AN: I appreciate the reviews and follows. Another action packed chapter. See you all again on Friday!
All Tris and Eric could hear was muffled shouting. Their communication from inside the chamber cut as soon as the video ended.
"What are they saying?" Tris asks.
"No idea." Eric bangs on the glass but no one turns to look at them.
"Destroy it." Jeanine had commanded Caleb as soon as the video ended, "You can take it to the incinerator downstairs.
"No." He said quietly as he continued working on the console, slowly bringing the pressure and gravity back to the chamber that Eric and Tris were inside of.
"Excuse me?" Jeanine turns her icy stare at him, "What did you say to me?"
"I said no." He says almost as quiet, but just as firm.
"Caleb, I'm going to give you a chance to reconsider your answers and actions. This video needs to be destroyed-"
"I don't think that it does," Four counters and she turns to him.
"I don't remember asking you." Jeanine says to him, raising her voice.
"The two of them risked their lives to open your damn box, Eric actually almost died and instead of letting him recover you put him right back in there because you were afraid your own daughter wouldn't live long enough to do it for you. Why, Jeanine? Why?" He demands.
"I owe you nothing!" She shouts.
"Really? You haven't been forcing me to work with my father knowing he spent most of my childhood beating my ass and locking me in closets while he played the perfect leader?" Four spits.
"My business with your father is just that, and it's not your concern." She shouts.
"Who else, Jeanine? Who else have you had besides us? Why does it feel like it's us against the world?" Four counters.
"Jeanine, you are asking us to destroy the very box you were willing to wage a war over. Who else besides us, Max and Harrison know about it? What will people say when it's suddenly gone?" Caleb asks.
"The only people who know about the box are the three of us, them," she gestures towards Eric and Tris, "and your father." She looks at Tobias, "Your father has been working with me too. He told me the two of you had a bad relationship, so he had asked me to have you work with him on the aptitude computers. He had already agreed to replace everything, but for some reason he'd wanted your loyalty in return."
"Do you understand what that man will do if he finds out that we had that box and destroyed it?" Tobias asks.
"He'll be fine because we will have our war, and when it's all said and done he will be a leader of our city alongside us." Jeanine replies.
"You can't be serious. You can't destroy the entire city-"
"This city is full of Divergents! We need to rid the city of them completely in order to move on!" She shouts.
"You heard that video, you heard them, they said the Divergents are the answer. There are more of them outside of our walls. They're not the problem, Jeanine, and our city needs to know that! We need to open the damn gate!" Caleb shouts, surprising Four.
"You cannot be serious, we will not open a gate and expose us to more of those monstrosities. The Divergent need to be stopped, and it's obvious that the video was planted." Jeanine argues.
"Your own daughter is Divergent, Jeanine. What are you going to do with her?" Four finally asks, but before Jeanine can answer they hear the pressurized door open and Eric and Tris join them in the room.
"What's going on here?" Tris asks.
"We are destroying that box." Jeanine commands.
"What? No! We need to talk about this-"
Jeanine narrows her eyes at her daughter, "Oh do we? When were you going to tell me you were a fucking Divergent? This entire time Beatrice, your entire fucking life you've hidden it from me. Is it because you know just how disgusting you are? And you," she turns towards Eric, "I've known you your entire life, how did you just slide under the radar?"
"None of that matters. You have your box, you have your message. Only the five of us saw it. You can do whatever the fuck you want with it now, and you can leave the rest of us alone." Eric says firmly.
"You may be a leader in Dauntless, but here you're nothing. You're barely an adult. I have most of your team on my side, and Max and Harrison have already started the injections. The box is just the beginning, we're going to finish what we started. You four have a decision to make, are you with me or against me?" She asks.
"We have the opportunity here to make a change." Tris says, breaking the tense moment, "You saw what that message said, there are other cities out there, there are more people like me. You know me. You know Eric. We're not the enemy, we are people just like you who want the city to be run fairly. We can do this together, we can learn from the mistakes that were made before us and we can make changes happen. I'm not your enemy, I'm your daughter, and I love you. Please, let's try to make a difference. Let's do this the right way. We're on the same side."
"Oh Beatrice," Jeanine says quietly, "You foolish girl, I will never be on the same side as a filthy Divergent. I don't care what that video says, or that the person in it is a Prior. Your father probably knew what it said the entire time, and the rest of those Divergents posing as Abnegation probably did too. We're done here, Beatrice. I will not let the likes of the two of you ruin our city." She presses a button on the console, "Kevin, it's time."
"What are you doing?" Tris asks.
