A/N: This wasn't too bad to get typed up. I managed to do it early on in the day. Also, there may not be an update next week as I have mock exams. I have to really focus and study for these.
CarBarrier - Poor Margaret indeed :(
Till next time,
D.L.D
*I do not own Divergent or any of its character and plot work. This is simply an adaption*
Chapter Thirty-Five: Abnegation Basement
Three Dauntless soldiers pursue me. They run in unison, their footsteps echoing down the alley. One of them fires and I dive, scraping my palms on the ground. The skin burns but I can't focus on it. One bullet hits the brick wall to my right and pieces of brick spray everywhere. Some of it hits me as I throw myself around the corner and click a bullet into the chamber of the gun. I am not one to resort to violence, but it is needed if I want to survive this.
They took Margaret. Breathing in deeply, I point the gun into the alley and fire blindly. It wasn't really them; they didn't kill her, I tell myself, but to my anger it doesn't matter - can't matter. And just like death itself, it can't be dealt with right now. I need to remain collected and I need to get this done.
Just one set of footsteps follows now. Willing my insides to stop squirming, I hold the gun out with both hands and stand at the end of the alley, pointing it at the approaching Dauntless soldier. Preparing for the showdown, my finger squeezes the trigger, but not hard enough to fire.
When the footsteps grow closer, I realise that the man running toward me is not a man, he is a boy. A shaggy-haired boy with golden amber eyes. King. Dull-eyed and mindless, but still King. He stops running and mirrors me, his feet planted and his gun up. His face is smooth, like a clear lake, and in an instant, I see his finger poised over the trigger and hear the bullet slide into the chamber and, instinctively, I fire.
My eyes squeezed shut. All of the air is forced out of my lungs. Every thought inside of me is collapsing.
The bullet hit him in the head. I know that because that's exactly where I aimed. There was no way that I would miss.
Sniffing, I turn around without opening my eyes and stumble out of the alley. North and Fairfield. I have to look at the street sign to know where I am, but I can't read it; my vision is blurred. I blink a few times. I stand just yards away from the building that contains what's left of my family.
Kneeling next to the door, I let out shaky breath. My hands are quivering now, full of guilt and terrible feeling of shame. Regret. I didn't see it, but I was there. I aimed for his head, pulled the trigger and know what happened. If anyone were to ask how he died, I would be able to answer it instantly.
Meliodas would call me unwise to make any noise. Noise might attract Dauntless soldiers. But, I do it anyway. I press my head into the wall and scream. After a few seconds, I clamp my hand over my mouth to muffle the sound and scream again, a scream that turns into a churning, broken sob. The gun clatters to the ground. My hands are still shaking, so are my arms - everything within me is shaking. I can still see King.
He smiles in my memory. A lip curled. Straight teeth. That bright Erudite flash in his eyes. Laughing, teasing, more alive in memory than he could ever be right now. In that alley it was a choice between me and him. Him and me. I chose me. But I feel dead too.
I pound on the door - twice, then three times, then six times, just like Margaret told me to do. My fist feels heavy, disjointed, as I do it, flopping with a weighted motion that I don't usually carry. A burden I don't usually own.
Sniffing, I wipe the tears from my eyes. This is the first time I will see Veronica and father since I left them. I don't want them to see me like this, half-collapsed and sobbing. I left Abnegation to be strong; I joined Dauntless to be every different from what I was. They do not need to see that I am really just the same, only more hardened and cruel from weeks of harsh scolding and other mind-breaking activities.
When the door opens, Veronica stands in the doorway. She is red-eyed and dirt-streaked, her hair ruffled and cheeks smeared with dust. The sight of her stuns me, knocks the grief and damage right out of me. For a few seconds, she stares at me, and then throws her arms around me, her hand pressing to the wound on my shoulder. I bite my lip to keep from crying out, but a groan escapes anyway, and she yanks back once more.
"Elizabeth," Veronica frowns, studying me, noticing my shoulder more keenly now. "Oh God, have you been shot?"
"Let's just go inside," I say weakly. It is all too much to recount out here, especially since the events are all coming back to me, fresh and full-force.
Veronica drags her thumb under her eyes, catching the moisture. Silently, the door falls shut behind us.
Inside, the room is dimly lit, but I can make out familiar faces, former neighbours and classmates and colleagues of my father. My father, who stares at me like I've grown a second head. Zeldris who is somber, placed across the room from his father. His father - Damon. The sight of him makes me ache - Meliodas...
No. I will not do that; I will not think of him.
"How did you find out about here?" Veronica demands, her features pinched with concern. "Did Margaret tell you? Did she manage to find you?"
I nod. I don't want to think much about Margaret, either.
"My shoulder," I manage to say, tiredly shifting it a little. I ignore the burning sensation it sends through my arm.
Now that I am safe, the pulsing adrenaline that had propelled me here is fading and the intense pain of my injury is getting worse. So is the haunting echoes of the people I have lost. I sink to my knees. Water drips from my clothes onto the cement floor. A sob rises within me, desperate for release, and I hold it back. Force it back. I do not deserve to feel upset.
