A/N: I love you guys so much. Thank you all for your amazing messages and reviews! I absolutely love reading everyone's thoughts and suspicions about where the story is going and I am so glad you all are enjoying it :) And of course, major thanks to Bamberlee who continues to do amazing beta work! And without further ado...


Chapter 5

TOBIAS

"Well you look angrier than usual today," Tony says, looking up at me when I stand next to his table in the cafeteria. He sips his hot drink and moves his empty plate out of the way. There are crumbs and a fresh coffee stain on his white T-shirt; he eats like a child. "I thought you'd at least be content that everything went as planned last night."

I huff, pressing my hand against the wooden table.

On the contrary, there is no way in hell I could have been prepared for what I saw last night, or what I think I saw.

Two of my men thought it was necessary to try and violate one of the captured Dauntless, and if that wasn't disconcerting enough, the woman was the spitting image of the one who has been haunting me over the past years. I felt like I had seen a ghost and for a second I wondered if I was dreaming and just wasn't aware of it. By the time I realized I was, in fact, fully awake, another question stirred in my head. Whoever she was, why did my mother want her dead? Killing the Dauntless intruders was never a part of the plan.

I decided not to ask her about it. I just went to my room afterward, because for some reason I had the idea that some rest would help clear my head. I was wrong; I woke up just as agitated and confused as I had gone to bed.

I sit down at the table beside Tony and I take a sip of my beer.

"Isn't it… a bit too early for that?" Tony asks, looking at the dark, glass bottle in my hand. "Why don't you grab some real food? Might need your energy today."

With the bottle still at my mouth, I groan with discontentment. I almost forgot. I'm supposed to be starting training with some of the new recruits today.

I become even more depressed just thinking about it. It's taken a lot of energy and restraint on my part to bring the factionless army to where it is now; they're undisciplined, unruly, and the new ones always have to be taught that questioning authority will not be tolerated here. In actuality, I think an early morning beer might do me more good than breakfast.

"There's not a gleeful bone in your body, is there?" He stares at me for a minute or two as I finish my beer. When I don't answer him, he asks, "Are you actually going to say something to me or should I just be grateful I at least have your company?"

I give him an eye.

Tony is the closest thing I have to a friend; apparently we grew up together here. Apart from my mother, he was the person who took me under his wing and showed me the ropes again after I lost my memory. The Erudite were experimenting on innocent factionless people and I had been captured. I was rescued but not before the damage had been done.

It was difficult transitioning back here. I thought with time a few things would come back to me but nothing ever did. The only memories I have in my head are the ones I've made over the past five years; and even so, sometimes I wake up and this place feels so unfamiliar, so wrong, definitely not like the place I've lived my whole life. Whatever the Erudite gave me, it was potent.

"Do you remember those dreams I was telling you about?" I eventually ask Tony.

"Oh, the blonde you keep banging?" When I give him a sharp look he laughs softly. "Sorry. It's not like that," he mocks me. "I know. And yes, I remember. How could I forget?"

The dreams are strange and always about the same woman. Sometimes she's just there talking to me, sometimes we're just sitting down somewhere not talking at all. Sometimes we're in bed, entwined together, her lips on mine and me deep inside her. It all feels so real that sometimes when I wake up, I immediately look beside me to see if she's there, and there's always this emptiness that follows when I remember she isn't real.

Tony thinks it's because deep down I crave some sort of connection, or a real relationship with someone, but I don't think that's what it is. I'm not desperate; I have no desire at all to even speak to any of the women in this camp and every time I decide to entertain someone, I'm left entirely unamused.

"What is it this time?" Tony asks, pressing his elbow into the table.

The cafeteria is loud with conversation, children running around the tables. Still, feeling like it's important nobody hears me, I whisper, "I could have sworn I saw her last night."

Tony's dark eyes open wide. "Really? Where?"

"Here," I answer, absolutely aware of how crazy it sounds. "One of the Dauntless spies who were captured. I stood in front of her and I just froze."

"Hmm. So she saw you?" he asks casually. "Did she recognize you from any of her dreams?"