"Getting rid of the Divergents, like I told you I would." She replies as armed Dauntless guards storm into the room.
"What is happening? Jeanine!" Tris shouts as she is pushed against the wall and held by two guards. She looks around the room and sees Caleb and Tobias in the same position. She watches in horror as Eric is pushed roughly to his knees and his hands are cuffed behind his back, "No!" She screams, "You promised me, Jeanine. You promised!"
"I lied." Jeanine says without emotion.
"Jeanine, please don't do this. Take me, kill me, let him live. He couldn't finish all of the sims, he's flawed-"
"So are you." She narrows her eyes at her daughter, "He failed the Erudite sim, and you the Candor. Neither of you are without flaw."
"We're not pure Divergent, you don't have to do this. We showed that neither of us could do it, you're right. Please-"
"Do it." Jeanine commands and they all watch in horror as one of her soldiers points his handgun at Eric.
"It's okay Tris. It's okay. You will get through this, you're the strongest person I know. I love you, it's okay, I'll be okay." Eric says. "I love you. Remember that-"
"Jeanine, stop!" Tris yells.
A gunshot rings out, and Tris's screams fill the chamber.
There's shouting, more gunshots, chaos and screams. Tris is dropped to the floor, and the room fills with smoke and the smell of gunpowder. She can see Dauntless soldiers in the room, and she recognizes some of the voices. She crawls across the floor to Eric, who lays crumpled and bleeding heavily from a gunshot wound to the chest.
She tears her jacket off, pressing it to his wound and suddenly Zeke is at her side pushing her out of the way so he can apply heavier pressure.
"You need to get out of here." He commands and she shakes her head.
"I'm not leaving him." Tris cries.
Lynn soon joins them, along with Uriah, and between the four of them they manage to lift Eric while Tris continues the pressure on his wound. They take him in a waiting truck and drive to the Erudite hospital in the center of the city.
He's ghostly white, his breathing is labored, and his pulse is thready when they pull up to the emergency entrance. Lynn runs inside, screaming for anyone who will listen that they need help. They are all covered in his blood, and a pool is left behind when they wheel him inside the hospital and straight into surgery. Tris finally breaks down once he's no longer in her sight, and it's Lynn who wraps her arms around the sobbing woman and offers her comfort.
Slowly more people from their group trickled in, and the bigger picture is finally exposed once Veronica joins them. She had put her entire career on the line that morning and gone to Jack Kang herself when Tris, Eric and Four had taken the box to Jeanine. All three had been wired with the sophisticated surveillance camera and audio, and when Veronica showed up at Jack's office with a laptop she talked the younger man into watching the entire event unfold live.
Once they saw Eric and Tris working in tandem to open the box, Veronica knew Max was right about one thing: they were unstoppable when working together. Jack and Veronica watched in equal parts awe and horror as the two powered through sims to open the box, and then as Jeanine exposed her entire plan afterward. Jack had ordered troops to arrest her, but they had gotten there milliseconds too late as Eric was shot right before the door was blown open.
Jeanine was taken into custody, along with Caleb since there was nothing on the recording that would prove that he wasn't working with Jeanine willingly. Next, Jack had sent his police force to Abnegation to take Marcus Eaton into custody as well. Four had been in constant contact with Tori, who along with Bud, Amar and George had gone to Candor to oversee the prisoners. Jack had agreed to let Caleb testify first thing in the morning in an effort to get him released from custody as quickly as possible. For now, they waited.
Much like they were waiting for Eric.
Tris was inconsolable at times, alternating between anger at herself for bringing Eric into these plans, and despair at the pain he must be enduring. He'd been in surgery for hours, and there were no real updates other than one nurse who came out to look for type specific blood from their group. Eric was AB negative, and the hospital had exhausted their on hand supply.
It gave them something to do other than worry. Christina, being three months pregnant, couldn't donate blood even if her type matched, but she called as many of their mutual friends as she could to get them down to the hospital.
Surprisingly they found a perfect blood type match with both of the Pedrad's, and they both began the process of donating their blood in an effort to save Eric. When a nurse came back in to speak to them, Tris had asked that they contact Eric's parents, and she met Eliza and Clive Coulter for the first time in a private waiting room.
"Our son has spoken highly of you." Eliza says when she's sitting in a set of chairs with just Tris.
"He loves you both so much." Tris says.
"I apologize for my husband, being here is overwhelming for him." Eliza says softly as she grips on to the younger woman's hands.
"I understand his need to go back and wait outside. Eric's told me a lot about Jason, and I can see that being here would remind you both of that." Tris replies.
