Hannah is brought back to Dauntless for a decision to be made about her future. A small glimpse at her life while she was living Factionless is revealed. Dauntless leadership learn about her and decide how they are going to handle her while she is at Dauntless.
Thank you to everyone who has taken an interest in this story, I am glad that there are people who are just as excited as I am to still be reading Divergent fanfiction. I will continue to update every Sunday. Until next time, continue to live in the world that you want to!
Chapter Two
"What the hell?" Zeke questions from where he lies on the ground, his good arm grabbing hold of his bitten shoulder.
"Dude, we need to get you to a hospital, right now. Who knows what she's got?" Nate says as he heads over to help pull Zeke to his feet.
"What do we do with her?" Christina says as she motions to the still figure on the ground, no one moved near her. I think they believe she might jump up and bite them too.
"They aren't going to let her stay at the testing centre. She nearly took the head off a Dauntless patrol officer. She will come back with us, but who knows what they will do with her?" I respond looking over at the girl on the ground.
"How old do you think she is? She doesn't look any older than fifteen." Christina comments before moving to action. "Zeke we need to go, you're still bleeding, and I don't want to be sitting in the car when she wakes up."
Nate helps Zeke to the car, and I bend down to throw the girl over my shoulder. She weighs nothing, under her clothes she must be just skin and bones. Once in the car, I pull her into the front seat with me. There's already little room with the children asleep and a bleeding Zeke in the back. It's probably not comfortable for her, but I don't care to move her around.
The drive back to Dauntless is quiet except for the occasional groan from Zeke. As we pull into the loading dock, I turn to address the rest of the group. "Christina, you drive the kids over to the testing centre. That's going to be the best place for them. No need to keep them here. Tris, you go with her. Nate get Zeke to the infirmary; he needs every test known to man."
As the car comes to a stop, I hop out with the girl still in my arms, heading straight for the infirmary. Thankfully it's quiet when we walk through the doors.
"Foster, we're going to need restraints for this one."
The head nurse pops her head out from one of the side rooms, taking in the woman in my arms. "What the hell did you do to her Coulter?" She accuses me as she walks over to us.
"I did nothing, you should see what she did to Zeke, she completely flipped on him. Nate gave her something to knock her out." As I finish Nate and Zeke are stumbling through the door. Now under the harsh fluorescent lights, you can see just how much of a beating she gave before we could get her off him. His shoulder is still bleeding, she broke the skin, and it seems to be deeper than expected. His face and arms are covered in scratches, bruises, and handmarks. He is favouring his left leg as he hobbles over to stand before Foster.
"Right take her to room eight, Zeke into room six. I'll send a nurse down to get a blood draw. Does anyone have a name for our fighter?" Foster shouts as she ushers us and other nurses around the place.
"The others called her Hannah," Nate calls out as he heads in the direction of where he was shoved.
Following Foster, I head down the hall to the room that would be Hannah's. Laying her on the bed with a thump, turning to grab some restraints. "What are you going to do with her?" I question as I watch as Foster places Hannah's arm in the other restraint.
"From the looks of her, she's been out there for some time. It's going to be hard to get any medical history. She's not going to have had any of her mandatory vaccines, so we need to see if she is carrying any diseases that she could have passed onto Zeke. He will have had all his, I remember giving some to him and his brother. She's going to need a full medical exam, and we will see where we go from there."
"Is she going to need to be kept under?"
"I would advise keeping her sedated while we run these tests. They are unpleasant enough, let alone if she has never stepped into a hospital before. I need to keep my staff safe."
"Keep me updated. I'm going to have to update Max and Four about the patrol. I'm not sure what we do with her. She can't go to the testing centre if she is just going to turn violent." I look back at her as lays on the bed. "Is she really just a child?" I question, even now under the light and asleep it's clear to see she is not old, probably around choosing age.
"I'm not sure. She's small that's for sure, but that could just be because of malnutrition. There are a few tests we can do. We can check her teeth, see how her wisdom teeth are growing and wrists for bone growth. It will give us a rough estimate before she is prepared to talk, it might be off but not more than a year or two."
Taking one last look at Hannah on top of the hospital bed, I turn to head out the door. "I want any reports sent directly to myself and Max, on either her or Zeke. Before you wake her up, let me know you're going to want some more guards down here, even if she is restrained."
