TRIS POV

I used to be afraid of drowning.

Not in an enclosed tank in which others were able to see and taunt me. Instead it was a vast ocean where the waves would collapse on top of me repeatedly, burying me in a boundless amount of water.

There were two ways to face that fear: either pull myself up on a slippery rock that sliced my hands, or surrender to the violent body of water. My survival instincts made me choose the former, but now I can't find it in myself to understand.

Every breath in feels laborious. It is similar to sucking in and choking on that water, except now there are no brief moments of untainted air or a rock to cling to. It is physically painful to be alive.

Why do I keep resurfacing, why do I even bother? Why do I not sink to the bottom and let nature take its course?

I am drowning in a vast ocean, and this time, I have no reason to struggle against it.

Fire. That is how they told me he died.

A muffled voice—Zeke, maybe—stood above me some time ago and explained it. I only caught a word here and there with my senses and mental capacity dulled, but it was enough.

The factionless derailed the train before they even arrived, likely to retaliate against the Dauntless. Somehow there was an explosion as well. He was knocked unconscious until the fire caught ahold of him, and despite Zeke's efforts, he was mutilated by the flames.

In my dreaming and wakeful hours—which are blurred together and unrecognizable in between the misery—I see the fire. His screams echo in my ears as my body tricks itself during rest. The flames flicker against the wall that I have not yet torn my eyes away from since I was coherent enough to realize my surroundings.

The agony is too heavy to comprehend. It manifests itself physically, and thinking about each source is a momentary distraction from the real weight. My lungs ache under the burden of inhaling and exhaling. My eyes are swollen and sting each time I blink. My left side is in more pain than my right now, after remaining in the same position for however long it has been.

I am without the only thing I had keeping me precariously pieced together, and I am wasting away.

I was resilient because he was nearly impenetrable. I was undaunted because he pushed me to be. I was only able to climb onto the winding road to recovery because life had significance in him.

Tobias—

No.

The sound of his name, if only in my mind, causes nothing but air to lodge in my throat. I cannot bear to think of his name because it brings on thoughts of how his arms wrapped around me could shield me from the outside world, how his rare smile could drag me out of any dismal abyss. Stolen kisses evade my mind as if I have already forgotten him, and I tell myself to commit everything I can about him to memory since he will not be here to remind me anymore.

Now that I have invited in the recollections, they are irrepressible. I am too numb to cry, but I would try to force out that accumulating emotion if I had it in me. Because pondering all of the things I will never experience again or experience period makes my chest feel like it is going to burst with angst.

I will never hear his low voice ever again. I will never hug him around the waist again, and he will never tuck me into him with his chin resting on my head. I will never see his tattoo again, peeking out of the top of his shirt in the back and reminding me of the virtues that he strived to live by. I will never see him clench his jaw when he is frustrated or brooding when he is actually calm or any of his mannerisms that I love.

Loved, past tense. That is how it must be going forward.

He is gone, and despite my young age, I have no future ahead of me. I will never marry, never have a family. I will never have the chance to heal and carry on the way I wanted to. Grief will follow me for the rest of my life. However long that may be.

This is selfish, I realize. Tobias was young too, and he was murdered before he could share that life with me. But then I consider why my attention is stuck on myself in a time when my well-being does not matter.

He did not have the choice of leaving this world, of letting that opportunity be snatched cruelly from his hands; it has been yanked from my loose grip as well. The difference is that I have to decide whether being is worth it when I have no hopes and my soul is empty.

"Tris."

A voice unexpectedly invades my private state of mourning. I blink at the wall, not acknowledging it.

"Tris, how long has it been since you have moved?" Christina asks. "Have you even eaten or drunk water in the last day?"

A day. That is how much time has passed. In my own world of devastation, time did not exist.

I lick my lips, just barely aware of how parched and sticky my mouth is.

She sighs at my lack of response. "We need to get you fed. You can't go on like this." A shadow casts over the wall as she steps closer to me. It must be late afternoon. "Besides, we're going home soon. You need to come out and join us so we can talk about it."

I blink at the blank space in front of me.

"Tris—"

"Leave me alone," I croak. It sounds like a wheeze, and I am surprised how broken it comes out, like it is directly putting my insides on display.

She pauses this time. "I'm sorry for what happened to Four. I'm very sorry."

Hearing it out loud somehow cracks me even further. My eyes squeeze shut as I find tears somewhere in me to let out.

"But we need to move soon if we want to get back to Dauntless before we miss our chance. So you have to get up."