"It does, we were here often with Jason. Even Eric a couple of times, once for his appendix, another for his broken arm," She smiles softly, "Did he tell you he fell from a tree that Jason dared him to climb?"
Tris returns the smile, "He did. He still doesn't like to back down from a dare."
There's several minutes of silence between them before Eliza speaks again, "He avoided that woman for years, how on earth did he get involved with this?" She asks.
"It was because of me." Tris admits, "Jeanine is my birth mother, and I had begun working with her in order to gather enough information and manpower to stop her plans. At first, I thought it was just her obsession with Divergents, but the deeper we got the more she uncovered. She wanted that box, she wanted power, she wanted a war. I shouldn't have ever brought him in."
"You had no choice. My son doesn't do a damn thing he doesn't want to do. Once his mind is made up, there's no changing it. I'm sure you already know that." She says.
"I do."
"You're wrong Eliza, our son wouldn't have allowed that woman to put her claws in him had it not been for this young woman." A deep voice says and Tris turns to see Eric's father Clive joining them, "I don't know how he survives this." Clive says, "The nurse says he's lost an extraordinary amount of blood, the bullet never exited so they've had to try to remove it and it tore an extremely damaging path."
"They wouldn't tell me anything-" Tris begins.
"Because you are not his family. We are. You are the only reason he's in this situation. You need to leave." Clive replies.
"Clive!" His wife exclaims, "She is our son's girlfriend."
"No, Eliza. She dragged him into this, and I don't want to look at the person who will cost me my only living son." He roars, causing the entire room to fall silent.
"I'll go. I'm so sorry." Tris chokes out as she walks away from them.
"Come on sweetie, we'll find another waiting room." Christina takes her hand and leads her across the hall, and their group of friends follow them to the other room.
She paces back and forth, and slowly their numbers dwindle as people try to get rest before heading to Candor the next morning. Tris's leadership communications device rings, startling her and when she reads the official message she begins crying again.
"What's wrong?" Christina asks.
"I'm being summoned to Candor to testify later this morning. I can't leave here, I can't leave not knowing what's happening with him." She cries.
Christina opens her mouth to speak, but she's cut off by a loud wail from the waiting room across the hall. Tris runs out of the room and into the other, and she sees Eric's mother being held up by her husband, and the wails and sobs are coming from her.
"This is your fault!" She screams at Tris, "You did this, get out, get away from me!!"
"Is he, did he?" Tris stammers.
"Get out!" Clive roars and hospital security approaches Tris.
"We have to ask you to leave." A guard says quietly.
"Did he die? Oh my god," Tris sobs and she feels herself being pulled away.
"We've got her." Someone from her group of friends says, but Tris doesn't even know who. She's sobbing, and she allows herself to be lifted up and feels herself being carried away.
"This is my fault..." She continues to wail.
Someone presses a needle into her neck and she panics until she sees Christina's familiar chocolate brown eyes.
"You're okay, sweetie, they gave you some peace serum. You're going to be okay, you'll get through this. We have your back." She soothes and Tris feels her eyes drooping shut.
She wakes up in a familiar bed and she turns and sees Tobias lying next to her.
"Is he dead?" She asks in a broken voice when he looks at her.
"I don't think so, his parents are still at the hospital from what I've been told but won't allow anyone near him, nor will they give us any answers. We don't know what's going on." He replies softly, "We have to go to Candor. I know you're exhausted and in pain, but we have to do this. If not, everything Eric's gone through is for nothing."
Tris knows he is right, so she gets up and gets ready for the day. She spends the entire train ride calling the hospital in Erudite, asking for updates on Eric, and being repeatedly denied. Her stress level is high when she arrives in Candor, and as soon as she and Tobias enter the courthouse they are stopped by security and placed in handcuffs.
"What is going on?" Tobias asks.
"We have orders from Leader Kang to arrest you both." A guard answers simply.
Neither protest, just peacefully following the guards down the hall and into the holding cell area.
"Ah good, I see you have Eaton and Prior. No Coulter?" The desk clerk comments to the guard once they're being booked.
"I heard he's dead. You need to update the system. We have them all now."
"What? No... no..." Tris crumples to the floor and she's yanked up by her arm roughly, "No, please no..." She wails.
"Get her out of here, cell three." The desk clerk buzzes a door open and Tris is dragged through it.
"Please tell me what you know, please, he's my boyfriend, I was forced to leave the hospital, please..." Tris cries and begs the guards who are dragging her away.
"What is going on with Eric Coulter? I need to see Jack Kang. Why are we being arrested? We were told to report here for testimony, not to turn ourselves in-" Tobias argues.