A woman named Tessa who lived down the street from us rolls out a pallet. She is married to a council member, but I don't see him here. He is probably dead.
Someone else carries a lamp from one corner to the other so we have light. Veronica produces a first-aid kit and Ellate brings me a bottle of water. There is no place to need help in a room filled with members of Abnegation. I glance at Zeldris. He has made sure not to involve himself too much, sticking to the outskirts of the room. He looks uncomfortable, tense, and I can't entirely blame him. His childhood was not a very happy one.
My father comes to me, lifts my arm across his shoulder, and aids me across the room. He hasn't spoken to me yet, hasn't even looked at me more than to study how I've changed. Margaret said that he was being selfish when she visited me, but now I think it is just that he is disappointed, upset, at me. I was the only one of his children to abandon him and leave everything I ever knew behind.
"Why are you wet?" Veronica asks, pulling at my clothing.
"They tried to drown me," I answer. I desperately need a subject change. "Did they capture any other transfers?"
"Mael," Veronica responds, frowning. Her cinnamon eyes sharpen, darken. "He did what you asked - what Margaret asked. He researched the serum and found out that Vivian was working to develop long-range transmitters for the serum so the signal could stretch farther. That led to him finding out about the whole Erudite and Dauntless pact and planning to warn everyone, including you..."
Veronica's silence is what captures me. The fact that she trails off and cuts herself short, averting her gaze and losing that usual spitfire spark she held within her. My sister was not one to be quiet, timid, in the face of danger, peril. Veronica would jump headfirst into a dangerous situation if it meant protecting someone, preserving the continuation of something, someone. She wasn't one to trail off, to not finish what she started.
"What happened to him, Veronica?" I ask, placing a hand on her arm. I have an inkling that I know - I've always had a inkling that something would happen to Mael. Erudite and Abnegation just didn't mix. We didn't get along. Even if he transferred, even Mael chose them over Abnegation, they would always see him as link, a bridge. I wouldn't put it above Vivian to even test the serum of him first, just to see the results.
"He was killed," Veronica finally says, her voice bitter. "By his own brother no less. He was caught trying to gain contact with you at the Dauntless compound. That whole family is tangled in this all."
"The important thing is that Mael did the right thing," My father interrupts, sending a look to Veronica. "He may have made a mistake, but we all do."
Veronica scoffed, cutting a piece of my shirt away at the shoulder with a pair of medical scissors. She peels away the fabric, revealing first the Abnegation tattoo on my right shoulder and second, the three birds on my collarbone. Veronica and my father both stare at my tattoos with the same look of fascination and shock, but don't say anything. They don't even bother to send me one of their famous silent scoldings.
I get down and lay on my stomach. Veronica squeezes my palm as my father gets the antiseptic from the first-aid kit.
"Have you ever taken a bullet out of someone before?" I ask, a shaky laugh in my voice. I'm trying to lighten the mood, ignore the anxiety I feel towards the pain that will come.
"The things I know how to do might surprise you," My father replies, giving me a grin.
A lot of things about my family might surprise me. I think about Margaret's tattoo and bite my lip. I would have never guessed that she broke an important faction rule, all just to honour our mother's past faction.
"This will hurt," He warns.
I don't see the knife go in, but I definitely feel it. Pain spreads through my body and I scream through gritted teeth, crushing Veronica's hand. Over the screaming, I hear my father's voice asking me to relax my back. Tears run from the corner of my eyes as I do what he says, still feeling the powerful pain shocking through me. The pain starts again, and I feel the knife moving beneath my skin, and I am still screaming.
"Got it," My father announces rather triumphantly, dropping something to the floor. It lands with a ding.
Veronica looks at our father and then me, then she lets out a laugh. A full, hearty laugh. My father joins her. I haven't heard them both laugh in so long that it makes me cry. It makes me wish that Margaret was here to share this moment.
"What's so funny?" I say, sniffling.
"I never thought I'd see us all together again," Veronica says, smiling. Then, it hits me. The dread, the terrible truth that I must deliver to my family. Margaret is dead - she sacrificed herself to save me. The reason I came alone, the reason why she didn't arrive, was because she exchanged herself for me.
My father cleans the skin around my wound with something cold, "Stitching time."
I nod. He threads the needle like he's done a thousand times.
"One," He says. "Two...three."
I clench my jaw and stay quiet this time. Of all the pain I have suffered today - the pain of getting shot and almost drowning and taking out the bullet again, the pain of finding and losing my sister and Meliodas, this pain is the easiest to bear. It is the least painful to just power through and get over with.
My father finishes stitching my wound, ties off the thread, and covers the stitching with a bandage. Veronica helps me to sit up and separates the the hems of her two shirts, pulling the long-sleeved one over her head and offering it to me. Me father helps me guide my right arm through the sleeve and I pull the rest over my head. It is baggy and still smells fresh, smells like Veronica.
"So," My father says quietly. "Where is Margaret?"