"Go away," I beg. A silent sob wracks my body just for a second.

Christina has never been one to follow directions. "You're being an idiot if you think we're going to leave you—"

"I want to die," I admit weakly.

I don't know exactly when I decided it, but it is out there as soon as it pierces through my ideas. I have felt this way before, after the previous war. It was a time when I was surrounded by the ghosts of my past life, my brother that would surrender me in a heartbeat, and the reality of what had occurred and what I had done. When it was too much, I took a knife to my own wrist for a twisted sense of relief.

What I am experiencing now makes those dark days look like child's play. This time it is a persistent ache that refuses to be quelled. This time, my life really is void of purpose.

Tobias is dead, and there is no reason to suffer when I could join him. I have survived a day in a place I do not want to be without him, and it is enough to let me know that I would rather be anywhere else so long as he is there. Maybe this time around I will have gall to do what I could not before.

"I know," Christina tries again, softly this time around. "I know, Tris."

Something inside of me snaps, and I sit up and face her with a dizzy head. Infected with negative emotions and needing some kind of purge, I take it out on my friend.

"You dated Will for a week. I was in love with Tobias for over a year," I snarl. The fury I feel at her insinuation that our relationship was some measly crush is too powerful for me to stumble over his name. "You don't know what it is like, so don't you dare try to assume that you do."

She takes a step back, her eyes wide with shock at my sudden outburst. Then she says, "I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and pretend like you don't know what you're saying."

My face burns, and this is the most alive I have felt in the last day, so I can't find it in me to stop. "You're so above me," I tell her with sarcasm flooding my tone. "You know everything, don't you?"

"Well, I know that Four wouldn't want you curled up in a pathetic ball, wasting away your life!" she retorts.

Some part of me agrees, yet a more fiery part challenges her hypocrisy. I stumble to my feet, leaning against the edge of the bed in the middle of the room. "You have no idea what he would want!" I shout, tears blurring my vision of her. "You didn't know him! And whenever you were around him, you were a smart mouth! The fact that you think you can try to speak for him—"

"Fine!" she interrupts. "I'll speak for myself instead. You are out of control, and right now, there are important things that have to be done if we want to survive. And I am not just talking about the people in this building."

My rage simmers for a moment. I am unsteady on my legs as I sniffle and meet her glare with my own.

"You need to pull it together, if not for yourself, then for Four." Just as I am about to retaliate, she sidetracks me with, "Did you want to avenge him or not?"

I rock back on my feet, blown away by the suggestion. I had not even considered it.

Christina purses her lips and walks away from me. "You better be out here in a few minutes, or I will drag you out by your hair," she tells me from the doorway.

She shuts the door, leaving me in solitude again. I wipe the moisture from my face, sinking down onto the bed now that she is gone.

The world outside the window is silent, too silent. No trains click as they hurtle down the tracks; nobody works to repair the destruction that this city has taken, as they used to; nobody freely walks the streets without fear of being gunned down. The wind whistles between the worn buildings and past the places in the street where several people killed themselves a couple days ago.

This is a different world.

This is not the same city I spent my childhood in, watching faction members mingle and collaborate to build a utopia. This is not the same city where I envied the citizens who each had found their rightful place in society.

This is a world in which there is no mercy or good. This is a world in which everyone will fight for their egocentric reasons and take anything precious within their reach, no matter the desolation it causes for others. The factionless are uncaring and will pillage for their power; the Dauntless are bitter and will scorch for retaliation.

I keep reiterating that Tobias is dead in order to immerse myself into reality, but the fact is that it is not the truth.

Tobias was murdered.

My blood races underneath my skin, hot and desperate. The wrath I feel is unlike any other sensation I have felt before, and I shake as it boils inside me. New tears form, this time in the shape of knives that leave burns in their wake.

It was not an accident, nor some unfortunate event. He was purposely killed for the factionless cause.

And if that is how this will be, a violent free-for-all, then it is time that I suppress my Abnegation aptitude. If they are going to be depraved, then I will be unforgiving. They cannot take anything more from me; little do they know that they have awoken an animal that is too desensitized to show any humanity towards them.

They made a colossal mistake when they derailed that train.

With that mindset, Tobias's face sets a fire in my heart that should have been smothered. I cannot join him yet because I do have purpose; there is something I have to do first. Someone needs to be here to enforce the retribution.

Silently vowing to him to be ruthless, a vicious sneer spreads across my face. I have officially gone insane, but that only means one thing:

Mayhem is coming to the factionless.