"Look, we're just following orders. We were told Coulter died, that's all we have. I'm sorry." One of the guards finally says, "If I put you two in here together will you behave?"
"Yes. I've got her." Tobias promises and they're locked into a single cell.
"I did this." She repeats as she cries on his shoulder. He tries to calm her, he tries to get her to listen to any reason, he thinks of any reasonable explanation to what the guards have said and comes up with nothing.
They are surprised when Jack Kang himself shows up outside of their cell.
"My apologies for this. Jeanine implicated the two of you, Caleb, Eric, Max, Harrison and Marcus as her accomplices. We had no choice but to arrest all parties." He says.
"What do you know about Eric? The guards said he was dead." Tris chokes out.
"He's unable to testify. That's all we are at liberty to disclose. We will get you two out there as quickly as possible." Jack replies.
Tobias can feel Tris wavering again and he puts his arm around her to hold her up, "Jack, please. They won't tell her anything. Please." Four begs.
"He's alive. Serious condition. Not yet stable." Jack says.
"Thank you." Tobias says and the other man nods.
Tris crawls into the bottom bunk bed into a fetal position and Tobias sits down next to her and rubs her back while she sobs.
Jack is true to his word and gets Caleb, Tobias and Tris out quickly, all three exonerated from any crimes. Just like Eric had mentioned, Caleb is given permission to choose a new faction due to being forced to follow illegal orders by Jeanine. He chooses to join Tobias in Dauntless and once they have their personal belongings back, Tris tries calling the hospital repeatedly, once again being denied any information.
What she does learn with every call is that he's still a patient there. That alone gives her the smallest amount of hope. Her father keeps calling her, leaving message after message asking her to update him on Eric's condition. She doesn't have the energy to return his calls.
He hasn't cared about her for twenty two years, why start now?
At Tobias' insistence, she returns to work to get her mind on something other than Eric. Veronica stays on as a temporary head leader, being very vocal in letting them all know this is only until Eric is back.
"What if he can't come back, Roni?" Tris asks her one day.
"Thinking like that isn't good for your soul." She replies. Tris watches as Veronica makes a phone call, and she sits patiently while listening to one side of a very spirited conversation with who she assumes is someone at Erudite general hospital.
"He's in the ICU, it's serious, but he's still with you." She says firmly.
"Thank you Roni." Tris replies.
After crashing on Tobias and Caleb's couch for several days, and getting nowhere with the ICU in Erudite, she finally goes back to the apartment she shares with Eric. The first night she's back home Lynn, Lauren and Christina join her. The four talk for a few hours, and as they're all saying their goodbyes Lynn pauses in the doorway and tells Lauren and Christina she'll catch up with them.
"I'm sorry for what I said that day." Lynn says, "I know that you never used him, and that you love him. I'm sorry for doubting you."
"Thank you. I do love him, and I blame myself for this." Tris replies.
"Don't. He was going to do this no matter what. He wrote you a letter, the night before you two went to Jeanine he texted me and told me it was inside of his desk. The smallest drawer, under a liner he has. You should read it, just in case."
"Just in case of what?" Tris asks.
Lynn just shakes her head and scrubs tears from her eyes, "Please read it, he told me it was there for you. Call or text me if you need me." She replies before pulling Tris into a quick hug then walking away.
Tris lets herself into his office, sitting down in his worn chair and opens the smallest drawer. Just as Lynn said, the letter is there, and she begins reading it.
It was the goodbye he wouldn't allow her.
She cries, to the point she can barely catch her breath, and she clutches it to her chest. He thought there was almost no chance he'd survive the sims, but he did, and for as close as she feels to Eric by reading his handwritten words she also knows it may be all she has left.
She moves to put the envelope on the table and a thicker pile of folded papers falls out of it. There is a sticky note attached to it, and she pulls it off, recognizing Eric's neat handwriting.
I'm sorry I tricked you into signing what you thought were blank invoices. I needed to protect you, and provide for you in case I didn't make it. Everything you need is here, and your father made sure that everything was legally in order and reported to Candor. I love you, and hope you understand why I did the things I did.
She finds his life insurance policy, his apartment lease, the paperwork for all of his bank accounts and then another certificate with the city seal on it. Tris looks at the paper and her hands begin to shake. There it is, in black and white, a certified copy of a marriage license signed by her own father with Eric and her names neatly typed as the bride and groom. Eric's familiar signature is there, along with her own, which she recognizes as being done by her own hand.
"How?" She whispers out loud.