Instantly, I look down and swallow thickly. I don't want to deliver this news. I don't want to have this news to begin with. Today, I am the one who bears all horrible truths, all terrible tolls, that came with this attack. I didn't ask to know so much, nor did I ask to be involved in it, but if I was given a choice, I would be ignorant. I would rather not know of all of the deaths that have happened, nor the people I had killed.
"She's gone," I manage to breath out. Tears prick at my eyes. "She saved me..."
Veronica takes a deep breath and closes her eyes.
My father looks momentarily stricken and then recovers himself, averting his glistening eyes and then nodding.
"That is good," He says, sounding strained. The words stick in his throat. "A good death."
If I speak right now, I will break down, and I can't afford to do that. So I just nod - agree. I don't voice the fact that I think it is all wrong, that Margaret's death was completely avoidable. I just nod. Give a simple movement of the head.
Ludociel called Howzer's suicide an act of bravery and he was wrong. Margaret's death was brave. I remember how calm she was, how determined. It isn't just brave because she died for me; it is brave that she did it without announcing it, without hesitation, and without appearing to consider another option. Margaret's death was brave because she did it as an act of selflessness. Like Meliodas said, selflessness is not all that different from bravery.
My father helps me to my feet. Time to face the rest of the room. Margaret told me to save them. Because of that, because of I am Dauntless, it's my duty to lead them now. I have no idea how to bear that burden.
Damon gets up. A vision of him whipping my arm with a belt rushes into my mind when I see him and my chest squeezes.
"We are only safe here for so long," He says eventually. "We need to get out of the city. Our best option is to go to the Amity compound and hope that they'll take us in. Do you know anything about the Dauntless strategy, Elizabeth? Will they stop fighting at night? I've tried asking Zeldris, but he's unwilling to help."
"I told you it won't work," Zeldris grouses from his corner, his dark eyes stormy. "Tell them, Elizabeth. Tell them why we can't leave."
"This isn't Dauntless strategy," I say, shaking my head. "This whole thing is masterminded by the Erudite. And it's not like they're giving orders."
"Not giving orders," My father says, frowning. The creases in his forehead deepen. "What do you mean?"
"I mean," I say slowly, trying not to sound frustrated. "Ninety percent of the Dauntless are sleepwalking right now. They're in a simulation and they don't know what they're doing right now. The only reason I'm not like them right now is because I'm..." I hesitate on the word. "The mind control doesn't affect me."
"Mind control? So they don't know that they're killing people right now?" My father asks me, his eyes wide.
"No."
"That's...awful," Damon shakes his head. His sympathetic tone sounds manufactured to me. "Waking up and realising what you've done..."
The room goes quiet, probably as all the Abnegation imagine themselves in the place of the Dauntless soldiers, and that's when it occurs to me. It all hits me just like when I realised the serum had transmitters within it.
"We have to wake them up," I say.
"What?" Damon asks, his eyes wide.
"If we wake the Dauntless up, they will probably revolt when they realise what is going on," I explain. "The Erudite won't have an army. The Abnegation will stop dying. This will all be over."
"It won't be that simple," My father says, shaking his head. "Even without the Dauntless helping them, the Erudite will find another way to- "
"And how are we supposed to wake them up?" Damon quizzes, interrupting my father. He is skeptical, awaiting the big problem that I cannot overcome with this plan.
"We can find the computer that controls the simulation," Zeldris answers, standing up. He stares pointedly at his father, his voice firm, certain. "Then, we can destroy the data. The program. Everything linked to this mess."
"Easier said than done," Veronica huffs, shaking her head. Her ruffled hair sways with her head. "It could be anywhere. We can't just appear at the Erudite compound and start sniffing around. We'd be killed on site."
"It's..." I frown. Vivian. Vivian was talking about something important when Meliodas and I came into her office, important enough to hang up on someone. You can't leave it undefended. And then, when she was sending Meliodas away: Send him to the control room. The control room where Meliodas used to work. With the Dauntless security monitors. And the Dauntless computers. The control room located in Dauntless headquarters.
"It's at Dauntless headquarters," I breathe, knowing it for certain now. "It makes sense. That's where all the data about the Dauntless is stored, so why not control them from there?"
I faintly noted that I said them. As of yesterday, I technically became Dauntless, but I don't feel like one. And I'm not Abnegation either. It's like Margaret said, I'm Divergent. I will not fit in anywhere, but I am used to it.
I am what I've always been. Not Dauntless, not Abnegation, not factionless. Divergent.
"Are you sure?" My father asks.
"It's an informed guess," I respond. "And it's the best theory I have."
"Then we'll have to decide who comes with us and who continues to Amity," My father nods, placing his trust within me. I feel honoured to finally have a voice in the adult world. "What kind of people do you need, Elizabeth?"
The question stuns me, as does the expression he wears. My father looks at me as if I am a peer. He speaks to me as if I am a peer. Either he has accepted that I am adult now or he has accepted that I am no longer his daughter anymore. The latter is more likely, more painful.
"Anyone who can or will fire a gun," I finally say. "And isn't afraid of heights."