Coals Burn Slow

Disclaimer: This story deals with mature themes and contains explicit content. It's not intended for underage readers, and it handles subjects of all kinds of abuse, murder, and themes of a sexual nature eventually, so I'm warning ahead of time. If you might be sensitive to those themes in a fictional context, then maybe this isn't the best choice for you and you may wish to leave this one be. Otherwise, happy reading.

Chapter 8

Tris POV

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We take a truck. Zeke drives, and lets me sit in the cab with him, which isn't as dark as the back and the plush leather seats cushion the bumps and swerves of travel. He whizzes through the city streets, navigating them with a polished ease and familiarity. He's been here his whole life. I guess it comes with experience.

I'm almost entirely sure I should not be leaving the compound, but I try to trust he wouldn't do anything that would get me into trouble.

He drives us to one of the thousands deserted back street, the kind that I'm pretty familiar with because it's in these areas that Abnegation brings food and supplies to the Factionless. Looking back, I'm sure I spent almost half of my childhood playing hopscotch with the Factionless kids in the rubble. Sometimes they showed me where they stayed, and sometimes I cried on the walk home because I hated to say goodbye and leave them there. Mom used to cradle my head into her side and smooth my cheek with her thumb as we walked home. She'd tell me it wasn't my fault; that I'd done what I could do for now, and that I could be glad about that.

She never told me not to cry, and she never said it wasn't wrong that they had to live like that, and I realise that I'm older that there's weight in the words she didn't say, too.

So, it doesn't spook me too badly when Zeke kills the engine and hops out without warning because the scenery feels vaguely known to me. I do the same, taking a moment to find the handle for the truck door, and a moment more to slide down safely to the ground. By the time I make it round to Zeke's side, he has two guns balanced in his arms and he shoves one of them into my hands.

I gape, the heavy metal still feeling entirely foreign in my hands. Especially without Four stood right behind me, to tell me what to do and keep me from flying back. "Zeke, I can't use this."

He smirks. "Well, lucky thing you're with me because I can."

I try to hand it back to him, but he puts the strap of his gun around his neck and holds his hands up, backing away to show me he won't take it. I huff, my eyes wide and my hands sweating around the heavy metal. "Zeke!"

He laughs. "Don't cry, Tris, it's not that scary. I know Four showed you how to shoot. You'll be fine."

I glare at him. "I wasn't very good. And I'm not shooting anybody."

"That's fine, but they don't know that," he says, grinning down at me. I know that the ominous 'them' is a general reference to the Factionless, and I don't particularly like it. "Come on, you look like a real Dauntless with it. Just don't drop it, and don't shoot yourself."

He takes off then before I can protest further, and I glower at his back before looping the strap around myself in the same fashion he had, but I keep tight hold of it in my hands as I jog to catch up with him.

He leads us down the street before choosing a building to turn into. I stick as close to him as I can without stepping on his heels, because this is not at all the same as walking down these streets in a grey dress with a basket of bread and blankets in my arms. He finds stairs and I eye them warily. Abandoned buildings have a tendency of falling down, and the chunks of plaster littering the floor here don't fill me with much confidence.

"Come on, Tris," Zeke sings, laughing as he jogs up them.

I haven't got much choice but to follow him. All the way to the very top, where he leads me to a ledge. I eye him warily and stay well back and hold my gun tightly, the thread of self-preservation strung too tight for me to be that stupid.

He seems like a happy, nice guy, and Four seems to trust him, and Four hasn't hurt me although he could. But people can seem like all types of things. It doesn't mean that's who they are.

He turns back and smiles at me. "It's a pretty nice view from here, don't you think?"

I nod stiffly, although I'm looking at it from a distance.

Zeke laughs. "Come on, I'm not going to push you," he says, jerking his head for me to come closer. "There are targets you can hit here. It's fun."

I shuffle nearer to the edge, keeping my steps short and my back stiff. I keep far enough away from him, but he doesn't seem to mind so much.