Foster nods her head as I walk out the door looking down the hall to see Nate leaning against one of the many medical devices left in the hall. He's on his phone and looks to find something rather amusing. "Well, how is the patient?" I ask as I stand in front of him.
"He's going to need stitches for his shoulder, other than that they are just waiting on Hannah's blood work to see where to go from there. Shauna's going to come down and sit with him, she needed someone to cover the rest of her shift."
"I need to find Max and Four, so we can go over everything. Any word on Tris or Christina?"
"Nothing yet, I'm sure they are taking a long way back. No one is going to want to fill out the amount of paperwork this is going to cause. I'll come with you to the offices I want to see if Martha is finished her shift yet."
"You still seeing her. What's that six weeks, longest I've seen from you. Nate, do I need to get the chapel ready?" I joke with my best friend.
"Man, she has the softest sheets in the whole faction, I don't care what you say about how crazy she is." He laughs at me, lightly shoving me as we walk towards the exit.
"She's Max's assistant, I'm sure she charmed someone into ordering them. I also know that whatever else she's doing in those sheets have you coming back for more."
Nate turns and thumps me in the arm, before heading towards the stairs leading to the main compound. People are bustling around, the after-dinner rush has people heading in different directions. Pushing past the crowds, I head towards the offices and conference room, reserved for leaders.
I heard the other leaders before I enter the room. There is a group of five of us, who make up Dauntless leadership. Max is the one to lead the faction as a whole, but we each have a voice in our chosen areas.
"What's this I hear you were attacked, and Zeke is in the infirmary with a bite worse than most bullet wounds?" Max says as soon as he sees me. Everyone else looks over to see Nate and I are in the room.
"Some factionless girl just completely lost it," Nate recalls.
"You were ambushed?" Torri questions from her spot at the table.
"It was just her, but she was possessed or something she took off like an animal, we only caught her when she went down a dead end. She was going to fight us to get out of there. Thankfully she didn't really know anything about hand-to-hand combat, or we would have been toast." Nate says always the one for the dramatics.
"You're telling me this untrained girl was able to bring down a Dauntless soldier and you were barely able to keep the situation under control. I have a guy in the infirmary with God knows what diseases running through his body." Max exclaims back at Nate, and it's clear that he is pissed.
"I don't know what you want us to say. It's obvious she has spent most of her life on the streets. She was not about to be dragged away from what she considered her home. She's going to fight us, and she is going to continue to do so." I respond to Max; I just want this patrol and this day to be over.
"Does she really need to be controlled?" Four pips in.
"She's going to at least need to understand social skills, that all we want is to help her. She can't be a part of society if she wouldn't act like a human rather than some wild animal." Harrison says from the back of the room.
"What if she doesn't want to be part of this society? We just throw her back out into the streets?" Four responds.
"Does she even have a name?" Torri asks.
"The others called her Hannah. She was meant to be some sort of protector on the streets, that's at least what the other kids we picked up had to say." Nate says as he now finds a seat at the table, looking at the picked-over snacks on the table.
"Hannah, is she even going to want to live in Dauntless? I think we have already talked ourselves out of sending her to the testing centre, and if she is too dangerous for the other factions we can't send her to them. Do we throw her in with the children in the school, or is initiation age?" Harrison says as he pushed the plate of muffins over to Nate.
"Foster is working on her age. She's doubtful that we are going to find any records on her." I respond. "They have her sedated at the moment, but I wouldn't put my hopes on her being very helpful."
"We will make further decisions about Hannah once we have some more facts about her," Max says before turning to face me head-on. "In the meantime, she is going to have to be on 24-hour detail as she settles into faction life. Eric, I think this would be a great opportunity for you."
I scoff at him, looking over to see if he is being serious. His face shows that he is completely serious. "Absolutely not. I'm not being that little bitch's keeper."
"Eric, you're already on thin ice with most of the faction here, let alone any of the others. We need someone who is going to not be afraid of her, and able to commit plenty of time to her. Unless you're too scared that she will be too much for you?" Max challenges, he knows exactly what he needs to do to get exactly what he wants.
"I'm not scared of some of some factionless scum." I snap back.
"She's not factionless anymore, this is her home for the time being. You will keep her and the rest of this faction alive. She will stay with you until she can be trusted to stay on her own or move into a dorm." Max looks at me, before adding: "This is not up for negotiation."
I roll my eyes before hearing the beep of my phone pulling it out and looking at the new message. "Foster has the results from her bloodwork, she wants a leader down there to discuss her treatment."
