Chapter 49

Tris

I eat dinner with Lauren in the cafeteria. I was a little hesitant to join her, but everyone else is still at work or elsewhere.

"Try to get over our instructor-initiate-relationship, Tris. We're equals now. And in more than one way, I might add," she says while digging into her fries.

"I'll try to work on it," I reply and pick up a pizza slice from my plate.

"So, are you planning to accompany someone to work this week? What do you have in mind when it comes to picking a job?"

I shift in my seat. It's an uncomfortable topic.

"Actually, I haven't given it much thought. With everything that's going on, I'll be happy if we ever make it to that point."

"I'm surprised you see it like this. Sure, there's a lot that's happening, but let's be optimistic about it, even if it's just for argument's sake. You'll still have to decide about your future in Dauntless. There are so many possibilities for you with your rank, you shouldn't ignore it."

"But I don't know my rank yet."

"You're clever. I'm convinced you know that you're good, and if not, then let me tell you that you are. So, any ideas?"

I chew on my pizza, turning thoughts around in my mind. There are things I enjoy, but it feels wrong to think about what I want. Whenever I spend time considering my job options, I don't spend time thinking about how to stop the war that's about to start, which leads me to feel guilty and selfish.

It feels wrong.

I sigh.

"Well, I think I'd like teaching. I can also imagine working in the infirmary, or helping people in general. I'd also like to change a few things about the way Dauntless currently works back to how it must have been before. I'd like to find out how people want to live here and try to improve their lives. I want to know more about the other factions and their beliefs and bring them together peacefully. I refuse to believe everyone in Erudite is evil. Every faction is more than their leaders. I'd like to give each member a voice in our society. Maybe there are ways to include the factionless more to give them a better social status. I want a job that is challenging and rewarding at the same time. Bottom line, my thoughts are not very organized."

"But that's quite an impressive list you've got there."

"It doesn't feel like much, though. It's just a bunch of intentions and ideals that I have, but I have no idea what to make of it all. And then the pressure that my decision will affect my life for so many years to come... It's frightening."

Lauren nods sympathetically, and then we talk about different jobs for at least an hour. Our plates have long been empty when we finally put a stop to our conversation, and that's only because we have to head to the Allegiant meeting.

"So Zeke and Shauna's apartment is your headquarters?" Lauren asks walking alongside me.

"We never used that word for it, but you could call it like that, yes. I mean, they have the most spacious home of all of us."

"Reasonable," she says, stifling a yawn.

I smile at her in understanding.

"Tired?"

"Kind of. I didn't sleep well last night."

"Tell me about it. Me neither. I had the strangest nightmare of all times. It felt as if I was trapped in a cruel version of my fear landscape."

I shudder as I remember the images that finally forced me awake at the dead of night, crying.

"A cruel version? Has there ever been one that wasn't?" Lauren's cynicism can't be missed.

"So true. But this one seemed endless, and I wasn't able to control it. I also wasn't aware that it wasn't real. I was so relieved when I finally woke up."

"It's strange, I had a nightmare, too, last night, and I usually never dream at all. What a coincidence."

"I think it was caused by what happened during the day. And for you, with getting all this new information yesterday, it must have been hard to process it all."

We make it to Allegiant headquarters, and one by one everyone drops by.

Christina and I greet each other shortly. At least there's no flaming anger between us. We are still reserved, but we don't stare each other down.

I hate conflicts, I can't bear fighting for long. I've never learned how to do that. I know I'll have to talk to Christina soon, in private, to get things straight with her. I'm still angry about what she said to me, though, but I see no other way out of this except talking to her again while we're both in a calmer mood than we were in this afternoon.

Zeke and Tobias are the last ones to arrive, and while I stand beside the couch and Tobias by the door, Zeke and Shauna greet each other with an embrace and a pretty intimate kiss in the middle of the room.

I'm still surprised at times about how they don't care about others being in the same room, but when I glance around I notice how nobody pays attention to them. Their kiss is so normal to everyone else that they don't pause and watch — or concentrate on not watching. They just keep doing whatever they are doing.

I look across the room to Tobias, and our eyes meet. He smiles at me, and I do the same in return. He walks over to me casually, and we take each other's hand and squeeze it softly. It's our usual way to say hello when our friends are around. Compared to the couple next to us it feels too much like friends and too little like lovers. My heart is thumping, knowing that our friends can see us, and maybe I even want them to see what I do next. They know we are together anyway, and now I want to show them. I don't want to hide what we have any longer.

I take Tobias' other hand and then slightly rise on my tiptoes to place a small kiss on his lips. Tobias pulls me against him gently in response and places another kiss on my forehead. It feels so good and safe, and I close my eyes to savor the moment, forgetting for a few heartbeats that we're not in one of our own apartments.

Tobias

I'm surprised about Tris' lips on mine, here, out in the open. It's the first time we kiss in public, even if it's just around people we consider our friends. I wouldn't have dared to kiss her myself.

I stare into her beaming eyes and trail my hands up along her arms to her shoulders and pull her close to kiss her forehead. When her eyelids flutter close, I'm burning with love for her. Closing my eyes to join her, knowing we've just taken another step, no matter how small and unimportant it might seem to anyone else, I inhale her scent deeply.