He's right. The view is nice, even if it is a little strange.

The skyscrapers shoot high, the taller ones casting shadows over the view, but the shapes aren't right. Decay has bit into the buildings, and they're missing walls and ceilings and foundations. It looks entirely unstable, but I suppose they've stayed standing for years. Centuries. Through wars and peacetimes and every riot this city has seen.

"Nice, right?"

"Yeah," I say. "It's nice."

He must note the tightness of my voice and the stiffness of my posture because he laughs, shaking his head. "See over there," he says, pointing a finger at an abandoned building across the way. One of many, but this one is different because it's marred with paint – white targets sprayed onto the side. "Erudite reports say it's going to fall down, so there's a demolition next week. But it's target practice until then. The building is weak and shit, so when you hit it, shit starts falling."

Zeke doesn't warn me before swinging his gun into his hands, raising it and sending a spray of bullets out to the building. I shriek and jerk back from him, and a muted clatter sounds in the distance as a few clumps of concrete and a handful of bricks chip away from the building.

They look small from here, but I imagine it raining concrete over the street – streets that Abnegation wander and Factionless reside – and nothing about it is casual.

Zeke laughs, but I don't find it so funny. "Cool, huh?"

"No," I snap, and perhaps it's the gun in my hand that makes me so bold I take a tone with him, but I don't restrain myself. "What about the Factionless? They live around here, and you're raining bricks on them for fun?"

Zeke's eyebrows raise, and he lifts his hands in surrender, his right arm pointing the gun towards the ceiling. "Whoa, Tris, don't panic. We had a team evacuate the surrounding areas a month ago. They've signposted it now, and our surveillance watch on the feeds to make sure nobody comes around here. Nobody's getting hurt."
And suddenly, I feel stupid.

"Oh."

He's gracious enough not to hold it against me, instead smiling and tilting his head, echoing me with a mocking, "Oh,"

"I'm sorry," I mumble. I don't make an excuse or offer an explanation for myself, though plenty surface in my mind. I could mention how I made friends with Factionless children, or how these riffraff streets feature in my fondest childhood memories. I could recount how many had offered their condolences and sanctuary when the riot broke out and my parents were lost to it. I could mention how they were the only people to offer me any help when I couldn't stand to stay in that wretched home.

But I don't say any of that, because it wouldn't serve much good and I don't much like to expose myself. Least of all to people I hardly know.

He shrugs his shoulders. "It's all good. I probably should have said that first. Now, shoot."

I do.

We shoot through the targets, and I find my aim improves with time. My shoulder aches more with every kickback, and my chest seizes when a particularly large block falls away, and the ground shakes so hard because of it that we can feel it beneath our feet all the way up here.

Zeke enjoys it like he was made for it, grinning at the thrill of destruction in a way that's entirely foreign to me. But it fits with what I know of him, that he would find laughter and not fear in the demise of things. He seems too light-hearted to fear anything, and that's a form of bravery I've not seen much of before.

We shoot for a long while, and he chatters away about anything and everything, mostly flitting through stories of similar things he's done with his friends over the years. He's entertaining enough to coax a laugh from me a couple times, and casual enough that I feel confident to speak to, gradually swallowing the embarrassment of my earlier misstep.

I manage to chip a fraction of the left corner from the building, and I tilt forward to watch it tumble to the ground. "Did you see that?" I laugh. "I got the corner!"

He grins at me. "I'm pretty impressed. With a bit of practice, you'll kill The Games this year."

"The Games?"

"Yeah, they're an initiation tradition. You'll see."

He offers a few little corrections for my shooting form, and when we run out of rounds and begin the descent back to the truck, he tells me about learning to shoot in his own initiation.

"We had Amar teaching us, and that day they integrated us with the transfers because they were short on trainers. We already knew what to do, but the transfers were fucking clueless. And stupid, too. One guy shot himself in the foot, had to go to the infirmary and ended up being cut from the programme because he was mangled after that."