When he smirks at me, I realize he's making fun of me.

"Well she did look terrified," I answer him anyway. "But that was to be expected given the circumstances. Two of our men were taking her outside for execution," and grabbing at her body like vicious animals. "They say it was my mother's orders. And that was the second thing I couldn't make sense of. Why would she have any of them killed?"

"Because they broke in trying to steal information, probably to sell to the Erudite," Tony says, but it sounds like a guess, and it's not a good one.

We already knew the Dauntless soldiers were coming and what they were coming for; there's someone among us feeding them information about our hideout and what we're doing here, but my mother has her own informant in Dauntless who warned us beforehand. The plan was to capture them and keep them all as leverage, trade them over for the exact locations of all the surveillance cameras in the city; ultimately, if we're going to attack them, we need to be sure the Dauntless can't see us, and we've been unsuccessful in trying to bring down their surveillance system from the inside.

There was nothing wrong with the plan; my mother assured me the people we were capturing were important enough that Dauntless would make the trade to spare their lives. Yet, now she wants to kill one of them?

And why this one in particular?

"But why just her? She wasn't alone," I voice my thoughts.

Tony shrugs. "Maybe she wanted to send them a message, let them know we're not playing around. Or maybe she discovered they came for motives different than the ones we were made aware of, and she had reason to believe that one was a threat."

I shake my head. It's not a long shot. It wouldn't be the first time my mother veered away from the plan without asking or at least notifying me.

"Sometimes my mother can be so rash and impulsive. She doesn't think before she makes decisions," I say with great irritation. "Do you really think the Dauntless will take lightly to us killing one of their leaders?" We have many of their weapons and our army has come a long way, but I don't think we're ready for the beating Dauntless would put on us if they came at us full force.

"It's true," Tony nods. "But you only get away with saying shit like that because you're her son."

He would know. He was my second in command for a while, but he stepped down after butting heads with my mother. She doesn't take well to people disagreeing with her. I'm the only person she listens to, the only one allowed to criticize anything she does. I still confide in Tony about most things though; after he stepped down, my mother requested his position remain vacant and that I, alone, be in charge of the army, but sometimes it can be a lot for one person.

"When's the last time you got laid? In real life, I mean," Tony asks out of nowhere and he brushes some bread crumbs off his pants. "What happened to what's-her-face?"

"Who?" I raise an eyebrow at him.

"The tall brunette," he says, lifting up his arm to show her height. "Pretty. Big boobs and great legs. Was it Kim?"

"You mean Kate?"

"Yeah," he nods. "Her."

"What about her?"

"I don't know. Is that going anywhere?"

"No," I say flatly, staring at the empty bottle in my hand.

My mother is the one who actually introduced me to Kate, and then she pushed the idea of us having some sort of relationship, which was funny considering Kate would roll her eyes every time I mentioned my mother. We've hooked up a couple times; I call her over, she calls me over, but I think we both realize this is nothing more than just sex. I don't feel the need to hang around and talk after we're done, and she's not the type to ask.

"You should probably try a little harder to make that work. Kate's hot; truthfully, I wouldn't have to try at all." Tony shakes his head. "But anyway, if you're starting to see your dream lady around the place… that is definitely a sign of sexual deprivation."

I ignore him. I find I do that often. For someone who has been my friend my whole life, sometimes I feel like Tony hardly knows me at all.

"Where are the other prisoners?" I ask him.

"Locked up in the cell block. Where else would they be?"

"I think I'm going to have a chat with them," I say, and I push myself to my feet.

"Sorry, I didn't hear you."

"I said, I think I'm-"

"I said," Tony says through his teeth, "I didn't hear you." Tony stands and leaves the table before I do, leaving his empty plate and cup behind. It's probably for the better. I have a feeling my mother doesn't want me talking to these people, and Tony might need plausible deniability on his side.


I push open the door of the main cell block. There's only one guard at the door and he knows better than to try and stop me. I walk to the larger cells at the end where our prisoners are and I find them huddled in a corner together, whispering God knows what to each other. They're all dressed in full black and it's so dark at the back of the cell I can hardly see them at all.