A whistle pulls us out of this fragile moment of intimacy.

I sigh. It's Uriah. Of course it's Uriah! Suddenly all eyes are on us, or maybe they've already been before. We wouldn't know.

We put a little distance between us, but keep holding hands as we turn to walk over to sit down. Tris has a beautiful red glow on her cheeks. While I'm still thinking of something to say, she has already found her voice. She doesn't seem to be uncomfortable with the situation, instead she's rather amused.

"Oh, stop it Uriah," she laughs. "It's not that you haven't seen anyone kiss before. But I'll remember to comment on you and Marlene the next time I see you making out in public."

"Go ahead and cheer us on as much as you want," he replies, laughing back at her.

He's just like his brother, who winks at me when he thinks no one can see it. — I bet half of the people in this room saw it...

But at some point, we all have to turn serious again. I'm curious to hear how Jack reacted to our request to help us. There's a lot of information to share about the afternoon, and with the four of them explaining everything and the rest of us throwing in questions, it takes a while until we're all up to date.

Jack took his time to listen to their story first, then interrogated them further for more details. He was taken aback by the accusations and expressed doubts regarding our theories. That's why he wants proof before he'll start doing anything.

He asked for two Dauntless members to come to meet him again on Wednesday afternoon and to bring as much evidence with them as possible to reinforce our suspicions. He didn't specify what kind of proof he's looking for. It's our job to find and bring something that is incriminating enough to convince him.

What he was clear about is that he expects one of the two that come to meet him on Wednesday has to be Tris because she only recently left Abnegation, and, with the threat being against her former faction, he wants to hear her opinion again. He wants someone to accompany her who has been in Dauntless for at least a year and can tell him more about how the faction has changed.

I offer to go to Candor with Tris, and nobody questions my decision. I don't know what Jack is really up to, but I consider it possible that he wants to interrogate us under truth serum, and I wouldn't want anyone else to be with Tris while she's forced to speak the truth. Or maybe she can withstand the powers of the serum, like she can resist the fear serum, at least to a certain extent. I wouldn't count on that, though, knowing what the overdose of peace serum did to her mind.

Jack also suggested that we should try to find more Dauntless whom we could trust to help us, because even if he pressed charges against Jeanine, Eric and Max, someone would have to arrest them. He must have been very didactic in his explanations about each faction's contribution to our society in general and about Candor and Dauntless' different roles regarding this case in particular.

This is the moment in which Uriah's request to tell Marlene comes up again.

"You know I won't stop bringing this up again no matter what you say. I won't get tired of discussing it over and over again with you, cause it is very important to me. And now it would even meet Jack's suggestion to make team Allegiant bigger and more powerful. Honestly guys, we have no idea yet how to take our leaders down. We could use more brains and fresh ideas. I swear Marlene is trustworthy."

I still don't like the idea of letting more people in, but I can't deny the reason in Uriah's words. I can follow his thoughts, and, apart from that, can understand his personal wish to tell his girlfriend. Weeks ago, I wouldn't have been able to relate to that desire and would simply have shut him down, and I even voted against him yesterday. It wasn't easy to do that because I like him, and now that I'm being so close to Tris, I want everyone else to find some piece of mind, too.

My vote yesterday was based upon my fear of being discovered and our faction being pulled into a war that nobody apart from our leadership wants. I had a hard time trying to explain it to Zeke on our way back here after our shift in the control room, because he wanted to exactly know my reasons. His words from right before he turned the key around to open the door to his apartment still echo through my mind: It's not very Dauntless to let fear dictate your opinion.

We're about to vote on the issue again now, and I find it hard to make a decision.

"So, today I'll phrase the question differently. I'm not going to ask for your permission, I ask for your vetoes. But I want you to please explain to me why you're against it, if you're against it," Uriah says while looking around at all of us.

And it works, at least at first. Will is the only one rising his hand. He then gives us a short speech about the increasing probability of someone finding out about the Allegiant before we can prevent the war, substantiating his allegations with numbers that are supposed to show the exponentially growing percentage of someone getting wind of us — at least that's how he phrases it.

His opinion is based purely on science, how typical for a former Erudite.

Does it make me a typical former Abnegation when I base mine on fear?

Nobody else puts in a veto, and that's when I realize how Uriah has tricked our group into giving him what he wants just by phrasing his question the right way. I have to admit he's a good tactician. The decision is now made, but I still wonder how I would have voted if the question had been the same as yesterday.

Shauna suggests telling Lynn, as she is family and trustworthy, too. Interesting, when twenty-four hours ago she shared my opinion that we shouldn't let more people in. Maybe it's a reaction of defiance? I have to give her credit for being a quick learner, as she uses the same words Uriah did as she phrases her query.

"And remember that your sister is part of the Allegiant, too," she reminds Will.

"But it's for a reason!"

"Lynn would be in it for a reason as well, just as much as any of us is here for a reason."

Will rolls his eyes, but he knows he's defeated.

"Fine, let everyone in then, if this is what you all want."

