of Oregon, it's the West Coast, and it's where we have settled. The war that you fled that was waged within Chicago isn't unlike what went on all over the country years ago, it's just like the Great War that we were taught about in Faction history. Back then, everywhere one would go there was a civil war, whether it be over ideals, greed, land, skin color, religion, or anything else. There were so few places that were truly supportive of the betterment of people and society. Chicago isn't the only major city that rebuilt after the Great War, but it's absolutely the largest."
"So Portland… and this camp, and others that are like it… are they just Factionless…?" Four asks.
"Something like that, yes. What we weren't taught in our Faction History classes is that the Great War was waged over the faction system…"
"Wait, yes we were. The war was waged in order to protect the faction system." Four argues.
"Four, it was waged in order to overthrow the faction system. The people of Chicago, and all others who supported retaining the faction system lost the war. The faction system was abolished, but the citizens who wanted to retain the faction system rebuilt the city of Chicago, and then they built their wall to keep everyone else out. A biological war was then waged, using a virus that was created in the Chicago faction of Erudite, to attack what little population that was left of our country. The virus was initially spread using the country's food supply, and then it became a highly contagious airborne virus that spread like wildfire. It wiped out almost the entire country, except Chicago, who patrolled their borders and controlled their own food supply. What Chicago fails to realize is there is one particular group of people that this virus didn't impact at all." Amar explains.
"The divergent." Four says quietly and Amar nods.
"Correct. Those divergent across the country quietly migrated to the West Coast, where the city of Portland was rebuilt. Chicago believes they are the only major city left in the country, and while they are not naïve enough to believe there is no one living outside the walls, they do believe the only people who are out here are the ones that managed to escape their walls. They have no idea Portland exists, and they definitely don't know that we're readying ourselves for another war."
"How many people do you have?" Four asks.
"Several thousand." Amar replies.
"It's not enough." Four mumbles. He sits up slightly. "These are all people who have been forced out of Chicago?"
"Yes. There are many more people just like us within the city walls of Chicago too." Amar replies. "We have several thousand who are in Portland, building the city. The numbers are greater in the smaller compounds between Chicago and Portland. We have the numbers, Four, we just need training and discipline…"
"So why don't the people outside the wall help? Four and Amar both turn to look at Tris. "Why do they allow people like Jeanine Matthews to rise to power and hunt divergent like fucking animals?"
"Tris, you should be resting." Amar says as he stands and moves toward her. Tris sways on her feet and braces herself against the doorway.
"I am tired of people telling me what I should be doing. I lost my baby, my husband is missing, and I come here to find you telling fairy tales of a city of divergent who may or may not want to overthrow Chicago? This is bullshit and I am leaving. I need to find my husband." Tris says.
Four sits up completely and ignores the pain in his shoulder as he moves from the bed. He makes his way over to Tris and wraps his one good arm around her and gently leads her into the room to sit down on the bed. Tris reluctantly takes a seat, and Four sits on the edge next to her.
"No one is trying to force you to do anything Tris, I promise you. Neither of us are in any shape to leave. Amar has a team searching for Eric. You need to recover…" Four says quietly.
"I'll go check with the search teams and give you some privacy." Amar says before slipping out of the room.
"He's dead, isn't he? You all just don't want to tell me." Tris says stoically. "I can take it, Tobias. I already lost the baby. Just tell me everything so I can find some way to grieve."
"A crash caused you to lose the baby Tris. A horrible accident that also took Tori's life. They're still looking for Eric." He replies quietly.
"He wouldn't just leave me Tobias." She whispers. "I need to get out of here and start looking for him." Even as she protests, he can feel her sagging against his side and he gently maneuvers her so she can fully lie down. Within seconds her eyes are closed and she appears to be sleeping.
He quietly sits down in a chair and watches her, and contemplates everything he's learned today from Amar. He places a blanket over Tris, and presses a gentle kiss to her forehead before quietly slipping out of the room.
He wanders down the hall until he finds a door cracked slightly open, and he hears the familiar sound of Amar's voice.
Amar looks up from his makeshift desk and gestures for Four to come in. "I've checked in with almost every search party, and received reports from all stating there are still no sightings of Eric Coulter." His secured radio alerts and he picks up.
"Go ahead." He says in the form of a greeting.
"Amar?" George Wu's crackly voice transmits over the line. "We have spotted him."
"Is he hurt?" Amar asks, he watches as Four leans forward and tries to support his arm.
"No, he's perfectly fine. Doesn't appear to be a scratch on him. We attempted to rescue him, however he refused to come with us. We had to leave, it's not safe here…" George replies.
"Where are you?" Amar asks.
"Erudite." George replies.
"He's in Erudite? They captured him?" Four asks.
"Nope, it doesn't look like he's here unwillingly, he's running things." George replies. Amar looks over at Four, who stares back in disbelief "I didn't want to be right about this one, but it looks like my sister and her friends got him out just so he could get back to running shit for Jeanine," George continues, "Tori died for this piece of garbage…" George says angrily before the radio cuts to static.