They're quiet the first few seconds they see me standing there. But then, one of the women stands to her feet and charges at the door. She grabs onto it and threateningly yells at me, "Where did you take her! I swear if you hurt her, you're dead! You're all dead!"

I assume she's talking about the woman my mother had taken away last night.

"She's safe," I answer her, although I don't really need to. "But I can't promise you she'll stay that way. I need you to tell me what your mission was. Why did you come here? What were you looking for?"

"I'm not telling you anything," she spits.

Slowly, out of the darkness at the back of the cell, another woman approaches. She's tall, slim, with short, curly, black hair. She looks at me with unmasked curiosity, and then horror.

"F-Four?" she stutters, looking frightened. One slow step at a time she makes her way toward the front of the cell. She reaches her hand out ever so slowly, but when she tries to touch me I take a large step back. "Tobias?"

"How do you know me?" I ask venomously when she says my name.

"What the hell am I looking at, Four?" Her eyes are as wide open as her mouth. "H-how are you," she stammers. "How are you here? You're alive?" She puts her hand over her mouth. "Oh my God, is Will…. Is Will alive too?"

"Shut up," I say tersely. "I don't know who or what the hell you're talking about."

"I guess we found our leak," a deep voice says from the back. A man steps forward, skinny, blonde, with a shiny nose piercing and a tattoo of a bird on his face. "Who would've guessed Tris and the greatly decorated Four were traitors?"

"What did you say?!" The woman who seems to know me turns around and pushes the man backward.

"Really?!" he cries out. "Tris is the only one who's taken away, and then he shows up here. You think that's a coincidence? You can't be that stupid, Christina."

"Tris would never betray us, Chad! And neither would Four!"

"I'm looking at living proof that they would!" The man points a hard finger at me. "Or have you forgotten he's supposed to be dead! They obviously staged it!"

She shoves him up against the wall, hard, having neither weight nor height to her advantage. "Say that again and I'll knock the stupid right out of you."

Her strength is impressive, but I'm too confounded by the fact that he just said I'm supposed to be dead.

Realizing I'll only become more confused the longer I stand here, I make a break for the door.

"Four! Wait! Four!" The woman yells after me. Why is she calling me that when she knows that's not my name?

I don't turn around; I walk faster. There are no answers here, but I know exactly where to find them.


"Where is the prisoner? I want her dead!"

I walk toward her, but I don't answer my mother who looks up and yells at me from across her desk the second I barge inside her pristine office. I quickly wave my hand at the guards, sending them outside.

"Tobias where is she?" she demands again.

I take a seat directly across from her and then I answer, "Why is she to be executed? How is she a threat to you? I thought the Dauntless weren't to be harmed."

My mother rolls her eyes at me and then she sighs and begins to aimlessly arrange a few papers on her desk. "Tobias, there are things you simply do not understand."

"Well then explain them to me," I answer quickly.

She drops the papers and looks up from her desk. "I received word that this one had been in direct contact with Erudite's leader. She volunteered herself to be a part of a new program of super soldiers, one whose specialty is to play games with your mind." She swallows hard. "You talk to her long enough and she can convince you of anything. Which is why I would rather not entertain her," she says forcefully.

I lean back in the chair and my eyebrows furrow. The Erudite never cease to amaze me.

"You never told me about this new program," I say gravely. Could that be why I thought I recognized her when I saw her? Could she have somehow been toying with my head?

"I only recently learned of it myself, but I assure you, she's dangerous, Tobias," my mother says, but she looks down at her papers again and I get the feeling she's hiding something from me.

To be honest, I've been getting that feeling a lot lately. She's given me full control of the factionless army but nothing else. No matter how much I stress the importance of receiving all the information I need, she refuses to let me go with her when she meets with her spies, her sources inside the factions.

"What about the others?" I ask.

"As far as I know the others are just regular soldiers."