Now Tris jumps to her feet, a determination in her voice that makes me admire her even more with every word that she says.

"All we want is to fight for the peace of the world we live in, and none of us knows which is the perfect way to do that, so we can follow either way without knowing how it's going to play out. Maybe it could work both ways, maybe there isn't just a wrong and a right way, but simply several ways instead, have you ever thought about that? And if that's the case, we might as well tell the people we are close with, so that even if we fail, we won't end up being in a fight with them for not telling them. Also, we could just turn the argumentation around and say that we might also regret not letting in enough people to help us if this ends badly, which I don't hope it will. I feel like we're spending too much time on discussing the wrong issues."

Silence follows her speech. Tris has been relatively quiet all evening, leaving most of the talking to the others, but now I wonder if she's just been saving her words for now. Was she even with us all the time, or were her thoughts drifting away, thinking it all through from an outside perspective?

"Pointed words, Tris, well said," Uriah acknowledges. "But now I need a break to think about what you said, my brain doesn't work as fast as yours," he adds jokingly.

"Seriously, can't we just focus on how to stop the traitors? Or on how to gather evidence against them, so Candor will support us? It's so much more important!"

Tris has a point with this. She sits back down beside me, and I take her hand and squeeze it. I'm proud of her, of who she has become.

We peruse all the evidence we already have to present to Jack:

We can print the invasion plans we stole from Eric's computer, and we have the pictures of the security cameras that show Jeanine in our compound the night her faction delivered the syringes.

There's also Eric's device we found in the Amity fields, but of course it isn't a proof itself. It's the story of how it got there and how I found it that is the interesting part. I can offer Jack to check with Johanna, as I'm sure she'd confirm my words.

Then there's the email I read in Eric's office that lead us to investigate in the first place. Unfortunately, I don't have a copy of it, but I still know the words. I can recite them under truth serum if necessary.

We can tell Jack to visit the Erudite compound at night and see for himself how they are working until long past midnight.

In the end, we already have a lot of things to show and tell Jack.

"It's all evidence that shows what they are planning and that they have already begun to realize their plans, but we should try to get some audio or video footage of them really doing forbidden things. It'll be a stronger kind of proof once it comes to a trial," Christina says.

"What do you mean by 'stronger evidence'?" Will asks.

"There are different classes of evidence in a trial. First, everyone who's charged with having committed a crime will be put under truth serum and then interrogated in the Candor court room. Then other people can be heard in addition, to form a wider understanding of the situation. That's the first kind of proof, testimony.

Then there is evidence in form of media, which can be anything from a letter to a video, and those are usually the ones that are regarded as the most reliable sources apart from the interrogations.

Items such as Eric's device, or the email you can only tell about but not show, are less valuable, as they prove nothing. They only serve to support the charges."

"But what if I can tell them what I read in Eric's office word for word? Or if I tell them about what happened in Amity? I couldn't lie about it if I was injected with truth serum," I interrupt her.

"You yourself couldn't lie, but the evidence could still be misleading. See, Candor think in black and white, like their clothes suggest, and it's how they judge.

That email you found could still be one that wasn't real. It could have been a test to see if you'd take it if you had the chance. Or it could be a draft, or it could be sent to Eric from someone other than Jeanine, just using her name.

And the device from Amity doesn't have to have been there because Eric had lost it there. It could have been stolen from him. Or he had another mission to attend in their compound. He could have inspected the place before you did. And Dauntless trucks going there to bring back enough food supplies is the conclusion we made. It doesn't make it true just because we think it is."

I sigh, "That makes it a lot more complicated."

"Maybe, but that's how Candor interpret the law. They base their sentences on proofs, not on suspicions."

"Okay, so then we'll drown them in evidence against Dauntless and Erudite leadership!" Uriah exclaims, clapping his hands on his thighs excitedly.

"This is not a game," Lauren scolds him.

"I know, I was just trying to motivate us. We're all so serious and worried, that's not the spirit that leads to good ideas to save the faction."

"We could hand you over to Eric as an intern, so we wouldn't have to put up with you stealing our cake after lunch anymore," Zeke grins.

We laugh and then start a wild brainstorming session in which we try to outdo one another with crazy plans.

At first, I think this is ridiculous and I want to shout at them to pull themselves together instead of wasting time, but then I notice that there's more creativity in those ideas than we've come up with since we decided on the whole vaccine plan.

Not everything is definite yet, but we'll try to install cameras and microphones that will hopefully provide us with more watertight evidence. Zeke and Will volunteer to work on it tonight. I offer to help them, but Zeke says they'll be fine.

Depending on what happens the next two days, we'll have to find a strategy on how to arrest the three leaders. Once they are taken into custody, chances are good that their supporters won't know what to do and won't act without their direct orders.

But before we can imprison them, we have to have Candor's support, or otherwise we'll end up being rebels acting against the law. Even worse than that would be our enemies' knowledge about us.

No, we must be sure they can be convicted to whatever sentence is long or bad enough for them before we act.

That makes getting Candor on our side our next big goal.

DISCLAIMER: I own neither the Divergent world nor the characters, they belong to Veronica Roth.