"Tori will head down with you, and she can report back any findings to the rest of the group. Keep us informed Eric, I want daily updates." Max says as I move out the door.
The walk down to the infirmary is quiet between myself and Tori. We normally don't spend time outside of work unless she is giving me a tattoo. Rounding the last step downstairs, I head towards the room I had left Hannah in earlier. A nurse is checking a machine attached to her, Hannah is still asleep on the bed, whether that is her own doing or sedation. However, she is no longer in the clothes she had on earlier, but a hospital gown.
"Foster will be in soon to talk to you both." The nurse says before she heads out the door. Tori takes the seat beside the bed and lifts her hand to her hair pushing it off Hannah's face.
"She looks like a child. She can't be more than sixteen. How does she get so cold?" Tori says in a quiet whisper, as she continues to brush her hair off her face.
I don't know what to say so I just turn to look back out into the hallway looking for Foster to inform us about what is going on. I feel uncomfortable thinking about factionless life for a young girl alone. Already knowing it would not be pleasant.
Foster returns to the room after a short wait, carrying a file already filled with papers. "I hopefully have a few answers for you about Hannah. I can estimate she is between fifteen and eighteen, closer to the younger end of that, I would say most likely sixteen. Our girl here has had none of her mandatory or recommended vaccines which would lead me to believe she was born factionless. Having none of the antibodies has left her body open to infection." She sets the folder down and flicks it over to a new page.
"She currently has a few issues. Firstly, she has Hepatitis B, it's an older disease for which most people are vaccinated as babies. She is not contagious, but she shouldn't be around any of the babies who have yet to get their injections. We hope that the medication we gave her, will start to clear it up for her. However, she will have some scarring on her liver. She also has Bronchitis, but again we have started her on some medication to help her. She needs to be kept warm to slow down the spread of infection in her lungs. She needs to gain about another thirty pounds to be within the healthy weight for her height and age. Her bloodwork showed nothing that could be passed to Zeke, and there was no sign of alcohol or drugs in her system. There are no track marks on her, so I would rule out any drug use."
She walks away from the file but looks over at Tori who is still sitting close to Hannah. "Now I know you are in charge of her, but I don't; know if I feel comfortable sharing the next part with Eric in the room."
"I'm the one in charge of her, I need to know everything. She probably wouldn't want us to know anything you have already shared with us. It's all going in her file anyway; you may as well tell me before I just go and read it." I spit out at Foster, annoyed at the things going on around me.
"She has a lot of old and new anogenital scarring," Foster says in a low voice, and she only looks at Hannah as she speaks.
"What the hell does that mean?" taking a step closer to the three women, but I don't raise my voice even though there is venom in my words.
"She has scars around her vagina and anus, which would point to non-consensual sex in her past. This would point to a repeated history of sexual abuse. Some as old as years, and new within the past month." Foster says as her usual authoritative manner is gone. Rape is not common around Dauntless, but it occasionally happens. No one can stand for the thought, and there are no second chances for those who offend such crimes.
I feel sick to my stomach. I know that I can be an angry and violent man, but the line that stops me from being a monster is the taking of life and innocence of people who don't deserve it. Tori also looks sick to the stomach.
"No wonder she put up a fight. Life has not been kinds to her." Tori comments to no one in particular, just watching her fingers in Hannah's hair.
"I've started her on all her needed vaccines that we could give her while her body recovers from the multiple infections. I would advise that she stays for a few days. She needs the rest. We would also recommend that she would remain sedated at least until the morning. We can attempt to wake her up and take it from there." She now looks at me as she speaks, knowing I have the power to make the decision.
"Thank you, Foster, we appreciate you letting us know all that you found out. I'll report back to the rest of the leaders, and we will let the other factions know about the incident in the morning. Eric is going to be in charge of her care and readjustment to Dauntless. If there is nothing else, I think I will step in and check on Zeke." Tori looks back towards Hannah before stroking her hair once more, getting off the chair. "Don't screw this up, Eric." She looks me in the eye, and I know that her unspoken threat is very real.
Foster moves over to check the machine connected to Hannah. "She will be out for the rest of the night; you can head up to your room for the night. We will wake her tomorrow after rounds. You're going to need to schedule most of your day here tomorrow, but we might be able to get her out in a few days."
I huff towards her staring back at Hannah before heading out, knowing already that this one patrol was going to be an ongoing nightmare.