"Well, one of them seemed to recognize me from somewhere." I cross my arms, unable to forget the woman who knew my name.

My mother is still; she looks at me curiously. "A young woman?"

I nod. "One of the others called her Christina."

"I should have known," my mother huffs. "She is well acquainted with the other one. It's not hard to believe they're in it together. Whatever she said to you, do not let it get to you," she says forcefully. "I'll have them both executed."

I shake my head at her. "I still think killing them is a horrible idea," as freaked out as I am by all of this. Although, I really shouldn't be. I, of all people, should know what the Erudite are capable of.

"Having them here poisoning the minds of everyone they come in contact with, is an even worse idea," she replies lividly, "Neither of them will give up any information so essentially they are useless to us."

"You kill them and Dauntless will send an army after us," I warn her. I hope to be the voice of reason, but I fail.

"Well then we'll need to be ready," my mother answers hotly, slamming her hand against the desk.

"And I already told you we're not," I snarl. The Dauntless sending soldiers here to investigate us meant our timeline had been shortened significantly. I was hoping to have at least a few more months of training with the men, but with this new development we're looking at weeks maybe days before we have to attack. That is, if we want to attack first.

"You keep saying that," she stands to her feet. "How much more time do you need, Tobias? You've spent years training this army."

"And the Dauntless have been fighting their whole lives," I say strongly, in case she hadn't considered that. "We need to be at our very best if we're to ever have a chance against them, and if we can't bring down the Erudite's first line of defence, then we have no hope of even making a dent in this endeavour."

Slowly, my mother makes her way around her desk and she sits on the armrest of my chair. She puts her hand on my shoulder and softly says, "I understand what you're saying, Tobias. I'm just tired of all the corruption and inhumanity openly taking place in this city. I am tired of their cruelty toward our people; they refuse to give us a seat at the table and would prefer to have us chasing after scraps like dogs. I'm just ready for it to come to an end."

And that's the only reason why I tolerate her- I understand her vision. It isn't right that the Erudite should be allowed to experiment on who they want, when they want, as if it weren't inhumane. They satisfy their curiosity at whatever cost, and they have the Dauntless to protect them, the Dauntless who are supposed to be protecting everyone, including the factionless. And anyone who willingly tolerates evil is an accomplice; this is why both factions will pay and a better system will be set in place, one where we are all equal.

"Every day I hate them for what they did to you, Tobias," she continues, and she rubs her hand softly against my hair. "The Erudite stole my little boy from me."

"I'm still here," I say to her, taking her hand, but it's not entirely true. The only things I know of my childhood are what my mother has told me. She filled in the blanks about how my father had died and how we left Abnegation together when I was just a boy.

She nods solemnly.

"I'll try and speed up the training however I can… but you need to be patient, and take this one step at a time," I say to her carefully. "Today's mission is to make sure our message is delivered to the Dauntless leaders before they send a team out here to look for their missing soldiers. It's already morning and they haven't returned; they will have already realized something went wrong."

"It's already on its way," she assures me.

I nod and then I look at my watch. "I should go. I have some new recruits coming in today." I stand to my feet and press a gentle kiss to her forehead.

Just as I'm about to walk through the door, she stops me. "Tobias," she says. "Why did you go to see the prisoners?"

"To remind our guards to be decent," I lie with a snarl. "I caught the men fondling the one you would rather have executed."

She nods and then says, "You never told me where you had her taken."

I pause. If I tell my mother where she is, she's as good as dead, and something very deep inside me is not okay with that. I feel like I need to see her again, just to make sure I'm not crazy, even after having heard an explanation for why I might have thought I recognized her. Strangely, a part of me wonders if there is more to it than that, even though I couldn't possibly begin to imagine what that would actually mean. But I can't let anyone harm her, not until I know for sure.

Regrettably, my mother knows every last inch of this building, and even though I threatened the men, they might not keep their mouths shut if she questions them. All that means is, I need to figure out if this is all really just a mind game or not. Because if it's not, I have to get her out of here… now.

Not saying another word to my mother, I close the door behind me.