I grimace. "That's horrible."

Zeke only shrugs. I suppose the cut throat nature of Dauntless life is more common place to him. It might cease to seem so harsh after a while. "Four was a natural, though, but nobody's fucking surprised about that," he laughs, rolling his eyes with good natured contempt.

"You were in the same initiation year?" Considering they're friends, it's not a surprise, but the stark difference between them somehow seems too much to imagine they've had to jump through the same hoops to be a member here.

He nods his head. "Yeah. Shauna, too, but we weren't together then. And Eric if you ever have the bad luck of meeting him."

He walks ahead of me, so he doesn't see the flicker of a grimace that slips onto my face at the mention of that man before I can manage to restrain it. Which is good, because I'd rather not let on that I've had an encounter with Eric. It doesn't seem like the smart thing to do.

But, imagining the three of them in the same training year, imagining Four and Eric in the same training class considering the dislike between them, goads some curiosity from me. "Who's Eric?" I ask, as innocently as I know how.

Zeke ducks under a low hanging wire, stepping over smashed glass. It crunches beneath his boots. "He was a transfer from Erudite. A miserable, arrogant little shit that nobody in their right mind likes."

I nod, though he can't see me. "How did he rank?"

"Second. Which still pisses him off, I bet." Zeke snorts, like the thought of Eric's grudge is a mere entertainment to him.

It makes me feel a little pathetic for being so scared of the man, but I suppose I'm nothing like Zeke in any way.

"Oh, who came first?"

Zeke pauses and turns to look over his shoulder at me, his brow furrowed like I've asked a ridiculous question. "Four. He didn't mention that?"

I shake my head, pausing where I stand, a few steps above him.

Of course Four came first in his year. He is a leader, after all.

"What do you talk about then?"

"Training," I answer plainly. "He tells me what I need to know, and I listen."

Zeke snorts, turning back and continuing down the stairs with a shake of his head. "Yeah, he's not the most talkative guy. Took me a few persistent months to crack him. But don't let it scare you, it's not personal."

I gnaw down on my lip, wondering how much information I can prod from Zeke before it becomes suspicious. "Did you train together?"

"No, he was a transfer."

Before I can ask where he transferred from, Zeke stops abruptly and lifts his hand to signal for me to do the same, ducking slightly in his posture.

In the quiet, without our voices and the crunching of glass beneath our feet, it's easier to hear the hum of the train speeding by on its tracks. But louder than that, just slightly, are footsteps. More than one set, but not an entire stampede. Not heavy like Dauntless boots, nor as light as Abnegation slippers.

The air burns in my lungs, and I don't dare steal any more of it.

Zeke turns to me, pressing a finger to his lip, and grabbing hold of his gun, lifting it to his shoulder. I mimic him, spooked by the turn in events and the uncertainty of it. They could be Factionless, or perhaps a group of teenagers out bending the rules. They could be harmless, like the Factionless I knew, or they could be feral. They could be unbothered by Dauntless presence, or it might trigger a bad temper and start something that only ends with bloodshed.

And for a brief minute, I wish I could call for Four. I wish I could shout up the stairs for him. I wish he could sweep in here and escort me out with a hand on my back, his tall frame shielding me from view.

It may be a hopeless, fruitless wish, but I wish it all the same.

My eyes stare at Zeke, waiting for any kind of direction but he's listening intently, eyes darting around to find the culprit of the footsteps. We're only on the last set of stairs, so close to the door that we could run if needed but the second we move, our footsteps will give us away. Though staying here can't be an option, because there's only two of us and we're both out of bullets and exposed on all sides.

"Follow my lead," he whispers, before straightening and marching down the last few steps and out of the door onto the street.

Outside, it's darker than it was on arrival, the sky is turning a faint pink, and in the shadows cast between the buildings a huddle of Factionless are gathered. They look young. Small. A crowd of eight, or so of them, muttering to each other and eyeing the Dauntless truck abandoned in the street.

So much for a thorough evacuation.

Zeke's steps don't falter. He marches to the truck like he hasn't even noticed our company, like he doesn't notice how they murmur and begin following us.

Once we get there, he scans his wrist against the pad near the door, and it clicks unlocked. He reaches in and grabs a gun, exchanging it for his empty one within a heartbeat. I copy, and do the same, though I have no intention of shooting anybody.

My hands shake so badly and my vision blurs, and I'm sure I'd miss anyway. But I don't want to try. I don't want to even think about it.

Zeke slams the door shut and turns back to the approaching crew of Factionless. Three of them are walking towards us, and the rest of the huddle remains in the shadows. They wear the usual mismatch of clothes, ragged and dirty looking though their faces are clean and sprightly. Two boys, one blond and especially young looking – he surely couldn't be older than fourteen – and a brunette with a stocky build, are positioned either side of a black haired girl. None of them look at all friendly nor happy to see us.

It's not the reception I'm used to, and it causes my chest to tighten.

"This zone was evacuated," Zeke says, his voice ringing with a seriousness that doesn't suit him. "You've breached the allocated boundaries."

"So have you," the girl retorts.

"We're authorised soldiers. You, however, are Factionless," Zeke answers firmly.

"She's not a soldier," she says, nodding at me. "She's got initiate tags."

My eyes dart down at myself for half a second, and I remember the red rings on my clothing that mark me as an initiate. How the Factionless girl knows to recognise that, however, I have no clue. I'd never heard of it before.

"A Dauntless initiate. We don't have to explain our training exercises to you."

"Oh no," she snorts scornfully, "I quite remember them, thank you."

Oh.

A failed Dauntless initiate. For all I know, I might become her.

It makes my future seem terribly bleak all of a sudden.

"Look, the boundaries are in place for your protection," Zeke says, his tone veering a touch into impatience. "There's a demolition site in this area. If you like your chances against falling concrete, have at it. Don't expect Erudite to patch you up afterwards."

With that, he turns to the truck and marches to his side.

I do the same, yanking the door open and hauling myself into the cab as fast as my sweaty hands can manage. I slam it shut the moment I'm inside, my entire body vibrating as I cling to the gun and avoid the glare of the three Factionless outside.

Zeke starts the engine, manoeuvring the truck to turn. As he does, my eyes slip towards them, and the girl holds something up in her hand. It's a piece of grey cloth, the same kind of shade as an Abnegation dress, painted with red streaks in a symbol that I don't recognise. Something round, with an intricate design I don't have time to scrutinise because Zeke drives us from the area swiftly.

From afar, it looks like someone bled all over it.

He laughs. "Well, nothing like a bit of on the ground experience, huh?"

My breathing hardly steadies, the nerves of that encounter not yet abated. "They didn't like us," I answer.

He shrugs. "They rarely do. Usually there's more of us, though, so they don't get mouthy. The next patrol might pick them up, but I'm not on duty and I was wagering you didn't want to cuff them for me." He chuckles, and I try to force a short laugh, but it comes out sharp, tense.

"Don't worry. We don't bring along baskets of bread and shit so we don't get the Abnegation welcome if that's what you wanted but you'll get used to it. They're not as scary as they want you to think they are."

I nod my head, but I don't believe a single word.

Because the last time I saw an angry Factionless man was the same last time I saw my parents, and that's something I'll never forget nor get used to. It's something that'll haunt my dreams for the rest of my days.

Zeke prattles on about dinner and his other Factionless encounters on the journey back to the compound, but I'm only half listening. My heart's beating too loud for me to actually hear him, anyway.

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A/N:

This chapter was going to be longer, but I decided I'd rather split it and have one part up sooner rather than take any longer to update. The next one is halfway done, and I've got some pre written further on but I've deviated from the original original, so there's some tweaking to be done.

Reviews are the best form of motivation to write, truly, so please leave me your thoughts. I love to hear them.

- Laylz :)